by Ian Watson
“Go on, Ph'theri,” Sciavoni said hastily. “We're just excited.”
Ph'theri lowered his hand.
“Let me give you an example of trading. Who can read the tides to best advantage? Obviously a swimmer whose mind is evolved by tidal rhythms on his planet. We Signal Traders found after much searching of stars by slow means, a world of Tide Readers. These beings trade us their services. It is a highly assessed trade, and still essential to us—”
“Are they fishes, birds, or what, these Tide Readers?” enquired a ruddy-faced Navy man, whom Sciavoni recollected was involved in a project down in Miami to train whales and dolphins to service subsea stations and defuse mines — one of the leading hunters for the key to the so-called Cetacean Languages.
Ph'theri fluttered a hand impatiently.
“They read atmosphere tides, but theirs is a gasgiant world, and they are methane swimmers—”
“Fair question, you'll admit, Sciavoni,” the sailor apologized in a blustery way. “Maybe we've got ourselves a tradeable commodity in our whales. Whales as starship pilots, imagine—”
“We saw your whales on television,” Ph'theri retorted dismissively. “You have no concept of the tide forces operating in a gasgiant. There is no analogy on this planet. Only the gasgiant is as vast and complex as the star tides. Even so, the Tide Readers need our machines to stand between their minds and the reality—”
“You can't build machines to read these tides yourself?” the sailor grunted, disappointed.
“Let me explain. We did not evolve in that way. But the Tide Readers did. Tide-reading is an inherited part of their reality, coded into their nervous systems. We Sp'thra cannot instinctively read the tides, no matter what machine-assist is used. Yet the steersman has to be a living being, to react flexibly enough. We buy this ability of theirs—”
Yet hereabouts the alien's cool detachment evaporated. A queer change seemed to be coming over him. Like a medium going into a spirit trance, he began to elaborate, almost lyrically:
“‘Their-Reality’, ‘Our-Reality’, ‘Your-Reality’ — the mind's concepts of reality based on the environment it has evolved in — all are slightly different. Yet all are a part of ‘This-Reality’ — the overall totality of the present universe—”
His voice rose shrill with emphasis.
“Yet Other-Reality outside of this totality assuredly exists! We mean to grasp it!”
His eyes blinked rapidly. He licked his lips in a lizardy way.
“There are so many ways of seeing This-Reality, from so many viewpoints. It is these viewpoints that we trade for. You might say we trade in realities—”
Like a patent medicine salesman launching into his spiel — or was it more like an obsessed visionary? The latter was perhaps nearer the truth, Sole decided, as the alien talked on raptly:
“We mean to put all these different viewpoints together, to deduce the entire signature of This-Reality. From this knowledge we shall deduce the reality modes external to It — grasp the Other-Reality, communicate with it, control it!”
“So then,” broke in Sole, getting excited himself, “what you people are doing is exploring the syntax of reality? Literally, the way a whole range of different beings ‘put together’ their picture of reality? You're charting the languages their different brains have evolved, in order to get beyond this reality in some way? That's the idea?”
“Nice,” conceded Ph'theri. “You read our intention well. Our destiny is to signal-trade at right angles to This-Reality. That is the tide of our philosophy. We have to journey out at right angles to this universe. By superimposing all languages. And our language inventory for This-Reality is nearly done—”
Sole was not interrupting now — as the others had been with their clamour about technology — but clearly touching upon an obsessive chord deep in the alien, harmonizing with his people's search among the stars.
Sciavoni was nervous at first; then accepted Sole's lead as the only visible thread in the labyrinth.
• • •
Ph'theri regarded him sadly.
“The length of time already elapsed is agony to us—”
“Agony? Why is that?”
“Perhaps the answer will mean nothing to you. It is our quest, not yours, to go at right angles to This-Reality. Maybe a quest specific to our species?”
Sole recalled the stringy, bitch face of Dorothy Summers as she raised a logical quibble some time ago at Haddon during one of tbeir bull sessions there.
