by David Brin
Jacob nodded slowly. Donaldson’s argument made sense. Also, how could one reconcile a projection with Bubbacub’s trick with the Lethani relic? It was a tempting idea, but a hoax didn’t seem very likely.
Distant spicule forests pulsed like waving fountains. Individual jets fenced with one another along the rim of the slowly thobbing supergranulation cell that covered half the sky. In its center lay the Big Spot, a huge eye of black, rimmed by areas of hot brightness.
About ninety degrees around the deck from them, a group of dark silhouettes stood or knelt near the Pilot Board. Only the outlines could be made out against the bright crimson blaze of the photosphere.
Two clumps of shadow could be distinguished from those near the command station. The tall, slender, figure of Culla stood slightly to the side, pointing ahead at a tall, wispy filament arch that hung, suspended, over the Spot. The arch grew slowly, perceptibly closer as Jacob watched.
The other identifiable clump of shadow detached itself from the crowd and began to creep in fits and starts toward Jacob and the chief. It was rounded on top, bigger above than below.
“Now there’s where you could hide a projector!” Donaldson motioned with his chin toward the bulky, massive silhouette as it creeped toward them with a swaying, twisting motion.
“What, Fagin?”
Jacob whispered. Not that it would make any difference, with the Kanten’s hearing what it was. “You can’t be serious! Why he’s only been on two dives!”
“Yeah,” Donaldson mused. “Still, all of those branches and such. . . I’d have sooner searched Bubbacub’s undies than have to pry in there after contraband.”
For an instant Jacob thought he caught a bit of a burr in the chief engineer’s voice. He stared at his neighbor but the man had on his poker face. That in itself was a small miracle for Donaldson. It would be too much if the man were actually being witty.
They both rose to greet Fagin. The Kanten whistled a cheery response, showing no sign that he’d overheard them.
“Commandant Helene deSilva has expressed the opinion that solar weather conditions are surprisingly calm. She said that this will be of great value in solving certain solonomical problems unrelated to the Sun Ghosts. The measurements involved will take very littie time. Much less than the time we will be saved, by these excellent conditions.
“In other words, my friends you have about twenty minutes to get ready.”
Donaldson whistled. He called Jacob over and the two men set to work on the laser, bolting it into place and checking the projection tapes.
A few meters away, Dr. Martine rummaged through her space-crate for small pieces of apparatus. Her psi helmet was already on her head and Jacob thought he could overhear her softly curse, “Damn it, this time you’re going to talk to me!”
22. DELEGATION
“ ‘What is their purpose, these creatures of light?’ the reporter asks. But he’d do better to ask, ‘What purpose has man?’ Is it our job to scramble on our metaphorical knees, ignoring the pain with chin upthrust in childish pride, saying to all the universe: ‘See me! I am man! I crawl where others walk! But isn’t it great that I can crawl anywhere?’
“Adaptability, the Neoliths claim, is the ‘specialization’ of man. He cannot run as fast as a cheetah, but he can run. He cannot swim as well as an otter, but he can swim. His eyes are not so sharp as a hawk’s nor can he store food in his cheeks. So he must train his eyes and create instruments from bits and pieces of tortured earth; not only to let him see, but to outrun the cat and to outswim the otter as well. He can walk across an arctic waste, swim a tropical river, climb a tree and, at the end of his journey, build a nice hotel. There he will clean up and then boast of his accomplishments over dinner with his friends.
“And yet for all recorded time our hero has been dissatisfied. He yearned to know his place in the world. He shouted aloud. He demanded to know why he was
here! The universe of stars only smiled down at his questions with profound, ambiguous silence.
“He longed for a purpose. Denied, he took his frustration out on his fellow creatures. The specialists around him knew their roles and he hated them for it. They became his slaves, his protein factories. They became the victims of his genocidal rage.
“ ‘Adaptability’ soon meant that we needed no one else. Species whose descendents might one day have been great became dust in the holocaust of man’s egoism.”
