Alien Tongues Read online

  Around 8 pm that evening, Alice knocked on his door. When she entered, she gave him an unusual stare. He asked her what was up, suddenly worried about the girls.

  "Did you by chance happen to read or listen to the news this evening?" She asked.

  "No, why?"

  "Well, it must have been a really quiet day, because one small local story from here somehow got national attention." She continued to stare at him. "It involves you, I'm afraid."

  His heart seemed to be failing. He thought of the local Herald reporter. He had tried to buy him off with a modest story the following week, and wasn't certain it was enough. But this couldn't be the work of the Herald alone. National coverage. Someone powerful had worked this. And it was the type of news story which, if cleverly handled, could make the choice he had just been facing completely moot. The choice had just been made for him. Sheryl was more correct that she could have imagined. He had been played for the biggest sucker in Whitehall.

  He sat down at his desk, armed with glass and whiskey bottle, and fumbled the address of the Evening News. Alice sat behind him on the bed, waiting. It took a few seconds to find the news story.

  "Today, Petra Kosovich filed a civil rights suit against the West Yorkshire Police Force, alleging her rights were violated when apparently false information was used by the police to obtain a search warrant for her apartment. Answering the door in her night-attire to a police officer, she and her companion that evening, Séamus FitzGerald, were taken to a Middleton police station where they were interrogated for one hour. Apparently, the police believed that Ms Kosovich was a victim of human trafficking, forced to provide sexual services to local customers of a call-girl ring. In fact, she works as a saleswoman at a local cattle breeding centre, and has held that job for eighteen months since moving to England. She had met Mr FitzGerald in a local pub earlier that evening. Mr FitzGerald is a government auditor who was recently posted to the government laboratories in the area."

  Even if, by some miracle, Sheryl forgave him for this transgression and the obvious humiliation it would bring her, the message of this article was clear. Someone was demonstrating that he could be publicly embarrassed at any time. If that someone was at the Agency, he or she could prevent his personal life getting in the way of his mission. Séamus FitzGerald might stand against such attacks, but he could not expect people like Sheryl to suffer them indefinitely.

  It took a few more moments to realize that, in a very perverse way, this news article contained the kernel of a compliment. The concept of a dumb agent on a dumb mission was suddenly banished. If nothing else, going to these extreme lengths proved not only the importance of his mission but also his personal role in it. He might be a prisoner to the Agency, but in some way he was a valued prisoner. Now he needed to know one extra piece of information. Who had set up the original false warrant? If that had been the Agency, then this whole plan predated his talk of resignation. They then must have anticipated his disillusionment and made contingency plans. Someone – presumably Wilkie – had expected the brick wall the girls were going to hit but had not communicated as much to Alice. Maybe he had wanted to create a crisis point. A second-level game was being played above them, and they were naively believing the scripts they had been given.

  He turned to look at Alice still seated on the bed. Her expression was full of worry, and he was touched to think that it was essentially for him. He exaggerated a shrug.

  "There goes my reputation," he remarked. "Just for your information, Alice, I went to this Petra on by boss's instructions, so we could send a message to the call-girl ring we were not going to touch them."

  "You don't need to explain to me," Alice told him, "But I had anyway figured out that one." She smiled. "Why would you have paid for what you could have got for free in your own room?"

  He smiled back. So he could still smile. "Let's go to the White Hart," he told her. "I want to see if I can find McMahon."

  Alice looked at her watch and sighed. "Hmm, better not spend the time at home changing. Still, who am I trying to impress? Let's go!"

  As soon as they entered the pub, Séamus spotted McMahon talking with a group of other men. He got drinks for the two of them and they took their usual place by the fire. He thought it better to wait until McMahon came over to him. There was every chance of that – after all, because of the news he was now quite famous. For the sake of filling in time as they sat waiting, Alice gave him an update on her analysis which he tried hard to follow, both of them glancing regularly across at McMahon's group. About twenty minutes later, McMahon broke away and walked towards them, accompanied by another man. Séamus recognized the face – it was Edward Allsop, the man who had tried to break into the facility and who had been caught on camera.

