by Unknown
‘Thank you.’
Paul peered at the broken message.
‘Didn’t I use that phrase earlier?’
He scrolled back.
Paul. Hello. Paul what are you doing. Please tell us. I’m going to see Thorsten. Paul we don’t understand. Why. Because there must be someone else. Paul. Paul please. Whatever you are going to do you have to come back …
‘Why wasn’t that jammed, if the others were?’
‘The phrase will not have been anticipated prior to its first use.’
No. It would not have been. Not if the interference was intelligent rather than automatic. First it had to be alerted. It had to recognize the possibility that the phrase might be transmitted. Only then could it begin to anticipate the use. And to improve its reactions each time.
‘It’s a radio signal?’ he murmured.
‘It is a surge of charged particles affecting the radio signal.’
‘Charged particles? In the magnetic field?’
‘Yes.’
Paul looked up at the display on the ceiling of his bubble.
There it was, as it always was and always would be to the end of his life. The thin crescent of the planet, spanning ten degrees of arc overhead, framed within the shadowed lips of the cliffs, with the Sun poised over it like a diamond on a half-ring.
‘My God!’ he whispered.
Then he said: ‘I didn’t mean that.’
‘Paul?’
She was back again, at his door. He sat up. Dazedly his thoughts recovered themselves from the paths they had been chasing for so long.
Long? How long?
Hours, perhaps. They had been going round and round and round. Round and round a conclusion that was impossible and yet inevitable, like debris orbiting a planet, neither escaping from its field nor falling to a new home in the bosom of its earth.
‘Paul!’
‘Yes?’ he said.
‘May I – may I come in?’
He gripped the back of his chair. His eyes were focused on nothing.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘For God’s sake – yes!’
There was a moment’s hesitation. Then the seal opened.
It was not May. He had thought it must be May because she had called him ‘Paul’. It wasn’t.
It was Erin Vandamme, floating through his doorway towards him, and her eyes widened as she saw how his face was working. And he was not conscious of stepping towards her but he must have done, because they came together in mid-air, spinning gently with the force of the collision, and might have stumbled if they had not already been holding onto one another, holding fast, fast, with her arms around his chest and his face buried in her shoulder. His throat was tight and his eyes were weeping hot tears.
‘I don’t know who it is,’ he cried. ‘I don’t know who it is!’
XVII
‘Paul!’ she said. ‘Stop … Do you hear me? I want you to take a breath. Deep breath, now. That’s right – now do it again … All right …
‘Now, slowly. Tell me. You don’t know who what is?’
Trembling, he showed her Hunter’s transcript. And again she made him stop, take breaths and repeat himself, as he stood at her shoulder jabbing his finger at the obliterated phrases.
‘Wait. What are you saying has happened to these messages?’
‘They’ve been jammed! Like the others!’
‘Which others?’
‘The tail data to Earth. Over the radio.’
‘But that’s a natural phenomenon.’
‘This isn’t natural. Look at it. It anticipates the words! That’s learning!’
‘So … who are you saying did it?’
‘Someone else! I thought it must be Thorsten. But it wasn’t! It’s someone else.’
‘You really thought Thorsten might not be dead?’
She hadn’t looked at him. Her eyes were still on the screen, but she was not seeing it. The signals of her optic nerves were being suppressed. Her body was still. Her mind had focused inwards, turning over what he had said, trying to imagine how it could have seemed true. She was trying to understand how he could possibly have done what he had done.
‘I knew it wasn’t any of you. Thorsten was the only one left.’
She sighed. ‘And I’ve known that he’s dead. I’ve known it for nine years, as solidly as anything I could touch. To hear you saying you were going to see him – I thought the bottom had dropped out of my heart.’
She was silent for a while, looking at the screen where the bald words told the story of Paul’s ride in the crawler.
‘It wasn’t any of us,’ she said at length.
Then she asked carefully, ‘Could it have been you?’
‘No!’
‘I need to be sure of that.’
‘It wasn’t me! I was going up to the cairn. I didn’t want that conversation at all!’
‘But the mind can trick itself, can’t it? Especially if it’s having difficulty relating to new surroundings. You could have muddled your own message and blanked your memory of doing so. You’ve been having a stressful time—’
‘I’m not mad!’
‘We’re all a little mad. How could we not be – out here?’
She was studying columns of figures on the screen. Paul recognized them at once. They were the readings of activity in the magnetic field.
‘I mean, we’re all affected by being here,’ she said. ‘Like having vertigo. Balancing on the top of a tower that men have built to the stars. Like Babel. God saw what men did at Babel and he twisted their tongues so that they could no longer speak to one another. That was madness, of a sort.’
‘I am not mad !’
She pressed another key. More figures filled the screen. Paul sank into the spare seating beside her.
‘I am sorry for what I did to Thorsten,’ he said.
She shook her head. ‘He felt nothing. He was all frozen.’
Then she made a little sound, like a hiccup or a giggle cut short. She added, ‘Like me.’
‘You are not frozen.’
(She had come to his door. She had called him ‘Paul’. A moment ago she had taken him in her arms.)