“It is only by the slimmest of luck that we became environmentalists shortly before Contact. . . thus keeping from our heads the just wrath of our elders. Or was it luck? Is it an accident that John Muir, and those who followed, appeared soon after the first confirmed ‘sightings’?
“As the Reporter lies here, in a bubble, in a swaddling of deceptive pink vapor all around, he wonders if the purpose of man may be to be an example. Whatever original sin drove our Patrons off, long ago, is being paid off in a comedy.
“One hopes our neighbors are edified, as well as amused, as they watch us crawl about, gaping in wonder and often resentment at those who are fulfillment incarnate, without ambition.”
Pierre LaRoque took his thumb off the recording button and frowned. No, that last part wouldn’t do. It sounded almost bitter. More whiney than poignant. In fact, all of it would have to be reworked. There was too little spontaneity. The sentences tried too hard.
He took a sip from the liquitube in his left hand, then began absently stroking his moustache. In front of him the brilliant herd of spinning toruses rose slowly as the ship righted itself. The maneuver had taken less time than he’d expected. Now there was no more time to digress on the plight of mankind. He could, after all, do that any day.
But this, this was extraordinary.
He pressed again on the switch and brought up the microphone. “Note for rewrite,” he said. “More irony, and more on advantages of certain types of specialization. Also mention the Tymbrimi . . . how they’re more adaptable than we’ll ever be. Keep it short and upbeat on outcome if all humanity participates.”
Heretofore the rising herd had consisted of little rings, fifty or more kilometers away. Now the main body came into view, along with a small sliver of the photosphere. The nearest torus was a bright, spinning, blue-green monster. Along its rim, thin blue lines swiftly mixed and shifted, like meshing moire patterns. A white halo shimmered all around it.
LaRoque sighed. This would be his greatest challenge. When holos of these creatures were released everyone and his chimp butler would be tuning in to see if his words measured up. Yet he felt the inverse of what he must make them feel. The deeper the ship went into the Sun, the more detached he became. It was as if none of it was really happening. The creatures didn’t seem real at all.
Also, he admitted, he was scared.
“Pearls of serendipity they are, strung on necklaces of lambent emerald. If some galactic galleon once foundered here, to leave its treasure on these feathery, fiery reefs, its diadems are now safe. Uncorrupted by time, they sparkle still. No hunter will carry them off in a sack.
“They defy logic, for they should not be here. They defy history, for they are not remembered. They defy the power of our instruments and even those of the Galactics, our elders.
“Imperturbable as Bombadil, they ignore the passing of oxygen and hydrogen in their incessant bickerings, and take nourishment from the most timeless of fonts.
“Do they recall . . . could they have been among the Progenitors, back when the galaxy was new? We hope to ask, but for now they keep their counsel to themselves.”
Jacob looked up from his work when the herd came into view again. The sight had less effect on him than it had the first time around. To experience the emotions he’d felt during that first dive he’d have to see something else for the very first time. And to see anything anywhere near as impressive, he’d have to Jump.
It was one of the drawbacks of having monkeys for ancestors.
Still, Jacob could spend hours looking at the lovely pa
tterns the toroids made. And for a few moments at a time, when he remembered the significance of what he was seeing, he was awe-struck once again.
The computer board on Jacob’s lap bore a shifting pattern of curving, connected lines, isophotes of the Ghost they’d seen an hour before.
It hadn’t been much of a contact. One isolated Solarian had been caught by surprise as the ship came out from behind a thick wisp of filament near the edge of the herd.
It darted away from them, then hovered suspiciously at a few kilometers distance. Commandant deSilva had ordered the ship turned so that Donaldson’s Parametric Laser could bear on the fluttering creature.
At first the Ghost had backed away. Donaldson muttered and cursed as he adjusted the laser, to carry the various modulations of Jacob’s contact tape.
Then the creature reacted. It’s (tentacles? wings?) shot out from the center as if snapped taut. It began to ripple colorfully.
