by James Gunn
Jeremiah looked at MacDonald's hand until it dropped to his side. “What do you hope to decipher? The voices?”
“The voices from the Thirties?” MacDonald said and shook his head. “Those bits and snatches of the radio shows of that time, rebroadcast to us from the direction of Capella, are just the wave of the hand, the attention-getter.”
“Then what is the Message?”
“We're not absolutely sure. We think it's in the bursts of static between the Voices. Slowed down, filtered for noise, for real static, it can sound like a real message—dots and silence, dots and silence.”
Jeremiah looked skeptical. “You could read anything you wished into dots and silence.”
“We haven't. Not yet. But we're trying. The computers are working on it, trying to make some intelligent pattern out of it. We'll get it done. It just takes time. That's what we need—time.”
Jeremiah said, “I can't promise anything.”
“We'll let you know first.”
“I can't promise anything,” Jeremiah said again, but this time it was like a promise. “Now leave me alone. And, Judith! You must not see this man again!” He motioned toward Mitchell. “I have told you so before, but I tell you now. You must choose between us. If you choose him, if you choose to disobey me, then I will not see you again.”
“Damn it!” Mitchell began, stepping forward.
Judith stopped him. “Go on, Bill,” she said. She stepped outside the door with them. “I'm not going to see you again, Bill, not alone.”
“I need you,” Mitchell said. “We made plans—”
“He needs me,” Judith said, “He's old. He's not well. He's not good with people.” She went back inside.
“What a strange mixture,” Thomas said. “He can make thousands believe he speaks with God, and he can't talk to another human being without trying to push him away, without rejecting the communication.”
“You should try to understand him, Bill,” MacDonald said gently. “He's asking for understanding in his way. He's asking for help. And you two are a lot alike.”
“Damn him!” Mitchell muttered, his soul filled with disgust for the human race. “Damn everybody!” He looked around. “Well, nearly everybody,” he said.
The taxi rolled silently through the traffic toward the airport.
Seated between Thomas and Mitchell, MacDonald said, “You've done a good job.”
“Hah!” Thomas said.
MacDonald raised a hand to emphasize his sincerity. “I mean it. You and Bill and the others, with your articles and releases and interviews and programs and all the other techniques of communication, have won general acceptance for the Project. No, not just acceptance—enthusiasm. The news that we have received a message from intelligent beings who live on a planet which probably circles one of the twin suns of Capella has been received without skepticism—with excitement but no panic. I don't know how it could have been done any better.”
“I do,” Mitchell said.
“You're setting your goals too high,” MacDonald said. “After all, for fifty years nine persons out of ten had never heard of the Project, and those who had mostly thought it was a waste of time and effort. And for more than fifty years experts have predicted that people would become hysterical when they were presented with proof of the existence of other intelligent creatures in the universe.”
“Experts!” Thomas said.
MacDonald shook his head and chuckled. “All right, gentlemen, accept credit for bringing back radio.” He leaned forward and twisted a knob until it clicked.
Music filled the taxi, first some of the current folk revival, then dance music from the Thirties. After a moment that faded and the sound that came back up was filled with static and broken transmissions.... Mitchell reached to turn it off.
“Some accomplishment,” he said.
Thomas stopped his hand. “Wait!”
“crackle,” came over the radio. “Say goodnight grace poppop music cracklepop could have knocked me over with a fender popcracklecrackle knee this is rochest cracklepop music cracklepoppoppop matinee idol larry poppop music: au revoir pleasant cracklecrackle the little theater off poppopcrackle eye doodit cracklepop music poppoppop who knows what evil popcracklepop...”
“That's it, isn't it?” Mitchell said. “The Message itself.” He found a strange kind of conviction in the poor quality of the reception.
“Part of it,” Thomas said.
