Hannah gawped at the view from Rose McAllister’s corner office, ogling the city full of green space. To her left was Blackford Hill, the golf course and gorse of Braid Hills just beyond. Then further away were the Pentlands where you could walk for miles and not see another soul. She looked at Craiglockhart Hill then Corstorphine to the west, could make out the tangle of bridge supports beyond. Then she looked closer at the castle, the Royal Mile, the monuments of Calton Hill. Her own flat was amongst the treetops of the Meadows, where Esha and Ravi were staying. And her gran’s house too. And the big cat, and the dead bodies that matched the feet, and the people responsible. Then she looked east, the stretch of Salisbury Crags, Thomas’s police station in its shadow, Arthur’s Seat and Crow Hill where they’d spread the ashes of a lost boy a year ago. Then further east to Berwick Law and she could even make out the white knuckle of the Bass Rock. She felt a sudden rush, overwhelmed by all the lives in the city, all the losses and heartbreaks, small victories and disasters, people trying to catch a break. And all those trees, like a parallel society, releasing seeds and spores, living and dying amongst us unnoticed.
‘Sorry,’ Rose said, diving into the office. ‘Last minute student snafu.’
She threw a big smile at Hannah, who felt a glow. Some people just had charisma and could make you feel good. She was glad she would be working for this woman from September.
‘Sit.’ Rose went behind her desk, logged into her laptop and lifted some printout pages. ‘Sorry, I like to work on paper sometimes, such an old dinosaur. And the poor trees.’
Hannah looked around the office, a huge star map took up one wall. She spotted Sirius, Antares, Vega, stars she knew more from sci-fi than physics so far, but that would change with her postgrad work. On the other wall a poster of the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico, a humungous grey dish embedded in an expanse of jungled mountains, trees and vines on every side.
‘So,’ Rose said, lifting a pencil and tapping the pages. ‘Want to give me some context?’
Hannah had sent her José’s data. She wasn’t smart enough to analyse the information he’d given her on a flash drive so she emailed the only person she knew was able to give her an answer.
‘I just thought you might be interested enough to take a look, that’s all.’
Hannah tried to keep her head up, eye contact, but she felt blood rising to her face at the obfuscation. The look on Rose’s face said she felt it too.
‘Come on.’ Rose sat back. ‘Hannah, I’m looking forward to you joining our team, I think you have great potential, but I’d prefer it if you were straight with me.’
Hannah nodded but didn’t speak. She wiped a strand of hair from her face and pulled at her earlobe.
Rose smiled. ‘Of course I had a look. Not because of anything you said, just because I’m a physicist, it’s our job to investigate.’
Hannah stuck her lip out in agreement.
‘So this is José’s, right?’ Rose said.
Hannah smiled.
‘You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to work it out,’ Rose said. ‘Credit me with some smarts.’
‘You’re the smartest person I know.’ She spoke without thinking then felt embarrassed about brown-nosing her future boss.
Rose gave her a withering look which ended in a big smile. ‘Just tell me, do I need to worry about José?’
Hannah shook her head, didn’t want to get the guy in trouble. ‘I think he maybe needs some support.’
Rose lifted a sheet of paper. ‘And this stuff is his?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well.’ She stared at her screen then back at the papers in front of her. ‘I can’t see anything wrong with the data.’
Hannah frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘These are definitely fast radio bursts,’ Rose said. ‘I did the number crunching, all the filters and analysis, then I passed the data to a colleague at Berkeley, he said the same.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means that whoever discovered this is a smart cookie. FRBs are only usually identified at big radio telescopes like that place.’ Rose waved at the Arecibo poster on the wall. ‘They’ve very rare, and take a lot of data, analysis and skill to detect. And luck.’
Hannah shook her head, she always felt one step behind Rose in their conversations.
‘Which means José is either very smart or very lucky,’ Rose said.
Hannah didn’t know whether to say it or not, but she leaned forward anyway. ‘So you’re saying this really could be a message.’
Rose ran a hand through her hair. ‘Come on, you’re a scientist, you know about proof and probability. Could it be a message from extraterrestrial intelligence? Yes, it could. But there’s no proof. At the moment we don’t know what causes FRBs, could be supernovae, neutron stars, pulsars. Or aliens, sure, that’s a possibility.’
‘What about the Morse code?’
Rose stared at her. ‘What?’
Hannah gulped, didn’t know how to go on. ‘I mean, is there a pattern to the bursts?’
‘They seem like standard FRBs, regular intervals, typical amplitudes and frequencies.’ Rose frowned at the papers in front of her. ‘Are you saying aliens are communicating with José in Morse code? You know that’s ridiculous.’
‘I mis-spoke, I didn’t mean Morse code.’
Rose narrowed her eyes. ‘Then what did you mean?’
Hannah breathed deeply. ‘I got confused with something else I’m working on, that’s all.’
Rose sighed and put the papers down on the desk.
Hannah thought of José ranting in his flat, Olivia losing her baby, now pregnant again, the two of them struggling in a world seemingly set against them.
‘We’re asking the wrong questions,’ Hannah said eventually.
‘What?’
Hannah waved out the window at Blackford Hill, where they’d stood last time. ‘The great silence. Why we don’t hear anything from all the life out there in the universe. You said we were asking the wrong questions.’
‘OK.’ Rose was cagey and Hannah felt for the first time as if she was a step ahead in the conversation. She started to realise what she needed to do for José.
‘I think I’ve been asking the wrong questions,’ she said.