Spectrum 5 - [Anthology]

by Kingsley Amis

“That’s hard to say, sir. I suppose I hoped to, but I was look­ing more for something that would answer a lot of questions. I knew it would be my last chance.”

  Finley’s tufted gray eyebrows pulled together quizzically.

  “I mean things like their language, sir. Their music. Their impossibly splendid ethics. The air of sophistication and assurance in everything they do.” The explanation sounded lame and inadequate even to Ted. Grimly, he continued. “Call it curiosity, maybe, but I was going to have a look in those blind spots.”

  They eyed each other for long seconds, Finley drawing thin blue smoke from his cigar, and Ted beginning to itch beneath his wet clothing. The director finally spoke, his voice sardonic. “Find anything?”

  “I did. In sector twenty-seven, a grove of trees, there is a hid­den trough of water. Large enough for the children to have learned to swim in.”

  Finley frowned, studied the fine ash at the tip of his cigar. “You’re certain it wasn’t a natural formation?”

  “Quite. There was a stone dam.”

  “Hm-m-m.” Finley rolled the cigar carefully between his fin­gers. “Any ideas about it?”

  “No, sir. Not yet.” It was petty of him, Ted knew to drag this out so.

  “Anything else?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, dammit?”

  “At sector thirty-five, blind since ‘98. There’s a spaceship just inside the zone.”

  Ash fell from the director’s cigar onto the rattan carpeting. “Ridiculous, Jepson. The U.N. hasn’t lost any craft. They’re either in Arizona, Australia, or trying to get past the moon. And, besides, if one had fallen, Radar would have spotted it. What gave you—”

  “Excuse me, Dr. Finley, but this wasn’t any ship of ours. It was small, just about fit into this room. It floated six inches off the ground. The grass around it was trodden down, and some­thing that might be a folding chair stood nearby. I say it’s a spaceship with some sort of gravity drive. It wasn’t built on this planet. And I suggest you get some pictures of it quick.”

  Dr. Finley set about relighting his cigar as if nothing of importance had been said. From behind a cloud of smoke he shot Ted a swift and hard gaze. “You sober, Jepson?”

  “Of course.”

  “Too bad. Maybe there is something up there.” He threw the cigar into a huge pottery tray and stalked angrily about the room.

  Ted couldn’t figure it. One of the most momentous events in earth’s history had occurred, and Finley expressed displeasure. He asked the older man about this.

  “Don’t you see, son? If you’re correct in your assumptions, it spells the end of Project Peace. The islanders have undoubtedly been in contact with this ... this visitor. What good are they to us now as a study of mankind? We’re on the eve of discover­ing how to live with ourselves . . . maybe only two or three generations from it, and suddenly the stars are in our back­yards. We’re not ready. We’re no more ready for space than we were for the printing press, or for atomics. We’re savages, trying to discover how the islanders live in peace and in happiness, ad­justed to their environment. It’s too soon, Jepson. Too soon by at least a couple of hundred years.”

  “You forget one thing, sir,” Ted told him quietly.

  “What?”

  “The islanders undoubtedly know of him, as you said. And he undoubtedly knows of us. But they’re giving no more indication of that knowledge than they gave of knowing how to do the crawl. Why haven’t we heard them talking about that great globe? Why aren’t they up there gathered around it, squatting on their haunches wondering about it? How long has it been there?”

  In silence, old Dr. Finley mulled over what Ted had said. Three minutes later he picked up his phone and called the submarine commander from his bed. “Captain, I’m sending a man down to pick up a pair of swim-fins and a Cousteau lung. He’s under my orders. Chap by the name of Jepson. Thanks.”

  He called Stores. “I want a waterproof transceiver. Sound and sight. A small one, hand size. Technician Jepson will be over in a few minutes to pick it up. Good-by.”

  He turned to Ted, studied him bleakly. “You realize my position, I suppose. If there’s nothing up there . . . I’m sending you because you’ve already been seen by the islanders. It hasn’t made an observable impact on them, aside from the swimming business. So there’s no use showing them another man.” As he began getting into his clothes, he explained that Ted was to keep the two-way open from the moment he touched land top­side. He was not to establish contact with the sphere—that was strictly a U.N. affair—but was to send a close-up of it, then back off up into the hills and hide the transceiver, aiming it to send images till it ran down. “All right, son. Get to it.”

  An extremely curious group of men were on hand at the sub docks to see him off. They helped him into the swim-lung, as­sisted him in buckling on the rubber fins over his sandals, and after Ted had clambered awkwardly down into the dark lapping water, handed him the transceiver.

  “Bring me back a blonde,” shouted one of the sailors from the sub. His words echoed strangely in the stone and water vault. The lung and the fins made it simple going, despite the two-way’s drag. Once outside, and surfaced into the pale moonlight, Ted made for a better landing spot than the isolated beach. He had no intention of ever scaling those rock walls again, so he swam a few hundred yards down the coast and put in on a high reef of coral that formed a rough, natural jetty. Pulling himself carefully up over the sharp incrustations, he scrambled ashore and unfastened the lung from his chest. This and his swim-fins he ditched in the profuse undergrowth and turned on the two-way. When Dr. Finley’s face and shoulders glowed into the dollar-sized screen, sunk into the set’s butt end, Ted told where he was and checked reception.

