7: THE TOOKE MEDAL.

The motorcade drew up outside a property in a suburb called Chiswick. Bella stepped out of her car, along with her two Council bodyguards. They were a man and a woman, bulked up by body armor, like all their colleagues silent and anonymous. The woman carried a small package in a black leather case.

The car closed itself up.

Bella faced the Duflot home, gathering her courage. It was a faceless block of white concrete with rounded wind-deflecting corners, sunk into the ground as if it was too heavy for the London clay. Its roof was a garden of wind turbines, solar cell panels, and antennae; its windows were small and deep. With subterranean rooms and independent power it was a house like a bunker. This was the domestic architecture of the fearful midtwenty-first century.

Bella had to walk down a flight of steps to the front door. A slim woman in a sharp black suit was waiting.

Ms. Duflot? Doctor Fingal. Thank you for coming. Call me Phillippa... She extended a long-fingered hand. Shadowed by her security people, Bella was brought through the house to the living room.

Phillippa Duflot must have been in her early sixties, a little older than Bella. Her silvered hair was cut short. Her face was not unattractive, but narrow, her mouth pursed. Phillippa looked capable of steely self-control, but this woman had lost a son, and the marks of that tragedy were in the lines around her eyes, Bella thought, and the tension in her neck.

Waiting for Bella in the living room were the generations of Phillippas family. They stood when Bella came into the room, lined up before a softwall showing an image of a pretty Scottish lake. Bella had carefully and nervously memorized all their names. Phillippas two surviving sons, Paul and Julian, were solid, awkward-looking thirty-something men. Their wives stood by their sides. This slim, pretty woman of twenty-six was Cassie, the widow of the missing son James, and his two children, boy and girl, six and five, Toby and Candida. They were all dressed for a funeral, in black and white, even the children. And they all had ident tattoos on their cheeks. The little girls was a pretty pink flower.

Standing before this group, under the stares of the children, Bella suddenly had no idea what to say.

Phillippa came to her rescue. Its most awfully good of you to come. Her accent was authentic British upper class, a throwback to another age, rich with composure and command. Phillippa said to her grandchildren, Doctor Fingal is the head of the Space Council. Shes very important. And she flew from America, just to see us.

Well, thats true. And to give you this. Bella nodded to her guards, and the woman handed her the leather case. Bella opened this carefully, and set it up on a low coffee table. A disc of delicate, sparkling fabric sat on a bed of black velvet.

The children were wide-eyed. The boy asked, Is it a medal?

And Candida asked, Is it for Daddy?

Yes. Its for your father. She pointed to the medal, but did not touch it; it looked like spiderweb embedded with tiny electronic components. Do you know what its made of?

Space shield stuff, Toby said promptly. Yes. The real thing. Its called the Tooke Medal. Theres no higher honor you can earn, if you live and work in space, than this. I knew Bud Tooke. I worked with him, up on the shield. I know how much he would have admired your daddy. And its not just a medal. Do you want to see what it can do?

The boy was skeptical. What? She pointed. Just touch this stud and see. The boy obeyed.

A hologram shimmered into life over the tabletop, eclipsing the medal in its case. It showed a funeral scene, a flag-draped coffin on a caisson drawn by six tiny black horses. Figures in dark blue uniforms stood by. The sound was tinny but clear, and Bella could hear the creak of the horses harnesses, their soft hoofbeats.

The silent children loomed like giants over the scene. Cassie was weeping silently; her brother comforted her. Phillippa Duflot watched, composed.

The recording skipped forward. Three rifle volleys cracked, and a flight of tiny, glittering jet aircraft swept overhead, one peeling away from the formation.

Its Dads funeral, Toby said.

Yes. Bella leaned down to face the children. They buried him at Arlington. Thats in VirginiaAmericawhere the U.S. Navy has its cemetery.

Dad trained in America.

