Dark as Day

2 THE TROJAN L-4 POINT, YEAR 2097, SEINE-DAY MINUS ONE

Alex Ligon and Kate Lonaker held their meeting in one of the “low-rent” levels of the Ganymede interior, where most government offices are located.

Draw a line that joins Alex and Kate to the Sun. It’s a straight line, a long line, and a line of variable length, because Kate and Alex rotate with Ganymede, and Ganymede revolves around Jupiter, and Jupiter itself circles the Sun. But to one significant figure none of that matters. The distance is seven hundred and seventy million kilometers, give or take thirty million. Using that Sun-Jupiter line as base, draw two equilateral triangles in the same plane as Jupiter’s orbit. The apex of one of those triangles, trailing Jupiter in its orbit, is known as the Jovian L-4 point. The apex leading Jupiter is the Jovian L-5 point.

Both these locations are gravitationally stable. An object placed at one will remain there, co-orbiting with Jupiter. Nature long ago discovered this, and the group known as the Trojan asteroids reside there. The mathematician Lagrange proved the existence of such stable points in the eighteenth century. Humans only found a way to get there a good deal later.

Milly Wu arrived at the Jovian L-4 station most recently of all. She had flown out in an economy 0.2 Earth-gee ship, on a flight of two weeks duration; long enough to worry to excess about the adequacy of her talents, but not long enough to learn all she felt she needed to know about the Argus Project. Now, only six days after arrival, Milly was sitting in her first staff meeting and wondering how long it would take her stomach to adjust to a micro-gravity environment.

The good news was that she was not expected to do anything. “Just sit in the back and keep quiet,” her supervisor, Hannah Krauss, had said. “Answer a direct question if the Ogre addresses one to you, of course. But I don’t think that’s likely. JB is going to talk more than listen.”

The Ogre. Hannah was about twenty-four, just a couple of years older than Milly. She was alert and attractive, with a wild mop of dark curly hair, a slim figure, and a mobile face that could take on a huge variety of expressions. When she said, “the Ogre,” her whole countenance somehow adopted a look of menace and malevolence. Milly had heard bad things about Jack Beston, even back on Ganymede. But could he really be as ogre-ish as he was painted?

Milly looked, and decided that maybe he could. JB, Jack Beston, was standing in front of the group now. He was tall, red-headed, and skinny as a stim-stick. Not bad looking, if you liked skinny guys, as Milly did. But his expression cancelled any possible attraction. He was glowering at everyone and everything before a word was spoken. It made Milly wonder why she had struggled through all the horrendous aptitude tests in cryptanalysis and pattern analysis needed to bring her here. Was she all that keen to be part of the Argus Project?

She decided that she was. If anyone made contact with aliens, Milly wanted to be in the front row. But for the moment she was quite happy to follow Hannah Krauss’s advice and sit at the back. She scanned the windowless room. Minimal furnishings. Twenty-one people, fourteen women, seven men; three empty seats in her row. Sit tight, keep quiet, and try to be invisible. She placed the rectangle of the scribe plate flat on her knees, where she could make unobtrusive condensed Post-logic notes on whatever she felt needed recording.

“You’ve heard the crap the media are putting out.” Jack Beston made no introductory remarks. “The Seine is going to link everything to everything and solve every problem in the solar system. I turn that around. When the Seine is up and running — and that’s less than a day from now — nobody will be safe. Nobody will have secrets. People will use the Seine to wander all over the System and stick their nose in where it’s got no right to be. We can’t have that. I want to review where we stand on battening down on Argus information. Druse?”

A small man with a wizened face and a shaved scalp stood up. “The incoming signals all come in from open space, and we can’t do anything about that. Anyone with the right receiving equipment will get exactly what we get. But so far as we know, no one else in the System has our sensitivity, or our modulated neutrino beam detector. Except—” Druse hesitated.

“Except the Bastard.” Beston scowled. “He’s got Odin working different targets and a different set of neutrino energies, but his equipment’s as good as ours. No point in worrying about the security of incoming signals. What about the rest of it?”

“We propose to use the Seine’s computer power only for raw data reduction and for first frequency scan. We don’t give much away there, even if someone taps our whole feed. That’s all that the Seine will do for us. Our private crypto programs and results will be completely caged, so no electromagnetic signals of any kind can get out. If we find a SETI signal—”

“When we find the SETI signal.”

