"You know what it is?"
"Nope. Do you play much chess?"
"Never got into it."
Collins shrugged. "Too bad."
Sherman looked at the black screen, then pushed the playback button.
Hopie. Sitting in a tight, dimly lit cabin, surrounded by a million lights and switches.
"Grover, assuming little brother survives those Israeli doctors, I want you to get this to him, but wait a few months, maybe next summer. I want you both to know the full extent of what's happening up here..."
Sherman paused playback and looked at Sumner -- who was looking at Smithfield. The old man was on a SatPhone, talking to God only knew who, but the old man was still dialed into the world, and always would be. Then Collins turned and looked at his friend.
"Better let me hold that," he said, taking the screen from Ted. He resumed play...
"Hyperion 1, our first launch, didn't stop out here past Neptune. Those folks didn't die out here, stranded. We deliberately launched for KIC 8462852. I'll let that sink in for a moment, let you think about the implications of that. As you may recall, there was some controversy a few years ago about that system, about it's irregular dimming, some discussion about Dyson Spheres and a massive array around the system's primary. Anyway, Hubble imaged the system more than a decade ago, and Project Hyperion was born a few months after that.
"So, let's cut to the chase. Hyperion 1 made first contact. Two and Three advanced our timeline, and their first emissary returned on Three. She, for want of a better word, returned to KIC a few weeks later, but we've been in discussions with them ever since. Once it became apparent both the Russians and the Chinese were growing suspicious of our activities, we discussed the possibility of an alliance. That's when the shit hit the fan, little brother.
"So much has happened, so much I never expected." She looked at something and flipped a few switches, her eyes darting about like an owl's, then she turned back to the camera.
"The Russians just launched two ASATs, two Anti-Satellite weapons, so we know a full scale attack is likely, and, well, we've convinced our friends to intervene; I hate to say that was the plan all along, but it was an act of faith on our new friends' part too. Simple as that, really. They took sides. Maybe they learned that from me, but I'm not going to be taking credit any time soon.
"So, Hyperion was never about fusion reactors and clean power. Hyperion has always been about exploration, and it inadvertently became about first contact. Now Hyperion is about colonization. We're going there, and they're coming here. They're adept at terraforming, and they're going to establish a colony on Mars, a research facility. We've been given a system under their control, and they'll engineer three planets to suit our needs. It seems they want to study us, and they want us to study them. Frankly, I think it's a little one-sided, maybe like when we traded beads and trinkets for Manhattan Island. I know, I know. Look how well that turned out for the local population...
"I suppose you think this is a gamble, that we're gambling with the future of the human race, but when you understand the issues better I think you'll agree with our present course of action.
"Those Russian ASATs will impact the platform in about ten minutes, so little bother, I've got to go. Looking at my current state of health, I probably won't be coming back, but I'd like to see you again. I can't say it any plainer than that.
"And, Sumner, I'm assuming your there. The one with two scars? Be nice to her. She's been my friend for more than twenty years now, and she's still very fragile. Maybe one day she'll tell you what happened.
"Ted? I like Carol. I'd hang on to her if I were you.
"Bye for now. I love you all."
The screen went dark, and Collins blinked his eyes rapidly for several seconds -- then handed the iPad to Sherman.
"Did you ever meet Dr Curry?" Sherman asked, looking at Collins. "The doc who operated on me after that stuff in LA?"
Collins shook his head, now feeling light-headed -- and very small.
"She called Hopie The Owl."
Collins tried to laugh, but found he was crying. "Kind of appropriate, don't you think?" He looked out at the cove, wondered where she was...
And Collins saw one of the boats beaching, the old man walking to it as two men hopped out and held the boat fast to the shore. "We'd better go," he said, and they started walking back to the beach...
The old man held his hands out, and a young girl, a toddler by the looks of her, reached out and slipped into his arms. He put the girl down on the sand and she turned and looked at Collins, then she ran to him, and Collins staggered to a stop and fell to his knees when he saw her.
She stopped a few yards away from him, and even kneeling down she was not quite half his height -- but what he saw was Jennifer. His Jennifer, only different now. Not a child, and not fully human. Sumner looked at the creature as the shock settled over him, as he felt this world spinning out of control, and the last thing he saw before the light consumed him was her right eye, and two small marks he saw in the shadows...
