Emprise (2 page)

Instead, he had spent the years duplicating work that had been done before, correcting the position of a source here, noting a small change in the output of one there, toying with theoretical models he could not hope to confirm, but accomplishing nothing of substance.

It was that realization, more than the seventeen years of loneliness, which had begun to disassemble the great man Chandliss had once been.

His oft-recalcitrant instruments cooperating, Chandliss was ready the next day. He marked the passage of the calibration source, an angry buzz in his earphones. Precious chart paper flashed under the pen at the highest possible speed; the disk drive whirred as Monitor stored blocks of data. Chandliss, shifting his weight impatiently from one foot to the other, at last heard what he had doubted he would hear. The tone was clear and nearly noise-free, modulating rapidly between two frequencies in an arrhythmic warble. All too quickly it faded, replaced by the familiar all-frequency static that Chandliss usually found soothing.

Stunned, Chandliss slowly removed the headset and shakily made his way to a chair. His fingers prowled absently through his beard as he tried to remember, tried to understand.

Once before had he heard such a sound. When the newly refurbished thousand-foot telescope at Arecibo, Puerto Rico, was dedicated in 1974, Drake and Sagan had taken that opportunity to send one of the few deliberate messages ever intended for non-human listeners—a 169-second cosmic declaration, a coded signal thrown with the power of a half million watts toward the great star cluster Messier 13 in the constellation Hercules.

Despite his skepticism on the question of life elsewhere, like many others in the crowd of two hundred Chandliss had had tears in his eyes as the message ended, overawed at the thought that in twenty-five thousand years, when all humankind’s works might be dust, the message would still be speeding through space, declaring more than anything that beings who thought and dreamed and loved life once walked the surface of the third stone from the sun.

But
this
emission—no! an inner voice insisted, call it a message!—had come
from
the stars.

Being alone without being lonely was an art Chandliss knew well. His location had permitted it, his personality had encouraged it, and his occupation had demanded it. But never had he felt more powerfully alone than in the minutes that followed the end of the Message.

All at once, Chandliss came to his feet, scooping up a handful of chestnuts from a container in the food chest as he headed for the door. Outside, he turned south, toward the Chairman’s conference room.

The clearing was a ten-minute walk from his cabin, and Chandliss was panting when he settled on a fallen log to wait. Before long there was a rustling in the branches of the trees, a black flash on the trunk of one, and then the northern squirrel Chandliss called the Chairman joined him in the clearing. Chandliss tossed a nut near his feet, and the Chairman began a tentative approach.

“Afternoon, Chairman,” Chandliss said. “Have a moment to discuss a problem?”

The squirrel dashed forward to claim the offering.

“It’s this new project, Chairman. I don’t think this new project really belongs in my area. Isn’t there someone else who can handle it?”

The Chairman, having retreated to what he thought was a safe distance, chewed busily.

“Ah—then I’m stuck with it, am I? But I‘ll still need help confirmation of the basic facts. But where in the world will I find a dish that hasn’t been stripped for salvage or abandoned to rust and rot?”

The Chairman offered no suggestions.

“Oh, Arecibo is still there, certainly, but the antenna trolley isn’t; we heard about that when you could still get radio from Boise. Fifty stories above the dish, all six hundred tons—when that hurricane hit, the trolley must have made quite a hole in the dish.”

The Chairman concurred and moved to the next item on the agenda—begging. Chandliss deferred to his wishes.

“Who can I trust? Who would trust me, for that matter? Perhaps overseas. Certainly not here. It’s as hard to find a scientist now in the States—quaint of me, yes, to use the old name—as hard to find one of us as it was to find someone who admitted they voted for Nixon. I must tell you about Nixon some time.”

The Chairman took a seat at the other end of the log.

“The members of the Order of the Dolphin would understand immediately; they were the ones that kept pushing SETI. Yes, I know, my jargon is as bad as when you talk about budgets and grants and say our college can’t afford new equipment. But Drake and Lilly are dead, and who knows where the rest of them are? It’s been a long time, and I was never close with that bunch, never close, never really believed.”

Chandliss held the next offering between the tips of his fingers, and the Chairman hesitated, evaluating his options.

“I could write letters, but they would take months to arrive, if they did at all—and I’d never know. Too many hands, too many unfriendly eyes.

“You’re right, Chairman—the only sure way is to find a Radioman, see who I can reach. If they don’t take me for what I am first.”

Placing hunger above fear, the Chairman scrambled onto Chandliss’s leg to claim the nut. He hesitated there a moment, then sprang to the ground, his nails digging painfully into the astronomer’s leg as he jumped. A few energetic bounds, and the Chairman was gone.

