Текст книги "Keystone"

Автор книги: Luke Talbot

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Chapter 28

Larue put the phone down and smiled. It was his first for some time.

Sitting back in his chair, he surveyed the view from his office. His smile grew as he took in the sunshine, Paris’s first for weeks. The windows of the ESA headquarters let the day’s warmth seep in gently, leaving the bitter wind and traffic noise outside. As a young man, he had worked for a short time in the Tour First, Paris’s tallest skyscraper, and had been impressed at how the sounds of the city were silenced when looking down from the top floors. On his arrival at ESA headquarters years later, it had amazed him even more that the triple glazed windows of his third storey street-facing office were just as effective. Occasionally a siren or beeping horn would make its way through the panes and remind him he was working in a sprawling metropolis of over fifteen million inhabitants.

He opened the top drawer of his desk and pulled out a small wooden box. Opening the lid, he perused the contents for a few moments, inhaling the deep sweet smell of the fine Cuban tobacco before closing it and putting it back in the drawer with a shake of his head. It was a good day, but not yet that good. He brought his gaze back to the blue sky outside, and closed his eyes.

A knock at the door brought him back from his reverie, and he sat up with a start. Looking at his watch, he sighed to himself and tapped the spacebar on his keyboard.

“Come in,” he said.

Martín entered the room. He had a huge smile on his face.

“News travels fast, I see,” Larue said casually.

Martín frowned in response. “Monsieur?”

“I take it from your smile that you have heard the good news?”

“No, I have not heard,” Martín said, confused.

Larue eyed him cautiously. “So why the big smile, Martin?”

Martín felt himself blushing; the past week with Jacqueline had been incredible, giving him plenty to grin about. Not that any of it was Larue’s business. He cleared his face before continuing. “Monsieur, a while ago you asked me to keep my eyes open regarding the Clarke?”

“Yes?” he leaned forward in his chair expectantly. He had almost stopped hoping, after so many weeks without any news. “Have you found something?”

“Not yet. But soon, we probably will. For some time now we have been unable to see any direct feeds from the mission. Whilst on board the Clarke, this was frustrating, but now that they have landed on the planet, it is even more so.” He paused, still unsure of what he was about to say. Telling Larue about the time delay wasn’t easy, but something he felt he could do now that they had a chance to prove it using the feed from Beagle. Nonetheless, he was still slightly nervous that he would be in trouble for hiding this information from his boss for nearly two months.

“I made a discovery shortly after our feeds were stopped, with the help of Jacqueline from Networks.”

“Jacqueline Thomas?” Larue asked, his eyebrow raised.

“Yes, Monsieur. She helped me to analyse the information being sent to us by NASA. There is a lot of information, I needed some help interpreting it, and her programming skills are far higher than my own.”

Larue smiled. “I did not ask you to justify yourself, Martin, I was merely surprised you would go so far to get help, we have very skilled programmers in this department, too.”

Martín shifted his feet uneasily. “She was available at the time, Monsieur.”

Larue looked up at the young man.  He was standing in front of his desk like a schoolboy in front of a headmaster. “Sit down, Martin, make yourself more comfortable,” he gestured to a chair opposite him. Martín sat down thankfully and put his hands on his knees. “So, you were saying that you had analysed the feeds from NASA at the time that they stopped relaying direct to ESA.  What happened next?”

“We noticed something very strange. So far, we think that we are the first to have noticed it, it certainly hasn’t been raised publicly by either the Chinese, Japanese or Russian agencies. A little over a day before Lieutenant Shi Su Ning, the Chinese astronaut, was found dead in her sleeping quarters, we believe that NASA placed a delay of one hour and fifteen minutes in the feed between themselves and ESA. They also placed the same delay in their feed to the other agencies.”

Larue stared at him in silence for several seconds. “Comment?” he said, eventually.

“NASA have implemented a time delay in the data feed from Mars which allows them to screen everything for over one hour before it is released to any of the other agencies. The other agencies are not aware of this, and as far as we can tell they believe that they are still watching direct feeds.” He paused and looked at Larue. Larue’s smile had disappeared; his hands were laid flat on his desk, fingers splayed. “To help achieve this, they have also added seventy-five minutes to all of the Clarke’s on board clocks and timers. This means that the Clarke’s time in the delayed feed on Earth looks correct.”

