Rejoice, a Knife to the Heart Page 13

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” Kent whispered.

  “They thought it was the Russians,” Mellyk explained. “At least at first. Those were paranoid times, Mister President. Cold War fears dominated everything. People weren’t thinking very clearly. By the late Seventies, however, the consensus was that something odd was going on up there. But even then, the matter was being discussed only at the highest levels. There were multiple efforts to contact the Greys. These failed.”

  “Do any ETs ever pick up the effing phone?” the President demanded.

  “And subsequent ventures,” Mellyk continued, “made it clear that further lunar exploration was forbidden. The Greys were thorough and succinct in showing us that the moon was now off-limits.”

  “They blew stuff up? Our stuff?”

  “Not just ours, Mister President. Russian stuff, Chinese stuff, Indian stuff.” He shrugged.

  “And not one blackbook project in the works to get the bastards out of there? Not in all those years? Those … decades? I can’t believe this.”

  “I think,” ventured Mellyk, “that president after president just wished the aliens would, well, finish up and leave. Instead, operations continued to expand. The problem was too big—”

  “And,” cut in Diana Prentice, “we kept distracting ourselves with all the usual jockeying around here on Earth.”

  Kent slowly sat, gaze now fixing on Prester. “And it never occurred to … anyone … not even once, that keeping this stuff secret might actually be counterproductive? Allowing us—all of us, every effing country and every effing government—to go on fighting the old battles, getting ever more divisive and parochial, when instead—if they’d come clean—we could possibly have actually united all of humanity?”

  “Like in that old film?” Prester asked. “Independence Day? But sir, that was just a film.”

  “You small-brained navel-wanking idiot, I know it was just a film! But the message was simple enough—even for you, I’d think? Give us an external threat and we get together! Duh!”

  “Sir, a panicked population would have toppled governments, crashed the market—”

  “And this is why politicians are the worst people to be running anything! They have no faith in humanity! None! Get people together and you get things done!”

  Both Prester and Mellyk had recoiled in their chairs at their President’s tirade.

  Diana Prentice said, “There was clearly another fear at work here, Raine. Those Greys possess technology we can’t match. That much is obvious by virtue of the fact that they came here from another planet, from another solar system. Sure, we could maybe have built something and loaded it up with Marines or whatever, and tried to make a beachhead on the moon, but honestly, that sounds like a scenario that ends with bits of dead Marines floating around in space. And then, what about the potential for retaliation? Eating holes in the moon is one thing, eating holes down here is another.”

  “Those Greys, they’re fucking thieves.”

  Mellyk straightened. “And now, Mister President, they’re all gone. Chased away.”

  “Because something nastier is in the neighborhood? Oh, that’s just great.”

  “It’s not exploitative, so far,” Mellyk said. “That is a significant detail, we think.”

  “Even more encouraging,” Prester chimed in, “the Greys ran away, no shots fired. Probably just a wag of ET’s finger. The Greys outclassed us but these newcomers outclass the Greys, probably by a long shot.”

  “Turns out,” said Mellyk, “the galaxy is a lot more crowded than any of us believed.”

  “So why did SETI come up with diddily-squat?” Kent demanded.

  “That, sir, is a mystery.”

  Raine Kent slowly sat back again, looking drained. “Our entire nation’s police forces are reduced to saving kittens from trees. The rioting’s done. There’s no crime anywhere, not even burglary. What happened to all the drug pushers? The addicts are going crazy. We’ve got a methadone shortage nationwide and in the meantime, a million Mexicans are crossing our border and there’s dick-all we can do about it. You all talk about budget crunches—what happens when the citizens decide not to pay their taxes? Oh sure, garnish their wages, but now you’re talking tripling the size of the IRS trying to administer that, hell, who am I kidding? Tripling? More like gazzippling, and servers are already crashing everywhere. We can’t maintain any control over this. The only people in control are aliens and all they care about is protecting pandas and trees and whales and horn-rimmed owls or whatever. Oh, and keeping recess friendly. But every recess ends. With a buzzer. Where’s the buzzer? When’s it coming? What the hell happens then?”

