The American and Russian navies today separately announced the apparent loss of a submarine in the North Atlantic. Few details, and no official theories as to the cause or causes of the incidents, are available. French and Spanish seismologists recorded events in the region consistent with underwater explosions. Deep submergence rescue vehicles are being rushed to the area by the two navies, but hopes for any survivors are slim.
The frigid state of relationships between these nuclear powers, and the proximity of their lost submarines, suggest that the disasters might in some way be linked. This is an inference about which spokespersons of both sides declined comment.—BBC News Service
They were sounded out, nominated, haggled over, and finally agreed upon in the most casual of contexts: huffed conversations between joggers; "chance" encounters of smokers in the shadow of the Pentagon; a tête-à-tête between parents at a kids' soccer match; walks in the woods surrounding Camp David; a half-dozen other innocent-seeming meetings in venues previously confirmed to be free of Galactic orbs and potentially compromised Earthly comm gear. The disappearance for even a few hours of the principals—the President, the director of the CIA, the secretary of defense, the secretary of state, the national security advisor—could trigger who knew what response from nervous Russians or inscrutable aliens. The five who were now gathered, in the most rustic of surroundings, would hold the debate their principals could not.
Kyle had volunteered his sister's remote Chesapeake Bay cabin. Darlene had driven from the District with him; the others arrived soon after, two in separate cars and one in the motorboat now bobbing alongside the cabin's rickety pier.
The dragged-indoors picnic table around which they met, a tarp covering the carved doodles of Kyle's young nieces, had never seen such august company. Erin Fitzhugh was a CIA deputy director, the terseness of her official resume implying a long history in covert operations. USAF Lieutenant General Ryan Bauer—former B-52 pilot, Gulf War veteran, ex-director of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization—was presently on staff to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Kyle was a widely respected physicist and the director emeritus of Franklin Ridge National Lab; more important, he was the one-time (and still unofficial) science advisor to the President.
Darlene's credentials, she felt, were the least impressive. A long-time foreign-service officer and now a deputy undersecretary of the Department of State, she was here to represent the diplomatic perspective. Britt had assured her that no one had ever considered holding this summit about the aliens—which was all that the invitees had been told about the gathering's purpose—without the first diplomat to see through the facade of F'thk good intentions.
The President's chief of staff was the final member of the small group, there to direct discussion of the still-undisclosed topic and report back to his boss. Of all the participants, Britt had the highest public profile. Official Washington thought he was down and out with this fall's virulent strain of flu.
Kyle was indulging some odd urge to play host before the discussion kicked off. As Darlene gave him a hand in the kitchen with cold sodas and salty snacks, Bauer and Fitzhugh rehashed the North Atlantic incident. The working theory was an undersea collision between the Russian attack sub that had been trailing an American boomer—ballistic-missile sub—and the American attack sub too closely following the unsuspecting Russian.
The details didn't parse at first—Darlene's job at State dealt with human rights and fostering democracy, not arms control and nuclear deterrence. A chill washed over her as, through whispered consultations with Kyle—a presidential science advisor's purview certainly did include nuclear matters—she came up to speed.
Dissolution of the USSR had removed several outward-looking land-based radars from the Russian missile-defense network, gaps that became ever more troubling as the Galactics systematically destroyed early-warning satellites. In predictable parts of every day, the Russians were effectively blind to submarine-launched missiles along two narrow corridors. Attack subs like the one the Russians had just lost sought to find and secretly track the American boomers. In case of hostilities, destroying a boomer before it launched would scratch twenty-four ballistic missiles, each with up to twelve nuclear warheads. American attack subs, in turn, silently stalked their Russian counterparts, ready to preemptively take out a Russian hunter. The vulnerabilities created by the Russian blind spots made hair-triggers inevitable . . . and incredibly dangerous.
The doomed subs had followed a boomer into one of the Russian blind spots.
"We've got to step back from the brink," Darlene blurted from the kitchen. "We're too close to disaster."
The national-security pros exchanged a look that said, "amateurs." Erin Fitzhugh cleared her throat. She was more one of the guys than most of the guys. "We and the Russkies have half a century's practice at dancing on the edge. Now, whenever our tensions show signs of leveling off, the F'thk, or Krulirim, or whoever the bug-eyed monsters are, turn their attention to the less experienced nuclear powers. Would you feel any safer if the damned ETs were working their magic on the Pakistanis and the Indians? Israelis and Iranians? I sure as shit wouldn't—their command-and-control systems are all bad jokes."
Pretzels flew as the diplomat undiplomatically slammed a tray onto the picnic table. "Are you saying the Atlantic incident was staged?"
"All too real," interrupted Britt. "Entirely real, and for the reasons Erin has articulated. We don't dare encourage the aliens to put more effort into manipulating the less seasoned members of the nuclear club. And unless we keep the military in the dark we can't hope to keep secret our knowledge of concealed ET hostility. So the operative question is, when, if ever, do we take on the aliens?
"That, ladies and gentlemen, brings us to the purpose of our meeting. The President is considering telling President Chernykov about our alien defector."
Stripes, who had been pouncing alternately on her sister, the fronds of a fern rustling in the draft from the fireplace, and her own tail, skidded to a halt with a sudden confused expression. After a moment of whatever passed for consideration in her young brain, the kitten skittered off in the direction of the nearest litter box. She thundered up the worn wooden stairs making noise in total disproportion to her size.
