by Ben Bova
“So the species we can make meaningful contact with will be somewhere between apes and angels.”
Littlejohn nodded. “That’s where we are, climbing the evolutionary ladder. We’re apes who are trying to become angels.”
Brad grinned back at him. “Not a bad place to be.”
“As long as we keep trying to climb,” said Littlejohn.
ADRIAN KOSOFF
He had been born to great privilege, the only son of a Wall Street broker father who had cleverly managed to make fortunes for his investors—and himself—out of the climate shifts and greenhouse floods that had brought misery and despair to half the Earth’s population.
Adrian’s mother was an equally driven woman, convinced that her mission in life was to use her family’s considerable wealth to help alleviate the hardships of less-fortunate people. She accepted their gratitude with good grace, and always made certain that the news media were on hand to publicize her generosity.
Young Adrian got the best education that money and social prominence could produce. To his father’s pride and his mother’s pleasure, Adrian was an excellent student, and possessed a fine, sharply focused mind. He graduated from Harvard at the top of his class, which was no less than his happy parents—and he himself—expected.
When astronomers discovered an Earthlike planet orbiting the nearby star Sirius, Kosoff was intrigued. When the team of explorers went to New Earth—as the media had dubbed the exoplanet—and found completely humanlike creatures living there, Kosoff mentally kicked himself for not joining the expedition when he’d been invited to.
He followed the news from New Earth assiduously: how the planet had been constructed by the Predecessors, an ancient race of intelligent machines who built New Earth specifically to attract humankind’s attention; how the humanlike population of New Earth had been created from human DNA samples taken over several centuries of clandestine visits by the Predecessors to Earth; how the machines’ purpose was to enlist the help of the young, vigorous Earthlings in the quest to save other intelligent races scattered among the stars from the death wave of lethal gamma radiation that was sweeping through the Milky Way galaxy.
Kosoff realized he had found his destiny. He was born to lead a star mission, to save an intelligent extraterrestrial species from the mindless, implacable forces of nature. It took him several years, but at last he won command of one of the star missions—command, and the responsibility of picking the men and women who would go with him two hundred light-years across the stars on his mission of mercy.
It would also be a mission of learning, Kosoff decided. His team would make contact with the aliens; his mission would lead the way to the enlargement of humankind’s domain among the stars.
That was his destiny, Kosoff was certain. That was his purpose in life. When he returned to Earth he would be acknowledged as the leader—the archetype, the exemplar of this new phase of human history. Once he returned to Earth he would be recognized by everyone as the human race’s most important scientist, a man qualified to lead all the others in humankind’s interstellar expansion.
His parents would be proud of him—if they still lived after four centuries. The whole Earth would sing his praises.
He told no one of his ambition, of course. But he would allow no one to stand in the way of the future that he saw for himself.
VETO
Adrian Kosoff sat behind his desk carefully eying the chief of the anthropology team that had been added to his scientific staff.
Forced down my throat, Kosoff thought sourly. A dozen people who have no real business being here, studying us as if we were the subject of this mission. Totally unnecessary; a waste of resources. But there he is, and I have to deal with him.
James Littlejohn was an Australian Aborigine, of course: short, black, with bushy hair and heavy brows. He had an affable personality, but Kosoff wondered if the man’s smiling amiability was a front to cover ambition.
He must have had to overcome a lot of resistance, Kosoff thought, to rise to where he stood now. But why have they stuck me with him?
Littlejohn was sitting in one of the comfortable cushioned chairs in front of Kosoff’s desk, a tentative smile on his dark face.
“One of your people wants to join the philology department?” Kosoff asked. “Who?”
Littlejohn’s smile faded. “You know him, of course. Bradford MacDaniels.”
Kosoff clamped down on his emotions and made his face freeze. “Yes, I do know him.”
“He’s spent three months out at Alpha, and he’s become intrigued with the sounds the octopods make. He’d like to try to help the linguists to decode those sounds and see if they actually are a language.”
“But he’s not a linguist.”
“No, although he minored in linguistics at Mars University.”
Mars University, Kosoff thought. A second-rate school. A sop to the people who live and work on that frozen sand trap.
Shaking his head, Kosoff said, “We can’t have people jumping from one team to another just to satisfy their personal desires.”
Littlejohn thought that just to satisfy their personal desires was an unconscious indication of Kosoff’s real motivation. But he kept silent. Sometimes silence is the best tactic, he knew.
“Your anthropology team is small enough. Letting MacDaniels shift to philology will make your job more difficult, won’t it?”
“Yes. Somewhat.”
“And the philology team would have to train him. That would take time away from their main effort.”
“He’s a very determined young man,” said Littlejohn.
“Yes, I know.”
Clearly unhappy, Kosoff drummed his fingers on his desktop for a few silent moments. Littlejohn sat patiently, his hands folded over his belly, wondering which way the mission director would jump.
Finally, Kosoff spoke to his desktop screen. “Phone: connect me to Dr. Chang.”
Littlejohn couldn’t see the screen, it was angled away from him, but he heard a softly feminine voice. “Professor Kosoff, how pleasant of you to call.”
