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Transmission
CHAPTER TEN
Kevin sat in his room, listening to nothing. There were signals, recorded by the scientists through their long-range equipment, but none of those signals turned into words within his mind. None of them seemed to have meaning.
Kevin was starting to get worried about that, and it seemed that he wasn’t the only one.
“Why aren’t you hearing anything, Kevin?” Professor Brewster asked. He and Dr. Levin stood there watching, waiting for whatever would come next.
Kevin didn’t have an answer. “I don’t know. Maybe there’s nothing to listen to.”
“You must try, Kevin,” Professor Brewster said, with a disapproving look, as if the solution to it lay in simply doing more, or pushing past the difficulty of contact.
“David,” Dr. Levin said. “Don’t pressure Kevin. Can’t you see that he’s getting sicker?”
Kevin knew that part was true. He’d started to notice a small tremor now in his left hand that would stop if he concentrated, but quickly started again whenever he was stressed. That meant most of the time now in the research institute.
“Then we need to get him more medical attention,” Professor Brewster declared. “Kevin, you have to understand, I have government departments I’ve barely even heard of calling me up to know what’s happening. I had a four-star general call me earlier, wanting to know if there were any potential military applications for this information. With the President wanting to know what’s happening, this isn’t a good time for us not to be able to say anything.”
“I can’t translate things if they aren’t there,” Kevin said. What did they want him to do? Make things up? Maybe they still thought he was doing that, despite everything. Kevin hated that thought.
“Maybe you just need a break,” Dr. Levin said. “Go for a walk around the institute, try to relax a little, and we can get back to listening for signals later, when you’ve rested a little.”
Kevin nodded, and went out into the institute, deciding to go search out his mother. When she wasn’t in his room now, she was usually somewhere near where Phil was working, or in the small space the research center had given her so that she could stay near Kevin. Kevin decided to check there first, and set off along the halls.
There seemed to be more people in the research institute now than there had been before. Kevin could see people in military uniforms and others in suits wearing earpieces. A trio wearing NSA badges stopped as Kevin went past, looking at him as if wondering how he was allowed to just wander the halls like that.
One of the stranger people there was a man who looked to be in his forties, with the short-cropped hair and erect posture of some of the military people, even though he was wearing a leather jacket and jeans instead of a uniform, and clearly hadn’t shaved for a week.
“You’re wondering who I am,” he said, as Kevin stared at him.
Kevin nodded nervously. He suspected some people wouldn’t react too well to being stared at like that.
“You have good instincts,” he said. “The number of scientists who have walked past me without wondering that… with so many people going in and out, anyone could get in here if they aren’t careful.”
“Anyone?” Kevin asked. “Who are you?”
“I’m Ted,” he said, extending a hand. A group of soldiers went past and Ted nodded to them. To Kevin’s surprise, one of them gave him a brief salute.
“Are you with the military?” Kevin asked. “The CIA? The police?”
“Something like that,” Ted said. He thought for a moment. “Actually, nothing like that, these days. And you’re Kevin, the kid who can decipher the alien signals.”
He was probably the first person who’d gotten that right. Most of them seemed to think that he was getting a live stream from an alien civilization, or could actually talk to them. That part made him want to stop and talk to this man, but even so, there was something about his presence there that made Kevin pause. He didn’t fit in.
“I’m sorry,” Kevin said. “I need to get going.”
“That’s fine, Kevin,” the man said. “I’m sure we’ll see one another again.”
Kevin hurried off. He could practically feel Ted watching him as he went. He found his mother in the small bedroom that the institute had provided her with so she could stay close.
“Kevin, are you all right?” she asked. “You look a bit pale.”
“I’m okay,” Kevin said. “Mom, there’s a man out there, and I’m not sure…”
He staggered slightly as the room swam. One moment he was upright; the next, he was on the floor, with people surrounding him. It took Kevin a second or two to realize that he must have had a seizure. There were medical staff there, and researchers, and of course his mother, but no sign of the man who had been there before.
“I’m okay,” Kevin said, struggling to sit up. He still felt dizzy, though, and only his mother’s arm around him stopped him from falling back again.
