Analog SFF, October 2005

by Dell Magazine Authors

  He waved at her. Once all the outerwear was removed, everyone came upstairs. Angela kissed him on the cheek as she passed, carrying a rectangular cake box. She went into the kitchen. Twelve-year-old Percy was up next, then came Cassie, pulling on the banister, which she could barely reach, to help her get up the six steps.

  Don bent low, feeling twinges in his back as he did so. He wanted to lift Cassie up, but that was impossible. He settled for letting her get her little arms around his neck and giving him a squeeze. Cassie was oblivious to the fact that she was hurting him, and he endured it until she let go. She then scampered through the living room and followed her mother to the kitchen. He turned to watch her and saw Sarah coming down from upstairs, one painful step at time, gripping the bannister with both hands as she did so.

  By the time she reached the bottom step, Don heard the front door opening again, and his daughter Emily—divorced, no kids—coming in. Soon enough, everyone was crowded into the living room. With his cochlear implants, Don's hearing wasn't bad under normal circumstances, but he couldn't really pick out any one thread of conversation from the hubbub that now filled the air. Still, it was his family, all together. He was happy about that, but—

  But it might be the last time. They'd gathered just six weeks ago for Christmas at Carl's place, in Ajax. His children and grandchildren wouldn't normally all get together again until next Christmas, but—

  But he couldn't count on there being a next Christmas; not at his age...

  No; that wasn't what he should be dwelling on. Today was a party, a celebration. He should enjoy it, and—

  And suddenly there was a champagne flute in his hand. Emily was circling the room, handing them out to the adults, while Carl presented plastic tumblers of juice to the children.

  "Dad, go stand by Mom,” Carl said. And he did so, making his way across the room to where she was—not standing; she couldn't stand for long. Rather, she was seated in the old La-Z-Boy. Neither of them ever reclined it anymore, although the grandkids loved to operate the mechanism. He stood next to Sarah, looking down on her thinning snow-white hair. She craned her neck as much as she could to look up at him, and a smile crossed her face, one more line in a landscape of creases and folds.

  "Everybody, everybody!” shouted Carl. He was the elder of Don and Sarah's kids and always took charge. “Your attention, please!” The conversation and laughter died down quickly, and Don watched as Carl raised his own champagne flute. “I'd like to propose a toast. To Mom and Dad, on their sixtieth wedding anniversary!"

  The adults all raised their glasses, and, after a moment, the kids imitated them with their tumblers. “To Don and Sarah!” said Emily, and, “To Grandma and Grandpa,” declared Percy.

  Don took a sip of the champagne, the first alcohol he'd had since New Year's Eve. He noted his hand was shaking even more than it normally did, not from age but with emotion.

  "So, Dad, what do you say?” asked Carl. He was grinning from ear to ear. Emily, for her part, was recording everything with her datacom. “Would you do it all over again?"

  Carl had asked the question, but Don's answer was really for Sarah. He set his glass on a little tea table next to the La-Z-Boy, then slowly, painfully, lowered himself onto one knee, so that he was at eye level with his seated wife. He reached over, took her hand, feeling the thin, almost translucent skin sliding over the swollen joints, and looked into her pale blue eyes. “In a heartbeat,” he said softly.

  Emily let out a long, theatrical, "Awwww..."

  Sarah squeezed his hand, and she smiled at him, the same wry smile he'd fallen for back when they were both in their twenties, and she said, with a steadiness that her voice almost never managed these days, “Me, too."

  Carl's exuberance got the better of him. “To another sixty years!” he said, lifting his glass again, and Don found himself laughing at the ridiculousness of the proposition.

  "Why not?” he said, slowly rising again, then reaching for his glass. “Why the heck not?"

  The phone rang. He knew his kids thought the voice-only phones were quaint, but neither he nor Sarah had any desire to have 2D picture phones, let alone holophones. His first thought was not to answer; let whoever it was leave a message. But it was probably a well-wisher—maybe even his brother Bill calling from Florida, where he wintered.

