“Then why the hell did you coldcell me?”
“You were not put in suspension by us, but by Taiwanese security operatives that were—well, ‘loaned’ to us. They saw you preparing to enter my superior’s suite, surmised that you had lied when you agreed to sit on the story, and were instead attempting to steal evidentiary documents. They stunned you, tried to contact us directly, couldn’t.”
“Why?”
Downing sighed. “Security blackout; we were on the Far Side. Only communiqués of national urgency.”
“So they didn’t know what to do with me.”
“Well, we learned later that some wanted to kill you.”
“Kill me?”
“Yes.”
“Christ sakes—kill me over an antimatter plant?”
“No. Over what it was built to enable, which you had started hypothesizing shortly after your arrival.”
Which put those hypotheses in Caine’s one-hundred-hour dead zone, along with the other lost memories of his time on the Moon. But a vague recollection—perhaps a wild guess from his prelunar investigations—teased a conjecture into existence. Antimatter: gram for gram the most potent energy source known. Not good for weapons, since its containment requirements make it much harder to work with than radioactives. So why would anyone need all that antimatter in one place, at one time—?
Caine blurted it out before he confirmed his thinking. “Interstellar travel: you were creating the power supply for a starship.”
Downing smiled. “Yes.”
“And did it work?”
Downing leaned back, considered the windowless walls. “Rather. We are currently in the Junction system. Technically, it’s still listed as Lacaille 8760. But only astrographers use that label, now.”
Caine had to focus—hard—in order to stay on track: “Okay: so now that interstellar travel is public knowledge, I’m free to go, right?” But even as he asked it, Caine knew there had to be a catch: otherwise, why take him light-years away from Earth before waking him up?
Downing shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Ultimately, it was not the interstellar travel we had to keep a secret. It was the mere fact that you were coldcelled at all. Even after interstellar travel—and colonies—became commonplace, we still couldn’t reanimate you.”
Caine understood. “Because then people would want to know who had the authority to put me in a deep freeze and get everyone to think I was missing, presumed dead, for thirteen years.”
Downing nodded.
“Well, since you woke me up, you’re obviously ready to answer the question if it comes from me: so, on whose authority did you coldcell me?”
Downing seemed to retract into himself for a moment: whatever was about to come out was apparently kept deep within. “I am—call it the executive officer—for the Institute of Reconnaissance, Intelligence, and Security. IRIS, for short. Officially, it is a civilian think tank housed at the Naval War College.”
“And unofficially?”
Downing resisted the same retractile reflex he’d combated a moment earlier. “The Institute covertly coordinates the actions of, and analyzes data gathered by, the world’s various intelligence services.”
Caine stared, then shook his head. “No, I don’t buy that: intelligence organizations would never cooperate that closely.”
“Not knowingly. Which is why IRIS exists: to provide an invisible intelligence locus that is aware of, and able to coordinate responses to, our new global crisis.”
“How can something be a ‘global’ crisis if only your handful of analysts are even aware of it?”
“If something endangers the whole world, then it’s a global crisis—regardless of whether one or one million persons are aware of the danger.”
“Okay, so what the hell caused this secret global crisis?”
Downing frowned. “Our first interstellar missions were extremely circumspect. And so we asked ourselves: if there’s anyone else out here, wouldn’t they explore the same way? Accordingly, we started watching for subtle signs—”
“And now you’ve found something. Out here. And that’s your new secret.”
“Yes. We’ve received reports that point to the possibility of past exosapience on Delta Pavonis Three. But we can’t investigate it with any of our contacts in the military or intelligence services, not without drawing attention to both the site and the Institute. So we need you to go there—on your own—and report back on what you find.”
Caine considered this rather surreal scheme and quickly arrived at three possible alternatives. Firstly, he might be hallucinating—in which case he had nothing to lose if he agreed to go looking for exosapients.