“You’re not okay,” she said. “Come on, we’ll get you back to your room, and then I’m going to ask Professor Brewster why he isn’t taking care of my baby.”
“Mom,” Kevin managed, because he wasn’t a baby, he was thirteen. Even so, he let his mother help him back in the direction of his room. Somewhere along the line, Phil joined them, the two more or less propping Kevin up between them until they could get him back to his bed.
“I’m going to go find out why they aren’t looking after your health better than this,” his mother said, and she set off with the determined look of someone who needed to get angry about something before she started crying.
“I guess we should work out exactly what’s happening,” Phil said, as she left. “What do you say, Kevin? Are you up for some more tests?”
“More tests?” Kevin countered.
There were, because Phil wanted to get an MRI, and then bloodwork. Kevin had only realized in the last couple of weeks just how much he hated having needles poked into him, because it seemed that everyone wanted his blood for something. Researchers and medical staff came and went, all explaining what they were doing as they went about it, almost none of them using words that Kevin could actually understand.
“We’ve made advances with anti-seizure medication,” one of the nurses told Kevin, “but the doctors are currently in discussions with all the people here, asking if it’s the best thing.”
Meaning that they were worried it might block off his ability to understand the signal, whenever it next showed up. Kevin could imagine them there, trying to balance the possibility of missing the information that might lead to the aliens against the possibility that Kevin might die and never give them anything else. Probably only a few of them would think about what it all meant for him, and so far, none of them had thought to ask what treatment he wanted.
“Is it the best thing?” Kevin asked.
The nurse shrugged. “Officially, I’m not supposed to have an opinion on that. Unofficially… I hear a couple of the doctors are talking about using variations on gene therapies developed for people with other illnesses, like Alexander’s syndrome.”
“I didn’t think there was anything like that available for me,” Kevin said, thinking back to the consultation with Dr. Markham, and all the ones that had followed it.
“There hasn’t been, but you currently have most of the biggest brains in the country on your side. If anyone can tailor something to your condition, it’s them.”
And then Kevin would find himself taking an experimental treatment that might cure him, might do nothing, or might make things worse. Would that be worth the risk of losing the alien signal completely?
“For the moment, though, you have a visitor.”
She nodded to the doorway and the short figure coming through it. Kevin’s eyes widened at the sight of Luna, looking as casual as if she’d just called around to his house to see if he wanted to ride bikes down to the reservoir.
“Luna? How did you get here?”
“My mom brought me along,” Luna said with a smile. “Because your mom thought you’d like to see me.” She held up an orange, then threw it to him. “I didn’t have any grapes.”
Kevin caught it clumsily while Luna perched on the edge of his bed. Her expression changed from happy to see him to worried.
“How bad is it?” she asked, most of her usual cheerfulness gone from her voice.
“I don’t know,” Kevin said. He glanced away for a moment. “Well, I guess we kind of do know.”
Luna put a hand on his shoulder. “They might have said that you’re going to die, but I refuse to let you die yet, Kevin. I haven’t even fallen madly in love with you yet.”
Kevin laughed at that. “If I have to wait for that, I might live forever.”
“True,” Luna said, but her smile didn’t reach her eyes. Kevin could see how much it hurt her having to be strong for him, having to be cheerful.
“It’s okay to cry if you want to,” Kevin said.
“As if I’m going to cry,” Luna said, although she looked like she might for a moment.
She didn’t cry, but she did hug him, hard enough that Kevin thought his ribs might break. He surprised himself by noticing how good she smelled.
“I’ve missed you, you know?” she said.
“I’ve missed you too,” Kevin assured her. He’d told her that it was okay to cry, but now he was the one with tears stinging the corners of his eyes.
“Hey, I shouldn’t make you upset,” Luna said. “One of the military guys in the hall would probably shoot me if I did that.”
That was enough to make Kevin laugh. Luna had always had the knack of doing it.
“What’s it like out there?” he asked. “Out in the real world? What’s it like at school, or on TV? I’m sick of everything just being about the things I can see for people.”
