“If you fail, that will result in destruction for all sentient life on your planet.
“We announce this threat with the deepest regret. You are urged to examine Eniwetok atoll for a small display of our power. Your artificial satellites have been removed from the skies.
“You must break away from this limited communication!”
Eniwetok had been cleared off flat as a table at one thousand feet depth … with no trace of explosion! All Russian and United States artificial satellites had been combed from the skies.
All day long a damp wind poured up the Columbia Gorge from the ocean. It swept across the Eastern Oregon alkali flats with a false prediction of rain. Spiny desert scrub bent before the gusts, sheltering blur-footed coveys of quail and flop-eared jackrabbits. Heaps of tumbleweed tangled in the fence lines, and the air was filled with dry particles of grit that crept under everything and into everything and onto everything with the omnipresence of filterable virus.
On the flats south of the Hermiston Ordnance Depot the weird bulk of the spaceship caught pockets and eddies of sand. The thing looked like a monstrous oval of dun canvas draped across upright sticks. A cluster of quonsets and the Army’s new desert prefabs dotted a rough half-circle around the north rim. They looked like dwarfed out-buildings for the most gigantic circus tent Earth had ever seen. Army Engineers said the ship was 6,218 feet long, 1,054 feet wide.
Some five miles east of the site the dust storm hazed across the monotonous structures of the cantonment that housed some thirty thousand people from every major nation: linguists, anthropologists, psychologists, doctors of every shape and description, watchers and watchers for the watchers, spies, espionage and counter-espionage agents.
For seven months the threat of Eniwetok, the threat of the unknown as well, had held them in check.
Towards evening of this day the wind slackened. The drifted sand began sifting off the ship and back into new shapes, trickling down for all the world like the figurative “sands of time” that here were most certainly running out.
Mrs. Francine Millar, clinical psychologist with the Indo-European Germanic-Root team, hurried across the bare patch of trampled sand outside the spaceship’s entrance. She bent her head against what was left of the windstorm. Under her left arm she carried her briefcase tucked up like a football. Her other hand carried a rolled-up copy of that afternoon’s Oregon Journal. The lead story said that Air Force jets had shot down a small private plane trying to sneak into the restricted area. Three unidentified men killed. The plane had been stolen.
Thoughts of a plane crash made her too aware of the circumstances in her own recent widowhood. Dr. Robert Millar had died in the crash of a transatlantic passenger plane ten days before the arrival of the spaceship. She let the newspaper fall out of her hands. It fluttered away on the wind.
Francine turned her head away from a sudden biting of the sandblast wind. She was a wiry slim figure of about five feet six inches, still trim and athletic at forty-one. Her auburn hair, mussed by the wind, still carried the look of youth. Heavy lids shielded her blue eyes. The lids drooped slightly, giving her a perpetual sleepy look even when she was wide awake and alert—a circumstance she found helpful in her profession.
She came into the lee of the conference quonset, and straightened. A layer of sand covered the doorstep. She opened the door, stepped across the sand only to find more of it on the floor inside, grinding underfoot. It was on tables, on chairs, mounded in corners—on every surface.
Hikonojo Ohashi, Francine’s opposite number with the Japanese-Korean and Sino-Tibetan team, already sat at his place on the other side of the table. The Japanese psychologist was grasping, pen fashion, a thin-pointed brush, making notes in ideographic shorthand.
Francine closed the door.
Ohashi spoke without looking up: “We’re early.”
He was a trim, neat little man: flat features, smooth cheeks and even curve of chin, remote dark eyes behind the inevitable thick lenses of the Oriental scholar.
Francine tossed her briefcase onto the table and pulled out a chair opposite Ohashi. She wiped away the grit with a handkerchief before sitting down. The ever-present dirt, the monotonous landscape, her own frustration—all combined to hold her on the edge of anger. She recognized the feeling and its source, stifled a wry smile.
“No, Hiko,” she said. “I think we’re late. It’s later than we think.”
