The Sunspacers Trilogy

by George Zebrowski

  Lissa and Alek sat down nervously. The other students were staring at them. One of the girls was smiling at Alek.

  “Let me make the introductions,” Dr. Shastri said, “now that we’re all here. At my right, I’d like to present Maxwell Cater, Cyril Yoseloff, Louis Tyrmand, and Alek Calder.” The first three students were pale and dark-haired. Lissa nodded to them, unable to keep from noticing that Alek was better-looking.

  “At my left,” Dr. Shastri continued, “we have Susan Falleta, Emily Bibby, and Lissa Quintana-Green Wolfe.”

  Susan Falleta was black-haired and thin. Emily Bibby was a plump redhead. Lissa smiled at them, realizing that she was not quite awake. She wasn’t used to napping during the day, but the trip and the cool mountain air had put her away.

  “I’d like to welcome you all to the Institute,” Dr. Shastri said, “and I hope that you will all like it here. Let me say that you were chosen very carefully, which is why your group is so small. But I hope that makes you feel special. You’re here not only to get an education, but to help solve one of the major puzzles of the century.” He smiled in a sickly way. Lissa realized that she was very hungry. “I must admit that our record of solutions has not been a good one, and my own feeling is that you won’t suddenly solve the riddle of the messages either—but you’ll learn what it’s like to go up against something immensely difficult and important. Now, as you know, others are working on this problem elsewhere. They are trained professionals, while you are fresh, young minds, who, it is hoped, will see the problem in new ways once you have prepared yourselves.” He beamed at them, and it seemed to Lissa that he was planning to cook them all for dinner. “Now, doubtless, you are very hungry.” He sat down. A gong sounded. The food was wheeled in on two trucks and served by male waiters. Lissa put her hand over her mouth to hide the sound of her swallowing as she smelled the food.

  “I hate curry,” Alek whispered next to her. “Makes me throw up.”

  She pressed her lips together and waited for her plate to be filled.

  After dinner, Dr. Shastri took them down into the mountain to see the receiving room. They crowded into the elevator, and Lissa’s stomach jumped as the floor seemed to fall away. There were very few elevators on Bernal One.

  “This way,” Dr. Shastri said as the doors slid open and he stepped out. “We’re now a hundred meters down inside the mountain.”

  He led them through a short corridor. A door slipped open, and they entered a large chamber filled with computer terminals, small screens, and work stations; a 3-D screen covered the entire wall ahead of them. Two technicians sat watching a green snake play on the giant screen.

  Lissa’s eyes opened wide as she realized what she was seeing: this was the signal from the stars, shown visually, accompanied by a low-pitched audio analog. She thrilled to the alien snake’s audiovisual gyrations, and wondered which had come first, the song or the visual dance. Was it just a matter of how humanity’s instruments had been set to receive the message?

  “This is it!” Dr. Shastri shouted. “They are speaking to us, and we don’t understand. Think—what might they be saying? Whole galactic encyclopedias of knowledge may be flowing past us as freely as the wind, but we’re too stupid to capture even a small portion.” He was looking at them with great interest, Lissa noticed, enjoying the effect that the screen display and his words were having on the new arrivals. She saw hope in his eyes. Perhaps this was the group that could decipher the alien language, he seemed to be saying, but there was also a touch of sadness in his face.

  Lissa glanced at her companions. They seemed a bit put off by Dr. Shastri’s deliberately dramatic style, but there was no denying the real fascination of the alien communication. It was there, something standing outside human history and experience, challenging their ingenuity.

  Dr. Shastri pointed to a group of chairs. “Please be comfortable. I might as well give you my orientation talk right now. I imagine that we’re all anxious to start work right away?”

  Lissa nodded, but she noticed that her companions made no sign as they all sat down.

  “What we do here,” Dr. Shastri began, “is unique. Once every three years we take in a few students with only one purpose in mind—to acquire fresh young viewpoints from a variety of places in Sunspace and set them to the kinds of problems we’re trying to solve.” He paused and looked at them seriously, each in turn. “You are those young minds. Often our chosen students have no background in Artificial Intelligence, languages, math, or codes. But you will complement those of our researchers elsewhere who do. Your job is to play Watson to their Sherlock Holmes, it might be said.”

