Part 14 (1/2)

Work, Rest and Play

By eight o'clock in the evening, British Summer Time, on Tuesday, May 6th 1997, everyone in the world knew that there was an alien s.p.a.cecraft hovering over London.

Back in the late sixties the United Nations had agreed what would happen if mankind encountered alien lifeforms.

The experts agreed that the ”First Contact”, as they called it, would be a faint radio signal from deep s.p.a.ce. It followed that the First Contact would almost certainly be with a radio telescope facility somewhere in the world, or perhaps a military listening station. The alien radio signal might be many hundreds of years old: radio waves travel ed at the speed of light, and so even those from the nearest star would be over four years old. That meant that the human race would have time to carefully compose its response - this wouldn't be a conversation with aliens, more like an exchange of letters.

So it was agreed: the staff of the radio telescope that picked up the message would pa.s.s it on to the Secretary-General of the United Nations. A team of experts would translate the message (any aliens trying to contact us would have considered the language barrier, and would keep the message straightforward - using basic mathematical or geometric concepts, perhaps, or a series of simple pictures). This translation would then be made completely public. The world would decide what response to send, and the world would send only one reply, leaving aside all cultural, political and economic differences.

Few of the people drawing up the First Contact Protocol thought that it would work like that in practice, and when the time came it didn't. For many centuries there was some debate about exactly when ”First Contact” between mankind and aliens took place. The Martian Invasion of 1997, of course, was always cited as the definitive moment, but it had become clear years before then that the major governments had positive proof of the existence of extraterrestrial life. Aliens had visited mankind for thousands of years, leaving their trails across the archaeological strata and their subtle influence on human development. Visitors from other worlds were wors.h.i.+pped as G.o.ds or hunted down as monsters through the centuries.

In the late twentieth century, as the human race began to venture out into s.p.a.ce, they had reached a level of scientific understanding that allowed them to interpret the old legends and superst.i.tions. They also now possessed a level of technology that allowed aircraft and radar to sweep the skies for unidentified flying objects. Alien s.p.a.cecraft and other artefacts began to arrive on Earth with alarming regularity.

The year that the United Nations drew up the First Contact Protocols, the governments of half a dozen of its member states were already concealing the existence of aliens from their citizens and from each other. The UN realised that such insularity was dangerous, and that if one country were to acquire alien weapons or other technology, then this would destabilise the carefully balanced world order. During Waldheim's term as secretary-general, restricting access to alien science became just as much a priority as preventing the proliferation of nuclear technology. A policy decision was made at the very highest levels of government that the public should not be informed about any alien 'incursion', regardless of its significance.

This level of secrecy means that historians were never able to reach a consensus over when what they cal 'The Real First Contact' was made. Some stil preferred to count the Arcturan Treaty of 2085. That had been an official, peaceful contact. The first time that human and alien sat down and talked, rather than attempted to commit genocide.

The Martian Invasion was yet another demonstration of the shortcomings of the First Contact Protocols, not least because the designated Contact Group, the local UNIT contingent had just been suspended. With the Prime Minister in the United States, there was some confusion among the British authorities about who exactly was meant to initiate contact with the aliens.

The result was chaos for the first hour. A million people descended on Trafalgar Square, desperate to see the alien vessel. A million more attempted to flee the city, convinced that the world was about to come to an end. The authorities were caught in the middle as two million of their citizens stampeded.

The scheduled editions of Wildlife at One Wildlife at One and and The Cook Report The Cook Report had been postponed. BBC1 and ITV were both showing the same image from different angles: the prow of the UFO hanging over Nelson's Column, pointing down the Mall straight at Buckingham Palace. The main body of the vessel was hanging directly over the Strand. had been postponed. BBC1 and ITV were both showing the same image from different angles: the prow of the UFO hanging over Nelson's Column, pointing down the Mall straight at Buckingham Palace. The main body of the vessel was hanging directly over the Strand.

Learned commentators and experts tried to find the words to match the image. They failed.

'What are our options, General?'

'We can do little to contain the information, Mr President. Every station has been broadcasting pictures of the object for the last half hour. The FCC are pul ing as much as it as we can, but the word is out.'

'I'm not worried about the d.a.m.n coverage coverage, General, I'm worried by the alien s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p. A nuclear strike is out the question, I know, but - '

'With respect, sir, I don't think we should be ruling out the nuclear option at this stage.'

'It's a hundred metres above London, General.'

'Sir, a pre-emptive nuclear strike might prove to be the only effective method of destroying the Hostile. I am not recommending that at this stage, but we can't rule it out.'

54.'Understood. What do you recommend?'

'Firstly, sir, we need to mobilise the National Guard. We need troops in al the cities, and additional forces in the air, ready to deploy them wherever there is trouble.'

'You think that the aliens are going to attack us?'

'That I don't know, sir. So far, there's no evidence either way and the situation seems contained in London. What I know is that at any moment riots are going to break out from here to Los Angeles.'

'I think you're underestimating the American people. There was a study done under the Carter administration which concluded that when confronted with indisputable evidence of alien life, most people's reaction would be one of awe and quiet contemplation.'

