The Listeners

by James Gunn

  “If all this were possible,” MacDonald said, “then we must also remember that they have put themselves and their world in our hands, as much as we would put ourselves in theirs. That demonstrates a certain amount of trust.”

  “Or confidence. Or arrogance.”

  “I cannot believe—” MacDonald began.

  “But can you conceive?” White broke in. “You have spent your life among scholarly men of good will. To you the universe is a benevolent place; it has treated you with kindness, or, at least, neutrality. I have seen passion and malice and greed, and I know that intelligence is not necessarily benevolent; in fact, in my experience, it is more likely to be merely an instrument in the persistent search for advantage, in weighing profit and loss and finding a means of maximizing profit and minimizing loss.”

  MacDonald did not respond as White had expected. “Logic is our assurance,” MacDonald said calmly. “The only thing worth sending from star to star is information, and the certain profit from such an exchange far outweighs the uncertain advantage from any other kind of behavior. The first benefit is the knowledge of other intelligent creatures in the universe—this alone gives us strength and courage. Then comes information from an alien world; it is like having our own instruments there, even our own scientists, to measure and record, only with the additional advantage of a breadth and duration of measurements under a variety of conditions. Finally comes the cultural and scientific knowledge and development of another race, and the treasure to be gained from this kind of exchange is beyond calculation.”

  White changed his approach. “What if it changes us? We have seen problems of cultural shock, where a more advanced race meets a more primitive one. Some of the societies that have gone through it here on earth have disintegrated; some have become slaves; and the ones that survived did so by changing their values, attitudes, behavior....”

  MacDonald studied White as if estimating his ability to understand. “I should think you would not find conditions so perfect that you would not welcome change.”

  Not understanding; reaction. “My kind of change,” White said.

  “Besides,” MacDonald said, “the anthropological examples you have cited refer to societies that are unsophisticated or isolated, that could not imagine anything superior to themselves, even anything different—”

  “As a tearful old medicine man once said to Carl Jung,” White said, as if he were remembering, “we might find ourselves ‘without dreams.'”

  “We are not so naive,” MacDonald said. “We know that there are other intelligent beings in the universe; we know that they will be different from us, and we hunger for the exchange. Our dreams are of spaceflight and alien contact; an entire literature has developed it, and our myths reinforce it with their flying saucers and visitations. We have been listening now for fifty years, and people are prepared to hear something. They are psychologically ready for contact. Now they know we have been contacted; they have heard the voices, and they have seen one version of the message....”

  John opened the door again. “More information coming in, Mr. President.”

  MacDonald looked at White. White nodded, and MacDonald pressed a button.

  The first scene showed police battling a mob outside the Solitarian temple. Stains could be seen on the streets when the conflict swirled an opening into view. Bodies could be seen, too, and some of the bodies wore uniforms. Men and women were streaming out of the temple endlessly, trying to get through the battle—or to join it.

  MacDonald turned up the sound. The conflict rumbled like distant thunder.

  The second scene revealed a smaller mob in the street in front of a neo-classical building; around it, like a moat, was a reflecting pool which kept the mob at a distance. But there was fist-shaking and shouts; the shouts were in some foreign language.

  The third and fourth and fifth scenes were similar: the only changes were the architectural styles of the buildings, the color and dress of the mob, and the language of the shouts. Some of the shouts were in English.

  The sixth scene showed a group of people, men, women, and children, gathered on a dark hilltop around a man in dark robes. They were looking up at the stars in silence.

  The seventh scene revealed something fleshy,and bloody and visceral spread out on pavement like an abstract painting. The view tilted up the side of the building until it reached the distant concrete peak.

  The eighth scene showed ambulances pulling up to a hospital emergency entrance.

  The ninth scene was a morgue.

  The tenth scene revealed an impenetrable traffic snarl as cars and copters tried to leave a city....

  What would John be like in the kind of world White knew, the kind of world that existed out there? Unconsciously, White knew now, he had sheltered John from it. John had not been exposed to the passions and the violence, the ignorance and the prejudice. White had wanted to spare his son the kind of hurt that he had felt, the kind of bitterness that even now twisted his guts in secret sorrows. That had not been a kindness; it had been a mistaken sentimentality that now was turning on him. Even the basic political facts, the kinds of bargaining and trades that politics forced on a man, he had shielded John from; he had not wanted his son to be touched by that kind of pitch. Or was it that he did not want his son to know what made his father's skin black?

  To be black—and without a son?

  “They don't understand,” MacDonald said. “They're reacting out of fear.”

  White took a deep breath. It was a habit when he was forced to make a decision, as if he could draw in the situation and force it down where his decisions were made. He soon would have to make a statement, to commit himself in a way he could never review, to unleash forces he could never recall. “It seems,” he said quietly, “like the start of something—religious riots, perhaps even a religious war—or the end of something.”