His voice was a little shaken, Mitchell thought, as if he were reliving that moment in Puerto Rico when he had heard it first, when he had changed from a skeptic with a muckraker's tools raised to bury the Project to a dedicated Project partisan with a self-assigned mission to convince a great variety of publics that the Message was real, that it was good, that there was nothing to fear. His friends had not believed the change in Thomas, not at first, but then they too had listened to the Message and to George and had agreed to help. Mitchell had joined in the first month.
“Those are the sounds of yesterday and today,” the radio announcer said. “Those are the sounds of the stars. That is part of the Message being received from Capella, forty-five light-years away from Earth. If you have any suggestions for deciphering the Message, send them to Robert MacDonald, the Project, Arecibo, Puerto Rico. And now—another episode from a story begun ninety years ago....”
The voice faded and eerie music came up, modulated, and a deep, voice asked, “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?” The music came back up and faded. “The Shadow knows—”
Thomas twisted the knob until it clicked.
“A brilliant idea,” MacDonald said, “but I don't know how we're going to answer all the mail.”
“Any worthwhile suggestions?” Thomas asked.
MacDonald shook his head. “Not yet. But who knows what brilliance lurks in the minds of men?”
“Well,” Thomas said, “we didn't expect any. Tell you what—we'll send somebody down to draft some standard replies, set them up on your computer.”
“Good,” MacDonald said.
“What are you going to do about the Chinese?” Thomas asked. “They've called the Message a capitalist plot to distract the world from American imperialism. Maybe we should have informed them before the public announcement.”
MacDonald shrugged. “Don't worry about it. Their scientists have requested tapes.”
“The Russians have announced that they picked up the Message a year ago,” Mitchell said.
“They haven't asked for tapes,” MacDonald said. “They're probably picking it up for themselves now that they know where to search.”
Thomas sighed. “I'm afraid we're just creating more trouble for you.”
MacDonald smiled. “'Law, Brer Tarrypin!’ sez Brer Fox, sezee, ‘you ain't see no trouble yit. Ef you water see sho’ nuff trouble, you des oughter go ‘longer me; I'm de man w'at kin show you trouble,’ sezee.”
The taxi pulled up at the airport and MacDonald retrieved his credit card from the meter as he got out.
“Come with me to the gift counter,” he called over his shoulder to the others. “I want to pick up something for Maria and Bobby.” When they caught up with him as he walked across the vast expanse of imitation marble, he said, “I've switched your reservations. I want you to return to Arecibo with me.”
The floor vibrated as the electrical catapult launched another jet. A moment later came a low “whoosh” and a fading thunder.
“I've got things here I should take care of before I leave,” Mitchell said.
“For the sake of the Project,” MacDonald said, “I think you should stay away from Judith for a while.”
“You and Jeremiah,” Mitchell said.
“He's a prophet, all right,” Thomas said gloomily. “And a danger.”
“That's why I want you to come back with me,” MacDonald said. “I want you to get the feel of the Project again, the reality, the excitement of the impending break-through. If you can communicate this, it might cou
nteract the growing influence of Jeremiah and his followers.”
Thomas shook his head. “We won't counteract Jeremiah. He's an honest man possessed by vision, like a poet. He has his own reality.”
“He's an old bastard,” Mitchell said.
“He's a man whose basic beliefs have been threatened,” MacDonald said, “and he reacts by defending his world. The Solitarians cannot co-exist with the fact of intelligent life on other worlds.”
“Then why did you invite him to the Project?” Mitchell asked.
“Because he is an honest man as well as a fanatic,” MacDonald said. “I think we have an even chance, or a little less, that if he sees what we are doing, sees the translation, he will accept it and be able to change.”
“Or he will reject it or be destroyed,” Thomas said.
“Yes,” MacDonald admitted. “There's that possibility.”
“How serious is his threat to the Project?” Mitchell asked.
“The most serious since its founding,” MacDonald said. “It is ironic—and somehow peculiarly appropriate to the history of the Project—that its most critical moment should come at the time it accomplished what it was created to do. Fifty years without results went unchallenged, but the moment we received a message our existence was threatened.”