He shook his head in bewilderment.
“This idea of getting outside of the reality you're already part of — it's illogical,” he protested. “Reality determines how you view things. There's no such thing as a perfect external observer. Nobody can move outside themselves or conceive of something outside of the scope of the concepts they're using. We're all embedded in what you call ‘This-Reality’—”
“It may be illogical in This-Reality. But in para-Reality, other systems of logic apply . . .”
Harking back, as an anchor, to Dorothy's preoccupation with Ludwig Wittgenstein, Sole felt tempted to quote the Austrian philosopher's bleak summing up of how much, and how little, human beings could ever hope to know.
“Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must keep silent—” he murmured.
“If that's your philosophy,” the alien said haughtily, “it is not ours.”
“In fact it isn't our philosophy at all,” Sole rejoined more briskly. “We humans are constantly searching for ways to voice the unvoicable. The sheer desire to discover boundaries already implies the desire to pass beyond Them, I suppose.”
The alien shrugged. (His own native gesture? Or was he picking up the gesture speech of human beings already?)
“You cannot hope to explore all the boundaries to reality on one single world, with only one intelligent species working on the problem. That isn't science. That is . . . solipsism. I think that's the word.”
“Yes, that's the word — defining the universe in terms of one individual.”
As the alien spoke, Sole marvelled at the extent of Ph'theri's stock of words — wondered exactly how the trick was done. Neural implant of so much information?
“One planet is solipsism. The Sp'thra duty is to avoid solipsism to the nth degree.”
“But we're all embedded in one universe ultimately, Ph'theri. That's a sort of solipsism nobody can escape. Or by ‘one reality’ do you mean one galaxy? Are other galaxies other modes of reality? Do you people plan on inter-galactic travel?”
An overwhelming impression of a huge wild sorrow came from the alien's gently-bulging, widespaced eyes. A wise calf waiting outside the slaughterhouse kind of look.
“No. All the galaxies of This-Reality obey the same general laws. We are searching for another reality. We have to achieve it. We are so late.”
Again, this time factor,
“The problem,” Ph'theri said dismally, “is what a two-dimensional being would face, trying to behave three-dimensionally: to the mocking laughter and love-taunts of superior three-dimensional beings—”
It sounded like nonsense or some kind of schizophrenia. Whose mocking laughter? Whose love? Whose taunts?
Sole decided to get back on a more solid footing.
“It all comes down to the laws of physics and chemistry that govern this reality, doesn't it, Ph'theri? Those decide how much we can ever know — or communicate. How much the brain of Man or Alien can think.”
“True.”
“We ourselves are experimenting with chemical techniques to improve the brain's capacity. We want to seek out the exact boundaries of universal grammar.”
Several Americans and Russians stared at Sole. He was aware he was giving something confidential away, but didn't care right then.
“That approach is worthless,” Ph'theri said impatiently. “Chemical techniques? Trial and error? Don't you realize there are a myriad conceivable ways in which proteins can be combined to code information? More than the
sum total of atoms in this planet of yours! The rules of reality can only be understood by superimposing the widest range of languages from different worlds upon one another. There is the one and only key to This-Reality — and the way out.”
Sole nodded.
“Ph'theri, another question I must ask — what you're saying now, is it being monitored and aided in some way? Your fluency has me worried.”
Ph'theri pointed a finger at the scarlet wires leading from his lips and paper-bag ears into his chest pack.
“True. This is sending signals through the ship outside into the language machines in our larger ship in the sky. It is also a witness to our trade negotiations. With machine-assist, I save time. Vocabulary fast-scan. Heuristic parameters for new words—”
“Yet even without this machine link-up you speak English — by direct programming into the brain, you said?”
“Yes, though not so easily. The technique is . . .”
“. . . I know, tradeable. Was I wasting time just now, asking about grammar and reality?”