“But,” Larue was visibly shocked, “surely it would be easy for everyone to find this out simply by trying to talk to the crew?  There would be a huge delay!”

“The change coincided with NASA cutting off our direct feed, which would have sorted us out. As for the others, a serious malfunction of the nanostations caused NASA to stop using them, which forced a policy change on communications.  On top of that, the Clarke was already so far away by then that we weren’t having direct conversations with the crew anymore, it just wasn’t practical.”

“So how did you find out?”

“Jacqueline hacked into the direct feed for a short period, and before she was cut off by NASA, we managed to view the real footage alongside what the other agencies were being sent. The time delay is real, but they’ve upped their security since, and we haven’t been able to get back in.”

Larue was taken aback. He looked out of the window and thought carefully about the situation; none of his counterparts at the other agencies had communicated anything to him directly. On top of that, NASA had certainly not lodged a complaint with ESA for the low level hacking of the data feeds.  He would leave that issue for another day. For the time being he would concentrate on the facts. “Can we prove this?”

“Unfortunately, we cannot,” Martín admitted. “I recorded the nanostation feeds that show the time difference, but since then the live footage has also been transmitted normally, so it proves nothing.”

“And you haven’t been able to access the live feeds since then?”

“No. Whatever encryption they’re using, it’s impossible to crack.” He looked at Larue, who was now staring at the backs of his hands on the desk. “We’ve tried several times,” he added helpfully.

Larue looked up from his desk and met Martín’s eyes, which contrary to his smile had lost none of the joy that they had shown when he had first entered the room several minutes before. “And you said that no one else knows this?”

“As far as we can tell, we are the only ones to have seen this.”

Larue looked out of the window again. “How about the Chinese? Their relationship with NASA is very strenuous at the moment, is it possible that they know too?”

“It’s very possible, Monsieur.”

Larue looked across and raised his eyebrow quizzically. “There’s something you haven’t told me, isn’t there?”

Martín hadn’t intended to tell Larue any of this, at least not until Beagle 4 was in place. He had agreed with Jacqueline that it was best to present him with good news rather than speculation.  His good mood had certainly helped to break his silence, but he was now finding it a relief to tell his manager everything. “We know of one other person who found out about the time change.”

“Yes?”

“We believe that shortly before her death, Su Ning became aware of the difference. Somehow, she must have calculated the time on Earth. This alone wouldn’t have helped her, and we’ve been trawling video footage to find any clues, but the best guess we have is that she must have had access to a watch that showed Earth time with which to verify her calculations,” Martín said. He had started the sentence slowly, carefully, but as he had gone on he had found the words pouring out of their own accord. He stopped himself from saying more, and tried to gauge Larue’s response.

Larue sat silently for over a minute, before standing up and walking to the window. He looked down at the traffic below, congested behind a bin lorry collecting recyclables from the side of the road.  A motorbike weaved its way through the lines of cars, narrowly avoiding a pedestrian reading a newspaper. He looked over at the UNESCO building.  The familiar tops of the trees beckoned to him; he would definitely go for a walk today.

Turning round, he looked at Martín and frowned. “You should have told me all of this much sooner, Martin,” he said. He walked over to his desk and opened the top drawer again. Beside the small wooden box was a large plastic tub. He pulled it out and popped the lid, carefully pouring one pill into the palm of his hand.  He clenched his fist around the pill and replaced the tub in the drawer before picking up a glass of water on his desk. He looked at Martín out of the corner of his eyes and titled his head back, taking the pill and water in one gulp.

He sat down at his desk once more, leaning back slowly and closing his eyes, his arms placed carefully on the armrests.

Martín waited for at least two minutes before speaking. “Monsieur,” he began, “I am sorry that I didn’t tell you this sooner; we wanted to be certain that –”

“I am not concerned with that, Martin,” Larue snapped. He did not move from his chair, his eyes remained closed. Of course, he was enraged that his employee had left him in the dark, but now he had to concentrate on what was happening on Mars. If it played out in his favour, this whole situation could be his saving grace. “You did well to find out what you did.”