  Then he turned inland, oddly self-conscious as he passed be­fore the hidden eye and mike units, each time resisting the im­pulse to thumb his nose or grimace into them. Nerves, he guessed. He was pretty highly keyed. He forced himself to take it easier.

  Reception, both sight and sound, faded completely away as he neared the blind spot. Ted thought it over, then backed out and checked when the worried-looking Finley reappeared.

  “You faded, too,” said the director. “Some sort of natural blanket, you suppose?”

  Ted didn’t think so. “Let me go in closer, sir,” he whispered. “Maybe it’ll lift closer in. If it’s from the ship, it’s bound to have a sort of umbrella effect, or his stuff wouldn’t work, either.” He began to move forward while Finley chewed that over with one of the electronics men. The blanketing could have a central no-zone, he supposed, but there was no telling how close. Thirty feet from the ship? A yard?

  He entered the meadow.

  It was still there. But now a light burned within it, a soft and faintly greenish glow, like the low flare from an early cathode tube. Something about it served to impress upon Ted the ab­solute alienness of the ship. His skin prickled uncomfortably as he considered a few of the grimmer possibilities: hard radiations, for one. Should have brought a counter. Extraterrestrial germs. Should have— He ran a hand over his mouth. Should’a stood in bed.

  A glance showed the transceiver still dead. He moved in closer, tempted by the craft’s great windows and the half-seen objects within.

  “Hello,” said a mild tenor voice behind him. In English.

  Ted whirled, automatically hefting the mass of the two-way. “Peace,” continued the voice. “And speak island.”

  He came forward from the pool of shadow cast by a boulder. A human, Ted saw with relief, clad like himself in shorts and sandals. No, not quite human . . . taller, more slender, and with huge black eyes almost twice the size of Ted’s own. But de­cently humanoid. Thankfully, he put aside all worries of intelli­gent fungi, frog creatures, and other Sunday supplement spawnings.

  “That is yours?” He indicated the alien ship.

  “Yes. An old model, but one to which after long years of use I have become attached. It gets me there.”


  Ted took a long breath and asked the question. “Where?”

  “Back and forth. To this planet from others unknown to you. My home is in another star system. One nearer the center of the galaxy.” He stepped closer, an effortless grace to his movements that suggested his accustom to greater gravities than earth’s. “May I compliment you on your composure?”

  Ted made the palm-up island gesture that meant acceptance, acquiescence. The motion caught the other’s notice. “I tried to make them quit that. Semantically,” he used the English word, “it’s too broad. By the way, I am called Eren Tu.”

  “Jepson.” He swallowed with difficulty. “Ted Jepson. You tried to what?”

  “I tried to teach the motion away. Gave them nicer variations if they must supplement their conversation with visual signals. Gesturing is a trait of your communication about which we know relatively little. While quite familiar with your printed lan­guages, we found it more difficult to study the meanings of winks, salutes, shrugs, and the like. Your films and earth to moon broadcasts are helping, however.”

  Weakly, Ted spoke the island word expressing utter bewilderment and requesting immediate explanation.

  “I can appreciate your emotions, friend. Suppose we sit over there on the grass and make ourselves comfortable.” He led the way. “And if you have been worrying about my communicating a sickness to you, don’t. Our races have a common origin and although we have evolved with slight differences, we are basically compatible. Many meetings prior to ours have proven this.”

  Dazed, Ted sat. “Go slowly for me, Eren Tu. There have been other meetings?”

  Many times, he was informed. Eleven hundred earth-years since the first routine reconnaissance and contact, the visitors from space had, on their periodic checks, learned our languages and sat with our finest minds in attempts to comprehend our be­wildering culture.

  “But why was there no record of such contacts. Surely—”

  “Will you be believed, Ted Jepson? Besides, those we sought out were wise enough to recognize the impossibility of earth’s being accepted into galactic society.” It was a rule, he explained, that races had to measure to certain minimum standards.

  “Such as?”

  A recognition and acceptance of the literal immortality of individual personality. That was grounds for automatic membership. A peaceful, yet technically advanced people could enter, if their dominant philosophies contained no dynamically dangerous errors. Or if a race possessed certain extraordinary talents, peculiar to themselves, but which could be beneficially used by others, they might be acceptable.

  “And earth?”

  Eren Tu studied Ted’s face a moment before replying. “Earth possesses quite a little of all the eligibilities, but not enough, I fear, to offset its inherent danger to a delicately ordered galactic confederacy. Can you guess what that is?”

  Without too much reflection Ted spoke. “Our warlike na­ture?”

