Dangling Conversations
Page 6
French-accented English in Dean's earpiece presented the objections of Chad. Some combination of the female translator's accent and the booming bass voice of Chad's ambassador recalled the leader of the Media & Education committee. “Our role is to package and control the Lalande information,” Paul Ricard had said at the kickoff, “while respecting various cultural sensitivities.”
Dean had focused that day on the impracticality of controlling ET's information. What about the packaging of that information? He'd sat through dispute after droning committee dispute about the optimal multicultural spinning of prospective announcements. What had he learned?
Swelling chants of, “Hey, Hey. Ho, Ho. COP-U-OS has got to go!” began again to drown out the debate. Sirens erupted. Li Zhou Huang's eyes narrowed once more, his hostility towards the crowd's coercion evident. Earth First had been wise to omit China from its planned disturbances.
What did ET know about Earth's cultures? Almost certainly, nothing. Ditto for any sensitivities that knowledge of ET's culture might arouse on Earth.
“ET hang up! ET hang up!”
Few things are as satisfying as the realization of a previously unrecognized assumption. When the outside chaos momentarily ebbed, Dean seized the floor. “The concerns now being expressed may rest on a misapprehension.”
“And what is that?” asked Ambassador Smythe icily.
“That ET is being secretive.” He spread his arms wide. “Many cultural perspectives are evident in this room. Despite that, our talk of ‘ET’ suggests we may have fallen into the error of positing a single alien culture.
“Imagine an ET conference preceding their transmission. Perhaps they too have many cultures, developed over millennia. Their national representatives argue over how to introduce themselves to their newfound neighbors: us.
“Will they present all of their cultures, or the supposed important ones, or only their cross-cultural commonalities? Will each society describe itself, or must all groups agree to every description? Will their entire history be an open book, or should embarrassing episodes be withheld? What is sent when two nations, one perhaps an ex-colony of the other, or former military adversaries, disagree about events? Will explanations be made about contradictory religions or systems of economics? How might our society, or societies, react to theirs?
“ET took more than thirty years to contact Earth after detecting humanity's presence. We have all wondered why.” Dean slowly and deliberately made eye contact with each ambassador. “Perhaps the ETs needed that long to agree upon the one mutually acceptable description of their cultures...
“Silence.”
When Li Zhou Huang and Alex Klein simultaneously smiled, Dean knew that he, the task force, and humanity had won.
EPILOGUE
The auditorium was packed in flagrant disregard for the fire code. More people filled the hallway. Matthews recognized task force members, COPUOS ambassadors, talking heads from the networks. People kept glancing at their watches. Twenty-one minutes to start of transmission, and counting.
Dean wriggled through the crowd to join Bridget, who looked as exhausted as he felt. Fair enough: refining and encoding Earth's reply, then checking and double-checking it, had taken ‘round-the-clock efforts for two weeks. The Reply committee had borne the brunt of it—the final tweaks to the message had been made just that morning, but almost everyone on the task force had felt the crunch.
“I find myself envying ET. Discovering unexpected courses in quantum mechanics and computing. Following our recipes to build their first transistors and solar cells.” She gestured with a meatball on a toothpick. “And then he'll read our catalogue.”
“So you think he may be interested in processes for making integrated circuits? Or schematics for the old PC in my den closet?”
“Could be,” she grinned. “Really, it's a brilliant solution. Trade our common knowledge, that no one can object to parting with, for their expertise.”
“And since we'll post our message to the Web, everyone who cares gets a sneak preview of our order. That's at least sixteen years to figure out ET's technology or to decide to exit a business that could be made obsolete.”
“Your attention, everyone,” called the amplified voice of Kim Chun Ku. A wave of shushes broke out. “Please be seated.”
On stage, large-screen TVs showed the great parabolic antenna at the Jodrell Bank radio observatory (now also an interstellar transmission station), the nearby control room, and a slaved copy of the main console display bearing only a decrementing counter.
The antenna was prepositioned, its motion as it tracked Lalande 21185 too slow to be visible. The control room had been vacated by all but a few technicians, the USG, and Sherman Xu. As the counter reached sixty seconds, Kim whispered something to the man who had started it all. The crowd cheered as Xu took his seat at the console.
At zero, Xu tapped the enter key. To thunderous applause, the text of Earth's response began scrolling down a monitor in the auditorium. Dean and Bridget embraced, and were far from the only people exchanging hugs, kisses, and backslaps.
The more important version of the message took the first step of its journey: an uplink to a geosat over the Atlantic for relay to Jodrell Bank in the UK. Jodrell Bank would start Earth's beamcast: responsibility would be handed off from transmitter to transmitter as the world turned. The eighteen-hour message would repeat continuously for the thirty days ET had said he'd be listening.
The USG entered the auditorium to thank everyone for their contributions. He kept his remarks brief, knowing them to be anticlimactic. The room emptied slowly, everyone too wound up to leave but for the first time in months lacking a clear purpose. Party noises from down the hall were subdued.
* * * *
Dean and Bridget found themselves alone in an otherwise empty auditorium. “Yes, I envy ET,” repeated Bridget. “He has only eight years to wait. We've got to endure twice that.”
“We actually have plenty to keep us busy.”
Perhaps eyes actually could twinkle—he was emitting some good vibe.
“Okay, Dean. What haven't you told me?”
“Remember ET going off-line a while back?”
“Sure. Didn't we decide his planet was going behind his sun? Too much interference?”
“That ‘explanation’ was purely speculative, since we can't see his planet.”
She tipped her head in puzzlement. “What are you saying?”
“There's a small matter I've kept to myself since we cracked ET's transmitter design. Remember the beam-steering and Doppler-correction logic? That circuitry is implicitly a model of his planet's movement and ours. I took the liberty of programming the model onto my laptop.”
“So is our speculation plausible? Might ET have stopped sending because his orbit meant his sun would be in the way?”
“Not even close. ET had another reason for stopping his transmission. My guess is that he had another use for his big transmitter.” The smile Dean had been hiding burst forth, an ear-to-ear grin.
“Now that we've built ourselves a phone, it appears we might have other neighbors to introduce ourselves to.”
* * *
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