“Then what is wrong?” To Martín, it was simple. The Americans were hiding information from their closest technological allies, and had probably caused Su Ning’s death to keep the fact secret. It was more of a conspiracy than even his boss could have hoped for.

Larue half opened his eyes and looked over at Martín. “If I understand you correctly, and you are right in what you say, which I have no doubt you are, then this is more than a simple rivalry between competing space agencies.” He paused, shifting his body up in the chair. “NASA would not simply carry out deception on such a scale for the fun of it. Placing this time difference between Clarke and Earth suggests that this is bigger than that.”

Martín leant forward. “So who could be responsible?”

“I do not know, Martin. But there’s one thing that is even more certain than the fact that NASA couldn’t be responsible for this.”

“Yes?”

“NASA would never intentionally kill an astronaut.”

Martín leant back and crossed his arms. “To hide the truth, they might,” he said.

Larue sat upright and laughed. “This isn’t Capricorn One, Martin! This is NASA! This is 2045, and the Clarke is a multinational mission to Mars! Why would anyone want to jeopardise our first manned mission?”

Martín had no idea. He looked at his shoes, as if the answer somehow lay in the criss-cross pattern of his laces.

“Which leads me to the most important question. The question that lies at the heart of this whole situation: what is there to hide? ”

“We have no idea, Monsieur. The feeds we have do not show anything revealing.”

“And they’re never likely to either!” Larue said in frustration. “They slipped up at the beginning, which is how you and Jacqueline were able to see this, and also why poor Su Ning lost her life. They are not likely to slip up again.” He looked out of the window again and his frown grew as he noticed dark clouds gathering on the horizon, ready to blot out the sun. “And until we know what they are hiding, or at least have some evidence, there is no way we can say anything to anyone. With what we have, we cannot tell anyone, Martin. Do you understand?”

Martín nodded slowly. “There is one more thing, Monsieur,” he said, “that may help us, and give us this proof.”

“What is that?” Larue had a wry smile on his face, as if he already knew what he was about to say.

Martín sat up straight and looked directly into Larue’s eyes. “We still have Beagle 4. While whoever it is controls the feed from Clarke, we have no hope of them slipping up again. But ESA controls the rover, which is equipped with high resolution cameras and microphones.”

 “Our maximum resolution being?”

“Beagle can read a book from one kilometre,” Martín found himself grinning, “and can travel at roughly two hundred metres per hour. We can follow them pretty closely, and they should always be within sight as long as the atmosphere is clear. All we need is to hope that Beagle is still up to the task.”

Larue gave a short laugh. That the people behind the cover up were able to control time and data feeds on the Clarke was one thing, but control over Beagle was something else entirely. “I trust you quite a bit, Martin, and based on your recommendation alone I signed off the Beagle mission route changes Jacqueline Thomas put through several days ago.”

“And?”

“You know that Beagle mission routes are planned months, even years in advance. It’s entirely possible that the route change you requested would only be executed in the middle of next year. Normally, that is.”

 “Normally?”

“I have just been in contact with the Beagle control room in England, who confirm that Beagle is approaching the edge of Hellas Basin once more. I may be old and on my last legs,” Larue confided. “But I am not stupid. As soon as the request to change Beagle’s route came through I understood why you had recommended it. Putting Beagle in sight of the Mars landing will give us a direct feed, as you say. I had no idea about the time-delay you and Jacqueline Thomas discovered, but with this we will be in a position to prove it conclusively.”

“And then?”

Larue thought about this for a second. “Having information like that is a risky business. There are two schools of thought: either keep it and use it to your advantage, or give it away to as many people as possible and spread the benefit. With the former, you gain the most but also run a greater personal risk. With the latter you gain the least, but you also minimise risk.”

They sat in silence for at least a minute. The pitter-patter of rain drops began against the triple glazed windows.

“Risk,” Martín said echoing Larue’s intonation “doesn’t sound good.”

“Absolument,” Larue said with a raised eyebrow. “If someone’s gone to the trouble they have to hide the mission from us, what will they be prepared to do to protect that secrecy?”

