Songs From The Stars

by Norman Spinrad

  Wolfson's face reappeared; rueful now, reflective. "How primitive we were! Even our concept of the powers of an advanced stellar civilization was primitive. Like the early Earthbound Ozma project and its successors, we were searching the hydrogen wave band for repetitive patterns. Everyone assumed that an interstellar broadcast would begin with mathematical constants and concepts in binary code. How hopelessly provincial our thinking was! The first signal man ever picked up from another star was—this."

  A monotonous buzzing song began—four bursts, each one twice as long as the previous, repeating over and over again, while the visual equivalent manifested itself as an endless string of white lines marching across the screen.

  "Obviously artificial but apparently meaningless," Wolf-son's voice said over the strange pulsing sound. "It went on for days, and all we could do was record it. Our analysts and computer could extract no semantic content. Then the signal abruptly changed and we began to get—this."

  Millions of tiny metal insects began to chirp, and the dashes marching across the screen blurred to a solid line.

  Then Wolfson's face appeared again, much more animated now, as if remembering a better moment. "A blizzard of four value data coming in at tremendous speed with a gap every hundredth of a second. Again, all we could do was record it. Now the problem seemed to be that there was too much content. It defied mathematical analysis.

  "But finally I saw the obvious. The first transmission was meaningless, merely a signal to alert the receiver to record, like... like the call letters of a television station! It all became clear in a flash. There were two hundred fifty thousand bits between the gaps, and each bit had four possible values. What we were recording now was a television signal. A color television signal: five hundred lines, five hundred bits to the line, each bit one of the three primary colors or black, and a scanning sweep of a hundredth of a second.

  "All we had to do was readjust our equipment and assume that the duration values of the pulses reflected the ascending wavelength ratios of the primary colors. What we were getting was an ordered sequential transmission, a data packet of galactic television that automatically taught us how to receive it.

  "What you are about to see is a very basic galactic orientation program as it were, a program that repeated itself a hundred times over for the sake of dullards such as ourselves—the first meaningful message from another star!"

  A cloud of pinpoint stars filled the screen, for all the world like a window into the real thing. One point of light began to pulse bright red. A beam of red light flickered out from it to touch a neighboring star but quickly vanished. Again and again, beams of light flickered out from the red star to probe at its neighbors.

  A regular pattern established itself. The flashing beams of red rotated about their source, each succeeding one growing longer, so that they became a spiraling search pattern encompassing more and more space until all the stars on the screen were within their sweep.

  Perspective suddenly shifted. Now the circling red lines spiraling outward were lost in an immensity of stars and blackness, and the sun that was their source was one dust mote among millions.

  Again perspective shifted outward, and now a cloudy spiral of stars rotated slowly in the blackness. Lost in this cloud of stars were tiny whirling pinwheels of red, blue, green, and yellow, slowly getting larger as the stellar spiral turned.

  Finally a pencil of red light touched a star broadcasting in blue. A pulse of blue light was returned to the red star after a short interval measured in the turn of a few degrees of the galactic spiral. After another pause, the red star spoke back in blue.

  Soon yellow beams were contacting green stars, and green stars blue, and within a few turns of the stellar spiral, multicolored traceries were flashing back and forth between hundreds of stars, a rainbow web of transmissions, an interstellar broadcast network.

  The spiral turned. More and more stars joined the rainbow net. The multicolored spiderweb began to vibrate. Colors blended into each other until the web harmonized into a single tone of piercing powerful violet.

  The whole screen glowed with a violet light so intense it almost seemed black. A string of red dashes moved slowly across this field of preternatural color, dozens of them in deliberate procession. Then just the glowing violet.

  The head of the old man appeared on the screen, shaking slowly in wonder. "How elegant! How self-evident they managed to make themselves to us poor groundlings! They were telling us the story of how the civilizations of the galaxy had slowly groped in the dark for contact with each other. How they had first begun to receive each other's transmissioris. And then began to answer each other. And then finally formed a network of interstellar communication on a common wavelength.

