Starplex

by Robert J. Sawyer

  "How about 'darkies'?" said Rhombus, helpfully.

  Keith cringed. "That's not a good idea." He thought for a second, then looked up, grinning. "What about MACHO men?"

  Jag rolled all four eyes and made a disgusted bark.

  "How does 'darmats' sound?" asked Thor.

  Rissa nodded. "Darmats it is." She addressed everyone in the room.

  "Well, as you all know, Hek has been cataloging the signal groups he's picked up from the darmats. On the assumption that each group is a word, we've identified the single most commonly used one. For the first message, I'm going to send a looping repeat of that word. We assume it's innocuous--the darmat equivalent of 'the,' or some such.

  Granted, the repetition will convey no meaningful information, but with luck the darmats will recognize it as an attempt to communicate." She turned to Keith. "Permission to proceed, Director?"

  Keith smiled. "Be my guest."

  Rissa touched a control. "Transmitting now."

  Lights flashed on Rhombus's web. "Well, that certainly did something,"

  he said. "The conversation level has increased dramatically. All of them talking at once."

  Rissa nodded. "We're hoping they'll triangulate on the probe as the source."

  "I'd say they've figured it out," said Thor, a moment later, pointing at the display. Five of the world-sized creatures had begun to move toward the probe.

  "Now the tricky part begins," said Rissa. "We've got their attention, but can we communicate with them?"

  Keith knew that if anyone could pull it off, it would be his wife, who had been part of the team that had first communicated with the Ibs.

  That effort had started with a simple exchange of nouns--this pattern of lights meant "table," that one meant "ground," and so on. Even then, there had been difficulties. The Ib body was so different from the bipedal human design that for many concepts they had no terms: stand up, run, sit down, chair, clothing, male, female. And because they'd always lived under cloud cover, for countless other ideas--day, night, month, year, constellation--there were no common Ibese words.

  Meanwhile, the Ibs had been trying to convey concepts that were central to their lives: biological gestalt, all-encompassing vision, and the many metaphorical meanings for roll ahead and roll back.

  But that exercise had been a piece of cake compared with communicating with world-sized beings. Indeed, the Ibs had had no trouble understanding that particular metaphor--enjoyable, nonnutritive food being equated with ease--just as humans had no difficulty with the Ibese expression for the same sentiment, "downward slope."

  Communicating with aliens as big as Jupiter who might or might not be intelligent, might or might not be able to see, might or might not understand any principle of physics or mathematics, could prove impossible.

  "The babble on all two hundred frequencies is continuing," said Rhombus.

  Rissa nodded. "But no way to tell if it's chatter amongst the spheres, or responses aimed at us." She touched another button. "I'm going to try again with a loop of a different, almost-as-common darmat word."

  This time, the radio cacophony was halted by one darmat who was apparently shushing the others. And then that darmat repeated a simple, three-word sentence over and over again.

  "Time to play a hunch," said Rissa.

  "How so?" asked Keith.

  "Well, the first question we would ask in a circumstance such as this would be 'Who are you?" Hek and I had PHANTOM sample all the darmat words, and devise a signal that followed the apparent rules for valid word construction but had not, as far as we've been able to detect, been used by the darmats. We hope they'll take this signal to be Starplex's name."

  Rissa broadcast the made-up word several times--and, at last, the first breakthrough: the same sphere that had shushed the others repeated the term back at the probe.

  "The rain in Spain," said Rissa, grinning, "falls mainly on the plain."

  "A thousand pardons," said Rhombus. "My translator must be broken."

  Rissa was still grinning. "It's not broken. It's just [hat I think she's got it--I think we've made contact."

  Keith gestured at the display. "Which one is talking to US?"

  Ropes danced on Rhombus's console. 'hat one," he said as a blue halo appeared around one of the red circles. He operated his console some more. "Here, let me give you a better picture. Now that we've got the green star for light, I can get good views of the individual darmats."

  The red circle disappeared, replaced with a gray-on-black rendering of the sphere.

