THE FOREVER GENE (THE SCIONS OF EARTH Book 1) (38 page)

He shook his head.  If things got any weirder, he would have to pinch himself to see if he was dreaming.

He pulled off again and crossed the river on Longfellow Bridge.  From there, it was a short drive to MIT.  He stopped outside the stately old Lowell Court and looked around for Edgar.  He didn't have long to wait before a thin, bearded youngster ambled over to the car.  David wound down the passenger window, but didn't unlock the door.

"Wow man," gushed Edgar.  "You really have a Lamborghini Aventador!"

"Yes, I do," replied David, "and you have two minutes to tell me why I should drive you to California."

"Hat Creek Radio Observatory," said Edgar.

"Hat Creek?  That's the SETI station; the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence.  Isn't that search over?  What is the point of going there?"

"The search is far from over.  We need to contact the other alien races."

David frowned.  "What other alien races?"

"The ones the Faerie Folk told us about.  Look, let me in and I'll tell you the whole plan.  If you don't like it, you can kick me out and be on your way."

David considered his choices.  He could either deliver his cargo of medicine to New York or use it to get to California.  If he chose the former, he could look forward to a life under the thumb of Westside Phil.  Once a gangster got his hooks into you, he never let go.  If he made the latter choice, he would never be able to return to Boston, but there might be some faint hope of seeing Pris again.

He unlocked the passenger door.  "Get in, you can tell me about it on the way."

Edgar moved the box of medicine to the luggage compartment and folded his tall frame into the low slung passenger seat.  He offered his hand, which David shook briefly.

"What about the rest of DOPE?" David asked.  "Are you just going to leave everyone else behind?"

"DOPE is pretty much a thing of the past," replied Edgar.  "We once had over a thousand members, mostly MIT students, but there are now only about twenty of us.  The others have already gone on to California.  Over the last couple of weeks we have been cadging lifts from anyone going that way.  I am the last one here.  That is why I was so interested in your car."

David pulled away from the kerb.  He took the Massachusetts Turnpike out of the city and, as they drove through the suburbs, Edgar outlined his plan.

"When I realised that most people were not going to listen to DOPE, I began to think about alternative strategies we might adopt.  According to the Faerie Folk, there are many other space faring races out there.  Some are even from our own galaxy. After a while, it occurred to me that, if there are other intelligent races in the universe, it is a good bet that not all of them are friends of the Faerie Folk."

"Wait a minute," said David, determined to expose any flaws in the other man's reasoning before they got too far down the road.  "How do you know they weren't lying about that too?  What if there are no other space faring races?"

"Think about it," replied Edgar, shaking his head.  "What does any good liar do?  He tells as much of the truth as possible.  It makes it easier for him to keep his story straight and the false parts harder to spot.  I believe that most of what the Faerie Folk told us is true.  There are other races out there.  That much we had worked out for ourselves already; that given the size of the universe, the odds are that we are not the only sentient life in it.  Our doubts always stemmed from the fact that we had never found any firm evidence of other life.  Well, those doubts have now been swept away and, logically, we must now accept as a fact that there are other intelligent races out there."

"So," said David, intrigued, "if most of what they told us is true, what did they lie about?"

Edgar adopted a pensive expression.  "Their real reason for coming here.  They said that it was because they needed help resolving their reproductive problem.  That rings true, as far as it goes.  If we accept what we have been told about their development as a race, it is quite possible that they really have a reproductive problem and that they are genuinely looking for answers.  But that wasn't necessarily their real reason for coming here."

"What do you think the real reason was?"

The youngster shrugged his shoulders.  "That is what we need to ask another intelligent race which has had contact with the Faerie Folk."

"I see," said David.  "Hence the trip to the world's biggest radio transmitter."

"Exactly," nodded Edgar.  "I figure that we broadcast a message offering to share information about the Faerie Folk.  We make it clear that we have suffered at their hands and want to hear from anyone who has had the same experience.  If the Faerie Folk were prepared to run roughshod over us, I'm pretty sure they will have done the same to other races.  And when those races become aware of us, they will contact us.  The enemy of my enemy is my friend and all that."

"But haven't we been sending messages out into space for decades?  Why hasn't anyone responded before?"

Edgar waved his hand airily.  "Those messages have contained nothing but generic rubbish.  Like spam on the Personet.  No-one with any sense responds to spam."

"Isn't there a flaw in your plan?" asked David.  "I'm no expert, but won't it take millions of years for a radio message to get to other galaxies?"

Edgar shook his head.  "The message doesn't have to go that far.  It just needs to spread through our immediate galactic neighbourhood.  Anyone who happens to be close by will hear it.  The message will include a request to pass it on.  It might be picked up by a star ship travelling through.  The message will be taken to another galaxy when the ship reaches the other end of whatever wormhole it uses."

David remained unconvinced.  "It may still take years before the message gets far enough to have any chance of being picked up."

"That's true, but I have time on my side."

David gave him a sideways glance.  "What do you mean?"

"I've had the Faerie Blood injection.  I'm going to live for a long time."

David was so surprised he almost lost control of the speeding Aventador.  "You?  The most vociferous adversary of the Faerie Folk in Boston took a serum they produced?  How do you know that the Faerie Blood does what they say it does?"

He shrugged.  "As I said, most of what they told us is true.  And anyway, it was tested and found to be the same thing as that Forever Gene."

David didn't respond.  He found himself beginning to wonder whether the young man was quite right in the head.  For someone who distrusted the Faerie Folk as much as he did to happily accept the risk of taking their serum didn't quite add up.  "Look, Edgar, I don't want to be sceptical, but are there others at Hat Creek who share your theories?  More than just a few hippies, I mean."