“Right. When we find an unambiguous SETI signal, everything switches from search to analysis. We have to make a choice there. If we use the Seine for decrypt, we lose secrecy. If we don’t use the Seine and stay caged, we limit our computer power.”

“That’s not your department. I’ll make that decision when the time comes. Just make sure I have a copy of the cage specs.” Beston turned to a woman just a couple of seats along from Milly. “Zetter. Any progress?”

The woman had a thin vulpine face with a sharp nose. She must have slipped in late, and very quietly, because Milly had surveyed everyone in the room when she first arrived.

Zetter — first name? last name? — did not stand up. She leaned forward, so that Milly was presented with only a quarter profile, and shook her head in a slow, reptilian manner. “Not as of four hours ago. I received a report from—”

“No names. You know the rules.”

“I wasn’t about to.” The woman sniffed. “I received a report from our source at L-5 four hours ago. Odin is tightening security on all fronts.”

“Of course. The Bastard is as worried about leaks as we are. Any peepholes?”

“Too soon to say. Maybe one weak point — human, not equipment.”

“Better. You can’t buy a machine. How much?”

“I don’t know yet. Pricey. You get what you pay for.”

“Or less. Get onto it again. Tell our source we don’t want general information. If it’s not decrypt methods—” Jack Beston stopped in mid-sentence. His green eyes, apparently staring at nothing, had suddenly focused their glare on Milly. “You in the back. What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

It was a direct question, the kind that supervisor Hannah Krauss had told her to answer. But it wasn’t one that Milly understood. She sat frozen.

“Who are you?” Beston barked. “What’s your name?”

“Milton Wu.”

“Milton?” Beston moved to peer at her body. “What sort of a fucking name is that? You’re no man.”

“No.” Milly, as always since the age of thirteen, was conscious of her too-large breasts. “Milton is my real name, a family name. But everyone calls me Milly.”

“She’s new. Only been here six days.” Hannah Krauss was trying to divert Jack Beston’s anger. It didn’t work.

“I don’t give a flying fuck if she’s been here just six minutes. And I’m not talking to you, Krauss.” He pointed straight at Milly’s crotch. “What’s that?”

He meant the scribe plate sitting on her lap. He had to mean the scribe plate. They had already established that she was a woman. Milly felt herself blushing. “I thought I ought to make notes. I have a lot to learn.”

“You can say that again. Tell me this, Milly Wu. Are we safe inside a cage, so no E/M signals get out?”

“No. I mean, I don’t think so.”

“I’ll tell you. We are not. You’ve been writing on that thing?”

“Yes, sir. Just notes. Squiggles. In condensed Post notation.”

“Which are converted to words for storage. Converted electromagnetically.” Jack Beston turned to the woman on Milly’s right. “Zetter? Are you on?”

“Yes.” She opened her jacket, peered at something inside, and the thin nose twitched. “So is she. I’m picking up and recording. Not interpreting, but that’s an easy piece of processing. Unless we’re shielded, the reception range for that strength of signal will be at least five kilometers.”

“Which might as well be infinity. Look around you, Milly Wu. Do you see anybody else making electronic notes?”

Milly looked. Neutral stares, except for Hannah’s rueful rubber-lipped quirk. Sorry. I ought to have warned you.

“No, sir.”

“And you won’t. This is a maximum security installation. We don’t let anybody know how we’re doing. We are going to be the first to pick up and decipher an alien signal, and nothing is going to stop us. Understand?”

“Yes, sir.” Milly, greatly daring, added, “I want to be part of the team that gets there first. That’s why I came here.”

“Damn right. Can you do hand-writing, on paper?”

“Yes, sir, I can.” Thank heaven for Uncle Edgar, and his insistence on an old-fashioned education.

“Then that’s what you do, if you want notes. Hand that thing over.”

He took the scribe plate and casually erased everything on it — including all that Milly had noted about the geography and operations of the L-4 Argus Station.

“You want notes,” Beston repeated, “you write ’em on paper.”

“Yes, sir.” He was turning away as she added, “But that’s a permanent record, too. What do I do with paper notes?”

He swung back to her. “You learn what’s there, or you put what you have on e-file inside the cage. Either way, you destroy your original notes. Burn ’em, eat ’em, swallow ’em, stick ’em up your ass, I don’t care. Just get rid of them — fast. I’m giving you one chance, Milly Wu. That’s all you’ll get.”