Then, in a flash of brilliant green, it was gone.
Jacob examined computer readouts from that reaction. The Solarian had presented the rim cameras with a good view. The earliest recordings showed that part of its rippling was in phase with the bass rhythm of the whale melody. Jacob was now trying to find out if the complicated display it emitted just before jetting away had a pattern that might be interpretable as a reply.
He finished drawing the analysis program he wanted the computer to pursue. It was to look for variations on the whale-song theme and rhythm in three regimes, color, time, and brightness across the surface of the Ghost. If it found anything definite he’d be able to set up a computer linkup in realtime during the next encounter.
That is, if there was a next encounter. The whale song had only been an introduction to the sequence of scales and mathematical series Jacob had planned to send. But the Ghost hadn’t stuck around to “listen” to the rest.
He put the computer board aside and lowered his couch so that he could look at the nearest toroids without moving his head. A pair of them swung slowly by at forty-five degrees from the angle of the deck.
Apparently the “spinning” of the torus creatures was more complicated than had been previously thought. The intricate, swiftly changing patterns that swept rapidly around the rim of each represented something in their internal makeup.
When two of the toroids touched each other, nudging for better positions in the magnetic fields, there was no change in the rotating figures. They interacted with each other as if they weren’t spinning at all.
The pushing and shoving became more pronounced with time as they transited the herd. Helene deSilva suggested that it was because the active region they were above was dying out. The magnetic fields were getting more and more diffuse.
Culla dropped into the couch next to him, bringing his mashies together in a clack. Jacob was starting to recognize some of the rhythms Culla’s dental work made in various situations. It had taken a long time to realize that they were part of a Pring’s fundamental repertoire like facial expressions for a human being.
“May I shit here, Jacob?” Culla asked. “This ish my firsht opportunity to thank you for your cooperation back on Mercury.”
“You don’t have to thank me, Culla. A two-year secrecy oath is pretty much de rigueur for an incident like this. Anyway, once Commandant deSilva got orders from Earth it was pretty clear that no one would be going home until they signed.”
“Shtill, you had every right to tell the world, the galaxy. The Library Inshtitute hash been shamed by Bubbacub’sh actionsh. It ish admirable of you, the dishcoverer of hish . . . mishtake, to show reshtraint and let them make ammendsh.”
“What will the Institute do . . . besides punishing Bubbacub?”
Culla took a sip from his ubiquitous liquitube. His eyes shone.
“They will probably cancel Earth’sh debt and donate Branch shervices free for shome time. A longer time if the Confederacy agreesh to a period of shilence. I cannot overshtate their eagernesh to avoid a shcandal.
“In addition, you will probably be rewarded.”
“Me?” Jacob felt numb. To a “primitive” Earthman, almost any reward the Galactics chose to give would be like a magic lamp. He could hardly believe what he was hearing.
“Yesh, although there will probably be shome bitternesh that you did not keep your dishcoveriesh more private. The magnitude of their generoshity will probably be invershe to the notoriety Bubbacub’sh case getsh.”
“Oh, I see.” The bubble was burst. It was one thing to get a token of gratitude from powers-that-be, and quite another to be offered a bribe. Not that the value of the reward would be any less. In fact, the prize would probably be even more valuable.
Or would it? No alien thought exactly the way a human would. The directors of the Institute of the Libraries were an enigma to him. All he knew for certain was that they wouldn’t like to get a bad press. He wondered if Culla was speaking now in his official capacity, or simply predicting what he thought would happen next.
Culla suddenly turned and looked up at the passing herd. His eyes glowed and a short buzzing came from behind the thick, prehensile lips. The Pring pulled the microphone from the slot next to his couch.
“Excushe me, Jacob. But I think I shee shomething. I musht report to the Commandant.”
