McGillicutty stood up and leaned in toward the hologram to get a better look. The grim red of the sphere made his face into something forbidding and sepulchral. “I knew you were working on cracking their signals, Marcia, but I had no idea you had gotten so far. You should have come to me for help. With imagery this complex, you had to make some choices and interpretations you’re not trained to make. How solid is this? I mean, how reliable could this be?”
“It’s close, very, very close to what was sent,” Marcia replied in a steely voice. “I’d say the colours, for example, are within angstroms of the intended value. Aside from bringing the latitude and longitude lines up when you asked, I haven’t enhanced or manipulated it at all. Time scale and physical scale, I have no idea on. This could be a record of a beach-ball-sized object popping— or a planet or a star being wrecked. All I know is it seems to be important to the Charonians.”
“What in God’s name is it?” Raphael asked in the darkness.
The room was silent for a long time. “This is a damn sophisticated four-dee image,” McGillicutty said at last, in a voice that seemed to be louder than it had to be. “How the hell did you manage to crack it?”
Marcia laughed, a low, throaty chuckle that came from the darkness, and a gleaming flicker of teeth flashed. “I told you I thought it would make sense to start at the end,” Marcia said. “I wanted to show you that I really had something before I explained how I got it. I know it seems amazing that I could come up with images and data so fast—even more so when I have no idea what the data mean. I wish I could take credit for cracking the enemy’s codes—but I can’t. These messages were designed to be decoded.
“In fact that’s the thing that worries me the most. Your invaders, Dr. Raphael, have done worse than deliberately ignore us. I get the distinct impression that it has never even occurred to them that we might be a threat, or even an issue. I think it would be a major effort of will for them even to realise we exist. They send messages back and forth right in front of us, the way we might talk about taking the dog to the vet while he’s in the room. We assume dogs can’t possibly understand people, and maybe they assume people can’t possibly understand Charonians. Maybe they’re right. I don’t know what they’re saying.”
Again, awkward silence blanketed the room. This time McGillicutty’s grating voice was almost a relief. “Dammit, MacDougal, how the hell did you unbutton this message?” He wasn’t going to let that question go.
“Arecibo technique,” Marcia replied. “A big old radio telescope they used in the twentieth century. On Bermuda or Cuba or someplace. It’s an old, old idea. The idea was to send out a binary message based on simple enough concepts and images that a totally alien culture could understand it. Something you could plot to graph paper—fill in a square for a binary on, leave it blank for a binary off to form pictures.
“A lot of your first message would consist of basic concepts of number, size, atomic structure in schematic form, that sort of thing. Count from one to, say, ten, then run the beginning of the prime-number series, maybe demonstrate the Pythagorean theorem by drawing a right triangle. Once you’ve sent enough for them to get the idea, maybe you send an outline sketch of what your species looks like, or a map of your planet or solar system. Your radio wavelength could provide a linear scale to give the size of any image you drew.
“The idea went that once you had a basic information set of number, geometry, scale, and atomic notation, you could move from there to real conversation, except that they were talking about signals sent to alien races light-years away.
“If you got good enough, and could establish a grey scale and a color scale, you could send detailed pictures. I don’t think anyone back then ever considered sending fully three-dimensional moving images, but the principle is the same. The first series of messages back and forth between the Moon and whatever the hell is on the other end of the wormhole closely resembled the number sequences I’ve just described.”
“Wait a second,” Larry objected. “This whole technique you’re describing is a means for sending messages to someone who doesn’t understand your language.”
“Right. In essence the first thing you do is send a grammar book to make sure they understand what follows.”
“But they’re sending messages to their own people,” Larry protested. “That’s nuts.”
“All I know is what I saw when I unbuttoned the message traffic. The computer was able to break it in real time into a two-dimensional grid. I had to walk the program through interpretation of the first outgoing message-grid—what the math examples were, what symbols they were using for numbers and atomic structures. Once the computer got the idea, it was off and running, learning the new language on its own. I just sat there and watched it. It was a classic example of the sort of grid messages we all dreamed up a million times in my xeno-bio classes—just more elaborate and sophisticated.
“You know about that twenty-one-centimetre signal coming from somewhere on the Moon. No one can find its source transmitter. That signal seems to go through to the Charonians on the other side. They send back a copy of the message at a doubled wavelength to signal receipt, and then send their own messages. Then the Lunar Charonian transmitter echoes the message from the other side. Once or twice the Lunar transmitter sends a perfect echo and then a slightly altered one. I didn’t get it until I compared the two copies. It was correcting the wormhole Charonian’s language errors.
“There’s no doubt in my mind on two points: That the Lunar Charonian had to teach whatever-it-was-sending-to the Lunar Charonian language. And that the receiving whatever-it-was was expecting a language lesson. It was too fast off the mark, replied too quickly. Which suggests the receiver had to be prepared to receive this message— even though they did not understand the language. It demonstrated that by making mistakes as it learned.”
“Except you’re not talking about a language here,” Larry said. “At least not so far as I can see. Has there been any arbitrary code in these signals that you couldn’t unbutton, something that might be commentary or orders or abstract thought symbols?”
