by Huskyteer
Suddenly Belt’s projected image became two, and then four, and then he seemed to be surrounded by a great herd. He felt something wet spray onto his nose, and he could smell them; dozens of people, crowded close around him. Slowly, his trembling eased. He took deep breaths, calming himself.
“Thank you. Thank you for bringing us back.”
“That is our most important function,” Belt signed. The phantom herd vanished from his eyes as quickly as it had formed, leaving only Belt’s persona signing to him. “Now, become calm and think. Leave the last signal alone and consider other questions for a moment. The Hukai will want to know why the aliens sent this message directly to Treaty space. How could they know we were here?”
Whitemane snorted. “Why worry? No species primitive enough to use radio could threaten us, or the Hukai.”
“But they must have known we were here. How?”
Whitemane started to spin again. Then he stopped, stock still. His eyes went wide in wonder.
“We have it. We understand! They didn’t know.”
“But they must have known! They beamed the signal to us!”
“No. Employ basic thought-discipline. The aliens couldn’t know we were here. Logic, therefore, tells us they didn’t.”
“You’ve fallen into a paradox. How can they know to send it here, and not know to send it here, at the same time?”
“They played the odds and got lucky. We know, mad as it seems, that they wanted to send a radio signal to announce themselves to aliens. With their crude technology, concentrating all power into a narrow beam was the only way they could project a powerful signal far enough out into the sea of stars for anybody to hear. Since they weren’t starfarers, as far as they knew each star they saw had an equal probability of harboring civilization. Given that situation, what was their best probability of success?”
Belt pondered for a moment. Its clock speed was so fast that the hesitation was probably for effect more than anything else. “They should have sent their signal toward the highest concentration of stars they could see.”
“Which, if they are in the Neighbor Galaxy, would have been here. This globular cluster. Treaty space.”
“Extraordinary! I estimate a high probability your analysis is correct. But why? Why announce themselves to a hostile universe? Were they such warriors they were sure they could defeat any comers? If so, the Hukai are right to fear them.”
“Perhaps they thought interstellar war was impossible. It would be impossible, or nearly so, if the speed of light were an unbreakable barrier. Most primitive races believe this to be true. Our aliens probably did too. Thinking nobody could attack them, they didn’t think announcing themselves was dangerous.”
“We think you are right. You surprise us with your insights.”
“We thank you. But why the multiple messages later? Why the attempts to jam each others’ signals? That’s insane! Refusing to send messages to the stars is prudent, but jamming one signal with another, stronger signal, just makes the senders more obvious.”
“It hints at herd-madness.”
“Yes. The poor aliens must have had conflict on their world. Different herds, each with its own philosophy of rule, so cornered-mad with fear that each herd could see only evil in the others. Until they became so full of herd-hatred that they would oppose each other in all things, just for spite. Even to the stupidity of trying to jam an interstellar message.”
“That is a high order of insanity, but historical files include 1,733 known examples of such behavior. In 95% of known cases such herd-madness led to war, as on our homeworld before the Herd of Herds came to be. In 52% of known cases, it led to extinction.”
Whitemane shuddered. “War. We dreamed of war last night. We dreamed of the screams of the dying. We dreamed of landships rumbling across the pasturelands, smashing everything. We heard fires roar and buildings collapse. We heard the mares of our harem we have yet to form, we heard our foals yet unborn, screaming as they died. We couldn’t see anything, or smell; just hear. It was only sound, but our hearts nearly burst at the terror of it. We wouldn’t have believed mere sound could frighten us so.”
In the corner of his eye, Belt’s projection shifted side to side on its hooves. Its body language showed approximately Level 3 uncertainty. “We would try to interpret your dreams, but they are too strange. Sounds. A dream of only sounds. We have never encountered that. Your minds’ deeper levels, and perhaps even the Herd-Souls themselves, must be trying to tell you something. There is truth there. Reach for it!”
Whitemane froze in place, staring at nothing. “Sounds,” he signed.
“Yes, you dreamed of sounds. What of it?”
“What if the last message is more primitive than we could have imagined? What if it’s analog?”
“Then there’s no way we can decode it.”
“What if there’s nothing to decode? The variations in frequency are in the audio-frequency range themselves, and so might represent sound. Such a signal, since it is not digital, decodes itself automatically when replayed. Assume this is so. Convert the final signal to sound, based on those assumptions, and play it for us.”
“Analyzing. Programming. Ready.”
“Execute.”
Sounds, strange and wonderful sounds, filled the habitat. Whitemane froze in place, his eyes wide with wonder, as he heard music for the first time.
“Play it again.”
Belt did.
“Again.”
“No. We can monitor that this signal is causing strange stresses, in previously unknown patterns, in your neural pathways. Does this signal disable you? Is it a weapon?”
He shook himself. “No, not a weapon. We understand it. We understand!”
“Then we suggest it is best you prepare your report for the Hukai. They come soon.”
Whitemane took a deep breath. Reluctantly, he tapped the floor with his hoof and bobbed his head.