'That report was wrong. Mr President, our system of government operates on a very simple principle: the people trust the authorities to keep them safe. They can wake up every morning, believe what they read in their newspapers, take the kids to school, drive to work, earn some money that they can spend how they want, go to the park without being bombed, eat their lunch without being poisoned. They pay us taxes, we keep them safe. Now, what we have there on CNN, in glorious colour and NICAM stereo sound, is proof that we can't protect them. We don't know what it is, what it can or wil do, who's in there, where they even came from. Mr President, our people aren't safe anymore. When they realise that, a lot of them will get angry, a lot of them wil get frustrated. Some of them wil take to the streets.'

The President rubbed his chin. 'Mobilise the guard.'

They'd been forced to abandon Bessie halfway up Whitehall, the streets were full of people and it would be quicker to get to Trafalgar Square on foot.

'This is madness!' the Doctor shouted back to Benny over the noise of the crowd. 'All these people, heading towards the Martian s.h.i.+p like moths to the flame.'

Benny apologised to the Rastafarian girl whose foot she'd just stood on. 'Doctor, I hate to point this out, but we're trying to get there, too.'

The Doctor turned around, continuing to walk backwards without even slowing. Unlike Benny, he wasn't having any problem slipping through the throng. 'We are doing so out of scientific interest, and because we might prove invaluable as impartial negotiators in this little dispute.'

Benny squeezed past two of the fattest men she had ever seen and came up alongside him. 'How do you propose to start the negotiations, Doctor?' she asked sweetly. 'By shouting up at them?'

'I don't think my voice would be loud enough,' the Doctor said in al seriousness.

They could see the s.h.i.+p properly for the first time.

It took Benny a couple of seconds to realise that the reason the hul was strobing with bright blue light was that it was being photographed by thousands of people, all using flashbulbs. She hoped that the Martians, from a planet in perpetual twilight, didn't take the bright light as some sort of attack. The flickering glare of the flashbulbs made the Martian s.h.i.+p appear even more nightmarish than it already was. The s.h.i.+p was too large to take in at one attempt: it just left impressions of a surface like that of a seash.e.l.l or a snail, fins like a deep-sea fish.

Despite that, Benny recognised the basic design of the s.p.a.cecraft - Martian rockets had remained unchanged for a hundred thousand years. The Martians had followed the pattern of technological development familiar on ten thousand worlds throughout the galaxy, and they had evolved many millennia before the human race. The Martian Industrial Revolution had taken place at the same time as the Pliocene on Earth. On her expedition, Benny had discovered the remains of doc.u.ments a mil ion years old that were evidence of Martian s.p.a.ce travel.

The Martians, the Ice Warriors as the Doctor insisted on calling them, would have conquered the solar system, even the galaxy, but for the lack of resources on their home world. Energy sources were scarce, few of the necessary metals were present in sufficient quant.i.ties. Martian astronomers knew that both the Earth and the asteroid belt were abundant with mineral wealth, but other planets remained tantalisingly just out of reach.

One of her contemporaries had suggested that another reason why the Martians never developed their s.p.a.ce travel was that their military culture was never geared to rocketry. The Martians lived in nests and cities deep underground, and such dwellings were scarce and impossible to attack from the air. Wars were fought to capture capture such possessions and territory, not to destroy them. The Martians favoured sonic guns and germ warfare, not such possessions and territory, not to destroy them. The Martians favoured sonic guns and germ warfare, not 'dishonourable' bombs that destroyed civilian populations and turned whole cities into radioactive craters.

'Why aren't the Martians doing anything?' Benny asked.

'The same reason that there was a delay when the human astronauts landed on Mars,' the Doctor shouted back at her, 'the s.h.i.+p's crew are acclimatising to the gravity and the temperature. They are probably a little confused by their reception - they wil want to a.s.sess this crowd, try and work out whether it's an army or not.'

'What made them pick London?' Benny asked.

The Doctor slipped through a group of German tourists. 'They must have tracked the source of the radio transmissions to the Orbiter: the Martian s.h.i.+p took a direct course for the National s.p.a.ce Museum. Something of a coincidence, otherwise, isn't it?'

55.The ma.s.s of people was almost stationary now. Most of the men and women had began to realise that they weren't going to get much closer. Or they had chosen not to - the object filled the sky, and every detail on its hull was visible from this distance. Sections of the flank were covered in wicked-looking spines. People were hesitating, holding still.

So, as the crowd became denser and denser, it became easier to move through it. Benny realised that she and the Doctor were the only people really trying. Everyone else stood staring at the sky. Benny found herself following the Doctor right into the Square itself.

Benny was tal enough to see over most heads, and by the time they had reached the crowd-control barriers she had built up a picture of what was happening. The police were clearing groups of people from around the Column itself. They'd also cleared the Strand, and a steady line of emergency vehicles was streaming up the long road.

Benny wondered idly what the Martians made of the convoy of large vehicles swarming beneath them with flas.h.i.+ng lights and wailing sirens. The TARDIS was still sitting in the middle of the Square where they'd left it. Its technology was way beyond that of the Martians, so there was little chance they could detect its true nature.

The Doctor was pointing past it. 'Over there, Bernice. The army.'

A couple of army vehicles were also there: large trucks, personnel carriers, nothing like a tank or even an armoured car.

'Excel ent,' he enthused. 'They're thinking. They are trying not to antagonise the aliens. The helicopters are keeping their distance, too.'