Analog SFF, April 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  “Making it look like an accident."

  “Of course. But then the detective would figure us out and show up with handcuffs."

  “Quite a few, in your case."

  “Ha ha. There is an intermediate course. We appear to enlist Dargo's aid, but don't tell her everything."

  “Lie to her."

  “Perhaps a necessary evil.” I suddenly wondered how much of what Red had told me was the truth.

  “What would we keep from her?"

  “The threat itself? I take it she doesn't know that I can understand the message. We could tell her that much and then claim it was something less disturbing."

  “No ... she heard me say that we got the message, and ‘please don't kill us'—she can extrapolate a lot from that."

  Red nodded. “Merely mortal danger."

  I tried to keep my voice down. “The only thing we have on her is the fact that she broke the law making that recording."

  “There is also the fact that she apparently has little beyond that one phrase."

  I thought back to what she'd said. “True. Little enough. She didn't seem to know that you had decoded the FM message. ‘We got the message’ could refer to the Drake diagram thing. As far as she knows, we were conspiring to communicate with the enemy in English."

  He paused. “Until we learn differently, then, let's make that a working hypothesis: she thinks we don't have any more data than anyone else. Meanwhile, we enlist Fly-in-Amber and Paul, swearing them to absolute secrecy.

  “When the Other responds to Earth's overtures, we'll decide on our own course of action."

  “And if it doesn't respond? How long do we wait before we try to contact it ourselves?"

  “If it moves at one-eighth my speed, I'd say a week. Of course, it might have various responses prepared ahead of time."

  “Like destroying everything?"

  “No. If it were that simple, there would have been no need for the message it sent to Fly-in-Amber. We're safe for the time being."

  “Which could be hundreds or thousands of years."

  “Yes. As long as we don't do anything that threatens it or the Others back home. Or it could be hours or days.” It made its humanlike shrug.

  My timer's buzz was barely audible over the festive jazz, Dixieland gone to Chicago a couple of centuries ago. “That's the ten-minute warning. Guess we better go up and watch them push the button."

  * * * *

  Just about everybody, human and Martian, showed up for the ceremony. One wall of Earth A was a glass one shared by its counterpart on the other side of the quarantine. We had more room per person, or entity, but they had champagne.

  After the short speeches and button pushing, the screen showed a roster for interviews at the two VR sites. Paul and I were scheduled first, though with two different interviewers. Paul had a guy from an MIT technical journal. I was stuck with Davie Lewitt, who was pretty and intense but not remarkably intelligent. She had interviewed me after the Great Hairball Orgy on Mars and pinned the name “The Mars Girl” on me. For a couple of years, it was ‘hey, Mars Girl,’ whenever someone wanted to annoy me.

  I was only a little sarcastic with her during the hour, but Dargo, who had been watching, gave me an annoyed grimace when she took over the helmet. She used more disinfectant spray than was necessary. But Oz gave me a broad smile and a thumbs-up.

  When Paul came out I touched his arm and cut my eyes in the direction of my room. He smiled, but wasn't going to get quite what he expected.

  You don't use paper wastefully in space. But it's one way to write something down and know that no electronic snoop can sneak a copy. As soon as we entered my door, I handed him the folded-over sheet that started KEEP TALKING—DARGO'S LISTENING! Underneath that was a summary of everything Red had told me about the frequency-modulation message, and our tentative plan.

  We chatted, mostly me talking, about our VR interviews. We undressed and I called for music, an obscure whining neo-romantic guitar/theremin collage by some Finnish group whose name I couldn't even read. But it was loud.

  When he finished reading, we got into bed and made appropriate sounds while whispering under the music.

  He nuzzled my ear. “So we do nothing until the Other responds. Then Red—and you and I and Fly-in-Amber—will send them back a message. In Red's language."

  “Right. Can you build a radio transmitter?"

  “We already have one that's rarely used. We could point it at Neptune and talk away."

  “I don't think that would be safe."

  “Probably not, if she's being fanatically thorough. But we don't have an electronics lab on this side. You can't build anything without parts.

  “So couldn't the existing radio have a little accident? It's got all the parts."

  “God, you're a devious woman."

  “Is it possible?"

  “Yes, of course. I'll study the wiring and be ready to disable it. In the course of testing the ‘repairs,’ I'll send this gibberish out toward Neptune.

  “But there's one thing you and Red missed. Dargo doesn't have to be that afraid of punishment when she admits to having spied on you. What can they do—extradite her to Earth? Dock her pay? There's nothing to buy here, and we're already in a kind of prison."

  “Well, Oz and probably the others would help us pressure to have her relieved of responsibilities. Deny computer access."

  “That could work. Make her stare at the walls until she begs to be thrown out the airlock."

  “I like the way you think.” I straddled him. “The music's going to climax in about two minutes."

  “Slave driver.” But he managed a coda.

  * * * *

  7. Language barrier

  Allowing for speed-of-light travel time, the Other took only twenty-some minutes to react to the Drake message—which meant that most of the response must have been prepared ahead of time, and it only had to choose which button to push.