  “I think that’s a bit insulting,” Emily Bibby cut in.

  Dr. Shastri smiled. “Not at all. A bit provocative, yes, but we do not mean to be insulting. Holmes needed Watson very much. One of two things will happen to you. You’ll have enough and leave to study a more conventional curriculum at another college, or you’ll develop in wonderful and surprising ways. Some of you may even become Holmeses. Now isn’t that worth a try?”

  Lissa felt a thrill at Dr. Shastri’s words. He had described a feeling she had always had—her desire to grow inside. For a moment, as he looked at her, she felt that he could almost see what was waiting inside her to come out.

  “One thing,” he continued. “You will not lose, whatever you decide or achieve, because you will be studying enough here to attain the equivalent of any Liberal Arts or Basic Science undergraduate degree in all Sunspace. Our degrees are highly respected, and we have exceptional tutoring.”

  Lissa glanced at her companions. Their faces seemed less skeptical of Dr. Shastri’s personal style. He was winning them over with his enthusiasm.

  Behind him, on the screen, the green snake was dancing its weird, chaotic pattern. She noticed that the line never broke, however much it twisted, straightened, or bunched up.

  “Are there any questions?” Dr. Shastri asked.

  Susan Falleta. raised her hand. “What do you think it’s saying? Whatcould it be saying? You must have some idea after all this time.”

  Dr. Shastri put his hands together behind his back. “Well, to begin with, it’s saying that they are out there, that they exist, that we’re not alone in the universe.”

  “Or existed once,” Cyril Yoseloff said.

  “Quite right, young man. It doesn’t necessarily follow that they still exist. This signal may be all that is left of them.”

  “Does the signal ever repeat?” Lissa asked.

  “No, not ever, not in the time we’ve been receiving it.”

  Cyril laughed. “Maybe it’s a very long message.”

  “Maybe the signal is chaotic nonsense,” Lissa said, “the point being that they expect a signal back of the same kind, showing that we can understand that much.”

  Dr. Shastri smiled and crossed his arms on his chest. “I’m sorry to tell you that you’re at least the hundredth person to suggest that. We get letters every year with that bright idea.”

  Lissa felt her face grow warm. “But what if it’s true?” she demanded.

  Dr. Shastri gazed at her patiently, and she got the feeling that he wasn’t quite the kindly old gentleman she had thought. “We’ve sent out replies,” he said, “consciously and unconsciously, ever since we discovered broadcasting. But radio is too slow. Even if the nearer stars were inhabited, messages could take a decade and up to go back and forth. The speed of light is not enough. In any case, we don’t think this signal is coming from any of the nearer stars, or from any star that we can detect. It seems to be coming from a blank point beyond Pluto’s Orbit.”

  Lissa felt even more embarrassed, wondering how many others of her ideas were old hat. He hadn’t answered her question, but she was too shy to ask it again.

  “We tried directing a message at where this one seems to be coming from,” Dr. Shastri added, “but we got no response. We wouldn’t get one if that point were very far away, of course.”

  Louis Tyrmand r
aised his hand. “Lissa’s nonsense message idea,” he said, “assumes that the senders don’t expect us to decipher anything. Maybe we should save ourselves a lot of trouble and try something else.”

  Lissa felt a little better. Louis had at least tried to take her idea a step further.

  Maxwell Cater laughed. She looked at him, and he stared back at her with his brown eyes. “If the message is nonsense,” he said, “then the work of the Institute has been a waste of time!”

  “Not at all,” Dr. Shastri replied. “If we could verify even that much, it would be an achievement. Mr. Tyrmand, getting back to your point, what else would you have us try?”

  Louis shrugged and looked shy. “Well, maybe we could go out and try to find the source of the signal, for one thing, if it’s not too far.”

  Dr. Shastri nodded, but said nothing.

  Lissa glanced at Alek. He seemed amused and not about to say anything. Suddenly, she remembered an idea she had mentioned to her father.

  “Yes?” Dr. Shastri asked as she raised her hand.

  “Let’s assume that the signal is chaotic, or even partially nonsense—”

  “That’s a big assumption.”