“Elizabeth, I hate to bother you, but could you come to my office, please?”
“Now?”
“Right now.”
“I’ll be there in five minutes.”
“Thank you,” said Kosoff. Turning back to Littlejohn, he asked, “So how is your work proceeding?”
“It’s coming along nicely,” Littlejohn answered. “It always intrigues me to study the ways in which people arrange their societies. No two are exactly alike.”
“What’s unique about our society?”
With an easy smile, Littlejohn said, “It’s small, it consists entirely of very bright, very accomplished men and women. Rather like a university faculty, cut adrift from the usual social norms.”
Kosoff nodded. “That makes sense.”
“We’re moving away from the normal hierarchical structure of a university faculty toward something rather different.”
“Different? How?”
Littlejohn pursed his lips before answering. “I believe we’re moving toward a true meritocracy: a society in which power is obtained by those who demonstrate accomplishment.”
Kosoff chuckled uneasily. “You mean I could be deposed as leader of this crew?”
Littlejohn shrugged. “I doubt that. You have enormous prestige and you’re quite an accomplished fellow. But it might be possible that groups within our overall crew will begin to form. Rather like the barons of a medieval kingdom gaining fealty from their serfs.”
“And overthrowing their king?”
“No, nothing like that.”
“Then how—”
A tap at the door. It slid open to reveal Dr. Elizabeth Chang, chairwoman of the philology department, standing in the doorway.
“Elizabeth,” Kosoff said heartily. “Come in, come in.”
Littlejohn suppressed a smile of relief. He had told Kosoff more than he’d intended to.
; Elizabeth Chang was physically small, doll-like. Her face was quite beautiful, as delicate as an orchid. She wore an unadorned knee-length tunic of rust-red, with a high mandarin collar. The two men got to their feet as she approached the desk.
“Dr. Littlejohn,” she said in her smoky voice. She extended her hand to Littlejohn and smiled with her lips, but her eyes were not focused on him. It seemed to Littlejohn that she was surveying the office, trying to find out what was going on, who was doing what to whom.
Once Kosoff explained why he wanted her to join the discussion, she seemed to relax somewhat.
“An anthropologist, joining our group? That doesn’t make much sense, does it.” It was not a question.
Littlejohn said, “He’s the man who’s recorded the octopods’ sounds, out at Alpha.”
“Oh, him.”
“He’d like to try to build up a vocabulary, to understand their language.”
Chang closed her eyes, as if the idea was painful to contemplate. Opening them, she focused on Kosoff, behind his desk. “We are concentrating on the people of planet Gamma, as you know. They obviously have a language.” Turning to Littlejohn, she went on, “They have sonic organs in their heads. They converse with one another using low-frequency sound pulses, beyond the range of human hearing.”
“Like the elephants, back on Earth,” Kosoff added.
“I know,” Littlejohn replied. “I was on the committee that saved the African elephant from extinction.”
With a sad smile, Chang said, “I don’t see how we could spare the manpower to teach a neophyte what he’d need to know to become a useful member of our team.”
“He already knows quite a bit,” Littlejohn said gently. “He’s not exactly a neophyte.”
“But he’s not a trained philologist.”
Littlejohn conceded the point with a nod, thinking, Typical group-think. Brad doesn’t have their credentials, so they don’t want him in their group.
“We do have a couple of our junior people studying the data brought back from Alpha. But that’s a back-burner issue. Most of our effort has to be concentrated on the humanoids of Gamma.”
“I agree,” said Kosoff. “It’s regrettable, but Dr. Chang is correct. We must concentrate the resources we have on the most important problem.”
Littlejohn knew he was licked. Kosoff was smart enough to get this Chang woman to do the hatchet work, rather than veto Brad’s application himself.
With a rueful nod, Littlejohn pushed himself up from the chair. “I understand. But Dr. MacDaniels is going to be very disappointed. He so wanted to work on the octopods’ language.”
“If it is a language,” said Kosoff.
“Which I doubt,” Chang added. Right on cue.
REBELLION
Sitting behind the desk in his office, Littlejohn thought that Brad looked as tense as a coiled spring as he told Brad of Chang’s reaction.
“So she doesn’t want me on her team,” Brad said, his voice low, dark.
“I’m afraid not.”
“She made the decision that Kosoff wanted her to.”
Littlejohn started to shrug, but halted the gesture halfway. “It was obvious,” he admitted. “Interesting interplay between them. He didn’t tell her what to say, but she said what he wanted her to anyway.”
Sitting in front of his department head’s compact little desk, Brad looked as if he were about to explode. Instead, though, he pulled in a deep breath and then said, “So I’m screwed.”
“I wouldn’t put it that way.”
“What other way is there?”
Littlejohn leaned forward slightly. “You’re still on the anthro team. Your situation hasn’t changed. You can still do good work for us.”
“I suppose so.” Without a shred of enthusiasm.
With the beginnings of a smile, Littlejohn said, “Actually, you’ve given us something to work with. A conflict within the scientific staff. Perhaps a split. It could lead to interesting changes.”
Brad almost smiled back. “A rebellion?”
“Maybe. Certainly we have a conflict.”
