The Black Cloud

by Fred Hoyle

  “This shortage of food chemicals leads to a tooth-and-claw existence in which it is difficult for the first glimmerings of intellect to gain a foothold in competition with bone and muscle. Of course once intelligence becomes firmly established, competition with sheer bone and muscle becomes easy, but the first steps along the road are excessively difficult — so much so that your own case is a rarity among planetary life forms.”

  “And so much for the space travel enthusiasts,” said Marlowe. “Ask him, Harry, to what we owe the emergence of intelligence here on the Earth.”

  The question was put, and after a time the answer came:

  “Probably to the combination of several circumstances, among which I would rate as most important the development about fifty million years ago of an entirely new type of plant: the plant that you call grass. The emergence of this plant caused a drastic reorganization of the whole animal world, owing to the peculiarity that grass can be cropped to ground level, in distinction from all other plants. As the grasslands spread over the Earth those animals that could take advantage of this peculiarity survived and developed. Other animals declined or became extinct. It seems to have been in this major reshuffle that intelligence was able to gain its first footing on your planet.

  “There are several very unusual factors that made the decoding of your method of communication a matter of some difficulty,” went on the Cloud. “Particularly I find it most strange that your communication symbols do not bear any really close connexion with the neurological activity in your brains.”

  “We’d better say something about that,” remarked Kingsley.

  “I bet we had. I didn’t think you’d be able to keep quiet for long, Chris,” Ann Halsey remarked.

  Kingsley explained his idea about A.C. and D.C. communication, and asked whether Joe himself operated on an A.C. basis. Joe confirmed that this was so and continued:

  “This is not the only quaint feature. Your outstanding oddity is the great similarity of one individual to another. This allows you to use a very crude method of communication. You attach labels to your neurological states — anger, headache, embarrassed, happy, melancholy — these are all labels. If Mr A wishes to tell Mr B that he is suffering from a headache he makes no attempt to describe the neurological disruption in his head. Instead he displays his label. He says:

  “ “I have a headache.”

  “When Mr B hears this he takes the label “headache” and interprets it in accordance with his own experience. Thus Mr A is able to acquaint Mr B of his indisposition even though neither party may have the slightest idea what a “headache” really consists of. Such a highly singular method of communication is of course only possible between nearly identical individuals.”

  “Could I put it this way?’ said Kingsley. “Between two absolutely identical individuals, if that were possible, no communication at all would be necessary because each individual would automatically know the experience of the other. Between nearly identical individuals a quite crude method of communication suffices. Between two widely different individuals a vastly more complicated communication system is required.”

  “That is exactly what I was trying to explain. The difficulty I had in decoding your language will now be clear. It is a language suited to nearly similar individuals, whereas you and I are widely separated, much more widely than you probably imagine. Fortunately your neurological states seem rather simple. Once I had managed to understand them in some degree, the decoding became possible.”

  “Do we have anything neurological in common? Do you, for instance, have anything that corresponds to our “headache”?’ asked McNeil.

  The reply came:

  “In a broad sense we share the emotions of pleasure and pain. But this is only to be expected of any creature that possesses a neurological complex. Painful emotions correspond to a sharp disruption of neurological patterns, and this can happen with me as well as with you. Happiness is a dynamic state in which neurological patterns are being extended, not disrupted, and this too can happen with me as well as with you. Although there are these similarities, I imagine that my subjective experiences are very different from yours, except in one particular — like you I regard painful emotions as emotions that I wish to avoid, and vice versa for happy emotions.

  “More specifically, your headaches arise from a faulty blood supply that destroys the precision of the electrical firing sequences in your brain. I experience something very akin to a headache if radio-active material gets into my nervous system. It causes electrical discharges in much the way that happens in your Geiger counters. These discharges interfere with my timing sequences and produce an extremely unpleasant subjective experience.

  “Now I wish to inquire into quite a different matter. I am interested in what you call “the arts”. Literature I can understand as the art of arranging ideas and emotions in words. The visual arts are clearly related to your perception of the world. But I do not understand at all the nature of music. My ignorance in this respect is scarcely surprising, since as far as I am aware you have transmitted no music. Will you please repair this deficiency?”

  “Here’s your chance, Ann,” said Kingsley. “And what a chance! No musician ever played to an audience like this!”

  “What shall I play?”

  “How about the Beethoven you played the other night?”

  “The Opus 106? It’s a bit fierce for a beginner.”

  “Come on, Ann. Give old Joe the works,” encouraged Barnett.

  “There’s no need to play if you don’t want to, Ann. I took a recording,” said Leicester.

  “What’s the quality like?”

  “As good as we’ll get it from a technical point of view. If you were satisfied with the performance we can start transmitting more or less straight away if you wish.”

  “I think I’d prefer you to use the recording. It sounds ridiculous, but I’ve an idea that I might be nervous if I started to play to that thing, whatever it is.”

  “Don’t be silly. Old Joe won’t bite.”

  “Perhaps he won’t but I’d still prefer to use the recording.”

