Fred Hoyle - The Black Cloud

“Those political bastards are still trying to get through. Damn it, I’ll switch those lights off,” remarked Leicester.

He walked over to the bank of lights monitoring the various transmissions that were being received. A minute later he returned to his seat, shaking with laughter.

“Here’s a fine thing,” he gurgled. “I forgot to stop our conversation going out on ten centimetres. They’ve been hearing everything we’ve been saying — Alexis’s reference to the Kremlin, Chris’s remark about cutting their throats. No wonder they’re in a rage! I reckon the fat’s in the fire now, all right.”

No one seemed quite to know what to do. At length Kingsley walked over to the control board. He flicked a number of switches, and said into a microphone:

“This is Nortonstowe, Christopher Kingsley speaking. If you have any message, get on with it.”

An angry voice came over the loud-speaker:

“So you’re there, are you, Nortonstowe! We’ve been trying to get through to you for the last three hours.”

“Who is that speaking?”

“Grohmer, U.S. Secretary for Defence. I might tell you that you are talking to a very angry man, Mr Kingsley. I am waiting for an explanation of tonight’s outrageous conduct.”

“Then you will go on waiting, I fear. I will give you another thirty seconds, and if your statements have not assumed some reasonably cogent form by then, I shall switch off again.”

The voice became quieter, and more threatening:

“Mr Kingsley, I have heard before of your insufferable obstructiveness, but this is the first time I have encountered it myself. For your information, I intend that it shall be the last time. This is not a warning. I am simply telling you here and now that very shortly you will be removed from Nortonstowe. Where you will be removed to, I shall leave to your own imagination.”

“I am anxious that in your plans for me, Mr Grohmer, you have given full consideration to one very important point.”

“And what is that, may I ask?”

“That it is within my power to obliterate the whole continent of America. If you doubt this statement ask your astronomers what happened to the Moon on the evening of 7 August. You might also like to take into account that it would take me substantially less than five minutes to implement this threat.”

Kingsley clicked off a group of switches and the lights at the control panel went off. Marlowe was white-faced and there were little beads of sweat on his forehead and on his upper lip. “Chris, that was not well done, it was not well done,” he said. Kingsley was genuinely disturbed.

“I’m sorry, Geoff. It never occurred to me while I was speaking that America is your country. I say again that I’m sorry, but by way of excuse you must know that I’d have said the same thing to London, or to Moscow, or to anybody.”

Marlowe shook his head.

“You’ve got me wrong, Chris. I’m not objecting because America is my country. In any case I know you were only putting up a bluff. What worries me is that the bluff may turn out to be damn dangerous.”

“Nonsense. You’re giving an exaggerated importance to a storm in a tea-cup. You still haven’t got over the idea that politicians are important because the newspapers tell you so. They’ll probably realize that I might be bluffing but while there’s just the possibility that I could make good my threat they’ll lay off the strong arm stuff. You’ll see.”

But in this matter Marlowe was right and Kingsley wrong, as events soon showed.

Kingsley was roused from sleep about three hours later.

“Sorry to waken you, Chris, but something important has happened,” said Harry Leicester. When he was satisfied that Kingsley was sufficiently alert he went on:

“There’s a call from London for Parkinson.”

“They’re certainly not wasting much time.”

“We can’t let him take it, can we? It’d be taking too big a risk.”

Kingsley was quiet for a few moments. Then, evidently making up his mind:

“I think we must take the risk, Harry, but we’ll stand over him while he takes the call. In fact we’ll make sure that he doesn’t give anything away. The point is this. Although I’ve no doubt that the long arm of Washington could extend as far as Nortonstowe, I can’t believe that our Government can relish being told what to do on their own territory. Therefore we start with the advantage of some sympathy from our own people. If we stop Parkinson answering the call we cancel that advantage straight away. Let’s go along and see him.”

When they had wakened Parkinson and told him of the call, Kingsley said:

“Look here, Parkinson, I’m going to do some plain speaking. By our own lights we’ve played this game pretty clean so far. It’s true that we made a lot of conditions when we came here, and we’ve insisted on those conditions being honoured. But in return we’ve quite genuinely supplied your people with the best information we had. Again it’s true that we haven’t always been right, but the reason for our mistakes is now only too clear. The Americans set up a corresponding establishment and this was run on the politicians’ terms not on the scientists’ terms, and the amount of information that came from that establishment was less than it has been from Nortonstowe. In fact, you know very well that but for our information the death roll in recent months would have been even vaster than it is.”

“Where is all this leading, Kingsley?”

“I’m simply showing you that however much it might at times have seemed otherwise we’ve played very straight. We’ve played straight even to the extent of revealing the real nature of the Cloud, and of passing on the information we’ve received from it. But where I do dig my toes in is at the thought of losing valuable communication time. We can’t expect that the Cloud is going to give endless time to talking to us, it’s got bigger fish to fry. And I’m emphatically not going to let what time we can get go by in political chit-chat if I can help it. We’ve got too much still to learn. Besides, if the politicians started up with their Geneva stuff and arguing about agendas, it’s more than likely that the Cloud would sign off altogether. It’s not going to waste its time talking to gibbering idiots.”

“I never cease being flattered at your opinion of us. But I still don’t see where this is leading.”

“It’s leading to this. London is calling you, and we’re going to be there when you answer. If you breathe a word of doubt over my suggestion of an alliance between us and the Cloud I’ll hit you over the head with a spanner. Come on, let’s get it over.”

It turned out that Kingsley had misjudged the situation somewhat. All the Prime Minister really wanted to know from Parkinson was whether in his opinion there was any doubt that the Cloud could obliterate a continent if it really wished. Parkinson was in no difficulty over his answer. He answered quite genuinely and without hesitation that he had every reason to believe that it could. This satisfied the Prime Minister, and after a few unrelated remarks he went off the air.

“Very odd,” said Leicester to Kingsley after Parkinson had returned to bed.

“Too much Clausewitz,” he went on. “They’re only interested in fire power.”

“Yes, it’s apparently never occurred to them that anybody might possess an overwhelming weapon and still decline to use it.”

“Particularly in a case like this.”

“What d’you mean, Harry?”

“Well, isn’t it axiomatic that any non-human intelligence must be evil?”

“I suppose it is. Now I come to think of it, ninety-nine per cent of stories about non-human intelligences treat ’em as being entirely villainous. I’d always supposed that was because it’s so difficult to invent a really convincing villain, but perhaps it may run deeper.”