Joe Haldeman SF Gateway Omnibus: Marsbound, Starbound, Earthbound

by Joe Haldeman

"I don't know that term."

  "I was afraid you wouldn't. Basically, some other individual decides it's time and applies enough energy to get it metabolizing again. A process that might take ares.

  "So in a sense, it's never really been dead. Though for a thousand ares or so, it's been no more alive than data stored in a machine."

  "How many of them are out there, alive, at any given time?"

  "It could be three or three trillion, I don't know. The only one we have to worry about is the speeded-up one on Triton. The others are thirty ares away from affecting us in response to anything we do. And it would take them ages to respond."

  "If some people, a lot of people, knew what you've told me, they'd be declaring war on Triton. Which would do a lot of good, I know."

  "A lot of expense for nothing. The best they could do would be to send a heavily armed and automated vessel out to find a small target beneath the surface of Triton and destroy it. But it's impossible."

  "Not theoretically. Not if a majority wanted it badly enough."

  "I meant practically. You realize how powerful that laser would be, close up?"

  "Paul worked up some numbers. If it could be aimed and used like the American Star Wars lasers were supposed to, they would be able to vaporize any conventional space vehicle, long before it got to Triton."

  "Ha ha." He nodded rapidly. "But think larger. Suppose this laser is far from being the pinnacle of their technology. Suppose they had one a thousand times more powerful. Suppose it was hidden on Earth's moon."

  "It could do some real damage, even if they stopped it pretty quickly."

  "It would be hard to stop, wouldn't it? And in less than one day it could destroy every city in the world and set fire to all the forests and plains. The smoke would persist long enough to stop agriculture."

  "Did ... did the Other threaten to do something like that?"

  "No, not in so many words. It did imply that the destruction would only take one day, and from that I extrapolated various possibilities. But it was not like a threat or a prediction." He paused for several seconds. "It's hard to translate the exact intent. It was presented as a theoretical possibility, almost an entertainment for the Other. Like a horror movie that could come true.

  "I think I know the leaders’ written language well. But I've never heard anyone speak it. Doubtless there are nuances that I've missed."

  "Only one day." We needed a scientist here. "I guess it could deflect a large enough asteroid to make a disaster like the dinosaur wipeout. Or release some kind of poison in the air. But wouldn't that take more than a day?"

  "Unless it was released at thousands of places all at once. But the ‘one day’ was only an implication. It could just stand for a short period of time. Maybe a short time in comparison to how long it normally takes for a species to go extinct. As I say, it's hard to tell whether it's being direct or speaking in metaphor and symbol."

  "Can you talk back to it?"

  "I don't see why not, at least in terms of technology. You could probably talk to it. It seems to understand English. Just go on the 6:00 news and say ‘Please, Mr. Other, don't destroy us in one day.’ But that would sort of give away our secret."

  "You could talk to it, though, in your secret language. I mean on the same news show. Without letting on that you'd talked to any human about what it said."

  "I'll do something like that, eventually. But first I want to see how it reacts to the Drake diagram project. That should be ready in a day or so." The Earth-side scientists were arguing with a consortium on Earth—of course including the Chilean astronomer who'd "cracked the code," and was turning out to be a real pain in the ass—trying to agree on a 29 X 19 matrix message to send back to Triton via ruby laser.

  "Maybe they should just send block letters. GOT YOUR MESSAGE. PLEASE DON'T KILL US."

  6

  Peace Offering

  In fact, they did a variation of that. The top five rows were taken up with the word PEACE in big block letters. Then there was a symbolic representation of an amino acid, alongside the same for some silicon-nitrogen molecule that might be a similar building block for its form of life, and then a question mark.

  A second message was a star map, looking down on the galactic plane, with Sirius at the center. (It would probably be the brightest star in their sky, too, if they came from nearby). The Sun's position was identified with a cross. Then there was another question mark.

  I wasn't too sure about that one—I mean, "We told you how peaceful we are. We'd never invade you. So why not tell us where you live?"

  The morning they were going to send the message, I got up at 5:00 and found a message that Dargo wanted to see me at 8:00.

  That couldn't be good news. Unable to concentrate on work, I surfed around the news and entertainment. I almost went to wake up Paul, but figured he was going to be busy with the message transmission, more ceremony than science. He was scheduled for three hours of VR interview after it, so he could use his sleep.

  I was, too, which is why I couldn't sleep. Dargo was probably going to tell me what I could and could not say. Good luck with that.

  I dawdled over coffee and hard biscuits. At five after eight, her door was open.

  "Please close it behind you. Please have a seat." She was studying a clipboard and didn't look up.

  The chair was hard and low. She kept reading for a minute and looked up suddenly. "You had a Martian in your room day before yesterday."

  "So?"

  "So what was he doing there?"

  "Well, I guess you got me. We were having sex."

  "Carmen..."

  "It's pretty wonderful, with all those fingers. You should try it."

  "Carmen! This is serious."

  "I've been in his room a hundred times. He was curious about what mine looked like. So?"

  She just glared at me. She pushed a button on the clipboard and it started playing the first Brandenberg Concerto.

