The Listeners

by James Gunn

  Carl Sagan, 1966...

  An intake area almost 80 miles in diameter would be needed to achieve the needed velocity for a space ship of about 1,000 tons. This is very large by ordinary standards, but then, on any account, interstellar travel is inherently a rather grand undertaking....

  R. W. Bussard, 1960...

  In ordinary interstellar space, with only one hydrogen atom per cubic centimeter, the sweeping system would have to be 2,500 miles in diameter. Perhaps starships dart from one dust cloud to another.... Interstellar vehicles may become feasible for us within the next few centuries. We can expect that if interstellar spaceflight is technically feasible—even though an exceedingly expensive and difficult undertaking, from our point of view—it will be developed....

  Carl Sagan, 1962...

  Interstellar flight is essentially not a problem in physics or engineering but a problem in biology....

  Freeman J. Dyson, 1964...

  And the golden glow built up, drowning out the green radiance from floor to roof, setting the multitude of case-surfaces afire with its brilliance. It grew as strong as the golden sky, and stronger. It became all-pervading, unendurable, leaving no darkness in which to hide, no sanctuary for little things.

  It flamed like the rising sun or like something drawn from the heart of a sun and the glory of its radiance sent the cowering watcher's mind awhirl....

  Eric Frank Russell, 1947...

  Oh capella, oh capella,

  We have heard your voices tell us,

  Over spaces in interstellar

  That we are not alone.

  Brotherhood—this you have for us;

  We would like to join the chorus,

  But we must sing alone.

  For you the words, for us the song,

  But distances are much too long.

  A cappella, a cappella...

  the most massive engineering construction force ever assembled for a peacetime job today began the decade-long task of building a dam across the strait of gibraltar. when the dam is completed the level of the mediterranean is expected to rise, the water of the sea will become fresh within a few decades, and power will be available from water pouring through hydroelectric generators into the atlantic for a variety of uses, including the pumping of water into the sahara for irrigation and industry.

  as difficult a construction job as the dam is scheduled to be, the political, social, economic, and organizational problems were even more difficult. experts in those fields have concluded that only in peaceful times like the present would agreement have been possible....

  The break in the sawtooth pattern of catastrophe and recovery may finally come about through the establishment of contact with a more advanced society—one that has already achieved stability....

  Fred Hoyle, 1963...

  The year 2000 conditions could produce a situation in which illusion, wishful thinking, even obviously irrational behavior could exist to a degree unheard of today. Such irrational and self-indulgent behavior is quite likely in a situation in which an individual is overprotected and has no systematic or objective contact with reality. For example, there are probably many people for whom work is the primary touch with reality. If work is removed, or if important functions are taken from work, the contact these people have with reality will be to some degree impaired. The results—minor or widespread—may become apparent in forms such as political disruption, disturbed families, and personal tragedies—or in pursuit of some “humanistic” values that many would think of as frivolous or even irrational....

  Herman Kahn and Anthony J. Wiener, 1967...

  Imagine that a reply to one of your messages was scheduled to be received forty years from now. What a legacy for your grandchildren....

  Edward M. Purcell, 1961...

  Robert MacDonald—2058

  Never the least stir made the listeners,

  Though every word he spake

  Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house...

  Robert MacDonald waited patiently for the ship that would take him from Miami to Puerto Rico.

  He had plenty of time. Nothing was waiting for him at Arecibo any more but memories.

  Why hurry? Nous n'irons plus aux bois, les lauriers sont coupés.

  He threw his fishing line back into the clear blue water off the pier and smelled the salt, sea air and watched the white sails of the freighters slide along the horizon and off the edge of the world.

  A day later MacDonald had a string of eating-size fish wiggling in the water beneath the pier, a new computer program for translating Mandarin into Senegalese worked out in his head, and the trimaran had coasted up to the pier, its nylon sail like a drift of snow across the brown deck. A Viking in a ragged pair of blue-denim shorts stood on the deck next to the pier. He threw a nylon line to MacDonald. “Take a turn around the bitt there, will you, Mac?” the sailor asked. MacDonald looked up in surprise. The sailor continued calmly, “That upright pole there, Mac, like a piling.”

