A terrible fear suddenly crossed her mind: What if all humanity’s efforts were not enough to understand the message, ever? What would that mean? She couldn’t believe that was possible. Still, her father’s criticism that the project was taking too long was bothersome. That humankind had failed to unravel the signal’s meaning might indicate something, but it couldn’t be that humanity was too stupid. It just couldn’t.
She asked Augie a direct question:
WHY DO YOU THINK IT’S TAKING SO LONG TO DECIPHER THE ALIEN MESSAGE?
Augie seemed to hesitate as she took her fingers off the keyboard. Then his reply came up on the screen: IT WAS PREDICTED AS EARLY AS A CENTURY AGO THAT SUCH A COMMUNICATION WAS NOT LIKELY TO BE SHORT. IT WOULD BE ENCYCLOPEDIC, AND PROBABLY SENT OUT ON A CONTINUING BASIS BY A CIVILIZATION USED TO MAKING SUCH TRANSMISSIONS ROUTINELY. THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY SCIENTIST PHILIP MORRISON WROTE IN THE 1980S THAT SUCH A MESSAGE “WILL HAVE A LOT TO SAY,” AND HE PREDICTED THAT “IT WILL NOT BE SOMETHING THATTHE NEW YORK TIMES WILL BE ABLE TO PRINT IN ITS ENTIRETY. INTERPRETING IT WILL, I THINK, BE A LONG, SLOW PROCESS, COMPARABLE WITH THE GROWTH OF A SCIENTIFIC DISCIPLINE. IT WILL TAKE DECADES TO UNDERSTAND, TO STUDY, TO ARGUE AND WRITE ABOUT.”
Augie stopped. She felt disappointed. He hadn’t told her anything that she didn’t know.
Lissa typed:
IS THAT ALL YOU CAN TELL ME?
THAT IS ALL.
She knew what her father would say. There had been no progress at all. The same ideas were current today that had been a century ago, long before the signal had even been picked up. It was depressing, unless Augie knew more and was not allowed to reveal it to students. After all, Augie was only one small part of a much larger Artificial Intelligence, the part that had been assigned to work with her.
She typed in another question:
ARE THERE OTHER DATA BASES FOR THIS QUESTION?
NOT TO MY KNOWLEDGE.
ARE YOU SURE?
OF COURSE, LISSA.
ARE ALL DATA BASES ON THIS SUBJECT AVAILABLE TO YOU?
PROBABLY. BUT THE QUESTION CANNOT BE ANSWERED AS PUT. I DO NOT GATHER DATA. THEY ARE GIVEN TO ME.
Lissa sighed and punched up the first assignment: selected readings from Norbert Weiner’s work on cybernetics and from Noam Chomsky’s explorations of human language, both from the late twentieth century.
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6
Lissa came out into the hall and saw Susan Falleta coming out of Alek’s room. The thin, black-haired girl smiled at her and hurried away toward the door to the courtyard. Lissa walked slowly down the hallway, to give Susan a chance to get outside. Alek seemed a fast worker, she thought, smiling to herself, or maybe it was Susan who had made the first move. Perhaps it was nothing at all, and they had been talking about something. No way to tell. Lissa was surprised that the incident interested her at all.
She stopped and buzzed Alek’s door.
“Forget something?” he asked as it slid open. He was wearing only a towel. “Oh, it’s you. Hello.”
“Sorry,” Lissa said, smiling. Alek glanced down the empty hall, then looked embarrassed.
“Don’t worry, she’s gone,” Lissa said, making sure that he would know that she had seen Susan. “Going to lunch alone?”
“No, I’m not hungry. Got to get started with Felix.”
“Felix?”
“That’s the name he gave when I turned on the screen,” Alek said.
“Oh. Mine’s Augie. Don’t worry, it’s just three short essays today, and you can skim the first one.”
“You wanted me to go to lunch with you?” Alek asked.
“Oh, not really,” Lissa said. “Just wanted to say hello.” He’s conceited enough to think I’m here to put in my bid for him, she thought, feeling a momentary twinge of competition with Susan; but she brushed it away. Who cares? I’ve got better things to do. “Bye,” she said, walking away. She heard the door slide shut behind her, and she quickened her pace down the hall.
Her mother would have disapproved. Lissa remembered her saying, “You don’t take enough interest in boys, Lis, and you don’t have any real girl friends.”
“Come on, Mom,” Lissa had replied. “You know I decided what I wanted to be long before I hit puberty. All this stuff about sex and romance came later, and all I can see is that it will slow me up. I’m not a toy for boys to play with, and I’m not a baby machine, either.”
“No one says you have to be. But don’t you have feelings about boys?”
“Sometimes.”
Lissa came to the door, pushed it open, and went out into the courtyard. The sun was bright, and the cool wind was blowing, as usual. It seemed to her that there was much more to Alek than was suggested by his easygoing manner. He intrigued her, but she was not here to distract herself with romance, she told herself, wondering if he found her interesting. He had looked good in his towel. His legs were not the usual hairy shanks. They were well shaped and just hairy enough. A pleasant shiver passed through her as she started across the stony courtyard toward the cafeteria.
