by Carl Sagan
“So the smart guys send a radio message and tell the dumb ones how to make a pucker. But if they’re truly two-dimensional beings, how could they make a pucker on their surface?”
“By accumulating a great deal of mass in one place.” Vaygay said this tentatively.
“But that’s not what we did.”
“I know. I know. Somehow the benzels did it.”
“You see,” Eda explained softly, “if the tunnels are black holes, there are real contradictions implied. There is an interior tunnel in the exact Kerr solution of the Einstein Field Equations, but it’s unstable. The slightest perturbation would seal it off and convert the tunnel into a physical singularity through which nothing can pass. I have tried to imagine a superior civilization that would control the internal structure of a collapsing star to keep the interior tunnel stable. This is very difficult. The civilization would have to monitor and stabilize the tunnel forever. It would be especially difficult with something as large as the dodecahedron falling through.”
“Even if Abonnema can discover how to keep the tunnel open, there are many other problems,” Vaygay said. “Too many. Black holes collect problems faster than they collect matter. There are the tidal forces. We should have been torn apart in the black hole’s gravitational field. We should have been stretched like people in the paintings of El Greco or the sculptures of that Italian…?” He turned to Ellie to fill in the blank.
“Giacometti,” she suggested. “He was Swiss.”
“Yes, like Giacometti. Then other problems: As measured from Earth it takes an infinite amount of time for us to pass through a black hole, and we could never, never return to Earth. Maybe this is what happened. Maybe we will never go home. Then, there should be an inferno of radiation near the singularity. This is a quantum-mechanical instability…”
“And finally,” Eda continued, “a Kerr-type tunnel can lead to grotesque causality violations. With a modest change of trajectory inside the tunnel, one could emerge from the other end as early in the history of the universe as you might like—a picosecond after the Big Bang, for example. That would be a very disorderly universe.”
“Look, fellas,” she said, “I’m no expert in General Relativity. But didn’t we see black holes? Didn’t we fall into them? Didn’t we emerge out of them? Isn’t a gram of observation worth a ton of theory?”
“I know, I know,” Vaygay said in mild agony. “It has to be something else. Our understanding of physics can’t be so far off. Can it?”
He addressed this last question, a little plaintively, to Eda, who only replied, “A naturally occurring black hole can’t be a tunnel; they have impassable singularities at their centers.”
With a jerry-rigged sextant and their wristwatches, they timed the angular motion of the setting Sun. It was 360 degrees in twenty-four hours. Earth standard. Before the Sun got too low on the horizon, they disassembled Ellie’s camera and used the lens to start a fire. She kept the frond by her side, fearful that someone would carelessly throw it on the flames after dark. Xi proved to be an expert fire maker. He positioned them upwind and kept the fire low.
Gradually the stars came out. They were all there, the familiar constellations of Earth. She volunteered to stay up awhile tending the fire while the others slept. She wanted to see Lyra rise. After some hours, it did. The night was exceptionally clear, and Vega shone steady and brilliant. From the apparent motion of the constellations across the sky, from the southern hemisphere constellations that she could make out, and from the Big Dipper lying near the northern horizon, she deduced that they were in tropical latitudes. If all this is a simulation, she thought before falling asleep, they’ve gone to a great deal of trouble.
• • •
She had an odd little dream. The five of them were swimming—naked, unselfconscious, underwater—now poised lazily near a staghorn coral, now gliding into crannies that were the next moment obscured by drifting seaweed. Once she rose to the surface. A ship in the shape of a dodecahedron flew by, low above the water. The walls were transparent, and inside she could see people in dhotis and sarongs, reading newspapers and casually conversing. She dove back underwater. Where she belonged.
Although the dream seemed to go on for a long time, none of them had any difficulty breathing. They were inhaling and exhaling water. They felt no distress—indeed, they were swimming as naturally as fish. Vaygay even looked a little like a fish—a grouper, perhaps. The water must be fiercely oxygenated, she supposed. In the midst of the dream, she remembered a mouse she had once seen in a physiology laboratory, perfectly content in a flask of oxygenated water, even paddling hopefully with its little front feet. A vermiform tail streamed behind. She tried to remember how much oxygen was needed, but it was too much trouble. She was thinking less and less, she thought. That’s all right. Really.
The others were now distinctly fishlike. Devi’s fins were translucent. It was obscurely interesting, vaguely sensual. She hoped it would continue, so she could figure something out. But even the question she wanted to answer eluded her. Oh, to breathe warm water, she thought. What will they think of next?
• • •
Ellie awoke with a sense of disorientation so profound it bordered on vertigo. Where was she? Wisconsin, Puerto Rico, New Mexico, Wyoming, Hokkaido? Or the Strait of Malacca? Then she remembered. It was unclear, to within 30,000 light-years, where in the Milky Way Galaxy she was; probably the all-time record for disorientation, she thought. Despite the headache, Ellie laughed; and Devi, sleeping beside her, stirred. Because of the upward slope of the beach—they had reconnoitered out to a kilometer or so the previous afternoon and found not a hint of habitation—direct sunlight had not yet reached her. Ellie was recumbent on a pillow of sand. Devi, just awakening, had slept with her head on the rolled-up jump suit.