“There’s only one of me. That’s not much of a rebellion.”
“The longest journey begins with a single step.”
“Off the edge of a cliff.”
“Now, now, don’t be so pessimistic. Actually, nothing has changed. You’re still with the anthropology department, still doing good work.”
“But Kosoff won’t let me study the octopods’ language.”
“He won’t let you switch to the philology department,” Littlejohn prompted.
Brad’s face lit up. “But I can still work on their language on my own time. He can’t stop me from doing that.”
“If you want to do the extra work, I don’t see anything wrong with that.”
“And we don’t have to let Kosoff know about it.”
“What’s this ‘we’?” Littlejohn said with a grin. “This is strictly your decision. How you spend your spare time is your own affair.”
“It won’t be easy.”
“Will Ms. Portman help you?”
Nodding vigorously, Brad replied, “Fil’s been with me so far. I don’t see why she wouldn’t continue.”
“If I were you,” Littlejohn suggested, “I’d start making friends among the linguists. All very informal, of course. Personal. Outside the normal channels.”
Brad got to his feet and stuck out his hand across the desk. “Thanks, Dr. Littlejohn. Thanks a lot.”
Accepting Brad’s outstretched hand as he rose from his swivel chair, Littlejohn said, “All I did was listen. You made up your own mind.”
With a bright grin, Brad asked, “Did I?”
“Of course you did.”
But once Brad left his office, Littlejohn sank back into his chair, thinking, You’ve planted the seeds of a rebellion, old man. It will be interesting to see how it develops. We might have something worthwhile to report on, sooner or later.
* * *
Felicia looked uncertain, her gray eyes apprehensive.
“Keep working on the data you brought back with you?”
Brad nodded vigorously. “Right.”
“Here? In the evenings? Just the two of us?”
A little less confidently, he replied, “If you don’t mind. I know it’s a lot to ask.”
They were in Brad’s sitting room, side by side on the sofa, a pair of half-empty glasses on the coffee table in front of them.
Felicia said, “Let me get this straight. Kosoff turned down your request to join the philology team, so you want to work on the data from Alpha on your own.”
“If you don’t mind,” Brad repeated.
“In the evenings.”
He nodded wordlessly.
She sat beside him, silent, obviously turning over the situation in her mind. Brad held his breath.
At last she said, “Kosoff won’t like it.”
“Screw Kosoff!”
Felicia’s face eased into a smile. “I’d rather not. I’m happy with you.”
“You’ll do it? You’ll help me?”
“Of course I will, Brad.”
“It’s going to cut into our social life,” he warned.
“You’re my social life,” she said.
Suddenly Brad felt a lump in his throat. “I love you, Fil.”
“I love you, too.”
Brad felt as if he were in zero gravity again. Weightless. In love.
DECISIONS
The nights stretched into weeks, the weeks melted into months. Brad dutifully carried on with his anthropology work, observing the ship’s various scientific departments and the people who composed them, slowly constructing an ever-growing diagram of the relationships among them.
His own relationship with Felicia grew deeper and stronger. Almost every evening they pored over the squeaks and chirps of the octopods, trying to match specific sounds with specific actions and with the areas of their brains that lighted up. Every night he thought hims
elf the luckiest man in the universe to have her by his side.
One evening he turned from the display screen showing a school of octopods gliding through their ocean and asked her, “Whose turn is it to make dinner?”
Sitting beside him, Felicia replied with a grin, “If you have to ask, then it’s your turn.”
“Good,” Brad said, getting to his feet. “Let’s go to a restaurant.”
Gesturing to the wall screen, Felicia asked, “What about our slithery friends?”
“They can wait. They’ll still be here when we get back.”
She got up from the sofa. “Okay. You’re the boss.”
Brad knew better, but he didn’t say a word about it.
Later that night, in the darkened bedroom, he asked, “The night we met, out on the dance floor…”
“Yes?” Drowsily.
“Who put you up to dancing with me?”
“Put me…? No one. I saw you in the middle of the dancers, looking kind of lost, kind of forlorn…”
A line from Othello flashed through Brad’s mind:
“She loved me for the dangers I had passed;
“And I loved her that she did pity them.”
He said, “And you took pity on me.”
“I wouldn’t call it pity.”
“It was awfully kind of you.”
Snuggling closer to him, she replied, “It’s worked pretty well, don’t you think?”
“I think it’s worked out so well that we ought to get married.”
“Married?” Suddenly Felicia was wide awake.
“It’s an ancient custom that’s pretty near universal. Every human society has a marriage ritual, symbolizing a couple’s dedication to each other.”
She giggled. “Stop talking like an anthropologist.”
“Will you marry me, Fil?”
“We’re living together. Isn’t that enough?”
“No. I want to marry you. We can get Captain Desai to perform the ceremony.”
“And Professor Kosoff to give away the bride,” Felicia added.
* * *
It was a week later that Felicia asked, “Brad, what’s wrong?”
“Wrong?”
They were sitting on the sofa again, with one of the holographic videos of the octopods on the wall screen. The dinner dishes, with the crumbs and crusts of their meal, were scattered across the coffee table in front of them.