Thats right. I was there, at the funeral, and so was your mummy. This hologram is generated by the shield element itself Why did one plane fly away like that?

Its called the Missing Man formation. Those planes, you know, Toby. They were T-38s. The first astronauts used them to train on. Theyre over a hundred years old, imagine that.

I like the little horses, said Candida. Their uncle put his hands on their shoulders. Come away now. With some relief, Bella straightened up.

Drinks arrived, sherry, whiskey, coffee, tea, served by a subdued young aunt. Bella accepted a coffee and stood with Phillippa.

It was kind of you to speak to them like that, Phillippa said. Its my job, I guess, Bella said, embarrassed. Yes, but there are ways of doing it well, or badly. Youre new to it, arent you? Bella smiled. Six months in. Does it show? Not at all.

Deaths in space are rare.

Yes, thank God, Phillippa said. But thats why its been so hard to take. I had hoped this new generation would be protected fromwell, from what we went through. I read about you. You were actually on the shield.

Bella smiled. I was a lowly comms tech.

Phillippa shook her head. Dont do yourself down. You ended up with a battlefield promotion to mission commander, didnt you?

Only because there was nobody else left to do it by the end of that day.

Even so, you did your job. You deserve the recognition youve enjoyed.

Bella wasnt sure about that. Her subsequent career, as an executive in various telecommunications corporations and regulatory bodies, had no doubt been given a healthy boost by her notoriety, and usefulness as a PR tool. But shed always tried to pull her weight, until her retirement, aged fifty-fivea short one as it turned out, until she was offered this new role, a position she couldnt turn down.

Phillippa said, As for me I was based in London during the build-up to the storm. Worked in the mayors office, on emergency planning and the like. But before the storm itself broke, my parents took me out to the shelter at L2.

The shield had been poised above the Earth at the point of perpetual noon, at L1, the first Lagrangian point of gravitational stability directly between Earth and sun. The Earths second Lagrangian point was on the same Earth-sun line, but on the planets far side, at the midnight point. So while the workers at L1 labored to shelter the world from the storm, at L2 an offworld refuge hid safe in Earths shadow, stuffed full of trillionaires, dictators, and other rich and powerful typesincluding, rumor had it, half of Britains royals. The story of L2 had subsequently become a scandal.

It wasnt a pleasant place to be, Phillippa murmured. I tried to work. We were ostensibly a monitoring station. I kept up the comms links to the ground stations. But some of the rich types were throwing parties.

It sounds as if you didnt have a choice, Bella said. Dont blame yourself.

Its kind of you to say that. Still, one must move on.

James Duflots widow, Cassie, approached them tentatively. Thank you for coming, she said awkwardly. She looked tired.

You dont need You were kind to the children. Youve given them a day to remember. She smiled. Theyve seen your picture on the news. I think Ill put away that hologram, though.

Perhaps thats best. Bella hesitated. I cant tell you much about what James was working on. But I want you to know that your husband gave his life in the best of causes.

Cassie nodded. In a way I was prepared for this, you know. People ask me how it feels to have your husband fly into space. I tell them, you should try staying on Earth.

Bella forced a smile.

To tell you the truth we were going through a difficult time. Were Earth-bound, Doctor Fingal. James just went up to space to work, not to live. This is home. London. And I went into town every day to work at Thule. Bella had done her research; Thule, Inc., was a big multinational eco-recovery agency. Wed talked vaguely of separating for a bit. Cassie laughed with faint bitterness. Well, Ill never know how that particular story would have turned out, will I?

Im sorry You know what I miss? His mails. His softscreen calls. I didnt have him, you see, but I had the mails. And so in a way I dont miss him, but I miss the mails. She looked sharply at Bella. It was worth it, wasnt it?

Bella couldnt bear to repeat the platitudes she knew were expected of her. Im new to this. But its my job to make sure it was.

That wasnt enough. Nothing ever could be. She was relieved when she was able to use the excuse of another appointment to get out of the pillboxlike house.

