The Coming (7 page)

"Ah, but only if you asked the questions. And the student asking that question wouldn't have a hundred million people watching her on cube." He shook his head. "You're right, though. It's not a good example. A sufficiently bright college student could make the calculation."

"A sufficiently bright junior-high-school student, Dr. Pauling," Bacharach said, almost hissing. "Do you actually have a doctorate in science?"

"Al…" Chancellor Barrett said.

"
Political
science
,
Dr. Bacharach. And a bachelor's degree in life science."

"Dean Bacharach does not mean to imply—"

"Of course he did," Pauling said. To Bacharach: "I trust you are satisfied with my credentials … to be a politician?"

"Eminently satisfied."

"I think we'll get along together splendidly. For as long as you stay on the project." He sat back slowly. "Now. The Department of Defense is assembling a task force to deal with the military aspects of this problem. They'll be in touch with you, Governor."

"What military aspects?" Rory said. "Do they plan to attack this thing?"

"Not so long as its intentions are peaceful."

She laughed. "Do you have any idea of how much energy a million megatons represents?"

"Of course I do. Our largest Peace Reserve weapon is a hundred megatons. That would be ten thousand times as large."

"So isn't it rather like ants plotting to destroy an elephant?"

He smiled at her. "An interesting analogy, Dr. Bell. If the ants worked together, they could sting the elephant, and make it change course."

Deedee Whittier spoke for the first time. "Rory, would you be practical for once in your life? Do you think we'll get a nickel of federal money if we don't let the generals come in and play their games? This is going to be an expensive project, and the state is flat broke. Is it not, Governor?"

"Well, I wouldn't actually say we were, uh,
broke."

"I like your directness," Pauling said to Whittier. "Let me return it: your state's worse than broke; it's in debt up to its panhandle. Largely because of a government so corrupt it makes my fragrant city seem honest by comparison."

"Corrupt?" the governor said. "Young man, that's simply not the case."

"Not your office, Governor." He made a placating gesture with one hand. "Lower down, though, surely you're aware…"

"Yes, well, yes. Government attracts both good and bad." Tierny's administration hadn't attracted a surplus of good people. He was the kind of governor only a newspaper cartoonist could love, and he would have long since been impeached if his machine hadn't owned the senate and judiciary before he came into office.

"I suspect you won't have much to do with the Defense people," Pauling said. "Most of the resources that come into Florida will come through Cape Kennedy."

"More good news," Rory said. "No surprise, though."

"The NASA can get things done when they're allowed to," Deedee said. "Your own gamma-ray satellite, didn't it go up ahead of schedule?"

"My
one
gamma-ray satellite. The backup is rusting away in some shed down at the Cape."

"Perhaps something can be done about that," Pauling said smoothly. "Gamma-ray astronomy seems a little more important than it was yesterday. I'll have my office look into it." Rory just nodded.

The governor cleared his throat loudly. "One reason I wanted to be in on this meeting was to ask you educated folks a simple question. I don't think it has a simple answer, though." He paused dramatically, looking around the table. "Have you given any thought to the possibility that the thing what's behind this thing … is God?"

"What?" Rory said. Whittier rolled her eyes. Bacharach studied the back of one large hand. Pauling openly stared at the governor.

"It might not be obvious to you scientist types, but that's just what your man in the street is going to think of first. All that thing said was 'We're coming.' What if it's the Second Coming?"

"Are you serious, Governor?" Pauling said.

He sat up straight and returned the man's stare. "Do you think I am the kind of man who would exploit religion for political gain?"

Rory decided not to laugh. "Why should God be so roundabout? Why not have the Second Coming in Jerusalem, or the White House lawn?"

"Actually, ma'am, I have given that some thought. It could be that God meant to give us three months to ready ourselves. Cleanse ourselves."

"He might be more specific," Deedee said. "The last time, he told everyone who would listen."

"God works in mysterious ways."