  "You ... you were eavesdropping."

  "You were committing treason. Against Earth. Against humanity."

  "Talking with Red. I do that all the time."

  "You've never whispered under music before."

  I raised my eyebrows and didn't say anything.

  "What were you two talking about?"

  "You tell me. What does the recording say?"

  She stared at me for a long seconds, her mouth set in an accusing line. I knew that tactic, but finally broke the silence. "You don't know what it says."

  "I can't decipher much of it. But other people, specialists in sound spectroscopy, will be able to."

  "So send it to them." I moved closer to her face. "And be prepared to explain how you got it."

  "You can't threaten me. I have clear statements like this!" I heard my voice whisper "...got your message please don't kill us."

  "You're pleading with the Others, aren't you? You can't negotiate on behalf of the whole human race!"

  "You have it totally wrong." I stood up. "I have to talk to Red."

  "You don't know what you're doing. He's not your friend. He's the enemy."

  I paused at the door. "Do you have a favorite piece of music? Something loud?"

  * * * *

  We only had about an hour before the Drake diagram thing, and of course Red would have to be there, too. I called and asked him to drop by my place on the way.

  I found an ancient Louis Armstrong composition with the Hot Sevens, which gave us a pretty constant level of loud interference.

  After I'd told him about the meeting with Dargo, he folded all four arms and thought for a minute.

  "I see three courses of action, and inaction, with different degrees of danger," he whispered.

  "The easiest would be to just do nothing and hope that Dargo lets sleeping cows lie."

  "Dogs. Sleeping dogs."

  "Ah. Then there is the extreme other end: assume that the Other is bluffing and just broadcast the truth. That would be almost equally simple, but if the Other is
n't bluffing, it might be the end of the human race—and perhaps Martians as well."

  "But it said Earth could be yours."

  "It would have no more need for us, if the humans were gone. We don't know whether it can lie. Like a sleeping dog, ha ha.

  "As a middle course, we might enlist a confederate or two, for insight and perspective. On the Martian side, it would have to be Fly-in-Amber. On the human side, the logical choice would be Dargo Solingen."

  "Out of the question."

  "This is not about personality, Carmen. I don't get along with Fly-in-Amber, either.

  "Your great military philosopher Sun Tzu said to ‘keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.’ He had some experience with alien invasions."

  "None that loll around in liquid nitrogen and zap you with killer lasers. What about Paul?"

  "His engineering and science would be handy. But I suggested Dargo because she knows so much already. Making her an ally might buy her silence."

  He made a gesture I'd never seen before, pushing down on his head with both large hands until it was almost level with the ground. Then he released it with a sigh. "It's a pity life is not a movie. In a movie we could just throw her out the airlock and go about our business."

  "Making it look like an accident."

  "Of course. But then the detective would figure us out and show up with handcuffs."

  "Quite a few, in your case."

  "Ha ha. There is an intermediate course. We appear to enlist Dargo's aid, but don't tell her everything."

  "Lie to her."

  "Perhaps a necessary evil." I suddenly wondered how much of what Red had told me was the truth.

  "What would we keep from her?"

  "The threat itself? I take it she doesn't know that I can understand the message. We could tell her that much and then claim it was something less disturbing."

  "No ... she heard me say that we got the message, and ‘please don't kill us'—she can extrapolate a lot from that."

  Red nodded. "Merely mortal danger."

  I tried to keep my voice down. "The only thing we have on her is the fact that she broke the law making that recording."

  "There is also the fact that she apparently has little beyond that one phrase."

  I thought back to what she'd said. "True. Little enough. She didn't seem to know that you had decoded the FM message. ‘We got the message’ could refer to the Drake diagram thing. As far as she knows, we were conspiring to communicate with the enemy in English."

  He paused. "Until we learn differently, then, let's make that a working hypothesis: she thinks we don't have any more data than anyone else. Meanwhile, we enlist Fly-in-Amber and Paul, swearing them to absolute secrecy.

  "When the Other responds to Earth's overtures, we'll decide on our own course of action."

  "And if it doesn't respond? How long do we wait before we try to contact it ourselves?"

  "If it moves at one-eighth my speed, I'd say a week. Of course, it might have various responses prepared ahead of time."

  "Like destroying everything?"

  "No. If it were that simple, there would have been no need for the message it sent to Fly-in-Amber. We're safe for the time being."

  "Which could be hundreds or thousands of years."

  "Yes. As long as we don't do anything that threatens it or the Others back home. Or it could be hours or days." It made its humanlike shrug.

  My timer's buzz was barely audible over the festive jazz, Dixieland gone to Chicago a couple of centuries ago. "That's the ten-minute warning. Guess we better go up and watch them push the button."

  * * * *

  Just about everybody, human and Martian, showed up for the ceremony. One wall of Earth A was a glass one shared by its counterpart on the other side of the quarantine. We had more room per person, or entity, but they had champagne.

