Red Dot: Contact. Will the gravest threat come from closer to home than we expect? (13 page)

“Don’t worry Mr. President, I appreciate—”

“Well, I shouldn’t dump this all on you. How much do you charge for your psychiatric services?” he asked.

“No charge,” she said with a laugh.

Douthart was almost always happy to extend the calls, swapping work stories with her, getting brief physics lessons, and poking fun at others, or at himself. “Well, gotta go save the world,” was one of his favorite ways to end a call.

Both Claire and the President came to value the calls more and more. Claire began to think there was something substantial growing out of her instant attraction for Douthart.

The President looked at the calls mainly as a welcome relief from the usual round of pressing problems and crises, at first. But soon he found that on some evenings, he wished he could call her just to chat and hear the sound of her voice. He wondered what he would do when—after the D9 thing was settled, one way or the other—their calls ended.

After Claire told him that Sunday about the first meaningful communication with the ETs, the President asked her for her evaluation of the significance of the message.

“Now we know that their stated reason for contacting Earth is peaceful, which is good,” Claire said. “But we still don’t know for sure why they’re approaching Earth, and or why they sent the red dots. We may not find out until they actually implement their plans for contact, presumably when they start to orbit Earth.”

After the call, the President contacted Chief of Staff Tejeda to put together a release for him to approve. Within seconds, Douthart’s phone buzzed with an alert from the CIA chief.

The President’s stomach tightened instantly and painfully. One of the things he dreaded most was getting news from foreign and domestic intelligence people. Every day, Douthart seemed to get news about a half-dozen or so new or escalating crises.

“Hi, Dix, how about those Red Sox?” Douthart asked, referring to the ongoing baseball playoffs.

“I’m a White Sox fan, so I’m not really following,” said CIA Chief Dixon Maddox, with a chuckle.

“OK, what are we following these days?”

“Mr. President, Russia has amassed more troops along the border with Georgia, and we have electronic and human intel indicating that they’ll invade within seventy-two hours. As before, the goal seems to be to seize a foothold in the northern region and intimidate the Georgian government into trade and political concessions.”

Douthart paused, took a deep breath, and asked Maddox to have the State Department get him in touch with Russian President Zarkov as soon as possible. “And see if the NSC Russia team can come up with some more carrots and sticks to use on them,” he said. “There just doesn’t seem to be much I can do, with all the D9 unrest.

“Oh, and I’ve actually got some good news,” he added. He then relayed information about the ET message that apparently said the red dots were a sign of peace.

“That is excellent news,” said Maddox. “Mr. President, I know it has occurred to you, but it’s striking that the waves of increased trouble we’re having worldwide are caused by humans. The ETs haven’t hurt anyone or damaged anything—at least not yet.”

Douthart muttered his agreement, and Maddox went on. “Mr. President, there’s something else I must raise with you. We’re picking up information from overseas US military sources about talk, and even the beginning of some plans, to take unilateral aggressive action against D9. And some
officers seem to be looking at Defense Secretary Fitzgerald for leadership or as a figurehead.”

After silence for a few seconds, Maddox said, “Mr. President?”

“Yes. I have an NSC meeting tomorrow morning, and I’ll thrash that out with Fitzgerald and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Peoples.”

After he ended the call with the CIA chief, Douthart leaned back, closed his eyes, and thought,
I really should fire Fitzgerald
. But getting rid of someone in such a vital position could create more doubt and confusion. It might set off the dissidents in the military. Maybe it was better to try to keep him close and in line.

The President leaned forward and eyed his video phone, waiting for news of yet another crisis.

Claire arrived at the NSC meeting the next morning to give a briefing on the latest breakthrough in decoding ET messages. In addition to butterflies from addressing the Council, she felt conflicting emotions about seeing the President again. On one hand, she was eager to see him and talk with him, but her affection for him might be noticed and cause problems. What would Council members think about a presidential advisor having a highly unprofessional crush on him? What if the President didn’t feel the same way?

The actual greeting between Claire and Douthart was warm but brief. Claire quickly began to relay the latest message and explain how the Language Unit found that it could use local linguistic traits to find more meaning in ET transmissions. And she advised them to expect setbacks, along with more breakthroughs, before messages became consistently useful. A new message received late the night before seemed to add little to their understanding of the ETs.

Claire was gathering her papers to leave the meeting when an aide entered the room to tell her Denver One had an important call for her about a new ET transmission. Claire arranged to take the secure call in the Situation Room and relay the message to the Council.

After putting her earphones on, she heard Cindy’s voice, now uncharacteristically subdued and even hesitant. “We have a message using language from a type of American music,” Cindy said.

Claire prepared her pen and paper to copy the message, as Council members looked on, engrossed.

“I’ll quote the message,” Cindy said.

“Quote, ‘Listen bitch…’”

“Pardon?” blurted Claire.

“I’m quoting the message,” said Cindy in a flat tone of voice. “Quote, ‘Listen bitch, I’m telling you, you need to,’ unquote, indecipherable phrase, quote, ‘motherfucker ain’t happening, never bust a fucking cap…’”

Claire’s face grew red and then pale as she realized that in seconds she would have to recite this message to the President of the United States, the Vice President, the Secretary of State, and other high officials.

