Oblivion (20 page)

Stephen Conrad was a Londoner in charge of monitoring the worldwide situation.
The human problem,
as the head of the English team had referred to it.

Cross glanced at Maddox. She wasn’t going to let anyone slow down work. She
was
scared, but she wasn’t admitting it.

On the screen, Conrad sat up when Maddox said his name. He looked surprised. Agripino sat down in his chair, keeping his face from the camera.

“Um, well, it’s not good news on this front either, I’m afraid,” Conrad said. “We’re discovering growing pockets of discontent worldwide. A rise in hate groups, most of them fortunately concentrated on the aliens, but a disturbing number who do not believe that aliens exist.”

“What do they believe?” Britt asked, sounding stunned. “Well, that’s a bit of a hodgepodge, really,” Conrad said. “Near as we can tell, they believe that this is a hoax perpetrated by world governments to encourage the rise of dictatorships. But nothing is uniform. We’re talking about fringe groups here. They only become a worry if they gain legitimacy.”

“Do they have any legitimacy?” Maddox asked.

“More than they had before the aliens arrived,” Conrad said. “People are always looking for explanations. You’ve got to remember one other thing. We’re tracking the groups that have gone public in one way or another, whether on the Internet or on the airwaves or written letters to their MPs or some such. But the problem with most of these fringe groups, particularly in Germany and in the United States, is that they operate underground. They’re particularly mistrustful of any organization and prefer to create their own. We have no good way of tracking those.”

Cross felt cold. He hadn’t thought much about this. “Is this going on in every country?”

“So far as we can tell. China has quashed all unusual Internet activity, and many of the African countries still have limited access,” Conrad said.

“What does this mean for us?” Cross asked.

“What it means,” Conrad said, “is that there is a greater tendency than ever for overreacting. Our governments have to be very careful how they present things. Mass hysteria is just around the comer. Riots, burning in the streets, attempted coups, all are possible and likely at any moment.”

“Because we’re facing a common enemy?” someone from the European Block asked, as if she were stunned.

“Because we’ve suffered such a mass defeat,” Conrad said. “And because our worlds are changing because of it. We’re losing national identities.”

Cross frowned. He hadn’t had this sense.

But Conrad continued. “For example, we’re all in our separate countries here, working on this Tenth Planet Project, and when we do communicate face-to-face, we do it in my native language, which happens to be English. However, we do it in a branch of my native language that many of my own countrymen deem inferior: American English. Multiply that tiny dissatisfaction among all the other countries in the world, and you suddenly have a problem. Add to that problem the fact that everything is changing, from the way we deal with one another to the way that our jobs and resources are being used, and we have the makings of serious social discontent.” “Well,” Maddox said as if this didn’t concern her. “We’ll have to—”

“Pardon me, General, but I would like to finish because
this last point is the most important.” He looked a bit embarrassed, but that didn’t stop him.

Maddox’s fingers tapped against the table, just once, a rapid drumbeat. Conrad probably didn’t see or hear it. “All right,” she said.

“We have lost our sense of ourselves,” Conrad said.

Maddox closed her eyes, but Cross had the sense she would have rolled them if she had kept them open.

“I know you Yanks don’t think of this as being all that important, but we Brits know the dire consequences of this. We suffered through it all during the last century, when we went from being an empire that ruled most of the world to a commonwealth.”

There were mutterings from other groups. Some of them, Cross noted, former members of the British Empire. Apparently Conrad noticed, too.

“I don’t mean to say that the Empire was well and good for all those involved. We don’t need that sort of political discussion here. But we do need to acknowledge that, until a few short months ago, we thought ourselves alone in the universe. And not just alone, but the most superior race in this universe.”

“You’d better have a point,” Maddox said tightly.

“I do, General, and I do want you all to hear me. What I’m saying may not be politically popular, but it does factor quite strongly into much of what is happening worldwide.” Conrad leaned against the table. His colleagues had moved away from him slightly.

Cross found that fascinating. Were they afraid of being associated with the superior race theory?

“If we look at human history, one perspective is that it’s a continual struggle for world domination. But we have always assumed that the world domination we’ve been speaking of is human domination. None of us ever thought that apes would rise up and take over the world, or that we’d suddenly be attacked by squadrons of killer dolphins.”

Surprisingly, no one laughed. Cross almost did: the mental image was one he appreciated. Killer dolphins on scooters, coming to take over the world.

“I believe,” Conrad was saying, “that this assumption is behind much of the denial that’s going on in the fringe groups. Aliens can’t be out there because they might take over our world. And we all know that no alien will take over Earth. We—the Americans, the Japanese, the Germans, whomever—we will take over the Earth, but certainly not some outsider.”

“You’re calling us xenophobic,” Hayes said.

“Yes,” Conrad said. “And some of us are ignoring it because we need to defend ourselves. Some of us are expecting humans to triumph because we’ve always seen ourselves as the superior species. And some of us are so xenophobic we can’t imagine any other species—from anywhere, Earth, Mars, or the tenth planet—being greater than we are. So we deny that the aliens exist.”

“Clearly their technology is superior to ours,” Cross said. “Clearly,” Conrad said. “And it always has been. One of the most bitter pills about this entire affair, Dr. Cross, are the discoveries that you made, the discoveries that led us all to look toward the skies before the tenth planet even arrived.”

Someone whistled—it looked like someone in the Australian feed—and Cross felt his stomach turn.

“The fact that they’ve been here before,” he said. “Countless times,” Conrad said. “Defeating humanity each and every time. What this means, my friends, is that we are not the superior species. They are, and have been, for millennia. It requires an entirely new way of thinking, about humanity, about Earth, about ourselves. England went through this on a very small scale when it lost its empire. So, I would assume, did Rome, centuries ago. But never have humans, on this scale, been forced to examine themselves. And never before have we come out looking quite this bad.”

