by Joe Haldeman
There wasn’t a single Rosetta stone for understanding human language, but two things combined to make it possible. One was television, which allowed them to connect words with objects, and the other was SETI, the twentieth-century Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, where scientists tried to communicate with aliens via binary-coded radio signals that started with simple arithmetic and moved up, by making diagrams, through mathematics, physics, and astronomy, and finally into biology and human affairs.
The translation was easier for the Martians than it would be for someone farther away—they not only got the messages, but they could watch TV programs explaining about the messages in English.
We talked with Red about that. Maybe the Others had been listening to us, too, but if they were far away, they’d be years behind the Martians in understanding us. He didn’t think so, and gave a reasonable relativistic argument—if they were light-years away, traveling toward us at close to the speed of light, then as they approached the solar system, the information would pile up in an increasingly concentrated way, and of course by the time they got here, they’d be totally caught up. Assuming they were infinitely smart.
It turned out otherwise.
3
SPEAKING IN TONGUES
When Jagrudi took my rosebud Franz off to Mars, along with Terry and Joan and another twenty-three, she was also carrying a cargo of special interest to Paul, an experimental drug called Primo-L. If it worked, it could revolutionize space travel, as well as other aspects of modern life: It was an antidote to radiation poisoning, at least from the low-dose, long-term kind of exposure that grounded space pilots and killed people who lived too close to places like the ruins of Kolkata.
They wouldn’t let him just take it, since there would be years of human trials before it could be approved. He volunteered to be one of the “lab rats,” but they turned him down, since he wouldn’t be taking it under clinically controlled conditions. They’d only sent it along in case an emergency arose that required him to drive the shuttle if the other two pilots were unavailable.
It happened. A few months later, in November, Jagrudi was out on the surface, working on the Tsiolkovski prior to launch, and a piece flew off a power tool and ripped open her helmet. They got an emergency patch on it and had her down in the clinic in a few minutes, but she had pulmonary embolisms, and her eyes and ears were damaged. She might be all right in a couple of months, but that was way past the launch window. The third pilot was in the Schiaparelli, four months out, so Paul got the job.
It was a course of ten shots over two weeks, and he admitted they caused a little nausea and dizziness, but said it went away after the tenth, so he took off with his payload of two Martians and a bunch of stuff from their city.
Scientists couldn’t wait to get their hands on the Martian hovercraft and the communication sphere that had connected them to Earth. But those engineering marvels paled in significance, compared to something the Martians didn’t even know they were bringing.
The engineering team came up to Little Mars three weeks before rendezvous, two of them joining us on the Mars side—a married couple who would eventually emigrate to Mars—and seven who joined the permanent party on the Earth side.
Our couple, Elias and Fiona Goldstein, were practically bouncing off the walls with infectious enthusiasm. Only a little older than me, they both had fresh doctorates, in mechanical engineering and systems theory, tailored for this mysterious job—analyzing self-repairing machines that had worked for centuries or millennia with no obvious source of power. Would they even work, this far from Mars? If they didn’t, Elias and Fiona were prepared to continue their investigations in the field, which is to say the Martians’ city.
They’d brought miniature tennis rackets and rubber balls with them, and we improvised a kind of anarchic racquetball game up in Exercise A, scheduling it while no one was on the machines. It was great to work up a sweat doing something rather than sitting there in VR pedaling or rowing.
Of course, my own favorite way of working up a sweat was only weeks away, and never far from my thoughts.
Planning for our reunion was fun. I had eight months and quite a bit of money, with a good salary and no living expenses.
Shipping nonessential goods on the Space Elevator came to about $200 per kilogram, and I tried to spend it wisely. I ordered fine sheets and pillows from Egypt, caviar from the Persian coalition, and wine from France. I could have bought it directly from the Hilton, but found that I could have more and better wine if I managed it myself. I wound up buying a mixed case of vintage Bordeaux, of which I took half, the other six bottles financed by Oz and Josie, who in turn sold two to Meryl and Moonboy.
