Overture (Earth Song) (6 page)

“
Well, then I guess we’re kindred spirits, you and me. But everyone here needs something, so again what do you need?”

Victor
shook his head and was about to say that he needed nothing when he had second thoughts. “You don’t have a bible, do you?”

“
In here, you would be crazy to be without the Good Book.”

“
May I borrow it?”

“
A bible is a personal thing,” the old brother said. Victor looked down and nodded his head. “That is why I carry more than one.” He reached into a shoulder bag and removed a shiny new bible and handed it to Victor.

“
Thanks, I’ll give it back to you tomorrow.”

“
You’ll do no such thing. As I said, a bible is a personal thing, and that one is yours now. Read His words, learn His ways, and grow.” Then the man did something unfamiliar to Victor. He offered him his hand. Somewhat awkwardly, Victor took it. The stranger smiled and moved on, without saying another word, to continue checking on each person in the crowded lock up. Victor looked up from the book some time later to see the old man being let out of the cell block. The man raised his hand in farewell and Victor returned the gesture, then he was gone.

He
couldn’t remember the last time he’d read the Bible. Maybe during his childhood? He could remember Sunday school with his mother. Dad would go to the early service then come back and run the store while he and mom would go to church. There were hymns, a sermon which he seldom understood but his mother always enjoyed, then bible study where he learned about the books of the Bible and how wonderful Jesus was.

He
started reading with some difficulty. Not only had it been many years since he’d read the Bible, it had been many years since he’d read much of anything. The lighting in the cell was poor at best, and in only a few minutes his eyes were hurting from the strain. Maybe he might need glasses?

Without
thinking he got up and walked to a cot near the metal bars at the front of the lockup. The hall lighting was brighter and would make for easier reading. He wasn’t looking at the person as he asked for their cot. “Can I sit here?  The light is much better.”

“
Yah, it’s better muthafucka’ because it’s the best seat in the slam!”

Victor
focused on the man, not more than a boy really, of the same type that chased him in the park yesterday. “I didn’t mean to disturb you, brother, I’m just trying to read,” he said, holding up the book.

Fast
as a flash, the punk snatched the Bible from Victor's hand and was standing in front of him, just inches from his nose. “Read? I’ll jack you up so bad you won’t be able to see!”

“
Please, I need that book.”

“
More than you need to breathe?”

“
I saw an angel. I think it picked me as its prophet. I need to learn, see if I can figure it all out.”

“
You need to learn some respect, bitch,” the boy said and backhanded Victor across the face. Victor’s head snapped back and his cheek blazed in white-hot pain. He’d been in a dozen fights, many for his life, others for profit. To his own surprise, he did nothing except look back at the kid.

“
I just wanted your seat,” Victor said evenly, “There are plenty of other ones. I’m asking you to please let me sit where-”

The
second blow came from the other side, nearly knocking him off his feet. Again, he just straightened up and faced his attacker. He took a quieting breath and smiled. “I’m not angry with you, I understand why you are, ugh!” the youth had snarled and punched him in the stomach, bringing him to his knees this time.

With
each blow, Victor could feel a small part of his soul shake free of the cobwebs it had been living under for so long. There was no desire to strike back, just a crystal clarity that was as terrifying as it was clear. A small laugh escaped his lips and this infuriated the punk who’d been trying to make him cry for mercy. This time the punk aimed a boot at Victor's head and prepared to do some real damage.

His
tormentor yelled in surprise as something caught his foot and sent him tumbling to the ground. “What the fuck!” the punk barked and jumped up, coming face to face with the biggest meanest looking brother Victor had ever seen. “Why you getting into this, man?”

“
Maybe I just don’t want to see a brother get beat half to death for wanting to read his bible?” the newcomer replied.

“
Yah, so maybe you’re bitin’ off more than you can chew?” And with that, he swung a vicious punch at the big guy’s balls. The man just shifted his hips, allowing the blow to smack into a solid column of muscular thigh. The punk gave him a look like he had just been kidding, but fast as a coiled python an arm shot out and fingers wrapped around his neck. The punk grabbed at the hand and tried to pry it open. He’d have had more luck trying to bend hardened steel. The big man squeezed, making the muscles on his forearm stand out. The punk gave a strangled gasp and clawed desperately at his attacker’s hand.

“
Don’t kill him,” Victor asked his rescuer, “Please, don’t kill him. Not on my account. I am a simple prophet of God.”

“
If you’re a prophet of God, why didn’t He save you from this little punk?” asked the big man, still squeezing the life from the punk whose face was now looking ashen.

