by Joe Haldeman
The only picture we had of the Others was a simple diagram they sent that we interpreted as having six legs and a tail. Maybe they did have seven legs, instead. So built a starship in their own image.
It was an odd shape for a vehicle, counterintuitive, but maybe my intuitions would be different if I had a seven-based number system.
Zero gee isn’t conducive to abstract thinking, which may be one reason space pilots have not distinguished themselves as philosophers. Another reason may be that they are basically jocks with fast reflexes. I pinged my pilot and said I was going to nap for a while, and he joined me in the bedroom for a few minutes of not napping. Then we did doze together, floating in midair with a sweat-damp sheet wrapped around us. I dreamed of monsters.
3
THE GRAND TOUR
The humans of course wanted to interrogate me as soon as Spy went back to its ship. But I hadn’t learned all that much about the creature. It asked all the questions.
We first went to the Martian quarters. It already knew the basic principles of our recirculating ecology; in fact, it knew more about some of the science and engineering than I did. It appears to have a memory like mine, perfect, but it had studied Martian physiology, for instance, with more depth than I was ever exposed to.
Part of what we discussed there is not translatable, because it has to do with an intimacy between Snowbird and me that has no human counterpart. To answer the obvious (to humans) question, it is not a sexual relationship, nor does it have anything to do with emotional bonding. It is a practical matter that has to do with being ready to die.
The pool that you built for us interested it; it wanted to know what humans gained by this demonstration of friendship. Altruism was difficult to explain, but it understood about doing favors in expectation of eventual return.
Then I took it around to all the crops. This took the most time, because for some reason it needed to know details about the propagation and maintenance of every species.
(I would call this a hopeful sign. Why would the Others need this information other than to help humans survive after some life-support mishap?)
Similarly, I took it through the warehouse area, which is mostly human food storage. It was interested in Namir’s homemade musical instruments. Music seems not as mysterious to them as it is to Martians; it asked me some questions that I could not answer; I said to ask Namir.
It also asked questions about the shop area that I could not answer, mostly about the weapons that obviously could be made there. They can’t be thinking that we will be making swords and pistols to attack them. I expressed this thought, and Spy said of course I was right. But I assume the situation is more complex than that and recommend that Paul or Namir, with their experience as warriors, engage him on this topic, to reassure them.
(I did not say anything, of course, about our conversation, our group meeting, on 8 May 2085, where we discussed the possibility of a kamikaze attack, using all of ad Astra as a high-velocity bomb. I assume that is no longer a possibility, so there was no need to discuss it.)
It was very interested in the swimming and exercise area, with the virtual-reality escape masks, or helmets. It looked at the exercise log carefully, perhaps to have a picture of each person’s physical strength. There was a long and odd discussion about the physical differences between humans and Martians, which covered things it must already have known. I think it was examining my attitudes (or mine and Snowbird’s) toward you humans.
I think that when we arrive at Wolf 25, the Others will want to exploit the difference between the two races and take advantage of the fact that we are, in some abstract essence, their children. As you know, from several conversations over these past three years, our allegiance is with you. Of course, that is exactly what I would say if I were lying, especially if I were on its side.
It wanted to investigate some private quarters. Since I am closest to Namir, I prevailed upon him. I explained to Spy about the sexual relationship among him and Dustin and Elza, as well as I can understand it, and how that mandates the arrangement of the sleeping area of each.
Of course, Namir’s bedroom is small (as is Dustin’s, since they are just for sleeping), and its walls are a constantly changing art gallery, thousands of reproductions from the great museums of Earth. Spy had difficulty understanding this, as do I. One thing Martians and humans have in common is a preference for darkness and quiet when we sleep. So what does it matter what’s on the walls? Dustin’s room is plain, with only an abstract picture he calls a mandala on one wall.
In Elza’s bedroom there is a large cube for showing movies, which usually are depictions of humans mating in various ways, which Namir explained as being an aid in their own mating, or I should say “fucking,” since I understand that Elza, like the other females, has suspended her reproductive function for the duration of the flight.
Of course Spy knew enough about human nature not to be surprised by that, as it was not surprised when we then visited the kitchen, where Namir pleases himself and the rest of you by preparing your food in various original ways. Neither we nor the Others see the point in changing the appearance and flavor of fuel.
I think we shared a thing like humor over your counterproductive need for variety in these commonplace aspects of life. I don’t think its motives regarding me are friendly, though, or simple; it seemed to be testing me. Perhaps it will do the same with you humans at a later date.
We heard Namir and Dustin making noise down by the swimming area, and backtracked to watch. They couldn’t play pool in zero gee, so they had improvised a three-dimensional variant, more gentle and slow than the original. I could not quite understand the rules, which amused them. Dustin said they had to make up the rules as the game progressed, since nobody had ever played it before.
This may be important: Spy revealed that the Others have a similar activity. Much of their time, like yours, goes to individual contests that have only a symbolic relation to real events. The compact way it described those contests did not reveal much, except that the physical actions are not accomplished by individual Others; they are done by beings like Spy, biological constructs that are autonomous but obedient. And the point of the game is not to win, but to discover the rules.
