Next History: The Girl Who Hacked Tomorrow (13 page)

Actually, there are more than a few
images in his phone. He’d got her from several angles, face, boobs, her curvy butt in the short skirt as she leaned in the passenger window. Beautiful, so beyond a guy like him.

He figured it like this: she’d been with someone, written her number on the take-out menu,
guy forgot to take it.
His loss my gain.
Hermon believes if he looks at the photos long enough, he’ll get up nerve to call the number.
But what the hell to say!
How can a body shop mechanic making sixty grand a year catch a break with a class babe who drives a late-model Aston?

A sound, he turns.
Two figures stand together, shoulders hunched strange yet beautiful, bathed in light.
How did someone get in?
Hermon’s last conscious thought is he should be afraid, but he’s the opposite of fearful. He is mesmerized by this bright swirling vision. His legs weaken, he drops to his knees, collapses forward onto the floor. Last thing Mark Hermon knows is an image of a woman’s lovely face.

The Japanese government is forthcoming with its information, the United States Navy not only willing but insistent to take command of the area. Comprehending a message somehow tattooed onto the flanks of a
full-grown blue whale took some doing, but eventually bubbled up through Japanese political and military channels. Contrary to earlier reports, the Japanese had not hunted this whale. The ship was not a whaler, but a scientific drilling platform on mission to obtain deep seafloor rock samples off Antarctica. This whale had hunted them.

Following ever closer in their wake for fifty miles, the massive animal swims abeam the 200-meter ship, lazing on its side. Astonished crewmen excitedly read and photograph the extraordinary markings. Written in graceful calligraphic Kanji of brush-stroke form, the message is clear. It provides a latitude and longitude, a date and an hour. A position in the southeastern Pacific, a time two days
later.

Two U
.S. Navy carriers and four battle cruisers are within range. They bring with them advanced sound recording equipment, ultra-def still and video cameras, as well as subsurface imaging tools. The fleet of six ships and numerous support aircraft are on station hours before the appointed time. Remotely-piloted submersibles with sensors and cameras wait at the preordained location.

Submersible operator Ron Lloyd, a specialist in
marine mammal studies including the blue whale, sits at a control console aboard a U.S. Navy battleship, making final checks of his panel. A mile off the battleship’s port bow, his remote craft,
Debra
, is behaving normally. Propulsion system, comm system, cameras function properly. He and four other remote pilots are in the rotation to operate this, one of three submersibles deployed for… what? No one has informed them why they are here. They’re only told to be ready, below the surface, on station. Two of his fellow submersible pilots stand behind him in the cramped quarters, not speaking, allowing Lloyd to concentrate. Tangible excitement throughout the control station.

Lloyd, an independent whale researcher who has made blue whale study expeditions to
distant Pacific locations such as Yap and Ulithi, Midway, Tonga and Costa Rica, had been flown in by helicopter for a mission that was described to him in the most oblique fashion.
Hover and wait.
His flight yesterday had caught up with the Navy fleet in mid-Pacific, bound for a particular location Southeast of Guam. Only after he was aboard did he see photographs of the blue whale from the Japanese research crew. At first, Ron Lloyd was outraged. Who would dare place graffiti on the body of a blue? What next, he scoffed, we’ll be using them as billboards?

Learning of the unusual markings for the first time, it took some explaining for Lloyd to comprehend that a human cause is unlikely. The markings are not cut into the 90-foot whale’s skin, they are on the surface, a skin discoloration, a tattoo. Although the combined resources of the CIA and U.S. military intelligence still investigate, there is no chatter or other indication of a human source. To Lloyd’s practiced eye, the coloring
is a natural variation in skin tone, the marble-like mottling which blues normally exhibit. Natural, that is, except that the Kanji forms on this animal’s sides are sharper of outline than usual markings. Beneath the graceful characters, an orderly row of iconic forms that seem to indicate whales in a long procession. Still suspicious of the cause, Lloyd is keenly interested in what the glyphs could mean. Are they, as some Navy personnel indicate, a type of invitation?

An announcement over the commlink. A number of blue whales
have been spotted from the air, location twelve miles east. Excitement rises. A video image appears on Lloyd’s monitors, aerial shot from a helicopter. Lloyd is shocked at the behavior he sees. The whales swim in a circle, counterclockwise on the surface. They are not herding krill. He counts fourteen animals, each among the largest he’s observed, at least 100 feet from nose to fluke.

“Never saw blues behave like this,” Lloyd mutters.

“Debra crew, can you say again that last transmission?”

Lloyd looks over at the other pilots, both Navy.
They give encouraging nods. He’d forgotten the submersible pilots are live on the commlink, and are being recorded. Lloyd clears his throat.

“Ah, in
eighteen years of blue whale study, I have never observed animals swimming in circles as we see here.”

Abruptly, Lloyd and the others tense.
In the aerial view, one of the whales breaks out of the circling formation into a straight path. The next animal follows, and the next after that. The huge swimmers now proceed arrow-straight, a line half a mile long. A call over the commlink, a helicopter crewman.

“The
pod is on a southwesterly heading. They will intercept the fleet location in approximately four minutes.”

On the monitor, the aerial view slews away from the line of blues, centers on another group of whales that circle
s slowly, waiting. Lloyd counts twenty-six whales in this pod. He turns his attention to
Debra’s
scanners.