Culla spoke briefly into the microphone, not moving his gaze from a position about thirty degrees to their right and twenty-five degrees high. Jacob looked but saw nothing. He could hear a distant murmuring of Helene’s voice filling the region of the head of Culla’s couch. Then the ship began to turn.
Jacob checked the computer board. The results were in. The previous encounter had elicited nothing recognizable as a reply. They’d just have to keep on doing as they had before.
“Sophonts,” Helene’s voice rang out over the intercom, “Pring Culla has made another sighting. Please return to your stations.”
Culla’s mashies clacked. Jacob looked up.
At about forty-five degrees, a tiny flickering point of light began to grow just beyond the bulk of the nearest toroid. The blue dot grew as it approached until they could make out five uneven appendages, bilaterally symmetric. It loomed up swiftly, then stopped.
Sun Ghost manifestation, type two, leered down at them in its gross mockery of the shape of a man. The chromosphere glowed red through the jagged holes of its eyes and mouth.
No attempt was made to bring the apparition in line with the flip-side cameras. It would probably have been futile and besides, this time the P-laser took precedence.
He told Donaldson to continue playing the primary contact tape, from the point where the last contact broke off.
The engineer raised his microphone.
“Everyone please put on your goggles. We’re going to turn on the laser now.” He put on his own, then looked around to make sure everyone in sight had complied (Culla was exempted; they took his word for it that he was in no danger). Then he threw the switch.
Even through the goggles, Jacob could see a dim glow against the inner surface of the shield wall as the beam punched through toward the Ghost. He wondered if the anthropomorphic figure would be more cooperative than the earlier, “natural-shaped” manifestation had been. For all he knew, this was the same creature. Maybe it left, earlier, to “put on its makeup” for this present appearance.
The Ghost fluttered impassively while the beam from the Communication Laser shone right through it. Not far away, Jacob could hear Martine curse softly.
“Wrong, wrong, wrong!” she hissed. Her psi helmet and goggles made only her nose and chin visible. “There’s something but it’s not there. Dammit! What in hell’s the matter with this thing!”
Suddenly, the apparition swelled like a butterfly squashed flat against the outside of the ship, The features of its “face” smeared out into long narrow strips of ochre blackness. The arms and body spread until the creature was nothing but a ragged rectangular band of blue across ten degrees of the sky. Flecks of green began to form,
here, and there, along its surface. They dodged about, mixed and coalesced, and then began to take on coherent form.
“Dear sweet God in heaven,” Donaldson murmured.
From somewhere nearby Fagin let out a whistling, shivering, diminished seventh. Culla began to chatter.
Across its length, the Solarian was covered with bright green letters, in the Roman alphabet. They spelled:
LEAVE NOW. DO NOT RETURN.
Jacob gripped the sides of his couch. Despite the sound effects of the E.T.’s, and the hoarse breathing of the humans, the silence was unbearable.
“Millie!” he tried as hard as he could not to shout. “Are you getting anything?”
Martine moaned.
“Yes . . . NO! I’m getting something, but it doesn’t make sense! It doesn’t correlate!”
“Well try sending a question! Ask if it’s receiving your psi!”
Martine nodded and pressed her hands against her face in concentration.
The letters immediately reformed overhead.
CONCENTRATE. SPEAK ALOUD FOR FOCUS.
Jacob was stunned. Deep inside he could feel his suppressed half shivering in horror. What he couldn’t solve terrified Mr. Hyde.
“Ask it why it’ll talk to us now and not before.” Martine repeated the question aloud, slowly.
THE POET. HE WILL SPEAK FOR US. HE IS HERE.
“No, no I can’t!” LaRoque cried. Jacob turned quickly and saw the little journalist, scrunched, terrified near the food machines.
HE WILL SPEAK FOR US.
The green letters glowed.
“Doctor Martine,” Helene deSilva called. “Ask the Solarian why we shouldn’t come back.”
After a pause, the letters shifted again. WE WANT PRIVACY. PLEASE LEAVE.
“And if we do come back? Then what?” Donaldson asked.
