The Lure

11 The Bishop and the Chorus Girl

‘It can only be a hoax. I mean, what else can it be?’

David Maddox, President of the Royal Astronomical Society, twirled spaghetti on to his fork. ‘The genuine article?’

Lord Sangster, Minister for Science, gave a sceptical smile. ‘David, let’s keep our feet on the ground here. Let me look at it again.’

A red London bus roared noisily past the restaurant door. Maddox waited until it had passed, and handed the paper over. ‘It was securely encrypted.’

‘Not against our friends in the NSA, if they got to know of it.’ Sangster put down his fork and read the e-mail, carefully, for the fifth or sixth time:

Sangster looked up, glanced again around the shabby little restaurant, its walls studded with paintings of rural Tuscany, and dust-covered Chianti bottles along the shelves. Near the bar, at the far end, an old man was picking at a plate of fish soup. Two waiters — elderly men with grey waistcoats and faces, napkins over arms — were standing dutifully, looking like extras in The Godfather. ‘What’s your opinion, David?’

‘A SETI signal? And from an underground dark matter facility rather than a radio telescope? It hardly seems credible.’

‘Can we ignore it, then?’

Maddox wrinkled his nose. ‘Suppose we ignore Gibson’s message and the signal turns out to be real…’

Sangster said, ‘The tabloids would crucify us.’

‘And if we declare the signal to be genuine and it turns out a mistake?’

‘The tabloids would crucify us, and come election time we’d be laughed out of office.’ Sangster sipped at his Sicilian wine and made a face. ‘Quite native, I would say. Tell me, David, this SETI League…’

‘A league of respected bodies, the International Academy of Astronautics chief amongst them, but their SETI protocols have no legal force. They want the state that discovers the signal to inform the Secretary General of the United Nations as well as the public and international community.’

‘But, as you say, the protocols have no legal force.’

‘No, Simon. I looked into this. They would have to be endorsed by the United Nations and that hasn’t yet happened.’

‘So the game plan is still open.’ Sangster finished his spaghetti al sugo and looked thoughtful. ‘Biological information, David. I don’t like the sound of that, not one little bit. What sort of information?’

‘Maybe something about their life history, or panspermia. I really can’t say.’

His lordship said, reflectively, ‘Fee fi fo fum, look out humans here we come. Coffee?’

‘No thanks, I ought to be getting back. I’m chairing a meeting.’

Sangster said, ‘David, I think we have to be very careful with something like this. There are all sorts of things to be taken into consideration.’

The RAS President looked at Sangster with a tinge of apprehension. ‘What are you saying?’

‘Leave it with me. I’ll get someone out there to check the whole thing from A to Z. Meantime, the tightest security is called for. Nobody — nobody — must know about this.’

‘You’re not going to keep the scientists in the castle quiet for long.’

‘Quite, quite. Still, this dark matter operation is financed by my ministry through PPARC, which means that I have the ultimate say, even if I hardly knew the damn thing existed a week ago.’

‘Simon, this is an issue for the whole of humanity. It’s too big for the Whitehall secrecy mindset, standard issue. You cannot and should not put the lid on this.’

Sangster gave an urbane smile. ‘You’re out of date, David. We have an ethos of open government these days, haven’t you heard?’

Maddox persisted. ‘Try to muzzle this and the international scientific community will come down on you like a ton of bricks.’

‘Unless we succeed in muzzling it, in which case no one will ever know.’

‘I doubt if you have any legal authority for blocking this result.’

‘Legal authority?’ Sangster was still smiling. ‘I’m talking about moral authority. Although governments do have other means of persuasion. Funding is always difficult these days.’

‘Am I being blackmailed here?’

‘Goodness, let’s not get draconian. But if this discovery is real it touches on matters which go far beyond mere scientific interest.’

‘Indeed, Simon. Such as whether we’re here for a purpose, how the existence of other life affects the great religions and our views about God’s purpose and where we fit into it, how our future would be bound up by a civilisation far in advance of our own…’

‘Ask the Mayans or the Navajo what happens when the weak and strong come into contact.’

‘That’s human history. This could lift us out of that.’