  "They even supplied a time scale by showing us the revolution of the galaxy. An interstellar brotherhood communing over thousands of years of space and time. Millions of years to evolve it. Civilizations that were old before mammals emerged on the Earth. Out there inviting us to join.

  "For that was what they were doing. The last sequence was our guide to the common interstellar wavelength. By adding the primary red dashes, we came up with a precise value for the interstellar wavelength, high up in the efficient X ray. There was even a hundred-hour pause before we got the first wave fronts on the interstellar frequence to give us plenty of time to retune our unknown primitive receiver. What came through first was—this."

  On the right-hand side of the screen, a string of blue, red, yellow, and black dots rapidly moving from bottom to top. Beside them, a much slower crawl of black and white dashes.

  "Now we were finally getting our mathematical constants," Wolfson's voice said. "In four-value galactic computer code with a binary translation. They were telling us to reprogram our computer for four-value bits and demonstrating how much faster and more efficient this system was."

  Wolfson's face appeared again, fully alive now, reliving a moment of personal glory. "They gave us a delay of ten days before the wave fronts changed again," he said. "But we got our computer reprogrammed in six and began to feel like star pupils. What came through next..."

  He paused and shook his head, as if he couldn't believe it, even in deathbed contemplation. "What came through next was four-value programming designed for our modified computer. From this visual analog, we were able to interface our computer directly with theirs over light-years of space and centuries of time."

  The screen became a blizzard of randomly winking spots of red, blue, yellow, and black.

  When Wolfson's face reappeared, the fire was gone, and the sunken eyes seemed glazed with awe.

  "What happened when we began feeding interstellar programming into our computer is hard to explain," he said. "Even some of us could only call it magic. The stellar software transformed our hardware into... into a new device not entirely within our comprehension. Perhaps their programming set up a metaprogram in our computer that interfaced their data wave fronts directly with our memory banks. Our computer began churning out strange data, galactic circuit designs rendered in a comprehensible semblance of our own electronic terms. We couldn't understand what we were being directed to build, but we could follow the directions."

  The jumble of electronic gear that filled half the room was once more mirrored on the screen in miniature.

  "And that is what we built," Wolfson's voice said. "A standard galactic receiver at whose heart is a computer whose software was designed by a broadcast from the stars and which then redesigned its own hardware to galactic specifications."

  Wolfson reappeared, speaking excitedly, as if anticipating the effect of each succeeding revelation. "For days nothing came through but a blizzard of programming that passed directly into the computer. When it was over, the galactic receiver could do wondrous things. It could extract rough English meanings out of a standard galactic transmission code. And so much more that only our elder and wiser brothers in the stars can fully explain the wonderful and terrible gift they've given us."r />
  The old man paused as bitter anguish suddenly contorted his features. "And so they shall," he said sharply. "What follows is apparently the standard introduction to the interstellar brotherhood of sentient beings, broadcast at random to lowly creatures such as ourselves. A history of the galaxy, a discourse on the evolution of consciousness and civilizations, and an instruction manual for the galactic receiver. May you be worthier of using it than we were."

  The old man's voice sank to a whisper. He seemed to hunch closer to the screen, his immense weariness much more visible.

  "Think of us when you contemplate using the galactic gateway. We could not live with the knowledge of what you down there were throwing away and how close we came to having it. With the universe in its grasp, our species ground itself into the dust. We were offered the heavens and condemned ourselves to hell. So we leave the stellar songs we've recorded and the galactic receiver to you, our hoped-for posterity, and we pray that some day someone human may be worthy of the gift our elder brothers have given us. As we were not. We say no more. Let the stars speak for themselves, let—"

  I Have Always Waited for this Moment to Arrive

  "Why did you turn it off?" Sunshine Sue snapped angrily.