“Sorry to disappoint you,” Luna said. “But there’s plenty about you on TV. There are reporters at your house most days now, and people talking about whether this is real, or a hoax, or an advertising campaign that got out of hand. There’s even a weird alien cult that has started up, people wearing antennae as they walk around and claiming that the aliens will save us from everything from environmental breakdown to high grocery prices.”
“You’re making that up,” Kevin guessed.
“Maybe the part about the antennae,” Luna said. She looked around. “It must be peaceful being here. It’s really quiet.”
“It’s been a lot busier since people found out what I could do,” Kevin said. “And I spend most of my time listening for the signals, so it’s not exactly a library.”
Luna smiled the smile of someone who usually did all the talking they wanted in libraries anyway.
It didn’t stay quite that peaceful, either, because Professor Brewster, Dr. Levin, and Kevin’s mother all came in together.
“You’re pushing Kevin too hard,” his mother was saying.
“We’re really not trying to, Rebecca,” Dr. Levin assured her. “We don’t have any control over the signals we receive, and Kevin is able to stop whenever he needs to.”
“And Kevin has barely listened to any today,” Professor Brewster said. “Besides, he’s receiving better treatment here than he would be able to get anywhere else in the country.”
“That’s… true,” his mother admitted. She sounded pretty reluctant to do it though.
“We are looking after your son,” the institute’s director continued. “And Kevin is doing important work here. Speaking of which, Kevin, do you feel up to facing the cameras?”
“Now?” Kevin asked. He wasn’t sure.
“There have been some rumors that you’re unwell today, and it seems like a good idea to show people that you’re healthy,” Professor Brewster said.
“Even though he isn’t?” Luna asked, beside Kevin.
“Especially because of that,” Professor Brewster said. “And anyway, people are waiting to hear more of what Kevin has to say. Kevin?”
“You don’t have to do it,” his mother said.
Kevin nodded. “It’s okay. I’m feeling a lot better now. If it will help, I’ll do it.”
***
Kevin felt as though standing up in front of people should get easier. He wasn’t doing anything, after all, that he hadn’t already done before. He’d shown them what he could do at the gates to the facility, and in a press conference before. Even so, he was nervous with so many people staring back at him.
“It will be fine,” Luna said. How did she always seem to guess when he was feeling bad? “And you can’t back out now. I want to watch you do your alien stuff.”
“Alien stuff,” Kevin repeated. “We definitely need a better name for it than that.”
Even so, he stepped out to face the crowd. There were more people here today, cramming every corner of the conference room where Kevin was due to perform for them. There were reporters, obviously, scientists, government people…
…and Ted, staring at him intently from the crowd.
“That guy’s here,” Kevin said.
“What guy?” Luna asked.
“I met him in the halls while I was looking for my mom, and he just seemed… I don’t know, out of place. He kind of seemed like he might have been one of the soldiers, but he said he wasn’t anymore. I don’t even know if he’s supposed to be here.”
“You think he’s some crazy guy?” Luna asked. “You think he’s here to kill everyone?”
“I didn’t until you said it,” Kevin said. Now that she had, Kevin found his eyes locked onto the spot where Ted stood. He wondered if he should tell someone about him.
“Time to do your stuff, Kevin,” Professor Brewster said, nudging him toward the center of the platform they’d set up. “Hello, everyone, as you can see, Kevin is fine, and some of the rumors out there are greatly exaggerated.”
“What rumors?” Kevin asked him, and then found his eyes pulled back to Ted again. “Professor Brewster, there’s this man out there…”
Professor Brewster ignored him. “Kevin is quite tired today, though, so we’ll keep this short. Kevin?”
Kevin stepped forward and put his headphones in place, figuring that it was probably best to just get on with this. The trouble was that there was still silence, nothing new to translate, no signal coming in. He stood there in silence for several seconds, feeling increasingly embarrassed. Worse, he couldn’t take his eyes off Ted, convinced that the moment he did, the man would do something.
That was when a completely different man, toward the front of the hall, started shouting. “You’re evil!” he yelled. “You’ll bring the aliens down on all of us!”
He ran forward, and even though he had a press pass, and was dressed smartly in a suit, there was something wild in his eyes. He charged at the stage, and Kevin saw him shove Luna out of the way as he went, sending her sprawling to the ground.