"What's a hippie?" asked Edgar.

"Never mind that," said David testily.  "I know nothing about you.  How do I know you aren't some whacko conspiracy theorist who took a guess and just happened to be proved right?"

Edgar grinned.  "I am a conspiracy theorist who took a guess and just happened to be proved right.  But I understand what you're saying, man.  Look, you can't just walk into Hat Creek and demand that they play a request for you.  I have been spreading my idea about a radio signal on the Personet for months.  I've had my share of crank responses, but I've also had plenty of solid scientific interest.  An ex-director of NASA saw it and said that, if the Faerie Folk weren't prepared to stay and help us sort through our problems, it was sensible to look for help elsewhere.  When he took an interest, the idea gained a lot of credibility in the scientific community.

"Once I had some solid backing, I pitched the idea to SETI itself.  It took a while, but eventually someone from SETI contacted me and said that it would consider sending my message, provided it was not aggressive or provocative.  But SETI is always short of funding so my friends and I would have to make our own way there."

David calmed down a little.  He fully intended to check Edgar's story on the Personet when he got the chance, but if people from NASA and SETI were involved, hopefully the whole thing wasn't just pie in the sky.  "There is still something I don't understand," he said.

"What's that?"

"On the Personet you said that we could help each other.  You need a lift to Hat Creek.  But how will going to Hat Creek help me find my wife?"

"It's obvious, man," said Edgar.  "When we come into contact with another race, you can ask them to take you."

"Take me?" said David.

"Yes, take you to the Faerie Folk."

"Why would they do that?"

"Why wouldn't they?  You could make a deal with them.  You go with them and answer all of their questions about Earth and what the Faerie Folk have done.  If they are enemies of the Faerie Folk, they will be interested in that information.  In exchange, they take you where you want to go.  Using wormhole travel, it wouldn't be much more than a minor detour for them."

It seemed like a very faint hope to David.  He was tempted to stop the car in the middle of the freeway and kick his passenger out.  But that was all he had left now, a faint hope, and he carried on driving.  Maybe there were people at Hat Creek who would have more concrete ideas that could help him.

"What about you?" asked Edgar.

"What do you mean?"

"Have you had the Faerie Blood injection too?"

"No, not exactly," said David noncommittally.

"Not exactly?  You mean you've had the Forever Gene instead?  You have, haven't you?  Boy, you must have been rich to afford that.  Now that I come to think of it, your face is familiar.  I guess you must have been one of those billionaires that were on the Personet all the time.  Did you know that the guy who invented the Forever Gene went to MIT?  Didn't you say you went to MIT?"

David stared stonily ahead.  The young man was beginning to annoy him and they hadn't even crossed the Massachusetts state line yet.  He drove in silence for a while, trying to ignore Edgar's furtive glances in his direction.  But, whatever else he was, the bearded student wasn't stupid.

  "Holy Red Sox," he exclaimed suddenly.  "You're David Herald.  You're the man who sold the world!  You must…"  He caught sight of David's expression and immediately tried to backtrack.  "Sorry man, I didn't mean to say, that is, er…"

"They lied to me too," said David through gritted teeth.  "I thought I was helping them, and I guess I was.  I just didn't realise what I was helping them with.  They have cost me everything I had and today they took my wife from me too.  All I can do now is hope that there is something, or someone, at Hat Creek who can help me find her."

At least Edgar was chastened enough by the exchange to shut up for a while.  The car was running low on fuel and David began looking out for places he might fill up.  Most of the old service stations were deserted these days and they had to stop and use the spare tank.  Eventually, late that night, they came across a truck stop outside Pittsburgh with armed men patrolling the perimeter and long queues of vehicles at the pumps.

David parked at the end of a queue and went inside to barter medicine for fuel.  He managed to buy enough to fill the car and two spare tanks.  It should get them as far as Omaha, where he was told more fuel would be available.

He and Edgar slept in the queue and the sun had come up by the time they took their turn at the pump.  They set off again immediately, driving at a respectable speed to conserve fuel.  By midday, David was exhausted and was forced to let Edgar drive.  Thankfully, the young man turned out to be an excellent driver and David was able to relax and fall asleep.

They reached Omaha late in the evening and found the promised fuel station.  They had to sleep in the queue overnight again, but were able to buy enough fuel to get most of the way to California. The next morning, David decided that it was time to get a move on.  He was tired of travelling and anxious to get to Hat Creek.  He took Route Eighty and opened up the Aventador, following the road all the way through the Rocky Mountains to Salt Lake City.  There Edgar took over again and David slept most of the way through the deserts of Nevada.

At Reno, they were able to buy a little more fuel, their stock of medicine running low, and then they turned north, winding their way through the protected forests of Northern California.  They reached the tiny little town of Hat Creek in the early morning, and followed the access road to the radio observatory.

When they finally arrived, David was pleasantly surprised to see that the place was a hive of activity.  There were as many as a dozen vehicles in the parking lot.  He climbed stiffly out of the car and stood for a moment admiring the massive Allen Telescope Array spread over the nearby hills; an impressive collection of three hundred and fifty telescopes designed to work in concert.  After three decades of delays caused by myriad funding problems, the array had finally been completed in 2028 and was now searching vast tracts of space for evidence of extra-terrestrial life.

Edgar had also climbed out of the Aventador and a small group of admirers began to assemble around the car.  David was particularly happy to spot a good number of grizzled veterans with a decidedly technical look about them.  Perhaps he had come to the right place after all.

A small, dark-haired girl appeared from the direction of the nearby buildings and ran towards Edgar.  She grabbed him in a fierce hug and he looked at David with a big smile.  "My girlfriend, Samantha," he grinned.