“Much later when you put it that way,” said Ohashi. His Princeton accent came out low, modulated like a musical instrument under the control of a master.
“Now we’re going to be banal,” she said. Immediately, she regretted the sharpness of her tone, forced a smile to her lips.
“They gave us no deadline,” said Ohashi. “That is one thing, anyway.” He twirled his brush across an inkstone.
“Something’s in the air,” she said. “I can feel it.”
“Very much sand in the air,” he said.
“The wind has us all on edge,” he said. “It feels like rain. A change in the weather.” He made another note, put down the brush and began setting out papers for the conference. All at once, his head came up. He smiled at Francine. The smile made him look immature, and she suddenly saw back through the years to a serious little boy named Hiko Ohashi.
“It’s been seven months,” she said. “It stands to reason that they’re not going to wait forever.”
“The usual gestation period is two months longer,” he said.
She frowned, ignoring the quip. “But we’re no closer today than we were at the beginning!”
Ohashi leaned forward. His eyes appeared to swell behind the thick lenses. “Do you often wonder at their insistence that we communicate with them? I mean, rather than the other way around?”
“Of course I do. So does everybody else.”
He sat back. “What do you think of the Islamic team’s approach?”
“You know what I think, Hiko. It’s a waste of time to compare all the Galactics’ speech sounds to passages from the Koran.” She shrugged. “But for all we know actually they could be closer to a solution than anyone else in…”
The door behind her banged open. Immediately, the room rumbled with the great basso voice of Theodore Zakheim, psychologist with the Ural-Altaic team.
“Hah-haaaaaaa!” he roared. “We’re all here now!”
Light footsteps behind Zakheim told Francine that he was accompanied by Emile Goré of the Indo-European Latin-Root team.
Zakheim flopped onto a chair beside Francine. It creaked dangerously to his bulk.
Like a great uncouth bear! she thought.
“Do you always have to be so noisy?” she asked.
Goré slammed the door behind them.
“Naturally!” boomed Zakheim. “I am noisy! It’s my nature, my little puchkin!”
Goré moved behind Francine, passing to the head of the table, but she kept her attention on Zakheim. He was a thick-bodied man, thick without fat, like the heaviness of a wrestler. His wide face and slanting pale blue eyes carried hints of Mongol ancestry. Rusty hair formed an uncombed brush atop his head.
Zakheim brought up his briefcase, flopped it onto the table, rested his hands on the dark leather. They were flat slab hands with thick fingers, pale wisps of hair growing down almost to the nails.
She tore her attention away from Zakheim’s hands, looked down the table to where Goré sat. The Frenchman was a tall, gawk-necked man, entirely bald. Jet eyes behind steel-rimmed bifocals gave him a look of down-nose asperity like a comic bird. He wore one of his usual funereal black suits, every button secured. Knob wrists protruded from the sleeves. His long-fingered hands with their thick joints moved in constant restlessness.
“If I may differ with you, Zak,” said Goré, “we are not all here. This is our same old group, and we were going to try to interest others in what we do here.”
Ohashi spoke to Francine: “Have you had any luck inviting others to our conferences?”
“Who?” asked Zakheim.
“The American Indian-Eskimo, the Hyperboreans, the Dravidians, the Malayo-Polynesians and the Caucasians.”
“Hagglers!” barked Zakheim. “I, of course, can cover us with the Hamito-Semitic tongues, but…” He shook his head.
Goré turned to Ohashi. “The others?”
Ohashi said: “I must report the polite indifference of the Munda and Mon-Kmer, the Sudanese-Guinean and the Bantu.”
“Those are big holes in our information exchange,” said Goré. “What are they discovering?”
“No more than we are!” snapped Zakheim. “Depend on it!”
“What of the languages not even represented among the teams here on the international site?” asked Francine. “I mean the Hottentot-Bushmen, the Ainu, the Basque and the Australian-Papuan?”
Zakheim covered her left hand with his right hand. “You always have me, my little dove.”
“We’re building another Tower of Babel!” she snapped. She jerked her hand away.