  MacDonald looped the line twice around the rope-slicked bitt. The ship slowed its forward drift against the slow stretch of the line, stopped, and settled back against the woven rope bumpers that kept its fragile sides away from the pier.

  “Thanks, Mac,” the sailor said. “May all your messages be answered.”

  “And yours,” MacDonald said. “You sail that all by yourself?” He nodded at the trim ship with the single cabin across the triple hulls, all shining white in the hulls and the sail and the cabin, gleaming stainless steel in the masts, glowing brown teak in the deck.

  “Me and any passengers I might have,” the sailor said. On his head, on his face, on his body and legs, his hair was bleached the color of his sails, and where there was no hair his skin was as dark as his deck. “Me alone, if I have to. I got a computer on board can set the sails in seconds, predict a blow, measure the bottom, read a map, navigate, sail a course, and find a school of fish if I've a mind to.”

  “Heading back to Puerto Rico soon?” MacDonald asked casually.

  “This afternoon—tomorrow—the next day. Depends,” the sailor said. He looked at MacDonald. “Been waiting long?” He jumped easily to the pier.

  MacDonald shrugged. “Couple of days.”

  “Sorry,” the sailor said. “I had a passenger coming back from Arecibo who heard the swordfish were biting off Bermuda, and we made a swing up that way.”

  “Any luck?” MacDonald looked around the deck for a sign of the passenger.

  “He caught one off the stern and had a hell of a good battle with it before we cut it loose. Decided to stay and try his luck off a small boat. President of some computer company, I think he said—IBM, GE, Control Data, one of those.”

  “Short, wiry man with a trimmed dark beard and a receding hairline?” MacDonald asked.

  “Yeah,” the sailor said. “You know him?”

  “Friedman,” MacDonald said. “IBM. I know him.” But he hadn't known Friedman was going to Puerto Rico. He didn't have to search hard for a reason Friedman hadn't told him.

  “You going over?” the sailor asked.

  MacDonald shrugged again. “I started down this way from New York ten days ago,” he said. After heading the other way for twenty years, he added to himself. “Bicycle and bus.” The other time it had been jet all the way. “If I'd been in a hurry I'd have taken a jet or at least the ferry.”

  Across Biscayne Bay he saw the Puerto Rico ferry come in now, its air-support fans spraying sea water to each side. It looked, MacDonald thought, like a giant many-legged water bug.

  “A couple days more won't make much difference,” he said.

  “And we all got sixty years to wait, right?” the sailor said. He held out a sun-darkened hand. “I'm Johnson, master of the Pequod.” His sun-bleached eyebrows slid up his forehead when he smiled. “Funny name for a trimaran out of Miami, right? But I used to teach college English, and contrasts appeal to me. I'm no Ahab, you see, and I'm not looking for a white whale or anyt
hing else, I guess.”

  “I'm MacDonald,” MacDonald said, taking the hand, feeling as if he were shaking hands with the sea itself. He grinned. “But you can call me Ishmael.”

  “I've heard that name before,” Johnson said. “MacDonald, I mean. Wasn't he—?”

  “Yes,” MacDonald said, and a wave of grief swept over him like nausea. He fought it back, blinking his eyes to hold back the tears. He didn't mind weeping in front of this friendly seaman, but not for nothing. There was nothing to weep about, no reason to feel sad....

  “I'll check the shipping deck to see if there's some freight for Puerto Rico,” Johnson said. He started off. “We'll head back as soon as we can get it loaded and put aboard water and provisions.”

  “No hurry,” MacDonald called after him. But there was hurry. He could feel it now, what he had pushed down and kept down, the urgency to get to Arecibo, the burning need to end the waiting....