  "Can you increase the contrast?" asked Keith.

  "A pleasure to do so." The parts of the sphere that had been gray or smoky now showed in a much wider range of intensities, all the way through to pure white.

  Keith regarded it. With the enhanced contrast, a pair of vertical white convection lines were visible going from pole to pole, flaring out at the equator. "A cat's eye," he said.

  Rissa nodded. "It does look like one, doesn't it?" She touched some controls. "Okay, Cat's Eye, let's see how intelligent you are." A horizontal black bar appeared floating in the holo bubble, about a meter long and fifteen centimeters tall. "That bar represents a series of fusion lamps on the probe," said Rissa. "The lamps have been turned off since the probe was deployed. Now, watch." She tapped a key on her console. The black bar turned electric pink for three seconds, went black again for three seconds, turned pink twice in rapid succession, blacked out for another three seconds, then blinked on three times.

  "When the bar is pink, I've got all the fusion lamps on," said Rissa.

  "The probe is also broadcasting white radio noise when the lights are on, and silence when they're off. I've set the bridge speakers to the frequency used by Cat's Eye."

  The speakers were silent, but Keith could see indicators blinking on Rhombus's panel, showing chatter on some of the other frequencies.

  Rissa waited about half a minute, then touched a key. The whole sequence--one blink, two blinks, three blinks--repeated itself.

  This time there was an immediate response: three darmat words, which PHANTOM translated over the speakers as three distinctive patterns of bleeps and bloops.

  "Well," said Lianne, "if we're lucky, that's darmat talk for one, two, three."

  "Unless," said Tho;, "it's darmat for 'what the hell--?"" Rissa smiled, and pushed the same key. The probe winked out one, two, three again, and Cat's Eye responded with the same three words. "Okay," said Rissa.

  "Now for the real test." She pressed another key, and everyone watched as the indicator bar winked in reverse sequence: three, two, one.

  The darmat responded with three words. Keith couldn't quite tell for sure, but-- "Got it!" crowed Rissa. "Those were the same three words Cat's Eye said before, but in the opposite order. He understands what we're saying--and therefore has at least a rudimentary intelligence."

  Rissa ran the sequence again, and this time PHANTOM substituted the English words "three, two, one," in a synthesized male voice with an old-fashioned French accent--apparently that was to be the standard for darmats.

  The bridge staff was rapt as Rissa pressed on, learning the Darmat words for the numerals four through one hundred.

  Neither she nor PHANTOM could detect any kind of repeating pattern in the word construction that would allow one to deduce the base the darmats used for counting; it seemed that each numeral was represented by a word unrelated to all the others. She stopped at one hundred, afraid the darmat would get bored by the game and cease communicating with her at all.

  Next came exercises in simple math: two blinks, a six-second pause--double the normal length--two more blinks, another six-second pause, and then four blinks.

  Cat's Eye dutifully provided the words two, two, and four each of the first five times Rissa repeated the sequence, but on the sixth, it finally caught the intended meaning of the prolonged gaps: a six-second gap meant a word was missing in the middle. PHANTOM didn't wait for Rissa's confirmation; when Cat's Eye next
spoke, it translated the darmat sentence as "two plus two equals four"--adding the terms for the two operators to the translation database. In short order, Rissa also elicited the darmat words for "minus,"

  "multiplied by,"

  "divided by," "greater than," and "less

  "I think," said Rissa, grinning from ear to ear, "that there's no doubt that we're dealing with highly intelligent beings."

  Keith shook his head in wonder as Rissa continued to use mathematics to work out more vocabulary. She soon had the darmat terms for "correct"

  and "incorrect" (or "yes" and "no")--which she hoped would also be their terms for "right" and "wrong" in other areas. She then had Rhombus move the probe in specific ways (carefully avoiding splashing the darmat with hot ACS exhaust), and that led to the darmat words for "up," "down,"

  "left," "right,"

  "in front," "behind,"

  "receding," "approaching," "turning," "tumbling," "circling," "fast,"

  "slow," and more.