  “People are reacting to a lack of information,” MacDonald said. “Let us communicate with them. People are uncertain. An official announcement and a planned campaign of information about the Project and the Message and the Answer....”

  “Might ease the fears,” White said, “and might reinforce them.”

  “The fears are not logical. Facts will dispel them. The Capellans cannot come here. Matter transmission is fantasy, and we cannot imagine any kind of propulsion system which could even approach the speed-of-light limit.”

  “What we cannot imagine,” White said, “has had a habit of coming true the last few centuries. And what was considered impossible by one generation was the next generation's commonplace. Tell me: why do you insist on responding to this message? Isn't it enough that your search has been successful, that you have demonstrated the existence of intelligent life in the universe?”

  “I could give you rationalizations,” MacDonald said. “There are many good reasons—I have given you the most important one: communication between aliens could result in incalculable benefits to both—but behind all the rationalizations, as you suspect, is the personal motivation. Before our answer could reach Capella I will be dead, but I want my efforts to be rewarded, my convictions to be proved correct, my life to have been meaningful. Just as you do.”

  “We come down to fundamentals at last,” White said.

  “Always. I wish to leave a legacy to my son and to the world. I am not a poet or a prophet, an artist, a builder, a statesman, or a philanthropist. All I can leave is an open door. An open line to the universe, hope, the prospect of something new, a message to come from an alien world under two strange, distant suns....”

  “We all want that,” White said. “The only question is how to get there.”

  “Not all of us,” MacDonald said. “Some of us wish to pass on our hatreds, our battles, not something new but something old. But life changes, time passes, and we must give our children the future, not the past—or if the past, only the past as it affects the future. The past is not irrelevant, but we can't live there; the only place we can live in
is the future, and it is the only thing we can change. Believe me: once the answer is sent, peace will come to the world.”

  “Why then?”

  “For one thing, it will be done, over. The people who are quarreling now will realize that they are human beings, that the different creatures are out there; that if we can talk with them, why shouldn't we communicate with each other, even those who speak different languages and believe in different gods....”

  John said, “The Chinese Ambassador is calling, Mr. President,” and White realized that he had been so involved in MacDonald's argument that he had not noticed the door opening.

  “I don't have my translator with me,” he said.

  “Don't worry,” MacDonald said, “The computer will take care of it.”

  After White and MacDonald had changed places and White found himself behind MacDonald's desk staring into the window, the Chinese face above the colorful tunic said, in English, with almost exact lip synchronization, “Mr. President, my country respectfully requests that you control the disturbances within your borders, and that you cease the provocative news announcements which threaten the peace of other friendly nations.”

  “You may tell your Premier,” White said carefully, “that we regret these disturbances more than anyone, that we hope to bring them under control soon, and that we have no mechanism for controlling news announcements, as he has.”

  The sleek Chinese head nodded politely. “My country also requests that you make no answer to the message you have received from Capella, now or in the future.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Ambassador,” White said politely, but before he could turn to MacDonald the Chinese face was replaced by a Russian.

  “The Russian Ambassador,” John said.

  “Russia is greatly disturbed by the suppression of this message,” the Russian said brusquely. “We wish you to know that we, too, have received the message and are composing a reply to it. We will announce this shortly.”

  And the window was empty and shimmering.

  “No more,” White said. The window winked out. He put his hands on the desk. It was a good, solid working desk, not a ceremonial desk like the one in the White House, and he felt as if he could work here. Here, seated at the desk, looking at MacDonald, he felt as if their roles had been reversed, as if MacDonald were in charge here.

  “Nothing human beings can speak,” MacDonald went on, as if he had not been interrupted, “is so foreign as the language of the Capellans; nothing they can believe is so strange as what the Capellans believe.”

  “I think you knew about the Russians and the Chinese,” White said.

  “The fraternity of science is closer than the fraternity of birthplace or of language.”

  “How did they learn about the message?”

  MacDonald spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “Too many people knew about it. If I had suspected that we would not be permitted to release the information as a matter of course, that there would be any question about our replying, then I would not have assembled that group for our moment of triumph. But once they knew, the information could not be entirely suppressed. We were not a secret project; we were a scientific laboratory committed to sharing our findings with the world. Why, we even have some Chinese and Russian exchange scientists working with us. At this late date—”

  “Nobody thought you would succeed,” White said.

  MacDonald looked at White in surprise. It was the first time White had seen MacDonald surprised at anything.

  “Then why did you fund us?” MacDonald asked.

  “I don't know why the Project was started,” White said. “I haven't looked up its historical origins, and perhaps the real answer isn't there, anyway. But I suspect that the answer is much the same as our rationalization over the past few years: it was something scientists wanted to do, and nobody saw any harm in it. After all, we live in the age of welfare.”

  “Public welfare,” MacDonald corrected.

  “Welfare of all kinds,” White said. “This nation—and other nations, some of them before us, some of them after us—set out on a conscious policy of eliminating poverty and injustice.”