  He had a persistent dream—maybe it was a memory rather than a dream—of waking up in a big bed all alone. It was his mother's bed, and she had let him climb into her bed and press himself against her soft warmth, and he had fallen asleep. Now he was awake and alone, and the bed was cold and he was afraid.

  He got out of bed in the darkness, carefully, lest he step on something terrible or fall into a bottomless hole, and he ran through the darkness, feeling deserted and afraid, down the hall to the living room, screaming, “Mama-mama-mama!"

  A light loomed ahead, a small light holding apart the darkness, end in the light his mother was sitting, watching the door, waiting for his father to come home, and he felt alone....

  He had met a girl on his trip south. They met in a bicycle shop in Savannah. They both wanted the same bicycle—it was the only rental bicycle left in the place except for a tandem—and they argued good-naturedly over whose need was greater.

  Actually they were both dividing their journey between bicycle and bus, peddling until they got tired and then turning in their bicycles and taking a bus to the next town, and either one of them could have shifted modes at this point. But to MacDonald, at least, the trip so far had been uneventful—a beautiful, up-and-down-hill journey through a timeless land where people moved with careless grace and unconscious courtesy—and he was bored. He enjoyed the moment of conflict with this beautiful girl and the sexual counterpoint that underlay it.

  Her name was Mary, and MacDonald liked her right off—which was unusual because he almost always noticed some flaw that spoiled a girl for him. Mary had dark hair and large dark eyes and olive skin with a delicate flush of health underneath and a properly rounded figure with the spring of the athlete to it.

  “Tell you what,” MacDonald said at last, smiling, “why don't we rent the tandem, the two of us, and ride off together,” but as it turned out he was going south, en route from New York to Miami, and she was going north, en route from Miami to New York.

  “Destiny has brought us together,” MacDonald said.

  Her smile and a glance from her dark eyes was encouraging, but she said, “And destiny will pull us apart.”

  Finally the elderly shopkeeper said, “It's almost dark, and you won't be travelling. I think I'll have another bicycle or two in the morning. One of you can take this one; the other can come back. You'll both get the same start.”

  MacDonald raised his hands and shoulders in mock perplexity. “But which shall do which? We still are unresolved.”

  “Tell you what,” Mary said, in imitation of MacDonald's Solomonic tone of a moment before, “since the one of us without a vehicle might have to travel some distance to find lodging for the night, let us rent the tandem and travel together to the nearest inn where we can spend the night—”

  “Together,” MacDonald put in hopefully.

  “Where we can spend the night and return tomorrow to rent our two bicycles and go our separate ways.”

  And so it was settled, and MacDonald found himself peddling through the leafy streets of Savannah, his pack and bedroll upon his back, with the city darkening around him as the sun disappeared beyond the horizon and Mary behind him remembering better than he the shopkeeper's directions.

  The inn was pleasant and old-fashioned and hospitable and redolent with the odor of the evening meal being prepared in the kitchen. MacDonald and Mary were greeted at the door by the plump innkeeper.

  “We would like—” MacDonald said, and looked at Mary.

  “Two rooms,” she said.

  The innkeeper's face was round and red and apologetic. “I'm truly sorry,” he said, “but we have only one room left.”

  “Destiny,” MacDonald said softly.

  Mary sighed. “All right,” she said. “We'll take the room.”

  The innkeeper's look of apology turned to one of vicarious pleasure.

  The evening was a delight. The food was well cooked and hearty, which suited appetites whetted by a day on the road. And to everything they ate, to everything that happened, to everything they said or did not say was added the spice of knowledge that soon they would be going upstairs together to spend the night.

  “Let us treat destiny like the royalty he is,” MacDonald said as he ordered wine with the meal, “not like a ragged beggar at the door.”

  “Sometimes,” Mary said, “destiny is hard to recognize, and it is even harder to know what destiny intends.”

  “Why,” MacDonald said, “destiny intends us all to seek our heart's desire.”

