He was asked to pause. “What is the significance of that?” asked Stepanov.
The cosmologist explained. “They are meteorites rich in organic substances and water, suggesting that both of the Martian moons could be asteroids captured long ago from the asteroid belt. Now the crucial importance of this is that the orbital period around Mars is only one third of the Martian day. Together with the tidal effect of Mars, we have known for some time that Phobos has a decaying orbital radius. We assumed that in millennia from now it would either impact the planet or break up into a planetary ring. What the pyramid builders are trying to tell us is that one of the disturbed asteroids in 1908 has fractionally altered this fate with a deadly consequence. It is demonstrating that it would collide with Phobos and disrupt its decaying orbit. The superimposed picture they have suggested is that the parent of the 1908 strike will return and would have had another brush with Earth, but Phobos is now going to deflect it to make a direct hit. I need not labour the point, but if we can somehow verify this, it will probably be the end; this monster is way bigger than the 1908 fragment. The calculations for this prediction are mind-boggling, but we must endeavour to identify this harbinger of death, and embark on similar mathematical computation.” This was a numbing opinion which temporarily eclipsed the logical step of moving to the next picture.
Face Two
This face of the pyramid was unlike all of the previous ones. It was composed entirely of symbols. Some were obviously based on the quaternary number system, but the vast majority of them were potential derivatives of that system evolved to higher mathematics. There were two corner buttons on this face. No sense could be made of what was assumed to be the calculations, for which one of the two corner buttons should be pressed to move to the next face. If it was an ‘either-or’ option they agreed it would be responsible to spend some time on the symbols by trying to get powerful computers to decipher patterns or links to terrestrial understanding of cosmological movement mechanics. Although this could take weeks, it would be preferable to simply tossing a coin and find they were then locked out.
There was no other subject on the news channels, even though ‘people in the street’ felt the immediate risk was negligible – it would be well beyond their life expectancy. The scientists however, couldn’t sit on their thumbs, they had to offer clarity. It took the eyes of the world off the assassination attempt and helped Ricardo Pierze to re-assess his priorities.
*
Sanchez’ condition had improved, the infection was retreating. This was a source of relief for Pierze; the investigation could be downgraded from critical to very important. When Manuel broke the news from Ibanez, everything returned to the melting pot. They both realised that if it was true, then there was an implied agenda of the Southern Iberiana mafia assisting in the objective of having a ‘compliant president’. Pierze called in Duarte, who hadn’t come up with anything concrete on his search for evidence of moles in Central Security. This new source of confirmation of such double-dealing gave Maxi Duarte a new starting point. Pierze was becoming more attracted to the possibility that this was, despite his earlier dismissal, showing hallmarks of a Sidonia operation. His own participation in trying to prove or disprove this, was however to be curtailed. The Tunguska situation had ruffled government feathers all over the planet. The outcome was the formation of a World Security Body, charged with humanity’s future safety. Until certain questions were answered about the extra-terrestrial object, its creators and its purpose, absolute vigilance was required. At least that was the view of elected officialdom. Ricardo Pierze was the obvious choice. In the same way that he couldn’t have refused to act as special adviser to Falcorini, it would be unthinkable to say he was too busy hunting shadows to save the planet. The potential for Falcorini to be repatriated to obscurity because of Sanchez’ recovery would help, but he had to bear in mind that powerful people didn’t want that. He felt that his fingers were being prised, one by one, from the trophy with which he was still obsessed. In a curious way he experienced more of those clamouring waves for more order and less chaos.
*
Back in Russia, it was felt necessary to reconnect the hemispherical part. They didn’t want to allow expiry of the ‘battery’ element of power in the separated state. This would continue until the massive computing resource had either come up with salient information or they declared the code was unbreakable. There was now enormous political pressure to reach this point in days, not weeks. This information vacuum left the door open for further debate amongst those who had witnessed the pyramid data revelations. It produced more speculative theory than cohesive direction, and this was particularly true of certain questions. The main ones were extracted from the minutes and posted on the incident board, so that the participants couldn’t escape their perceived importance.
‘Were the creators of this object solar system dwellers or just passing through?’
‘If they were just passing through how did they have time to identify the threat of the 1908 body, work out the threat of the next one, build the messenger, and accompany the fragment to Earth?’
‘If they were dwelling in the solar system, and had done so for some time, it would answer some of the above, but not how, or where it joined with the parent body or the fragment. It also begged the question – where did they live?’
Then Stepanov asked another question, which was really a theory. “What if the projectile or a slave controlled by it actually caused the fragmentation? They may have saved us from a much bigger disaster. Up until now it has been hotly debated as to whether a parent body, in bouncing off the Earth’s atmosphere, lost a fragment to our planet, or there was no fragment, just the large air-burst rock. I bring your attention back to the study from Roman Iberia which suggested that Comet 2005NB5C fitted the first of the two theories, and furthermore it is expected to return in 2045. Isn’t it worth having our cosmologists run calculations on this marauder to see if it fits with this prediction of interaction with Phobos?”
