by Ian Stewart
"Correct."
"But even an adolescent knows how to offcast a symbiaut and bond with it. In this way, one can detect the meaning of a message in one's own mind!"
"Halfholder, we're not like you. We can't grow machinery in our own bodies. We have to build it. And we've done that. We have machines that can translate the squark wavepackets into signals we can hear or see."
Halfholder's puzzlement was plain. "Then there is no problem. Use the machines you have false-cast."
"That doesn't help! We still can't understand anything. We think it's an encryption problem."
Moore's Theorem stated that any maximally efficient method of encoding signals would be statistically indistinguishable from black-body radiation. The classical black-body spectrum, of course, was derived using statistical mechanics, which assumes that dynamic ensembles distribute themselves randomly in phase space. The catch: despite appearances, the Jovian signals were not random; they were redolent with cryptic meaning. That meaning, however, was so cunningly encoded that no statistical test could ever extract a pattern. And without a pattern. Skylarks cryptanalysts and xenosemanticists had no point of leverage.
Moses tried to get these ideas across to Halfholder. He had a feeling he wasn't succeeding. Hell, he had problems understanding them himself. But, frustratingly slowly, she began to comprehend. She had been so accustomed to wheeler communication that it had never occurred to her that it involved an encryption/decryption mapping.
Now that she was aware of the nature of the problem, she was certain that the Instrumentality would find some way to resolve it. She said as much and signed off.
Moses shut down the 'node and wandered along to the Ops Center. Here the Jovian wheeler still stood, immobile, surrounded by a low fence. The 'nodes' signal-processing windows continued to display blank regions of gray. He stared at the wheeled device—not-quite-alive, not-quite-machine. He knew that incredible amounts of information about the Jovians must be flowing through its mind. Equally incredible amounts of information about the humans must be flowing the other way, to Jupiter. And the Jovians would not be having the same trouble in understanding it.
He wondered what they were making of it all. Did the wheelers have some kind of visual sense? Was that what the headlights were for? If so, right at that moment teams of Jovians were probably looking at him. No matter, he'd suffered a lot worse. He looked straight into the headlights and winked. Let them try to figure that out . . .
His daydream was disturbed by a growing hubbub in the Ops Center.
The signal-processing windows were no longer gray. They were displaying moving images in weird, washed-out colors.
The subcommittee on Poisonbluvian Trespass was at an impasse.
As usual.
Its difficulty was simple: there were no precedents. Even the long-remembrance symbiauts had no idea how to proceed. The committee had to make up its own protocols as it went along, and it was desperately worried that it would trip up and do something illegal without realizing it.
The only positive action it had yet taken was to authorize the reprogramming of the repauter at the Poisonbluvian settlement on Sixmoon, so that it made its messages available to the extrajovians—and did so, moreover, in the format of unencrypted two-dimensional cartoons. The committee still found it difficult to believe that it had actually agreed to such inefficiency, and indeed it had not: it just remembered doing so because one of the protocol symbiauts had planted that memory in its collective consciousness. This particular protocol symbi-aut was at the far end of a wheeler chain of command, one of whose members was a rogue—secretly subservient to the sky-diver Instrumentality To the committee's surprise, this action had paid off almost immediately: the Poisonbluvians had started to send sensible replies to the Jovians' own transmissions, instead of just wandering around inside the weird architecture of their Sixmoonian lair and ignoring both the symbiaut that had been sent and its constant attempts to communicate with them.
Ironically, the improved communications quickly revealed a major obstacle to harmonious coexistence, and to this the committee's agendaut now referred them.
The Conclave of the Elders' representative—inevitably. Venerable Mumblings of the Interminable Prevarication—reminded the group mind of the background to the item. At considerable length, even for a blimp Elder.
«Thank you. Mumblings.» Rising Star of the Keen Persuasion was on the career track to become an Elder herself within the next ten million years and found it necessary to float very circumspectly now that the prize was so near. Mumblings was a pompous buffoon, but Star paid him all due respect, and more. « A definitive and masterful exposition of this difficult issue. Our admiration has been noted by the minute-keeping symbiaut? Excellent.»