We completed the circuit by investigating the lounge and work areas, where most humans spend the waking hours that are not given over to strictly biological activities.
When Spy began to put on its helmet, Paul came over to operate the air lock. One person can do it alone, but it’s simpler to have someone outside the lock pushing the buttons. He told Spy he would start to fire the steering jets at 0230; best to be inside by then.
Before the outer door was even open, Carmen and the others were bearing down on me with questions.
4
OTHER-NESS
Fly-in-Amber let us grill him for exactly one hour. Then he said he would submit a written report tomorrow and went off to rest.
Namir wondered aloud how he would do that. Lying down is irrelevant in zero gee, but they never actually lie down, anyhow. Hard to sort out all the legs.
Having a conversation was odd, too, without a physical up and down. By convention, most people tried to stay upright, but if you didn’t hang on to something, you could start to drift. Paul let himself go every which way, I supposed to demonstrate how natural the state was to an old space hand.
We were in the compromise lounge, and it was cold. I told Snowbird we had to move into the dining area. She said she would come along for a little while.
Namir had put a collection of ration bars in a plastic bag with a drawstring. I took a peanut butter one and passed the bag around.
Snowbird bounced gently off the refrigerator and grabbed onto the dining-room table with three arms. “You were not too pleased with what Fly-in-Amber remembered?” she said to me.
“We could wish for more. But we’ll have years.”
“The next time it visits, we’ll have plenty of questions,” Paul said.<
br />
“Can you establish a radio link?” Meryl asked. “Or would it be better not to?”
“No reason not to,” Namir said. He looked around with a stony expression. “It’s a good thing we have nothing to hide. They’re probably hearing every word we say.”
“Through vacuum?” I said.
“Any Earth spook could do it. Spy could have dropped a microtrans-mitter in here while it was walking around, but you could be even more direct than that—attach a sensor to the hull and have it transmit the vibrations it picks up.
“I don’t think that would work once the main drive starts up again,” Paul said. “The vibrations would overwhelm your signal.”
“Maybe so.” His expression didn’t change.
“They’d have something like S2N,” I said. It’s a spook program to coax out data that’s buried in noise.
That brought a little smile. “How on earth do you know about S2N?”
“I haven’t been on Earth since ’72,” I kidded him, “but you can learn a thing or two in orbit.” It was an unpleasant memory. Dargo Solingen had used S2N to spy on Paul and Red and me, overhearing our whispered conferences under loud music. A day later, our secrets were headlines on Earth, and the Others decided it was time for us all to die. Sort of a turning point in one’s life.
“What it said about the Others playing games,” Dustin said, “to find out the rules. I want to know more about that.”
“They might view us as contestants?” I said.
“Or pieces,” Namir said. “Pawns.”
“Anything but rivals,” Meryl said. “If they perceive us as a danger, we won’t even get close to them.”
I nodded. “No matter what Spy says, we have to assume it can destroy us if it thinks we present a danger to the Others.”
“We ought to figure out a way to talk to its buddy,” Paul said. “The speeded-up Other.”
“Hard to visualize a conversation,” I said. “Eight minutes passing for us, for every minute it experiences.”
“Say something, play a round of poker, then listen and respond,” Dustin said. “Spy will always be our intermediary anyhow.”
Namir nodded. “We could do something like that. We just have to find a way to present it so it appears to give them an advantage.”
“Home team?” Dustin said. “We agree to go over there to talk?”
“That would be our advantage,” Namir said. “Get a look inside their ship.”
“Wait,” I said. “We’re not fighting them. It’s the opposite. We want them to feel safe, cooperating with us.”
Namir laughed. “Like a mouse negotiating with a python.”
“She’s right,” Meryl said. “We can’t see it as a contest. We already know what the result would be, in a contest of strength, or will.”
“I don’t know about will,” Namir said.
Elza snorted. “Spoken like a true man. You have balls, darling, but they’re no advantage here.”
There was a loud ping from the control room. Paul launched himself in that direction, somersaulting in midair, and slipped through the door. I could hear him saying a few words, responding to the radio.
He walked back, with his gecko slippers, looking thoughtful. “Interesting coincidence. We have an invitation from ‘Other-prime.’ To come over for an audience with His Nibs.”
“All of us?” I asked.
“Just four. You and me and Namir, and Fly-in-Amber.”
“Any danger?”
“Well, we’ll want to be tethered down on the way over and back, in case of a course correction blip. I can fix that easily with a guideline. Once we’re over there . . .” He shrugged. “We’ll be at their mercy. Exactly as we are here.”
Paul put off the turnaround rotation, even though it probably would make little difference. He got a roll of cable and a couple of pitons, ice spikes, out of the workshop, and I went along as fetch- and-carry. It was the first time either of us had been outside in over three years; we’d all done it as a safety drill before the engine started. You wouldn’t want to do it during acceleration. Like being perched on top of a rocket. One misstep, and you’d slide off and drop forever.