“Luna!” Kevin shouted, but there was no time to help her, because the man was still coming, and now Kevin could see that he had a knife. He grabbed Kevin, and the next moment, the man was behind him, the blade pressed to Kevin’s throat.
“You’re trying to bring them here. You’re trying to let them destroy us all. I have to stop you, whatever it takes.”
Kevin had never been so frightened before, but the strangest part was that most of that fear wasn’t for himself. Luna was lying still where the man had knocked her down, and now Kevin was wondering if he might have stabbed her, just because she got in the way.
“Easy there, friend.”
While Kevin had been looking at where Luna lay, Ted, of all people, had gotten up onto the stage, and he had a gun held expertly in both hands.
“If you put the weapon down, we can talk about this,” he said.
The man behind Kevin didn’t move the knife from his throat. “It’s talking that’s the problem. He’s talking to them. He’s bringing them here to kill us! No, stay back!”
He punctuated that order by pointing the knife at Ted’s advancing form. With the knife gone from his throat for a moment, Kevin did the only thing he could think off, and let himself fall to the floor.
Two shots rang out, so loud they seemed deafening. Kevin heard something metallic clatter to the stage, and something soft followed it a moment later. An instant after that, and Ted was there, pulling him to his feet.
“Don’t look around. There are things a kid shouldn’t have to see. Run to the others.”
Kevin wanted to do all of that. He wanted to run and see if Luna was all right. He wanted to run to his mother, who was, even now, pushing her way through the chaos. He wanted to do all of that, but he couldn’t, for one simple reason.
“There’s a signal coming!” he said.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Kevin could feel the next message coming, the signal starting in his headphones, the beginnings of a translation working their way up through him. This was happening now, whether he wanted it or not.
“I don’t think we have much time,” he said. “I can feel it coming.”
Already, people were crowding around him. His mother was there, wrapping her arms around him as if she might protect him from anything that came. Dr. Levin and Professor Brewster were there, both looking worried. To Kevin’s relief, Luna was back up on her feet. She hadn’t been stabbed. Kevin ran to her, hugging her.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“That depends,” she said. “How many of you are there supposed to be?”
Kevin shook his head. “Don’t joke, I was worried about you.”
“You were worried about me? I wasn’t the one with a knife to my throat.”
Through it all, of course, the cameras kept rolling. They weren’t going to stop in the middle of something this dramatic.
Professor Brewster was there, looking as though he was afraid Kevin might break. Or maybe it was just that he was staring at the dead man behind Kevin, the one that he didn’t dare turn to face.
“What’s happening?” he demanded. “Why are we not getting Kevin out of here?”
“He says there’s another message coming,” Ted explained.
Kevin didn’t know how to explain it any clearer than that.
“Well, hold it back until we get you to safety,” Professor Brewster said, but surely he had to know that it didn’t work like that by now.
Kevin gritted his teeth. “I can’t control when the message arrives. I just receive it and translate it.”
“Why… why is it a problem if you get the message here?” Luna asked. She sounded shaky, which was understandable given everything the two of them had just been through. Even so, she was the one asking the right questions, not the professor.
“Because it will be the coordinates for the escape capsules,” Kevin said. “I’m sure of it. What else could it be?”
“You remembered the numbers for the system before,” Luna pointed out. “You could remember this.”
“What if it’s a long list?” Kevin countered. “What if I miss something?”
Luna pointed to the cameras, and Kevin realized she had a point. All he had to do was speak, and everything he said would be recorded by so many cameras he couldn’t count them all. It would be around the world in an instant.
He went over to them, and even as he did it, the signal hit him.
The strings of numbers seemed to last forever. No wonder the beings sending them had given Kevin a warning that they would be coming. They’d wanted to give him a chance to prepare to record them in some way, so that the information wouldn’t be lost. Each time Kevin finished repeating a string of numbers, a new string of digits and symbols began, barely giving him enough time to take a breath. He was translating it as it came, shaking with the effort of doing it, or perhaps just with the aftereffects of everything he’d been through in the past few minutes.