‘Do you know what I felt when he was in his illness?’
‘No.’
‘I thought you did. I thought you would throw it at me.’
Paul frowned. ‘What did you feel?’
‘Nothing,’ she sighed. ‘Almost nothing. I still don’t understand why. It was too difficult. It was too hard to reach him. Sometimes I was just angry. I still am. Why did we fail when the other two didn’t? I don’t know. But I know that I felt less than I should. Maybe I was protecting myself from what was happening to him. Only – when I thought you were going to do the same, suddenly it all came up. It was too much. I almost couldn’t breathe.’
‘You thought I would do what he did? Is that why you’ve come now?’
She looked at him. ‘I came,’ she said, ‘because I missed you.’
She turned back to the screen. Click. The columns changed again. Like the landscapes of the moon they changed and changed and were always the same.
‘Thank you,’ said Paul.
Click. More numbers.
‘That’s today,’ she murmured. ‘And you were outside the station – when?’
‘Yesterday – your watch. Eleven zero four …’
Once more she clicked the controls. Paul could see at once that the strings of figures were longer. But what spoke most clearly of all was her sudden stillness as she stared at the screen.
‘All right,’ she whispered at last. ‘Let’s be scientists now, shall we?’
‘What do you want to do?’
‘Repeat the experiment.’
Power: 92%.
Once again he was in the cabin of the crawler. Lewis was beside him. The screen showed a view of a liquid flow on the floor of the canyon – brilliant white in the headlights, ghostly blue when he rotated the screen away towards the shadow of the cliff walls. He w
as tense. He could feel his jaw clamped shut, his stomach tingling, how he kept fidgeting like a helpless bystander expecting the worst. His eyes flicked along the display, watching the figures for the tiniest change.
In the helmet: Ex: 1.0 Suit: 1.0 Temp: -12°.
On the crawler screen: Ex: 0.01 Temp: 36K. More than two hundred degrees separated the interior temperature of the crawler from that of the ground on which it stood. Paul could still hear the occasional creak of thermal stress from its fabric.
Power: 92%.
On the rear view the screen showed the station wall, curving up and away from them. They were too close to see the whole of it, or the structures that sprouted from its roof to gather sunlight and signals. The seal behind them had closed but Paul could still see the outline of it and the clear runs of crawler tracks that led to the door. It was less than a hundred metres away. Even so …
‘Is this far enough?’ said Lewis curtly.
They were the first words that he had spoken to Paul for six days.
‘I hope so.’
‘Get on with it, then.’
‘May?’ said Paul. ‘Can you hear me?’
‘We can hear you,’ said May’s voice in his helmet.
‘Is Vandamme with you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then listen to this. I think there is someone else with us out here. I don’t know who or what they are but I know it’s not one of us. It has to be someone else. I repeat, from the evidence I have, I think there is someone else with us out here. There’s one, two, three, four of us, and there must be someone else.’
He stopped. He wondered if he had said enough. Perhaps he should have made it longer, padded it out, told them memories of Earth and things that were nothing to do with this place, and perhaps devised a sentence using the words someone else in a different context. Perhaps …
‘Did you get that?’ asked Lewis.
Lewis had not believed him. To begin with he had refused point blank to agree to another crawler expedition. Only when Vandamme had managed to persuade May did he begin to listen. And he had taken his place in the crawler only because he trusted no one else to make sure that Paul was not interfering with his own signal. If this experiment failed there would be no more reasoning with him.
‘Did you get it?’ he repeated.
The silence lengthened. Then: ‘We got it.’
That was May. There was something odd about her voice.
‘Do you want us to try another location?’
‘No. You can come back in.’
‘You’re sure? We could go a kilometre down the canyon and—’
‘Lewis!’ broke in May. ‘Get back in here now!’
They were waiting, tight-lipped, in the common room. They had projected the short transcript onto a working area of the wall. Paul saw the pattern of interruptions the moment he entered.
Is this far enough. I hope so. Get on with it then. May. Can you hear me. We can hear you. Is Vandamme with you. Yes. Then listen to this. I think there is someone else with us out here. I don’t know who or what they are but I know it’s not one of us. It has to be someone ???????????????????? the evidence I have I think there is som?????????????? us out here. There’s one two three four of us and there must be ?????????????????? you get that. Did you get it. We got it. Do you want us to try another location. No. You can come back in. You’re sure. We could go a kilometre down the canyon and. Lewis. Get back in here now.
‘I’m scared, Lewis,’ said May.
‘Why?’ said Lewis expressionlessly. ‘Nothing’s happened to us in ten years.’
But his eyes were fixed on the transcript. His mouth moved silently, as if he were repeating the words to himself. He must have read them two or three times. Then, slowly, he lowered himself into a seat.
‘I didn’t believe it,’ he said quietly. ‘I just didn’t believe it. My God – how long has this been going on?’
‘All the time, maybe,’ said Vandamme. ‘We might have known sooner if we hadn’t lost Thorsten but …’
‘But it’s hard to believe all the same.’
‘Some things are so big you just don’t see them.’
‘My God!’
