Infinity Beach

by Jack McDevitt

  They debated endlessly how best to establish a syntax and vocabulary. “We don’t want to play more number games,” Gil Chase reminded them.

  They knew the two technologies had a common system for exchanging audio and visual signals. “We can use pictures in the beginning,” Eric Climer said. He was a linguist. “But it would have been helpful,” he complained to Kim, “if I had known in advance what this was about. I could have brought the proper software.”

  They formulated lists of questions to ask once a common language had been devised. How far back can you trace your history? To even begin to phrase that question they’d have to work out a joint system for measuring time.

  Where are you from?

  “No,” said Maurie, “don’t ask that. It sounds too much like intelligence-gathering.”

  “What do we do,” asked Sandra, “if they put that kind of question to us?”

  “Considering what’s already happened,” said Paul, “we’d better avoid giving them any information of that nature.”

  Kim nodded. “I agree.” She didn’t want to be responsible for the arrival of an invasion fleet if they encountered a worst-case scenario.

  “But if they get the idea we don’t trust them,” said Matt, “how can we expect them to trust us?”

  “We can’t,” said Mona. “But we don’t need a great deal of mutual trust. At least not in the beginning. They’ll certainly understand our reluctance to divulge that kind of information. I think our best approach to this is to be honest.”

  “So what other questions,” asked Terri, “do we want answered?”

  “Is there anyone else?” said Ali. “Have they found anybody else out there?”

  “Your ships seem to have armaments. Why?”

  “What’s your explanation for order in the universe? For the existence of the universe itself? Why isn’t there nothing?”

  “Have you been able to establish the existence of alternate universes? If so, have you been able to learn anything about them?”

  “Do you believe life has a spiritual dimension?”

  “How are you going to define ‘spiritual’?” asked Mona. No one had any idea.

  “What do you do with your leisure time?”

  “Do we really care about that?” asked Terri. “Why would we want to know whether they play bridge?”

  Maurie, who’d proposed the question, shook his head in dismay. “What people do with their leisure tells us a great deal about the nature of a society, what its values really are, for example, as opposed to what its members say its values are.”

  “What if they ask us that question?” said Mona. “Are we going to admit that ninety-nine percent of our population sit around indulging in electronic fantasies?”

  “Best not do that,” said Gil. “If these things are hostile, that would only invite attack.”

  “So we lie,” said Matt.

  “Sure.” Gil looked frustrated. “We don’t want to create problems down the line. Maybe we should be thinking more about what they’re going to ask us than vice-versa. Because they may think the same way we do. So what do we say when they ask questions designed, for example, to test our technological knowledge?”

  “I don’t think we need to worry too much about that,” said Paul. “All they have to do is shoot at us and see how quickly it takes us to leave town.”

  Nobody seriously believed there’d be a biological presence at Alnitak, but everyone was convinced the Mac would find an automated outpost of some sort, a scanner watching for one of the giant ships to reappear. There was no way humans would not have established one, and nobody could imagine an intelligent species simply abandoning interest in a place in which two encounters had occurred in recent decades. Although it occurred to Kim that Woodbridge would have forced just such an abandonment had he been able. What did that say about human governments?

  They agreed, by a vote of seven to three, that any effort by the celestials to attach an object to the hull would be deemed hostile, and the contact attempt would be terminated at that point. Ali explained to Kim later that he didn’t care much about the outcome of that particular vote since the safety of the ship was his responsibility, and she should not doubt for a minute that he would not require anybody’s authorization to clear out if he didn’t like any aspect of the behavior of their prospective clients.

  If an object actually arrived despite their best efforts, and secured itself to the Mac, they would send the robot out to break it loose. To ensure it didn’t circle back, the robot would burn it with a few thousand volts before tossing it aside. No hatch would be opened at any time after the operation commenced. The robot was dispensable and would be left behind.

  If nothing appeared to either challenge or welcome them, they would broadcast a greeting and wait things out. The Mac carried enough supplies for a ten-week stay in the region. If there were no developments during that time, they’d leave an automated scanner and broadcasting station of their own and return home.

  As could be expected, a few shipboard romances developed. Paul and Terri paired off; Eric created a bit of tension by running dalliances with both Mona and Tesla. Matt, who was married, either refused to take advantage of Sandra Leasing’s obvious interest or he did it with sufficient discretion that Kim saw no evidence of it.

  Ali remained professionally courteous to everyone, but he maintained a discreet distance from the women. During the course of a wandering discussion one night in the rec room, he commented casually that emotional attachments between captains and passengers were not conducive to good order.

  Kim was well below everybody else’s age, and she knew her companions perceived her as little more than a child. It was just as well; she was still too close to Solly to think about any kind of relationship. And considering the cramped conditions on board the Mac, everything became public within a few hours anyhow.

  During the final days prior to arrival at Alnitak, tension began to build.