  The cordless handset was on the other side of the room. Don lifted his eyebrows and nodded at Percy, who looked delighted to be charged with such a task. He raced across the room, and rather than just bringing over the handset, he activated it and very politely said, “Halifax residence."

  It was possible that Emily, standing near Percy, could hear the person on the other end of the line, but Don couldn't make out anything. After a moment, he heard Percy say, “Just a sec,” and the boy started walking across the room. Don held out his hand to take the handset, but Percy shook his head. “It's for Grandma."

  Sarah looked surprised as she took the handset, which, upon recognizing her fingerprints, automatically cranked up its volume. “Hello?” she said.

  Don looked on with interest, but Carl was talking to Emily while Angela was making sure her children were being careful with their drinks, and—

  "Oh, my God!” exclaimed Sarah.

  "What is it?” asked Don.

  "Are you sure?” Sarah said, into the mouthpiece. “Are you positive it's not—No, no, of course you'd check. Sorry. But—my God!"

  "Sarah,” said Don, “what is it?"

  "Hang on, Lenore,” Sarah said into the phone, then she covered the mouthpiece with a trembling hand. “It's Lenore Darby,” she said, looking up at him. He gathered he should know the name, but couldn't place it immediately—the story of his life, these days—and his face must have conveyed that. “You know,” said Sarah. “She's doing her master's; you met her at the last astro-department Christmas party."

  "Yes?"

  "Well,” said Sarah, sounding as though she couldn't believe that she was uttering these words, “Lenore says a reply has been received."

  "What?” said Carl, now standing on the other side of her chair.

  Sarah turned to face her son, but Don knew what she meant before she spoke again; he knew precisely what she meant, and he staggered a half-pace backward, groping for the edge of a bookcase for support. “A reply has been received,” repeated Sarah. “The aliens from Sigma Draconis have responded to the radio message my team sent all those years ago."

  * * * *

  Chapter 2

  Most jokes get tired with repetition, but some become old friends, causing a smile whenever they come to mind. For Don Halifax, one such was a quip Conan O'Brien had made decades ago. Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones had just announced the birth of their baby girl. “Congratulations,” O'Brien had said. “And if she's anything like her mother, right now her future husband is in his mid-forties."

  There was no such age gap between Don and Sarah. They'd both been born in 1960 and had gone through life in lockstep. They'd both been twenty-seven when they'd gotten married; thirty-two when Carl, their first child, had been born; and forty-eight when—

  As Don stood, looking at Sarah, the moment came back to him, and he shook his head in amazement. It had been front-page news, back when there were front pages, all over the world. On March first, 2009, a radio message had been received from a planet orbiting the star Sigma Draconis.

  The world had puzzled over the message for months, trying to make sense of what the aliens had said. And then, finally, Sarah Halifax herself had figured out what they were getting at, and it was she who had led the team composing the official reply that had been sent on the one-year anniversary of the receipt of the original signal.

  The public had initially been hungry for more news, but Sigma Draconis was 18.8 light-years from Earth, meaning the reply wouldn't reach there until 2028, and any response the Dracons might make couldn't have gotten here until October 2047 at the earliest.

  And a few TV shows and webcasts had dut
ifully done little pieces last fall noting that a response could be received “any day now.” But none was. Not in October, not in November, not in December, not in January, not...

  Not until right now.

  No sooner had Sarah gotten off the phone with Lenore than it rang again. The call, as she revealed in a stage whisper while holding her hand over the mouthpiece, was from CNN. Don remembered the pandemonium the last time, when she had figured out the purpose of the first message—God, where had the decades gone?

  Everyone was now standing or sitting in a semicircle, looking at Sarah. Even the children had recognized that something major was going on, although they had no idea what.

