Otherness

by David Brin

  Anyway, who wants to make such a claim? Not readers of this collection, certainly. Far from stodgy defenders of some status quo, most of you probably think yourselves quite daring types, on the cutting edge, ready for whatever's new . . . in other words, just the sort who ought to be picked to make Contact with visitors from space, if such an event really happened.

  We and UFO aficionados share a common love of wonder and the possibilities of a vast cosmos. The difference is that we have no magical yearning for mysteries to remain mysterious. Rather, they are puzzles meant to be solved. If alien visitors really are swooping down on us, doing all the sorts of things they are said to, our natural question is . . . "Why?"

  Why kidnap people? Why rattle houses and twirl wheat fields? Why stick needles in peoples brains?

  And most important of all, even supposing extraterrestrials had their own, weird reasons for doing such things . . . why should we put up with it?

  Take my word. Cultists who are ready to face down even the most determined examination of their "evidence"—their photos and eyewitness accounts—wilt under direct assault on purported UFO behavior.

  In simple fact that behavior is indefensible. It is the kind of activity you'd expect from meddlesome lunatics, not mature guests visiting our star system. I don't care how much smarter they are supposed to be, or how much more spiritually elevated. A high-IQ vandal in my home is still a vandal!

  Worse yet, these supposed visitors are refusing to make contact, at a time when confirmation of their mere existence might shake us out of our shortsighted self-involvement, provoking us to spend more on the future—on children and science—than on bombs and beer. Defenders of so-called space visitors plead possible explanations. They are "afraid of us," or we're "not ready for contact." But these excuses sound whiny and weak under close scrutiny. Like the captain of the starship in the excellent, but misunderstood, movie E.T., who abandons a crewmate when threatened with flashlights, these extraterrestrials sound more and more like selfish cowards. Nothing like the sort of non-Earthly sophonts we dream of meeting someday.

  Which brings me to "Those Eyes."

  The story evolved partly from my talk-show answers to ET cultists, and partly from a friend's interesting observation. One day, while looking at the cover of a famous book concerning alien abductions, she commented—

  "Huh! When I picked this up, I thought it was about elves!"

  Sure enough, there were the big, smooth head, the huge eyes, the creepy fingers . . . and I suddenly recalled fairy tales I'd read . . . not the sanitized versions made into Disney cartoons, but old tales collected by the Brothers Grimm, or Native American legends of Coyote, or folklore of the Aranda, the Semang, the Yanomamo and Ibo. In each culture one can trace a common thread never commented on by Joseph Campbell. True, many of the tales are beautiful, spiritual, even elevating, but the nonhuman characters depicted in them are also often capricious, meddling . . . what we by modern standards would call nasty.

  Then it hit me. UFO aliens are elves. They fill the same role, fit the same archetype, occupy the same space on the fringe of the "firelight." Only now, for better and worse, light from our civilization covers the entire planet. So, naturally, fairyland has been pushed out into space!

  I'll leave as an exercise what this implies about the true difference between fantasy and science fiction. Let me just finish with this final thought.

  It might be nice to meet wise, ancient cousins from out there . . . some Elder Race with all the answers to our problems. It is tempting to envision "wisdom" manifested in the ships and forms of near-godlike creatures from far stars. The subject often makes for good fiction, since it enables a writer to metaphorize what is both great and tragic about our situation.

  It is no surprise that millions yearn for Contact, linking the word in their minds with Salvation.

  Yet I find it just a bit insulting to lean on such a belief as a crutch. Humanity climbed to where it is by hard work over thousands of years, and the trial-and-error efforts of countless good and bad men and women. Now, at long last, we are poised to decide if well take the last difficult step—to become civilized folk, honest intellects, good planetary caretakers, elder brothers and sisters to the other species of our world.

  What if a flying saucer did land suddenly? What if some tall, austere, silver-clad ambassador stepped out, made a speech, and sent us into a tizzy of euphoric new-millennia resolutions? Suppose that, after a hundred centuries struggling in isolation to grow up, just when we were on the verge of dramatic success or tragic failure, someone with a shiny suit and patronizing manner showed up to give a lecture or two, and then take all the credit?

  Yes, it might just tip the balance. It might even save us.

  Nevertheless, I'd be tempted to say—"Who do you jerks think you are? Where the hell were you when we really needed you?"

  I don't mean to be a poor sport. In fact, I hope we are gracious enough to be good hosts, however bad-mannered our guests have behaved.

  Still, and despite the fall of the Soviet Empire, I remain a big fan of the U.S. Air Force.

  Keep watching the skies, guys. Keep watching the skies.

  Now for a very different alien-contact story, which first appeared in the shared-universe volume Murasaki. My job in that joint effort was to "establish the scene" on planet Genji, for later authors such as Greg Bear, Paul Anderson, and Nancy Kress. Since the objective was less to weave a self-contained story than to introduce a world, one result was a gentler tale, one that stands alone, but is also a bit less frenetic than the typical space yarn. I rather liked that.

  Bonding to Genji

  It is, fundamentally, a question of balance, Minora reminded himself as he left the air-flyer and set foot on the island that would be his home for many months. Keeping his stance wide and footsteps close to the ground, he moved cautiously in the insistent, heavy pull of Genji.