  Arnold Harker's trembling hand still rested on the switch. His jaw was slack, his eyes were vacant, his face was deathly pale, and, in fact, he looked as if he might vomit again at any moment. "They... they died," he stammered. "The greatest scientists of the pre-Smash Age of Space... they... they came up here into this horrible place, and they watched their world kill itself, and they saw what... what you want us to see and it made them commit suicide. We've made a dreadful mistake. But how could we know...? We thought we understood..."

  "What on Earth are you babbling about?" Sue said.

  "On Earth?" Harker fairly shrieked. "But we're not on Earth! We're up here in this tomb of all humanity's hopes, listening to a dead man tell us how lowly our species is and warning us about... about that..." He nodded fearfully in the direction of the thing that Wolfson had called the "standard galactic receiver." "Are we any better than they were? Do we dare face what higher beings than ourselves will tell us? When they couldn't?"

  "Are you out of your mind, Arnold?" Sue said impatiently. "After all we've gone through to get here? After all you've done to get us here? Get ahold of yourself, Arnold! This is the destiny you've chosen—for yourself, and for us, and for the whole damned world! It's a little late to think of backing out now."

  And why would anyone be afraid to go on? she wondered. This was far more marvelous than anything her poor Earth-bound soul had ever dreamed of. No mere Earthbound radio network but a galactic network of sight and sound. Not some provincial world electronic village of shared human consciousness but the electronic communion of the stars, of many higher beings walking greater Ways than any conceived of by man. And this is the consciousness our elder brothers are inviting us to share. This is the gift they've used all their powers and all that effort to give to us. How could such a mighty and selfless feat be performed in the spirit of anything but love?

  "So I was wrong," Harker whined. "We were all wrong. I dreamed of going into space and found it sickening. We dreamed of learning from the people of the stars and found death and despair waiting up here for us. You people were right, the Company has done great evil, our great dream is corrupt inside, our ancestors destroyed the world and died in despair for their sin, and now... and now..."

  "Stop it, Arnold!" Sue snarled. "Stop your sniveling and be a man!" Horrified and disgusted, she found herself watching this man she had feared, this cold and arrogant sorcerer, disintegrating before her eyes, and she couldn't even take a down-and-dirty pleasure in this turning of the tables. It was just too pathetic.

  Clear Blue Lou found his empathies torn between Sue and Arnold Harker, though he knew that the issue was long since decided, that this moment of destiny could not and should not be delayed. Like Sue, he lusted impatiently for the fulfillment of the inevitable and found the Spacer's fear unmanly and ultimately purposeless.

  But the trouble was he could read Harker's spirit as well. The Spacer had dedicated his whole life to abstractly preparing for travel into the longed-for realm of outer space and then found that the reality of it sickened his flesh. His mind had been trained and briefed, but his spirit had failed him in his own eyes. Having been confronted with fleshly nausea in the face of the fulfillment of this dream, he now suffered from a nausea of the spirit in the face of the fulfillment of his higher dream. It seemed to Lou that what he feared now was not so much that which he was about to learn but the lack of spiritual grace with which to confront it.

  The Spacer had met his own natural man and found it wanting.

  "Can't we wait?" Harker said. "Can't we eat and rest and sleep and then...?"

  "You know we can't," Lou said very gently.

  Harker stared at him woodenly. He gulped. His eyes rolled. "I think I'm going to be sick again..." he whispered.

  "Cut that shit out, Arnold!" Sue snapped. "It won't work. Even you can't really think we can leave here without learning what we came to find out, now can you?"

  The Spacer choked back his nausea, or perhaps gave up the pretense. "I suppose you're right," he admitted softly. "We've asked for whatever we're going to get. We deserve it. But I admit I'm afraid of what we're going to find out. You can't deny that those who came before us killed themselves..."

  "They were watching their world die," Lou told him. "Ours still lives. They heard the songs from the stars in despair. We came to bring back hope."

  "Are you trying to shame me with your bravery?" Harker said wanly.