Part IV: Time, Like A River -- They called for the harp -- but our blood they shall spill
The Air Force C37A turned on base over Maryland's 'eastern shore' -- flying towards it's next waypoint and now 4500 feet over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, and Grover Smithfield looked down at Annapolis as the pilot configured flaps for the extended approach.
So many decades had passed, Smithfield thought as he looked down at the campus by the bay, since his class had first formed up on drill fields by the waterfront. JFK was in the inadvertent autumn of his presidency, and only a few of his teachers glimpsed the great dissolution that would follow Kennedy's murder. One of his favorite instructors, a Navy captain who just happened to be a well regarded historian, remarked casually on the Monday after Kennedy's assassination that Lee Harvey Oswald had just accomplished what all the navies and armies of Germany and Japan had failed to do in the second world war: in the span of a few brief seconds he had completely shattered America's sense of itself. No matter who was ultimately held responsible, he saw Americans from that day forward drifting apart from one another, flying off to their polar extremes. "Belief is a fragile thing," he said, "a shared set of ideas that can disappear in an instant -- even in three seconds." Smithfield remembered the captain's office, and a little sign the man had hung on the wall above his desk. "History is the graveyard of tyrannies," the little placard stated, and even now Smithfield recalled the captain had gone to work for first Nixon, then Ford, eventually ending his non-partisan career in the Carter White House. As Smithfield watch the campus slide away, he realized he had tried to emulate the man all his life.
But what had happened to that perspective over the years?
He sat in silence as the little harbor slipped away, then Washington's eastern suburbs appeared through the trees, and he was looking at the captain's rigid prediction that was even now coming true. Politics had devolved from the soft art of compromise to cold obstructionism. Compromise was considered evil, and thugs on the right and idiots on the left all sounded more and more -- like what? Ignorant, or simply arrogant? Unwilling to even consider a thought that didn't conform to a fixed set of ideas? Up here he could see better than ever how communities had grown into ossified extensions of ideology, yet even so, looking down on the Beltway in that moment, for some reason he remembered sitting in Sergey Gorshkov's office one rainy May day in Moscow, listening to the old admiral expound on the role of Soviet seapower.
"The Soviet Union will collapse soon," he'd said as their meeting drew to a close, and Smithfield had thought the man insane to speak those words aloud in that office -- even if he was the architect of modern Soviet naval doctrine. "But I do not worry so much about that. Your Kennan predicted our collapse, in 1947, and he had it down almost down to the year. And he was correct, his working hypothesis was accurate, the whole Buddenbrooks analogy, how political cultures decay like families decay over time. But, Captain Smithfield, what troubles me most is what happens when your country grows ill. It will, you know, perhaps in your lifetime. That is the working assumption in the Kremlin, anyway."
Smithfield's Gulfstream made it's last hard left onto final -- and a half mile off their left wingtip he saw two F-16s, and he thought again of Israel. That beleaguered nation had been at war since 1947, since it's modern inception -- and keeping a strong military presence in the public eye was a vital fact of public life.
But here? In our skies? My, how times had changed. Was this what Gorshkov had been talking about?
Now it was routine for airliners approaching New England from Europe, or Alaska from the Orient, to find squadrons of interceptors waiting to 'escort' them through the relevant ADIZ. Terror alerts were taken seriously now -- by the military, at least -- because that was the reality of our post-modern 'neoliberal' existence. Newton's Laws, Smithfield sighed, just couldn't be ignored -- though the political world had tried often enough -- only now actions and reactions were coming so fast there was no time to adjust, no time to plan. He'd found himself reacting to events all during his presidency, rarely catching up with events before the next calamity.
And now the extreme reaction to the Hyperion Contacts -- as the current president called them -- with ever more liberties curtailed, and the general population clueless about the facts. Still, almost seven months after Hope Sherman's 'disappearance,' information about the project within the intel community had been rigidly compartmentalized. Of more importance, information had been stopped before reaching the greater political hierarchies within the American congress, let alone the European Union and Russia. As a result, only a handful of people around the world had any idea what had happened last Christmas -- in space, between the earth and her moon. So focused had those governments been on the threat of expanding Islamist terror, the idea that the Hyperion Fusion Project had been a ruse, and that so-called 'First Contact' had already occurred, remained a great unknown.