  “I know, but consider, for the moment—why would it be that way, if it is? And I don’t mean that they simply want us to reply in kind.”

  She looked around. No one seemed about to give her an answer.

  “You have something to say,” Dr. Shastri said finally, “so please don’t hold us in suspense.”

  “Well,” Lissa began, “I think that a chaotic or partially meaningless message would have an important effect in shaping our attitudes toward contact with another civilization. Our failure to decode the messages would give us a chance to live with the idea of contact with aliens, until we took it for granted that it would happen one day, and we would be ready.”

  “That’s interesting,” Dr. Shastri said. “Can you elaborate?”

  Lissa took a deep breath. “Well, I imagine, if this is true, that the time would come when some part of the signal would suddenly become understandable … but we couldn’t really be sure if the nonsense parts had been meant to slow us down, unless we could be sure they were nonsense.…” She heard the doubt in her voice as she finished.

  Dr. Shastri’s eyebrows went up, but he shook his head, and Lissa was suddenly afraid that he was going to make fun of her.

  “Unfortunately,” he said, letting his hands fall to his sides, “some of us have had that hope, that suddenly the signal might change, even though we’ve not given your reason for a nonsensical signal. You’re expressing a kind of faith, I suppose, a blind hope that revelations will come to us. But what do you think we might learn at that point?” He smiled. “I know, my last question is infinitely hard and can’t be answered by anyone right now.”

  She felt embarrassed again. Her ideas were amateurish. She struggled to think of something more to say. “They’ve made it hard for us,” she continued, “because they want us to be ready to talk to them when the time comes, so that we won’t be hurt by a sudden contact with an advanced civilization. We’ll have time to get used to the idea, by having this mystery signal around for a while. Look, why didn’t we pick it up in the twentieth century? We were listening. Why did it become so clear recently? It was a silent universe up until less than twenty years ago …” Again she felt the doubt creeping into her voice.

  “So what are you getting at?” Shastri demanded.

  “I don’t know yet,” Lissa replied impatiently, “but I feel there’s something in this.”

  “Perhaps. Now I think that’s enough for today. I think this gives you a taste of what we’re up against. For most of your time you’ll follow the reading schedule that you’ll find on your screens. This room will be open to you at all hours, in case you wish to come and study the signal display. The Artificial Intelligence will punch up all past receptions for you, in case you wish to make your own comparisons. And from time to time I will discuss things with you. Students from other Institute centers will visit us occasionally.”

  Lissa looked around at the other students as they all got up to leave.

  “Sleep well,” Dr. Shastri said. He turned and left by another door.

  Alek led the way out to the elevator. They all crowded in.

  “So what does anyone think of him?” Max Cater asked loudly as Lissa’s stomach lurched.

  “I think he’s very impressive,” Susan Falleta said.

  Max laughed. “A bit of a fake, don’t you think?”

  Lissa felt that there was some truth in Max’s words, but maybe not all that much. “He digs around in your head nicely,” she said as the doors opened and they came out into the hall that led to the courtyard. She felt suddenly that Shastri had almost pulled out of her what she had been trying to say, but the process had ended too soon. She also suspected that Shastri had been holding things back, as if he didn’t want them to know certain things yet. Excitement filled her mind. More was known than was being revealed. The contact project was about to take a big step forward, and she had arrived just in time

  “After all,” Max continued, “what has he ever done besides discover the signal? Anyone could have picked it up!”

  “How did you ever get in here?” Alek asked harshly. “Don’t you know the man’s work in astrophysics?”

  Lissa looked at Alek with surprise, and smiled. He obviously knew much more than his casual manner revealed. Max did not reply to him.

  They came out into the courtyard. It was dark, and the north wind was blowing hard across the monastery. She looked up at the stars. There weren’t as many as she could see from Bernal, where the view was perfectly clear, but somehow the aura of Earth’s atmosphere gave the stars a strangeness she had not known before. Most of humanity had always seen the stars through atmosphere, twinkling, as if about to catch fire.

  “I like it here,” Lissa said as they crossed to the dorm wing.

  “So do I,” Emily Bibby added.

  “It’s interesting, so far,” Alek added.