  "I expect you'll be wanting a word with me," McMahon said to Séamus. "But before we start, I just want to introduce someone who says you'll recognize his name – Ed Allsop. He's a colleague of mine, you might say."

  Allsop looked at Séamus in a distinctly unfriendly manner. "I will catch you later after Ryan's had his talk." He then walked back to the original group.

  "What's that about?" Séamus asked McMahon, nodding towards Allsop.

  McMahon shrugged. "I thought you would know. Sorry, he didn't tell me. Actually we don't work together, but we have the same employer."

  "Kevin Grant," Séamus said.

  "Aye," McMahon sounded a little surprised that he knew. "Actually, he's over there in the group – do you know him by sight?" Séamus replied that he did not. McMahon glanced over his shoulder. "He's the smaller man, shaved head."

  Séamus glanced over to the group. He had already noticed the man who, almost a head shorter than the others, was nevertheless the dominant character, the other men tending to address their comments to him. The shaved head appeared to be his response to premature balding. He was good-looking with a strong, restless gaze which seemed to take in everything around him. There was a sense of enormous energy about the man, kept under tight but comfortable control. Séamus judged him to be dangerous. Perhaps the only dangerous man in the group, with the potential exception of McMahon.

  "Look," McMahon continued, "I'm very sorry about what happened." He glanced at Alice, but Séamus indicated with a wave that he could talk openly in front of her. "Both that night, and with the lawsuit. But I want to assure you that I had nothing to do with it. We were caught completely unawares by the search warrant. As for the lawsuit, Petra got pressured into it by some government agent. She came to me and asked me what to do. Apparently she has a brother who's on parole and if she didn't do what they said he was going back to prison. What could I tell her? We hoped you'd be kept out of it, but the agent made sure you weren't." McMahon paused. "What did I say about you working for the British government? They'll destroy you, Man."

  "Could you call Petra now on your phone?" Séamus asked. McMahon immediately did so, then handed him the phone. "Petra? It's Séamus… Yes, I know it couldn't be helped, I'm not angry with you… Where are you? OK. What's your brother's name?... OK, don't worry. I'll be in touch later… Thanks for your help. Bye." He returned the phone. "OK, Ryan, it seems to check out. I think I know where to go looking now."

  "Well, let me know if there's something I can do to help," McMahon told him. "Of course, I feel a bit guilty the way this has turned out, but I believe there's nothing else I could have done." He then lowered his voice. "By the way, there are still folks around here who aren't convinced you're just an auditor and who are worried you're snooping into their area of business. Just wanted to let you know. Not relevant to me, of course, because I know you're fine with my line of work."

  Séamus felt it unnecessary to return McMahon's grin. "That depends upon how well you can keep the government out of it," he replied, deadpan, which only widened the other's smile.

  Alice had returned with two fresh pints, and McMahon took his leave. "So that confirms the search warrant was engineered by your Agency?" she asked.

  Séam
us nodded. "McMahon knows I can verify Petra's brother – the story has to be genuine. So that leads me to some very interesting conclusions. First, the Agency is determined to keep me on this job, no matter what I wanted to do. Second, it probably anticipated things would start going badly, so that I would be vulnerable to pressure to give the work up and go back home. Third, it's much more optimistic about success than we are. Otherwise it wouldn't have gone to all this trouble to frame me."

  He could tell that Alice was deep in thought so waited for her to reply. Finally she said, "I've been a fool, Séamus. Now I realize I'm one of those mathematicians who just drives ahead with a single problem to solve, forgetting to ask if it's actually the right problem."

  To illustrate her mistake, Alice placed her glass between them on the table. "'Dr Alice Turner, please analyze the primary ingredients of this glass of beer.'" She dipped her finger in the liquid and then tasted it. "'Let me see – water, hops, barley, malt, yeast. Am I right?' 'No, Dr Turner, you forgot the heaviest ingredient of them all – the glass!"