“Yes. They can never understand it. Yet we must try to explain it to them.”
“We are ready to record your findings.”
“No. We will give our findings to the bugs directly, by sign-of-hand.”
“Is that wise?”
“Play the signal again. No, not wise, but we must do it.”
Again the music played. The methane wind rocked the habitat, the darkness beyond the window held terror, but he was unaware of these things. He let the sounds carry his soul away from this place, as he decided what to have Belt check, what to analyze and have Belt analyze, and what to tell the bugs.
* * * *
Something moved in the murk. The image of a person on video display came alive. “It being two days, and fulfillment of contract being due. Tell your understanding,” it signed.
“Our computer is now transmitting our translation of every message but the last.”
The bug paused half a minute. “Correct,” the image signed. “Our understanding is it being same. Tell understanding last message.”
Rage gripped him. He was at the glass, baring his teeth, rearing to strike it with his forehooves, before he knew how he’d gotten there. The bug outside flinched back, as if it were about to run away.
Whitemane screamed. He spun in a circle, three times around, grinding his teeth, spittle flying from his mouth. Somehow he forced himself to a stop, although every muscle in his body ached with rage, with the need to lash out. “You pack of meat-eaters! You understood all but the last message, but you made us waste time translating them all? In the name of the Herd-Souls and the nine hells, why?”
“Data redundancy check. Being need to know you understand. You understand goodly. Now tell understanding last message. Transmit.”
Whitemane took a deep breath and turned to face not quite toward the glass. His rage faded away to a strange kind of pity. The poor, sad Hukai! They were as ugly inside as they were on the outside, and there was absolutely nothing they could do about it.
“We understand the signal,” he signed, with gentleness
in the motions of his hands and arms. “But we can’t transmit it as digital data, because it isn’t that at all. It’s a language of a type unknown, something completely new to Treaty Space.”
The giant cockroach stood dark for quite a long while. “Explain.”
Whitemane twitched his fingers and his computer played the sound again. “This message confused us because it is analog, representing sound. It was too simple for us to understand, at first. The gods laugh at us for that. It was a message in sound, but such a strange thing must have seemed natural to these aliens. It appears they used sound to generate their form of speech.”
“Sense of atmospheric vibration speak using are inferior oxygen breathe lifeforms, yes, sometimes.”
“You are our clients. It would be impolite to contradict you. You can’t hear sound yourselves, can you? We know, we know, you won’t tell us anything about yourselves, but a sense of hearing would be little use to beings who live in a constant methane gale.”
The bug stood motionless and dark. The sounds of the alien transmission ended, and then started again from the beginning. Whitemane lowered his head, as if exhausted.
“We have analyzed these sounds for you. As you say, some oxygen-breathers have languages based on sounds their bodies make; languages of the standard type, conveying words, concepts, requests, and thoughts. Perhaps these aliens did too, but if so, this isn’t it. It’s a different kind of language altogether.
“These sounds were from artificial devices, made of wood, brass, stretched strings and membranes, various things. The frequency spectrum shows this clearly. These sounds aren’t speech from the throats of living creatures.”
The sorrow in the alien sounds built. It was the agony of loss, given a language of its own, and it was the most lovely thing Whitemane had ever heard. It made him want to curl up and mourn all who had ever died, but it calmed him and uplifted him too. That was good, because he had to keep talking.
“There were perhaps a hundred or more sound-making tools, and tiny variations indicate each was operated by a living being, not a machine. These aliens must have valued this activity as much as anything in life, to put so much effort into it.
“We think these aliens achieved something unique. They had not one language, but two. What they sent us here, the very last of their works, their greatest achievement, was unique in the galaxy. It is a story written in their second language, their Language of Emotion.
“Their other messages tell us about them. How they grew in number and power. Then they sent competing messages, and jammed each others’ signals. That speaks of herd-madness. They lost themselves in struggles for herd dominance. That can only end in war.”
“War?” The bug shifted.
“Yes, war. But you don’t have to worry. Listen to this. Sorrow. Then they climb out of sorrow, triumph, but sink back into the sorrow again. Everything is cut off by a sorrow so powerful we are surprised that even you soulless bugs can’t feel it. Everything ends.
“The message couldn’t be clearer. They destroyed themselves. Their message says ‘We have vanished from the galaxy, and taken with us everything we dreamed, everything we created, everything we were, and everything we could have been. Mourn us.’”
The bug flashed. There were other flashes in the murk. They went on for a long time.
Finally the image signed “Agents instructed fund transfer. Leave now.”
“They’re gone, bug. And whatever they were, they took great beauty out of the universe when they died.”
“Worthless. Failed Second Great Test; built technology, yes yes, but destroyed selves with.” Then the video screen went blank, and the monster behind the glass went away.
Whitemane hurried to get himself into the pod. If he tarried, they’d probably collapse the habitat on him, even though he’d given them everything they wanted, and more.
“Is your data safe?”
“Redundant copies made. Launch in thirty heartbeats. Soon we will be back with our herd.”
“Yes. But our-the-stallion-Whitemane’s world has changed forever. The language of emotion has changed us.”
