by Jerry
I stopped at the spot where the jeep had stopped, that day of the Breakthrough. In one direction lay our study area, a painted stream valley against a cloudless Earth-June sky. In other, the Stardust glittered, and farther away, the red dot of Ursula’s umbrella specked the green landscape. No sounds, no wind, no birds in the sky. I sat down on a hillock, rested my chin on my knees, and brooded.
I don’t know when I became aware of it. I was alone, and I felt alone, and then suddenly I knew that I wasn’t alone any more. The black cube rested solidly, inertly, crushing down the lettuce not six feet from where I sat.
I realized that I was not surprised. If our hypothesis was in any way valid, it had come looking for me. I remembered the chop I’d given it with the hammer and wondered vaguely if it was going to hold a grudge. That it was the same black cube I hadn’t the slightest doubt. I didn’t move. Quietly I studied the matchless perfection of its glittering onyx planes. As an object d’art it would have graced a pedestal in any museum in the galaxy.
Nothing else happened. I sat, and the cube sat. No more cubes appeared. Apparently this was going to be a solo contact. And I felt, indeed I knew, that there was a reason for its coming.
After a quarter of an hour of this. I did what you and you probably would have done. I began to talk.
VII
Oh, I didn’t expect any answer.
You’ve talked to your dog, to a flower, to a picture of someone you like—or hate. It’s a way of thinking.
“You’re alive, aren’t you?” I told the black cube. “You aren’t life as I know it, but you’re alive. What your origins were, I can’t even guess. What you’re made of, what goes on inside you, what the sources of your energies are—I’d give an arm to know. Make it a left arm,” I added. “I’m right-handed.”
The cube simply sat. I didn’t expect anything else, but somehow I felt cheated. For the first time, the utter soundlessness of my surroundings began to get me. Everywhere else I had ever been, things made noise. Here, nothing. You made your own noise, or you didn’t hear.
I began to talk again. It was rambling, idle talk. It relieved my tensions. And it was some minutes before I became aware of another reason for talking.
I was talking because the cube wanted me to talk.
Something inside that beautiful polished surface was probing, sifting, analyzing. This phenomenon of sound was no part of its everyday existence. Varied, meaningful sound it probably had never before known.
And, somehow, it was reminding me that this was so, was urging me on to more speech.
It wasn’t telepathy, in any sense that you have ever used the word. I’ve come across some highly developed examples of that. This was different. I just knew what it wanted.
“How can you hear me?” I demanded. “You live in a soundless world. How, for that matter, can you vanish and reappear, probably miles away, even though you have unusual weight and mass? What complex stuffs are you made of? How do you come into existence? How do you die?”
I studied the inert, unmoving object. Dimly, but definitely I could feel its awareness of meaning in my speech. There was, too, a sense of pleasure, of satisfaction, of intellectual wonder emanating from it. It was something I recognized and hadn’t thought of before. If the cube was a living, sentient being, an active, intellectual entity, why shouldn’t it regard me as remarkable, unbelievable and strange? That’s the feeling I got, and I admitted the justice and validity of it. After all, it was all in the point of view.
We were communicating!
That hit me like a blow. It was nothing you could put your finger on, but we were, somehow establishing contact. I felt pretty sure it couldn’t hear me, yet that it got pleasure from my speech. And minute by minute the feeling of contact grew more definite. I groped for a way to prove it.
I bounded up from nay seat on the hummock and strode hack and forth, the lettuce squashing crisply under my sandals with every step. I stood over the changeless, motionless cube with both fists clenched. I swore at it.
“Do something!” I shouted. “Damn it, don’t just sit there! Move!”
I considered picking up the cube and dropping it. I did take out my rock hammer and cut circles in the air with it. But the cube could have been the block of stone it superficially resembled. Nothing happened. And I got the feeling that there was no reason why anything should.
In the evolutionary chain of events that had produced the cubes, so different from any I knew, motion had no merit. The rigid body plan precluded it. And what went on inside I could only dimly guess. Then I remembered that the wheels moved, and I said so. The message got through. The feeling that I got in return was not a good feeling. But other than that, nothing.