"So does the government." Deedee reached out of the holo field and brought back a plastic cup. "Let's leave that part to the holy joes, okay?" She sipped coffee and set the cup down. It hovered a disconcerting inch over the table.

"It is something we'll have to deal with," Chancellor Barrett said. "If that becomes a commonly accepted explanation, there may be some public resistance to our research. Even organized resistance."

"That's true, Mal," Deedee said, "but what can we do about it ahead of time?"

"There's the obvious end run," Pauling said. "Does your university have a religion department?"

The chancellor shook his head. "Philosophy. There are subheads in comparative religion and 'philosophies of social and religious morality.'"

"Well, find one of them who's ordained, if you can—a tame one—and make him a pro forma member of your committee."

"Hold it," the governor broke in. "You all act like this was some kind of a game. You'll look pretty sorry if it turns out that God really
is
behind it."

This time they all stared at him. He seemed dead serious. "Now, I'm not saying that business and science aren't important. But this could be the biggest thing in history. Second biggest thing."

It actually was calculation, Rory decided. The idea had come to him while he was sitting there, and now he was going to hang on to it with all of his famous "bull 'gator" tenacity. He probably didn't have much support from organized religion, so he was going to milk this for votes.

"Now I understand the church and state thing," he continued, "and anyhow you scientists won't do much about the God end of it. Wouldn't expect you to. But Dr. Pauling's right. To be fair about it, you have to put some religious people on your committee."

"And you have a suggestion for one," Pauling said.

"As a matter of fact, I do. And he lives right near Gainesville, out in Archer, practically suburbs."

The chancellor forced an unconvincing smile. "That wouldn't be Reverend Charles Dubois."

"The same! By George, Dr. Barrett, you don't miss much, do you?" Reverend Dubois would be hard to miss. He was prominent in almost every conservative movement in the county. He had delivered Alachua County's votes to the governor in spite of the pesky liberal presence of the university.

"Um… I'm not certain he would be qualified…"

The governor was staring at his prompter. "He has a doctorate. He went to your own university."

Barrett looked a little ill. "He didn't earn his doctorate here?"

"Well, no. That was in California."

"Through the mail," Bacharach said. "That charlatan doesn't have a real degree at all."

"You know him?" Rory asked.

"I live in Archer, too. He tried to push through a zoning variance for his new church last year."

"We can't spend our energy worrying about local politics," the governor said, "Dubois is an energetic, intelligent man—"

"Who flunked out of UF his first—"

"Who has the trust and support of many elements of the community that do not automatically trust you academics." He glared into an uncomfortable silence.

Bacharach stood up. "Malachi, thanks for asking for my input here. I'm obviously not helping the process, though." He turned around abruptly and disappeared.

Rory realized she was in the same room with him; if she stood up and stepped away, the illusion would vanish, the dean and the chancellor staring at ghosts. Maybe she should. This was getting pretty far from the astrophysics of nonthermal sources.

Well, there was no way to keep the politicians and religionists out of it, anyhow. Might as well start dealing with them now.

"Governor," she said, "with all due respect, I wonder whether we might want a representative of the religious community who's more widely known. This Dubois man may be notorious in some circles, but I've never heard of him, and I live just twenty miles away."

Deedee smiled at her. "Aurora, I'd bet that everything you know about local politics could be inscribed on the head of a pin."

"She has a good point," Pauling said. "We should find someone of national stature. Perhaps Johnny Kale could find the time."

"Or the pope. Everybody trusts the pope." Deedee looked into her coffee cup and put it back down. Johnny Kale had been the pet preacher of the last three administrations. He had as much clout as a cabinet member.

Even Rory had heard of him. "But he's kind of old-fashioned," she said, although she meant something less charitable.

"Well, perhaps that's what we want," Pauling said, "for balance. Most of the
country
is pretty old-fashioned, after all."

Rory wasn't very political, but she knew a turf battle when she saw one. The governor was thinking so hard you could hear the dry primitive mechanisms grinding away.

"There's no reason we can't have both men," he conceded. "Reverend Kale at the national level and Reverend Dubois down here."