Across the table, Robert Shane sighed and looked down. Britt put her hand on Cross’s. Yolanda Hayes pursed her lips and looked toward the ceiling.

Maddox had threaded her fingers together. “Let me see if I get this, then,” she said. “You believe this reassessment, this new way of looking at things, is causing more nutballs?” “Absolutely,” Conrad said. “I keep going to the British model because it’s the one I’m familiar with, but the discontent in England during the 1920s is related to an economic crisis, yes, but also to the fact that our national psyche was injured. People were quite angry, and they took to the streets over the smallest thing.”

He paused. No one was fidgeting any longer.

“Right now, people are very angry. We’ve been attacked from above, from the heavens, something we have never expected. We’ve had significant loss of life and property. We’ve been destroyed by weapons we don’t understand, by a species we’ve never heard of, and for no apparent reason. The average citizen in almost every country feels quite powerless. There is no rising against the oppressor because the oppressor is invisible. So the uprising could occur against the people who are visible.”

“The governments.” Maddox didn’t look bored any longer. “Not just one,” Conrad said, “but all of them, and for different reasons.”

“This is a political problem,” one of the Japanese scientists said.

“No,” Conrad said. “This is a problem we must all be aware of. Fringe groups often tie with terrorist organizations, and if they direct their wrath against a major government, we might be fighting on two fronts: against the aliens, and against ourselves.”

“What do you expect us to do?” one of the African representatives said. “Most of us are scientists.”

“Or advisers,” the South Korean representative said.

“We need to warn our governments to pay attention to these threats, and to neutralize them where possible. I will send you all e-mail with some of this material in it.” Conrad threaded his fingers together. “We also need to make certain that the people know we’re doing something.”

“The massive deployment of troops should tell them that,” Maddox said.

“The massive deployment of troops figures into the conspiracy theories,” Conrad said. “I’ve read some of the paranoia on this. We need to let people know, as time goes on, that we have successful plans for fighting the aliens.”

“Most of the world doesn’t even know the aliens are coming back yet, even with some of the tabloid coverage,” Cross said.

“That status is not going to last much longer,” Conrad said. “There’s too much coming out from too many sources. And anyone with a slight knowledge of orbits will figure out that the tenth planet will be close to Earth a second time in a few months.”

“We can’t divulge what we’re going to do,” Maddox said. “We’re at war.”

“No, we can’t,” Conrad said. “But we can make reassurances. And we should from time to time.”

“I’ll speak to the president,” Yolanda Hayes said.

Others echoed her sentiments.

Maddox’s mouth was a thin line. “Well,” she said. “That was cheerful. Let’s talk about something we do have control over. General Obote, what’s happening with those fighter planes?”

A heavyset man wearing a uniform that Cross didn’t recognize stood. He was in the African group. He nodded, as if he felt there needed to be a bit more formality in these proceedings.

“Thank you, General Maddox,” Obote said. “I have been placed in charge of coordinating the joint military effort to build more fighter planes. Several governments are involved in this project, and we have made contact with several more. We have also spoken to international conglomerates, like your Boeing, and they have, as you say, stepped up production. Things are proceeding rapidly. We should have many more planes by the time the tenth planet returns. More planes than I would have been able to predict a week ago.”

“Excellent,” Maddox said, and Cross knew she wasn’t surprised by this. She had been saving it for just this sort of moment in the meeting. “Anything else?”

“All of the countries we have spoken to have taken old fighters out of retirement and are fixing them, putting them in working order. We shall have, by our target date, more fighter planes than the world has ever seen.”

“What about pilots?” Shane asked.

“Many are returning from retirement, and many are on an accelerated training program. Many of the smaller countries are sending their most promising candidates to flight schools in the larger, more developed countries. We shall have pilots to fly our fighters, sir. We shall have a fighting force that the aliens will not expect.”

“Thank God,” someone said.

Cross only thought about how worthless that would be without the ability to get through those alien ships’ screens. “Good news at last,” Maddox said. “Thank you, General.” Obote nodded again, then sat back down.

“Dr. Archer, what do we have on the planet itself?” Maddox asked.

“Not much, General,” Britt said. She slowly stood up as the others had been doing. Cross got the sense she was still unnerved by Conrad’s argument. It had been as if he had spoken about a taboo subject. No one wanted to think about the changes the arrival of the tenth planet brought, especially the less visible, psychological changes.

“We’re attempting to get as much information as we can,” Britt was saying. “All of the telescopes are focused on it, but right now it’s too close to the sun. We can only get minimal information, most of which I’ve already reported. Soon the tenth planet will go behind the sun, and then we’ll have three months to sift through the information we have before the planet reappears.”

“I expect that sifting to take less than three months,” Maddox said.

Britt smiled as if she had expected that slight rebuke. “You’ve already gotten the important information, General. It’s the subtler stuff we’ll be working on while the planet is out of our range. We’re going to be double-checking facts and figures to see if we’ve missed anything. We’re going to go over our previous work to make certain we’re on the right track, and we’re going to see if we can clean up these last images we get in the hopes that we gain more information from them than we initially thought possible.”

“Excellent,” Maddox said. “Is there anything else?”

As usual, there were small items, things that had more to do with coordination than information. Finally Maddox insisted that the specific groups work the details out among themselves. Cross noted, as things wound down, that Maddox had said nothing about what the military was doing. She had, in fact, steered the meeting away from all but the good news about the fighter planes.