It was agreed but only after the current decoding programme had concluded, and part of the fallout of this decision was for the World Security Body to be closely informed, and ahead of public dissemination of the result. It was therefore seen from a security point of view, a necessary step to interview and produce files on the main players in the saga. Implicit in this policy was another collision. Not one of cosmic proportion, nevertheless it was also a repeat of an earlier encounter, albeit in different circumstances.
*
Pierze would meet Constantin Boniek in the guise of Lionel Zara. The irony didn’t stop there. With the weight of evidence suggesting that Sanchez had been targeted for what he might say on the proposed mission to Mars, there was now massive support for finding out if the projectile architects were camping in its vicinity – the solar system.
Zara had time to contemplate exactly where his grand design lurked in this new chapter of the planet’s rich tapestry. He had been aware for a short while that he was looking at life a little differently; it had mainly evolved through his relationship with Stepanov. The importance to humanity which was now flowing into the Tunguska discovery added to this feeling. He had always been convinced that with Sidonia, he was a servant of a worthwhile crusade. The route and timing of his involvement in Russia, coupled with proof that humanity was not alone, conspired to fuel his schizophrenia. It was not something he needed help with; his egocentric tendency was nearing uninhibited freedom. He had, from his childhood, been intoxicated with destiny and symbolism. His reptilian characteristic of being able to cast off the redundant skin and seamlessly slide into the new one was, in his mind, set to the music of ‘Also Sprach Zarathustra.’ This was his destiny. He wasn’t simply a servant to this cause; he was the chosen one – that much was obvious. Even his upcoming meeting with Nemesis, in the form of Ricardo Pierze, was anticipated within this belief. He now had guidance from the cosmos, confirming that the way to supplant religious f
aith was to offer another non-religious faith, with hope at its heart. It was blindingly obvious to him now that atheists and agnostics were peddling fog instead of clarity. Offering people theories and facts didn’t tackle the root of their psyche. The ingredients of impending disaster and renewed hope through faith were much more powerful to the huddled masses. The symbolism of humanity’s evolution arising ‘out of Africana’ appealed immensely. He would found the Circle of Light and its bible of The Truth in the Rift Valley. It was a perfect choice – ripe for the fever of salvation and out of focus of the Iberian spyglass. He would spread the waves of enlightenment from there to the ‘civilised’ world. He was ready to recruit his first disciple. The opportunity to parade his two personalities, on demand, was relished. He decided to contact Moya and give him the good news that the promised exchange of roles was ratified as of now. He closed the conversation with an instruction to get all possible information on a certain individual who would be considered for conversion. “I’m not talking about a rehearsal, as with Alberto Simone, this is a quest to find our torchbearer.”
Moya detected something different about Zara, but cared not – this was his passport out of evangelism and into the real world.
Chapter 11
With his new information Duarte had a loose end, with which he could attempt to unpick the covered trail of shady activity within Central Security. It didn’t stop there. Pierze had visited Sanchez in the rehab ward to explain the importance of the information Manuel had unearthed. He gained signatory authorisation from the President which allowed him to bypass Falcorini. Duarte was able to access travel documents from the Presidential office. He went back several years, to a time before the internet collapse in 2016. There were numerous examples of Nelson Ortega flying to Southern Iberiana on the back of rather flimsy justification policy. They often coincided with Sanchez and before that, his predecessor Moreno, fulfilling planned tours of some of the more loosely aligned states in the Iberian Republic. It seemed strange that the return journeys of Ortega’s trips were almost always via Southern Africana. When he passed this on to Pierze, Duarte asked if the President knew of this at the time. When asked, Sanchez recalled that Ortega had suggested this, in view of him not being needed on the President’s goodwill tours. It was, he claimed, important to make sure that his replacement as ambassador to this unruly sector of the Republic was adhering to central policy. Sanchez had thought at the time that Ortega’s reports on what he had achieved seemed trivial, but as he neither liked nor trusted the man, he was just pleased to get away from him on his own tours of ‘inclusiveness’ within the republican family. Ortega could be counter-productive in those situations. Sanchez now realised his mistake, he should have trusted his judgement and replaced Ortega as one of his first acts in coming to power. Pierze echoed this sentiment when Duarte was able to connect passport control data of three personnel in Central Security with Ortega’s detours to Southern Africana. They were personal vacations rather than business trips. One of these officers was in management; the other two were apparently her subordinates. Duarte suggested to Pierze that they should stop digging, so as to avoid creating the buzz of an inquisition. “Now that we know of their presence in the same part of Africana at the same time as Ortega, we should begin to shadow them, rather than allow the grapevine to tip them off. They will surely have to react in some way, as the conductor of their orchestra has perished.”
Pierze thanked Duarte and asked him to contract an ‘unknown face’ for this task. “I’m sorry to ask this of you Maxi, but your own rather loose association with us as a consultant is not understood by the department and yet your face is too familiar to be the shadow. I would engage someone myself but this damned monolith – the World Security Body is accreting so much of my time that I’m not going to be in Madrid as much as I should be in the coming weeks. I can’t even keep an eye on Falcorini, but Sanchez is expected to be back soon, and I’ve briefed him fully on the work you and Manuel are undertaking. He will contact either of you if necessary.” The thought of being summoned by the President sounded interesting to Duarte, as long as it didn’t clash with his son’s matches in the first team. The prospect of Maxi Duarte lounging in a chair while debriefing the President filled Pierze with apprehension.