The fact that Russia's intercontinental missile force had been neutralized in an instant completely altered the role of the military, and an early Cold War hysteria gripped planners in the Pentagon and the Kremlin -- "Flying Saucers and Death Rays, oh my!" -- yet countering this new threat became the next mission. Planners and designers from Boeing and Grumman and Sukhoi hypothesized and groused -- because no one knew what the threat was -- not what the threat looked like, or even what "their" capabilities were. These planners and designers just shrugged and shook their heads and wondered how best to spend the billions of dollars suddenly knocking on their doors.
So the race was on: how to assess the threat became the next great game, and the President called Smithfield, or, rather, he had called the Prime Minister of Israel...
...and now, here he was...walking down air-stairs on a torrid July afternoon to a convoy of waiting Suburbans. Turning out of Joint Base Andrews onto Pennsylvania Avenue, four black Suburbans and eight motorcycles in line, making the half hour drive through the city to the Big House; once past the Beltway the traffic grew oppressively heavy, the edifice of empire everywhere he looked, while legions of homeless and the infirm lay in every shadow. The city was, Smithfield thought, still the living embodiment of extreme contradictions, and then, the white Capitol Dome looming just ahead out of a thick, brown haze. Perfect, he thought. So few with so much.
The House was unchanged, he saw, but security was oppressive now; not even one tourist on the sidewalk waiting for a tour; those had been suspended for the time being. Snipers not visible either, but he knew they were up there, watching this arrival. Through the White House gates and out of the Suburban, then he heard a formation of jets overhead and didn't even bother looking at them; he saluted the pair of Marines by the entry and saw Paul Kirkland, the President's National Security Advisor, waiting, and they walked together to the West Wing, and to The Office.
The President looked much older now, and uncharacteristically tired, his face lined with cares he'd never imagined seven years ago, and Smithfield smiled. He paused, looked at a sword on the president's desktop, a simple Samurai's sword, and Smithfield thought it looked ancient, indeed, it's silvered steel now almost elegant with it's patina of age -- and use, perhaps -- yet the President pointedly didn't stand, and barely acknowledged his predecessor's presence in the room.
Smithfield listened as FDR's old clock beat away on the bookshelf across the room, and still the President simply continued looking at the sword, his eyes fixed on the cold steel, while Smithfield remained standing. The old man wasn't aggravated by this breach of protocol -- no, he was simply more interested in the mood he felt in the room. Oppressive curiosity, perhaps? With a lingering sense of despair?
"Japanese Ambassador just left," the President finally said, slowly looking up at the previous occupant of this office. "Symbolic, don't you think?"
Smithfield glanced at Kirkland, then back at the President; Kirkland shrugged, rolled his eyes, so Smithfield sat down across from the President. "Why symbolic? Think he wants you to commit seppuku?"
The President shook his head then, and chuckled. "Wouldn't be surprised, Grover. Not a bit surprised."
"What can I do for you, sir?"
"Have you been out there yet?"
"Sir?"
"KIC 8462852, the system. Have you been out there yet?"
"No, sir."
"Really? I'm surprised." The President was staring at him, as if taking the measure of his predecessor once again.
"Oh? Why's that, sir."
The President turned in his chair and looked out the window. "Don't you want to?"
"No sir, not really."
The President steepled his hands in front of his face, took a deep breath. "That ship of their's? The one on the far side? Have you seen it, know it's capabilities?"
Smithfield shook his head. "No, I haven't, and I don't."
"Well then, that's going to be a problem."
"I understand."
"Oh? Do you really? We're confronting a hostile species that has demonstrated the capability to neutralize all our offensive and defensive weaponry. Doesn't that concern you?"
"No sir, not really."
The President turned to face his desk again, yet once again he looked at the sword as he spoke. "Interesting. I never took you for a fool."
"Was there anything else you wanted to talk about while I'm here?"