“Spurned again,” mourned Zakheim.
Ohashi said: “Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.” He smiled. “Genesis eleven-seven.”
Francine scowled. “And we’re missing about twenty per cent of Earth’s twenty-eight hundred languages!”
“We have all the significant ones,” said Zakheim.
“How do you know what’s significant?” she demanded.
“Please!” Goré raised a hand. “We’re here to exchange information, not to squabble!”
“I’m sorry,” said Francine. “It’s just that I feel so hopeless today.”
“Well, what have we learned today?” asked Goré.
“Nothing new with us,” said Zakheim.
Goré cleared his throat. “That goes double for me.” He looked at Ohashi.
The Japanese shrugged. “We achieved no reaction from the Galactic, Kobai.”
“Anthropomorphic nonsense,” muttered Zakheim.
“You mean naming him Kobai?” asked Ohashi. “Not at all, Zak. That’s the most frequent sound he makes, and the name helps with identification. We don’t have to keep referring to him as ‘The Galactic’ or ‘that creature in the spaceship.’”
Goré turned to Francine. “It was like talking to a green statue,” she said.
“What of the lecture period?” asked Goré.
“Who knows?” she asked. “It stands there like a bow-legged professor in that black leotard. Those sounds spew out of it as though they’d never stop. It wriggles at us. It waves. It sways. Its face contorts, if you can call it a face. We recorded and filmed it all, naturally, but it sounded like the usual mishmash!”
“There’s something in the gestures,” said Ohashi. “If we only had more competent pasimologists.”
“How many times have you seen the same total gesture repeated with the same sound?” demanded Zakheim.
“You’ve carefully studied our films,” said Ohashi. “Not enough times to give us a solid base for comparison. But I do not despair—”
“It was a rhetorical question,” said Zakheim.
“We really need more multilinguists,” said Goré. “Now is when we most miss the loss of such great linguists as Mrs. Millar’s husband.”
Francine closed her eyes, took a short, painful breath. “Bob…” She shook her head. No. That’s the past. He’s gone. The tears are ended.
“I had the pleasure of meeting him in Paris shortly before the … end,” continued Goré. “He was lecturing on the development of the similar sound schemes in Italian and Japanese.”
Francine nodded. She felt suddenly empty.
Ohashi leaned forward. “I imagine this is … rather painful for Dr. Millar,” he said.
“I am very sorry,” said Goré. “Forgive me.”
“Someone was going to check and see if there are any electronic listening devices in this room,” said Ohashi.
“My nephew is with our recording section,” said Goré, “He assures me there are no hidden microphones here.”
Zakheim’s brows drew down into a heavy frown. He fumbled with the clasp of his briefcase. “This is very dangerous,” he grunted.
“Oh, Zak, you always say that!” said Francine. “Let’s quit playing footsy!”
“I do not enjoy the thought of treason charges,” muttered Zakheim.
“We all know our bosses are looking for an advantage,” she said. “I’m tired of these sparring matches where we each try to get something from the others without giving anything away!”
“If your Dr. Langsmith or General Speidel found out what you were doing here, it would go hard for you, too,” said Zakheim.
“I propose we take it from the beginning and re-examine everything,” said Francine. “Openly this time.”
“Why?” demanded Zakheim.
“Because I’m satisfied that the answer’s right in front of us somewhere,” she said.
“In the ultimatum, no doubt,” said Goré. “What do you suppose is the real meaning of their statement that human languages are ‘limited’ communication? Perhaps they are telepathic?”
“I don’t think so,” said Ohashi.
“That’s pretty well ruled out,” said Francine. “Our Rhine people say no ESP. No. I’m banking on something else: By the very fact that they posed this question, they have indicated that we can answer it with our present faculties.”
“If they are being honest,” said Zakheim.
“I have no recourse but to assume that they’re honest,” she said. “They’re turning us into linguistic detectives for a good reason.”
“A good reason for them,” said Goré.
