Contact - Carl Sagan [167]
"Oh yes, poor Dave Drumlin. The late Dave Drumlin. You set him up. The professor you never liked."
Der Heer slumped still further down in his chair, and she had a sudden vision of him regaling Kitz with secondhand pillow talk. She looked at him more closely. She couldn't be sure. "During the decrypting of the Message, you couldn't do everything. There was so much you had to do. So you overlooked this and you forgot that. Here's Drumlin growing old, worried about his former student eclipsing him and getting all the credit. Suddenly he sees how to be involved, how to play a central role. You appealed to his narcissism, and you hooked him. And if he hadn't figured out the decryption, you would have helped him along. If worse came to worst, you would have peeled all the layers off the onion yourself."
"You're saying that we were able to invent such a Message. Really, it's an outrageous compliment to Vaygay and me. It's also impossible. It can't be done. You ask any competent engineer if that kind of Machine-with brand-new subsidiary industries, components wholly unfamiliar on Earth-you ask if that could have been invented by a few physicists and radio astronomers on their days off. When do you imagine we had time to invent such a Message even if we knew how? Look how many bits of information are in it. It would have taken years."
"You had years, while Argus was getting nowhere. The project was about to be closed. Drumlin, you remember, was pushing that. So just at the right moment you find the Message. Then there's no more talk about closing down your pet project. I think you and that Russian did cook the whole thing up in your spare time. You had years."
"This is madness," she said softly. Valerian interrupted. He had known Dr. Arroway well during the period in question. She had done productive scientific work. She never had the time required for so elaborate a deception. Much as he admired her, he agreed that the Message and the Machine were far beyond her ability-or indeed anybody's ability. Anybody on Earth.
But Kitz wasn't buying it "That's a personal judgment, Dr. Valerian. There are many persons, and there can be many judgments. You're fond of Dr. Arroway. I understand. I’m fond of her, too. It's understandable you would defend her. I don't take it amiss. But there's a clincher. You don't know about it yet. I'm going to tell you." He leaned forward, watching Ellie intently. Clearly he was interested to see how she would respond to what he was about to say.
"The Message stopped the moment we activated the Machine. The moment the benzels reached cruising speed. To the second. All over the world. Every radio observatory with a line-of-sight to Vega saw the same thing. We've held back telling you about it so we wouldn't distract you from your debriefing. The Message stopped in mid-bit. Now that was really foolish of you."
"I don't know anything about it, Michael. But so what if the Message stopped? It's fulfilled its purpose. We built the Machine, and we went to…where they wanted us to go."
"It puts you in a peculiar position," he went on. Suddenly she saw where he was headed. She hadn't expected this. He was arguing conspiracy, but she was contemplating madness. If Kitz wasn't mad, might she be? If our technology can manufacture substances that induce delusions, could a much more advanced technology induce highly detailed collective hallucinations? Just for a moment it seemed possible.
"Let's imagine it's last week," he was saying. `The radio waves arriving on Earth right now are supposed to have been sent from Vega twenty-six years ago. They take twenty-six years to cross space to us. But twenty-six years ago, Dr. Arroway, there wasn't any Argus facility, and you were sleeping with acid- heads, and moaning about Vietnam and Watergate. You people are so smart, but you forgot the speed of light. There's no way that