Marcia looked as if she was about to protest, but then she stopped. “No, there wasn’t. Nothing unaccounted for. Just the data stream. I’ve been able to decode it all down into pictorial images of one degree or another of sophistication. So if you want to nitpick, then no, it’s not a true natural language.”
“Hold it there,” McGillicutty said. “The sons of bitches are sending messages here. How the hell can it not be a language?”
“Because, if you really want to nitpick, they aren’t actually messages, either,” Larry said. “They’re pictures. The sender and receiver have agreed on a set of transmission standards, a procedure for sending data.”
“So what?”
“They can only send data—not advice, abstracts, or ideas.”
“What’s the difference?”
“The difference between a picture of your Aunt Minnie and a letter telling what you think of the old girl,” Larry said. “According to Dr. MacDougal, there’s no residual signal left over that might be used as a symbol set for interpretative discussion. It’s as if I had come in here with pictures, and data, but without any words to tell you what it all meant.”
“If what you’re saying is true,” Sondra said, “then maybe they don’t need language. Because they don’t need interpretation.”
Larry looked at her for a second. “Go on. What’s your point?”
“They don’t need a language capable of interpretation or opinion or theories because there is no possibility of disagreement. Their responses are all Pavlovian. If every member of their species always respond to the same stimuli in the same way, language would be redundant.”
“In effect, a mass mind. It doesn’t need communications,” Daltry said. “Separated by great expanses of time and space, but so like each other they always reach the same conclusions.”
“It sort of makes sense,” Sondra said, “but
then why the grammar lessons?”
“Language drift,” Lucian suggested. “Enough time has passed since their last contact that the two parties expected to be mutually unintelligible. Maybe they think very nearly alike, but there was some drift, either in attitude or simply in styles of notation.”
“How long are you talking about before that could happen?” Larry asked.
“I’m no expert,” Lucian said, “but we can read and understand Shakespeare, and he was eight hundred years ago—but there’s certainly been drift since then. Any decent record keeping and memory storage system would slow the process down. If you’re dealing with computers that can remember for you, you’re talking at least thousands of years since they talked with each other. Maybe millions.”
“Millions of years?” Daltry said with a faint gasp.
Larry cleared his throat. “That’s not quite as incredible as it sounds. We’ve got some evidence that suggests the Charonians have been around a long, long time. There’s a whole new situation that our group on Pluto decided to keep under wraps until we got here, something we couldn’t trust to radio or message laser. In fact the team from Pluto is agreed that we will not divulge this data to this committee until we get some assurances that it will be kept quiet. We don’t want to spread panic.”
“How could anything panic us more than losing Earth?” Daltry asked.
“Having people thinking you did it,” Sondra said.
“You’ve already got the Naked Purples in Tycho claiming they did it.”
“But they couldn’t have! No one could possibly believe them,” Marcia protested. Heads turned to see who was talking. “No one could imagine the Purples had the ability to do this. I ought to know,” she added.
“But supposing people had reason to imagine just that?” Sondra asked gently. “Suppose there was some good, hard, unnerving evidence that this thing was being run from the Moon? Worse than the mystery radio beams. Don’t you think someone might panic? Perhaps attack the Moon to prevent further disasters?”
“No one would do that,” Marcia protested.
Sondra swept her hand around the table, indicating everyone. “We’re here from all the settled planets and major habitats. Can you all honestly say that you’re positive that your governments might not drop one of your nastier noisemakers on the Purps—or on the Moon generally— if they thought there was even a microscopic chance it would do some good? No matter who got hurt? And you from the Moon—what would your people do if they thought one of the other worlds was about to make a sudden preemptive attack? What would your government do?”
Again there was silence.
At last Chancellor Daltry cleared his throat. “Speaking for the Lunar contingent, I can pledge my group to silence. As you may have gathered from the lack of press or other attention, we have done what we could to keep this meeting quiet for the time being, and I have no desire to step into the spotlight just yet. What of the other delegations? Will you keep silent on this new evidence outside this group?”
There was a rumble of reluctant assents, and Larry nodded, satisfied. “Thank you for that,” he said. “I think in a moment you will all understand why that was necessary. But let me emphasize that none of us think any human agent had anything to do with this. We just don’t want anyone else to think so either.” He rose and went to the video display controls on the far side of the room. “Let me tell you about the Lunar Wheel…”
◊ ◊ ◊
The ghostly grey-on-black image of the Wheel, hanging inside a transparent Moon, hovered over the conference table alongside the frozen, blood red image of the shattered sphere. Larry noticed more than one delegate glancing down at the floor, imagining the monstrous device there under their feet. It was a damned unsettling thought, that a world-girdling monster was lurking in the depths.