  "No,” Sarah was saying. “No, I have no comment. No, you can't. It's my anniversary today. I'm not going to let it be ruined by strangers in the house. What? No, no. Look, I really have to go. All right, then. All right, then. Yes, yes. Good-bye.” She pushed the button that terminated the call, then looked up at Don, and lifted her frail shoulders a bit. “Sorry for all the bother,” she said. “It's—"

  The phone rang again, an electronic bleeping that Don disliked at the best of times. Carl, taking command, took the handset from his mother and flicked off the ringer. “They can leave a message if they like."

  Sarah frowned. “But what if somebody needs help?"

  Carl spread his arms. “Your whole family is here. Who else would call for help? Relax, Mom. Let's enjoy the rest of the party."

  Don looked around the room. Carl had been sixteen when his mother had been briefly famous, but Emily had been just ten, and hadn't really understood what had been going on. She was staring at Sarah with astonishment on her narrow face.

  Phones in the other rooms were ringing, but they were easy enough to ignore. “So,” he said, “did—what was her name? Lenore? Did she say anything about the message's content?"

  Sarah shook her head. “No. Just that it was definitely from Sigma Draconis, and seems to begin, at least, with the same symbol set used last time."

  Angela said, “Aren't you dying to know what the reply says?"

  Sarah reached out her arms in a way that said “help me up.” Carl stepped forward and did just that, gently bringing his mother to her feet. “Sure, I'd like to know,” she said. “But it's still coming in.” She looked at her daughter-in-law. “So let's get started making dinner."

  * * * *

  The kids and grandkids left around 9:00 P.M. Carl, Angela, and Emily had done all the work cleaning up after dinner, and so Don and Sarah simply sat on the living-room couch, enjoying the restored calm. Emily had gone around at one point, shutting off all the other ringers on the phones, and they were still off. But the answering machine's digital display kept changing every few minutes. Don was reminded of another old joke, this one from his teenage years, about the guy who liked to follow Elizabeth Taylor to McDonald's so he could watch the numbers change. Those signs had been stuck at “Over 99 Billion Served” for decades, but he remembered the hoopla when they'd all finally been replaced with new ones that read, “Over 1 Trillion Served."

  Sometimes it was better to just stop counting, he thought—especially when it's a counting down instead of a counting up. They'd both made it to eighty-seven, and to sixty years together. But they surely wouldn't be around for a seventieth anniversary; that just wasn't in the cards. In fact...

  In fact, he was surprised they'd lived this long, but maybe they'd been holding on, striving to reach the diamond milestone. All his life, he'd read about people who died just days after their eightieth, ninetieth, or hundredth birthdays. They'd clung to life, literally by the force of their wills, until the big day had been reached, and then they'd just let go.

  Don had turned eighty-seven three months ago, and Sarah had done so five months before that. That hadn't been what they'd been holding on for. But a sixtieth wedding anniversary! How rare that was!

  He would have liked to put his arm around Sarah's shoulders as they sat side by side on the couch, but it pained him to rotate his own shoulder that much, and—

  And then it hit him. Maybe she hadn't been hanging on for their anniversary. Maybe what had really kept her going all this time was waiting to see what reply the Dracons would send. He wished contact had been made with a star thirty or forty light-years away, instead of just nineteen. He wanted her to keep holding on. He didn't know what he'd do if she let go, and—

  And he'd read that news story, too, dozens of times over the years: the husband who dies only days after his wife; the wife who finally seems to give up and let go shortly after hubby passes away.

  Don knew a day like today called for some comment, but when he opened his mouth, what came out were just two words, that, he guessed, summarized it all: “Sixty years."

  She nodded. “A long time."

  He was quiet for a while, then: “Thank you."

  She turned her head to look at him. “For what?"

  "For—” He lifted his eyebrows and raised his shoulders a bit as he sought an answer. And then, finally, he said, very softly, “Everything."

  Next to them, on the little table beside the couch, the counter on the answering machine tallied up another call. “I wonder what the aliens’ reply says,” Don said. “I hope it's not just one of those damn autoresponders. ‘I'm sorry, but I'll be away from the planet for the next million years.'” Sarah laughed, and Don went on. “'If you need immediate assistance, please contact my assistant Zagdorf at ... ‘"

  "You are a supremely silly man,” she said, patting the back of his hand.