Impulsive Speaker of the Loose Tongue knew exactly what Star was up to and found it pathetic. «Mumblings may have been definitive, Star, but the main issue was hard to distinguish among the embroidery. Which issue, fellow members, is simple. We are being requested to redirect a snowstone that the Diversion Engines have already been configured to deal with, merely because some upstart extrajovian race that claims to have arrived from Poisonblue is getting snitty about incidental damage to its homeworld! I move that we take no action and disband this committee.»
«ls there a seconder?» Mumblings automatically asked. «No, we all sense that Speaker is in a minority of one.»
Speaker belatedly realized his tactical error: no self-respecting Elder would ever disband a committee if it could avoid it. «I withdraw my motion but reserve the right to reintroduce an amended version at a subsequent stage. Let me reiterate the essence of my remarks: there is no rational reason to comply with this request!»
Mumblings detected no consensus yet. «I believe that the central issue here is quite different. We all know that there are no protocols for such a situation, but the difficulty of instituting such protocols is being compounded by the circumstances in which we are expected to achieve such a goal. I refer to the obvious fact that there most definitely is a protocol for communicating with the Conclave of the Elders. It is sanctioned by the precedents of Deep Time, and it should be followed to the letter on all occasions. Yet the extrajovians have floated stiff-trunked all over it! Instead, they are communicating through a symbiaut and in a highly inefficient format!»
«The problem with extrajovians. Mumblings, is that they are extrajovians.»
«Thank you. Speaker, for expressing that tautology.»
«Tautologies, Mumblings, may be tautologous, but tautologies are true. It is foolish to expect an extrajovian to be aware of the niceties of protocol.»
A third committee member. Intermittent Inserter of the Ir-relevant Interjection, now rose to the fore of the bureaubonded mind-ensemble. «Are we not forgetting that many snowstones have already been dispatched to Poisonblue in the past? Does this not set a precedent?»
Mumblings was forced to explain that it did not, since material circumstances were now very different. Inserter refused to concede: had it not been established in retrospect that there had been Poisonbluvian life-forms on the distant hellworld in the past, too? Speaker pointed out that according to recently accessed symbiautic memories, the most spectacular of those life-forms, who had inhabited the world some five and a half million Jovian years previously, were unintelligent—and had, in any case, been destroyed by the impact. The argument went around and around in circles for several days and was still unresolved when Speaker protested that the snowstone was getting very close now and the issue must be decided without further delay.
This brought an immediate denunciation from Mumblings: «Delay? There is no such concept! Proprieties must be observed, matters of import must be given the consideration they deserve. Haste is inappropriate, for nothing worth doing can be done hurriedly»
«But the issue must be resolved!» protested Speaker.
«In due time. If we carry out our task with diligence, a resolution can probably be achieved in no more than forty thou
sand years—»
«Which will certainly leave plenty of time to divert the next snowstone to a less contentious target,» Inserter pointed out smugly. «What more can be expected?»
«But the Poisonbluvians will all die,» Speaker pointed out.
«Pah! As we have now become aware, these Poisonbluvian intelligences owe their very existence to a previous snowstrike! It destroyed their competitors and opened niches for them to evolve in! They can scarcely complain if another snowstrike opens up niches for their successors! Higher life-forms will quickly reevolve! Intelligence could easily return to the planet in fifty million years or less!»
Speaker conceded that Mumblings had a point.
Skylark's xenosemanticists were good, Prudence had to admit. Once the Jovians had stopped encrypting their signals in unbreakable ciphers, progress was surprisingly fast. Within a month, the banks of semiologic chips had learned the Jovians' language—with creative invention of human terms for untranslatable Jovian jargon—and the quantity of available data, both new and recorded, was now immense, and growing by the hour. The early signals shed innumerable insights on the blimps' lifestyles, social structure, history, technological prowess, and philosophical viewpoint. They resolved the status of the wheelers: not machines in the normal sense, yet not exactly living creatures, either—but the result of a curious mechano-organic symbiosis. If wheelers had genetics, then their genes were held by the blimps, not by the wheelers themselves.
