Frank Schatzing - The Swarm

'Well, remember we need you.'

'Yeah, right,' he heard Oliviera mutter, as she and Johanson continued to the mess.

Rubin clenched his fists. They could say what they liked about him. In the end he'd get the recognition he deserved. He was the one they'd have to thank for saving humanity. He was tired of being veiled in secrecy by the CIA, but once this business was over, there'd be nothing to stop him sharing his achievements with the world. All that stuff about confidentiality wouldn't matter. He'd broadcast his successes and bask in admiration.

His mood improved as he hurried up the ramp. On 03 level he turned down a passageway and arrived in front of a narrow door. It was locked. He tapped in the code. The door swung open and Rubin entered a corridor. He followed it to the end, and came to another locked door. This time when he punched in the code, a green light flashed up on the display. Above it was a camera behind a glass panel. Rubin walked up and placed his right eye in front of the glass. The camera scanned his retina and gave the all-clear.

Authentification complete, the door slid open. He went into a large, dark room full of computers and monitors. It bore a striking resemblance to the CIC. Civilians and people in uniform were manning the control desks. The air was abuzz with the sound of computers. Li, Vanderbilt and Peak were standing around a chart table. Its transparent surface was lit from below.

Peak looked up. 'Come in,' he said.

Rubin walked over. Suddenly his self-assurance slipped. Since the events of last night they had stuck to brief factual conversations on the phone. The tone had been neutral. Now it was frosty.

Rubin decided to pre-empt the attack. 'We're making good progress,' he said. 'We're still one step ahead and-'

'Sit down,' said Vanderbilt. He gestured brusquely towards a chair on the opposite side of the table.

Rubin sat. The others remained standing, leaving him in a position that made him uneasy. He sensed that he was on trial. 'Of course, the incident last night was rather unfortunate,' he added.

'Unfortunate?' Vanderbilt rested his knuckles on the table. 'For Chrissakes, you jerk. Under any other circumstances I'd have made you walk the plank.'

'But, really, I only-'

'What the hell did you knock him out for?'

'What was I supposed to do?'

'You were supposed to be more careful in the first place. You shouldn't have let him in.'

'That wasn't my fault,' Rubin objected. 'I didn't think anyone could scratch their bums without you people watching.'

'Why did you open the goddamned hatch?'

'Because… Well, I thought we might. . . You see, there was a matter that I…'

'That you what?'

'Now, look here, Rubin,' said Peak, 'that hatch on the hangar deck serves one purpose and one purpose only: to let vehicles in and out. You should know that.' His eyes flashed. 'Maybe you could tell us what was so damned important that you opened it.'

Rubin bit his lip.

'You couldn't be bothered to walk through the ship. It was laziness, period.'

'How could you even suggest that?'

'Because it's true.' Li walked over to Rubin and perched on the edge of the table. Her eves looked concerned, almost friendly. 'You said that you were going for a breath of fresh air.'

Rubin slumped deeper into his chair. Of course he'd said that. And, of course, the surveillance system had recorded him saying it.

'And then you went out a second time.'

'But it didn't look as though anyone was there,' he defended himself. 'And your people didn't say different.'

'They didn't say anything because you didn't ask – even though you need express permission to open that hatch. It happened twice in a row. They didn't get a chance to tell you.'

'I'm sorry,' murmured Rubin.

'I'm going to be straight with you, Mick. We didn't do our job perfectly either. No one seems to have clocked Johanson's return trip to the hangar deck. We're also to blame for the fact that the whole vessel isn't under continual surveillance. As it turns out, we couldn't hear what Oliviera and Johanson were saying when they held their private party. The ramp and the roof are out of earshot too. But none of that changes the fact that you acted like a total jerk.'

'I promise I won't-'

'You're a security risk, Mick. A brainless asshole. I may not always agree with Jack, but if you go ahead and pull another stunt like that, I'll volunteer to help him throw you overboard. I'll even drum up a few sharks so I can watch them tear your heart out. Do you understand me? I will kill you .'

Li's deep blue eyes gazed at him amicably, but Rubin could see she'd have no reservation about carrying out her threat. The woman scared him.

'I think you get my drift.' Li thumped him on the shoulder and joined the others. 'OK. Let's talk about damage limitation. Did the drug work?'

'We injected ten mills,' said Peak. 'Any more than that would have really knocked him sideways, and we need his brain. The drug's supposed to work like an eraser on the mind. But there's no guarantee that his memory won't come back.'

'What kind of risk are we talking?'

'It's hard to say. A word, a colour, a smell could do it. Once the brain finds a trigger, it's capable of remembering exactly what happened.'

'Well, that's quite some risk.' Vanderbilt scowled. 'No drug can suppress a memory entirely. We still don't know enough about the workings of the brain.'

'We'll have to keep him under observation,' said Li. 'What do you think, Mick? How much longer are we going to need him?'

'Oh, we're going great guns,' Rubin said eagerly. Here was his chance to regain lost ground. 'Weaver and Anawak are working on the idea of pheromone-induced aggregation. Oliviera and Johanson think it might be scent-based too. This afternoon we'll be running some phase tests, and we should get our proof. If we're right about aggregation being triggered by scent, we'll soon be in a position to proceed as intended.'

'If, should, could.' Vanderbilt snorted. ' How long until you come up with a goddamned formula?'

'This is scientific research, Jack,' said Rubin. 'No one stood over Alexander Fleming and kept telling him to hurry up and discover penicillin.'

Vanderbilt was on the point of responding when a woman stood up and walked over.

'They've decoded Scratch in the CIC,' she said.

'Scratch?'

'Seems that way. Crowe said to Shankar that they'd figured it out.'

Li turned towards the desk where the audio and video footage from the CIC was being processed. A view from the overhead camera showed Shankar, Crowe and Anawak in conversation. Weaver had just walked in.

'They'll call us in a minute,' she said. 'Good. Don't forget to look surprised.'

COMBAT INFORMATION CENTER

Everyone was crowding round Crowe and Shankar, trying to get a look at the message. What they were seeing wasn't a spectrogram but a graphic representation of the transmission they'd received the day before.

'Is it a reply?' asked Li.

'Good question,' said Crowe.

'But what is Scratch anyway?' asked Greywolf who'd just arrived with Delaware. 'A language?'

'Well, Scratch itself might be a language, but this signal isn't part of it, not in the way it's been coded here,' said Shankar. 'It's like the Arecibo message. I mean, humans don't usually communicate in binary code. If you think about it, we didn't send that message into space. Our computers did.'

'The good news,' said Crowe, 'is that we've worked out its structure. You know how Scratch sounds as though a needle's being dragged across a record? Well, it's a staccato vibration of a very low frequency, ideally suited for propagating across the ocean. Infrasonic waves can travel incredible distances. And in this case the wavelength is extremely short. The trouble with infrasound is that we have to speed up any sound with a frequency of less than a hundred hertz to make it audible, but that would speed up the staccato. The trick to understanding this signal lies in slowing it down.'