  “The illegal drug trade seems to be a curious development,” the Vice President said after Kent had run out of breath and, it seemed, the will to live. “A very subtle application of the no-violence-against-others principle, particularly when the addicts themselves want their fixes. After all, self-harm seems to be allowed—”

  “What’s your point?” Kent asked.

  “Well, my point is just that, Raine. This is a strong ethical statement being made here. It probably doesn’t relate to drug abuse per se, but to the criminal element behind it. Criminal activities have been shut down, world-wide. Supplies are processed, prepared, ware-housed, and then it all just vanishes. Except for hospital-grade heroin and other related opiates.”

  “Wait a minute. There’s hospital-grade heroin?”

  Diana Prentice shrugged. “Pot seems acceptable, at least insofar as we can tell in those states and countries where it’s legal.”

  “The buzzer,” said Raine. “Recess is over. Out comes Jesus, waving a big bell.” He pointed a finger at his Science Advisor. “Enough of this waiting around shit, Ben. Tell NASA we need to launch someone. We need an effing astronaut in a capsule or something, heading out looking to make contact with these new hidey-hole aliens. We make it a public spectacle. We say we’re expecting an actual contact with the aliens. Whatever it costs, Ben, am I understood?” He stood. “Something for the people to get behind, right?”

  “Well,” said Diana in a flat tone, “better than Freedom Marches.”

  Kent snorted. “Murdo always was an idiot. A rich, powerful idiot, but still an idiot. Glad that backfired on him. But that’s a point—let’s make sure this launch thing doesn’t backfire on us.”

  “Mister President,” said Ben Mellyk, “that’s up to the aliens, isn’t it?”

  “Call their bluff.”

  “It’s a gamble,” said Prester.

  “And exactly when did that make Americans flinch?”

  “We think,” said Prester, “the Chinese are accelerating their Luna Colony program.”

  “While we just sit here with our thumbs up our asses. This country’s gone off the rails. I said it during my campaign and I’m saying it now. We’ve lost our balls—sorry, D.K. But dammit, we have. All this thin-skinned wimpy mamby pamby oh my feelings are hurt crap, good grief, we’re a nation of cry-babies! Listen, all of you, it’s time to take the lead.”

  “A snap-mission into space will still take some time,” Ben Mellyk said.

  “We’ll need congressional approval—” began Prentice.

  “They’ll approve what I tell them to approve,” said the President. “You’re not popular there, Raine. They’ll jump all over you with this.”

  “Oh really? Tell ’em I’ll veto every one of their pet projects. I’ll empty the pork barrel. Listen! I need to address the people. I’ll lay it out. The rest of the world can cower, Americans won’t. Dammit, that’s our solar system out there!”

  “To be honest sir,” Mellyk said, “this may not even be our planet anymore.”

  Raine Kent slowly sat back down. “Is that why they’re ignoring us? We’ve ceased to be relevant?”

  “Governing remains necessary,” his Vice President said, pushing off from her chair to stand, arms crossed under her breasts. “The fact that we have not been contacted in any official way sugges
ts at least two levels of engagement from these new aliens.”

  “What do you mean?” Raine asked.

  “Well, there’s the global—no, call it macro engagement. The forcefields showing up all over the planet and then ET enforcing non-violence on human behavior. And, of course, the things going on with Venus and Mars. And no doubt the non-violence aspect is affecting human actions, but only insofar as backing up our legal institutions, world-wide, since it seems we can still arrest and incarcerate people. And the forcefields have halted expansion and access to additional resources, necessitating population re-adjustments, especially among the poorer nations.” She paused, noting at last that she had everyone’s attention. “But actual governing—the potential micro-management side to all of this, they’re still leaving to us. Us humans.”

  “So far,” said Daniel Prester.

