Free The Lure by Bill Napier

keep balance on the slippery road. His mood had swung from beatitude to desperate anxiety. He stopped at Petrie, his chest heaving with the sprint. ‘Pulsars. Fucking pulsars. Bleep bleep bleep in the Cambridge radio telescope. A secretive lot, that group, they sat on it for six months because they thought they were detecting little green men only it turned out they weren’t little green men, they were spinning neutron stars.’ He glared fiercely at Petrie, looking for reassurance.
    ‘Charlie, pattern recognition is my business. It’s why you asked me here, remember? No natural process could produce what you detected. That signal is the product of a mind.’
    Charlie smiled again, an enraptured saint. ‘The discovery of all time. The Nobel for sure.’
    ‘A Nobel Prize, Charlie, but that’s the least of it. Think about it. We’re not alone. There are thinking beings out there. What effect is this going to have on society?’
    ‘Who cares? The effect on me is a Nobel Prize.’ Then: ‘The pattern really is intelligent? You’re absolutely sure?’
    ‘Absolutely.’
    ‘You said a mind? A signal?’ Gibson’s face was distorted by a ferocious intensity. ‘Are you saying it’s a message?’
    ‘I don’t know what it is.’
    Gibson took Petrie by the arm and they reversed direction, back towards the castle and the receding hay-cart. His eyes were lit with an evangelical gleam and his words came out rapidly, almost staccato. ‘I’m very concerned about you, Tom, you need sleep, then you can waken up nice and fresh and crack the code, you’ll do that, won’t you, Tom? You’ll wake up nice and fresh and crack the code? Then we’ll all get big juicy Nobel Prizes, you for cracking the code and me for being the big cheese and we’ll all be famous just so long as you get some sleep and then wake up and crack the fucking code for Christ’s sake, please, just as quick as you can.’

10
    Poet’s Dream
    After the penetrating cold, the warmth of the castle hit Petrie like a sleeping pill. Gibson, however, was in a high state of excitement. He now decided that the young mathematician could endure a little more sleep deprivation in the name of science. He took Petrie by the elbow, guided him upstairs to the common room, propped him in a chair and bustled through to the kitchen. Presently he came back with a mug of strong, sweet, black coffee. ‘The cleaners turn up about eight,’ he said for no obvious reason. Then he vanished, singing loudly and tunelessly.
    Freya and Svetlana were first to appear, Svetlana in black jeans and sweater, Freya in the same long skirt and red blouse she had worn in the BMW. ‘Good morning, Tom,’ Freya said. ‘You look terrible.’
    ‘Like death warmed up,’ Svetlana added, flopping into a couch. ‘My great-aunt was a better cook than Vashislav’s and she taught me how to make pyzy which have been known to revive frozen corpses.’
    ‘Later,’ Gibson said curtly. He popped out of the door impatiently, popped in again, and repeated the cycle twice before Shtyrkov arrived. The Russian sat down heavily on the couch next to Svetlana; the armchairs looked as if they would be too tight a fit. He grinned expectantly at Petrie.
    ‘Tom has something to announce,’ Gibson said triumphantly.
    Petrie sipped at the over-sweet coffee. Exhaustion was blurring his words. ‘Vashislav’s suspicions were right. The signal can’t be caused by any natural phenomenon. It’s coming from an intelligent source.’
    Freya gasped briefly, and then there was a long, stunned silence.
    Shtyrkov muttered something in Russian, under his breath. Then Svetlana began to laugh and cry and Shtyrkov patted her shoulder. ‘Stay calm, child.’
    Svetlana produced a paper handkerchief, blew her nose and smiled sheepishly. ‘I suppose the first thing is to be sure that Tom is right.’
    ‘I can prove it. But the proof involves a bigger shock. I warn you, it’ll blow your mind.’
    ‘A bigger shock? Bigger