  And so the recording was transmitted. At the end came the message:

  “Very interesting. Please repeat the first part at a speed increased by thirty per cent.”

  When this had been done, the next message was:

  “Better. Very good. I intend to think this over. Good-bye.”

  “My God, you’ve finished him, Ann!’ exclaimed Marlowe.

  “It defeats me how music can have any appeal for Joe. After all, music is sound and we’ve agreed that sound oughtn’t to mean anything to him,” remarked Parkinson.

  “I don’t agree there,” said McNeil. “Our appreciation of music has really nothing to do with sound, although I know that at first sight it seems otherwise. What we appreciate in the brain are electrical signals that we receive from the ears. Our use of sound is simply a convenient device for generating certain patterns of electrical activity. There is indeed a good deal of evidence that musical rhythms reflect the main electrical rhythms that occur in the brain.”

  “That’s very interesting, John,” Kingsley exclaimed. “So you might say that music gives the most direct expression of the activities of our brains.”

  “No, I wouldn’t put it as strongly as that. I would say that music gives the best index of the large-scale patterns in the brain. But words give a better index of the fine-scale patterns.”

  And so the discussion continued until far into the night. All aspects of the Cloud’s statements were argued over. Perhaps the most striking remark came from Ann Halsey.

  “The first movement of the B flat major Sonata bears a metronome marking requiring a quite fantastic pace, far faster than any normal pianist can achieve, certainly far faster than I can manage. Did you notice that request for an increase of speed? It makes me feel a little shivery, although probably it was only some queer coincidence, I suppose.”

  * * *

&n
bsp; At this stage it became generally agreed that information concerning the Cloud’s real nature should be passed to the political authorities. Various Governments were again getting radio communication to work. It was found that, provided a three-centimetre transmission was propagated vertically, the ionization in the atmosphere could be maintained at a value favourable for communication at a wave-length of about ten centimetres. Once more Nortonstowe became an information clearing-house.

  Nobody was really happy at disseminating information about the Cloud. Everybody felt that communication with the Cloud would be taken out of Nortonstowe’s control. And there was so much that the scientists wished to learn. Kingsley was strongly opposed to passing information to the political authorities, but on this point he was overruled by general opinion, which felt that, regrettable as it might be, secrecy should no longer be maintained.

  Leicester had made recordings of the conversations with the Cloud and these were broadcast over the ten-centimetre channels. Governments everywhere had no scruples themselves about maintaining secrecy however. The man-in-the-street never learned of the existence of life in the Cloud, for as time went on events took such a turn as to make secrecy quite imperative.

  No Government at this time possessed a one-centimetre transmitter and receiver of appropriate design. For the time being at least, therefore, communication with the Cloud had to be made from Nortonstowe. Technicians in the U.S. pointed out, however, that ten-centimetre transmission to Nortonstowe and thence by one centimetre would allow the U.S. Government and others to establish contact with the Cloud. It was decided that Nortonstowe should become a clearing-house, not only for conveying information over the Earth but also for communication with the Cloud.

  The personnel at Nortonstowe divided into two roughly equal camps. Those who supported Kingsley and Leicester wished to veto the politicians’ plan openly and violently by telling the various Governments to go to hell. The others, led by Marlowe and Parkinson, argued that nothing was to be gained by such defiance, since the politicians could if necessary secure their own way by main force. A few hours before a communication from the Cloud was expected the argument between the two groups became acute. It was resolved by compromise. It was decided that a technical hitch would prevent any ten-centimetre transmissions being received at Nortonstowe. Thus the Governments would be able to hear the Cloud, but they wouldn’t be able to talk to it.

  And so it came to pass. That day the highest and most honoured of the human species listened to the Cloud and were unable to reply. It turned out that the Cloud made a bad impression on its august audience, for Joe began talking frankly about sex.

  “Will you please resolve this paradox?’ he said. “I notice that a very large portion of your literature is concerned with what you call “love”, “profane love” mostly. Indeed, from the specimens available to me I estimate that nearly forty per cent of literature is concerned with this subject. Yet nowhere in literature could I find out what “love” consists of, always the issue is very carefully avoided. This led me to believe that “love” must be some rare remarkable process. Can you imagine my surprise when at last I learnt from medical textbooks that “love” is only a very simple ordinary process shared by a great variety of other animals?”

  There were some protests at these remarks from the highest and most honoured of the human species. They were silenced by Leicester who cut their transmissions from the loud-speakers.

  “Aw, dry out,” he said. Then he handed a microphone to McNeil. “I reckon this is your turn, John. You’d better try to give Joe an answer.”

  McNeil did his best:

  “Viewed from a wholly logical point of view the bearing and rearing of children is a thoroughly unattractive proposition. To a woman it means pain and endless worry. To a man it means extra work extending over many years to support his family. So, if we were wholly logical about sex, we should probably not bother to reproduce at all. Nature takes care of this by making us utterly and wholly irrational. If we were not irrational we simply wouldn’t be able to survive, contradictory as this may sound. It’s probably the same with all the other animals too.”

