Alien Tongues (28 page)

"Ladies, I patiently await your next instruction," he said, very gingerly turning his head to show he was addressing all three of them.

"Ah, such a big and handsome man, and intelligent too!" Jenny said, as Ivan felt the device release his genitals. "We'd like you to walk out of this room together with the three of us girls, your arms around us, talking and laughing as if we were all the best of friends.  In return for such cooperation, we three promise we will make sure you are unharmed and unprosecuted.  After all, you will have helped us earn a lot of money tonight."

Ivan shrugged and gave a magnanimous smile.  "Ladies, my dream tonight was first to date your colleague at the other table, then to spend time with you three.  If you will allow me to escort you from this casino, I can at least console myself with a beautiful exit."

Phyllis came round and perched herself briefly on the edge of his lap.  "Honey, don't sell yourself too short so quickly.  If you play your cards right over the next few days, who knows what you can win?  I mean, we're all of us lonely in a foreign land, aren't we?"

Once news of their success spread through the Syndicate, there was demand for the team in a number of locations.  Finally, it was agreed between them that Jenny, Phyllis and Tina should go to New York and Séamus and Chrissy stay behind on the Riviera.  It was tempting to travel to a range of assignments, but it was decided to avoid flying and crossing borders as much as possible.  Over the following months, their ability to earn money was already making a reasonable return for the Syndicate on its investment, and Séamus became less concerned about debt they could not repay.  Yet the thought of reaching out to the Consortium was never far from his mind.

According to Alice, it had been a bit less than two months after that fateful night at the facility that Wilkie had defected to the Consortium. He had apparently been outraged by the decision to eliminate the girls, and had decided to take her into his confidence.  He told her that the partial translation had exposed a piece of advice from the sender that was wholly unpalatable to many of the G8+5.  They feared it would be dangerously destabilizing to both the world economy and social order.  Better to bury the whole translation process as if it had never been started.  Several of the countries involved took the position that the material was evidently a hoax, created by some members of the Consortium with a radical agenda, either social or business.  Giving supposed extraterrestrial origins, any credibility would put too great a weapon in the hands of this private organization which could then manipulate world opinion at will.  The enterprise needed to be disbanded and the Consortium 'discouraged' from further research or any publication.  Several of its members were arrested and remained in various countries' jails without trial.  Some other members cooperated with the governments.  But a group decided to go underground and fight on, gaining the support of a number of other governments which had felt slighted by their original exclusion.  It was this group that Wilkie joined.

Since he had left, Alice had received only one other piece of news from him.  It was the name of a science fiction novel circulating as a free e-book,
Moon Uprising
.   No one had been able to find the real author of the book, which had cropped up in so many places on the Internet that its original posting could not be traced.  The Moon in the title actually referred to Meg Moon, the book's main character and first-person voice.  The story was about a human civilization in another galaxy millions of years before humanity appeared on Earth, and how they had actually transferred a colony of primitive humans to our planet. 

It was Meg's idea, apparently because she not happy with the condition of 'real men' in her galaxy.  The 'real men', or
mals
, were quite mentally challenged and thus treated as something less than human by the
croses,
a sort of de-testosteroned version of the non-child-bearing sex.  If nothing else, it appeared quite a neat way of explaining the Book of Genesis:

And God created man to his own image: to the image of God he created him: male and female he created them. And God blessed them, saying: Increase and multiply, and fill the earth…

A bit like the old joke – the doctors just brought me back from the other side and you won't believe this about God – she isn't white!  The book seemed partly a political satire, but it also raised severe warnings about some critical issues that faced the Earth today, not least about genetic engineering.  All well and fine, but that was not a genie one could exactly return to the bottle.  Perhaps this book was Wilkie's way of paraphrasing the translation for popular consumption.  If people knew that fact, would it create a worldwide backlash against genetically modified food?  And would politically motivated elimination of all GM, when combined with global warming, create such massive food shortages as to destabilize the world's governments?  Of course, it was possible.  You could see a few paranoid government representatives deciding it was better to arrange the accidental death of four ex-convicts than to even raise these risks another percentage point.