  “That is but a manifestation of your illness. You are made frustrated and angry, and driven to your wars because you have such poor tools for thinking and for communicating with each other. That is why we tried. That is why I have been here, off and on, for over ten years. I am a language instructor, one of several who have taught the islanders a simple form of the tongue spoken by everyone in civilized space.”

  There was a long pause during which Ted noted the other had an extra joint on each thumb. Not that it mattered greatly. He was far more perturbed by what Eren Tu had said. As a philologist and student of semantics he recognized the truth of the other’s statement. Humans never had managed to communi­cate more than fractionally with each other. And, as they thought almost entirely with words, how could their very con­cepts be worth much? Envy and its inevitable animosity tugged him as he regarded the large-eyed, vaguely sympathetic features of Eren Tu.

  “And what if we just came barging into your exclusive society without the invitation?”

  The other smiled, a grave wise smile. “That will not happen.”

  Correct again. Ted thought bitterly of the countless attempts, in the last twenty-five years, to get a ship farther than Mars. Something always went wrong. All electrical equipment would fail; cosmic radiation increased capriciously, dangerously; strange vertigoes assailed the crews. Let them play at voyaging between earth and Mars, but beyond— Discourage them.

  “I’m sorry,” Eren Tu told him. Stop them like the mad dogs they were.

  “In time, perhaps, Ted Jepson,” he suggested softly.

  Two or three thousand years, maybe, when they’d evolved a language to help them out of kindergarten. A language—

  “But the islanders have taught many of us to speak your tongue! It’s being taught in several of our universities. If we were told that’s all we had to do—learn the language—we’d all do it.”

  “In time, perhaps,” he said again. “You see, it is one of the basics of galactic civilization that we tell no one how to mature. That is something a people must do for themselves.”

  “But why,” Ted asked, “did you come to the island and set up school?”

  For the first time, Eren Tu frowned. “We became impa­tient,” he said. There were certain attributes and talents native to earthlings, he explained, which would be valuable. Earth’s unique sense of humor and the absurd, for one. It was needed to freshen and revitalize certain other races. To lend its peculiar nu­trition to a great stellar group grown somber and static with age.

  An infusion of earthlings was also longed for because they alone of the humanlike peoples possessed a great number of latent extrasensory abilities. “To say nothing of your tremen­dous natural energies and drive,” he added. “When word was re­ceived that this Project Peace, as you term it, existed, there were certain liberal factions who maintained it would not be a viola­tion of observational codes to teach the subjects, the islanders, our tongue—after first conditioning them not to speak of us within hearing of your microphones. In that way, earth could do what it wished with the language, could mature if it pleased. And while, as you say, thousands of your people arc studying to speak it, there has been no discernible change in their natures. Wars still threaten to involve them. Greed and anger and other suicidal tendencies are increasing, instead of lessening. Even you, Ted Jepson, who can talk with me as well as the islanders, have an aura tainted with violence. Why, I cannot say. It is probably something in your heritage which not even semantic correction can touch.”

  “But the islanders,” put in Ted, puzzled.

  “Yes. The islanders have reacted as we had hoped you all would. They are stable and loving and just. But they know no other language, you see. They have always thought in it.”

  Ted plucked a blade of grass and chewed its tender stem thoughtfully. It was as bitter as his mood. What a perfect vicious circle: We can’t get in because we’re not invited. We’re not in­vited because we’re antisocial. We’re antisocial because of our clumsy thought and speech processes, and they’ll stay clumsy be­cause we can’t get in. “You’ve wrecked Project Peace, too, you know. Maybe we could have made it without your . . . help.”

  “You are compensated for our interference. You have the language. A fair trade.”

  Ted shrugged. “Perhaps. And what about these poor devils? The islanders? What have they got?”

  Eren Tu looked for a long moment in the direction of the vil­lage. “That is being debated by my superiors. There are some who hold we should wipe out all memory of our visits. Others want them taken from the island and admitted as special wards to our society. Word of their decision should reach me any hour now. An important happening was predicted for tonight, and I don’t believe your coming was meant.”

  “Predicted?”

  “Yes, Ted Jepson. I spoke of your race’s extrasensory abilities. Apparently certain areas of the islanders’ brains were activated by the proper semantic processes. That has happened in non­human species. All manner of mental talents have been dem­onstrated when the thinking h
as been properly changed. You realize,” his tones became self-deprecating, “I’m speaking as a layman. That isn’t my field. At any rate, after warning me that the technician who taught them to swim was coming up—”

  Something extremely ironic dawned on Ted. “They know of the project?”

  “Certainly. They’ve always known of it.”

  Ted’s laboring mind turned up a wry memory; a scrap of joke about the researcher who bent down to peer in at his laboratory ape, only to find an inquisitive brown eye at the other side of the peephole. “Go on,” he said wearily.

  “They look only so far into the future. The distance seems to depend not only on the individual but on the nature of the event. It varies—a few hours, at the most. Beyond that they say the pictures are blurred and often inaccurate, colored, I suppose, with imagination.” Eren Tu broke off, appeared to be listening intently. Then he sprang to his feet and peered down the grassy slope into the darkness.