Thomas laughed. “Scientists are dangerous. They bought you off with toys, but when the toys turned out to be real they began to worry.”
“What can the Solitarians do?” Mitchell asked. “Besides talk among themselves.”
“They're big,” MacDonald said, “and they're growing. They want the Project stopped, and they're putting pressure on Senators and Congressmen. In spite of your good work, in spite of what I've called public acceptance, they still manage to exploit mankind's basic fear of meeting a superior. And there's no doubt that the Capellans are superior.”
“How so?” Mitchell asked, and as he heard the words he felt that his tone was a little sharper than he had intended.
The floor shook again. The gift counter was just ahead. MacDonald already was running his gaze along the shelves.
“They're clearly older and more capable than we,” MacDonald said. “Their giant red suns are older than our sun by millions—perhaps billions—of years, depending, say my astronomers, on the effect of mass on stellar evolution. In any case, we have not even been able to pick up radio broadcasts from other worlds, much less rebroadcast them so that the original world could receive them again.”
“'Who's that little chatterbox?'” Thomas half-sang, half-chanted, his gaze distant. “'Pepsi-Cola hits the spot.'” He shivered.
MacDonald bought a new book, a light romantic novel about love and peril in orbit, for his wife, a three-dimensional scale model of the stars surrounding Earth for a distance of fifty light-years, including, of course, Capella, for his son, and then, admitting that an eight-month-old infant would have little use for the model—at least for a year or two—bought him a large stuffed toy ostrich. It was so big that it had to go into the jet's baggage compartment.
“Robby!” Maria said in the little waiting room of the airport just outside Arecibo. She was frowning as she tried not to laugh at the gigantic bird with the long legs that stood in front of her. “Hush, now, Bobby,” she said to the crying child in her arms, “it won't hurt you.” And then she said to MacDonald, “What a monstrous bird to give a baby!”
Mitchell thought she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. He wondered what she must have been like at twenty or even thirty. Between Maria and his work, MacDonald had two magnificent reasons for remaining in Arecibo as much as possible.
“I'm a fool,” MacDonald said, stricken. “I just can't seem to understand my own family.”
“Considering,” Thomas said, “how well he understands and communicates with everybody else.”
“Ah!” MacDonald said deprecatingly. “What of Jeremiah?”
“At least you got him to listen,” Thomas said “and to promise to come.”
Maria's smile burst upon MacDonald. “You did, Robby? You won him over?”
“Nothing as final as that,” MacDonald said. “Here, now, let me hold him.”
He held out his arms to the squalling boy. The baby went to him willingly, trustingly, but not looking at the stuffed bird all the same. In a moment or two the infant's yells turned to sobs and the sobs to silence.
“Now, Bobby,” MacDonald said, “you know your father wouldn't bring you anything that would hurt you—though, to be sure, it might frighten you at first. Well, come along,” he said to the ostrich with its black eyes enigmatic in their plastic sockets, “we will grow up to you.”
He tucked the bird under his other arm, turned toward the door, and stopped. “What am I thinking of?” he asked Maria. “These are my guests. You know George, our own doubting Thomas. And this other handsome gentleman is Bill Mitchell, who is a star-crossed lover.”
“Hello, George,” Maria said, presenting her cheek to be kissed. “Hello, Bill,” she said, extending her hand. “I hope the stars are as kind to you as they have been to me.”
“It's not all that serious,” Mitchell said, trying to keep his tone light. “You know, a stubborn father, a girl who must choose—it will all work out.”
“I know it will,” Maria said, and Mitchell was swayed for a moment by her conviction. “Come,” Maria said, “I will fix you all a good Mexican supper.”
As Maria withdrew her hand from his, Mitchell caught a glimpse of the white scar that crossed her wrist.
"Querida," MacDonald said apologetically, “we ate on the plane.”
“You call that eating?”