  The renowned twenty-fourth-century psychologist Edmund Trimble had argued that extended life spans were detrimental to human progress. For one thing, he said, life tended for most people to consist of a series of missed opportunities. Consequently, after seventy or eighty years, people became not only inflexible, but increasingly cynical. As it had turned out, Trimble’s fears were exaggerated but not altogether groundless. The average age for the members of the contact team, not counting Kim or Ali (who was only 41) was 126. The general conviction, based on all these years of experience, was that something would go wrong. What they expected to go wrong was that no one would be waiting at Alnitak: that the opportunity had been missed and that all they would have to show in the end would be the Valiant, the Hunter logs, and maybe another intruder chasing them around.

  On the last night before arrival, they celebrated Kim’s thirty-sixth birthday. They broke out a few bottles and toasted her. Gil provided a cake, they put up ribbon, and enjoyed a celebration whose level of festivity, it seemed to her, far exceeded the significance of the event.

  33

  Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing,

  Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness,

  So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another,

  Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.

  —LONGFELLOW, Tales of a Wayside Inn, 1863 C.E.

  Kim was sitting with Ali in the pilot’s room when they made the jump back into realspace, into the Alnitak region. She heard the oooohs and aaaahs downstairs as everyone got a look at the view.

  The captain’s manner throughout the flight had been detached, unemotional, under control. The sort of perspective you’d want in an emergency. She was consequently pleased to see him catch his breath when the great illuminated star-clouds appeared in the windows. He turned the lamp down and got up from his chair.

  “It’s why the Hunter stopped here, Ali.”

  “The hand of the Almighty,” he said. “Still at work.
”

  Kim had grown familiar with the instruments on the Hammersmith, and she’d made it her business to acquaint herself with those of the Mac. Especially with the long-range sensors, which were set to sound off at the first indication of an object moving contrary to orbital requirements. Her eyes went to them now, looking for telltales but finding none.

  Ali stood for several minutes in the crystalline light, and then directed the AI to adjust course for the gas giant. He turned toward Kim. “Good luck,” he said.

  “I hope so.”

  She summoned the team to the mission center, where they briefly reviewed the plan. Matt asked whether there’d been an incoming transmission yet.

  Yet. Now that they were here it did seem inevitable. “No,” she said. “We haven’t heard anything.”

  They began broadcasting a visual program. It consisted of a portion of the numerical interchange between the Hunter and the Valiant, and the recorded Mona Vasquez, in her most inviting manner: “Hello. We are happy to have the opportunity to greet you and to say hello.”

  They’d deliberately repeated the “hello” in an effort to imply its use. “It would be,” Maurie said in his somewhat pretentious manner, “an appropriate beginning.”

  “We hope,” Mona continued, “to establish a long and fruitful collaboration for both of us. We look forward to exchanging ideas and information with you at the earliest opportunity.”

  Mona added that she and her friends were a long way from home, and that they had made the voyage specifically in the desire to meet the entities who had been seen in the area of Alnitak a long time ago. She emphasized the star’s name. Its spelling and its picture appeared beside her.

  She got some mocking applause when the broadcast finished. There was a sixty-second delay and it started again.

  No one expected an immediate response, but Kim remained hopeful at the beginning. Although after the first few hours, when it became apparent that contact would not come quickly, she grumbled inwardly, fought off discouragement, and went to lunch.

  The team members drifted idly through the ship, anxiously awaiting whatever might happen. Most congregated around windows, and Kim found Mona in one such location holding forth to Terri and Maurie.

  “What happens here,” she was saying, “is that you get a better sense of the sky’s depth. It’s not like Greenway or Earth, where all you see at night are stars and moons, and it could all be just a shell with holes poked in it. Here you look out and you see those clouds and you know they go on forever. It would have to have a radically different impact on a developing civilization.”

  “If there were one,” said Maurie.

  “That’s right,” said Terri. “And there isn’t. You wouldn’t get any local life-forms out here. Too much UV.”

  “It wouldn’t have to be orbiting Alnitak,” said Mona. “It could be parked up there anywhere. Just give it a little distance, and it loses the radiation and keeps the view.”

  They were seated in a circle. Kim sank into a chair.

  “I wonder,” Maurie said, “what kinds of societies would have developed if Earth had had skies like this?”

  “Religious fanatics,” said Kim.

  Terri chuckled. “They got that anyhow.”

  Mona shook her head. “I’m not sure you’d get religious zealotry under these kinds of conditions. I think it would be easier to see the mechanical aspects of the environment, which aren’t so obvious at home.”

  “Kim.” Ali’s voice, from the pilot’s room. “Message for you.”

  “On my way,” she said.

  When she got there, the heading was onscreen:

  TO: GR 717 Karen McCollum

  FROM: SOA

  SUBJECT: Artifact

  Personal for Dr. Brandywine

  SOA was the Secretariat for Off-World Affairs. “Run the text, Ali.”

  “You can read it in your quarters if you like, Kim.” He looked worried. “Is this their reaction to your dealings with Woodbridge?”