  “The function of government is ‘to promote the general Welfare,'” MacDonald said.

  “It is also a deliberate policy. Poverty and injustice are evils, but they are endurable evils in a world where other problems are greater. They are not endurable in a complex, technological society where cooperation is essential, where violence and rioting can destroy a city, even civilization itself.”

  “Of course.”

  “So we turned ourselves around and set this nation to the task of eliminating poverty and injustice—and we have done it. We have established a stable social system where everyone has a guaranteed annual income and can do pretty much what he pleases except procreate without limit or pollute or harm others in other ways.”

  MacDonald nodded. “That has been the great accomplishment of the past few decades—the welfare movement.”

  “Except we don't call it welfare any more,” White said. “It's democracy, the system, the way things are, what people are entitled to. What makes you think that science is not part of the system?”

  “It creates change,” MacDonald said.

  “Not if it is unsuccessful,” White said. “Or if it is successful in certain limited, anticipatable ways like the space program. God knows, we thought the Project was safe enough. Certainly it is part of the welfare program, and the diversion of public funds to support it over the years has been a dole to the scientists to keep them busy and out of mischief. The important task of government, you see, is to keep conditions stable, to hold down disturbances and unrest, to maintain itself, and the best way to do that is to give everybody the opportunity to do what they want—except change things. Don't tell me you haven't suspected this all along, that you haven't used it.”

  “No,” MacDonald said, and then, “yes. I guess so. I knew that if we made ourselves difficult it was easier to get money. I guess I realized it without facing it. And now you want us to stop, just like that.”

  “Not just like that,” White said kindly. “Wind it down. Pretend to be considering an answer. Keep searching for other messages. Set up another project somewhere, to do something. You've had experience. Put your mind to it: you'll know what to do.”

  But the battle against injustice and poverty was not won, White knew. John thought it was; he thought he could be discharged from it. But it was desertion. That was what White had called John: “deserter."

  Welfare wasn't enough. Too many blacks were satisfied with their guaranteed annuals, were unwilling or afraid to compete for more. They had to be educated; they had to be led; they needed figures like himself to model themselves after, like John could be if he stayed in politics. Oh, there were some models: there were black scientists, black doctors, black artists, even some black members of the Project. But there weren't enough; the percentages still said that inequality was a reality.

  He had presided over the welfare state, but he hadn't thought welfare would get John.

  MacDonald was thoughtful, as if he were weighing something deep inside himself. Does he think in his hips like Teddy and me? White thought.

  “I've spent my life in search of truth,” MacDonald said. “I can't lie now.”

  White sighed. “Then we will have to get someone who can.”

  “It won't work. The scientific community will act, when suppressed, the same way as any other minority.”

  “We must have tranquillity.”

  “In a technological world,” MacDonald said, “change is inevitable. What you must have for tranquillity is reasonable change, manageable change.”

  “And the change the Message brings is unmanageable, incalculable.”

  “That is because you have not allowed us to manage it—I do not like that word—you have not allowed us to communicate our reality to the people, to explain it to them in such a way they see it as an adventure, as a promise,
as a gift of understanding and awareness and information and insight yet to be delivered.... Besides, how can you know what the world or this nation will need ninety years from now?”

  “Ninety years?” White laughed shakily. “I think no farther ahead than the next election. What does ninety years have to do with it?”

  “That is the length of time it will take an answer to reach Capella and for their response to return,” MacDonald said. “That is what I meant when I said I wished to leave a legacy for my son—and his son. Why, by the time our answer reaches Capella, you and I will be dead, Mr. President. Most of the people now alive will be dead; your son will be elderly and my son will be middle-aged. And by the time the response reaches us from Capella, virtually everyone now alive will be dead. What we do we do not for ourselves but for future generations. We bequeath you,” MacDonald said softly, “a message from the stars.”

  “Ninety years,” White repeated. “What kind of communication is that?”

  “As soon as people understand,” MacDonald said confidently, “the disturbances will disappear. Fear, anger, hatred, distrust—these do not last. Tranquillity lasts, and tranquillity will return, along with a vague sense of something pleasant that will happen in the indefinite future, like the promised land: not now, not tomorrow, but sometime. And those who threaten the tranquillity, from nation to individual, consciously threaten a definite future good—and will refrain.”

  White looked around the room once more, this small, bare simple place where a man had worked for twenty years and left few marks behind. Perhaps, he thought, MacDonald had left his mark elsewhere, on people, on ideas, on a project, on the stars, and he still felt that sense of unease in his hips that said “no, this is wrong,” and he felt sorry for everybody, and he hoped that it was not just because he was not an intellectual, because he felt uncomfortable with ideas, because he could not think in terms of centuries....

  “I can't take the chance,” he said. “You will not send an answer. You will begin the dismantling of the Project. Can you do it?” He stood up. The discussion was over.