  * * * *

  Even though they only had voice phones, Sarah and Don did have a modern answering machine. “Forty-eight calls were received since you last reviewed your messages,” the device's smooth male voice said the next morning as they sat at the dining-room table. “Of those, thirty-nine left messages. All thirty-nine were for Sarah. Thirty-one were from the media. Rather than presenting them in order of receipt, I suggest you let me prioritize them for you, sorting by audience size. Starting with the TV networks, CNN—"

  "What about the calls that weren't from the media?” Sarah asked.

  "The first was from your hair dresser. The second is from the SETI Institute. The third is from the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Toronto. The fourth—"

  "Play the one from U of T."

  A squeaky female voice came on. “Good morning, Professor Halifax. This is Lenore again—you know, Lenore Darby. Sorry to be phoning so early, but I thought someone should give you a call. Everyone's been working on interpreting the message as it comes in—here, over in Mountain View, at the Allen, everywhere—and, well, you're not going to believe this, Professor Halifax, but we think the message is"—the voice lowered a bit, as if its owner was embarrassed to go on—"encrypted. Not just encoded for transmission, but actually encrypted—you know, scrambled so that it can't be read without a decryption key."

  Sarah looked at Don, her face astonished. Lenore went on. “I know sending us an encrypted message doesn't make any sense, but that seems to be what the Dracons have done. The beginning of the message is all math stuff, laid out in that symbol set they used before, and the computer gunks say the math describes a decryption algorithm. And then the rest of the message is total gibberish, presumably because it has indeed been encrypted. Get it? They've told us how the message is encrypted, and given us the algorithm to unlock it, but they haven't given us the decryption key to feed into that algorithm to do the actual unlocking. It's the craziest thing, and—"

  "Pause,” said Sarah. “How long does she go on?"

  "Another two minutes, sixteen seconds,” said the machine, and then it added, “She's quite chatty."

  Sarah shook her head and looked at Don. “Encrypted!” she declared. “That doesn't make any sense. Why in God's name would aliens send us a message we can't read?"

  * * * *

  Chapter 3

  Sarah fondly remembered Seinfeld, although, sadly, it hadn't aged well. Still,
one of Jerry's bits of standup seemed as true today as it had been half-a-century ago. When it came to TV, most men were hunters, switching from channel to channel, always on the prowl for something better, while women were nesters, content to settle in with a single program. But today, Sarah found herself scanning constantly; the puzzle of the encrypted message from Sigma Draconis was all over the TV and the web. She caught coverage of odds-makers paying off winners who'd correctly guessed the day on which a reply would be received, fundamentalists decrying the new signal as a temptation from Satan, and crackpots claiming to have already decrypted the secret transmission.

  Of course, she was delighted that there had been a reply, but as she continued to flip channels on the giant monitor above the mantel, she reflected that she was also disappointed that in all the years since they'd detected the first message, no other alien radio source had been found. As Sarah had once said in an interview very much like the ones she was looking at today, it was certainly true that we weren't alone—but we were still pretty lonely.

  Her surfing was interrupted each time someone came up to the front door and rang the bell; an image of whoever it was automatically appeared on the monitor. Mostly it seemed to be reporters; there were still a few journalists who did more than send email, make phone calls, and surf the web.

  Those neighbors who had lived here on Betty Ann Drive four decades ago knew Sarah's claim to fame, but most of the houses had changed hands several times since then. She wondered what her newer neighbors made of the succession of news vans that had pulled into her driveway. Ah, well; at least it wasn't something to be embarrassed about, like the cop cars that kept showing up at the Kuchma place across the road and, so far, Sarah had simply ignored all the people who had rung her doorbell, but—

  My God.

  But she couldn't ignore this.

  The face that had suddenly appeared on the monitor was not human.