The coordinates took her car to a wooded area near Calgary. Mountains rose up behind the vehicle as it landed in the forest clearing. She had done as he requested: no surveillance equipment, no one following. She had the file.
About five minutes early. Raiya waited, checked the nav readouts to be sure they were accurate. This seemed like a sensible place for not being monitored even though the evening sun still seared through the trees, illuminating slightly yellowing leaves.
She waited in the car.
After another ten minutes, a figure emerged into the clearing. The same dark suit and hat. There’d been no sign of any transport. However he got here she imagined it would’ve evaded any sensor; that man would surely laugh at any electronic observer.
He stood outside her car beckoning her to come out. Her heart pounded with a fear she couldn’t quite quantify. Is he truly dangerous?
She stepped onto the wild grass, feeling curiously resigned now to her fate. He has the power, I have no choice. Looked up into those dark eyes. Revealing nothing. Soulless.
‘Doctor Fortenski. The file?’ He took a step closer, tilted his head in a strangely avian way.
She pulled the datastrip from her jacket pocket. ‘This is everything: his complete account. I swear to you.’
‘I accept you honesty.’ He snatched it from her fingers with indecent haste. ‘You will not speak of this meeting. Moreover, I cannot be followed, or tracked, or monitored in any way. This is out of your hands now, understand?’
‘I understand quite clearly,’ she said, trying to maintain a semblance of composure.
He walked off, seeming to merge into the woods. Still she heard no sound of any transport.
Stood there, couldn’t go back in her car even though it was the obviously sensible thing to do. A retched feeling, a need to vomit, but couldn’t quite. Just had to wait awhile.
When the feeling subsided, the car became the inviting place of sanctuary. She wondered if somehow he would find out she’d kept a copy of the file. He knows, of course he knows. It was logical she would, after all.
As the car lifted from the clearing she contacted Jannson, whom she knew was on another late shift; since the break-up with his wife he’d been doing overtime almost every week day. ‘Jannson, have there been any security breaches in the last hour?’
‘Not one. Is there a problem?’
‘No. Just need you to keep a close monitor of everything including EM disturbances, fluctuations---’
‘I understand: security has already been stepped up. The institute is safe?’ He seemed very sure.
‘Thank you. That’s reassuring.’ Really she needed the file to be transferred to somewhere more secure, in spite of it being in a fingerprint and voice-check safe. It seemed absurd but the idea of total security would be for the file to be kept in Jannson’s pocket.
When she got back to the institute, Raiya made anxiously for the safe. Still there. She took the datatab out, inserted it into her console, and ordered it to remain within a firewall. A reassuring slither of indigo denoting an unusual interface. The text erupted before her against a plane of beige-white: the third Lyndau file.
<Now it’s as if we can be gods. Space, time is no longer a constraint. The wormhole only remained for a fraction of a second. But it seemed that moment was enough. Now I know my life can be divided into halves; at the time I hadn’t appreciated how drastically it would change from that point. Who could? All that mattered then was the confirmation of my equations, the balancing of forces, enough to form a hole through space allowing information to pass to a far distant place.
Information did pass. Enough that whoever analysed it would know us.
We – my team of technicians, engineers – had prepared for such a rare, fleeting moment. To send a data burst with more than a basic test message was never part of the plan; we had only been commissioned to create the conditions for a wormhole: the parameters were strict, no matter that I provide the math that led to those parameters – as arbitrary as they had been. But this event may never be repeated, so finely tuned and unpredictable were the conditions (you could get the exact calculations for a successful trial only for the repeat to be a failure, such is the nature of quantum unpredictability; although, as exacting and complex as they were, we simply had to accept they were too basic to turn probability into prediction). So our one chance. We sent the data burst in the form of light, containing information about our species, much like the original voyager probe but far more detail. An alien civilization with standard digital communication, would then know of our genetic make-up, our history of the last few centuries. Everything that makes us human.
Why did I send it? So they’d know, know not repeat our mistakes. And if we destroyed ourselves through these dangerous experiments, at least the knowledge would remain.
I’ve always felt so isolated. There must be so many of them out there. Maybe they are afraid to contact us. But I suspect they already have. The government knows. Those people behind the scenes who are really in charge, they’ve kept the truth from us. So we must go beyond our assigned roles, to push through the truth.
In spite of what has happened since, I still believe it was the right thing to do. I cannot say any more for now. I am afraid. Perhaps soon the courage will be with me.>
Raiya closed the file. It was hardly that she needed convincing of Torbin Lyndau’s descent into psychosis; the background on him – although can never be verified as true any more than any other media-based accounts – all cited his erratic and delusional behaviour. The question wasn’t whether he was mad, de-facto, but whether the nature of his work led to this madness.
She did a datanet search on Torbin.
Torbin Lyndau: co-creator of Rosen wormhole technology. A channel through space, creating a near instantaneous means of sending information and matter. Produced as a result of extreme gravitational warping through an evolved singularity, by means of negative (exotic) matter.
Torbin did not, however, successfully produce a stable wormhole, only ever managing to send photons and a single stream of protons for a fraction of a second.