I prowled and stewed. Then the thought Came to me that I was behaving like a spoiled child who had dropped his lollypop in the dirt. Whether the awareness came from the cube or my own common sense I’ll never know. But I suddenly saw that the human race wasn’t coming out so well in the dignity and maturity department. The cube was patient. It simply sat.
My mood changed. My impatience vanished. I stopped before the cube and made a little bow, as polite and formal as Johnny Rasmussen.
“I beg your pardon,” I said.
Was the pulse of feeling that I got back akin to soundless, derisive, sympathetic, good-humored laughter? I know what I think.
Thereafter for two hours I sat and talked to the unmoving cube, I talked as I would have talked to a man. I used the words that said what I wanted to say, knowing full well that there was no way to simplify or adjust them, suspecting that I wasn’t, in any sense, being heard anyway, but being increasingly aware that the thoughts, the ideas, were going through.
I told it about the explorer ship Stardust and of the millions of worlds in the galaxy. I explained what manner of creatures we were. I told how we were able to go from world to world, and how we were endlessly curious about all phenomena we could detect or contact. I admitted that this was a world apart from any we had ever explored, that it had little or nothing we expected, that life here seemed to have a different meaning from any we had ever before encountered. I assured it that we had no enmity and that we could use friends and help.
“We have short lives,” I told the cube. “We associate in pairs and produce others like ourselves, and they live the same way in their turn. How you live, how you continue yourselves, is all the greater mystery to us, for we know you can’t live as we do.”
So I talked, on and on, and imperceptibly the rapport between us grew more complete. I knew, too, when to stop. And when the time came, I got up and said good-by.
“I’d ask you to walk along with me,” I said drily, “but walking doesn’t seem to be your strong point. I’ll see you around.”
When I was a hundred yards away I looked back, and the cube was gone. But it didn’t feel gone. Nor was it. It sat quietly on the lettuce ahead of me. I passed it, and once again it appeared ahead. I didn’t see it come. It was just there. And I got a good feeling, like a shared joke, down inside me. The cube was walking along with me, after its fashion. But when the long glittering bulk of the Stardust reared close ahead, the cube vanished, and I knew it was really gone.
That evening I reported. It was an all-personnel report, full staff, full crew, everybody. Not assembled, of course. The tape was put on intercom, and every living soul had to listen. This was essential. Then, after conferring with Lindy, Pegleg and me, Johnny Rasmussen announced point of view and policy concerning the known life. This was usual, but on this planet it hadn’t before been necessary. There hadn’t been any life.
The gist of it was, be friendly. Be courteous, be aloof and, rigidly, be hands off. No tampering. No experimenting. Watch. Report any cubes sighted and, most particularly, any behavior. And, as a special precaution, no weapons. There was every evidence they wouldn’t be needed, and a pretty good chance they wouldn’t be effective, anyhow. The energy that could disassemble and reassemble the heavy cubes might, if turned to o
ther use, be devastating. So peace and friendship were not only a policy. They were a carefully considered precaution.
The following morning was a panic. I was slug-abed, and Lindy’s voice over the intercom wakened me. Cyrene rays reached through my window port, looking so like Sol rays I couldn’t have told the difference.
“Look out, Roscoe,” Lindy said. “We didn’t hold the only policy meeting.”
We didn’t, either. Cubes were everywhere. I don’t mean they were jammed together as they had been around the jeep. Instead, they dotted the landscape. I could see thirty or so from the window. Their polished sides picked up the sun’s rays, no two the same color. It was a gaudy and a rarely beautiful sight.
And as I looked I felt a familiar pulse inside me. I searched, and sure enough, there it sat, almost under the shadow of the ship.
“And good morning to you too, pal,” I said. “Had your breakfast yet? Sorry about the late rising, but I do like my naps. I’ll be out in a bit.”