Swelk almost hoped the kitten would be too late. Tending to the Girillian menagerie had begun as a ploy; caring for them had become ennobling. She yearned to regain that quiet satisfaction of being needed. There was a flurry of unseen digging noises, and then Stripes returned at full gallop to the salon. With a leap and a midair twist the cat was off in pursuit of something only it could see. Swelk waggled her sensor stalks in amused confusion . . . the thing Kyle called a poltergeist baffled her translation program.
With thoughts of him, her momentary good mood vanished. The human to whom she felt closest had not stopped by in two days. And it was not only Kyle—none of her most frequent visitors had come by. Even an alien newly arrived could tell from the demeanor of her guards that the substitute questioners were of lesser status than those who had disappeared.
What Kyle and the others were doing, she could not imagine.
"It seems clear-cut enough to me," said Kyle. He didn't entirely feel that way, but the other summiteers were erring in the opposite direction. "Either Swelk is a defector or she's not. Which do we believe?"
Everyone began animatedly speaking at once, stopped, then all started up again. On the next random retry, the ex-spy got the floor. "The ET could be a real defector—and delusional. She could be entirely sane and sincere, and unaware that she's been filled with disinformation. She could be lying through whatever she uses for teeth, for reasons fathomable only to celery-eyed monsters, and still reveal . . . with whatever encouragement is appropriate . . . incredibly valuable information. We need to understand her motivations to have any hope of making sense of anything she tells us."
From nowhere came a memory of Swelk dangling a scrap of yarn above leaping kittens. "Delusional? A secret agent? Erin, have you ever actually met Swelk?"
"No, by intent." Fitzhugh impatiently flicked a potato-chip crumb from the table. "My people have. I talk to them; I read their reports. I'm objective. It's the professional way to handle supposed defectors, even when the stakes aren't so high."
Ryan Bauer popped open another Coke. "It's just too convenient that nothing in Swelk's story can be confirmed—short of what could be a suicidal attack on the F'thk vessel. She claims she's some kind of outcast and dilettante social scientist, excusing her not knowing anything helpful. The lifeboat she came down on is melted slag. Her computer can't be experimented with, because it contains her translator. Her so-called bioconverter can't be fiddled with because that would put at risk her food supply." He rolled his eyes. "Could the little monster's story be any more convenient?"
"Oh, please," Darlene snapped. Beside her, Britt's head swung back and forth, like a spectator at a tennis match. And just as unuseful.
"Excuse me," said Kyle, stunned by the unexpected disbelief. Swelk had specifically sought him out. Was he too close to, too influenced by, the little ET? "Maybe we can approach the problem another way. The most critical of Swelk's disclosures, whatever her motives, is the nonexistence of the mother ship. If we can corroborate that, if we can be sure there's 'only' the so-called F'thk vessel to handle, her story would be valuable."
Ryan shoved back his chair, its legs grating against the floor. "Come on, Kyle. Small telescopes see it. Radar shows it."
This time, Kyle had six copies of the images that had almost convinced Britt. He passed the prints around the table without explanation, letting the pictures tell their own story.
"Holy crap," reacted the CIA exec, her eyes bright. "The microwave and visible-light images don't match." Ryan, nodding in agreement, looked chagrined. The USAF Space Command could have made the same observation . . . weeks ago.
"Why haven't we seen a discrepancy before?" asked Darlene. "I know the mother ship has been scanned by radar."
"Radar's ordinarily used to locate and identify an object, not to create a detailed image of it," Bauer explained. "What Kyle's showing us took a lot of computation. Why bother when it was so plainly visible to telescopes?"
Kyle rapped the table confidently. "The reason, my friend, is because our defector said there could be no mother ship. I'm saying the optical image is a hologram, and the featureless glob must be the echo of a radar buoy we can't see."
Darlene, for some reason, refused to catch his eye. What was going through her mind?
She didn't give Kyle long to wonder. "You know I like Swelk. I trust her, too. That said, the stakes are too high to go with my gut. Like Reagan famously said of the Sovs and disarmament, I think we have to 'trust, but verify.' "
Dar was the last person he'd expected to object. "What other explanation is there?"
She tipped her head, tugging a lock of hair in reflection. "I defer to every one of you about technology. Without knowing much about tech, though, I can concoct another explanation for what we're seeing. Kyle, you've explained before that the aliens have radar stealthing. Their satellites that upload recordings from the souvenir orbs, the satellites that we watched destroy that Russian rocket . . . they were stealthy."
"Go on," encouraged Britt.
"So imagine for a moment that Swelk's account isn't true. Whether she's purposefully lying or has been filled with disinformation, someone, in this scenario, wants us to believe her. They want us to mistakenly conclude that the mother ship is fake." Darlene swept a hand grandiloquently over the pictures, her words tumbling out in a rush. "Couldn't they enable a stealth mode on their small craft? Then those smaller spaceships would be seen visually but not by radar. Isn't it at least possible that a real, physical mother ship could use a stealth mode to prevent a true radar reflection and, whenever pinged, emit a synthesized signal that matches a featureless large blob? Wouldn't those stratagems also explain your observations?"
Scientist, general, and spy master exchanged surprised glances. Erin Fitzhugh found her voice first. "If you ever get tired of working at State, there's a spot for you at the Agency."
Discussion continued—of Swelk's debriefings, of analyses of her salvaged equipment, of the international dangers posed by recent F'thk secretive whisperings—but the decision-making part of the meeting had ended. Whatever their opinion of Swelk, no one could be certain her story was true. There would be, for now, no disclosure to the Russians of her arrival and claims. Unwilling themselves to recommend a desperate attack on the F'thk ship, they dare not risk influencing the Russians to try.
Would they be ready to share, Kyle wondered, before a nuclear miscalculation obliterated them all?