Halfway there she changed direction and went to the low stone wall instead. As she looked down at the valley, she smiled to herself, thinking that her mother might like Alek; but then again, Sharon would probably approve of any boy who wasn’t a complete toad.
Far below, nearly two kilometers down, the river wound its way among the greenery, passing through what seemed a toy village. Lissa gazed down into the valley for a while, the wind sighing in her ears, and the whole scene became unreal to her again, as if she were somewhere else and only dreaming about being here. If she turned her head too quickly it would all disappear and she would be at home, where there was no sky, really, only the curving landscape closing up the world, imprisoning the sky within…
She turned her head and saw Alek standing near her.
“Hello again,” he said, looking at her strangely. She realized suddenly that she had betrayed her interest in him when she had knocked on his door.
“It’s chilly out here,” she said, zipping up her windbreaker as her feelings raced.
Alek nodded and leaned against the stone wall. He seemed tense. Lissa smiled, not knowing what she was feeling. He seemed relieved.
“And the air,” she continued. “It’s like a magnifying lens, making distant things look so clear that you think they’re somehow inside you.”
“I know what you mean,” he said, glancing down into the valley.
“I’m sorry if I disturbed you,” she said after a longer silence.
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” he replied vaguely. “Sue is from New Zealand. She thought we might have something in common, being as we’re from the same part of the world.” He was staring down into the valley now.
“And do you?”
He shrugged without looking at her. “No more than most people.”
She liked his profile. It made him look shy, not as intense as when he was looking directly at her. Whatever had happened between him and Susan had made little impression on him, it seemed.
He turned and looked directly at her. “I like you much better than her,” he said softly. “Will you give me a chance to get to know you better?”
Lissa breathed deeply and smiled. “Why, sure. You don’t have to ask.” Looking at him was very pleasant.
“Well, I thought I did have to ask,” he said very seriously.
“But why?” She felt idiotically concerned by his question.
He put his hands into the pockets of his sweater. “Well, you’re here to work very hard, and that leaves little left over for much else. I suppose I think of you as a hard-nosed type.”
Lissa drew a deeper breath. She didn’t like him thinking that he had her pegged. “Sure, I feel committed to the work here, but isn’t that true of everyone who comes here?”
Alek smiled and brushed the hair from his eyes. “Maybe. But you saw how few new students there are. Three decided not to come at the last minute. T
he truth is, they take anyone who has the makings to get in, and some of them don’t really know what’s in them. That’s what my dad says.”
“I don’t quite understand what you’re saying,” Lissa replied.
“It means that you may have the brains, but it may not mean that much to you what you do with them.”
Lissa shook her head in denial. “Not here. The entrance standards are too high. If no one met them one year, they wouldn’t take anybody at all. You’re talking about people who don’t care, who lack ambition.”
“But the school wants that, in part. Sure, they pick mavericks, but not so extreme they can’t be shaped. Dr. Shastri is a smart old codger.”
“Either you want to come here or you don’t,” Lissa insisted. Alek was becoming bothersome, and that disappointed her, because she liked him.
“Do you always feel that you have to agree with people you like?” he asked mischievously, as if he had read her mind.
She felt herself blush. “No, but it would help,” she said softly.
“Okay, I’ll agree with you. Who knows, you may be right, and there are more important things. I was only saying that people make mistakes.” He was smiling at her as he leaned against the wall, and he looked just about perfect. The smile became a grin as she gazed up at him.
“Let’s go to lunch,” he said.
“So what does anyone think of the stuff assigned this morning?” Max Cater asked as they sat around the same table where they had eaten dinner on the previous evening.
“Junk and beginner’s pablum,” Emily Bibby replied.
Louis Tyrmand nodded in agreement.
“We’ve got to start somewhere,” Susan Falleta said, looking at Lissa.
They were all silent as the waiter rolled in a large cart and left it for them to serve themselves. Lissa felt uncomfortable and out of place, but she hoped that would pass.
“It’s kind of lonely here,” Cyril Yoseloff said unexpectedly.
Lissa glanced at Alek.I told you so , his eyes seemed to be saying;not everyone can be like you.
“What’s the matter with all of you?” she demanded suddenly. “Didn’t any of youwant to come here?”
“Sure,” Max answered, “but maybe we won’t like it”
“It seemed like a different place to go,” Louis said.
“But we haven’t even started,” Lissa protested.
“We know that,” Max said tiredly, looking up at the ceiling.
“What is it exactly you’re complaining about, Max?” Emily asked.
“There were going to be three more of us,” Max answered. “It bothers me that they bowed out. Three of them at once. Why?”
“We could have used the company,” Louis said sadly.
“It bothered me also,” Cyril said sarcastically.
“Yeah,” Alek added. “I guess they wanted to go to a place with a more structured environment.”
Lissa glared at Alek. He was making fun of the orientation-brochure essay. But as she stared at him, she began to smile. Emily giggled. Louis laughed.
Lissa sighed. “I guess I expected that everyone I’d meet here would show, well, more dedication.”
“We’re here, aren’t we?” Louis said.
“Let’s eat before it gets cold,” Susan said.
“Great idea,” Alek said, grinning.