“Besides,” MacDonald said, “we are on our way to the Project. We've still got work to do. Tomorrow—before these gentlemen must fly back to New York—you can fix a big dinner. Okay?”
Partially mollified, she gave him a comic shrug and a broad “Hokay.”
They put their bags and the ostrich into the trunk of MacDonald's car. The baby was relieved when the stuffed bird disappeared, and he settled comfortably onto his father's shoulder. Maria drove. She handled the car skillfully. They were well-matched, Mitchell thought, Maria and MacDonald—both beautiful, both capable. The old steam turbine hummed peacefully under the hood as they climbed the quiet green hills in the night.
It had been a long day that started in New York and ended in Puerto Rico by way of Texas and Florida, and Mitchell should have been exhausted. But for him the evening was enchanted. He did not know why. Perhaps it was the Puerto Rican quiet after the urban congestion of Texas, perhaps the automobile taking them farther from civilization, perhaps the calm beauty of MacDonald's wife, perhaps their domestic chatter in the front seat. Usually this kind of thing embarrassed him, this talk of food and family in which he played the role of an unwilling eavesdropper, but somehow this was different.
Maybe, he thought, people are not so disgusting.
He looked at Thomas. Even Thomas felt it. This man of tangled nerves, one-time poet and novelist, sometime muckraking reporter, now committed propagandist for the Project and its cause, was staring quietly out a window as if he had packaged all his worries and mailed them back to Manhattan.
The journey in the moonlight went on. Mitchell found himself wishing it would never end, this trip beyond time and space, but then he saw below them a valley that gleamed metallic in the night. Across the valley some giant spider had been busy spinning cables in a precise mathematical pattern; it was a web to catch the stars. Beyond it they came upon a giant ear cocked to the sky to hear the whispers of the night....
And then the car drifted onto a broad parking lot that gleamed phosphorescently in the moonlight, and came to a stop beside a long, low concrete building. Mitchell blinked. The spell faded. It faced slowly. Looking back later Mitchell thought that it continued to color his impressions for as long as he stayed on the island.
They got out of the car. MacDonald placed the sleeping child gently in the seat and strapped him down.
He kissed Maria and murmured something about his plans.
Thomas and Mitchell took their bags out of the trunk; MacDonald removed the ostrich. “I'll keep him at the office for a while,” he said, “until Bobby gets used to him.”
The car whispered away. MacDonald opened the door to the building. “Here we are,” he said, as if they had walked across the street from the Texas airport.
Thomas stopped in the doorway and motioned toward the distant steerable telescope, moving slowly on its supporting arm. “You're still searching?”
MacDonald shrugged. “Just because we picked up one message doesn't mean there are no others, that our search is ended. And we have engineers who are good at listening but not so good at understanding what they hear—so far, of course, none of us have been very good at that—and we don't want to lose them, to see the team broken up before the game is over.”
They entered the building. The corridors were painted concrete with tiled floors lighted by radiant fixtures in the ceiling. From the cars in the parking lot Mitchell had assumed the place was busy, but somehow he was unprepared for the bustle Men walked purposefully along the halls, papers in their hands, nodding at MacDonald as if he had never been away, or talking eagerly to each other and never seeing MacDonald and the strangers. Or women moved past, more sociable, talking to MacDonald, asking about his trip, about Maria and Bobby, being introduced to the visitors.
MacDonald smiled at the purposeful scene and quoted Horace:
"[F]ungar vice cotis, acutum
Reddere quae ferrum valet exsors ipsa secandi."
And then MacDonald led them down the hall to an open door. “Here's our listening post,” he said to Mitchell, pulling him by one arm into the doorway. For some reason Mitchell did not mind being guided.
The room was filled with electronic equipment, a computer, recording devices; it smelled of ozone. Two men were in the room, one at a panel against one wall, tinkering with its wiring, the other sitting in a chair with earphones over his head. He looked up and waved and turned one earphone out toward MacDonald in a gesture of invitation. MacDonald waved back and shook his head.