“Don’t you think there’s something candy-assed about a culture that needs soft pillows?” Ellie asked. “The ones who put their heads in wooden yokes at night, that’s who the smart money’s on.”
Devi laughed and wished her good morning.
They could hear shouting from farther up the beach. The three men were waving and beckoning; Ellie and Devi roused themselves and joined them.
Standing upright on the sand was a door. A wooden door—with paneling and a brass doorknob. Anyway it looked like brass. The door had black-painted metal hinges and was set in two jambs, a lintel, and a threshold. No nameplate. It was in no way extraordinary. For Earth.
“Now go ’round the back,” Xi invited.
From the back, the door was not there at all. She could see Eda and Vaygay and Xi, Devi standing a little apart, and the sand continuous between the four of them and her. She moved to the side, the heels of her feet moistened by the surf, and she could make out a single dark razor-thin vertical line. She was reluctant to touch it. Returning to the back again, she satisfied herself that there were no shadows or reflections in the air before her, and then stepped through.
“Bravo.” Eda laughed. She turned around and found the closed door before her.
“What did you see?” she asked.
“A lovely woman strolling through a closed door two centimeters thick.”
Vaygay seemed to be doing well, despite the dearth of cigarettes.
“Have you tried opening the door?” she asked.
“Not yet,” Xi replied.
She stepped back again, admiring the apparition.
“It looks like something by—What’s the name of that French surrealist?” Vaygay asked.
“René Magritte,” she answered. “He was Belgian.”
“We’re agreed, I take it, that this isn’t really the Earth,” Devi proposed, her gesture encompassing ocean, beach, and sky.
“Unless we’re in the Persian Gulf three thousand years ago, and there are djinns about.” Ellie laughed.
“Aren’t you impressed by the care of the construction?”
“All right,” Ellie answered. “They’re very good, I’ll grant them th
at. But what’s it for? Why go to the trouble of all this detail work?”
“Maybe they just have a passion for getting things right.”
“Or maybe they’re just showing off.”
“I don’t see,” Devi continued, “how they could know our doors so well. Think of how many different ways there are to make a door. How could they know?”
“It could be television,” Ellie responded. “Vega has received television signals from Earth up to—let’s see—1974 programming. Clearly, they can send the interesting clips here by special delivery in no time flat. Probably thereto been a lot of doors on television between 1936 and 1974. Okay,” she continued, as if this were not a change of subject, “what do we think would happen if we opened the door and walked in?”
“If we are here to be tested,” said Xi, “on the other side of that door is probably the Test, maybe one for each of us.”
He was ready. She wished she were.
The shadows of the nearest palms were now falling on the beach. Wordlessly they regarded one another. All four of them seemed eager to open the door and step through. She alone felt some…reluctance. She asked Eda if he would like to go first. We might as well put our best foot forward, she thought.
He doffed his cap, made a slight but graceful bow, tinned, and approached the door. Ellie ran to him and kissed him on both cheeks. The others embraced him also. He turned again, opened the door, entered, and disappeared into thin air, his striding foot first, his trailing hand last. With the door ajar, there had seemed to be only the continuation of beach and surf behind him. The door closed. She ran around it, but there was no trace of Eda.
Xi was next. Ellie found herself struck by how docile they all had been, instantly obliging every anonymous invitation proffered. They could have told us where they were taking us, and what all this was for, she thought. It could have been part of the Message, or information conveyed after the Machine was activated. They could have told us we were docking with a simulation of a beach on Earth. They could have told us to expect the door. True, as accomplished as they are, the extraterrestrials might know English imperfectly, with television as their only tutor. Their knowledge of Russian, Mandarin, Tamil, and Hausa would be even more rudimentary. But they had invented the language introduced in the Message primer. Why not use it? To retain the element of surprise?
Vaygay saw her staring at the closed door and asked if she wished to enter next.
“Thanks, Vaygay. I’ve been thinking. I know it’s a little crazy. But it just struck me: Why do we have to jump through every hoop they hold out for us? Suppose we don’t do what they ask?”
“Ellie, you are so American. For me, this is just like home. I’m used to doing what the authorities suggest—especially when I have no choice.” He smiled and turned smartly on his heel.
“Don’t take any crap from the Grand Duke,” she called after him.
High above, a gull squawked. Vaygay had left the door ajar. There was still only beach beyond.
“Are you all right?” Devi asked her.
“I’m okay. Really. I just want a moment to myself. I’ll be along.”
“Seriously, I’m asking as a doctor. Do you feel all right?”
“I woke up with a headache, and I think I had some very fanciful dreams. I haven’t brushed my teeth or had my black coffee. I wouldn’t mind reading the morning paper either. Except for all that, really I’m fine.”
“Well, that sounds all right. For that matter I have a bit of a headache, too. Take care of yourself, Ellie. Remember everything, so you’ll be able to tell it to me…next time we meet.”
“I will,” Ellie promised.
They kissed and wished each other Well. Devi stepped over the threshold and vanished. The door closed behind her. Afterward, Ellie thought she had caught a whiff of curry.
