Chapter Sixteen
I felt like I'd been hit with a ton of bricks or something. Had I really missed a year of CowBelle's life because I'd pulled away? Had I really believed she was dead for a year when she was really alive and only right across town? Had I really believed the wild stories of a crazy person claiming they were from outer space when they were not true?
All these questions fogged my mind for a long moment as I sat there in the passanger seat of Fabritz's van staring up at the building before us. Gliese -- or CowBelle or whover the hell she was -- grabbed my hand and pulled, "Nick! Don't listen to him, don't listen to him, he's lying, he's trying to slow us down, to stop us from stopping the Whitenoise!"
"I --" I glanced at her then at him, and I felt... torn. I wanted to believe Fabritz, to believe that CowBelle was alive... but I didn't want to believe this was what had become of her. I didn't want to believe that this was permanent. Better to believe her dead forever than to believe she'd lost everything that had made her...her.
"What proof do you have that you are Keplar?" Fabritz asked, tauntingly, "What proof have you shown him? You show up in someone else's assumed DNA with their looks, their voice, their mannerisms. Sure you spout some cool spacey sounding factoids that he doesn't know enough to question... but what proof do you actually have?" he asked.
Gliese spat the words, "You're an arrogant little bitch aren't you?"
"Hot headed on Keplar, are we?"
"Don't tease her," I snapped, turning to him. I glowered at him. "Why didn't you call me? Why didn't anyone call me? Why did everyone let me walk away?" I asked, the questions overflowing from my guts. "Why didn't you try harder to tell me?"
"You didn't want to hear it, Nick," Fabritz replied.
I shook my head. "No... no, something about this doesn't make sense..."
"The fact that she's claiming she's a freaking alien might have something to do with it," he suggested.
"If we wait much longer to shut down the Whitenoise signal, then you'll have all the proof you need. You'll have an entire army of Keplar soldiers descend on this planet like nothing even your wildest sci-fi stories have depicted..." Gliese looked at me, desperation in her eyes and face, "Don't let him lie to you, don't let him poison you against me. Nick, I need you right now... Please. Don't stop believing in me now."
My mouth went dry.
"Please," she repeated thickly. "Don't leave my side now."
"I'm not going anywhere," I replied.
"You've got to be kidding me," Fabritz said from inside the van.
I turned to look at him, "Look, what can it hurt... If she's crazy, all we did was play with a couple switches for a minute. If she's not then we save humanity." I shrugged. "Either way, we owe it to Bella, don't we?"
Fabritz took a deep breath. "Nick... she needs to go home, she needs to be medicated, to be taken care of by her parents, not paraded around NASA headquarters, at the mecca of astronomers, for all of her once colleagues to see what she's become. She deserves to be respected, to be remembered with dignity... not... like this." Fabritz's eyes looked tired, defeated.
Gliese's jaw was set.
"Why would CowBelle -- even if she's suffered trauma -- want to stop the Whitenoise Signal?" I asked him, "That project was her life. It meant everything to her. She's not gonna get a bump to the head and suddenly want to destroy everything she worked so hard for. Why would she come back with such a determination to kill the signal? Explain that to me."
Fabritz took a deep breath, "She wanted to stop it the night she died," he said quietly.
"What? Why?"
"She wanted to cancel the project because of the money we were using. Even if Keplar was inhabited by life it would take 1200 years for our message to reach them. She thought the money for the Whitenoise Project would be better redirected another way. Like for funding promising young astronomers' education." Fabritz looked at Gliese, then back at me.
"Bellatrix believed in her project," Gliese said, shaking her head, "She never would've wanted to dismantle it... Never."
The passion in Gliese's voice was exactly the sort of passionate response CowBelle would've had to such an accusation. Which made it even mor confusing to me. Was the passion there because she was CowBelle or was she right that CowBelle would never want to dismantle the project? Either way, something didn't make sense. "Look... both stories... are impossible," I said, "Whether Bella's alive or Gliese is a Keplar, neither story sounds entirely true to me."
Gliese turned to me. "Nick... please. He's trying to change your mind, he's trying to stop us. I warned you back at our house, back in Tennessee. I warned you they'd try to change your mind."
"Fabritz," I said, "What would it take to stop the signal?"
He rubbed the back of his neck, "Something just shy of a miracle."
I looked at Gliese, "And we'll have proof when we finish ceasing the signal?"
She nodded, "Absolutely."
"Okay," I said, "Then let's kill the signal."
Whitenoise by Pengi