“That’s the way, isn’t it?” Chandliss said sadly. “You take the risks you must to keep yourself whole.” He stood and brushed at the patched cloth of his trouser legs. “I wonder if perhaps England—with the North Sea and that coal—things might not have gone down so badly there.” Returning to the cabin, he began to prepare for the hike into Ketchum.

“Someone’s coming!”

Chandliss frowned and shifted the straps of his pack onto a different set of blisters. Before leaving the cabin, he had filled the pack with the currency of the times—energy in one form or another. Most of it was food, as much as he could spare and carry. Concealed by a fold of cloth in the pack was his insurance, a precious forty-watt section of his solar array.

Federal money was still legal tender in the United North, but unless things had changed there was little that could be bought with it. Nevertheless, Chandliss had brought that, too—the little he had left. He had spent the bulk of it while collecting his supplies, when he realized its worthlessness, and before many others did. Ninety-odd Anthony dollars clinked occasionally in a pocket of the pack, and a now-damp collection of paper twenties filled the bottom of a trouser pocket.

“Someone’s coming!” repeated the child, and another took up the cry. The first houses along the road were to either side of him now, and ahead he saw people stop and look his way.

When he drew near enough to the first adult—a woman only a few years younger than himself, considering him from the middle of her front yard garden with a gaze devoid of warmth—Chandliss summoned up a cheeriness he did not feel and called a hello. The woman did not answer, nor did her expression change as she followed his progress into town. Chandliss felt her eyes in his back as a physical sensation, a crawling of the skin between his shoulder blades. It was the same with the other adults he passed; they stopped to watch him, but not with curiosity. It was as though knowing him to be a stranger, they knew everything of importance.

And they knew he was a stranger, without a doubt. Chandliss berated himself for having failed to anticipate how much he would stand out. Probably the town’s population had been stable for so long that it acted more like a family than a community, a complex barter system reinforcing the normal small-town closeness. It made sense, but understanding made it less comfortable.

The children had long since carried news of his arrival to the heart of the town, and Chandliss was not surprised when a tall man thirty years his junior stepped out into the street to intercept him. “Mornin’.” He squinted upward at the sun. “Or should I say afternoon? Hardly matters, I s’pose. Come far?”

“Through the Sawtooth. Far enough.” Chandliss slipped the pack off his shoulders. “Allen Chandliss,” he said, extending his hand.

“Tom Heincke,” said the villager, keeping his hands in his back pockets. “Have you come to trade, or are you just passing through?”

“I’ve some business with your Radioman.”

Heincke nodded. “I’ll take you to him.” It was more an order to follow than an offer to help, and Chandliss fell in beside him. He was led to the door of a small, one-story building sprouting a half-dozen antennae, all but one makeshift.

“Radioman?”

A short, wiry man appeared from the gloom at the back of the building. “Yeah, Tom.”

“Fellow has need of you. I’ll be at the club when he’s done.” Radioman nodded. “Come on in.” He walked a few steps to a table, lit a pair of candles, then turned. “You done business with me before?” he asked, his voice no more friendly than the faces of those Chandliss had passed.

“No.”

“I put a mark on the meter when you start,” Radioman said. “When you’re done, you get on”—he waved his hand at a converted exercycle connected to a generator—“and bring my battery back up to the mark. That’s expenses. Then there’s overhead—that’s for me. Food—my choice of your pack.”

Chandliss nodded. “You do this full-time, then?”

“Ain’t it enough? I keep the town in touch—get the news from Twin Falls or Pocatello once a week—talk to the hill families that still have CB’s—not so many of those, now. I’m the only thing this town has that touches what we used to be,” he said with stiff pride. “Now—where you callin’ to?”

“Long distance.”

“How long? Butte? Salt Lake? Portland? I can’t always raise Portland this time of day.”

“West Virginia. Green Bank.”

The radioman’s sideways glance was quick but meaningful. “I’ll have to get the government people in Boise for that. How are you gonna pay for it? Have cash?”

“Yes. Can you accept it for them?”

“Of course,” sniffed the Radioman. “I’ve got a contract. Name and number?”

The scientist recited the number from memory. “I’ll talk to anyone there.” He stood back while the Radioman donned a headset and warmed up the equipment. He heard him explain to Boise what was wanted, and then Radioman covered the microphone. “Forty-five dollars paper or twenty in coin. Let me see it before I tell them to go ahead.” Wondering briefly if Radioman had added something to Boise’s price, he dug out the bills.

“Okay,” Radioman said into the microphone. “Do it.” The wait seemed longer than it really was. Finally Radioman doffed the headset and turned on his stool. “Number’s out of service. Anything else, while I have Boise?”

The National Radio Observatory had been at Green Bank; with it apparently closed, Chandliss had no hopes for anything else on the continent. Still, he had to try. On the way into Ketchum, he had, with the help of an assortment of invented mnemonics, committed to memory as many numbers as his tattered address book had contained. He had hoped that he would have no need for them.