As I had my own breakfast, savoring the good coffee and wondering in all seriousness what the cube ate, if ate was the word, a conviction grew that we were not only accepted, but for some reason we were needed. We were the answer to something. What? A good question. But the feeling persisted that it was a real need, and that it would be communicated to us in good time.
VIII
That day the mapping crews did not leave the area. The zoological and botanical collecting teams, which had been pretty well stymied by the barrenness of the planet, came out and prowled, looking both appreciative and baffled. There was a population to be studied and yet literally nothing for them to do. That had never happened before.
Cap’n Jules Griffin let the ship’s crews out in shifts, keeping a minimum complement on board and seeing that the open hatches and ports were closely watched and guarded. Cap’n Jules hadn’t the imagination to see that his guards were useless. If a cube chose to go inside, I hadn’t a doubt that it could do it. There was no evidence that it couldn’t go through any wall or barrier as well as the ports. We had no idea what their condition became when they disassembled.
Everybody was under the same general instruction from Johnny Rasmussen. Mingle. Wander as you choose. Examine the cubes. Talk to them. Try to detect any energy expenditure, any activity at all. Use detection instruments if you like, but don’t apply any energy!
The only person who could do usual, familiar work was, naturally, Ursula Potts. The old girl painted like the fiend she resembled. The colors drove her wild. And, say what you will, Ursula was one of the galaxy’s great painters. I would have loved to look over her shoulder to see what she was seeing, but I didn’t dare.
Instead, I visited with my friend the black cube. I brought Lindy and Pegleg over and introduced them formally. Lindy was dubious about her status. After all, this was the cube that had “bitten” her. She was shy with it at first. I explained her feeling to the cube as I might to you, pointing out that I had wielded the hammer and that she had been by way of being an innocent bystander.
The cube’s aura expressed no contrition. It soon was apparent that she hadn’t been bitten because of the blow. She was “different,” and the cube had been repelled. Why? If you find out, tell me. I doubt, in the light of what I know now, if the cube itself knew for sure.
I explained further.
“We associate in pairs,” I reminded it, “but the members of the pair are not alike. One is like I am, or Dr. Williams. The other is like she is. That’s how she’s different. Is that clear?”
Apparently it wasn’t, for I got no confirming feeling. Instead, it seemed that the rapport between us was completely broken. The cube simply sat in beautiful isolation. After a moment I shrugged at Lindy.
“You’re persona non grata,” I said. “I can’t imagine why. It has shut off the voltage. I don’t get a thing.”
I spoke too hastily. The next instant I was awash with a flood of feeing, warm and sympathetic and infinitely understanding. It lapped and ebbed around me in almost tangible waves. From the startled looks on Lindy’s and Pegleg’s faces, I could tell that they got it too.
The cube really understood, or thought it did. The isolation time lapse had simply been a time to think it over. Almost in words it gave this assurance. Then came proof. As usual, we couldn’t see how it happened. But another cube sat beside the black one on the lettuce. It was appreciably smaller. Its color was a delicate cream-ivory. I had never seen anything so completely perfect.
I heard Lindy catch her breath. Her admiration gushed in typically feminine phrase.
“Oh!” Lindy breathed, “she’s exquisite!”
“She?” Pegleg and I said it together.
“Of course!” Lindy went down on her shapely knees before the ivory cube. “Of course it’s she! Can’t you feel how proud he is? She’s why he understands about me. I don’t repel him anymore!”
She ran her long, sensitive fingers over the velvet-smooth surfaces of the smaller cube. “You’re beautiful,” she said gently, “and I’m sure you’re very nice.” She patted the black cube. “I won’t sit on you, because one doesn’t sit on one’s friends. But I wouldn’t be afraid to. You wouldn’t bite me again.”
The good feeling was there all right. The air all around us felt like cats purring before an open fire. I picked up an apology from the black cube more graceful than any language could have expressed it. The ivory one exuded a shy, dignified pleasure. Lindy gave them as good as they sent, and you’ve never heard so much brotherhood kicked around since you went to your last revival.