  Balance is vital when exploring a new world.

  The flight out from Okuma Base had been all too brief, diving down from trans-himalayan mountain heights where humans could breathe unassisted, then swooping over a green-and-red blur of endless fringe-frond forests, skimming above pale, verdant ocean shallows, and finally alighting on this isolated archipelago where, at last, Minora would begin work he'd trained for all his life. It was hard to concentrate at such a moment. Yet he knew the danger. Excitement was an enemy that could rain everything with one false step.

  Careful. You've only been on the ground a few weeks. Even at Okuma Base they've had a dozen broken limbs. Out here a fall could kill.

  During the ten-year journey from Earth, Starship Yamato's drives had been cranked up gradually to one and a third gravities, preadapting three hundred crewfolk to the first alien world visited by humankind. Seldom mentioned during all that time had been the other motive for pushing the engines so hard—to make it first to Murasaki System.

  Uselessly, it turned out. Yamato arrived after the Spacers—upstarts from Earth's asteroid colonies—had already visited the twin-worlds of Genji and Chujo, taken samples of alien life, and usurped the privilege of first contact that should have been Japan's. Then, as if shamed by their impertinence, the Spacers hadn't even waited to hold conference, but fled Earthward on the flimsy excuse that their enviro-systems were strained. The letdown told on Yamato's complement. All that hurrying to get here . . . then not to be the first to set foot, to plant a flag, or to gaze into strange eyes on a new world?

  Encumbered by his pressure suit, Minoru stepped carefully along the blackened trail laid by the lander when it alighted on this loaf-shaped hilltop, hard beside a strange, luminous sea. Behind him the flyer hissed as it cooled—touched by drifting fingers of sea fog, much thicker than the mountain hazes that shrouded high Okuma Base.

  It's a whole planet, after all. There are ten million million places, each as different from the rest as Sapporo is from Saipan. Each a unique story. And the most familiar looking will always be utterly alien.

  The pilot
unloaded supplies Minoru and his partner would need during the months ahead. That included, to Minoru's resignation, many kilograms of nutritionally adequate but monotonous algae paste. One more reason to make friends with the natives, who were now spilling out of their hilltop hamlets to cross swampy farms on their way toward the landing field. From a distance they looked like glossy salamanders, slithering along mud-slick trails. This was a tribe already briefly contacted by the Spacers, who had cataloged a hundred words of local dialect before dashing off.

  Pausing to catch his breath, he put down his twin satchels and glanced up toward this planet's sister world—little Tõ No Chujo, named after the companion of Great Genji, fabled hero of Japanese children's fables—which filled an entire octant of the sky. Chujo was so close, you could make out wispy cloud formations, the dun color of its dry uplands, and the glitter of its midget seas. Here on this part of Genji, where Chujo hovered permanently at the zenith, you could tell time by watching a great curved shadow move across its constant face as the paired planets spun around a common center—their "day" a composite of their linked momenta. The glow given off by Murasaki's Star might be pallid compared with Sol's remembered flame, but it nurtured life on both worlds. And as night's terminator flowed across Chujo's scarred face, it was easy to see why the natives of Genji had never invented clocks.

  A neat explanation. Except it's usually overcast this close to the sea. And Genjians live nowhere else.

  Probably much of his life would consist, from now on, of coming up with interesting hypotheses, only to find later evidence that demolished them. On a new world it wouldn't pay to grow too fond of one's favorite theories. Yet another reason to cultivate balance.

  He heard his partner, Emile Esperanza, approach from behind, breathing hard and carrying more supplies. "Cabrón!" Emile muttered. "Look at them! They sure seem bigger in real life."

  Minoru turned. Swiveling too fast in the fierce gravity, he felt a yanking pain as abdominal muscles strained to compensate. After a subjective decade aboard ship, he wasn't the same youngster who had once set forth so eagerly for the stars.

  The weight isn't so had if you're careful. You can't ever forget, though. Not for a minute. And there's the paradox. Who can remember every minute of every day, for a lifetime?

  Long-term effects of the planet's pull could be seen in the thick trunks and low profiles of the nearby trees, clustered in slope-hugging groves. Gravity was also manifest in the squat, wide-limbed gait of the natives, who used paths made of wooden planks to cross paddies and fern-lined fens on their way to the landing site. And, yes, they seemed more imposing, more vivid than in those jerky holos the Spacers had shared.

  "I guess they look peaceful enough," Emile added. "Maybe the Spacers didn't alienate the locals after all, or infect them."

  "We still don't know for sure cross-infection isn't possible. There are many similarities between Genjian life and ours."

  "And even more differences." "Genji-life uses more amino acids than ours, because there's less ultraviolet." Emile gestured toward Murasaki's Star, which put out just six tenths of Sol's luminosity. "Any of their pathogens who tried to eat our cells would starve of some necessary ingredient. And our bugs would be poisoned by some chemical never known on Earth."

  Minoru knew what that implied. If Earth germs found nothing to eat here, what hope had human beings of doing so? He clung obstinately to hope. "There may be something here that's edible."