Victor
looked down at the book held in his hand and then at the big man who had saved him. “He did save me, He sent me you.”

The
big man’s head snapped around to look at Victor, something in his expression that wasn’t readable. He looked at the feebly struggling man he held and cocked his head to watch for a second as his struggles began to end. “Well, then God must have meant this motherfucka’ to die because I’m going to choke his worthless life out.”

“
No, God meant him to live, and sent someone to save him.” The big man looked around. No one in the crowded lockup was going to lift a finger to save the punk’s life; that was readily apparent. “He sent me to save him. I’m asking you to please not kill that man.”

With
no warning the punk fell to the floor like a rag doll. Victor was certain he was dead, then the punk took a rough gasping breath and rolled onto his back. On the streets he was a predator without fear. This jail was nothing more than a minor setback; just a place to consider what he had done and how to avoid getting caught next time.

“
Go away,” Victor said as the punk crawled shakily, “and sin no more.”

Victor
’s savior watched the punk crawl away, obviously deep in thought, then spoke, “I came to help you because you weren’t doing anything wrong, not because your God sent me.”

“
You’re in here, so you’re either innocent and inside by mistake, or you’re not a very good man. Which is it?” The big man looked down, not wanting to meet Victor’s intense stare. “So we know you deserved to be in here. You probably have hurt people, maybe even killed the innocent.” Now the big man turned away, not wanting to even see Victor. “But when I was being beaten, not just an innocent, a chosen of God, you came to me.  Why?”

“
It just didn’t seem right.”

“
You’ve probably seen people being beaten up a hundred times.”

“
More like a thousand times.”

“
So why didn’t you help any of them?”

“
I don’t know,” the man said, what sounded like a sob in his voice, “I just didn’t care about them.”

“
But you cared about me?”

“
Something about you, you didn’t try to defend yourself or beg him to stop. It was as if something was helping you…”

“
Almost like someone standing behind me? It was God, giving me the strength. And it was God, moving your hand to save me. My job is not done yet, and neither is yours.”

“
I can’t serve God.”

“
Why not?”

“
Because I
am
a bad person.” This time Victor was certain this ebony mountain of a man was crying. A cold-blooded thug and murderer was crying because of what he had done in the face of a tormentor. Victor felt his heart swell and the last of the fog that had once covered his mind for the last twenty years evaporated.

“
We’re all bad people in the beginning,” he said, placing a hand on the man’s shoulder who turned around to look at Victor, tears glinting off his cheeks. “Through God we learn to love, to care, and to heal.” The big man’s chest heaved as he sobbed like a child, falling to his knees before Victor who moved his hand from the man’s shoulder to his head. “Your sins are washed clean in your tears of regret. Join me in doing His will.”

“
I am yours,” he said looking up into Victor’s eyes with intensity.

“
Then stand by my side and stop kneeling.” He did as he was asked, handing Victor a dirty rag to wipe blood from his face. “It would be easier if I knew your name.” The other man looked bewildered, as if he were trying to remember his own name. “If the name that is coming to your lips is not what you used to be called by, fear not. God often gives new names to those reborn in His service.”

“
My name is Duke,” the man said, still looking bewildered at calling himself something other than the name he’d grown up with. “That is what I'm to be known as.”

“
I am Victor, Duke. And we have a lot of work to do.” Duke smiled at him and the two shook hands. No sooner had they finished their formal greetings then three others in the cell came over.

“
I’d like to learn more,” one of them said.

Victor
looked at all of them and nodded his head. “Well, let’s learn together,” he said and sat down. They all formed a circle and began reading his new bible.

Mindy yawned and then took a bite of her sandwich. The view from her office window was the same as always, the decorations on her office walls were the same, the work was the same, and most of all her discontent was the same. “You were meant for more than this,” a voice whispered in her mind. She shook her head and looked at the printouts on her desk, taking in the logistics of what she was coordinating. Mindy had passed her customs broker exam three months after starting at her office as an entry processor. The test was one of the hardest ones administered to become a licensed and recognized expert with the US government. Eighty-nine percent of those who took the exam failed, and she’d passed with a ninety-eight percent score after studying for a week. The job provided distractions in dealing with unscrupulous importers, suspicious US Customs officers and her greedy bosses. But it was still not even a minor mental challenge for a mind which never rested.

Putting
aside the work on her desk she accessed the Internet for a break. Another bite of sandwich found her browsing familiar territory. The World Astronomers’ Association home page still listed her as a member in good standing. That only stood to reason since she wrote them a check every year. There were no links from her name where there used to be. It was as if she were just some hobbyist, only a member so they could brag about it at the cappuccino bar.