  “But not,” Mary said, “necessarily to find it.”

  Mary was a seeker. She was on her way to begin graduate study in xenopsychology at a university in New York, and when MacDonald got her talking about her plans she bubbled with the thrill of the search. MacDonald liked the enthusiasm that lifted her voice and flushed her cheek.

  “And what are you going to do in Miami?” she asked at last.

  “I am going to take a ship to Puerto Rico,” he said.

  “And there?”

  “I don't know. I don't know,” he said. “Perhaps to lay old ghosts to rest.”

  Later, with acute disappointment, he watched Mary spread his bedroll upon the floor. “But—” he said. “I don't understand—I thought—”

  “Destiny moves in inscrutable ways,” she said.

  “We're both adults,” he protested.

  “Yes,” she said, “and if this were only a chance encounter we might both enjoy it and think no more about it. You are an attractive man, Robert MacDonald, but you have a dark, uneasy quality to you that you must resolve; there are answers you must find elsewhere. And there is time. We have lots of time.”

  He could have persuaded her, he thought. He could have told her about his past and won her sympathy and from there her bed, but he could not talk about it.

  In the morning he offered to go back to New York with her, but she shook her head. “Go on with your journey,” she said. “Go to Puerto Rico. Put your ghosts to rest. And then—if destiny brings you back to New York—”

  They went in opposite directions, the distance between them widening, and MacDonald turned his thought toward Puerto Rico and the past.

  "Bobby,” his father said, “you can be anything you want to be, go anywhere you want to go, do anything you want to do—if you don't get in a hurry. You can even travel to another star if you want to and you're in no hurry to get there."

  "Daddy,” he said, “I just want to be like you."

  "That's the only thing you can't be,” his father said, “no matter how slow you're willing to go. Every person's different, you see. Nobody can be like anybody else in any significant way. And nobody would want to be like me—all I am is a caretaker, a janitor, a waiter. Be yourself, Bobby. Be you."

  "You be like your father, Bobby, if you want to be,” his mother said. She was the most beautiful woman in the world, and when she looked at him with her large dark eyes he thought his heart would burst. “He's a great man. Never forget that, my son."

  “'Es un entreverado loco, lleno de lúcidos int
ervalos,'” his father quoted. “But your mother is a bit prejudiced."

  They looked at each other with eyes of love, and his mother held out her hand for his father to hold, and Bobby felt as if a giant hand were squeezing his chest, and he ran to his mother, crying, and threw himself into her arms, and he did not know why he cried....

  The voyage across the Caribbean was a trip through a timeless world of water and sky, with the hiss of the hulls through the quiet water and the occasional slap-slap of a wave the only reminder that they sailed the ocean and not the sky itself—one blue or another, it was all the same—and MacDonald renewed his old acquaintance with the sea that he had bade good-bye to and thought he did not want to see again.

  They sailed with their cargo of computer parts and software in the hold, and only the slow arch of the sun marked the passage of the day, and only an afternoon squall broke the oil-smooth surface of the water. They fled before it briefly and then slid away from it, guided by the computer in the cabin. They ate and drank when they were hungry or thirsty, and MacDonald got to know Johnson, the college professor who had wearied of the process that chopped his days into little blocks and escaped to the timeless ocean and its peace. And it was right.

  Now MacDonald had time and inclination to consider the uneventfulness of his long trip down the coast, broken only by a brief interlude in Savannah—or was it only more of the same? The country was calm. The world was calm. Like the sea. Waiting. Waiting for what?

  Even Miami, like New York, was more like a village than a city. People moved about their daily tasks—if there were tasks—with unhurried grace. It was not that they could not move swiftly if they had to: ambulances occasionally roared emergencies to hospitals; special deliveries sometimes raced along the express lanes; once in a while individuals would speed on unusual errands. But mostly people walked or rode bicycles or took the electric buses that could not go faster than twenty-five miles an hour.