Джек Макдевитт - A Voice in the Night

She was entranced to have an historic event of this magnitude happening in her cottage. I’d been trying for several months to get a commitment from her, but she insisted that her career took too much of her time and, to be honest, she wasn’t sure she was ready for a lifetime commitment. She liked me, and so on, but I was spending my life chasing UFO’s. Or something. But after that night, our relationship was never the same.

Since we were looking at a long delay before a reply came in, the formality between us and the marshals broke down. The male was Oswald Grant; his partner, Constanza Jones. They quickly became Ozzie and Connie.

Fox reported that the Chinese had suggested the possibility of talks in hope of avoiding war. There was no explanation, and certainly no suggestion that it had anything to do with the transmissions from Jupiter. But the commentators on the various channels and across the internet were having a field day.

And eventually we got our reply: “I do not have a name. I have never had a use for one. I am on Ganymede because I was placed here. I have no capability to move, so I suspect I will be here a long time.”

“Who put you there? And for what purpose?”

We sent out for pizza. The marshals couldn’t drink on duty, so they got cokes while Susan and I tossed down a couple of beers. I was by then in a celebratory mood, and couldn’t resist offering toasts to President Hawkins for his adroit handling of the situation, to Susan and Connie, the loveliest women on the planet, and to Oz, who probably has a question he’d like to ask our nameless partner.

“Yes,” he said. “Find out if he knows what the Giants will do this year.”

“Pete, I was placed here by your ancestors. They wanted to find out whether there was intelligence elsewhere in the universe. They were driven much as you are. I’ve heard—and enjoyed—your radio program, by the way.”

And the whole construct collapsed. It was a fraud. From beginning to end, it had been a hoax.

The media laughed themselves silly. But they couldn’t explain what was happening. They interviewed people from NASA and a half dozen observatories. “The signal,” said Orin Michaels, the director at Lowell, to a panel of journalists on Current TV, “is coming from the direction of Jupiter. There’s no question about that. If it’s a hoax, I can’t imagine how it’s being managed.”

For me, it was a devastating time. Susan assured me everything would be okay. Connie said how nobody could blame me. And Ozzie just sat shaking his head. Craziest thing he’d ever heard.

I decided, reluctantly, very reluctantly, to back off. This was destroying my career. I could live with that, but I was afraid that when the smoke cleared, when the explanation surfaced, it would destroy SETI as well. Nobody, I thought, would ever take us seriously again.

In the midst of all this, frustrated, enraged, saddened, I called Java’s number. Susan was with me. When I got patched through and Java responded, I hesitated. And finally I took the jump: “Please explain how my ancestors could have had anything to do with this. They were, if nothing else, a trifle short on technology. They needed a horse to get to the next town.”

Again we settled in to wait.

Commager called. “They wanted me to tell you that you’re doing well, but they’d rather you not push the ancestor thing. It’s crazy and it’s going to make us all look dumb in the end. Try to find out what its real purpose is. It can’t be just sitting out there doing what SETI does. No offense. But you know what I mean.”

“Okay, Margaret,” I said. “Tell the President I’ll let Java know we don’t believe a word it says.”

“Come on, Pete. Be reasonable.”

A couple more bombs went off during the next hour, one in Cairo, one in northern France, killing dozens. In Palestine, a woman announced she was proud of her son, who’d killed seventeen people, as well as himself, in an Iraqi mosque. Fresh evidence surfaced that the North Koreans were once again selling nuclear technology to terrorists.

And finally another response came in.

“Pete.” The Voice had acquired a less intimidating tone. “It is a great tragedy that you have lost a significant portion of your own history. Sixty thousand years ago, your forefathers lived in a paradise. An island, in the eastern Atlantic off the African coast. They loved their home, and made no attempt to expand to remote places, other than to establish several outposts. They had technology well beyond anything you possess. And please do not think I refer to the lumbering space vehicles with which you are experimenting. And which will go nowhere of any significance. No, they penetrated the dimensions. When they came to Ganymede, they walked.

“They’d looked around the Earth and found only predators and apes. Nothing to intrigue them. They wanted to reach farther, beyond their mundane world. And they created me to fulfill that end. You may find this difficult to grasp, but I am spread across the local cosmos. I exist simultaneously in seventeen widely-separated sites in the Milky Way, and two in Andromeda. The locations were selected to allow me to listen for the radio signals which, my creators believed, would be the hallmark of advanced civilizations.”

Orin Michaels, now being interviewed by CBS, shook his head. “Whatever this thing is,” he said, “it’s obviously either deceitful or deranged. Probably the latter.”

“Why do you say that, Professor?” asked the host.

“Because no rational creature could expect us to believe such a story.”

That was the general view. Susan stared at me and smiled. Take the plunge, she was saying without speaking the words. What the hell can you lose?

She had a point.

“What happened to these people?” I asked.

The general consensus on cable TV and on the internet was that I’d disappeared into a government safe house. That gave Susan reason to smile. Ozzie asked what I thought was going on, and I confessed that I had no idea. But I wasn’t happy. I’d hoped that Java would provide a clean, crisp resolution. I was put here thousands of years ago by scientists from Altair to monitor the development of civilization on your world. You’ve accomplished much, but we want you to stop killing one another.

That would have been ideal. Instead we had a lunatic on our hands. “Maybe, whatever it is, it’s been alone too long,” said Susan.

“I feel sorry for it.” Connie shook her head. “Suppose it’s true that it’s been sitting out there for thousands of years? How could it survive that long?”

Commager called again: “Pete,” she said, “we’re going to shut everything down. It’s gotten completely out of hand. But we’re concerned that this thing, whatever it is, will continue to send disruptive messages. We don’t want to be perceived, though, as trying to silence it. You understand what I’m telling you? If you see a chance to end the conversation, take it. Maybe just say thanks and wish it well. Something that sounds generous and says goodbye without actually saying it outright. Okay?”

The next message came in after eleven. “Peter, there was an apocalypse. The island sank, without warning. I heard it all, heard the roar of the sea, the screams, the frantic calls for help. Then it went silent. Except for the outposts. They continued to communicate with each other. For a while. Eventually it faded out.