Hammering in a piton wasn’t simple in zero gee. There was nothing to hold him to the “ground,” so after each swing, he would rotate away from the spike. He’d foreseen this, of course, and brought along a hand drill to make a preliminary hole.
I held a light for him but looked away from it to preserve my night vision. The sky was beautiful, the stars brighter than on Earth, the Milky Way a glowing billow across the darkness. I wished I knew the constellations well enough to tell whether they were different. Orion looked about the same. Paul pointed out where our Sun was. A bright yellow star, but there were brighter ones.
We had safety tethers attached to the air lock. After the piton was secured, Paul jetted across first, unreeling the guideline behind him. I followed him hand over hand, trying not to tangle the three lines.
The air lock on the starfish-shaped craft was a barely visible lip. Paul drilled and hammered a piton right in front of it. He secured the guideline to give it about three or four feet of slack; if you held on to it, you could walk, after a fashion, from one air lock to the other.
We returned to our own ship to relax for a few minutes and ensure we’d be going over with full air tanks and empty bladders. There was no strategy to discuss; we’d just keep our eyes and minds open.
Fly-in-Amber went over between us, moving with characteristic caution. I didn’t mind going slowly. It was a long way down.
When we got to the air-lock lip, Paul opened the radio circuit—I heard a slight click—but before he could say anything, Spy’s voice said, “Come in,” too loud and too clear. The lips parted to reveal a red glow.
“Returning to the womb,” I said. We went in, and the lips closed behind us. The small red light inside my helmet, an air warning, glowed green.
“Is this safe to breathe?” Paul asked on the radio.
“If I wanted to kill you,” Spy said, “I wouldn’t have to go to this much trouble. This is exactly the same pressure and composition as you breathe over there.” He stepped in out of the gloom and made a circle with one hand. “Paul, get your feet under you. I’m going to turn on some gravity.” As the light increased, so did the feeling of weight. It was very feeble, though; much less than Mars.
“What kind of gravity?” Paul asked.
“Triton. About one-twelfth Earth’s gravity; less than a third that of Mars.”
The room was organic in a mildly disgusting way. I had to take a colonoscopy before they would let me go to Mars, but they did let me watch, and the walls here looked like the inside of my large intestine then, pink and slippery. That gave me a whole new attitude toward the air lock. There was no furniture in the room, no windows except for two portholes, one on each side of the air-lock lips. Not a sound.
“I will introduce you to the Other- prime, though of course it cannot respond directly.” He touched the wall, and a dark oval appeared, like wet glass. We stepped forward.
I’m afraid I made a little noise of alarm. It was, in a word, a monster. A word that shouldn’t be in a xenobiologist’s vocabulary, but there you have it.
The creature was all chitin and claws, hard shiny brown with yellow streaks and blobs. Six smaller claws, about the size of human arms, circled the thorax. A seventh one, twice as big, curled over the top like a scorpion’s tail. A powerful serrated vise.
The biologist in me immediately wondered what was in its environment that required such armor and strength. “How big is it?”
“About twice human size,” Spy said. “It won’t hurt you, though. Too warm out here for it to survive.
“It is looking at you through me and wants to say something. I will relay the message in a few minutes.”
I studied the creature while we waited. It looked more like a huge crab than any other terrestrial animal. No crabs on Earth were that big, I thought, except maybe th
e long spindly ones that live on the bottom of the ocean, spider crabs. This guy could eat them alive.
Which again raises the question, why? None of our speculations about its environment, living in liquid nitrogen, considered the possibility of strong, fast predators.
Of course, it couldn’t react fast, which would explain the armor.
Maybe our assumptions about body chemistry were wrong. Temperature chauvinism. The fact that this species is slow doesn’t mean that all nitrogen-based cryogenic life-forms are slow.
So that’s the next question. If the environment has swift, strong predators, what did the Others evolve from, when a snail could run circles around them? Well, just because they’re smart doesn’t mean they’re at the top of the food chain. There are plenty of environments on Earth where the crown of creation would be lunch.
It would be fascinating to investigate the Others’ planet and see whether it was biologically as complex as Earth. Mars never had been, or at least we’ve never found any fossils you could see without a magnifying glass.
Maybe the Others’ planet had a whole phylum of smaller and less complex crablike creatures, culminating in this beautiful example.
It was beautiful, in its way.
“It wants to congratulate you,” Spy said, “on having made it halfway. The odds are good you will continue on to Wolf 25 and arrive intact.
“It currently has no interest in destroying you. It reminds you of the obvious, though: this ship you are in has an autonomous intelligence that thinks faster than you can and won’t hesitate to destroy you, and us, whenever that might be necessary for the protection of our home planet.
“You are here on our sufferance. We are curious about you and wish to study you.”
“Why should you let us live?” Namir said. “You’ve already tried to destroy us once—why should we expect you will let us survive now?”
“Is that a question you wish me to ask Other-prime?”