  She nodded. “So far. But those macro effects they’ve imposed, they do seem to be pointing us toward a specific attitude re-adjustment in our thinking, and by that I mean our thinking as it pertains not just to governing, but also our economics.”

  Raine Kent thumped a fist on the desk. “They’re fuckin’ socialists!”

  “They’re reining us in in the name of preserving the planet and managing its dwindling resources,” Diana said. She shrugged. “Is that socialist?”

  “Maybe not,” the President retorted, “but it sure as hell isn’t capitalist!”

  “The space mission aside,” Diana said after a moment, “we do have pressing issues here on the ground, namely, the need for foreign aid—”

  “Screw ’em,” said Raine in a low growl.

  “That might be dangerous,” Diana observed.

  “Why? Is Burundi about to invade?”

  “No sir, by ‘dangerous’ I meant the aliens. Consider this, sir—in fact, all of you—the non-violence interventions are all instantaneous. What does that imply?” She fixed the Science Advisor with her gaze. “Ben?”

  “I said it before. It applies agency.”

  “Yes. An omnipresent … presence. Observing, monitoring, comprehending what it sees in real-time.” She paused. “Are none of you getting it yet? We are being observed. Watched, and probably recorded. And what we decide may well determine what they do next.” She turned to the President. “Show a cold, cruel heart, sir, and they might well decide to do the same.”

  Slowly, the color left Raine Kent’s face.

  “Neither socialist nor capitalist,” Diana went on. “More like … our conscience.”

  The word hung there in the now-silent Oval Office, like a judgement from God.

  Fame was fleeting, but it had yet to leave Marc Renard. As a Canadian astronaut he had been only the fifth from his country to spend time at the International Space Station, and like his predecessors there had been speaking engagements, radio and television interviews, and a book with its attendant cross-country signing tour. It helped that he was affable and comfortable in front of a crowd, or a camera. Most of these virtues seemed far away at the moment, as he sat opposite the Prime Minister and did his best to explain. “Secrecy is a big part of the package,” he said. “If you don’t sign on you don’t go, as simple as that.”

  Lisabet Carboneau’s eyes were hard. “And this supersedes the oaths you took in service to your own country?”

  “Madam, when I agreed to non-disclosure prior to my stay at the ISS, I had no idea that it would create a conflict of interest with respect to my oath as a military officer.”

  She leaned forward in her chair. The office seemed stifling and the vase full of lilacs from the Prime Minister’s garden yielded a scent pungent enough to make the astronaut’s eyes water. “Just tell me what’s going on up there? What did you see?”

  “We had company,” he replied. “Irritating company. They were, well, remotes. Not big. They did a lot of hovering. They got curious, especially when anyone was on a walk. For all that, no one ever felt they were friendly. More like wasps at a picnic.”

  “And the moon?”

  He sighed. “A busy place. Half our job was making sure our external shots didn’t catch anything too overt. Positioning for public shots was so damned complicated we needed Mission Control to guide us.”

  “So the book, the tours, and the speeches, all bullshit.”

  He winced.

  “Yesterday,” the Prime Minister said, “I had a long conversation with the British Prime Minister, Jeffry Kemp, where we discussed our ‘special’ relationship with the United States. Of course, this also involved matters relating to the European Space Agency and the recent revelations about the moon. Our moon.”

  Jeffry Kemp. That wanker. Marc glanced away.

  “No, sorry, back here please.”

  Marc’s head snapped back. “Apologies, Madam. Allergies.” He nodded toward the lilacs. “Making my eyes water.”

  “Will you get hives?”

  “Pardon? Oh. No.”

  “Then suck it up,” she said. “You know, everyone in power thinks the same thing. The privilege of keeping secrets, it’s like ambrosia. It’s heady stuff. When people say someone is drunk on power, this is what they mean, whether they realize it or not. The idea of people knowing too much—of the citizens actually finding out what governments and corporations are really up to—that’s what scares them the most.”