“To sum up,” he said. “The Wheel is a toroidal object buried many kilometres below the Moon’s surface. It exactly follows the border between Nearside and Farside, so that it was always precisely facing the Earth—when the Earth was there. It in many ways closely resembles the Ring of Charon, and was detected because it is also a gravity-wave generator. It is massively more powerful than the Ring of Charon. It is the source of the radio signal we have been monitoring since the moment Earth vanished. It seems obvious that it is central to whatever has happened to the Earth—and whatever is happening to the Solar System. It’s been there a long time. That is more or less the sum total of our knowledge of the Wheel. The biggest problem we have right now is that the only device we have capable of seeing the Wheel is back at Pluto. Maybe someday we’ll rig a more compact gravity telescope, but not soon. If we could get closer to the Wheel, I have no doubt we could get far better imagery—but this is all we’re going to get for a while. We have played a few games with computer enhancement, and those runs have produced one rather intriguing additional detail. Computer, display enhancement routine.”
Two faint, ghost needles of grey floated at the edge of visibility, one growing up from the north pole of the Wheel, the other from the south. Both seemed to reach the Lunar surface proper. “Computer, give us a brightened outline on the enhancement-revealed details.” Bright red lines snapped into being around the needles.
“So, what are they?” McGillicutty asked.
“Access tunnels,” Daltry suggested. “They needed a way in and out when they built that thing.”
“That was my thought too,” Larry agreed.
“Then we have to go in there and get a look at that thing,” Lucian said.
That brought out dead silence around the table. At last Raphael spoke unhappily. “That was our conclusion,” he said. “We must find out the nature of the Lunar Wheel. Examine the Wheel, and we should learn a great deal more about the aliens—the Charonians—who run it. Who are they? Where are they? Are some of them actually inside the Moon? We must get to that Wheel, somehow.”
“And yet there are other needs,” Daltry said. “We need to get a close look at the gee-point objects, and see what happens when they reach a planet. Mars will be our best chance for that.”
“Can we get an observer team to Mars before the first gee-point asteroid shows up?” Sondra asked.
Vespasian checked with his notepack. “With a constant-boost ship at one gee, sure thing. Get you there in under four days.”
“And while we should have a gravities specialist going to Mars to observe there, I also want at least some of you gravities people back in place on Pluto as soon as possible,” Daltry said. “In the meantime: Dr. Berghoff, Dr. McGillicutty, Dr. MacDougal. A gravities expert, a physicist, and the person who has made the most progress toward communication with the, ah, Charonians. There is a constant-boost ship ready to depart for Mars. I want the three of you on it tomorrow morning.”
Sondra, fresh off a gruelling constant-boost flight, swore under her breath, but Daltry did not seem to hear it.
Daltry turned toward Larry and Dr. Raphael. “I’m told that your ship, the Nenya, will be upgraded and ready for the return flight in seven days’ time. Mr. Chao, Dr. Raphael. You will return to Pluto at that time.” Daltry smiled grimly, showing a bit more steel than he had before now. He was clearly not interested in discussion. Obviously, he was assuming he could give orders—and everyone around the table seemed willing to take them. For his own part, Larry dreaded the idea of a return flight to Pluto. Another sixteen days in the Nenya . . . But there didn’t seem likely to be any pleasant duties ahead.
“But we have one week to put you to use here, Mr. Chao,” Daltry said. “Obviously, a good part of that time should be spent consulting with the scientific people here. But there is the question of the Wheel, and getting to it. That would seem a high priority as well.”
Chancellor Daltry leaned in from the middle of the table and looked both ways down it. Larry at one end, Lucian at the other. “Mr. Chao, Mr. Dreyfuss. One of you knows gravity-wave generators, the other how things are done on the Moon. The two of you ought to be able to
find a way to reach the Wheel. You have one week to do it.”
Lucian seemed about to protest, but said nothing. Plainly, he did not want to work with Larry. That stung, more than a bit, but it did not surprise Larry. Even if it was unexplained, unexpressed, he knew there was already something gone wrong between Lucian and himself.
“Very well. I suggest that we give our new arrivals a chance to freshen up, and then reconvene here in one hour’s time.” The meeting broke up into a general hubbub of voices as people stood and stretched. Obviously a number of people wanted to talk to Larry, but he was in no mood for that right now. He found himself drifting toward Daltry at the center of the room, where the holographic displays of the Lunar Wheel and the shattered Sphere still hung in the middle of the air. The Lunar Wheel. Bad blood between Lucian and himself was not a good sign. Not if they were supposed to tackle something the size of the Wheel together.
“How long has that Wheel been down there?” Dr. Daltry asked, looking up at them. “How long has it been waiting for the signal we accidentally sent?” He nodded up at the strange repeating image of the Sphere. “And what in all the names of hell is that?”
“We can’t answer that, Dr. Daltry,” Lucian said, coming over to stand on the chancellor’s other side. “Why don’t we send a little radio message and ask them?”
Larry looked at Lucian in surprise. “That’s it!” he cried. “That’s what I’ve been trying to get my finger on.”
“What?” Lucian grinned sardonically at Larry. “Trying to talk to them? Let me tell you, friend, they won’t listen.”
“No! Trying to talk with Earth! It’s on the other side of that hole. After all, if they can send radio signals through the wormhole, why can’t we?”
Part Four
chapter 16: Names of the Saints
“I am expendable. He is not. The first journey down there is too dangerous to risk more than one person. I should go. He shouldn’t.” Lucian Dreyfuss resisted the impulse to reach across Chancellor Daltry’s desk and shake some sense into the man. “How much simpler could it be?”
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