“No. We are understanding each other at the optimum rate. We thank you. And assess it highly.”
“That's good. But I suppose you want to get on to what we're going to trade each other. You talked about buying realities—”
There were instant protests in the room. Voices cutting Sole down to size. Insisting that he didn't have any mandate to negotiate.
Ph'theri raised both arms high in a histrionic gesture.
“There is low likelihood we find any trade worth losing the tide for, on this world. In too many ways you are predictable. So, is this your representative, or not?”
“Let's hear Dr Sole bargain on our behalf,” growled Stepanov, “since that is apparently unavoidable. We're not at the United Nations now. I'm sorry to say we're in an auction room — and the bidding has already commenced.”
Zwingler nodded sarcastically in Sole's direction; and Sciavoni squeezed the Englishman's elbow surreptitiously, like an embarrassed godfather.
“Touchy impatient bastard! Do your best, Chris.”
Yet Sole felt suspicious of loopholes in this alien's logic and integrity. For bargaining is a competition, not a free exchange of gifts.
“Presumably you want information about human languages?” he said, gently detaching himself from Sciavoni's grasp.
“Yes. So long as we select the format—”
Sole tried another tack. Laid down a challenge.
“I think you're being dishonest, Ph'theri. All this business about you people being the right ones to assess values, on account of you came here first — and pushing off if we don't behave ourselves. In fact, we came out to you to start the trading, when we gave you a language to trade in, out by the Moon. That cost us some effort — as much effort for a culture at our stage, maybe, as it costs you to hop from star to star. We have a right to assess the value too. What you've told us — it's interesting, but it's pretty thin and mystical-sounding, a lot of it. Not like what we gave you — a complete working language. Which, by the way, tells you a hell of a lot about us human beings and our outlook on reality. I'd say you're already in our debt — you're just trying to browbeat us with these threats about leaving, to get something on the cheap!”
For the first time since his arrival, Ph'theri seemed nonplussed — stood there wasting time, while the seconds drew out visibly. Sole noticed how the Nevada skyline was lightening with premonitions of dawn.
Finally Ph'theri clasped his hands together. “Some credit is owing to you, true. But in some situations no-information is valuable. Who knows, the fact that we have not flown over your cities may be highly assessed by you?”
Sole ignored this, despite venomous looks darted at him, and argued strenuously:
“You can't possibly trade without an agreed system of communication, Ph'theri. Right? We gave you that when we gave you the key to English. Right? But by giving you it, we gave you the outline idea of all human language as such — since all human languages are related deep down. You want to buy an exact description of human language, to get at our basic set of concepts? I'd say you're already some way there for free, thanks to us!”
Ph'theri waved an orange palm cursorily. “May we appear over your cities? Interest ourselves in recording architectural and urban data?”
“We would prefer,” intervened Sciavoni nervously, “to arrange tours for you. There's such a lot of air traffic over our cities, you see. The system's really very complicated—”
“So you accept the pay-off?”
Ph'theri's question produced an awkward hush. Nobody was willing to commit themselves. During the silence that followed, the alien's paper-bag ears inflated to pick up tiny sounds, brought him by the scarlet wires.
Ph'theri was the first to speak.
“The Sp'thra make the following offer for what we want to buy,” he said to Sole. “We will tell you the location of the closest unused world known to us, habitable by you. The location of the nearest intelligent species known to us ready to engage in interstellar communication, together with an effective means of communication using modulated tachyon beams. Finally, we offer you an improvement on your current technology for spaceflight within your solar system—”
“In return for which you want more tapes and grammar books on microfilm?”
“No. That has been your mistake all along. Tapes and books cannot provide a full model of language in action. We need six units programmed with separate languages as far removed from each other as possible.”
“Units?”
“We need working brains competent in six linguistically diverse languages. Six is an adequate statistical sample—”
“You mean human volunteers, to go back home to your planet with you?”