Chapter 29

Captain Marchenko pressed down on the accelerator with his boot, sending Herbie forwards at walking pace. As they crept away Dr Richardson looked over her shoulder at the open crates they had been cataloguing the contents of.

A little over two thousand meters away, Beagle’s mechanical arms seemed to wave goodbye to them as the on-board computer ran through some environmental tests and procedures.  It was now standing in the same position in which it had been over a year earlier. Its missions for the last twelve months had been far from linear, and it had frequently crossed its own path on its travels. Each and every time it did it automatically took the opportunity to measure any changes. The Martian weather system had done little to change the terrain, save for few extra coats of fine dust and grit. An examination of the ground proved that, as expected, its past tracks had more or less been erased from the surface of the planet, unlike the eternal footprints of the first men on the Moon.

Beagle’s five forward-mounted eyes, consisting of one long range high-resolution video camera and four smaller still image cameras, watched Herbie as it left towards the horizon. After thirty-two minutes and twelve seconds precisely, the two passengers exited the vehicle, which was parked next to the MLP. Re-focusing, the high-resolution camera adjusted its viewing angle by a fraction of a degree, and captured the smile on the man’s face through his visor as he gestured for the woman to enter the building first. Zooming out, the camera reported back to the on-board computer that the building was exactly four thousand four hundred and six metres away. It hadn’t been there when it had last mapped the terrain, and it duly noted the location and nature of the phenomenon.

Beagle retracted its mechanical arms slowly, folding them against its smooth sides, neatly above the four rows of wheels that had already helped the rover travel over six hundred kilometres on the Martian surface.

The computer had processed and stored the departure of the two people and their vehicle on its internal drives, and had completed its assessment of the surrounding environment.

Its current status and environmental report had already been transmitted to a satellite orbiting Mars, ready for its receipt by the ESA controllers on Earth.

While it waited for their response, Beagle busied itself with some more soil samples. The thin coating of dust that had gathered around it was new and, therefore, interesting.

Chapter 30

Remind me again, why did we come here?” Danny complained as he shook the dust from his boots and placed them against the wall of the MLP. A thick layer of light-brown powder covered the floor within several feet of the airlock. “Atchoo!” he pretended to sneeze and shook his head dramatically, before making his way over to the kitchen area where Jane had already joined Montreaux in preparing the evening meal.

“Because for thousands of years, humans have looked up at the heavens and wondered what it would be like to be on the other side, looking back at Earth, and because we won’t be happy until we’ve looked back at Earth from as far away as is humanly possible.” Jane said without looking up from the tray of hydrated food she had just pulled out of the processor. “And because the food is so good, of course.”

Danny laughed and peered into her tray. “Tell me, Jane: how long until you start providing us with some real food?”

“Soon, Danny,” she nodded towards her experiments across the MLP. “Everything is set up.”

“Thank God for that. Is that really what you think?”

She looked at him strangely. “Of course, my experiments and material are all ready, so –”

“No,” he laughed as he interrupted her. “I mean, do you really think that we came here to simply look back at Earth?”

She shrugged. “Why else? Firstly, we are by nature curious creatures, peering into cupboards we’re told we can’t open, wondering where rivers start and mountains end, when and where we came from. But despite our desire to go into the unknown and explore, we have an overpowering sense of belonging; that we come from somewhere and that in a way we are a part of that place. Secondly, as well as being incurably curious, we are constantly trying to better ourselves, I think to improve on what our parents achieved, to perpetuate the advancement of the human race.”

“So you don’t believe that we came here to find life, or advance science?”

“Of course we did. We have a scientific role to play, a mission that is well defined and thought out, the result of decades of research and theorising by the best minds on Earth. But I believe that is our secondary goal. The underlying reason we came here is to gain a different perspective of our home.”

“I don’t agree at all!” he exclaimed. “You make it all sound so futile and superficial.”

“Captain Marchenko,” Montreaux interjected. “When you were a child, did you ever play outside?”

“Of course, everyone does.”

“And when you ventured further away from your home than ever before on your own, did you look behind you to see how far you had gone?”