As they got up to go fill their plates, Lissa realized what had been going on. Two of the three students who had decided not to come were female. Alek was looking at her intently as she came to the food cart and began to fill her plate.
“Just got it, didn’t you?” he asked softly.
She nodded. “A social life is that important to them?” she whispered.
Alek shrugged. “Maybe they’ll get over it.”
She had thought, somehow, that people would not be coming to the Institute in search of the opposite sex. The other three students would have made the class fifty-percent female, however, and that might have been better in the long run. Still, she was relieved that her classmates’ complaints seemed to have little to do with their studies.
“Can I sit next to you?” Alek asked.
“Sure, I don’t mind.”
“Food looks great!” Emily said loudly, staring at the varied display of Indian soups and dishes.
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7
Lissa studied hard during the next three months, reading every assigned text well ahead of the schedule. Dr. Shastri lectured on the history of the project, but he was at the school for only ten days out of every month, so they often had to hear him as a hologram recording. Max thought it the height of humor to walk through the 3-D image in the middle of a lecture.
Lissa saw Alek at meals and in the social room, but they were never alone for long. She woke up one morning and realized that she was afraid of him. He could take away everything she was and wanted to be and make her into someone else—and she might even like it. Love, at last, her mother would say, in a daughter who had been oblivious to puppy love and had never had a crush. I’m weird, Lissa thought one afternoon as she sat at her desk. Definitely weird. That was okay, in a way; everyone here was weird. Emily showed her imaginative menus that she had made up and asked if they looked delicious. Max asked everyone to tell him the color of his eyes once a week, as if he were working hard to change his shade of gray. Susan always looked guilty of something. Louis built toy houses out of toothpicks, which angered the chef. Cyril’s love was staring at 3-D slides of butterflies in his spare time, but he never talked about his hobby. It seemed clear that Max had found a girl friend in the village, because he disappeared regularly every Friday evening; but he never brought her up the trail to the Institute. All the students except Lissa were from Earth. I’m the only offworlder, she thought, so that makes me weird in their eyes, as well as for other reasons.
Only Alek seemed normal, even ordinary. Why was he here? The strangest thing he did was hike down to the village and come right back, for the exercise. Sometimes he would ask her to come, but she never accepted. What did he feel for the alien signal? Maybe he just couldn’t show it, and behind that wonderful smile lurked a brain more alien than the aliens who had sent the signal.
Her door chirped. She got up, went over, and opened it.
“Hi,” Alek said, smiling as if he had been reading her thoughts.
“What is it?” she asked firmly.
He frowned. “Well, I just can’t get enough of you at lunch or the social area. I think you’re avoiding me.”
“I am busy.”
“So are we all.”
“I should hope so,” she said.
He was smiling again, trying to break her control. “Aren’t you going to ask me in?”
She shrugged finally. “Okay, for a few minutes.” She went back to her desk. He came in and sat down in her armchair.
“So what do you think of this place by now?” he asked, putting one leg over the armrest and still managing to look serious.
“I don’t know,” she said, relaxing in her swivel chair. “We get to work on our own a lot.”
He nodded. “But we could do the reading anywhere. And it’s strange in the signal room, watching that dancing line and not being able to do anything about it. I think Institute people are watching us to see how we react. We’re just test subjects to them. I know I haven’t had any bright ideas about the message, and probably won’t for a long time. Have you?”
“No,” Lissa replied, watching him warily.
“It’s as if there’s nothing at all to do here, and there never was.”
“It’s too early,” Lissa said impatiently.
“Could be,” he said slowly, looking at her. “I’ve been thinking about you.…”
“What?” she asked, annoyed by his steady gaze.
“You, Lissa, you. Don’t you see, don’t you feel?” He put his foot back down on the floor and sat forward. His eyes were soft and caring, his voice low and rumbly. She tensed.
&nbs
p; “What are you saying, Alek?”
“I’m attracted to you. I like you lots, but you haven’t given me a chance to know you at all. You’ve been avoiding me.”
“No, I’m busy, as you should be.” She swallowed hard, knowing that it was a sign of weakness.
“Come on, Lissa,” he said, leaning back, “what are you afraid of?”
She was silent, even though she had wanted him to notice her.
“You’re blushing,” he said.
She stood up. “You’d better go.”
He got to his feet and stepped toward her. “You’re afraid of me, aren’t you?”
“No …” she started to say as he leaned over and kissed her on the cheek.
“There,” he said. “Am I such a monster?”
“I never said—” she began, but the picture of Susan Falleta coming out of his room weeks ago now flashed through her mind.
Alek was turning to leave. Lissa hated herself, but she said nothing as he went out the door and it slid shut behind him. She sat down in the armchair and took a deep breath, wondering at how Alek had stirred her up inside. What am I? What is a human being, she asked herself, and why is so much of ourselves hidden? Talking to Alek had been like sleepwalking.
Then, as she breathed more evenly, she admitted that she was fearful of falling in love with Alek, or with anyone.
She got up and went to the door. It opened, and she peered cautiously out into the hall to see if it was empty. Then she hurried toward the exit and stepped out into the sunny courtyard.
The Sunspacers Trilogy Page 26