As the Tsiolkovski approached, there of course was less and less time delay, messaging, and Paul and I were able to converse almost in real time. We coordinated our schedules and made half-hour “dates” every day, just chatting, catching up on each other’s life over the past couple of years. I have to admit that his obvious eagerness to talk was a relief. A lot could have happened to either of us during two and a half years, but a lot more could have happened to him—one of the few single young men on a whole planet.
He had admitted to a fling with Jag, which was about as surprisingas gravity. But it didn’t really work, partly because she was having reservations about living on Mars, which was rather less exciting than her native Seattle. If the quarantine was lifted before radiation kept her out of space, she probably would exercise her option to go back to the ground the next time she returned to Earth orbit. The scary accident made her even less enthusiastic about staying.
Paul was committed to Mars; it had been his planet since he signed up years ago. To him, the place where I lived was a suburb of Mars, though it happened to orbit another planet. That was my own attitude, though in my case it was more resignation than affirmation.
I knew I wouldn’t be able to just drag him off the ship and down to my room—but the leer he gave me when he stepped out of the air lock said that was on his mind, too. He had to supervise the unloading and disposition of his cargo, which took two hours, with Dargo breathing down his neck. Then say hello to Red and Green and get Fly-in-Amber and Snowbird established in the Martian quarters, and meet the new members of the Mars side human team.
Dargo offered to introduce him to the people on the Earth side, but he pled fatigue and let me guide him by the elbow on a tour of the Mars side, which got as far as my room.
He didn’t show any sign of fatigue over the next half hour, though at first he sweetly suppressed his own urgency to attend to mine. I did have the impression that it had been all carefully rehearsed in his mind, but what else was he going to do for eight months, locked up with a couple of Martians?
It was much better for me, for whatever reasons, than aboard the John Carter or in his shared room in the colony. My own territory, I guess, with my own lock on the door. Egyptian sheets and pillowcases might have helped.
The wine bottles had corks made of actual cork, which I should have foreseen. I quickly dressed and slipped down to the galley unobserved—almost everybody was over in the Martian environment with the new arrivals—and got a thin-bladed knife that served the purpose.
I undressed when I got back, because it would be silly to drink wine with a naked man otherwise. The wine was amazing, bottled the year I was born. The caviar was kind of like salty fish eggs to me, but Paul went crazy for it. Well, after years of Martian food and ship rations, anything different would be ambrosia.
He said it tasted something like me, which made me feel oh-so-feminine and scaly.
We each had a couple of glasses, which left me light-headed and giggly, and him, light-headed and horny. We got out of bed and did it that Indian way, my arms around his neck and legs clasping him, and it was even more intense than the first time.
We collapsed on the bunk and held each other tightly for a while. I think it was the first time I’d ever produced actual tears of joy. I hadn’t been able to
admit to myself how much I’d missed him and how much I feared losing him.
Of course, I’d been missing it, too, ever since Jag took Franz away.
We eased into sleep intertwined, Egyptian cotton wicking away our sweat while French wine weighed down our eyelids. A most international coma, and interplanetary, the man from Mars holding the girl from Florida.
My phone started pinging, and after about four pings I managed to pry one eye open, then sort through the pile of clothes for the pinger. One problem with living inside a tin can is that you can’t ignore the phone and then say “I was out,” like taking a stroll through the afternoon vacuum.
It was Oz. I pushed NO VISION, and then remembered that my standby picture this week was a little movie of pandas copulating.
“What’s up, Oz?” I said quietly.
“I don’t suppose Paul is there.”
“He’s sleeping. It was a long trip.”
“I guess it can wait. When he gets up, tell him he’s not the biggest news story anymore.”
“Hey, Oz.” Paul was up on one elbow, blinking. “What do you mean?”