She brushed her teeth in salt water. A certain fastidious streak had always been a part of her nature. She break-fasted on coconut milk. Carefully she brushed accumulated sand off the exterior surfaces of the microcamera system and its tiny arsenal of videocassettes on which she had recorded wonders. She washed the palm frond in the surf, as she had done the day she found it on Cocoa Beach just before the launch up to Methuselah.
The morning was already warm and she decided to take a swim. Her clothes carefully folded on the palm frond, she strode boldly out into the surf. Whatever else, she thought, the extraterrestrials are unlikely to find themselves aroused by the sight of a naked woman, even if she is pretty well preserved. She tried to imagine a microbiologist stirred to crimes of passion after viewing a paramecium caught in flagrante delicto in mitosis.
Languidly, she floated on her back, bobbing up and down, her slow rhythm in phase with the arrival of successive wave crests. She tried to imagine thousands of comparable…chambers, simulated worlds, whatever these were—each a meticulous copy of the nicest part of someone’s home planet. Thousands of them, each with sky and weather, ocean, geology, and indigenous life indistinguishable from the originals. It seemed an extravagance, although it also suggested that a satisfactory outcome was within reach. No matter what your resources, you don’t manufacture a landscape on this scale for five specimens from a doomed world.
On the other hand… The idea of extraterrestrials as zookeepers had become something of a cliché. What if this sizable Station with its profusion of docking ports and environments was actually a zoo? “See the exotic animals in their native habitats,” she imagined some snail-headed barker shouting. Tourists come from all over the Galaxy, especially during school vacations. And then when there’s a test, the Stationmasters temporarily move the critters and the tourists out, sweep the beach free of footprints, and give the newly arriving primitives a half day of rest and recreation before the test ordeal begins.
Or maybe this was how they stocked the zoos. She thought about the animals locked away in terrestrial zoos who were said to have experienced difficulties breeding in captivity. Somersaulting in the water, she dived beneath the surface in a moment of self-consciousness. She took a few strong strokes in toward the beach, and for the second time in twenty-four hours wished that she had had a baby.
There was no one about, and not a sail on the horizon. A few seagulls were stalking the beach, apparently looking for crabs. She wished she had brought some bread to give them. After she was dry, she dressed and inspected the doorway again. It was merely waiting. She felt a continuing reluctance to enter. More than reluctance. Maybe dread.
She withdrew, keeping it in view. Beneath a palm tree, her knees drawn up under her chin, she looked out over the long sweep of white sandy beach.
After a while she got up and stretched a little. Carrying the frond and the microcamera with one hand, she approached the door and turned the knob. It opened slightly. Through the crack she could see the whitecaps offshore. She gave it another push, and it swung open without a squeak. The beach, bland and disinterested, stared back at her. She shook her head and returned to the tree, resuming her pensive posture.
• • •
She wondered about the others. Were they now in some outlandish testing facility avidly checking away on the multiple-choice questions? Or was it an oral examination? And who were the examiners? She felt the uneasiness well up once again. Another intelligent being—independently evolved on some distant world under unearthly physical conditions and with an entirely different sequence of random genetic mutations—such a being would not resemble anyone she knew. Or even imagined. If this was a Test station, then there were Stationmasters, and the Stationmasters would be thoroughly, devastatingly nonhuman. There was something deep within her that was bothered by insects, snakes, star-nosed moles. She was someone who felt a little shudder—to speak plainly, a tremor of loathing—when confronted with even slightly malformed human beings. Cripples, children with Down syndrome, even the appearance of Parkinsonism evoked in her, against her clear intellectual resolve, a feeling of disgust, a wish to flee. Generally she had been able to contain her
fear, although she wondered if she had ever hurt someone because of it. It wasn’t something she thought about much; she would sense her own embarrassment and move on to another topic.
But now she worried that she would be unable even to confront—much less to win over for the human species—an extraterrestrial being. They hadn’t thought to screen the Five for that. There had been no effort to determine whether they were afraid of mice or dwarfs or Martians. It had simply not occurred to the examining committees. She wondered why they hadn’t thought of it; it seemed an obvious enough point now.
It had been a mistake to send her. Perhaps when confronted with some serpent-haired galactic Stationmaster, she would disgrace herself—or far worse, tip the grade given to the human species, in whatever unfathomable test was being administered, from pass to fail. She looked with both apprehension and longing at the enigmatic door, its lower boundary now under water. The tide was coming in.
There was a figure on the beach a few hundred meters away. At first she thought it was Vaygay, perhaps out of the examining room early and come to tell her the good news. But whoever it was wasn’t wearing a Machine Project jump suit. Also, it seemed to be someone younger, more vigorous. She reached for the long lens, and for some reason hesitated. Standing up, she shielded her eyes from the Sun. Just for a moment, it bad seemed… It was clearly impossible. They would not take such shameless advantage of her.
But she could not help herself. She was racing toward him on the hard sand near the water’s edge, her hair streaming behind her. He looked as he had in the most re-cent picture of him she had seen, vigorous, happy. He had a day’s growth of beard. She flew into his arms, sobbing.
“Hello, Presh,” he said, his right hand stroking the back of her head.