  “Probably.” She smiled. “It’s too late for them to do much now. Run it.”

  Dr. Brandywine:

  If you have the object with you, be aware that failure to deliver it immediately into official hands will result in prosecution. No further warning will be sent.

  Talbott Edward

  Edward was Woodbridge’s boss. The man who’d given her the Brays Stilwell Award.

  “How does he expect us to do that?” asked Ali. “He knows where we are.”

  “C.Y.A.”

  “I’m not so sure.” His dark eyes were hidden in the half light.

  “What else?”

  “I think we’ll be having company.” He swung around to face her. “Do you really intend to give the microship back to its owners? Its original owners?”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “Easy. Once we find them.”

  “Tell me how.”

  “Just lean out the door and hand it to them.”

  “Isn’t that dangerous? These are the same creatures who tried to kill you in the Severin Valley.”

  “I think that was an anomaly. I think the thing that got stranded became deranged.”

  “I hope they’re not all deranged.”

  “They have to be rational, Ali. Or they wouldn’t be out here.”

  She heard a sound deep in his throat. “Maybe,” he said. “But that sounds like an epitaph to me.”

  They settled into a routine during the first few days, working on individual projects, watching the sensor screens. Maurie and Terri never tired of standing by the windows and looking out at the view. To Kim it seemed as if the emptiness looked back. Gradually the assumptions that had held sway throughout the flight—that contact was virtually inevitable, that the celestials would be waiting anxiously for the appearance of another giant ship—came to seem first unduly optimistic, then doubtful, and finally hopelessly naive. They began to speculate that the opportunity had been lost. Fumbled away by the clumsiness of the first expedition. Kim even overheard some comments that suggested she and Solly might have done better if they’d thought things out a bit.

  The current situation, the silence that roared at them from the empty sky, was perceived as somehow her fault. If she had gone to them in January with what she knew instead of coming out here alone, they might have salvaged everything.

  She saw it in their eyes, heard it in their voices. And as the days dragged on, and the gas giant came to fill their windows, their attitude toward the Valiant changed. If it had once been a unique artifact, a link with another civilization, it now became simply an oddity thrown up by the retreating tides of history, a symbol of human incompetence.

  “At least,” said Paul, “we know now we’re not alone.”

  “Maybe it’s just as well if we don’t find them,” said Maurie.

  The remark brought frowns from everyone.

  “Why would you say that?” asked Gil.

  “How old would you guess their civilization is?”

  Matt let his impatience show. “We’ve no way of knowing,” he said.

  “They could easily be a million. Six million. What’s a civilization that’s been around that long going to look like? Do we really want to talk to them?”

  “Why not?”

  Maurie took a deep breath. “What could we possibly have to say to them that they’d be interested in?”

  Kim was playing chess with Mona when Ali buzzed her. “Please come up for a minute.”

  She left the game and climbed the stairs to the top floor. When she walked into the pilot’s room, he was wearing a strange expression. “We’re being scanned,” he said.

  “By whom?”

  He shrugged. “No idea.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Don’t know that either. We can’t track it back. But somebody’s keeping an eye on us.”

  “You think the fleet has arrived?”

  “Maybe. But I doubt it’s any of our people. If it is, they’re p
retty good. The scopes don’t show anything out there.”

  The screens were blank. “So what are we saying? That we’ve found what we came for?”

  “I’m only saying that the technology behind the scan is of a very high order.”

  “Marvelous,” she said, clapping him on the back. “What can they learn about us?”

  Ali propped his jaw in his palm. “Which way we’re headed, of course. What kind of engines we have. Maybe they’re able to do an analysis of light leakage. Hard to know what their limits might be. If it’s really celestial. This is where it would have been helpful to have dissected the microship.”

  Kim ignored the implication. “Is there a chance they can see into the ship?”

  “I don’t think anything we have, or anything anybody could devise, could penetrate this kind of hull. Mac’s hull. It’s designed to survive in high-energy environments. We could take her in pretty close to Alnitak, if we wanted, without frying the help. So no, they wouldn’t very likely be able to do that. But they’re probably able to get a sense of our electronic capabilities, of armaments or lack thereof, of engine architecture, that sort of thing.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “Anything else?”

  He shrugged. “Listen, don’t get so carried away with this that you forget they have a tendency to bite. Okay?”

  She returned to the mission center, called everybody in, and passed the news. Somebody’s watching us. The reaction was mixed, a sense of exhilaration combined with a dash of disquiet. Paul recommended they begin broadcasting the second-phase package. The others agreed and Kim passed the instruction to Ali. A minute later he reported that transmission was underway.

  The second-phase package contained a vocabulary list with pictures and pronunciations of 166 objects that the team hoped would be common to the experience of both species. They included words like “star,” “planet,” “cloud,” “river,” “ship,” “rain,” “forest,” “lamp.” Eric, who claimed to have gone to acting school and in any case had exquisite diction, had provided the voice.