  Max Cater chuckled to himself. Cyril Yoseloff and Louis Tyrmand said nothing. Lissa noticed that Susan Falleta was staring at Alek. The group reached the door that went inside. Lissa felt a bit of a letdown as they went down the corridor and each of them dropped off at his or her room.

  “See you tomorrow,” Alek said. He opened his door and disappeared inside before she could answer.

  She came to the end of the hallway, pressed her palm to the ID plate, and went inside as the door opened. As she undressed, she realized tiredly what she would have to do: Her best would have to be even better here. She wouldn’t be able to present just anything that came into her head; too many bright people had hit upon her ideas over the years. She would read and study and listen, and one day the stars would speak to her.…

  |Go to Table of Contents |

  5

  Lissa awoke early and lay in bed looking out at the mountains. The wind, she knew, was frigid out there, and it blew constantly. She stretched, feeling fresh and encouraged, and wondered how she could have felt down at all last night. Everything was still waiting to be accomplished, and there would be enough time to work around every failure, every disappointment.

  She thought of her parents. Morey would be getting ready for his Monday morning physics class. Sharon would already be at the hospital, or she might even have been there all night. They were thinking of her, Lissa felt sure.

  As she gazed out at the piece of blue sky visible through her window, she thought of where she had been born—in a small town on the inside of a spinning hollow ball located in the Moon’s Orbit. The only other worlds she had known were the other space colonies at L-5 and L-4 and the growing Lunar settlements. She had thought more about the colonies on Mars, the asteroid hollow orbiting Mercury, the habitats in Saturn’s rings, than of Earth. Yet here she was on the home world, where everyone had come from originally. For a moment it seemed a backward thing to do, to come here, the place of co
untless old and dead civilizations, where for thousands of years people had warred and died; even in the last century millions had died in world wars. There was no place on the planet where people had not died, where human bones did not lie buried in the ground. Suddenly she felt the age of the Earth, and she startled herself with the fact that no one hadbuilt the Earth; it had condensed out of interstellar materials in orbit around the youthful sun, and after billions of years humanity had evolved from the thin layer of bio-matter that had formed in the outer crust. Some crust, she thought, sitting up and looking at the mountains. But even though the Earth had not been constructed especially for human beings, she realized with curiosity, it had become livable because human life had evolved by adapting to the planet’s environment. The habitats she knew had only taken that environment of earth, air, and water out into space.

  She got up finally and sat down at her desk. Her screen tilted up, and she entered her palm print. A greeting appeared: GOOD MORNING. I AM YOUR PERSONAL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. MY NAME IS AUGIE. HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO ADDRESS ME—WITH WORD DISPLAY OR WITH A VOICE? WOULD YOU ALSO PREFER TO GIVE ME ANOTHER NAME?

  Lissa typed:

  WORD DISPLAY WILL DO JUST FINE FOR NOW. AUGIE IS A GOOD NAME.

  Augie replied:

  THANK YOU. LET ME PRESENT YOU WITH YOUR SYLLABUS FOR THIS TERM.

  A long list of book titles began to march up from the bottom of the screen. The list included science and humanities, current texts, and key works in the history and methodology of contact with alien civilizations, including introductory works on exobiology and exopsychology. Logic, mathematics, and languages made up a separate list.

  Augie added some comments:

  YOU ARE ENCOURAGED TO BROWSE AND READ SECTIONS OF WORKS THAT STRIKE YOUR INTEREST. DO NOT TRY TO BE SYSTEMATIC AT FIRST, BUT MOVE TOWARD THAT APPROACH AS YOUR INTEREST GROWS.

  The rest of the list marched through, and Lissa realized that this part of the Institute was a kindergarten. Elsewhere in Sunspace, the advanced listeners were at work, examining the alien signal with a sophistication that she could only guess at. As the list ended, she realized that the Institute’s educators believed that to break the alien message might require the sensitivity and intellect of all human history and experience, concentrated, of course, in highly motivated, trained individuals. She wondered whether she could ever become one of those individuals. It was possible to fail at this school, she told herself; perhaps not in terms of grades, but by being unable to handle this kind of independent study. Some people needed rigid schedules and clearly defined courses. There was only one way to find out—by trying; and maybe one day they would send her to a more advanced center, where she would work with the finest Artificial Intelligences and colleagues.