  Séamus shrugged. "Most of us fail those trick questions."

  Alice wagged a finger. "But it's not always a trick question. If I'm a visitor from Mars and have never seen the inside of a pub, the question I'm asking is perfectly reasonable. My problem is that I failed to understand the reasonable perspective of the person asking."

  A visitor from Mars. That was certainly a new way of looking at things and, for a reason he could not put his finger on, seemed strangely apt. But he immediately forgot this impression when he said, "OK, whose perspective did you fail to understand?"

  "One moment, let me check those ingredients more carefully…" Alice drank for a good two seconds then continued, "The answer to that is, I don't know, because we don't know who wants our results. We only know what Wilkie says he wants, which is a number-based language. And I think my 6% is a reasonable estimate of our success, based on our current methodology. But suppose the girls are right, and something really is missing? Wilkie never said we couldn't change the methodology. It's just that he and we have no idea what we should be changing. We have no way of measuring our chances of success if we allow other methodologies, but it could be much greater."

  Séamus frowned. "Give me an example of another methodology."

  "Oh, a different type of keypad." Alice took out her smartphone and stared at it. "I don't want to get tediously mathematical, but there are other ways of getting to numbers than by numbers themselves. And numbers are a hierarchy, unlike letters. We can't assume they'll be adopted just like letters. We need some kind of hook to introduce them, one that the girls simply can't see just now because we haven't asked them to look for it."

  "Shall we ask them to design their own keypad?" Séamus asked. Alice shook her head.

  "There's a reason Wilkie didn't invite them to do that." She laughed. "The old devil. Of course they would have asked for what suited them best, and he wants them to beg for an extra key or two. He knows he must give something, but he wants to make sure it's as little as possible."

  "I'll ask you more about why later," Séamus told her. "For now, I just would like some idea of how much our chances may have gone up."

  "Impossible to do anything very scientific. But I suppose we may as well go back to our original 40%"

  Séamus was not sure how he felt about this dramatic change. On the one hand, he felt tempted to ask Alice why the hell this idea had only just occurred to her, but he quickly realized how hypocritical such a position would be. Had he not recently attempted to bail after solemnly committing himself? It was not surprising the project was playing tricks with their minds – a product of their isolation and ignorance of purpose. If anyone was to blame, it was Wilkie for keeping her deliberately in the dark. But even his sins were mere trifles compared with the dark nature of his own boss.

  He decided to allow himself to feel pleased. If he was going to lose Sheryl, it was better over a near-half chance than a near-hopeless one. He proposed a toast to the project's success. They both put down empty glasses.

  "Can you handle another one?" he asked her.

  "I think a little bit more celebration is in order, surely? I might say let's go back, but I think we need to know what Mr Allsop has to say. Make it a half."

  When he went up to the bar, Allsop came over to him. He stood next to him as Séamus watched each of the two pint glasses being filled half way.

  "You made a bit of trouble for me," Allsop mentioned quietly.

  "Oh?" Séamus said with faint surprise. "I had the impression you made that yourself. You know, trespassing."

  "Shortcut," Allsop growled. "There are old rights of way here that aren't posted for the Ramblers' Association. Any road, there's a code of behavior that's more important in these parts. We don't go talking to the police just because a neighbor's in a hurry."

  "Mr Allsop, I'm a government employee. I had no choice except to find out why you might be trespassing. I took no further action."

  Allsop put a hand on Séamus's shoulder. "And I need to make sure that there will be no further action from you again. None at all, mind."

  "Is that a threat?" Séamus looked at the hand and then at Allsop. The hand remained there.

  "Call it protection. Cute young Asian girls there could do with some, don't you think?"

  "Listen, Allsop. I think you're well out of line here."

  "Oh, no, that would be you, Paddy Boy." Allsop took his hand from Séamus's shoulder and now ran it down the edge of his jacket lapel. It was a very common way to start intimidation. Take physical liberties which challenged dignity, daring the victim to respond physically. "And I've just begun to get you back in line. I'm also going to tell you not to appear in public with Alice Turner. That's an order."