They also explained why the Jovians had moved their moons to divert the comet, rather than using their gravitic repulsion beams to push it onto a different trajectory: the antigravity force was a short-range one. Gravitic repulsion worked by changing the sign of the graviton, and it needed a generous supply of gravitons to work with.
However, the messages were a very mixed bag, endless trivia jumbled up among items of extreme importance. Some were as plain as day; others were totally baffling. All of that had been anticipated, and sophisticated semantic filters weeded out most of the junk.
Fragments . . .
The reduced equation for stochastic transport of sporulated nanogametic density concentrations across intragalactic voids can be derived from Formic Glandules Thirteenfold Principle by an elementary but tedious application of the inordinate calculus. In Fey Mosling's quasi-simplicial notation it may be rendered thus:
&[c:c:c]/// — $ — {oospore}x%%
where $ is a multiphase parameter on the slow manifold ///. Transposing all intraframes into semi-canonical form and omitting all omissibles, the formula complifies to [3,821 pages of Jovian algebra omitted] from which it can readily be deduced by numerical supposition that the transference rate is adequate for pansporulation on a teraday timescale.
• The wise artificer grasps with all trunklets.
• Opinions are untrustworthy, this one included.
• She who controls the modalities of communicauts controls Firsthome.
• You can lead a magnetotorus to liftgas, hut you cannot make it fuse.
(From the sayings of Cunning Intriguer of the Sideways Assault.)
The penalty of ritual deflation has by tradition been reserved for only the most heinous of crimes—racial treason, multiple genocide, star murder . . . However, these are difficult times and the maintenance of civil order is of paramount importance as we embark on an enforced Exodus into the Unknown . . . The Conclave of the Elders has therefore determined that the penalty shall be extended to crimes that in ordinary circumstances might appear less heinous, but in our new circumstances may in fact be even more antisocial. These shall include vandalizing an unattached symbiaut, unauthorized bureaubonding, exfoliating in public places outside the hours of darkness . . .
(Fifteen thousand other new offenses listed.)
On Trembling Sands of Pale Scaturience a guard symbiaut parked, Ingesting its cervicular strut for lack of adequate nourishment. It declaimed, "It may not be appropriate to ingest, But it is considerably better than Delicate Neglect of the Neotenous Curfews proprietary germanium sulfide supplement."
(It is conjectured that this item may have lost something in translation.)
Opiner's contention that all taxa ultimately converge in backward time will at first hearing appear improbable, given the existence of disconnecting macro voids in phenotypic space. The evidence in its favor, however, seems incontrovertible. For example, today's intergalactic herds of wandering magnetotori have MHDnomes that differ from those of plasmoid-domesticated magnetotori by less than three percent. And blimp conclave records include transdictions of precursors that go back at least to [25 billion years ago (sic)] and these indicate a common ancestor for both blimps and plasmoids. It is conjectured that these "preplasmoid" entities bifurcated taxonomically some [40 billion years (sic)] in the past. One branch self-complicated into the coherent complex plasma-vortex creatures that we now call plasmoids, the second evolved from multisoliton wavepackets into conventional atomic matter, self-organized into molecules, and joined the primal condensation of solar materials that gave rise to Firsthome and its innumerable sister worlds throughout the known galaxies. Fossil KAM-attractors in chromospheric hidden-variable relics dispersed by supernovas are strongly indicative of the theory's correctness for plasmoids, but unfortunately planetological deposits are too short-lived to contain interpretable traces that could confirm the latter statement. Nevertheless, there is much indirect evidence in its favor. For further information see The Descent of Blimp by Original Opiner of the Obvious Ontology, in its recent reprint by Sphoeniscid Books.