What had surprised Séamus was that Wilkie had rebelled at this logic, in his own way, as much as he had.  After all, Wilkie was first and last a scientist and knew that a 1% chance of a global famine that led to a hundred million deaths was, in effect, worth an actuarially expected one million lives.  Even if there was only a one percent chance of the girls communicating their knowledge, and then just a one percent chance of that knowledge leading to such a famine, we were still talking about an actuarially expected ten thousand lives.  Governments had to make such calculations every day.  Spend a million dollars on improving a dangerous piece or road or funding some medical research?  One would save the lives of five drivers and the other the lives of four cancer patients.  If we choose not to fund the research, aren't we killing the four just as surely as Chrissy, Jenny, Phyllis and Tina?

Or maybe Wilkie had just wanted Alice to think that his motives were noble.  Maybe the deaths of the girls would have been no more an inconvenience than their disappearance.  Maybe he had joined the Consortium just to pursue his research, which the governments had ceased.  As he had said, he was thrilled just to hear anything the extraterrestrials wanted to tell him.  As Alice herself had said, it could be the end of the world and he would still keep chatting about unscientific theories like they were the ultimate danger.  As Séamus rarely understood his own motivation, he could hardly expect himself to understand that of an ivory-tower professor.

These thoughts ran through his head as the late afternoon approached a perfect sunset, one early-Fall day at a beach-side cafe.  He had been leafing through
Moon Uprising
one more time on his e-reader, trying to tease out some more meaning from the text.  But it was pure speculation, and probably Wilkie himself would have condemned it as unscientific.  He had put down the reader and stared out at the beach where Chrissy was lying now that the sun was not strong.  She had allowed herself to turn a slightly golden color.  She had joked that, when she took off her bra now, the white areas gave her the appearance of breasts.  He had declined her offer to see them.  Of all people, he didn't want to get pulled into a romantic relationship with Chrissy.  It would only be a matter of time before she got bored and wanted to move on.  He worked well with Chrissy, and dreaded again having a colleague whose body he craved.  He believed he was finally cured of Barbara, and wanted to stay healthy.

Because his thoughts on Wilkie had been interrupted by thoughts of female flesh, it was perhaps natural that Alice now popped into his mind again.  She was now working on other projects and had been able to find out little else.  They wrote to each other regularly, but it was all small, personal stuff.  It felt like they were consciously keeping their friendship alive because they knew they were going to need it later.  He missed her company, and especially their warm nights together.  She was a woman he could deeply respect because of her academic brilliance, the genuine concern she had shown for both the girls' and his own welfare, and the sacrifices she had made for her mother.  But, perhaps a little like Wilkie, he was still not sure that he could completely trust her.  Hiding her relationship with Grant and acting as his spy, though understandable, had not helped his level of confidence.

As he sometimes did, Séamus let his imagination wander over a range of conspiracy theories.  Suppose that last night had been just more of the manipulation of Séamus FitzGerald in a second- or even third-level game being played?  A negotiation tactic with the Consortium in order to wring a better deal out of them?  A clever way to plant Wilkie among their scientists?  If this all was a hoax, who had planted the data – the Consortium or the governments?  Maybe it was a negotiating tactic with the drug and pharmaceutical companies to force better pricing for their GM products?  Maybe it was all a ploy by Big Pharma to provide extraterrestrial endorsement for some radical genetic engineering program – a ploy that went horribly wrong.  Could Alice be a knowing player at such layers?

She had expressed her hope that he would protect her like the girls, and Jenny had expressed her belief that she loved him.  Yet her spying for Grant had created an element of danger for them all.  Had her objection to them returning to their old work been motivated solely by her concern for them, or had she been trying to steer their plans for other purposes?  She liked to distance herself from Wilkie, but were they so different from each other?  He certainly could not fault either of them.  If he had been born that smart, probably he would have put scientific knowledge and reasoning ahead of all else.  If the girls had been given better education opportunities, probably they would have done the same.

But in the end he saw himself and the girls on one side of the divide, and Alice and Wilkie on the other.  On the other side, abstract principle and procedural rules governed.   His father had lived his life on that side and Séamus had admired Barbara Coates so much for her dedication to that approach to life.  As a government agent he had wanted to be the same but, when he was finally tested in the crucible of action, he had realized he was a very different sort and that was something which could never change.

