The Ghosts of Heaven by Marcus Sedgwick

I

 The low white dome clung to the summit of the hill, a glass wall of windows around the side overlooking the valley, looking like an oyster buried in the sand, with its mouth open a fraction.
 Edward Althing had been travelling for two days, from Cambridge down to London, out of Heathrow, via JFK to San Francisco, then in the car that had been sent for him, driving North hundreds of miles through the night and the Californian desert, until finally in a daze he’d seen a sign for Bear Creek as the sun came up and the driver, a monosyllabic giant called Ramon with weather beaten skin, had slung the springy car up off the freeway and into the hills.
 In the shimmering heat haze, in his jetlagged stupor, in the back of the bouncing Chrysler, nothing seemed real to Edward any more; not the fight with Juliet on the day the invitation came, not his flight from England, and least of all this gleaming white oyster dome, a blind beast but with a mouth, seeming to him like a trap, waiting to fall on the unsuspecting.
 Behind the trap, the globes and huts of the rest of the observatory sat also flaunting its whiteness against the only two other colours in view; the blue of the sky and the ochre of the landscape.
 The tarmac snaked up the last run of hill before the dome and the car leaped up it eagerly, and then Edward was out into the glare of the desert morning, clutching hands, nodding hello, yes, that’s my case, no that’s the only one, a wash before lunch perhaps, and all he could think was please, let me sit in the car again. The air-conditioned car.
 His case disappeared somewhere and before he knew it he was standing in a small bathroom off the main hall, clutching the sides of the basin. Half a joke flashed through his head but he couldn’t remember the set up or the punchline, and he focussed on finding the cold tap instead. There was a sudden rush of soothing cool and he flung his hands into it, then an urge drove him to shove his face under the running water and slurp like a dog.
 After a long time, he straightened, and pulled his hands down across his face, to stare in the mirror above the sink, and to fail to recognise the stranger looking back at him.
 He needed a shave, that’s all, he told himself, a shave and some sleep and then he’d feel a million dollars. He smiled.
 America. He was really here, in America, in California. In some tiny place that even the handful of people across the planet who’d heard of it thought had been shut down in the early sixties.
 Bear Creek.
 Present population: 22. Highest ever population: 1008, during the Gold Rush. A handful of prospectors’ shacks still dotted the valley, wooden ghosts of a hundred years before. Now, Bear Creek was the observatory and nothing more; a ship at sail on the desert, everything had to be driven in or driven out. There was a telephone landline, a single cord of cable that slung its way on poles of wood for fifty miles until it came to the nearest town. Electricity had once come from a generator, now from solar power and wind turbines. No mains water, the supply came from a spring reopened in 1954 when they built the observatory.
 Edward stumbled back out into the hallway and for a minute he was alone. What a building. When it was new, in the mid-fifties, it would have seemed as if it had landed from another planet, Edward thought. How apt. Even now, its smooth sleek lines, faultless curves and strange unexpected interiors gave it an otherworldly feel.
 ‘Dr Althing?’
 Edward turned to see a slim woman of middle age, or at least, a woman older than him.
 ‘Ed. Please call me Ed.’
 The woman smiled.
 ‘Tyler Brook,’ she said, and held out her hand. ‘Institute Director. I wrote you..?’
 ‘Yes, yes you did. Sorry,’ Edward shook his head, took off his glasses and wiped them on the hem of his shirt.
 ‘Still a little footsore?’ Tyler said, and Edward’s toes tingled at her West Coast accent. ‘You’ve had a long trip. Let’s get lunch. Then you can meet with Dr Lensmann.’
 She led the way out of the hallway, through a door and a corridor, and into a long white room, again, gleaming white.
 ‘The refectory. Ah! There’s Baxter now.’
 ‘Dr Lensmann?’
 As they crossed the dining hall towards Lensmann, Edward had a few moments to observe the great man unnoticed. Was he what he’d expected?
 Maybe. Your typical crazy scientist. A genius in his field but unable to tie his own shoes with any great degree of success. Maybe. What Edward saw was a white-haired man in his fifties, hunched over a bowl of soup, and concentrating on nothing else but the spoon.
 Tyler made the introductions, then left the genius and the youngling together while she found some food for them both.
 Edward stood looking down at the top of Lensmann’s head while he finished another mouthful, then the older man looked up with watery eyes.
 ‘Althing?’
 Edward nodded.
 ‘Strange name.’
 Edward shrugged.
 ‘Norse, I think,’ he said. ‘The Althing was the name of the Icelandic parliament.’
 Lensmann grunted, then grimaced.
 ‘So you know your ancestors, but that’s not why you’re here. You’re here because of your numbers, yes?’
 Tyler returned.
 ‘Baxter, don’t be rude to Dr Althing,’ she said, and Edward was amazed to see the gruff old scientist soften under her gaze. ‘Edward is the foremost algorithmicist in Cambridge, which in fairness probably makes him the best in the world.’
 Edward started to shuffle, raise a hand in modesty.
 ‘Don’t be shy,’ Lensmann said. ‘That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? Because of your numbers?’
 Edward nodded, and fought the impulse to clean his glasses again.
 Lensmann stood up, thrust out a rough hand.
 ‘ISIS welcomes you, Althing.’
 ISIS.
 There. Someone had said it.
 What was he doing here after all? Just because the invitation had arrived that day, that day of all days, he’d picked up his iPhone there and then and had emailed an acceptance of the offer. To come to America, to live in a community of less than two dozen people, and to apply ‘his numbers’ as Lensmann called it, to the great search. The search for intelligent life somewhere other than on planet earth.
 And yes, for two years at least they were going to pay him a fortune and provide food, lodging and everything else he’d need, but for what? To waste his career, and any chance of a reputation, on this crackpot scheme that had been closed down in the sixties?
 He pulled himself together and returned Lensmann’s handshake.
 There, it was done. The deal was sealed. He felt like Jonathan Harker at Dracula’s castle. Enter freely and of your own will. But you will never leave. The oyster trap had shut before Edward could flee its sandy mouth.

 ‘You will start work tomorrow,’ Lensmann said, as they walked down a curving corridor within the main building. ‘For now, you must be very tired. I will show you your room.’
 Edward nodded, and wondered exactly how far he was from home.
 ‘Five thousand one hundred miles is a long way for anyone to travel,’ Lensmann said, as if he’d read Edward’s mind. He hesitated for a moment, then walked on. He smiled at some private joke, then stopped.
 ‘Your room,’ he said, pointing at one of an infrequent series of doors in the curving wall.
 It was another coffee-table book example of modernist American fifties interior design, set somewhere around the back of the oyster dome, with a row of high windows that let in light but a view only of the sky. He could see a bedroom off the living room in which they stood, and a bathroom in another corner. There was a low sofa arrangement, a desk, some chairs, a rug. Everything was white, be it plastic, wood, metal or fabric.
 ‘This will be your home,’ Lensmann said. ‘But don’t worry, you won’t be alone.’
 He walked across the living room.
 ‘My room is right next door, and,’ he said, with a flourish of the hand to indicate a door that Edward had not seen on entering, ‘the rooms communicate.’
 Lensmann pushed the door open and Edward saw the mirror of his own room through it, though its whiteness was clogged by the detritus of a busy mind, books, papers, clothes strewn here and there.
 ‘I’ll let you settle in. Tomorrow we begin again.’

Go to Part II of The Ghosts of Heaven