Grain of sand # 1 — 24 facets as follows: triangles 18, pentagons 4, hexagons 2; impurities as follows: iron 0.000345, aluminium 0.014673, cadmium 0.000022, magnesium 0.009756 . . .
Grain of sand # 2 — 20 facets as follows: triangles 15, pentagons 3, hexagons 2; impurities as follows: iron 0.000111, aluminium 0.075643, cadmium 0.000008, magnesium 0.003522 . . .
Grain of sand # 3 — 28 facets as follows: triangles 16, pentagons 9, hexagons 3; impurities as follows: iron 0.009255, aluminium 0.000001, cadmium 0.006666, magnesium 0.000600 . . .
Grain of sand #4 — 937 facets as follows: triangles 588, pentagons 317, hexagons 8, heptagons 0, octagons 22, enneagons 0, decagons 2; impurities as follows: iron 0.000345, aluminium 0.014673, cadmium 0.000022, magnesium 0.009756 . . .
Grain of sand # 417,738 — 5,416 facets as follows: triangles 4,483, pentagons 888, hexagons 45; impurities as follows: iron 0.000543, aluminium 0.037641, cadmium 0.010005, magnesium 0.000081 . . .
(28,366,741 further entries)
In the early years, there was much interbreeding between the native Secondhome species and imports from Firsthome. This can be seen as confirmation of the universality and uniqueness of our molecular genetics — on two separate worlds, exactly the same reproductive processes "evolved." This cannot be an accident.
The Magnetotorus Whisperer ... A mythopoetic history of the domestication of the magnetotorus from the confrontational techniques of ancestral preplasmoids to the modern and deliciously controversial exploitation of innate assemblage tropes. The scene in which a single plasmoid breaks the spirit of an entire herd of wild magnetotori is constructed with brilliant repulsiveness. Even the stablest mind will [pewm?] with [symplasyl] at the eventual closure of the [ . . . unintelligible . . . ] sneffle index***
Charles was surprised to find that he was much happier now that he had destroyed his own career, handed back his public honors, and offered his resignation. He could see that Prudence still didn't trust him, and if he'd been in her place he'd have done the same. What is the bastard conniving at now? A sudden rush of honesty would not figure highly on her list of explanations. He was still trying to figure out exactly why he'd done it. Change of perspective was surely one factor. Out here, most Earthly politics looked ridiculous and petty Guilt was another— it had been eating away at him for years, but he'd always been busy enough to ignore it. Ah, yes ... a third factor was the infinitely tedious two-year journey out to Jupiter in a
flying junkyard, mostly alone with his thoughts. The voyage had changed him a lot, given him a dose of wisdom. Not to mention that— damn it—Prudence's audacity had succeeded where all his careful preparations had failed. The old Charles would have put it down to luck, but the new one realized that the real innovators make their own luck. Prudence had gone straight for the jugular, whereas all he'd done was shuffle around.
She'd been right about the Sphinx, too.
What a waste. Not all of it his fault, but he'd shamelessly exploited the media's insistence on a simple story instead of a complex truth. He hoped one day Prudence would forgive him . . . but to push her any harder now would be stupid. No point in dwelling on imponderables when there's one very large ponderable bearing down on your planet with an impact velocity of five hundred thousand miles per hour. He even felt better about that, because finally they were in contact with the Jovians. The information they'd need to understand the alien mentality was flooding in—they seemed to be getting access to big chunks of the Jovian archives now, and their biggest problem was transmitting the material back to Earth before it overwhelmed their data banks. More optimistically still, he had repeatedly been assured by his Jovian counterparts that the question of redirecting the comet was under urgent discussion at the highest levels of blimp government. He was confident that they would soon do something to avert the catastrophe.
After all, there were still more than six weeks before the comet hurtled through the planet's inner moons.
The Jovians did seem a bit slow, though. So it was a good thing that Moses Odingo had cultivated a friendship with that strange (but powerful!) group of subversives. If the Jovian leadership proved intractable, there was an alternative . . .