It wasn’t even human.
I looked past the purplish-green scales and saw a different structure; a more beak-like nose with narrow slits of nostrils, a more pronounced cranial crest – and something wrong with the gold eyes. After a second I realised what it was; the pupils were vertical slits, like a cat’s.
Then the picture slipped, became fuzzy, reverted to static.
Freya came back into the room, looked at me and stopped in her tracks. ‘What’s the matter?’ She asked quickly, her concern reaching out to me.
I looked down and saw that I had gone silver all over, in what I later came to realise was an instinctive protective fall-back to reflect radiation. I was too stunned to answer her. I slowly got up and walked out onto the verandah, then leaned forward and held desperately onto the railing. I felt the wood splintering under my grip and deliberately eased off. My thoughts were cycling in an uncontrollable loop, trying to comprehend what I had seen.
The face that looked back at me had shown no human expression yet I had felt that I could read the alien mood, had sensed an urgency, the importance of the need to communicate. I realised that this face was connected with the strange nudging in my mind – I had been prompted to turn on the television and hunt for the channel.
I realised something else, too; the face on the screen looked too much like mine for it to be a coincidence; there had to be some connection with what had happened to me.
I became aware that Freya was hovering by the open door, her concern for what was happening to me in a tug of war with anxiety not to disturb me. She didn’t yet know me well enough to tell if this was normal behaviour for her bizarre new charge or if she needed to worry.
With an effort, I refocused my mind on the present and turned slowly to face her. ‘I’m all right, but I need some time to think’, I managed.
‘Of course’ she said instantly, and disappeared into the house.
I stayed looking out over the sea for a long time, conscious of the almost imperceptible whirl of the stars, the occasional lights of a plane, the slower movement of a satellite. All the while, my mind was in turmoil, trying to understand what I had seen, what it meant.
As the sky slowly lightened with the approach of dawn, I gave up the hopeless search for answers, more tired than I had been for a long time. I went back into the house, to sleep.
6
I awoke late the next day and lay in bed for a while, feeling an unaccustomed lethargy. After a while I realised that I was reluctant to get up and face the day, to deal with the shocking revelation of the previous evening. I located Freya, the bodyguard and the housekeeper, sensed them moving about the house, and noticed Freya's continued anxiety about me. I forced myself to get up and walk downstairs, greeted Freya cheerfully, and announced that I felt like a long swim.
The coolness of the water slid soothingly over me and I settled into a long, steady rhythm which I knew I could keep up for hours – or even days, if necessary. The monotonous repetition of swimming helped me to slip into a light trance, not thinking consciously but retaining a rather detached awareness of my surroundings. Some tracks by Wynton Marsalis drifted through my mind. There were few boats around, and I easily avoided them. After a few hours I turned on my back, raised my head and saw nothing but water in all directions. I lay back and just floated for a while, feeling relaxed enough to turn my mind to the incident which had troubled me so much.
I ran it through my mind again from start to finish, my sharpened memory allowing me to examine the image in detail. I suddenly recalled where I had seen similar faces; in speculative paintings showing what dinosaurs might have looked like had they survived to evolve human-type intelligence. After a while I reluctantly acknowledged what my subconscious had been telling me for some time; that there was no point in putting off the moment any longer, I had to go back and look at that television again.
I returned in time for dinner, feeling physically tired but mentally refreshed. After some attempts at conversation, Freya realised that I was in no mood to chat, and retired to her room. The housekeeper had already cleared up and withdrawn to the annex she shared with the guard, so I immediately switched on the television, muted the sound and trawled through the vacant channels until, with a shock of recognition and fear, I saw that face again.
It was the same face as the previous evening, and this time I sensed a different emotion – relief rather than anxiety. The face looked me intently for a few moments, then faded out to be replaced by a string of numbers. I started blankly at them for a few moments, until I realised that they formed a telephone number. I felt a sudden desire to laugh hysterically; "phone home", I thought. Then I walked over to the cordless telephone, picked up the handset and sat down again facing the television. Handling the phone as gingerly as if it were a live grenade, I dialled the number on the screen and waited. The face reappeared as the call was answered. Then the lips moved.
'Good evening Cade.'
I felt a flood of terror and excitement wash over me at the sound in my headset. There was no accent, but the voice could have come from no human throat. The sound had an overlay which was simultaneously fricative and sibilant, and beneath that a strange echo, formed in a different voicebox. I forced myself to speak: 'Good evening', I managed.
'Thank you for calling', the alien continued, 'I have waited for this moment for a long time'.
A detached part of my mind noted that he – she? No, definitely he, I knew somehow – had even mastered clichés.
'There is much that we need to discuss.'
'Yes.' I responded dryly.
'This is a very cumbersome and limited method of communication for us. I would like to suggest something better.'
'Go on.'
'I will put a diagram on the screen, of something we might call a "headnet"; it will permit mind-to-mind communications.'