  Séamus watched as a silver pin in his lapel buttonhole was removed. "Did Dave Orwood send you?"

  "Boy, you don't have to know who or why. You just do as you're told."

  Allsop wore a look of quiet confidence on his weather-beaten face. He was perhaps ten years older than Séamus and had a muscular, manual-worker's build, perhaps an inch taller than Séamus and with longish, prematurely grey hair. He was holding a pint glass in his hand and he tapped it against Séamus's chest. A little beer slopped onto his jacket.

  Séamus noticed that his two half-full, pint glasses were waiting for him. The bartender was also waiting for his money, though eyeing Allsop with some alarm. Séamus placed money on the counter and decided not to wait for change. He thought that, if he returned to Alice quickly, Allsop would be forced to continue his argument in front of her, and her reaction would illustrate the absurdity of his demands. Maybe the words "you just do as you're told" made him feel upset in a way that wasn't quite rational, and he unconsciously felt the need to escape from this bully.

  It was the only reason he could think of, later, why he moved at that moment with unfortunate haste. Since he was carrying two half-filled pint jugs, it allowed him to do so without slopping the beer, which would not have been the normal case with glasses filled to the brim. Certainly, Allsop was not expecting him to move hastily, since he positioned himself directly behind Séamus, blocking his anticipated direction. The older man had been amused at how his beer had stained the younger man's jacket, and so held his own glass in front of him, perhaps in the hope that Séamus would knock into it and be to blame for using up more of the beer with his clothes. His glass was different, being what is typically referred to as a straight or a thin glass, a more comfortable pint to hold if the drinker is standing. Publicans themselves prefer the thicker "dimple mugs" with handles, as Séamus carried in both hands, because these involve fewer breakages but are more suitable only if the drinker has a place to rest them.

  The resilience of glass is unpredictable. Sometimes it can withstand surprisingly hard blows, at other times shatter almost spontaneously. The fact that one of the dimple mugs collided with Allsop's thin glass did not inevitably mean breakage, but that was certainly a possibility
which, as it happened, came to pass. The force of the collision was not strong but, given the result, must have seemed much greater. The broken glass fell from Allsop's hand and onto his foot. Beer soaked the bottom of his trouser-leg.

  "I'm so terribly sorry," Séamus began, quickly returning his own drinks to the bar. "Please let me get you another." He knew such a response was going to be wholly inadequate for someone like Allsop, but he needed at least to try and make clear that the breakage was an accident. How had he been so clumsy? Something had distracted him. He had suddenly noticed Kevin Grant staring at him from across the room. The man's look was fiercely penetrating, catching his attention and, for just a fraction of a moment, had reduced his focus on his immediate environment. With Allsop's intention to be obstructive, little else was needed for an embarrassing accident. Now Grant and the rest of the pub, including Alice and McMahon, would be riveted on what happened next.

  Allsop would also have been keenly aware of his audience. He had made a threatening approach to a stranger and had had his beer smashed in his hand. No doubt blood would soon start to ooze from cuts. For years in the future, this event could be used as a source of humorous humiliation for him, adding to his reputation for slow-wittedness. Or he could deter that humiliation now with decisive action. The second option was particularly appealing to a man of limited patience and restraint.

  That, anyway, was Séamus's take on the man. He felt there was near certainty that a blow was going to come, but could not be sure what type, and that made a big difference in such close proximity. It was a bit like batting in cricket. You watched your opponent's arm movement and had to make a decision between a short or long pitch, without fully committing yourself in case you chose wrong. Séamus guessed a mild jab to his solar-plexus. Mild, because it needed to be aimed quite carefully for proper effect, and also because it would suggest to the audience precision as opposed to aggression. If done well with the point of the knuckles, a relative tap could reduce Séamus to a doubled-up, gasping but virtually noiseless victim. Allsop could then claim the pint offered him even as his host remained unable to stand straight or talk, in a kind of paralysis of pain.