He recited the numbers and letters in a long, almost endless string, but the truth was that, for the first time since Luna had helped him to work out the connection to the Trappist system, he didn’t know exactly what any of it meant.
Finally, the stream of numbers came to a stop, and Kevin stood there, trying to catch his breath.
“Is that everything?” Luna asked. “Kevin, are you all right?”
Kevin managed to nod, although even that was an effort right then. He wasn’t sure which part he was nodding for.
Dr. Levin was there then, putting an arm around each of them.
“Okay,” Dr. Levin said, “let’s get you both back inside. After everything that has happened, my guess is that a lot of people will want to talk to both of you, but I want to get you both checked out first and make sure that you’re all right. I don’t like how close you both came to being hurt back there.”
As they turned to go, Kevin could hear the shouts from the gathered crowd as they started to come out of whatever stunned silence they’d been caught up in.
“Kevin, when are the aliens coming for us?” one man yelled.
“Kevin, what does life mean?”
“When are you going to admit this is a hoax?”
“Are you hurt?”
There were so many different questions being shouted at once that for a moment or two, Kevin wanted to just walk away and leave them to it. He didn’t, though. He felt as though he had to say something, and this time it didn’t have anything to do with the pressures of alien signals.
“I know a lot of you are looking to me for answers, but the truth is that I don’t have many,” Kevin said. “I’m just a kid. I don’t have any special understanding. I don’t even know why I’m the one who receives the messages that the aliens are sending.”
“What happened today?” a reporter asked. “Why all these numbers? What is it about?”
Kevin inclined his head, trying to work out how much he was allowed to say. Then he realized that was probably the wrong way of thinking about it. Misunderstanding this had caused this. Someone had tried to kill him today, because they didn’t understand the information he had. Because, given the space to do it, they jumped to the wrong conclusion.
“Someone tried to kill me today,” he said, “because they think the information I’m receiving is dangerous enough to be worth killing for.”
“Is it?” someone called out.
Kevin shook his head. “Knowing that there’s an alien civilization out there, that there was one, is amazing, but it’s not worth killing people for, and I don’t want anyone else being in danger for me.” He almost stopped as he thought back to the sight of Luna being knocked aside, the sound of Ted’s gun as he fired. “I don’t matter. What matters is that the aliens’ world was dying, and they have sent out… I guess you could call them time capsules. And we know where those are going now.”
He also knew where he was going now, because his mother was pulling Kevin back away from the platform, into the institute.
***
“If my son is going to be attacked, then I don’t want him staying here!” Kevin’s mother said while she and Professor Brewster argued.
Kevin watched them both from the edge of his bed. He winced as one of the institute’s medical staff disinfected a tiny cut he’d gotten from the knife. Beside him, Luna had a bandage wrapped around her head, while Ted was there, looking as though he was half expecting another attack.
“I understand your concern,” Professor Brewster said, and even Kevin knew that was the wrong thing to say to his mother right then.
“You understand what it’s like to see your child attacked because he’s caught up in all something crazy?” Kevin’s mother demanded. “Do you even have children?”
“Well no, but…”
“Who are you?” Kevin asked Ted, ignoring the argument between his mother and the professor for the moment.
“Oh, I’m just a guy who helps out where he can,” Ted said.
“That’s not an answer,” Luna said.
He seemed to think for a moment or two, then shrugged. “I guess it can’t hurt. Sorry, I’m just in the habit of not saying anything. I used to be in the army. Special Forces. Then I got loaned out to the CIA for a while, then… well, then I tried to retire, but I got a call when all of this started, and I couldn’t exactly refuse.”
“You said before that the President called you,” Kevin said. “He wouldn’t do that if you were just some guy.”
“Well, maybe I’ve seen a few things in my time,” Ted said. He looked over to where Professor Brewster and Kevin’s mother were still arguing. “From what I hear, he met you about this though. That must make you more special than I am. You two want to come see how the eggheads are getting on with the numbers you pulled out of the air?”
Kevin nodded, and together, the three of them set off through the facility. Kevin felt a little stronger now, most of the weakness he’d felt obviously down to the combination of receiving the message and the stress of the attack. He also felt strangely empty, and it took him a moment to realize why:
For the first time since this had begun, there was no sense of the aliens.