  Abruptly she stood, collecting up the vase to carry over to a side-table. “And then there’s some people who were born to it, born in it, thinking their power is a birth-right, a product of blue blood or some such thing.” She walked back to re-seat herself. “That’s Kemp. Even on the phone and thousands of kilometers away, I found myself wanting to throttle the man.” She blinked. “Needless to say, you can’t quote me.”

  Marc nodded. “I’ve met him, Madam. Proof that power corrupts, I suppose.”

  “Well, I’m not yet corrupted,” Lisabet said. “At least, I don’t think so. You understand, I want to see full disclosure, and I want to be the one to lead the way. With an address to all Canadians.”

  Frowning, Marc asked, “Why? They’ve left, the moon, I mean. And, from what I’ve learned, all the remotes are gone. Nothing in orbit.”

  “That’s not the point. The point, Marc, is the principle. The assumption that the general population consists mostly of idiots who, as the film once said, can’t handle the truth.”

  “If disclosure is that important,” Marc said, “why have the newly arrived ETs not made a public appearance?”

  “You think they’re hiding what they’re up to? That hardly seems the case.”

  “No, at least on one level, you’re right. So, two very public, worldwide gestures: the forcefields and the ending of all violence. But what if there’s more going on, things that we’ve not yet noticed? Those two acts couldn’t be disguised or hidden away. They were explicitly public. But not everything is, Madam Prime Minister. We both know that.”

  “What have you heard?”

  “High tech schematics, files containing instructions on building an emission-free energy-source. An engine. You can make it so small it’ll run an electric toothbrush, or big enough to lift an Atlas rocket. Those files arrived at every tech and engineering firm, everywhere.”

  She waved a hand. “Yes, I’m aware of that. And how is that any less public, Marc? It’s pointedly non-proprietary. No one can patent the technology. The automotive companies have just seen decades of electric-car research go down the tubes, not to mention the hydrogen-fuel prototypes and the improvements on bio-diesel. As for the oil sector, let’s not even go there. These new ETs aren’t hiding anything, despite the potential chaos of their revelations. And you know what? I find that refreshing.”

  “But we still don’t know that they’re not hiding anything, apart from themselves, that is.”

  “In their place, I wouldn’t make an appearance either. No alien visage to focus our resentment on.” She slid into view a file folder. “But it may be that we’re going to be surprised again.” She opened the file and push
ed it across the desk toward Marc.

  He leaned forward, spun the file around and began reading, only to stop. “I remember this,” he said. “The abduction event in Victoria, all those videos—”

  “And what were the conclusions from your Don’t Tell Anyone crowd?”

  “You make that sound so …”

  “Juvenile?”

  After a moment he returned his attention to the file. “Well, it didn’t really match past abductions, which tended to be more … private. There was worry that the Greys were ramping things up.”

  “Did you see the video recordings?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was that flying saucer recognizably a Grey ship?”

  “Impossible to say, Madam. They reconfigure, or there are multiple styles. The initial thinking was that the Greys wanted us to believe that they weren’t the only ones up there, travelling through and occupying our sovereign space. A multitude of vessel-styles meant to intimidate us.”

  “I would think it worked.”

  “Yes. It did. Kept us in our corner, for certain, looking out at the big boys playing the real game.” He glanced back up from the file. “You are thinking that these new ETs took Samantha August?”

  “What do you think?”

  After a moment, he sat back. “You know, you might be right. Still …”

  “Why didn’t they snatch up someone like you, you’re thinking. An astronaut, someone who’s been up there. Or maybe a major mover and shaker, a very public figure. An actor or a president or even a prime minister. Or a scientist, someone like Tyson. Hell, why not Jodie Foster?”

  “Well, it’s a good question, isn’t it?”

  “Surely you’re a fan of Science Fiction, Marc?”

  “Of course. But at the same time, they do, well, they make things up. Warp drives, singularity drives, hyperspace. They’re not necessarily … grounded.”

  “Hmm. Very well. Let’s assume they took her. And just her, no one else.”