  After the short speeches and button pushing, the screen showed a roster for interviews at the two VR sites. Paul and I were scheduled first, though with two different interviewers. Paul had a guy from an MIT technical journal. I was stuck with Davie Lewitt, who was pretty and intense but not remarkably intelligent. She had interviewed me after the Great Hairball Orgy on Mars and pinned the name "The Mars Girl" on me. For a couple of years, it was ‘hey, Mars Girl,’ whenever someone wanted to annoy me.

  I was only a little sarcastic with her during the hour, but Dargo, who had been watching, gave me an annoyed grimace when she took over the helmet. She used more disinfectant spray than was necessary. But Oz gave me a broad smile and a thumbs-up.

  When Paul came out I touched his arm and cut my eyes in the direction of my room. He smiled, but wasn't going to get quite what he expected.

  You don't use paper wastefully in space. But it's one way to write something down and know that no electronic snoop can sneak a copy. As soon as we entered my door, I handed him the folded-over sheet that started KEEP TALKING—DARGO'S LISTENING! Underneath that was a summary of everything Red had told me about the frequency-modulation message, and our tentative plan.

  We chatted, mostly me talking, about our VR interviews. We undressed and I called for music, an obscure whining neo-romantic guitar/theremin collage by some Finnish group whose name I couldn't even read. But it was loud.

  When he finished reading, we got into bed and made appropriate sounds while whispering under the music.

  He nuzzled my ear. "So we do nothing until the Other responds. Then Red—and you and I and Fly-in-Amber—will send them back a message. In Red's language."

  "Right. Can you build a radio transmitter?"

  "We already have one that's rarely used. We could point it at Neptune and talk away."

  "I don't think that would be safe."

  "Probably not, if she's being fanatically thorough. But we don't have an electronics lab on this side. You can't build anything without parts.

  "So couldn't the existing radio have a little accident? It's got all the parts."

  "God, you're a devious woman."

  "Is it possible?"

  "Yes, of course. I'll study the wiring and be ready to disable it. In the course of testing the ‘repairs,’ I'll send this gibberish out toward Neptune.

  "But there's one thing you and Red missed. Dargo doesn't have to be that afraid of punishment when she admits to having spied on you. What can they do—extradite her to Earth? Dock her pay? There's nothing to buy here, and we're already in a kind of prison."

  "Well, Oz and probably the others would help us pressure to have her relieved of responsibilities. Deny computer access."

  "That could work. Make her stare at the walls until she begs to be thrown out the airlock."

  "I like the way you think." I straddled him. "The music's going to climax in about two minutes."

  "Slave driver." But he managed a coda.

  7

  Language Barrier

  Allowing for speed-of-light travel time, the Other took only twenty-some minutes to react to the Drake message—which meant that most of the response must have been prepared ahead of time, and it only had to choose which button to push.

  If, that is, it had been honest with Red when it described its temporal limitations. It did occur to me that there was no compelling reason for it to tell us the truth.

  Or to lie, if it was as powerful as it claimed.

  The answer to the message came in spoken English, in an odd American accent, which Earth quickly identified as David Brinkley's, a newscaster from a century ago:

  "Peace is a good sentiment.

  "Your assumption about my body chemistry is clever but wrong. I will tell you more later.

  "At this time I do not wish to tell you where my people live."

  Then it began a speech in a slightly different tone, that could have been prepared years ahead of time:

  "I have been watching your development for a long time, mostly through radio and television. If you take an objective view of human behavior since the early twentieth century, you can understand w
hy I must approach you with caution.

  "I apologize for having destroyed your Triton probe back in 2044. I didn't want you to know exactly where I am on this world.

  "If you send another probe I will do the same thing, again with apologies.

  "For reasons that may become apparent soon, I don't wish to communicate with you directly. The biological constructs that live below the surface of Mars were created thousands of years ago with the sole purpose of eventually talking to you and, at the right time, serving as a conduit through which I could reveal my existence.

  "'Our’ existence, actually, since we have millions of individuals elsewhere. On our home planet and watching other planets, like yours."

  Then it said something that simplified our lives, mine and Red's. "This is a clumsy and limited language for me, as are all human languages. The Martian ones were created for communication between you and me, and from now on I would like to utilize the most complex of those Martian languages, which is used by only one individual, the leader you call Red." Then it went into about two minutes of low gravelly wheedly-rasp-poot and went silent.

  "So what was that?" Dargo said.

  Red favored her with a potato stare. "Please play it back for me."

  He listened. "Can you speed it up by a factor of eight or so?"

  "No problem," a voice said from the screen. "Just give me a minute. I can double the speed three times."

  We waited, and then it came back sounding more like Martian.

  "Not much in the way of information there. I can write it down for you, phrase by phrase. But it's mostly ceremonial—good-bye and a sort of blessing—and some technical information, which frequencies it will monitor for voice and for pictures. Though I think it probably monitors about everything."

  "Why was the initial message so slow?" asked the screen.

  "The Other said that it had spent days translating that English message and rendering it as American speech. It recorded it more than a year ago."

  Red hesitated. "We talked, Oz and Carmen and Paul and I, about how slow their metabolism must be because of the low temperature of their body chemistry. They must move slowly." He wasn't going to say anything he'd learned from the still-secret message.