Her
next stop was SETI.COM, formerly SETI.ORG. Five years ago, the government cut all funding and association with the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence. And it had been completely her fault. But there in the SETI site she found herself still listed prominently among contributing astronomers. All her links were in place.  Her photo was still there, as well as the video of her keynote speech to the World Astronomers’ Association convention five years ago. Here it was like nothing had happened, even though SETI’s fall had been more directly her fault than anyone else’s.

Some
old longing made her click the link for her speech. In a moment she was watching herself, a younger more confident version, standing behind a podium covered with microphones. The speech was momentous for her career. Only seven years in the association, she was both the youngest member to ever give this speech and the newest member as well. The press had been made aware and what was usually a collection of old men listening to boring details became a media event. She was also the first woman to give the address. Halfway through the speech she sprung the trap.

“
Ladies and gentlemen of the press, at this point I would like to deviate from the script.  Two months ago, while working at the Arecibo radio observatory, we received the first signal from another star system. It was, without a doubt, from an intelligent species.” The room exploded into roars of amazement and outrage, and her career exploded soon after.

“
That was a stupid move,” she chastised herself for the thousandth time as she stopped the playback. It had been a move of desperation. The signal they received was only nineteen seconds in length and cut out before any other radio observatories could lock in on it. To make matters worse, one of the two main data recording drives had failed to record and the one copy was not perfect. One recording of the signal and no corroboration was a worst case scenario. The governing scientific bodies refused to authenticate the incident
and there was no wide baseline interferometry, so the specific star system that originated the signal couldn’t be pinpointed.

Mindy
spent the next month watching the suspect channel and coordinates in space every moment they were in view, but the signal had not been repeated. Other friends at SETI had analyzed the signal itself and found tantalizing structure in it. Because of the quality they couldn’t yet decode whatever the signal contained.

SETI
had been accused of trying to create public hysteria over the supposed alien signal. Congressional hearings had resulted and SETI was publicly torn to pieces. Mindy had hoped that the public limelight would create pressure for JPL (NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory) and NASA to use its formidable power to decipher the garbled signal and help them look for the source. Instead, they were made to look like fools. It was the first real mistake she had ever made, a critical overestimating of the public opinion. Her career and SETI’s funding had paid the price. Mindy sighed and clicked on her IM, paging an old friend.

“
Hi stranger,” came the typed reply just a few seconds later.

“
Been a long time,” she typed back.

“
Still moving freight?”

“
Yep. Still making pizza?”

“
SEG,” was the reply. It stood for Shit Eating Grin, a bit of computer shorthand. “Pays the bills, if you know what I mean.”

“
Yeah, same here. How’s the crunching going?”

“
Slow, real slow. You been walking down memory lane again?”

“
Of course. I got a line on a dedicated server on eBay yesterday; I’m going to try to get it to you.”

“
I saw it too, but the pizza business isn’t going so good.”

Mindy
sighed and typed on. “I’m not rolling in it either, but I just got a bonus check.”

“
I thought you were going to be going on a honeymoon with that?”

“
Yeah, well, sometimes things don’t work out the way you hoped they would.”

There
was a long pause, long enough to make Mindy wonder if her friend had signed off before he replied. Long enough to make her worry just how deep of a grudge he might hold against her for taking his life down the crapper with hers.

“
I don’t blame you, you know,” he finally typed, reading her mind.

“
No, I don’t know that. I like what you’ve done with the new website.”

“
Thanks. The rest of the gang wants you back.”

“
I can’t make it on pizza money.”

“
It was only the stuffed shirts that abandoned you, abandoned us really. The real sky watchers are still faithful.”

“
Really?”

“
Really. You were sitting in the chair E.T. called. You’re the hero. I get a thousand hits a day on your section of the site, a hundred times that on the anniversary of first contact. As for pizza money, we’ve got some prospects for funding.”

Mindy
sat up a little straighter. “All forgive and forget with Uncle Sam?”

“
Hardly, this is semiprivate, corporate cash.” Another pause, shorter this time. “I think we’ll need you to get this money.”

“
I’ve got a new life, a new career.”

“
Right, and sooner or later you might even get married.”

“
Am I that transparent?”

“
Do you want me to answer that?”

“
Not really.”

Another
pause before her old friend resumed. “We’ve been chewing on that signal with surplus PCs and borrowed mainframe time for five years now. We’re no closer to getting anything from it than we were when we started. Five layers of data, all in frequency harmonics with a base multiplier of one hundred forty-four, all tightly compressed into a transmission only five seconds long.”