“California. Hat Creek.”

A few moments later, Radioman shook his head.

“Owens Valley.”

“Nope.”

“Goldstone.

“Table Mountain.

“Hamilton, Massachusetts.

“Tuscon, Arizona.”

“You be owing me for the trying on top of the doing,” Radioman said. “That’s fair. North Liberty, Iowa. “Danby, New York.”

“I got real work to do,” Radioman said with a touch of impatience. “You think of one more old friend to try, then you come back another day.” Chandliss rubbed his face with his hands and thought. “Great Britain.”

Radioman cocked his head and raised an eyebrow questioningly. “Haven’t had call for that in six, seven years. Don’t know if that can be done,” he said as he turned back to find out. It was a full five minutes before he turned back. “One-sixty paper or seventy coin. You have it?”

Chandliss nodded.

“Show me.”

Chandliss did.

“Worth it to you?”

“Yes.”

“No guarantees. We make the connection, you get five minutes with whoever.”

“I understand.”

“You want this pretty bad. All right. Where and who?” Chandliss told him. “No such number,” he reported a short time later. They tried three others with the same result, and Chandliss began to despair. He was near the end of his short list, past his close friends and those he knew well enough to trust.

“Eddington,” he said, giving the number. “Laurence Eddington.” Presently Radioman handed Chandliss the microphone and headset and retreated to the far side of the room. Chandliss sighed and settled on the stool. “Eddington?” he said experimentally.

“Yes,” a voice said cautiously, half statement and half question.

“Laurence Eddington, Mullard, 1985?”

The voice demanded, “Who is this?”

For that brief moment, the link—by radio to Boise, light-cable to New York, and undersea cable to Cambridge—cleared up enough for Chandliss to recognize his younger colleague’s voice. “Thank God.” Chandliss breathed noisily. “Larry, this is Allen Chandliss.”

There was such a long pause that Chandliss began to think they had been cut off. “Yes. From where are you calling?” sounded in his headset.

“Idaho.” It sounded incongruous. “Ketchum.”

“Idaho,” Eddington echoed. “It’s been a long time, Chandliss—what have you been doing?”

“The same as always.” The Radioman, across the room but within earshot, troubled Chandliss, and he turned his back to him. He hoped Eddington would catch his allusion.

Eddington did. “You have a dish?” he asked incredulously.

“Nothing fancy.”

Radioman leaned forward and stretched out a hand to pick up Chandliss’s pack from where it lay. Flipping back the flap, he pawed through the bags of nuts and bundles of rabbit jerky in search of suitable payment. A gleam of glass and metal drew his eye, and he pulled back a corner of the wrap that concealed it. His face impassive, he closed the pack and quietly replaced it.

Eddington laughed. “That’s fantastic. We had heard things were quite bad in the colonies. How are you getting away with it?”

“They are, and I’m not,” Chandliss said, glancing back over his shoulder at the Radioman.

“You never were much for long speeches, Allen, but this is extraordinary. I presume you’re taking precautions of some sort? Feel free to doubletalk, there’s no charge for translations.”

“Thank you. Do you still enjoy the same things you did when you were younger? Or know someone who does?”

Eddington grew cautious. “Possibly.”

“Then there’s something—someone—you’ll want to hear about.” Chandliss hesitated; he needed to pass along the celestial coordinates of the source but was afraid to say them too openly. “Her name is Cassiopeia. The best address I have is 105 Right Avenue—”

“Do you mean the right ascension is one hour five minutes?”

“Yes. If you can’t find her, she has a friend named Deke at 54 North—”

“Understood. Declination, fifty-four degrees. Plus, of course. But look, Chandliss—you don’t understand—I can’t simply—”

“You have to get in touch, Larry. Cassiopeia SEH, Larry.” He spelled out the last “name” with deliberate slowness. “You won’t regret it. You have to remember—remember Frank and Carl and the Order of the Dolphin!” His voice rose higher than he had intended.

“You’re saying you’ve detected some sign of intelligent life?”

“Exactly! Exactly! I won’t be jealous—she’s more than I can handle here. I’ll count on you to help. There’s no one left here to care for her, no one. She needs a lot of attention, Larry—a lot of attention.”

Eddington made a staccato noise deep in his throat. “How accurate are those coordinates?” Chandliss forgot where he was for a moment. “As good as they can be with a five-metre dish and no interferometry. Under the circumstances—”

“And what wavelengths?”

“She’s around nineteen.”

Eddington’s sigh was louder than the static. “All right-I don’t know what I can do, but at least there are two of us now that know. How can I reach you?”

“I can be here at this time two weeks from now.” The Radioman was moving toward him, giving him the cutoff signal.

“Ah—”

“That will have to do. Good-bye, Larry. I’m very glad to have talked to you again,” he said, as the Radioman switched off the set.