There was no countdown pulsing in his head. There was no impending signal he was supposed to be waiting for. There were no messages. Everything was silent. It should have felt peaceful, but for the first time since he’d gotten there, Kevin felt… useless, as if he had nothing to do.
He was about the only one who did. The people they passed were busy, and they all seemed to be working on the problem of the coordinates. Labs that were used for other things stood empty, and instead, scientists were gathered in conference rooms, working on strings of numbers in a hundred different ways. Some of the NSA people seemed to be involved too.
Kevin had thought that there might be a problem with security as they got closer to the space that housed the supercomputers, but Ted walked right through it all, soldiers and FBI agents alike nodding to him as he went and letting the three of them through.
“Wow,” Luna said as they reached the supercomputer pit. “Imagine the games you could play on those.”
Kevin doubted that they’d be much use for that, but when it came to dissecting strings of numbers, it seemed that they were very good. SAM was spitting out possibilities using the signals, while half of the other machines there had been fired up too, and scientists ran between them, calling out results.
“It’s another miss,” one yelled. “I think that one hits somewhere out in the Pleiades.”
Kevin heard a groan of frustration from the other scientists there.
“They’re trying to narrow down the search,” Ted explained.
Dr. Levin was there, and to Kevin’s surprise, people seemed to be listening to her. Maybe the fact that there were definitely aliens made it easier to take orders from the head of SETI.
“The problem is too much information,” she said. “You gave us so many possible hits, Kevin, that we can’t work through all of it, even with our computing power.”
“Have you tried the Internet?” Kevin asked.
“I don’t think this is the kind of thing we’d find on the Internet,” Professor Brewster said, coming up to join them. “We have some of the most sophisticated computers in the world here.”
Kevin shook his head. “We might. When I translated, I gave the reporters the information, right? So, won’t people all around the world have been looking at it? You said the problem was having enough people to do it. Well, doesn’t this mean you have the whole world helping?”
“The kid has a point,” Ted said. “Have you checked?”
“Well… no,” Professor Brewster admitted.
Dr. Levin shrugged. “Maybe it’s worth a try. SETI has often borrowed computing power from people around the world.”
“Do it,” Ted said.
Dr. Levin went away for a few moments. She came back with a tablet computer, and a faintly shocked look.
“I… I don’t believe it,” she said, and started tapping away on it. “Hold on, I’ll bring it up on a bigger screen.”
She pressed a few points on the tablet, and a computer screen across from them lit up, big enough that the entire room would be able to see it. Coordinates sat on the screen, along with the words “Alien craft to hit Earth!” The site appeared to be anonymous, but there was no doubt about what it was saying.
“If we take this set of coordinates,” Dr. Levin said, “well, watch.”
A map of the world appeared on the screen, first so broad that Kevin couldn’t work out where the crash site was supposed to be. It turned, zooming in on South America, then kept going. It took in a country, then a region, then what seemed like a patch of jungle just a couple of miles across.
“The Colombian rainforest,” Ted said, staring at it.
“We’re sure about this?” Professor Brewster asked.
“We’ll check, of course,” Dr. Levin said, “but on first glance… yes, it looks correct. Which is astonishing in its own way. The idea that a civilization could predict where their vessel would land this precisely at such a distance is… almost impossible to believe.”
“Well, I think we need to start believing it.” Ted put a hand on Kevin’s shoulder. “If you’re right about all this, our alien friends are sending their cargo to Colombia.”
“Is that a bad thing?” Kevin asked.
Ted shrugged. “I don’t know. It might make things complicated. I’m more worried about how many other people will have seen this. Dr. Levin?”
“There’s no way to know,” the SETI director said. “I’d guess that if we found it, plenty of other people will have.”
“Which means that half the world will be there,” Ted said. “What do you say we go there to meet them, Kevin?”
“Go to meet who?” Kevin’s mother asked, walking into the computer pit. “What’s going on?”
Kevin tried to work out the best way to phrase it. “Mom, um… can I go to Colombia?”