“‘…not going to,’ unquote, indecipherable phrase, quote, ‘all night. This…’ uh, unquote. Here the message uses the ‘N’ word,” said Cindy.

Claire’s mouth dropped open, her face burned, and sweat dripped down her forehead and back.

Cindy continued, “Quote, ‘this N word got to sing, this N word got to learn, this N word,’ unquote, indecipherable phrase. That’s the end of the message.”

Claire slumped back like a rag doll, to find the Situation Room in dead silence, and everyone staring at her. In a thin but steady voice, she started to repeat the message. When she got to the “N” word, Vice President Duggard interrupted.

“Wait a minute. Did they say ‘N word’ or actually
use
the ‘N’ word?”

“They used the ‘N’ word,” said Claire, and then finished reading the message.

Embarrassed silence followed for a few seconds, then one of the assistant security advisors started to laugh. Soon, the Situation Room filled with uproarious laughter. Claire couldn’t help but join in.

The fact that ETs, with their technological genius and historic mission, used grossly inappropriate hip-hop lyrics to communicate seemed hilarious.
Her squirming as she prepared to recite the message to the highest-ranking government officials did as well. And the need for relief from the oppressive stress faced by the leaders could not be resisted.

After a couple minutes, Douthart teased Claire. “I didn’t know you had such musical talent,” he said. The room broke out in a new wave of laughter.

After a minute, or so Claire was able to report that Cindy said the message tended to show peaceful intent, based on the phrases “never bust a … cap,” and “got to learn,” and “got to sing.” After her report, Claire left, smiling, to a round of mock applause.

The nasty confrontations Douthart expected failed to materialize. Exhausted by relentless tension, everyone seemed willing to pass over the most contentious issues… At least for now.

Even Dr. Doom, the President’s nemesis, Defense Secretary Fitzgerald, remained civil. Everyone seemed to reason that it wouldn’t hurt to put the heavy lifting off for a day or two.

As they left the room, the Vice President sidled up to Douthart and gently elbowed him in the ribs. “Your girlfriend’s got some mouth on her,” she said in a whisper.

“And for a scientist, too,” he replied with a smile.

B
REAK
-O
FF
E
FFECT

T
he ETs’ misadventures,
this time with language, again provided fodder for comedy. Headlines talked about “Gangsta ETs,” and one cartoon showed an egg-shaped ET wearing an armband with gang symbols, tattoos, and holding a handgun at the end of each of six tentacles.

When news of the hip-hop message came out, it had been twenty-four days since the President told the world about D9, and fourteen days since the red dots had appeared. On its present course, D9 would start orbiting Earth in twenty days—D minus 20, in common terminology. That day took on a frightening significance, because many people assumed that D9 would implement its plans for contact with Earth—whatever those plans were—after it had gone into orbit.

Just as the world had settled into an anxious routine about a week after the initial shock of the discovery of D9, so too was the acute panic surrounding red dots beginning to fade a bit. It was true that the uncertainties and potential dangers were the same. But people had experienced more than a week without any verifiable harm from the red dots. Today, they planned their schedule of work, school, shopping, and other activities much as they would have before they’d ever heard of D9. And tomorrow was the same, and on for a couple more weeks. Little Billy had to have a costume ready for the school play next Monday; Dad had to take the car in for new tires this week. The public in general seized this brief span of comfortable predictability to get relief from excruciating fear.

Plenty of people and groups seemed determined to fan panic about the red dots and approaching ETs, but some respected public figures spoke earnestly to promote calm. Pope Paul VII personally went to see a red dot for the first time during a Papal visit to Venezuela. He looked unsteady on his feet at times, and appeared to weep as he prayed a few yards from a red dot on a cordoned-off street in a residential district of Caracas. Clearly moved, he was taken back to his hotel and reappeared about an hour later to speak, in Spanish.

“My brothers and sisters, I share with you that after contemplating this visitor from beyond our Earth, I more fully realize the power of God. We were foolish to try to limit the power of almighty God. When we believed God devoted all his attention and energy to protecting us, shaping the universe to suit us, we weren’t worshipping God, we were worshipping man. With love and charity, all-powerful God rules all.”

It certainly helped the public mood that neither D9 nor the red dots caused any harm, according to official sources or the average person’s personal experience—experience spread far and wide on social media. ETs themselves had also become a bit less demonic, because people had a chance to laugh at them, twice, and the aliens’ messages spoke of a peaceful intent.

Messages from D9 gradually became more understandable. A message at D minus 19 stated explicitly that D9 was on a peaceful mission of exploration, no more hip-hop lyrics or talk of black-throated loons. “This (is a) peace trip for our education,” the ETs said.

Governments around the world then bombarded D9 with questions, some of them submitted by their citizens. “What do you look like?” “Why did you change direction so abruptly?” “Do you have males and females?”

In increasingly more fluent transmissions, the ETs said they would communicate more fully once they reached Earth’s orbit. One answer they provided was that they came from Earth’s own galaxy, from a planet orbiting a star in the vicinity of the
Canis Major
constellation, about thirty thousand light years from Earth. Like all but a relative handful of the 200 billion or so stars in the Milky Way Galaxy, this one hadn’t been detected or studied by
Earth scientists. The ETs also sent a separate greeting to nations that were home to each of the thirty-six languages they had chosen to communicate in.