“It’s weird, Paul. The timing. Just about the same time you docked here, astronomers in Hawaii recorded a strong blinking beam of coherent light from Neptune. Apparently a laser, blinking on and off.”
“I don’t understand. We don’t have anything out there, do we?”
“Nope. They’re falling over each other, trying to find a natural explanation. Lased light aimed toward Earth? It’s brighter than the planet itself.”
“Maybe China? They can do some weird shit.”
“Come on, Paul. That’d cost more than Little Mars and the Hilton combined. Get a big laser out there.
“Anyhow, there’s a news conference at 1900. We’ll all be watching it over at Earth A.”
“Okay, we’ll be there.”
“Bye… Loverboy.”
He smiled and raised his eyebrows. “I do believe Dr. Oswald is jealous.”
“E-ew. That would almost be incest.”
“Like incest doesn’t happen. How much time we have?”
I checked my wrist tattoo. “Forty-two minutes.” He got out of bed and stretched. He was becoming erect again. “Oh, put that thing away and let’s go get a cup of coffee.” He pouted, so I amused him for a few minutes. We did have time to go by the galley and get a cup on the way to Earth A.
Earth A was the largest room on the Mars side; it was where we met, or “met,” various presidents and prime ministers and CEOs, pressing palms through a feelie glove. The room had enough seating for twice our human population, and a raised platform behind that was big enough for a dozen Martians.
All four of them were there—Red, Green, Fly-in-Amber, and Snowbird—chattering and chirping and buzzing. Red raised a large arm and waved hello.
Most of the humans were already in place, in the first two rows of theater-style seats. Paul and I sat alone in the third row.
The walls were an intense blue. “The color of Neptune,” Paul said.
“Did they name it Neptune because it was the color of the sea?”
“I don’t know. Sounds logical.”
Some weird music started. “Holst, of course,” I said.
“What?”
“Didn’t you ever take music appreciation?”
“I was an engineer, sweetheart. Did you take Fourier transforms?”
“Don’t give me any trouble.” I pinched his leg. “Gustav Holst wrote a suite called The Planets, which had eight parts. This is the last one, Neptune. It’s kind of famous because it was the first orchestral piece written that ends by fading to silence.” I put a hand over my mouth. “Chattering. Sorry.”
“Chatter anytime,” he said softly.
A face appeared in the cube, vaguely familiar. “Who’s that?”
“Raymo Sebastian. He’s the default science explainer for BBC/ Fox.”
“Good evening,” he said, in round announcer tones. He was famous enough that he didn’t have to identify himself. “This is a special brief report—brief because so little is yet known—about the strange phenomenon astronomers noticed a few hours ago in the vicinity of Neptune.”
His image faded to the image of a blue ball with faint dark markings and a white smear. Just next to it, a red light was blinking regularly, five or six times a second. It was so bright it made me squint.
“The red light is coherent,” Sebastian said off camera, “and its wavelength suggests—it almost requires—a ruby laser. The same kind used for commercial scanning since the last century, but trillionsof times more powerful. Viewed from Earth, it’s as bright as the planet itself.”
Behind us, there was a thud, and a quiet susurrus of Martian talking. I turned and saw that Fly-in-Amber had fallen over and was twitching. Paul and I ran up the aisle to their raised platform.
Green was going out the door. Red and Snowbird were kneeling by Fly-in-Amber, who was lying on the floor, twitching. It was an unnatural sight, even for people used to seeing Martians, since they didn’t lie down to rest. I remembered seeing a picture of a cow on Earth that some pranksters had tipped over on its side; he looked as odd as that.
“What happened?” I asked Red.
“I’ve never seen it before, except as a joke.” He was gently bending one of Fly-in-Amber’s legs. “It looked as if these two legs suddenly collapsed, and the other pair, at the same time, pushed hard, as if jumping.” He said something in Martian, loudly, but Fly-in-Amber didn’t respond.
Most of the other humans were right behind us. “Maybe it is some kind of odd joke?” Moonboy asked. “A practical joke?”