‘We will not rush to the media. Decisions about this will be made by HMG, not by some naive academics round a table at this Academy of Whatsit.’ Sangster snapped his fingers, and one of the waiters jerked into motion. ‘Security is the first priority. We’ll probably have to bring MI6 into this.’

‘What on earth for?’

‘All sorts of reasons, David,’ Sangster replied vaguely. ‘Because we ought to make sure that communication with this castle is secure. Because we don’t want our American cousins jumping the gun on this one. And after all, if these aliens exist, we are dealing with a foreign power.’

‘But look at what Gibson says here. They’re about to activate paras three and four of the protocol.’

‘Which are?’

‘They’ll inform observers worldwide through the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams, Commission 51 of the International Astronomical Union, and a dozen other bodies of that sort. And the Secretary General of the United Nations.’

Sangster’s eyelids half shut; to Maddox, he was now looking positively reptilian. His lordship murmured, ‘Will they, indeed?’

They made their way on to the pavement outside while the busy Piccadilly traffic roared past. An empty black taxi appeared and the Minister waved at it. It U-turned smoothly to a halt. Sangster opened its door and turned. ‘Give you a lift?’

‘No, thanks. I’m only going to Carlton House Terrace.’

The Royal Society, Sangster thought. Full of damned chattering scientists. ‘David, unless and until I say otherwise, you must forget about this whole business. Consider that to be an order.’ In the back of the taxi, he wound the window down. ‘And we never had this conversation.’

‘Joseph? Sally Morgan here.’

Joseph Pembroke could never quite hide the surge of pleasure he felt whenever he heard her voice. He had known Sally Morgan from the remote past, when his hair was long and her skirt, he remembered well, was short. She was a cheerful, petite high-flier in Christ’s College who could down a pint with the best of them. Her voice was twenty years older now, and its carefree tone was tinged with something he couldn’t identify, but it still triggered distant memories — picnics by the Cam, dangerous winter climbs in Glencoe, the Flying Club, and of course that unforgettable overnight berth in the ferry to Dieppe … ‘Good afternoon, Sally.’

‘I’d like to speak to the PM, Joseph.’

The Prime Minister’s PPS pulled a large black desk diary towards him. He glanced at his watch — it showed 3.40 p.m. — before running a manicured fingernail down the afternoon schedule, pencilled in by Anne Broughton, the Diary Secretary, with a couple of entries made by one of the Garden girls.

‘But you saw him this morning.’

‘Something’s turned up in the interval.’

‘And it can’t wait until your next Wednesday session?’

‘No, I must see the Prime Minister today.’

‘You’re an audacious little minx.’ Pembroke said it lightly, but there was something in her voice. ‘The PM’s with Nicole at the moment, then he’s straight into a session with Sir Crispin and the Foreign Secretary to discuss the Iraq campaign. There’s not a gap in his diary.’

‘What about the evening?’

‘He’s at the Guildhall dining with the Lord Mayor and the director of the new opera house, along with assorted actors and showbiz types. Then he formally opens the opera house and sits through an evening of modern ballet.’

‘He doesn’t strike me as a ballet lover, Joseph.’

‘I don’t know which he loathes more: modern ballet or the Lord Mayor.’

‘Dear Joseph, who could take offence? Some day you’ll be stuffed and exhibited in the Victoria and Albert.’

‘Then he’s back to Number Ten and, I assume, a stiff whisky and bed. I don’t see how to squeeze you in.’

‘You’ve never had any problem squeezing me before, Your Grace.’

Pembroke laughed. It was a reference to The Bishop and the Chorus Girl, a bawdy undergraduate play in which they had played the principal parts. The nicknames had stuck for years.

‘I have to see him.’ Again, that undertone in her voice.

‘Maybe after he gets back. I’ll have a word with him.’

‘I’d be very grateful.’

‘Consider it done. Be in the Private Office at ten o’clock tonight.’

‘I’ll use the Garden entrance.’

‘By the way, Sally…’

Cautiously: ‘Umm?’

‘How grateful is “very grateful”?’

The Head of MI6 gave a deep-throated chuckle. ‘Oh sir, Oi be a simple country lass.’