  If, that is, it had been honest with Red when it described its temporal limitations. It did occur to me that there was no compelling reason for it to tell us the truth.

  Or to lie, if it was as powerful as it claimed.

  The answer to the message came in spoken English, in an odd American accent, which Earth quickly identified as David Brinkley's, a newscaster from a century ago:

  “Peace is a good sentiment.

  “Your assumption about my body chemistry is clever but wrong. I will tell you more later.

  “At this time I do not wish to tell you where my people live."

  Then it began a speech in a slightly different tone, that could have been prepared years ahead of time:

  “I have been watching your development for a long time, mostly through radio and television. If you take an objective view of human behavior since the early twentieth century, you can understand why I must approach you with caution.

  “I apologize for having destroyed your Triton probe back in 2044. I didn't want you to know exactly where I am on this world.

  “If you send another probe I will do the same thing, again with apologies.

  “For reasons that may become apparent soon, I don't wish to communicate with you directly. The biological constructs that live below the surface of Mars were created thousands of years ago with the sole purpose of eventually talking to you and, at the right time, serving as a conduit through which I could reveal my existence.

  “'Our’ existence, actually, since we have millions of individuals elsewhere. On our home planet and watching other planets, like yours."

  Then it said something that simplified our lives, mine and Red's. “This is a clumsy and limited language for me, as are all human languages. The Martian ones were created for communication between you and me, and from now on I would like to utilize the most complex of those Martian languages, which is used by only one individual, the leader you call Red.” Then it went into about two minutes of low gravelly wheedly-rasp-poot and went silent.

  “So what was
that?” Dargo said.

  Red favored her with a potato stare. “Please play it back for me."

  He listened. “Can you speed it up by a factor of eight or so?"

  “No problem,” a voice said from the screen. “Just give me a minute. I can double the speed three times."

  We waited, and then it came back sounding more like Martian.

  “Not much in the way of information there. I can write it down for you, phrase by phrase. But it's mostly ceremonial—good-bye and a sort of blessing—and some technical information, which frequencies it will monitor for voice and for pictures. Though I think it probably monitors about everything."

  “Why was the initial message so slow?” asked the screen.

  “The Other said that it had spent days translating that English message and rendering it as American speech. It recorded it more than a year ago."

  Red hesitated. “We talked, Oz and Carmen and Paul and I, about how slow their metabolism must be because of the low temperature of their body chemistry. They must move slowly.” He wasn't going to say anything he'd learned from the still-secret message.

  “Talking with them is not going to be anything like a conversation. But we are all accustomed to having a time lag between saying something and hearing the response, in talking with Mars."

  “Why did it wait?” Dargo asked. “First there was all that indirect mumbo jumbo, hiding the Drake message in the strange oration that the yellow Martians had buried in their memories. Now we find out that it could have just contacted us directly. In English!"

  “Dargo,” Oz said quietly, “we don't know anything about their psychology. Who knows why it does anything?"

  “It's protecting itself,” Moonboy said. “Maybe even trying to confuse us."

  “It does know our psychology pretty well,” I pointed out, “after eavesdropping on us for a couple of hundred years."

  “And it knows you,” Red said. “Of you."

  “Me personally?"

  He nodded. “The Other knows of our special relationship and would like to exploit it, making you its primary human contact, through me.” I wondered whether he'd just made that up.

  “How could it know something like that?” Dargo snapped, for once mirroring my own thoughts.

  “It has access to any public broadcast. Her relationship to me is well documented.” He made what might have been a placating gesture. “Of course, Carmen will share what she hears with everyone, and we will take input from anyone."

  “I don't like it. You or she could make up anything, as long as you're working in a language no one else can translate."

  “I will tell the Other of your objection."

  “And how will I know that you have?"

  “Have I ever lied to you? Lying is sort of a human thing.” Paul glanced at me and glanced away. We both knew that wasn't exactly true. Red had come up with the suggestion that we feed Dargo an innocuous, half-true translation.

  “Even if you completely trusted Red,” Oz said, “as I do, there's no reason to assume that the Other is being straight with him. As Dargo said, it could have communicated with us directly from the beginning, if it had wanted to."

  Moonboy nodded. “It must have its own agenda, its strategy.” To Red: “We still don't know how long this whatever, this hypnotic suggestion, has been part of the yellow family's makeup?"

  “None of the family can tell us anything useful. They say it must have been there forever, ever since the Others created them. Which would be fine, except for the number."

  “Ten to the seventh seconds,” Moonboy said.

  Red nodded. “It would require that the Others, or this Other, could predict 27,000 years ago, how long it would take for humans to get to Mars and bring a Martian back."

  “A yellow one,” I said.

  “Wait,” Oz said and laughed. “We don't have any reason to assume that the number is right. The Other isn't some sort of infallible god. That 27,000 years might have been its best estimate two thousand years ago, or ten thousand, or fifty—whenever you Martians were initially set up."

  “At least 5,000 ares. We have reliable memories that far back—at least the memory family does."