“We can’t see how an alien language could have any such effect on you.”
“No? Perhaps it has, or perhaps not. Time will tell.”
* * * *
Ruff tapped on his data pad, getting the story down for the folks back home. He kept the pad turned so it hid his claws from this leaf-eater. Whitemane was a nice enough fellow, but predator’s claws did tend to make the Herd People nervous.
“But why? Why would they send this last message to us? How could it possibly have helped them, when they faced their own extinction?”
“When we-the-stallion-Whitemane thought we would fail in our contract, when we thought the Hukai would kill us, we told our computers to record our story in their permanent memory. We wanted some tiny chance to be remembered. It must have been the same with these aliens.”
“That is a tremendous story. I’m astonished to discover that you, the Founder and Director of the Institute, didn’t invent sound-art yourself.”
“No. It was the gift of an alien race who went extinct twenty thousand years ago. We-all-of-us owe them much for the joy it brings us. We-the-stallion-Whitemane owe them far more; we owe them everything. We owe them our meaning in life, our purpose, our freedom, our beloved harem, our foals. We owe them this land, these mountains and streams, lands where we-the-stallion-Whitemane can run for a day and a half in any direction and never see anything that isn’t ours. It is much to owe a race dismissed by our philosophers as worthless.”
“I take it you don’t believe in the Three Great Tests, then.”
“Philosophy simplifies the world for us; that is its purpose. But it can simplify things too much. When are real-world questions ever so clear-cut as philosophical ideals?
“We think the Three Great Tests have some truth. They warn us of the dangers we all face, even now. Can we develop technology? Can we avoid destroying ourselves with it? Can we live in peace, or at least mutual indifference, with other starfarers?
“These are all important questions. Yet by the standards of the Three Great Tests, the Hukai are worthy, even though they have never created anything good or beautiful. Even though their lives are mere existence, with no purpose, not even pleasure. And by the standards of the Great Tests, these poor dead aliens, who gave us so much, were worthless.
“We-the-stallion-Whitemane can’t accept the judgment of the Great Tests. We say life should be more than just survival.”
Ruff tapped on his computer pad. “I agree with you.”
“We knew you would. We saw you when the students played their new major-work this morning. We saw the light in your eyes. We know how high your hearts can soar.”
Ruff felt a warmth at that he never would have thought he could have felt toward a leaf-eater. He smiled. “It was wonderful. The sound-art touched me. And yet I have never heard the First Sound-art itself.”
Whitemane turned his head and tossed his mane. “Have you not? Then this is the time to hear it.”
He twisted his upper torso so he could reach back and pull something from his left saddlebag. It was a keyharp, Ruff knew.
Whitemane braced the keyharp between the shoulder of his right foreleg and his chin. He fingered the chord keys with his right hand, took up the plectrum in his left, and began to play.
The theme was simplicity itself; at first, just one note repeated again and again, unchanging for several measures. But beneath that one note, the alien composer had woven a progression of chords of impossible depth, as if trying to show that even in one note alone there is more beauty than anyone could possibly know.
And then the melody moved, and built. Whitemane’s computer began to produce the sounds of accompaniment as the ’taur himself followed the melody where it led; sorrow, triumph, the crashing, heartrending minor chord that ended it all.
Ruff could hardly breathe. Shaking his head, he finally whispered “It is…b
eautiful.”
Whitemane put his keyharp back in his saddlebag and looked off across his lands for a long moment. “Yes. As lovely as anything we can ever hope to create. Hear the sorrow and think on it. Marvel as we do at how these creators can still touch us, after so much time, across such great gulfs of emptiness.
“Those creators were not worthless! And they never died. They live on. They speak to us in this, every day. We-the-stallion-Whitemane love the sounds of their last message. It makes us think about fate and the stars, and fills our hearts with a great joy and a great sorrow. In that lies the other message hidden in the transmission, the one we never told the Hukai.”
Ruff blinked. “What? How could you possibly bring yourself to conceal a truth from those…those creatures when your life depended on what you told them?”
Whitemane turned away again. He might be watching the sun set behind the mountains; it was hard to tell.
“We didn’t tell them because they could never understand it. They are true philosophers; everything is an ideal for them. Exchanges are all win or lose. Beings are only worthy or worthless. Never both, never anything in between, never first one, then after a while the other.
“These aliens taught us the greater truth. This, their sound-art, tells us that eternity is long. In its depths all things will find their end and fade away. They will soar for a while and then vanish, however great they were, or however small.
“In that there is great sorrow, but also great hope. For as measured against eternity we all win, we all lose, and none of us are worthless. And in these sunset hours we remember the poor foolish creatures who invented the language of emotion, and we mourn them.”
A BAG OF CUSTARD, by Michael H. Payne
It was late Friday afternoon when my dog Bruce walked into the front room carrying a paper sack in his jaws. He put it on the floor, looked up at me with his big, brown eyes, and said, “Look, Jim, I’ve got to go out of town this weekend. Could you watch my bag for me?”