Danny thought for a moment. “Yes, I guess I did. But I wouldn’t say I was inherently interested in what my home looked like from the top of a hill, I was probably more nervous about knowing how to get back and wanted to make sure that I didn’t go too far.”

“Yes, you are right about that, and there’s an element of that when we look for Earth in the Martian sky that comforts us when we find it twinkling above the horizon,” Jane agreed. “But I am sure that the desire to look back at your house is not just fuelled by concern, but by interest also. When you first visited the United States, did you feel that you had an increased interest in anything to do with Russia, sometimes even in things that you would not normally express an interest in?”

“I found myself reading stories about Russian politics, despite the fact that in Russia I do everything to avoid them,” he said.

“I personally find that when I am abroad, I am always listening out for any mention of America. But in the absence of America-related subject matter, I casually introduce trivia into conversations,” she admitted. “I don’t do it consciously, I just do it. It usually starts with the sentence ‘In America…’ and then I’m off. And do you know what I think?” She didn’t leave time for an answer, although Danny seemed ready to give one. “I think it’s because as humans we constantly act as advertisers for our homes, towns, counties, nations, beliefs. You name it, we advertise it. When we go somewhere, we are obsessed with knowing what people think of where we came from, or what we represent. If we don’t receive that input, I’m sure that we are predisposed to plant knowledge, spread the ‘good word’, so to speak, so that when the next person like us arrives, their curiosity is more satisfied.”

He looked down at his plate of unappetising food. “And do you not think we might do this to simply make these foreign places more like home, so that they seem less alien to us, eventually expanding the circle of what our unconscious mind defines as home until it includes the location in which we currently find ourselves?”

Captain Montreaux looked at the Russian and smiled. “Like the first settlers in America. They built themselves a little Europe, changing the plants, animals and even soil, until they no longer found themselves in the New World, but in a carbon copy of the old one.”

“Which is why Jane would like to plant a nice flag on Mars, isn’t it?”

“No!” she said indignantly. “I want to put a flag on this planet to prove our achievement. And I think that whilst there may be some truth in your argument when talking about moving home permanently, the root of our desire to go anywhere is to witness what our homes look like from outside our normal viewpoint. On the smallest scale like a carpenter standing back and admiring his new table, or a builder standing back and looking at the house he has finished, and on the largest scale like a mission to Mars looking back at a reassuring light in an alien sky.”

“You said reassuring. Does that mean you feel insecure?” Danny smiled.

Captain Montreaux shook his head and decided to concentrate on his meal.

Jane opened her mouth, and Danny saw from the look in her eyes that it was time to get back to his original point. “Anyway,” he started, noting the frustration on her face. The word ‘anyway’ could at times be the most annoying in the English language, and Danny always used it to great effect. “I think that covers why we came to Mars, but why we came here precisely. To this exact geographical location on Mars” He gestured vaguely to the outside world behind him. “Dust, rock and more dust, not forgetting the rocks and dust.”

“Is there much else on Mars?” Montreaux asked.

“We are here, precisely, because of the water, Danny, because Beagle 4 kindly confirmed the presence of water for us, and because had we landed anywhere else in the hope of finding water and had not actually found any, we would at present be the first human beings likely to die on any planet other than Earth.” Dr Richardson said.

“Which wouldn’t have been very reassuring,” he joked. “I know we came here for the water under our feet, not to mention the gigantic, geologically fascinating impact crater a few kilometres away. I’m just annoyed by all of this dust.” He rested his head on the back on his chair and closed his eyes.

Montreaux turned to look at the Russian.

“You’re tired, Captain Marchenko, have something to eat and get to sleep.”

Danny opened his eyes and looked at him lazily. “I’m mostly tired of the dust. The dust is everywhere! I wear a suit out there, but I feel I have dust and grit in my hair! How can I have grit in my hair?”

“Because over the past two weeks, we have managed to bring the outside world in, despite the airlock.” Montreaux said. “I guess we have to be thankful that dust and grit is all that we’ve brought with us.”

Jane scoffed. “And the jury’s still out on that one.”

They fell into silence at the thought.