  “You think so.” Oz was still smiling broadly. “But look. If the Other could program the yellow folk, the memory family, to flop down and deliver a pre-recorded message when they saw the red laser—then what else might it have programmed them with? Maybe five thousand ares of bogus history."

  Red grabbed his head and buzzed loudly, laughing. “Oz! You could be right.” He buzzed again. “Like your religious humans who claim God created the Earth six thousand years ago, with the fossils in place. Who can say you're wrong?"

  “An areologist,” Oz said. “Quite seriously. We have Terry and Joan on Mars right now, nosing around your city, trying to date it. What if there's nothing that's more than a few thousand ares old? A few hundred?"

  Red clasped himself with all four arms, which usually meant he was thinking. “It's not impossible. I have direct evidence, written communication, with only three previous leaders, with mention of a fourth. Less than a thousand ares.” He turned to Moonboy. “Have Joan and Terry found anything older?"

  “I don't think so. But they're still doing preliminary work, being pretty cautious."

  “We must have them try. Dig down for things to date. This is fascinating!"

  What I myself found fascinating was the way Red had changed the subject away from “Have I ever lied to you?"

  * * * *

  8. Signal-to-noise ratio

  Red wrote out the message that the Other had transmitted after its English one, and it was as innocuous and plain as the earlier secret one had been threatening and complex. Basically, “I want to cooperate, but you must let me go at my own slow pace."

  I searched my room for a microphone but found exactly what I'd expected: nothing. You can buy one at Cube Shack not much bigger than a flea.

  Red asked everyone on our side and most of the people on Earth side whether they had questions or messages for the Other. I knew he wanted a long transmission so that his own part would be hidden in the volume generated by others.

  News came that my mother and father were coming on the next shuttle from Mars, which pleased me, though I had to admit I hadn't missed Dad. So Card would be informally adopted by the Westlings, which no doubt made him one happy boy. Barry got away with murder, which happens when your mother is a novelist and your father is a crazy inventor, no matter what their job titles claimed.

  Over the next two days, I had eight more VR interviews. The most trivial was one from my old high school, and the most interesting was with a panel of “xenopsychologists” convened at Harvard. The weirdest was the last one, from the Church of Christ Revealed, who thought the whole thing, from the Space Elevator on, was a hoax the government was perpetrating for its own obscure purpose. I told them they could go out and watch the Space Elevator work; they could aim an antenna at Mars and intercept the signals that emanated from there whenever the right side was facing Earth. The interviewers smiled conspiratorially, saying “Yes, that's what we're supposed to believe,” or “It's all explained in the Bible, and it isn't like your people say."

  After putting up with that, I went back to my place feeling sort of like the most dispensable member of the team, and what should greet me but a message from Dargo: “Please come see me at your earliest convenience."

  I put on my exercise clothes and went up to row and jog. Moonboy was on the rowing machine, so I jogged for a while on the treadmill watching Earth news. So little of it seemed important.

  So my “earliest convenience” was after 250 calories of running and a mile on the oars. I didn't shower, but went sweatily down to Dargo's office.

  Her nose wrinkled when I stepped in and closed the door behind me. Without preamble, she said, “Have you ever heard of S2N?"

  “No ... a sulfur and nitrogen compound?” Even my dim recall of valences told me that couldn't be it.

&
nbsp; “It's a research tool I just found. It dramatically increases the signal-to-noise ratio in a collection of audio data."

  Her ubiquitous clipboard was on the desk. She stabbed a button on it, and my voice clearly said, “That's a kind of insect?” Then Red started the mayfly analogy, Bach a faint whisper in the background. She switched it off.

  “I have it all,” she said. “The super-slow Others, the faster one on Triton, the rationale for Red's secret language. Our mayfly helplessness in the face of their ancient wisdom."

  “So. Now you know everything I do. You still can't—"

  “Maybe I know a little more than you do. You accept what your Martian friend says as the pure truth. I do not."

  I didn't trust myself to say anything and just nodded.

  “There's nothing like all that even implied in the actual communications that everybody's seen and heard from Triton. I think Red made it all up."

  “Made it up? Why would he do that?"

  “It's simple, really. His power over his tribe, and now his usefulness to us, is dependent on the uniqueness of his supposed language. What if it's just another Martian dialect? Our linguists are cataloguing similarities among the other three. With a large enough sample, I'm sure Red's will fall into line."

  She didn't know what she was talking about! They weren't “dialects,” any more than Chinese is a dialect of Turkish. And no linguist was yet able to utter “two plus two is four” in any of the tricky languages. That they had sounds in common was not very mysterious.

  “I'm sure that could be true,” I heard myself saying, “in theory. But I'd need more than supposition."

  “Of course you would. And I know you consider him a friend and wouldn't ask you to betray him. Just try to listen to what he has to say objectively—with my ears as well as yours. Try to entertain the possibility."

  “All right.” Among the possibilities I could entertain was that Dargo had finally popped her cork. “But what if he is telling the truth? We don't dare go public with your thesis. The Other might learn of it and push the button."

  “Absolutely. Utmost caution and secrecy."