He turned away. “Poldish. Yesterday was your deadline for the ‘promising patterns’ analysis. I’ve not seen anything on my desk.”

Poldish, red-faced and pudgy, turned an even brighter red. “It’s not quite finished. You see, the diversion of my group’s resources to Seine protection—”

“I don’t give a rat’s left testicle for your reasons. You tell me before if a piece of work is going to be late, not after. You’re a horse’s ass, Poldish. I’ll meet with you separately.”

Milly thought, Right. But first I have to humiliate you in public with a bit of animal imagery. Hannah had turned her way, and when no one was looking she gave Milly a quick wink. If it was designed to say, There, that wasn’t too bad, was it?, Milly wasn’t sure she could agree. For this, she had left Ganymede? For this, she had given up her three-year championship on the Puzzle Network, and the chance to ascend from Journeyman to Masters’ level? She must be crazy.

Hannah mouthed at her. Talk later.

Jack Beston was an equal opportunity employer. Milly didn’t make an exact count, but so far as she could tell everyone in the room came in for a personal roasting before the meeting was over. Hannah was chewed out for failing to give new staff an adequate briefing. Even Zetter, who seemed to have no first name and with whom Milly would certainly not like to argue, was blasted for her failure to scan the room for electronic devices, and so eliminate Milly’s scribe unit before it was ever turned on. The woman said nothing in response to Beston’s tirade, but her face turned pale and her dark eyes promised murder.

“Don’t let it worry you,” Hannah said, as she led Milly away at the end of the meeting. “That was a perfectly normal start to the week’s work. Come on, let’s go see if the arrays are picking up anything new.”

“He’s a bastard.”

“He is, but I’d suggest you don’t say so. Around here the word bastard is reserved for the distinguished leader of Project Odin, over at L-5.”

“When I was sitting in that meeting I thought I should have applied there, instead of here.”

“Not a good idea. You’d be no better off. Philip the Bastard is supposed to be more cunning than Jack the Ogre, but from what I’ve heard he’s an even bigger shit to work with.”

“Then they deserve each other. They ought to work together.”

“They once did. From what I’ve heard they were a perfect combination, Philip extremely sneaky and better on theory, Jack with the edge when it came to design of detection equipment. But Jack was two years younger, and you know how it is with brothers. Philip had been used to bossing Jack around when they were kids, but by the time Jack was nineteen he wouldn’t take it anymore.”

“He decided he’d rather dish it out.”

“Maybe. But you’re just pissed right now because of what he said to you. Don’t let it bother you. Didn’t you hear how he spoke to everybody?”

“I don’t care. Nobody has the right to talk to people like that.”

“Jack thinks he does.”

They were about to enter the main chamber for signal reception and initial scanning, and Hannah paused on the threshold. “Milly, there’s one other thing I want to say before we get to where others can hear. You look young enough to pass for a fresh-faced kid, but that won’t save you. Jack Beston finds you attractive — yes he does, don’t argue with me. I know the signs. And so far as I can tell his only two interests in life are the search for extraterrestrial intelligence and the seduction of new female workers. You can feel free to refuse—”

“I damned well will!”

“—although he won’t easily take no for an answer. Also, if you do decide that he’s attractive, and sleep with him, you’ll find that it doesn’t bring any special out-of-bed privileges. Don’t look for special favors from Jack Beston. He’ll still be the Ogre when it comes to work.”

“You know all this, for a fact?”

The corners of Hannah’s ultra-mobile mouth turned up and down again in a fraction of a second. “Believe me, Milly, I know. And don’t bother to tell me I was stupid, because I don’t think I was. There’s not too many things to do around here apart from work, and JB doesn’t hold grudges when it’s all over. Nor do I. I’m just saying to you, watch it. He’ll come sniffing, sure as Sunday. Keep hating him, and that’s fine. It’s when you feel sympathy for the Devil that you’re in trouble.”

Hannah didn’t offer a chance for more questions, but stepped through into the great cube of the signal reception room. At first, Milly did not follow her. She had been here before, but again she wanted to feel the thrill, the prickle of awe creeping along her spinal column and up into her hind brain.

This was it. Here, in this room, thirty-four billion separate signals, culled from narrow parts of the neutrino and electromagnetic energy spectrum, and from all parts of the heavens, came into convergence. Here, the myriad signals were sifted and sorted and searched, in the quest for anomalies that stood out from the rest, the deviation from random noise that cried out, “Look, look at me. I am a message!”