“All right!” growled Pegleg finally. “We all love one another.” He was less sensitive to the cubes than Lindy and me and never was able to communicate in any complex situation. “It occurs to me that this he-she business is oversimplification, Roscoe. They’re not like any life we know in any other respect. Sex would be a pretty long-chance coincidence, wouldn’t it?”
I had to agree, but I qualified it.
“There’s an affinity,” I said. “What it means I don’t know yet, but there’s no doubt it’s important to them both.”
“Lindy’ll be no help,” Pegleg added with sly malice. “Her romantic leanings and woman’s intuition have completely nullified the training that produced Dr. Linda Peterson, microbiologist extraordinary. From now on she’ll be wearing rose-colored spectacles an inch thick.”
I like to think that that was the remark that put Pegleg out of the running with Lindy. He meant no harm, and there was some truth in it, too, but Pegleg always talked too much. Talked well, I grant you—but too much.
Lindy flushed with indignation. I hastily spoke to the black cube.
“Let’s go to the top of the slope and leave the ladies to talk about knitting. I think you’ve got something to tell me. Come on, Pegleg.”
I strode away without looking back. In a minute or two Pegleg caught up with me, and we walked along in silence. I felt nothing, yet I had no doubt that the black cube would join us. And when we reached the top of the rise, suddenly it was there, inert, utterly inscrutable.
I wasted no time.
“Tell me,” I said. “How can we help?”
That made no sense to Pegleg, but the cube knew. We sat down on the lettuce and waited.
For a while nothing happened.
The familiar pulse of communication I had known before did not come. For some reason I found myself thinking of the Island and the huge, misshapen gray cubes which were its population. I looked at the landscape around me. The black cube’s colorful kin dotted it, but there were many yards between the closest of them. I recalled the massed thousands of gray cubes in the mapping photos. The inference was plain. The Island had become overpopulated. The gray cubes were threatening to move to the mainland.
Threatening! That was it. The perfection that our multicolored friends represented was being threatened by hordes of imperfection. I sensed that this was a carefully disciplined race, that regulated the production of more of its kind in a
fashion that I couldn’t quite grasp. It seemed that the Island cubes ignored this regulation, and that they scorned geometric perfection.
I came out of my musing with a start. Of course, it wasn’t musing at all.
“Are you getting this, Pegleg?” Pegleg flexed his plastic kneejoint, shifted his seat on the lettuce and looked puzzled.
“What am I supposed to be getting? I was just thinking how different these fellows are from the big gray brutes we saw in the Island pics. Be a mess, wouldn’t it, if they moved across the Strait and started shoving things around on the mainland. Wonder what keeps them there? They looked like their space is pretty well used up, and no matter what their metabolism is like, they must eat something.”
I had to chuckle.
“You’re getting it,” I said. “You even have the right point of view.” Pegleg stared at the black cube. “You mean,” he said slowly, “that it’s feeding us? That this train of thought wasn’t my idea?”
“I’ve felt since yesterday that we’ve dropped in on a crisis on this planet. Ridiculous, isn’t it? A soundless, motionless crisis. Our boys here are not quite sure what to do about it. I think, since we’ve been identified as intelligent and disciplined, that we represent hope. I think we’re being asked for help.”
“And how in the ever-loving—” Pegleg paused, glanced at the cube, and then fixed me with a cold eye. “Suppose we could do something, though what, at this moment, I wouldn’t have an idea. But I do know the basic regulation under which all explorer ships operate, and so do you. No interference! We discover, we observe, we record and collate data, we make recommendations, but we keep hands off. We don’t take sides. We don’t sit in judgment. We don’t play God!”
For the first time I felt a slight pulse from the cube. There was dismay in it, and I am sure, a plea for further hearing. That, it should have realized, was unnecessary. Nothing could have kept us from finding out everything we could about this, to put it lightly, different situation. But Pegleg’s warning was apropos. We could defend ourselves, but we were forbidden to interfere.