  By moving the probe in a path right around Cat's Eye, Rissa was able to get the darmat word for "orbit," and soon had picked up the words for

  "star,"

  "planet," and "moon," as well.

  By using colored filters on the probe's fusion lamps, Rissa then elicited the darmat words for various hues. She next broadcast her first simple original sentence, beginning with the arbitrary sign they'd originally assigned to the probe that was Starplex's mouthpiece:

  "Starplex moves toward green star." Rissa then had Rhombus make the probe do precisely that.

  Cat's Eye understood at once, responding with the word for "correct."

  He then sent his own sentence: "Cat's Eye moves away from Starplex,"

  then turned word into deed.

  Rissa replied with "correct."

  When alpha shift was over, Keith went back to his apartment to shower and eat, but Rissa kept on long into ship's night, building up a bigger and bigger vocabulary.

  Never once did Cat's Eye show the slightest sign of impatience or fatigue. By the time gamma shift was coming on duty, Rissa herself was exhausted, and she turned the translation duties over to Hek. They worked for four days--sixteen shifts--slowly building up a darmat vocabulary.

  Cat's Eye never let his attention falter. Finally, Rissa said, they could engage in a simple conversation. Keith, as director, would vet the questions, but Rissa would actually pose them.

  "Ask him how long he's been here," said Keith.

  Rissa leaned into the microphone stalk emerging from her console.

  "How long have you been here?"

  The answer came quickly: "Since the time we started talking, times one hundred times one hundred times one hundred times one hundred times one hundred times one hundred."

  PHANTOM's voice came on, interpolating: "That is approximately four trillion days, or roughly ten billion years."

  "Of course," said Rissa, "he could be speaking figuratively--just meaning to convey a very long time."

  "Ten billion years," said Jag, "is, however, a rough approximation of the age of the universe."

  "Well, if you were ten billion years old, I suppose you'd have a lot of patience, too," said Thor, chuckling.

  "Maybe ask him a different way," suggested Lianne.

  "Is that how long all of you have been here?" said Rissa into the mike.

  "This group that duration," said the translated voice.

  "This one, duration since the time we started talking, times one hundred times one hundred times one hundred times fifty."

  "That translates to approximately five hundred thousand years," said PHANTOM.

  "Perhaps he's saying this group of darmats is ten billion years old,"

  said Rissa, "but he's only half a million himself."

  "'Only,'" said Lianne.

  "Now tell him how old we are," said Keith.

  "You mean Starplex's age?" asked Rissa. "Or the age of the Commonwealth? Or the age of our species?"

  "We're comparing civilizations, I guess," said Keith. "So the comparisons would be the oldest Commonwealth race."

  He looked at his little hologram of Rhombus. "That's the Ibs, who have existed in their current species form for about a million years, right?"

  Rhombus's web rippled in agreement.

  Rissa nodded and keyed her mike. "We duration since the time we started talking times one hundred times one hundred times one hundred times one hundred. This one duration since the time we started talking times one hundred plus one hundred." She touched the off switch. "I told him that as a civilization, we're a million years old, but Starplex itself is just two years old."

  Cat's Eye replied by reiterating the number for its own personal age, followed by the word for minus, then repeating the equation for Starplex's tiny age, adding the word for "equals," and then reiterating the same sequence it had used to express its own age. "Very loosely,"

  said Rissa, "I think he's saying that our age is nothing compared to his."

  "Well, he's right about that," said Keith, laughing. "I wonder what it would feel like to be that old?"

  Chapter XV

  Keith rarely entered any of the ship's Ibese areas. Gravity was kept at 1.41 times Earth normal there (and 1.72 times ship's standard); Keith felt as though he weighed 115 kilograms, instead of his usual 82.

  He could stand it for short periods of time, but it wasn't pleasant.

  The corridors here were much wider than elsewhere aboard Starplex, and the interdeck areas were thicker, making for lower ceilings. Keith didn't have to stoop, but he found himself doing so anyway. The air was warm and dry.