“I don’t think so. It’s childish. Fly-in-Amber is too stiff for that. Yellow is a dignified family.” Red faced Paul. “Did he act strangely during the crossing?”
“Forgive me, Red,” Paul said, “but to me you all act strange, all the time.”
He made his little buzz sound. “You should talk, Two-legs. I mean, did his behavior or conversation suddenly change?”
“He talked a lot more during the last couple of days, approaching Earth. But we were all excited, ready to get off the ship.”
“Of course. You were eager to mate with Carmen. Did that happen yet?”
I had to smile. “It was fine, Red.”
“That’s good. Green has gone to Mars C, to send a message to the other healers at home. She’d never seen this either.”
“Nor have I,” said Snowbird. “Nor have I heard of it, ever, except children playing. It’s painful.”
“Should we pull him back upright?” I asked.
“Not yet,” Red and Snowbird said at the same time. “Wait until we hear from—”
Fly-in-Amber started talking, a quiet uninflected warble. Snowbird moved close to listen.
“Is this being recorded?” Paul said.
“Of course,” Dargo Solingen snapped.
“What is he saying?” I asked.
“It sounds like nonsense to me.” Red shook his head, ponderously, a gesture that he’d learned to copy from us. “Perhaps code? I’ve never heard anything like it.”
“You can’t make any sense of it?”
“No, not yet. But it doesn’t seem… It isn’t random. He is saying something, and repeating it.”
Fly-in-Amber stopped with a noise like a sneeze. Then a long monotone, like a sung sigh. Snowbird said something in Martian, and after a pause, Fly-in-Amber answered a couple of halting syllables.
He started to rise but hesitated. Red and Snowbird helped him to his feet, Red chattering away. He answered, obviously faltering. Red made an odd fluting sound I didn’t think I’d heard before. “Can you tell them in English?”
Fly-in-Amber stepped around, faltering, to face us. “I don’t know what happened. Red says I fell down and spoke nonsense while my body shook.
“To me, I was blind, but I felt the floor.” He gingerly patted his right arms with his main left hand. “Along here, that was strange. And I smelled things that
have no name. At least that I’ve never smelled. And I felt cold, colder than home. Cold like Mars, outside.
“But I don’t remember talking. Red says I talked and talked. I heard something, but it didn’t make any sense.”
“Maybe you heard what you were saying to us?” Snowbird said.
“No, it wasn’t words; nothing like words. It was like a machine sound, but it was like music, too; human music. A musical machine?”
Dargo played back part of it. “Doesn’t sound very musical.” Fly-in-Amber tilted his head back, as if searching the ceiling and walls with potato eyes. “I mean something like ‘feeling.’ When you say music has feeling.”
“You mean emotion?” Oz said.
“Not really. I understand that you humans have emotions when events or thoughts cause chemical changes in your blood. In your brains. We are similar, as you know. This is not… not that real?”
He swiveled toward me. “It’s like when Carmen tried to tell me, at 20:17 last Sagan 20th, how she felt while reading the score of Beethoven’s Eroica symphony. That seeing the dots on the screen made your brain remember the sound, and the feeling that the sound caused, even though you weren’t hearing anything. Do you remember that?”
“I guess.” If you say so, Dr. Memory.
“It was that kind of, what would you say, distance? What you said about reading the score was that it was like a diagram of an emotion, an emotional state, but one you didn’t have a word for.”
I did remember. “That’s right. You can call it ‘joy’ or ‘hope’ or something, but nothing really precise.”
“So if someone couldn’t read music, and didn’t know anything about how music is written down, still, they might see the score and recognize patterns, symmetries, as having beauty, or at least significance, without connecting them to sound at all.”
“I’ve seen something like that,” Oz said. “A system of notation that dancers use to record a performance. There’s no way you could tell what it was without knowing. But there was symmetry and motion in it. I guess you could say it had intrinsic beauty.”