Beyond that were accounts of his decline through drink and drugs, and speculation that this was caused through his failure to make a viable wormhole for any known application. That incompletion. Indeed, it was puzzling that he the principle scientist should achieve such a breakthrough but not take it any further. Perhaps it was due to his descent into madness. And yet his colleagues were never mentioned, as if they had stopped when he had given up.
Then why the interest in someone whose work had been greatly improved, made viable by others? It wasn’t as if any of his work had been kept a secret. He was certainly significant in wormhole development, perhaps without him there would never have been such technology. But from what she had read, no one seemed to have the inclination to advance his work for at least half a century, as if for that time it had been viewed as something sacred.
Raiya stared at the folder icon with the fifth file, toying with the idea of opening it, wondering whether she should read of what might be his final decline before the inevitable suicide.
Not now.
She realised it was not only her that was in danger.
She contacted her colleague on the comm-link. ‘Len, I need to speak. Is this a secure line?’ Audio only.
‘As always,’ said Heigener. ‘So, Raiya, how is our dead patient? Diagnosed his condition yet?’
‘Normally it would be most unprofessional of me to discuss a patient with you.’ She knew that most likely he’d already have made up his mind from his copy of the diary. ‘But I am troubled by his case.’
‘Weird, Huh.’
‘So go on: what’s your opinion?’
‘Well, it’s not unheard of for anyone venturing beyond Earth to go insane. But why is he different, you really want to know. Anyone trying to push the boundaries is under tremendous pressure, self imposed mainly: the perception of being under the spotlight – the pioneer.’
‘As I thought, although perhaps there was something more; an external pressure made all the worse for it being invisible to others.’
‘I knew this was about more than a general diagnosis – like I could give you anything new on that,’ he said.
‘There are others interested in Torbin Lyndau, and I’m frightened because of it,’ she told him frankly. ‘Can’t tell you now, I don’t trust this line is a hundred per cent secure. Can we find somewhere safe to meet?
‘Of course. I can send you the location.’
‘And the Lyndau file … hide it somewhere remote.’
‘You’ve been ... contacted?’
‘More than that, but can’t explain now.’
‘Okay. Well, I would have thought your office is as safe a place as any.’
‘I’m not even entirely sure it is.’
*
Eludi-4
Scott opened the unlocked hatch and peered into the shuttle main quarters, where the pilot lived permanently now. ‘I need to contact Deanna,’ he said. ‘This is quite urgent.’ At least for once he wasn’t locking them out.
The pilot swivelled round in his leatherette chair, as if surprised he hadn’t himself locked the hatch. ‘Main comm’s down. Been working on it, the quantum cooler works fine – it should be in step with Earth’s relay sat.’
‘And you know this is serious, right?’ How could the pilot make it sound like some routine failure?
The pilot stood up in all his indignation. ‘Of course I fucking know it’s serious. You’re not the only one with problems here.’
‘Alright, so you’ve been having trouble with malfunctioning tech. Well ... most of it.’
‘Look. I’m a second grade engineer; fixing dual locality quantum modulators is a bit out of my league. I mean the whole concept is pretty weird – two places at once, separated by hundreds of light years.’
‘Maybe they don’t want us to contact home.’
‘That’s a reasonable assumption. But it doesn’t explain the problem with the locater and the nav systems.’
‘You hadn’t tested them before we left.’
‘No. Well you tend to trust Cisa.’
‘Something strange is happening on this planet. We all know something’s not right with it.’
‘I won’t argue with you on that,’ the pilot said in a low voice.
‘But you can’t explain it, though.’
The pilot shrugged, then looked up intently. ‘I’ve seen things myself. Disturbing things.’
‘Can it be any more disturbing than what I’ve seen?’
‘How about my long-deceased first wife visiting me, and telling me how wrong I’ve been coming here. Said a man of my age is long past being in charge of a ship.’
‘A man of your age?’
‘I am a hundred and sixty-three.’
‘Older astronauts were once favoured because they already had their life behind them.’
‘You probably think someone as ancient as me might no longer have a sound mind.’
‘Not at all. You could only be middle aged with decent geneering. In any case, what I’ve seen is just as freaky.’
‘But you have the excuse of CO2 poisoning.’
‘Well, I don’t buy that.’
Scott jumped as he felt a tap on his shoulder. It was Josh. His face was not showing the usual exuberance. ‘Scott, if you’re up to it I wanna get this project finished today.’
‘You and me both. But we’ve got another two days.’
‘Yeah well, I’d like to explore some of this planet.’
‘You want to get away?’
‘I’ve been getting these headaches; those damn masks, no doubt. It was actually the doc who recommends having a wander round – clear my head I suppose.’
Scott nodded. ‘Sounds like good advice. We’ve got the preliminaries; we can fill in the details on the ship. I know the point about finishing it at the site was to feel properly inspired, but I’ve had my bit of inspiration for this trip.’
Josh gave a wry grin.‘Me too. Maybe you’d like to join me for some mountain climbing ... if you can handle it.’
‘I can handle it.’
***