  Keith came to the room he was looking for, its door marked with a matrix of yellow lights forming a rectangular shape with a small cimle just below the rectangle's base at each end. Keith had never seen a train with wheels, except in a museum, but the pictogram did indeed look like a boxcar.

  Keith spoke into the air. "Let her know I'm here, please, PHANTOM."

  PHANTOM chirped acknowledgment, and a moment later, presumably having received Boxcar's permission, the door slid aside.

  Ib living quarters were unusual by human standards. At first, they seemed luxuriously big--the room Keith had entered measured eight by ten meters. But then one realized that they were actually the same size as every other apartment aboard ship, but weren't divided into separate sleeping, living, and bathing areas. There were no chairs or couches, of course. Nor was there any carpeting; the floor was covered with a hard robber material. On their home-world, in preindustrial times, Ibs built mounds of earth just wide enough so that they would fit between their wheels--so that the frame and the other components could be supported when the wheels temporarily separated from the body.

  Boxcar had the manufactured equivalent of such a mound in one corner of her room, but that was its only furnishing.

  Keith found the art on the walls strange and disconcerting: peanut-shaped images consisting of multiple, often distorted, views of the same object from different angles superimposed one atop the other.

  He couldn't make out what the ones on the far wall showed, but he was startled to realize that the series of them nearest to him were studies of severely premature human and Waldahud babies, with stubby limbs, and strange, translucent heads. Boxcar was a biologist, after all, and alien life was probably fascinating to her, but the choice of subject matter was unsettling to say the least.

  Boxcar rolled toward Keith from the far side of the room.

  It was nerve-racking to have an Ib approach from a good distance. They liked to accelerate to high speed and then stop with a jerk only a meter or two away. Keith had never heard of a human getting steamrollered by one, but he was always afraid he'd be the first.

  The Ib's lights flashed. "Dr. Lansing," she said. "An unexpected pleasure. Please, please--I have no seat to offer you, but I know the gravity is too high. Feel free to rest on my comfort mound." A rope flicked in the direction of the wedge-shaped construct at the side of the room.


  Keith's first thought was to reject the offer, but, dammit, it was unpleasant standing under this gravity. He walked over to the mound and rested his rear on it. 'Thank you," he said. He didn't know how to begin, but he knew he would offend the Ib if he wasted time coming to the point. "Rissa asked me to come to see you. She says you are going to discorporate soon."

  "Dear, sweet Rissa," said Boxcar. "Her concern is touching."

  Keith looked around the room, thinking. "I want you to know," he said at last, "that you don't have to go through with the discorporation--at least so long as you are aboard Starplex. All staff aboard this ship are considered de facto embassy personnel; I can try to arrange immunity for you."

  He looked at the being; he wished it had a face--wished it had normal eyes, eyes that he could try to read. "Your service has been exemplary; there's no reason why you couldn't continue to serve aboard Starplex for the rest of your natural life."

  "You are kind, Dr. Lansing. Very kind. But I must be true to myself.

  Understand that though I have not mentioned my impending discorporation to anyone, I have been preparing mentally and physically for it for centuries now. I have timed the events of my life to conclude now; I wouldn't know what to do with the extra fifty years."

  "You could continue your research. Who knows? With another half century of work on the senescence problem, you might lick it. You might never have to die."

  "An eternity of shame, Dr. Lansing? An eternity of guilt?

  No, thank you. I am unalterably committed to my stated course of action."

  Keith was quiet for a moment, thinking. Arguments and counterarguments ran through his head; new tacks, new approaches. But he dismissed them all. It wasn't his business, wasn't his place. Finally, he nodded.

  "Is there anything I can do to make it easier for you? Any special facilities or equipment you need?"

  "There is a ceremony. Normally, most Ibs would not attend; to do so would be to have the guilty party end up wasting even more of their time. I imagine that only my closest Ib friends will come. So, on that basis, I have no need for a large venue. But, since you have offered, I would request, if possible, that I be allowed to use one of the docking bays for the ceremony--and that once the ceremony is completed, my component parts be ejected into space."