“
We got nineteen seconds of seamless data” she started to complain, then stopped typing.

“
Uh-huh,” came the reply.

“
You made a breakthrough?” She had to type it three times before she got it right, her hands were shaking so bad.

“
I wouldn’t call it a breakthrough. Let’s just say we found what looks like terminators in the signal.”

“
Then it was repeating.”

“
Almost certainly. The signal is so complex we probably would have spent another five years trying to find the repeating sequences. Leon had a brain stroke one night while tripping on some particularly righteous Columbian weed,” she shook her head as she read on, “and decided to look for anything that resembled a terminator block, like you would find in a program. He found three of them.”

“
No shit.”

“
Nope, good shit. I’ve tried it. Anyway, once we had the terminators we isolated a five second block of signal and overlaid it with another five second block.”

“
Did they match?”

“
Not in the least.”

“
Fuck!” Mindy snapped aloud, then typed the same thing.

“
That was our reply too. How could we have found such a clear indication of structured signal length and not had it played out? Simple really, looks like each five second block is a unique block. We’ve been chewing ten millisecond segments of each one looking for repeats.”

“
Any luck?”

“
None, until last night. Funny that you IM me just now since I was about to ping you.”

“
You trying to give me a heart attack?”

“
No, just dragging out the drama.”

“
Well, enough dragging. Spill it.”

“
It’s taken a lot of computer time, and a lot of bread we don’t have, but we’ve found ten recurring data groups. All are nearly identical. Nine are in packets one, two and three. Those are the complete packets. At least as complete as we have. One is in packet four, that’s the one on the end of the data stream right before we lost the signal. The last one is the least interesting, only really useful to prove a theory. The data groups are 12 milliseconds long. It looks like they are ALL twelve milliseconds long. These groups occur through the entire length of the transmissions. We’re searching for more matches, but it could take years. Centuries. It’s unfuckingbelievable!”

“
It sounds like it.”

“
Remember how I said they are NEARLY identical?”

“
Sure.”

“
The fascinating part is the nearly identical bits of data. They are each different in a very particular way. We don’t have enough to make sense out of it yet, but I think it’s a primer, or a lexicon.”

“
You’re kidding? We don’t have enough of the signal, do we?”

“
Each packet is twelve milliseconds; if they are contiguous that means every five second terminator brackets more than four thousand bytes of data. How many bytes would it take to show a comparative of the English language and our base ten numerical system?”

“
Probably about four thousand or so if you went at it straight on.”

“
Our thoughts exactly.”

She
sat and stared at her computer for a moment before noticing the pile of work just to the side. “This is fascinating; keep me up to date, okay?”

“
Sure,” was the reply. “Also, I thought you might want to know that WAA is crucifying another member like they did you.”

“
Who this time?”

“
You’ve never heard of her. British amateur visual astronomer named Alicia Benjamin. She calls her place the Worth Hill Observatory, in southern England. Month ago she says she spots a rock, one of the bigger NEO rocks, suddenly accelerate. Problem is she lost some of the data, and no one else saw it happen.”

“
Sounds all too familiar.”

“
Right. She went public, and got a little play with her pictures. Problem was her telescope is just a worked up civilian job so the imagery is not up to association standards. The WAA said she was making it up and now she’s a laughing stock in the media.”

“
I’m beginning to hate them again.”

“
You mean you stopped?”

“
LOL,” she replied, computer shorthand for Laughs out Loud. “So, what rock, and is it really gone?”

“
The rock is LM-245. About twelve miles long and doesn’t get closer than point one five AU for fifty thousand years. There’s no way to confirm her story, as it’s due to be behind the sun for another forty days.”

“
I guess she’ll either be vindicated or screwed in forty days.”

“
Too bad we didn’t have those options.”

“
Yeah, too bad.”

Harper found a lame excuse to enter in his log for swinging by Central Park late in his shift. Removable concrete barriers now permanently blocked the 97th street entrance to Central Park. He could see despondent-looking NYPD and even more despondent-looking FBI agents manning the blockade. He was really curious who called the shots now; it didn't seem to be either NYPD or the FBI. There were no answers to be found here so he drove on.

He
’d hardly gotten any sleep at all last night after leaving Victor in the lockup. Harper spent most of the time working his way through all his contacts trying to get information on what was going on inside the government cordon. He hadn’t found out a damned thing. It wasn’t that they were unwilling to tell him, it turned out no one at NYPD knew what was going on. The desperate truth was that the information Harper had gotten with Victor’s help was probably more than anyone else outside the Feds knew.