  Joe was speaking again:

  “This irrationality, which I suspected and which I am glad to hear you recognize, has a serious, more grim, aspect. I have already warned you that the supply of chemical foods is pitifully limited on your planet. It is only too likely that an irrational attitude towards reproduction will lead to more individuals being born than can possibly be supported by such slender resources. Such a situation would carry great dangers with it. Indeed it is more than likely that the rarity of intelligent life on planets as a whole arises from the general existence of such irrationalities in their relation to food shortage. I consider it not unlikely that your species may shortly become extinct. This view is confirmed, I find, by the far too rapid rate at which human populations are now increasing.”

  Leicester pointed at a group of winking lights.

  “The politicians are trying to get through — Moscow, Washington, London, Paris, Timbuctoo, Uncle Tom Cobbly, and all. Shall we let ’em through, Chris?”

  Alexandrov made the first political speech of his life.

  “Do b — s in Kremlin good to listen,” he said.

  “Alexis, you’ve got the word wrong,” remarked Kingsley. “In polite society we say “beggars”.”

  “I think we ought to recommend Alexis to study the writings of the celebrated Dr Bowdler. But it’s time we got back to Joe,” said Marlowe.

  “Certainly don’t let the politicians in, Harry. Keep their throats cut. John, ask Joe how he reproduces himself ’ — from Kingsley.

  “That’s what I’ve been wanting to ask,” said McNeil.

  “Then carry on. Let’s see how delicate he gets when it comes to his turn.”

  “Chris!”

  McNeil put his question to the Cloud:

  “It would be of interest to us to know how our reproductive system compares with your own case.”

  “Reproduction in the sense of giving rise to a new individual proceeds in our case along entirely different lines. Barring accidents, or an overwhelming desire for self-destruction — which happens sometimes with us as with you — I can live indefinitely, you see. Therefore I am not under the necessity, as you are, of generating some new individual to take over at my death.”

  “How old in fact are you?”

  “Rather more than five hundred million years.”

  “And was your birth, your origin, that is to say, a consequence of spontaneous chemical action, as we believe life here on the Earth to have been?”

  “No, it was not. As we travel around the Galaxy we keep a look-out for suitable aggregations of material, suitable clouds in which we can plant life. We do this in rather the way that you might grow saplings from a tree. If I, for instance, were to find a suitable cloud not already endowed with life I would plant a comparatively simple neurological structure within it. This would be a structure that I myself had built, a part of myself.

  “The multitude of hazards with which the spontaneous origin of intelligent life is faced is overcome by this practice. Let me take an example. Radio-active materials must be rigorously excluded from my nervous system for a reason that I explained in an earlier conversation. To ensure that this is so I possess an elaborate electromagnetic screen that serves to prevent the ingress of any radio-active gas into my neurological regions — into my brain in other words. Should this screen fail to operate, I would experience great pain and would soon die. A screen-failure is one of the possible accidents I mentioned a little while ago. The point of this example is that we can provide our “infants” both with screens and with the intelligence to operate them, whereas it would be most improbable that such screens would develop in the course of a spontaneous origin of life.”

  “But it must have happened when the first member of your species arose,” suggested McNeil.

  “I would not agree that there ever was a “first�
�� member,” said the Cloud. McNeil did not understand this remark, but Kingsley and Marlowe exchanged a glance as if to say: ‘Oh-ho, there we go. That’s one in the eye for the exploding-universe boys.”

  “Apart from providing such protective devices,” the Cloud went on, “we leave our “infants” free to develop as they think best. Here I must explain an important difference between us and you. The number of cells in your brain is more or less fixed at birth. Your development then consists of learning to use a brain of fixed capacity in the best possible way. With us the case is quite different. We are free to increase the capacity of our brains as we find best. And of course worn or defective parts can be removed or replaced. Thus development with us consists in extending the brain in the best way, as well as in learning to use it in the best way — by the best way I mean of course in the way best suited to the solution of problems as they arise. You will realize therefore that as “infants” we start with comparatively simple brains and as we grow older our brains become very much larger and more complicated.”

  “Could you describe, in a way we could understand, how you would go about building a new part to your brain?’ asked McNeil.

  “That I think I can do. First, I build chemical foods into complicated molecules of the required types. A supply of these is always kept on hand. Then the molecules are carefully laid down in an appropriate neurological structure on the surface of a solid body. The material of the body is adjusted so that its melting point is not too low — ice, for instance, would have a dangerously low melting point — and so that it is electrically a very good insulator. The outer part of the solid has also to be carefully prepared so that it will anchor the neurological material — the brain stuff as you might say — firmly in position.

  “The design of the neurological structure is of course the really difficult part of the business. This is arranged so that the new brain acts as a unit for attaining some specified purpose. It is also arranged that the new unit does not come spontaneously into operation, but only when signals are received from the previously existing part of my brain. These signals have a variety of points of entry into the new structure. Likewise the output of the new unit has a host of connexions to the older part of my brain. In this way its activity can be controlled and integrated into the whole of my neurological activity.”