His face disappeared, to be followed by a three-dimensional image of what looked like a hairnet, only with fewer strands all leading to a small box. Words appeared on the screen, labelling the different parts. I focused on memorising them. The black box slowly exploded into its component parts, each also labelled. As it expanded, details of the specification of each part appeared. The "net" was made of wire: the lengths required and the specification followed. I gradually realised that what I was looking at was a kind of battery-powered radio, linked to a network of wires which would fit around my head. It seemed to be an absurdly simple device.
'OK, I've got it.'
The face reappeared. 'Good. This is not how we normally make one of these, but the parts have been designed to be readily available at one of your specialist electronics shops.'
'I'll get onto it tomorrow'. I was feeling ridiculously calm, almost detached. I realised belatedly that I was probably holding mankind's first conversation with a member of an alien race. The thought crossed my mind that somehow the topic should have been less mundane than instructions on assembling a radio.
'One thing you should be aware of; this house is bugged.'
I felt hysteria surfacing again at the incongruous colloquialism and suppressed it with difficulty.
'There is a small camera and microphone in each room. Fortunately, the one in this room is facing towards you, not the television screen.'
'Right.'
'Goodbye for now.'
'Goodbye.'
The phone went dead and the screen blanked. I shifted my perceptions into the electronics mode I had learned on the warship, and scanned. I instantly located the bug, high up in the corner of the room masquerading as an IR security sensor, and traced the links through the house. The phone handset was clean. I mentally reviewed my side of the conversation and decided that, while any observers might be puzzled and curious, there was nothing there to alarm them, but I spent a couple of minutes inventing a story to account for the call, should I be asked to.
The next morning I told Freya that I enjoyed playing with electronics as a hobby, and would appreciate it if she could obtai
n some materials for me. I gave her a list of the components, plus a compact battery and some tools I would need: a small soldering iron, pliers and a screwdriver.
A courier presented me with a package that afternoon. Freya had left to visit the UN. I went up to my room, carefully sat with my back to the spy camera, and got to work. The story I told Freya hadn't been entirely false – my interest in science had at one time involved fiddling with electronics – so it didn't take me too long to assemble the headnet. Some of the components had come in a resealable plastic bag, so I slipped the headnet into this and then into a pocket in my jacket, as I simultaneously turned that side away from the camera.
I walked downstairs and strolled out into the grounds, conscious of the CCTV security camera tracking me. I ambled towards a large tree growing to one side of the house and sat with my back it, on the side away from the camera. Then I took the headnet out of the bag, fitted it over my head, took a deep breath and switched it on.
'Anyone there?' I thought, feeling rather foolish.
'Here!' Came the instant response. That word does not do justice to what I experienced. The response was far more than just mental speech; it was enveloped by an intense emotional field, similar in kind to the one I could detect in other people, but immeasurably richer and clearer. I was momentarily overwhelmed by the flood of emotions, by the warmth of the greetings which flowed over me. If ordinary speech could be likened to hearing a one-finger piano tune, and my enhanced sensitivity to people to a string quartet, then this was a full-blown orchestra, complete with chorus. And it was two-way. I instantly realised that there was no possibility of misunderstanding or duplicity; communication was complete to a degree I had never dreamed of, and lightning-fast. My account of our conversations can therefore give only the barest outline of what passed between us.
'I see what you mean about telephones being cumbersome and limited,' I managed, once I had recovered enough to respond.
Amusement tinged with satisfaction.
'What do I call you?'
A mental signature was returned, a concise emotional summary of my contact, instantly recognisable. Still, I felt more comfortable with names, however crude they may be, so I decided to call him Primo, as he was my first contact. After a while, I became aware of two others in the background; simultaneously, I realised that Primo had made me aware of them. I called them Secundo (a more mature and serious type) and Tertia – unmistakably female, with a softer, more subtle and perceptive signature. Primo explained that there were three of them to ensure that one would always be "on duty", ready to communicate with me at any time.
Primo addressed me again, not by name this time but by an emotional signature that I recognised as myself in a way which cannot be explained in words. 'We owe you many explanations for what has happened to you since, as you will have surmised, it is all our fault,' he said apologetically. Then he conveyed to me, in an intense flood of information, what had happened and why. I will recount it here as best I can, in the form of a conventional conversation.
'You will be aware of the parallel worlds hypothesis?' Primo commenced.
'You mean that there is an infinite number of universes existing in parallel with our own?
'Exactly so. That hypothesis is largely correct. There are many worlds which are connected by branching points where events might have occurred differently had random chance fallen one way rather than another.'
'Are you telling me that you live in a parallel Earth to mine?'
'Yes.'
'Tell me more!'