‘Coffee?’ said Paul.
‘Yes, please.’
He left them to their shock and made his way to the kitchen. He took down the white cups and clipped them to the tray. He made the coffee and poured it. When he rejoined the others, May and Lewis were both on their feet. They were agitated. May was waving her hands.
‘… It’s got to be something Earth’s doing!’ she was saying. ‘It’s got to be! Hasn’t it?’
‘Earth is eight light-hours away, there and back,’ Lewis answered. ‘Anything that could react this quickly to signals from out here must be out here with us. Not just orbiting the planet. It’s here on the moon with us.’
‘But it must at least be human, mustn’t it? To understand what we were saying?’
‘It’s hard to imagine what else it could be. But …’
‘But?’
‘But if it’s a human then it’s a pretty damned simpleminded one. What’s it jamming? The words someone else. To a human that’s as good as telling us there is someone else. If it’s a human, then it’s one that’s got absolutely no understanding of how other humans will perceive what it does.’
‘Could it be the We?’
‘Eight hours away,’ Lewis repeated wearily. ‘Plus its reaction time, which is going to be hours if not days. It’s not the We, whatever it is.’
‘Can I show you something?’ said Vandamme quietly.
‘Please.’
‘Field readings: seventeen: zero four: twelve hundred,’ said Vandamme to the wall.
The screen filled with figures.
‘Those are pretty damned high,’ said Lewis, eyeing them. ‘Is that what was going on when we were out there?’
‘They are extreme, Lewis. Although in fact they are slightly less extreme than the recordings we took during Paul’s first excursion. And I think that if we repeated the experiment several times we would find both that the level of activity would fall and that the accuracy of the jamming would improve each time we did it.’
‘Why?’
‘Because that’s how a brain learns,’ said May. ‘That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it, Van? That’s how a brain learns.’
‘It’s hiding in the shadows,’ said Vandamme at last.
Lewis stirred. ‘What’s that?’
‘Something Paul said to me. It’s in the shadow. On the side of the planet away from the Sun. That’s why Earth hasn’t found it. It’s hiding behind the planet.’
‘You’re saying it’s the tail? The tail is alive?’
‘It’s responding. And it doesn’t want to be found.’
‘Found by whom?’
‘By Earth. It knows Earth is there.’
‘But – a field isn’t life,’ said Lewis. ‘How can it be? Where’s its DNA?’
‘It doesn’t need DNA. It needs a way of copying itself. Life is a pattern that copies itself. That’s all. Once it’s reached a population of several thousand, then it’s stable enough to survive in the long term. And to mutate and adapt.’
‘Several thousand?’ repeated May.
‘I don’t understand,’ said Lewis. ‘Are you saying it’s one thing, or thousands?’
‘Both, perhaps.’
A pattern, Paul thought. One that used energy, became complex and replicated itself. The action of the exterior sub-storms crowded on the interior ones and forced them to split into little copies of themselves, so that there were always more to replace those that perished on the edge of the tail.
How could it be intelligent? A magnetic source might excite particles so that they reacted like the impulses from a nerve cell. But how could these reactions become thought? How did they link and feed back to one another? How did it learn and remember? What stimuli or process of selection had cultivated it to reach its current state?
Whe
n, in its history, had it learned fear?
For it was afraid. After aeons of knowing only the planet, the solar wind and itself, it had felt a sudden change: an increase in radio communications sourced from one tiny rock planet circling closely around the star. A torrent of signals, growing and growing in intensity as mankind worked through the technological advances of radio, television, telephone and the World Ear. To a thing that perceived the radio spectrum, it must have been as dramatic as a second sun flaring at the heart of the solar system. A new light that drove the thing scurrying for darkness.
And then worse had come. More transmissions had begun, here, sourced from a fleck of rock that until now had been silent and meaningless as it orbited through the magnetic tail. The new star, Earth, had reached out and planted a seed of itself here, so that all space became full of its chatter and there was nowhere to hide. It must have felt like an invasion. Or a knife drawn across the skin.
But the field – if it was a field – was not defenceless. Bursts of particles could override anything in its immediate vicinity. To begin with it must have suppressed all the new transmissions indiscriminately, confounding the World Ear networks and bringing construction of the station to a temporary halt. But it was also capable of listening and of learning. It had been bathed in signals from Earth for more than a hundred years. It had come to know them, so that it could distinguish and jam only those transmissions that seemed to relate directly to itself – the periodic surveys of the tail, where the heart of its being lay, and a little lone voice on the ice which cried, There must be someone else.
* * *
‘… But you’re not making sense either!’ Vandamme complained. ‘Why can’t it be an ST2 event?’
‘Because there’s never been one!’ cried Lewis. ‘We’ve been looking and looking for a hundred years, far beyond this solar system, and there has never been anything! Not a bleep, not even a microbe. Certainly nothing capable of learning – and learning our language!’
‘It’s something, though,’ said Vandamme. ‘Isn’t it? Something that can only have been done by some level of intelligence?’
Lewis paused.
‘Well …’ But he did not go on.
‘I think Earth suspects it,’ Paul said.