If life existed on Mars, it was most likely in bacterial form beneath the surface, which was exactly where they had been extracting their water supply from. Every precaution had been taken to prevent possible contamination, but they all knew that even the smallest amount of the wrong kind of alien bacterium inside their habitable compartment could spell disaster. The headlines were easy to imagine: “Life on Mars! Kills crew!”

So their scientist took samples of the dust every day and screened them for any signs of life, and was convinced that it was not a matter of if she found something alive rather than when.

During the first few days, they had managed to keep the MLP absolutely spotless, using the airlock to clean and decontaminate their suits as it had been designed to do. But slowly, inexorably, as the days went on and the number of EVAs increased, a fine Martian dust had begun to settle inside the craft, for obvious reasons mostly around the airlock.

No matter how many times they cleaned, the dust would continue to appear; Danny’s frustration notwithstanding, they had more or less accepted it as part of their lives on Mars, like sand in a beach house.

 “Of course,” she broke the silence, “if we do find anything harmful out there, or in here, the chances are that our bodies would be so totally unprepared for it that we wouldn’t stand a chance. And given that we cannot sensibly stop the dust from entering the MLP, we may as well stop worrying about it.”

They both looked at her, stunned.

“Great!” Danny said throwing his arms in the air. “The only doctor on board thinks that we’re going to die here no matter what! I may as well go out there without my suit next time!”

She laughed, tossing her food tray onto the table and sitting down on a stool. “I would imagine that we’re all more likely to die of food poisoning anyway, at least until my experiments bear fruit.” She nodded towards a table at the far end of the MLP, covered in small trays with clear plastic lids.

Captain Montreaux reiterated his desire for Captain Marchenko to get some rest, before sitting down in his chair and opening his book. He was on his second read-through of The Martian Chronicles, and it was making a lot more sense to him this time round.

The Russian made his way to his bunk and lay down, looking at the ceiling. “So we have to hope for a combination of friendly Martian bacteria and your very successful green-fingers, I see.” He shook his head and closed his eyes. “We’re doomed.”

The next morning, Dr Jane Richardson was alone in the MLP. Strangely, she had never felt more at home than right now. Surrounded by experiments in the middle of the most unexplored environment humans had ever set foot on, she was the first scientist to touch Martian soil outside of a Petri dish, and despite the dangers it presented, she was enjoying every minute of it.

As far as she was concerned, if things stayed as they were and with enough water and food, she could quite happily stay on Mars for the rest of her life.

She prised the lid off a small plastic container and poured the liquid contents into a large, shallow metallic tray. The transparent, clear substance settled evenly at the bottom of the tray, a small bubble bursting on its surface. She tilted her head to one side slightly, as if listening to it, before putting the lid back on the small container from which it had been poured.

Nanoplasma had been the crowning achievement of her work on Earth. The result of five years of her own research and development, she was the first to admit that she stood firmly on the shoulders of giants, and would not have been able to succeed without the hard work of the pioneers of the ‘Nano-age’, as it had been dubbed by the media back in the 2020s.

The nanoplasma itself was comprised of two main elements: nanocapsules and organic plasma. The minute capsules, each one less than twenty nanometres wide, contained either flavours, colouring, or any other active ingredient that may be needed, and could be opened by stimulating them with very specific subsonic frequencies. By subjecting a capsule-filled solution with carefully controlled frequencies, it was possible to recreate any number of flavours, whilst at the same time filling the solution with vitamins and nutrients as desired. Nanocapsules had been introduced over thirty years earlier to the mass market, and had revolutionised the soft drink industry.

Almost overnight it became possible to buy one drink with multiple flavours that could be switched at will simply by depressing a button on the neck of the bottle. Any capsules that were not required by the consumer would simply pass through the digestive system intact, meaning that a wide variety of flavours could be contained within the same bottle without affecting each other.

Jane had not invented nanocapsules. That achievement had been slightly before her time. Instead, she had successfully combined them with a plasma solution, made from a fibrous breakdown of plant-matter, in an effort to replace what had been a staple food of human beings for thousands of years: meat.  Her theory came from the simple fact that if the digestive system of an animal could break down organic matter, for instance grass, and turn what it needed into animal matter, then it must be possible to recreate this process in the laboratory.