“Note the phraseology of their ultimatum,” said Ohashi. “They submit a problem. They open their rooms to us. They are available to us. They regret their threat. Even their display of power—admittedly awe-inspiring—has the significant characteristic of nonviolence. No explosion. They offer rewards for success, and this…”
“Rewards!” snorted Zakheim. “We lead the hog to its slaughter with a promise of food!”
“I suggest that they give evidence of being nonviolent,” said Ohashi. “Either that, or they have cleverly arranged themselves to present the face of nonviolence.”
Francine turned, and looked out of the hut’s end window at the bulk of the spaceship. The low sun cast elongated shadows of the ship across the sand.
Zakheim, too, looked out of the window. “Why did they choose this place? If it had to be a desert, why not the Gobi? This is not even a good desert! This is a miserable desert!”
“Probably the easiest landing curve to a site near a large city,” said Goré. “It is possible they chose a desert to avoid destroying arable land.”
“Frogs!” snapped Zakheim. “I do not trust these frogs with their problem of communication!”
Francine turned back to the table, and took a pencil and scratch-pad from her briefcase. Briefly she sketched a rough outline of a Galactic, and wrote “frog?” beside it.
Ohashi said: “Are you drawing a picture of your Galactic?”
“We call it ‘Uru’ for the same reason you call yours ‘Kobai,’” she said. “It makes the sound ‘Uru’ ad nauseam.”
She stared at her own sketch thoughtfully, calling up the memory image of the Galactic as she did so. Squat, about five feet ten inches in height, with the short bowed legs of a swimmer. Rippling muscles sent corded lines under the black leotard. The arms were articulated like a human’s, but they were more graceful in movement. The skin was pale green, the neck thick and short. The wide mouth was almost lipless, the nose a mere blunt horn. The eyes were large and spaced wide with nictating lids. No hair, but a high-crowned ridge from the center of the forehead swept back across the head.
“I knew a Hawaiian distance swimmer once who looked much like these Galactic
s,” said Ohashi. He wet his lips with his tongue. “You know, today we had a Buddhist monk from Java at our meeting with Kobai.”
“I fail to see the association between a distance swimmer and a monk,” said Goré.
“You told us you drew a blank today,” said Zakheim.
“The monk tried no conversing,” said Ohashi. “He refused because that would be a form of earthly striving unthinkable for a Buddhist. He merely came and observed.”
Francine leaned forward. “Yes?” She found an odd excitement in the way Ohashi was forcing himself to casualness.
“The monk’s reaction was curious,” said Ohashi. “He refused to speak for several hours afterwards. Then he said that these Galactics must be very holy people.”
“Holy!” Zakheim’s voice was edged with bitter irony.
“We are approaching this the wrong way,” said Francine. She felt let down, spoke with a conscious effort. “Our access to these Galactics is limited by the space they’ve opened to us within their vessel.”
“What is in the rest of the ship?” asked Zakheim.
“Rewards, perhaps,” said Goré.
“Or weapons to demolish us!” snapped Zakheim.
“The pattern of the sessions is wrong, too,” said Francine.
Ohashi nodded. “Twelve hours a day is not enough,” he said. “We should have them under constant observation.”
“I didn’t mean that,” said Francine. “They probably need rest just as we do. No. I meant the absolute control our team leaders—unimaginative men like Langsmith—have over the way we use our time in those rooms. For instance, what would happen if we tried to break down the force wall of whatever it is that keeps us from actually touching these creatures? What would happen if we brought in dogs to check how animals would react to them?” She reached in her briefcase, brought out a small flat recorder and adjusted it for playback. “Listen to this.”
There was a fluid burst of sound: “Pau’timónsh’ uego’ ikloprépre ‘sauta’ urusa’a’a…” and a long pause followed by “tu’kimóomo ‘urulig ‘lurulil ‘oog ‘shuquetoé…” pause, “sum ‘a ‘suma ‘a ‘uru ‘t ‘shóap!”
Francine stopped the playback.
The Collected Stories of Frank Herbert Page 42