8: EURO-NEEDLE.

For her appointment with Bob Paxton, Bella was driven to the Livingstone Toweror the Euro-needle as every Londoner still called it. The local administrative headquarters of the Eurasian Union, and sometime seat of the Unions prime minister, it was a tower of airy offices with broad windows of toughened glass offering superb views of London. During the sunstorm the Needle had been within the Domes shelter, and on its roof, which had interfaced with the Domes structure itself, was a small museum to those perilous days.

Paxton was waiting for her in a conference room on the forty-first floor. Pacing, he was drinking coffee in great gulps. He greeted Bella with a stiff military bow. Chair Fingal.

Thanks for coming all the way to London to meet me He waved that away. I had other business here. We need to talk.

She took a seat. Still shaken by her encounter with the Duflots, she felt this was turning into a very long day.

Paxton didnt sit. He seemed too restless for that. He poured Bella a coffee from a big jug in the corner of the room; he poured for Bellas security people too, and they sat at the far end of the table.

Tell me whats on your mind, Admiral. Ill tell you simply. The new sightings confirm it. We have a bogey. A bogey?

An anomaly. Something sailing through our solar system that doesnt belong there...

Paxton was tall, wiry. He had the face of an astronaut, she thought, very pale, and pocked by the scars of radiation tumors. His cheek tattoo was a proud wet-navy emblem, and his hair was a drizzle of crew-cut gray.

He was in his seventies, she supposed. He had been around forty when he had led Aurora 1, the first manned mission to Mars, and had become the first person to set foot on that worldand then he had led his stranded crew through the greater trial of the sunstorm. Evidently he had taken the experience personally. Now a Rear Admiral in the new space navy, he had become a power in the paranoiac post-sunstorm years, and had thrown himself into efforts to counter the threat that had once stranded him on Mars.

Watching him pace, caffeine-pumped, his face set and urgent, Bella had an absurd impulse to ask him for his autograph. And then a second impulse to order him to retire. She filed that reflection away.

In his clipped Midwestern accent, he amplified the hints Edna had already given her. We actually got three sightings of this thing.

The first had been fortuitous.

Voyager 1, launched in 1977, having made mankinds first reconnaissance of the outer planets, had sped on out of the solar system. By the fifth decade of a new century Voyager had traveled more than a hundred and fifty times Earths distance from the sun.

And then its onboard cosmic ray detector, designed to seek out particles from distant supernovae, picked up a wash of energetic particles.

Something had been born, out there in the dark.

Nobody made much of it at the time. Because it showed up on April 20, 2042. Paxton smiled. Sunstorm day. We were kind of busy with other things.

Voyagers later observations showed how the anomaly, tugged by the suns gravity, began a long fall into the heart of the solar system. The first significant object the newborn would encounter on its way toward the sun would be Saturn and its system of moons, on a date in 2064. Plans were drawn up accordingly.

And that was the second encounter, Paxton said. We have readings made by Deep Space Monitor X7-6102-016and then a record of that probes destruction. And third, the latest sighting by a cluster of probes of some damn thing coming down on the J-line. The orbit of Jupiter. He brought up a softscreen map on the table. Three points on the chart, seethree points on a plausible orbital trajectory. Three sightings of what has to be the same object, wandering in where it dont belong. He stared at her, his cold blue eyes rheumy but unblinking, as if challenging her to put it together.

And youre certain its not a comet, something natural?

Comets dont give off sprays of cosmic rays, he said. And its kind of a coincidence this thing just popped up out of nowhere on sunstorm day, dont you think?

And this trajectory, if it continueswhere is it going, Admiral?

We can be pretty accurate about that. It deflected off Saturn, but it wont pass another mass significant enough for a slingshot. Assuming it just falls under gravity She took the bait. Its heading for Earth, isnt it?

His face was like granite. If it continues on its merry course it will get here December of next year. Maybe its Santas sleigh.