'We have identified several levels of parallel worlds. Most basic are those in which the random elements can be traced back to the earliest days of the universe, when the most infinitesimal variation in the behaviour of the elementary particles could produce major long-term differences. Among other things these could affect the formation of stars and planets, and the likelihood of life developing on a planet. We call these "Stage 1" variations. Where life did develop, random chance at critical points could affect which species types flourished and which did not; most significantly, it could also determine whether the conditions existed to encourage the development of intelligence. These are "Stage 2" variations. The development of intelligent consciousness has more recently introduced a plethora of different possibilities, as there is nothing quite as random and unpredictable as an intelligent being, starting with the gene-shuffling which occurs when each individual is conceived.' Primo's mental smile reflected his gently ironic sense of humour. 'Almost all such random events have a negligible effect on their universes as they affect only those directly concerned or, at most, their circle of acquaintances, but every now and then something happens which switches the history of the intelligent species off onto a different track. We call these "Stage 3" variations. These may result from a particularly significant piece of gene-shuffling which, in conjunction with environmental conditions, may produce (or not) a great leader or thinker. More subtly, they could be caused by a scientific discovery which happens to occur to a person in one country rather than another, or a change in the finely-balanced decision of a military leader or national ruler. Least predictable of all are the emotional rather than logical issues; for a variety of reasons, a previously conventional individual may unexpectedly become enthused with religious beliefs which may, in a tiny fraction of cases, lead to major changes in religious organisations with all that can follow from that.'
I mulled over that for a moment. 'Let me guess – on your world, the dinosaurs didn't disappear?'
'Correct. I should perhaps explain that worlds tend to group together, just as twigs on a tree all belong to one small branch, and several smaller branches all belong to one major branch. Thus there is an entire major branch of universes in which Homo Sapiens became the dominant life form on Earth, and another major branch in which my species exists instead. The differences in the histories of our physical universes are quite small – at Stage 2 level – but just enough to encourage the development of one group of species rather than other. In your world the conditions which favoured the dominance of dinosaurs continued for scores of millions of years, but without the right kind of environmental challenges needed to stimulate the development of high intelligence. The dinosaurs became over-specialised and unable to respond to hostile environmental changes when these eventually occurred. Ironically, in my world the conditions were less benign for my species, but in a way which rewarded the development of our intelligence, and mammals have remained a minor branch of the animal kingdom, just as reptiles are in yours.'
I smiled. 'So what do I call your species?' As usual with names, the response was both instantly intelligible and completely untranslatable, so I thought for a moment and said; 'I expect I'd better refer to you here as saurians.'
An equable response.
'How is it that we can communicate like this? We are entirely different species, yet our minds must be very similar for us to understand each other so well.'
'An interesting question. In part, it might be because we share some far-distant ancestor – it is not as if we developed on different planets. The environments and evolutionary pressures our species faced were also very similar, and it is not surprising that they stimulated the development of the same kind of intelligence. It may be that there are some basic similarities in the way in which intelligent minds function. Most significantly, however, it seems the changes which took place in your brain to increase your sensitivity may have altered it in such a way that it has become sufficiently like ours for communication to be possible.'
'You somehow managed to reach me first of all without even a headnet.'
'Yes, it took all three of us linked together a huge mental effort just to persuade you to switch on the television. We discovered long ago that we can in this way reach saurian minds in worlds parallel to our own, but it is scarcely possible.'
I mulled this over for a few moments. 'Why didn't you just ring me on the phone to start with?'
'For technical
reasons it was easier for you to ring us - and anyway, would you have taken any notice of such a call?'
I laughed. 'I don't suppose so. All right, then, how did all this happen to me? I presume that some experiment went wrong?'
'I'm afraid that will take a lengthy explanation. First, you need to be aware of several things about us. We evolved much more slowly and incrementally than humans, but the process started much earlier. Our civilisation has developed more or less continuously for over two hundred thousand years.'
I pondered that one for a moment. It was approximately as long as modern humans had existed as a species. Our earliest recognisable civilisations formed about ten thousand years ago, and they were long gone.
'This has given us a certain perspective which humans lack, reinforced by the fact that we have always been relatively long-lived; in fact, we can now live almost as long as we want to, barring accidents.'
'How do you manage that? And how do you control your population?'
'Our technological development has been far slower than yours and in some respects you are already catching us up, but we have focused on two areas; genetics and, more recently, the parallel worlds. We have complete knowledge and control of our genetic structure, as well as that of all other living things in our world, and long ago mastered the ageing process. For a long time now we have only had children at the rate needed to replace losses, which are partly due to accidents but more frequently the result of people deciding that they don't want to live any longer. After a few centuries, life tends to become dull and repetitive. So our population is stable at about one hundred million, compared with over six billion on your Earth.'
A thought crossed my mind; 'have you always had these mental abilities?'
'No. We used to be like you, communicating by sound – something which we now use for singing, otherwise we would probably have lost the ability altogether. A few tens of thousands of years ago we observed that some individuals showed signs of extra sensitivity, and since we already had a thorough understanding of our genetic code we investigated the cause of this. It did not take us long to isolate the genes concerned and to begin to reinforce them, to the point which you now know. So in a sense, we are our own creation.'
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