*
The computational work which Stepanov had suggested and got approval for, was deliberately kept running slightly behind the code-breaking efforts. It wasn’t difficult to confirm the comet’s return schedule, or whether the larger moon of Mars was on a much slower orbital decay. The assertions about stray asteroids and Phobos were complicated and required up to date observational data from the asteroid belt. Looking for rogue rocks down to ten metres in diameter, with retrospectively altered orbits from such a distance was however, extremely challenging. Although there were unmanned explorer craft data available over a period of decades, it was a cumbersome task to dredge up meaningful reference points of even the major asteroids. They considered sending a probe, and very soon, as the worst case scenario could mean they had less than two decades to confirm such a vagrant body, even if they could find it. Alternative suggestions were offered, one of them being to try to correct the decay of Phobos’ orbit. It had the advantage of not needing a search, we knew where it was. The project could begin immediately in order to devote the entire period to developing the solution. This was also rejected as many cosmologists felt a failure to achieve the exact correction could actually make the situation worse. The distillate of these lateral thinking sessions was chiefly focussed on returning to the object itself. Porec questioned the fear of pressing the next button and argued that if the messenger had been carefully instructed to warn us, it would have surely taken precautions against accidental irreversibility. “We are taking so much for granted that some benevolent alien race feels compelled to help us for some unknown, altruistic reason. If this is the case, then it is illogical to mistrust their conclusion that they knew we did not have the technology in 1908, to help ourselves. If I may labour the point, our thinking has changed orbit since we have fastened on to the prediction of possibly being two decades from impact rather than two millennia. We are creating a mental stampede when we should be collecting hard evidence. The code-breaking may yet yield a breakthrough, and the celestial data may yet identify the rendezvous which is supposed to kick off the chain reaction to divine extinction. On the other hand these resources we are committing may deliver nothing, even two decades from now. We have to press the next button.”
Although the reaction to the proposal was muted, it did gather support overnight, when the group had slept on all other options. They hadn’t expected further political interference. This in itself had sinister overtones and a watershed point was reached. The guarding of the object, now that it was in Moscow was increased, and state of the art detection equipment was fitted to the containment facility. This was a serious challenge to would be intruders. Pierze brought forward his interview schedule with the scientists and expedition members, specifically because once again they were using the media to portray heavy-handed, autocratic, government interference. Pierze quoted the need to be guided by cohesive scientific opinion, which did not exist at present. “It is my remit to help facilitate the consensus we seek, and I make a solemn promise that this will happen.” Such a public statement brought about a rallying call behind Porec’s plan, but not quite unanimity. Pierze had the platform to begin his corralling of scientific differences into acceptable compromise.
These interviews went well despite the suspicion, and its derivative, palpable tension. Mohammed was the most vociferous in his sarcasm. He maintained that in over one hundred years, no authority had taken Stepanov’s claims seriously, and now they were hijacking the project. “This would never happen in my country and I am surprised that the Russian people accept that this newly formed organisation of yours has any legitimacy in their sovereign territory. After all they are not even under the Iberian flag; they are members of your ‘commonwealth’.” Pierz
e privately thought he had a point. He had actually shared the view that it was hurriedly conceived and implemented. He realised that others would be making this overture to the Russian leader without declaring such dissent during these sessions.
*
When Zara entered the forum he was extremely calm. Pierze confessed that he hadn’t actually realised that there was an Iberian citizen involved in the expedition. Zara engaged with this admission. “Well, I wouldn’t want to exaggerate my involvement. I’m basically the only sponsor Alexei Stepanov could find. Having agreed to help, I’ve become fascinated with what he has brought to our attention.”
Pierze was surprised at this explanation. “Is it personal sponsorship or through a company you represent?” The brinkmanship was seductive, as the first hurdles had been safely negotiated. His appearance and his voice had not caused even the slightest hint of recognition by Pierze.
“I suppose you could say it is a bit of both really. I do have stockholding in a corporate group and indeed directly in one its companies. I had shares in two of them, but I pioneered employee ownership of the equity in one, by adjustment of projected salary increases, profit and release of reserves. It struck me that the strongest motivator in this changing world is truly shared incentive. I stand to be corrected, but I believe that the company will actually strengthen its market share and profitability this way. I made a direct plea to the new board of directors, which included people from many levels of the company, to match the contribution I had offered personally to Stepanov.” Pierze was now even more curious.
“What is the name of this company?”
The reply seemed to carry a lot of pride. “Digital Component Industries; they are part of Cerberus Enterprises Corporation. I hope my legacy will not be considered as foolhardy in years to come. Anyway I’m intrigued by what your expectations are in conducting these interviews. I have of course heard the party line, but I’m hoping that we can actually do something rather than terminally discussing theories.”