She frowned. Twenty-one months. Thats not much time.

That it aint.

If the alert had been raised when this thing passed Saturn, and, you say, it actually destroyed a probe, wed have had years warning.

He shrugged. You have to set your threat levels somewhere. I always argued we werent suspicious enough. I had this out with your predecessor on a number of occasions. Looks like I was right, dont it? If we survive this we can review protocol.

If we survive this. His language chilled her. You think this is some kind of artifact, Admiral? Couldnt say. But you do believe its a threat? Have to assume so. Wouldnt you say?

She could hardly gainsay that. The question was what to do about it.

The World Space Council had only a tenuous relationship with the old UN, which since the sunstorm had focused its efforts on recovery on Earth. The Councils brief was to coordinate the worlds preparedness for any more threats from the unseen enemy behind the sunstorm, an enemy whose very existence had not in fact yet been officially admitted. Its principal asset was the navy, which nominally reported to the Council. But the Council itself was funded by and ultimately controlled by an uneasy alliance of the worlds four great powersespecially the United States, Eurasia, and China, who hoped to use space to gain some political ground back from the fourth, Africa.

And at the apex of this rickety structure of power and control was Bella, a compromise candidate in a compromised position.

In the short term, she thought, the three spacegoing powers might try to leverage the sudden irruption of an actual threat into some kind of advantage over Africa, which had become prominent since being relatively spared by the sunstorm. The tectonic plates that underpinned the Council might start to shift, she thought uneasily, just at the very moment it was being called upon to act.

Youre thinking politics, Paxton growled.

Yes, she admitted. As if this anomaly, whatever it was, was just a new item on the agenda of the worlds business. But if this was another threat like the sunstorm, it could render all that business irrelevant at a stroke.

Suddenly she felt weary. Old, worn-out. She found she resented that this crisis should be landed on her plate so soon into her chairmanship.

And, looking at Paxtons intent face, she wondered how much control she would have over events.

All right, Admiral, you have my attention. What do you recommend?

He stepped back. Ill gather more data, and set up a briefing on options. Best to do that back in Washington, I guess. Soon as we can manage.

All right. But well have to look at the wider implications. What to tell the people, or not. How to prepare for the incoming anomaly, whatever it is.

Well need more data before we can do that.

And what do we tell those we report to?

Paxton said, As far as the politics go its essential we make sure our mandate and capability arent diluted by politico bull. And, Chair, if youre agreeable, for the briefing Ill incorporate material gathered by the Committee.

She felt the hairs on her neck prickle a warning; after most of a lifetime at the upper levels of large organizations she knew when a trap was being set. You mean your Committee of Patriots.

He smiled, sharklike. You should come visit us sometime, Madam Chair. We work out of the old Navy Special Projects Office in DC; a lot of us are old navy fliers of one stripe or another. Our mission, grant you its self-appointed, is to monitor the responses of our governments and super-government agencies to the alien intervention that led to the sunstorm, and the ongoing emergency since. Once again your predecessor didnt want to know about this. I believe he thought dabbling with the wacko fringe would damage his fine career. But now we really do have something out there, Madam Chair, a genuine anomaly. Nows the time to listen to us, if youre ever going to.

Again it was hard to gainsay that. I feel youre drawing me into an argument, Bob. Okay, subject to my veto.

Thank you. Theres one specific.

Go on.

One beef the Committee has always had has been with the almost willful way the authorities have never followed up the hints of the alien. Developing our own weaponry and armor is one thing, but to ignore the enemys capability is criminal. However we do know of someone who might be our way in to that whole murky business.

Who?

A woman called Bisesa Dutt. Ex British Army. Long story. Shes the reason why I came to London today; she has a base here. But shes not around, or her daughter. Since arriving here I got word she may have booked herself into a Hibernaculum in the States, under an assumed name. Of course she may have moved on from there by now. He eyed Bella. With your permission Ill track her down.