Six years ago, when she was seventeen, Milly had encountered another message, one passed down from the very dawn of SETI. A century and a half ago, Frank Drake had sent a string of 1’s and 0’s to his colleagues, inviting them to decipher its meaning. Not one of them had succeeded.

But Milly had, proceeding from prime factors of an array of numbers, then to a picture, then to an interpretation. She could trace her presence here directly to the emotional rush of that day. It had been a fork in her personal road, the moment when the pleasures of mastering the Puzzle Network faded before the challenge of messages from the stars.

Now there was no guaranteed signal, but in its place a near-infinity of possible ones. The distributed observing system around the L-4 Argus Station still explored the ancient water-hole of the early investigators, between the spectral lines of neutral hydrogen and the hydroxyl radical, and to that they had added the preferred zone of neutrino resonance capture, a region undreamed of in early SETI work.

The work took on new complexity when you could not be sure that a possible signal was a signal, and all the time the detection equipment became more sensitive and sophisticated. Is something there? That question was harder to answer than ever. Milly wondered about the comparison. Which was more difficult to decipher: A signal sent by humans to humans, deliberately obscure and challenging their ingenuity, but with a promise that it was a signal? Or a message from aliens, designed to be clear, struggling to be heard, wanting to be transparent in meaning, and sent to any life form who might be listening?

What would Frank Drake say now, if he could be here to regard his legacy? The original listening had been done for just two stars, Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani, on a minimum of radio frequencies, for a period that was no more than one tick on the great celestial clock. Drake would probably just shake his head and smile a secret little smile. He was a scientist and a realist, but he had an element of fey, deep inside, that led him to label his project Ozma, a name with more than a touch of magic and a hint of exotic mystery. Maybe more than surprised he would be disappointed, that they had looked so long and so hard and found nothing.

Nothing yet. Where are they? Be patient, Frank, and old Enrico Fermi. They are there. We are going to find them.

The smaller room beyond, in contrast to the one where Milly stood, was completely shielded from external signals. Within it the anomalies, the potential messages, the scores or hundreds daily culled from raw inputs, were sent to be analyzed. It is one of the curious results of information theory that the possible information carried within a signal is proportional to its randomness, to its unpredictability. If something is totally predictable, then by definition you know its content exactly and it can tell you nothing new. If the incoming signal is totally unpredictable, on the other hand, then in principle every single bit of data is a potential message. There had to be a fine line: enough regularities to announce intelligent design (a sequence of prime numbers, the Pythagorean theorem, a sequence of squares, the digits of pi), yet enough variation to offer information. How would an alien intelligence draw the line?

Milly crossed the big receiving chamber and stood on the threshold of the inner sanctum. Hannah had vanished. Milly had not been looking for her for minutes, and did not know where she had gone. That was all right. For the moment there was neither need nor desire for company. She was at a nexus, the focus of a torrent of information streaming in from every direction and distance in space, from everywhere in the galaxy and beyond it. The chamber was silent, but her inner ear discerned a mighty rushing river of data, rain-fed by the whole universe.

And the Ogre, with his insults and his coarse manners? Screw Jack Beston. She had not come here for him, she was here for this.

Milly was starting toward one of the work stations, where she could grab a batch of anomalies and analyze them to see if anything there spoke of purposive signal, when at that moment she saw him. He was standing in the center of the room, no more than ten meters away. Clearly, he had no idea that she was there. His head was tilted to one side, looking slightly up. The green eyes were slitted half shut. The expression on his face was nothing like the one she had seen and hated in the review meeting. It was rapt, it was concentrated, it was yearning.

Strangest of all, Milly could read that look. Jack Beston heard the cosmic roar of the swirling galaxy, beating in from all around them. But he was not listening for that. He was listening, with all his heart and soul, for something that he could not hear. Within the whirlwind, a still small voice.

Jack Beston wanted to hear the message, the one that would tell him that all this dedication of spirit and mighty labor was not in vain.

Milly could suddenly see inside him, as clearly as if Jack were lit from within by lightning. She looked, she understood, she yearned in just the same way to hear that same small voice. She felt connected.

And, like it or hate it, she felt a first faint stirring of sympathy for the Devil.