The President looked up at that. "Such as?"
Smithfield shrugged. "Oh, I don't know. Who goes next, on what ships? How we go about setting up colonies on new worlds? Little things like that."
"You mean, of course, that we tell the people? Let the people know who's up there, what they're capable of doing to us?"
Smithfield looked at the man, at the lack of imagination he saw in his eyes. "Why not tell them the truth? What they have to offer, perhaps, and then let them decide?"
"What's wrong with you, Grover? Have you gone soft in the head?"
Smithfield smiled, looked the man in the eye. "Maybe so."
"You're dead, I guess you know?"
"Sir?"
"After all that nonsense out in Santa Monica, the funeral at Arlington. The country thinks you're dead. Maybe a handful of people in the world know you're still alive. Have you considered your position?"
"Ah."
"I have reports you've been with them."
"Sir?"
"Well? Have you met them? The aliens?"
"Yessir. Several of them, as a matter of fact. About all I can add is that, in my opinion, you have no reason to fear them."
The President snorted derisively. "Do we need to send you down to Cuba? Maybe for a little R&R at a little naval base we still have down there?"
"That's your prerogative, Mr President. But I'd recommend against that course of action."
"Would you, now? So you do know a few of their tricks. Well, it occurred to a few of our people across the river you might say something like that; in fact, I think more than a few were kind of hoping you'd imply a threat of one kind or another."
"Yessir, I imagine they have. That's understandable."
"So? No hard feelings?"
Smithfield smiled, and stood...
...And the national security advisor shouted into his handset, screamed for the president's secret service detail to get to the room -- ASAP --
The team entered the room, found Kirkland open-mouthed down on the floor, pointing at the president's desk, but both men were gone, nowhere to be found -- they had simply vanished -- but why was Kirkland down there on the floor? When the head of detail ran closer, he saw Kirkland was kneeling, his hand out, talking to what at first he thought was a toddler -- a blue-skinned girl, perhaps two feet tall, but then she too was gone -- leaving a thousand questions hanging in the air -- apparent.
+++++
[Log entry SailingVessel Gemini: 7 July, 0700 hrs GMT, Friday morning.
COG: at anchor, Ile du riou , calanque des contrebandiers
SOG: 0.0 kts;
Temp: 83f;
Winds: NW at 15, viz unlimited +10nmi;
Barometer 29.98 and rising;
GPS: 43°10'26.16"N | 5°23'11.17"E
We are still anchored inside the Calanque des Contrebandiers, aka smuggler's cove, effectively in another world yet less than six miles from the heart of Marseilles. Liz is turning out to be a decent diver, both she and Carol are spending lots of time down there -- two hours yesterday -- while Ted remains preoccupied and sullen for the second day running. We're warped to limestone walls, some of the pitons we found are still secure, and we've been checking the ones we set a couple times a day. A late-season 'mistral' blew through yesterday yet we were snug in here, unaffected by wind or waves, while a few hundred yards away the sea looked like a washing machine. I remain wary as we're roped off in here with zero maneuvering room, but we're practically invisible, and the mood is magic, esp. at sunset, when the limestone cliffs glow an incredible orange.]
Gemini lay 'at anchor' within a narrow finger of water, a hidden treasure Collins had learned about from a local at the marina in Cassis. They'd taken Hyperion over for a haul-out, to get her bottom painted and anodes checked, and to refill the SCUBA tanks once again, so the four of them decided to spend a few days over on the island until Hyperion was 'ready to go' again. He'd just managed to get Ted out into the sun, and now they were taking the Zodiac over to les Empereurs with masks, fins and snorkels, yet their conversation so far had been brief -- though telling.
"You seem down, almost out of it..." Collins asked, setting a little anchor on the sandy bottom near the rocks.
"Yeah. I've been thinking about Hope. I worry about her, you know?"
"I know, Spud. I think we all do. What does Carol think about all this?"
"She misses LA, her work. Hell, I do too."
"No shit? You'd rather be back on the streets -- than here?"
Sherman nodded his head, looked away. "I wasn't really ready to retire, whatever the hell that means. Sitting around doing nothing, drinking fruit punch and watching sunsets."
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