  Lou shrugged. "Both fear and bravery are useless now," he said. "Now is the moment and the only way out is the way through."

  He reached out and gently touched the hand that Harker still held upon the switch. He moved it forward against only a momentary and flaccid resistance.

  The Voice from the Whirlwind

  "... let those who have given us this gift speak for themselves. " The old man's face vanishes from the screen, a short blizzard of multicolored snow, and then—

  A spiral galaxy of stars pinwheeling through space. Out on one of the spiral arms, a tiny purple point begins to pulse as a strange voice speaks.

  "This is the... a... standard missionary introductory transmission-greeting to unconnected primary stage beings..."

  The voice seems dead and artificial as if filtered through a distant radio transmission. The sentence is an uninflected string of words approximating human speech rather distantly. Yet the very tonelessness of the voice has a hypnotic quality that is not altogether unpleasant.

  "This introductory song-packet-manual is transmitted to you by..."

  A succession of eerie and beautiful moving images. Floating in space, a jeweled world. A rolling field of lavender grassland under a too-blue sky, a small unnatural white-hot sun. A city of crystal atop a conical mountain furred with waving red-crowned trees—spires of amber, emerald, sapphire, and ruby. Millions of tiny feathery motes dance around jewel-like buildings growing in random profusion out of a lavender meadow. One of the motes, seen large, rebounds from an aerial ledge of ruby—a creature whose body seems to be one prehensile lavender feather whose gossamer branches ripple and flex with obvious athletic purpose. Two red worms copulating in a double helix, traceries of black, white, lavender, and blue veining the space between spiral curves.

  "Our species connects itself to the interstellar network-web of galactic stage beings. We-I have been part of the brotherhood consciousness of sentient beings for half a million years. We welcome-initiate your primary stage civilization-spirit to galactic consciousness-network-knowledge-gossip as elder-brother-neighbors said hello to us half a million years ago. Come on in in a relaxed psychic state the water is fine."

  Squat blue mushrooms with bright red eyes dance around hairy brown trees. Great black butterflies skim the surface of a scummy sea, drawing up liquid with trailing tubula
r tongues. A living carpet of slimy green worms oozes across a yellow desert. A herd of maroon kangaroos with long flexible snouts hop madly around a copse of stalky green trees like giant celeries, nibbling at the branches.

  "Life abounds on the planets of the galaxy... is warmed by every friendly sun... springs like decay from the body of unbeing..."

  The hideous face of a yellow bird with one glaring humanoid eye. A living lavender feather. An impossibly attenuated spiderlike creature on stilt legs holds a cluster of insect eyes aloft on waving tentacles. The homey face of something very much like a yellow bear.

  "Consciousness-curiosity-feedback with the material realm-environment arises at the pinnacle of almost-theoretically-any foodchain-planetary-biomass-ecosphere as a natural phenomenon-gift-consequence of bio-physiological-chemical process. Barring glitches-anomalies, every planetary ecosphere evolves a sentient species."

  Feathery lavender creatures float and dance around an amber spire. A city of dull black stone under a cloud of smoke and lightning. Thousands of raftlike ships roll on an endless swell, bearing trees and machineries and what may be streets of conical houses. A city of metal monoliths that seem to move ponderously on wheeled feet. A flying disc of burnished copper bearing a crystal city above red hills and deep green canyons.

  "Barring catastrophe-ecological-collapse-the-usual-fuckups, every sentient species evolves a primary stage civilization. But the survival rate to maturity of primary stage civilizations is less-than-satisfactory-pitifully-small-fills-the-soul-with-sadness. For-because-unfortunately every primary stage civilization arrives at confronted with the power of life-and-death moment-of-truth transformation point crisis."

  Vast churning machineries burrow into a yellow mountainside within a cloud of dust and greasy smoke. A cliff of steel teeth winnows an emerald sea, dribbling ugly brown spume. Beams of searing light from devices set high on metal frameworks burn holes in the land that fountain black blood.