  Emile shrugged, as if indifferent. Unlike most of the crew, he showed little frustration at the limited range of ship-grown fare. Emile never speculated, as others did incessantly, what delicacies might be discovered on a new world. "Anyway, none of the Spacers came down with weird plagues. And apparently neither did the locals." He gestured toward the Genjians, who had crossed half the distance without apparent hurry, carrying only a few of the tridents locals used as weapon-tools. Closer at hand, the natives still looked like fat salamanders, whose long front legs gave them a reared, semiupright stance. Yet Minoru felt a chill of alienness. For even a salamander had a face.

  He chided himself. In all honesty, so do these creatures.

  But such a face! Instead of bilateral symmetry—two eyes atop and mouth below—the Genjians had four bulging vision organs spaced at the corners of a square, centered on impressive, gaping jaws. Above, a waving snorkel tube vented the amphibians' excited cries, clearly audible since sound carried well in dense air. Hanging below each Genjian's throat were two slender, tentaclelike "hands" for fine manipulation.

  So strange. Yet these were intelligent beings. On this isolated isle they lived a modest, agrarian-and-fishing existence, tending algal mats and pens of captive, iridescent-finned ichthyoids. But the expedition had spied from space on several cultures possessing metallurgy, and even electricity.

  Hissing and rattling, the translator apparatus made a broad range of sounds as Emile tested its sparse store of Spacer-donated words, augmented recently by two other Japanese contact teams operating in this archipelago. Theirs wasn't even the primary-group opening talks. That, too, lifted some tension.

  "Hey! You fellows okay now? Do you want me to hang around, just in case?"

  Remembering just in time to move slowly, Minoru turned carefully to look back at the lander, where their pilot had finished unloading supplies for their extended stay. "I could help you fellows erect your shelter," Don Byrne offered. As one of the few Occidentals on the expedition, his Japanese was thickly accented and much too formal. Still, he never seemed to mind, and the cheerful Australian had won Minoru's undying gratitude during the seventh year of the voyage by discovering three new recipes for preparing the same old hydroponic ship-fare.

  Still, Minoru wished this assignment had been drawn by a different pilot—Yukiko Arama. There might have been a chance to get a moment alone with her. . . .

  Ah, karma. Maybe next time.

  "Not necessary," Emile told the pilot. "You should return to Okuma."

  Byrne shifted his weight. "Maybe I'll just hang around awhile, anyway." He began unfolding sections of the storage dome, but Minoru noticed Don never strayed far from his rifle, by one leg of the lander.

  He's staying to watch over us. To his surprise Minoru felt no resentment over the presumption, only relief. Emile, on the other hand, sounded irritated. "Well, keep out of the way. And warn us when you're about to take off! We don't want to frighten our hosts."

  Emile began spreading a tarp, on which he laid objects to help identify the Genjian equivalents of nouns and adjectives, toward establishing an orderly dictionary. Minoru opened his own satchel and started doing the same. But as he drew a hammer from the bag, its claw snagged on the material. Caught off balance, he leaned over to compensate.

  Gravity seized the momentary lapse. Minoru flailed and hit the tarp before he could get his hands out. Impact was sudden and also harder than instinct led him to expect. The blow stung.

  Fortunately, despite his brash, gaijin-influenced ways, Emile had the decency not to laugh, or even seem to notice. Overcoming embarrassment, Minoru moved with careful deliberation to push back into sitting position.

  Balance, Minoru thought. I may live the rest of my life on this planet. It certainly isn't going to adapt to me!

  STARSHIP YAMATO CREW DATABASE:

  With establishment phases one and two accomplished, the following teams are now active—

  GENJI EXPEDITION: Okuma Base on Genji-Moonside established atop Mount Korobachi—sixty-five hundred meters altitude—Senior Scientist Matsuhiro Komatsu, commanding. Five domes. Three landers. Three power units. Preliminary survey parties detached to remote islands for early, minimum-contamination contact sessions. Total crew on Genji—eighty-five personnel.

  TÕ NO CHUJO EXPEDITION: Captain Koremasa Tamura has decided to personally lead attempts to make contact with the local inhabitants.

  Minoru slogged through the boggy fields of Green Tower Village, taking samples and supervising as his native assistants labored on a
treadmill linked to a scaffold and massive wooden gearing. That clanking, rattling assemblage, in turn, rotated a machine that projected a cylinder of force into the ground, digging ever deeper into the rich sedimentary layers below.

  It had taken several days to acquire enough local dialect to get across that humans wanted to "hire" the natives. But then the Genjians became eager helpers, not only with the coring but scurrying through shallows and across hillsides to snare countless wriggling things—from burrowers, to insectoids, to flyers with one, two, even three pairs of wings—the first of a multitude of pieces Minoru needed to start putting together a picture of this island's ecosystem. He could hardly complain. He had impressive tools at his disposal, and a Genjian work force willing to labor long and hard for lumps of iron. Metal was precious on these remote islands, where Genji's continental industrial revolution was still but a rumor. Despite temptation, Minoru was careful not to overpay his workers, which would only disrupt their local economy.