"At any rate," Chancellor Barrett said, "we have to keep a sense of perspective. This is still primarily a scientific problem. Absent some startling revelation."

"I don't know how much revelation you need," the governor said.

"More," Barrett said.

"I guess you find it easier to believe in ETs than God?"

"Save it for the speeches, Governor." He turned to Pauling. "What sort of many-headed beast are we cooking up here? At the federal level we have you, Defense, NASA, and now that sanctimonious camp follower Kale. No doubt we'll have a boatload of senators before long."

Pauling nodded. "Half of Washington will find something in this that's relevant, as long as it's hot. I'll try to deflect them so they don't interfere with your science."

"What science?" Rory said. "Unless they begin broadcasting again, everything we do is idle speculation. Until they're close enough to observe directly."

"How long would that be?" Pauling asked.

"Depends on how big they are. Depends on what you mean by 'observe.' We have a probe orbiting Neptune that's the size of a school bus, and we can't see it optically. If that's the size of the thing, we won't see it until it's a day or so away."

"Three months' wait." The governor frowned. "That's a long time to keep people interested." Rory opened her mouth and shut it.

"We can work on that," Pauling said. "The preparations for various contingencies could be made pretty dramatic.

"When I was a kid I remember reading about plans to orbit nuclear weapons—not as bombs, but as insurance against a catastrophic meteor strike, like the one that got the dinosaurs."

"
May
have," Deedee said.

"Anyhow, it never got off the ground, combination of money and politics. I wonder if they could do it now."

"Not in eleven months," Deedee said. "No matter how much money and politics you throw at it."

"I wouldn't underestimate the Defense Department," Pauling said. "Remember the Manhattan Project."

"It was the War Department then," Rory said, remembering from her new book, "and the threat was more immediate and obvious."

"I don't know about this Manhattan thing," the governor said. "We don't need to drag New York into this, do we?"

Barrett broke the silence. "That was the code name for the team that developed the atom bomb, Governor."

"Oh, yes. Of course. World War II."

"I don't think it's conceptually difficult," Whittier said, "putting missiles with large warheads into orbit. I'm no engineer, but it seems to me you could cobble it together with existing stuff. Peace Reserve weapons mated piecemeal with the Super Shuttle. The problems would be logistics and politics rather than engineering."

"International politics more than national," Barrett said. "A lot of countries wouldn't care to see American H-bombs in orbit, no matter which way they were pointed."

"And there's a law against it," Pauling admitted. "'Weapons of mass destruction' have been proscribed, in orbit, for almost a hundred years."

"Has anybody told the Pakistanis about this?" Rory said.

Pauling shrugged. "Outlaws don't obey laws. We have to step lightly, of course, especially given the European situation. There's no reason all the bombs should be American, and of course their launching wouldn't be under the control of any one nation."

"Dr. Pauling," Rory said, "don't let yourself be too impressed by a few hundred megatons in orbit. We're still the ants in this picture."

"We must remind ourselves of this constantly," the governor said, "and not fall prey to the sin of pride."

"How very true," said Pauling in a weary, neutral tone. "Hubris. Get you every time." He stood up. "I think we have a sense of how everyone feels. We need more data; we need time for the data we do have to sink in. Shall we meet again two days from now, same time?"

Rory was the only one who didn't nod or mumble yes. This was going to be nothing but an impediment.

Suddenly the three academics were sitting alone at their too-large table in Room 301. Barrett turned to Whittier. "So. Do you think we've lost Bacharach for good?"

"Pretty sure," Deedee said. "He doesn't have any real stake in staying."

"He could lose his position."

"Al wouldn't lift a finger to retain his deanship," Rory said. "You know that. He'd gladly trade the extra pay and perks if he could do science full-time again."

"I've always wondered how sincere he was about that. Perhaps we'll find out."

Rory got up. "I'll have some tentative scheduling for both of you tomorrow morning. Have to go confer with my second-in-command, over a beer."