"You seem deep in thought," Chrissy remarked, standing over him.  He looked up.  God, she now looked amazing in a tiny bikini.

"I was wondering why my head hurt.  Are you working tonight?"

She sat down next to him.  "Yes, unless you plan on showing me a wild time."

He signaled the waiter to come over.  "You enjoy your work?"

"Strange question.  It's fine.  You're not proposing marriage are you?  Be careful, because I'll accept."

Séamus grinned and ordered two coffees.  "Are you missing the other girls?"

"Wow, this is deep.  A little bit.  We make an amazing team.  Are you lonely, Séamus?  Are you sure you don't need some physical comforting?"

"I think I've been getting my fair share recently.  I mention it because they say how much they're missing you.  Not just as a friend but as someone who brings real balance to the team. The girl with the cold, hard logic."

"Yeah, they balance me, too.  Make me less selfish and think more about others.  As I said, I'm fine with my work here, but now I realize I only reach my full potential when I'm with them."  She paused.  "Any news on the Consortium?"

Soon after escaping England, Séamus had explained to the girls about The Call.  Jenny and Tina had thought it all made perfect sense, Phyllis had speculated that it was a message from God, but Chrissy had a hard time understanding why anyone would bother sending such a message if they weren't going to get a reply for thousands of years.  The others had tried to explain that this was a natural urge for an intelligent being, and Chrissy had grudgingly accepted that fact.

"Nothing yet.  But something else very interesting happened.  There's an international news journal that's widely read throughout the world, so accessing it from somewhere like here doesn't throw up any dangerous red flags. That's why the British Government uses it for getting messages to people which it knows are hiding from it.  It's like a third party for safe communication.  Well, my agent's number was listed there in this morning's issue.  They are asking me to get in contact, implicitly for some type of discussion."

"Do you trust them?"

Séamus sipped his coffee as the sunlight began fading.  "In one sense, yes.  I'm sure they have a genuine offer to make which is worth me considering.  Perhaps an offer of our freedom in return for helping them with something.  I'm obviously going to try and find out more.  I can promise you, I'm not going to make any decisions until I've had the chance to thoroughly discuss it with all four of you."

Chrissy nodded. "I know that, even though you have no obligation whatsoever to do so.  None of us would raise any objection if you simply told us what you planned to do."  She put her arms round him, and he looked down to see where her bikini top left a bright white line.  "We still marvel at the huge sacrifice you made for us.  None of us could ever imagine anyone else doing that for girls like us.  I mean, freaks like us who were not much more than a source of money for even our closest family members.  It's not just that we owe you more than we could ever repay.  It's because you made us all feel special in a way we never dreamed of."

She rested her face on Séamus's shoulder.  "Even Tina?" he joked.

She grabbed his chin.  "You bad man.  You know Tina's ultimate dream is for you to fall in love with her."

"But not yours, obviously."

Chrissy narrowed her eyes.  "FitzGerald, why would I give a ruthless man like you such power?"  She turned to join him looking at the fading sun. "I think you know I'm a bit like some of those poor gamblers in the casinos.  I could be the richest woman in the world with love, then just suddenly blow it one crazy night.  Maybe I'm much sicker than the others.  Maybe I can't believe anyone wants to be with me for more than a short time, so I make sure it's even shorter than they expect."

"Chrissy, I just think you love freedom too much and you're not going to trade it for anything."

"Maybe, Wise Guy." She released him, drank her coffee and looked him in the eye.  "So you were basically checking how ready I was to team up again with the other three?  The answer is, any time, Boss.  I can love them or I can leave them, but if you want the Feline Four back together then it sounds like fun to me.  I leave you to decide what's dangerous and what's not.  If you want my personal opinion, we already gave these governments a chance and they blew it.  I don't give them any preference just because they call themselves governments.  The Syndicate has so far been a good employer, and I remain intrigued by the Consortium geeks.  I mean, they're likely to be better lovers than the average businessman, aren't they?"