From beneath the waves, the submersible’s main display is an unbroken view of
green subsurface haze, shafts of sunlight flicker downward. And there, outline forming from the gloom, a majestic blue whale, swimming directly at the submersible. Lloyd maneuvers
Debra
to clear the animal’s path.
Debra’s
companion submersible momentarily appears in the view. As the animal approaches, all can see that the whale’s sides are covered with rows of neatly-formed Arabic numerals.

Lloyd maneuvers
Debra’s
cameras to sweep the entire surface of the animal. The commlink is completely silent. Lloyd moves in close, cameras at full magnification. The numeric markings are the same skin coloration as the Kanji photographed by the Japanese research vessel.

Another whale follows a hundred yards astern of the first, and another and another in stately procession. All are tattooed with
long sequences of integers. Completing the train of ponderous animals, the last whale bears no markings of any kind.

The excited voice of a helicopter pilot. “Slew northeast, there must be
eight hundred blues out here.”

The helicopter video picks up other groups circling near the original location, counting eight, twelve, thirty, as many as 100 of the stately blue whales in each ring. Each group in turn breaks
from its circle into a uniform line, proceeds along the same even course toward the waiting fleet. The whales appear on the surface at a steady pace, group themselves in orderly fashion a few miles out, and swim toward the unmoving ships. The tension breaks, excited calls spread among the 3300 crewmen of the fleet.

Passing at up to five
each minute, the stream of majestic animals is steady, ponderous, and calm. Voices aboard the fleet drop to reverent whispers. In the end, the procession takes more than twenty-seven hours to pass. In all, seven thousand and sixty-nine blue whales swim past and are photographed. The sides of most animals are covered with numbers.

O
fficers and many crew are sleepless during the eerie passage. Fourteen hours into their vigil, an officer reports to his fleet commander.

“Sir, we have background on this gathering. It is extremely surprising.”

“Everything about this is surprising. Tell me something that makes sense.”

“Captain, this procession includes, so far, about one-quarter of all blue whales on Earth. Over three thousand have passed by already. The nearest
population group is the Antarctic, but it numbers only two thousand, approximately. Some of these whales are from farther away.”

“Where do they go when they leave this position?”

“Everywhere sir. They separate into small groups and go every direction. They dive and disappear. The whale scientist, Lloyd, recognizes individuals from every migratory group in the Pacific. They come from unknown directions before they form up in their circles. After they pass, they depart toward all headings. We’ve launched flyovers of usual concentrations. We find many fewer blues in those locations at this time.”

“What are these numbers written on them? Are we photographing them all?”

“Yes, sir. We have multiple cameras recording the complete body surface of each whale. We plan to radio-tag one hundred. The animals tolerate the submersibles well.”

“So, what are the numbers?”

“Sir, we think it is a coded message.”

“Who from?”

“The whales, sir.”

“We have a coded message from thousand
s of whales?”

“Sir, other than that, we have absolutely no idea.”

A
hastily-called face meeting at General Solberg’s office in the Pentagon swing space. The building hums with intensity. Strand is shown inside even as Solberg ushers a Navy admiral to the door.

“Yes
,” the general is saying, “that data and all photographs are hyper-secure. The information is encoded. A very small team will be working on that initially, under armed guard.”

“We can handle it, Ralph. You need us on this.”

“Point taken Stephen. You do realize an enormous amount of data could be represented there? Few computer systems in the world have adequate capacity to manage that volume of data. Few teams have the tools and techniques to develop that information. Results will emerge as fast as there is capability.” Solberg’s eyes flicker briefly in Strand’s direction as he eases the Navy man out the door. Turning back, Solberg gets right to it. He motions Strand to look at his laptop. There on the screen, a photo of a blue whale, along its flanks thousands of numbers lie in neat rows. Strand’s eyebrows chase his hairline.

“Chris, I need Next History on the whale data immediately,” Solberg whispers
with a glance at the door. “A number theorist monitored the photos as they came aboard fleet command. She thinks it's a coded message. She estimates over 140 million digits in that sequence. It will require serious compute power to pick it apart, assuming it means anything. Mass storage and numeric techniques, tools such as Next History uses. I want your team to take it on if you have the bandwidth.”

Strand nods, scratches the back of his hand. “We’ll make it priority, Ralph.
This suggests deeply coded information. When can we acquire the datasets, the film?”

“We’re assembling the complete sequence on DVD for you, along with all the original photographs, a structured database with tags and keys.”

“What other groups will have it?”

“T
hat’s just it. There will be none. We’re treating this Security Alpha. Too much of what's happened since our courtyard visitor appeared has gone live on the Internet. We cannot afford that with the whale data. The accountability comes down to you and your team. And to me. I want your smallest possible group in contact with this data. None of your people can have access to all of it. Break it up somehow so that no one person can view the entire dataset.”

“
Understood Ralph. I’ll need four of my team. My closest working group.”

“Very well
. Ship me their dossiers as soon as you get back. We’ll put tracers on them, physical, cyber, voice. All of you will be guarded continuously until this thing is over. Put them on sanitary profiles. I don't want to see any nightclub activity, unusual trips, hookers, parties or random meetings. Understood?”

“Of course, Ralph.
How will we receive the data?”

“
Guarded caravan with armed 24-hour presence. Where will your team do the work?”

“Main office. Alexandria.”

“Fine. The dispatch detail will meet you there in two hours. The second you get any indication of what’s in the data, pull me in face-to-face.”

“Man in the hot seat,” Strand says.

Solberg nods. “In fact, face-to-face will be the only way the team communicates. Absolutely nothing electronic in reference to it. And be effing quick about it. My ass is on the line here. The President and the entire command chain is barking up my butt for answers yesterday.”