“Leave Earth for the stars?” cried an American whose face — younger then, grinning toothily from the cover of Newsweek — Sole remembered from one of the Apollo missions. “I'd sure say yes to that, even if it did mean never coming home again. That's the human spirit.” The astronaut stared defiantly round the room, as though he'd staked a claim to something.
“No,” Ph'theri retorted sharply. “That isn't reasonable. To have our ship crowded with a zoo of beings on the loose. We have been trading with many worlds. If we took beings on board from every one—”
“That globe of yours is one helluva big!”
“And I say it is full — it carries the space tide drive, which is not small. The planetary drive. And the ecology for the methane Tide Readers, who are huge beings.”
“But, methane breathers! We humans can fit in with you, surely,” the astronaut begged. “You're just wearing a simple air filter.”
“Atmospherically compatible you may be. Whether culturally compatible, is very doubtful.”
“Then what do you mean if not live human beings!”
“What we say — language-programmed brains. In working order. Separated from the body. Machine-maintained compactly.”
“You want to cut a human brain out of its body and keep it alive in a machine for you to experiment on?”
“The requirement is for six brains, programmed with different languages. And instruction tapes.”
“Jesus Christ,” murmured Sciavoni.
“Naturally we consult on which units are most suitable,” said Ph'theri.
TEN
LIONEL ROSSON TOSSED his hair fitfully as he came into Haddon Unit out of the crisp January air, unshouldering his sheepskin coat hastily as he encountered the wall of heat.
And how about the hothouse growths within?
Damn Sole for a bastard, ducking out of sight at this first sign of trouble on his mysterious errand to America. Leaving Rosson, like some little Dutch boy, to stick his thumb in the leaking dyke. Then watch helplessly as the cracks got wider and wider.
Sole's alibi was really as thin as ice. If Sam Bax didn't keep up the illusion of its solidity by skating over it.
Who had that man Zwingler been?
And what
was this instant-mash ‘Verbal Behaviour Seminar’ the American had invited Sole to attend? Rosson's private theory was that some space tragedy had happened that no one had been told about. Some radical breakdown in communication with the long-flight astronauts as they swung round the world for months on end in Skylab. They'd been expelled from the womb of Earth, with its comforting tug of gravity and its well-spaced sunrises and half a hundred other natural and necessary signals, longer than any other men had been. Had they altered their patterns of thinking to fit some new celestial norm? Or fallen in between two stools — bastards of Earth and of the Stars? And now they needed rescue — conceptual rescue, before they could be rescued physically. Was that it?
A memory nagged at him — something he'd read years ago, that the initiate to the Orphic Rites in ancient Greece had to learn by heart for recitation after death. ‘I am a child of Earth and Starry Heaven. Give me to drink of . . .’ Of what? The waters of forgetfulness — or the waters of memory? One of the two; but he couldn't remember which it had been. Yet the distinction was critical. Perhaps it was critical too, for the Skylab astronauts.
That man Zwingler's paper had been about ‘Disorientation in longflight astronauts’, ‘Disorder of conceptual sets’. What if astronauts did lose their wits in that place of exile between Earth and the Stars? In that mind limbo up there. Who knew what experiments Skylab really carried as a payload? How it fitted the nowadays mood that avenging angels should always be floating overhead. Prometheans who had mastered the secrets of nuclear fire, only to become mankind's own liver-eating eagles, soaring in perpetual orbit.
Rosson wondered too, what link, if any, there was between this hastily-convened conference on verbal behaviour, and the new Russian moon visible only over Reykjavik, Siberia and the Solomon Islands. A grandiose and meaningless gesture, to inflate such a vast balloon and hang it like a lantern in the sky — where nobody would be seeing it. So unlike the Russians. They always aimed for the maximum propaganda appeal.
Whatever the truth was (and presumably Sole knew it) damn him for a bastard ducking out of the Unit right now. At the very time when his precious Vidya was about to go crazy — and his embedded world was coming apart at the seams . . .
