by Larry Niven
I went back to work. I had gotten terms for the sciences and mathematics, or some of them anyway. I wanted to do some more mathematics, basically because it was easier, and I had found out how to draw lines, and I drew the Pythagorean Theorem with squares on the edges of a right-angled triangle. The system took a while to get the Theorem, but I found that by making the squares into icons I could get the idea of area, and then I could label the icons and write out the theorem. It gave me a symbol, which I guessed meant that it could prove it, and when I focused on it, it did the old decomposition of a square with four triangles around the edges and then the same square decomposed into rectangles and squares. It seemed to think a proof was a process of moving things around, not just rewriting strings of symbols. I suppose their idea of a proof was different from ours, but it made some sort of sense. That and a few simple Euclidean theorems gave me the word for geometry, or at least Euclidean geometry. That led me to a word for mathematics. Or near enough, at least.
Then I got animals, and built up until I got zoology, then some plants to get botany, and then I got biology by combining them. Or again, something reasonably close. It was a lot more logical than the human way of doing it, or at least what human beings thought they were doing.
Then I made my great discovery. I could reverse my building-up process and dig down instead. One of the icons at the very beginning, which I had not made any sense of, allowed me to decompose a word into a network of nodes, each node being labelled, and also the arcs joining the nodes being labelled by little flags. I could take a new word and break it up into, its component meanings. The networks had another structure too, it came in layers, but I didn’t find out what that meant until a lot later.
I needed to move into something like soft, something involving the social sciences. And how did I find out what poetry looked like? Or music? Or painting? Or dance? Did the aliens have anything remotely like these activities? All human cultures did, and it came as confirmation of some people’s theories that the kzin did too. Something about the abstraction process which was fundamental to probabilistic learning, that being the sort of learning that was forced by evolution, or so it was claimed. I hadn’t got that far to follow the mathematics yet. Certainly kzin told their young stories. Certainly, they played, although their maturity was usually more pronounced than with human beings; the kittens played, but very few adult kzin did. But then I don’t suppose most adult human beings did either. As Marthar had put it, most grown-ups ossified. I hoped I never did. If I felt it coming on, I decided, I’d start on the immortality drugs that very moment. I drummed my fingers on the table and thought. Music. Playing. If only there was a way to play some music at it. But of course there was, if it could hear me. It could certainly detect where I was looking. I lifted up the helmet so I could see my phone and started searching my apps. There was a Sibelius symphony I had collected, there was a whole lot of guitar music, and some Bach, which Marthar had loved. Right. I would give it the Bach ’Cello Suites and see what it made of them.
The music certainly seemed to puzzle it, it started to try to turn them into writing, and eventually gave up. But at least it could hear the music. It was strange to think of the centuries and the light-years that music had covered to be playing at an alien computer intelligence. Then I gave it some more classical music that had come a bit later. The Beatles and Elvis Presley. I played the videos at the screen, not having the faintest idea if the thing was able to make sense of the images. They were made for human eyes, with three basic colors, and even some Earth and Wunderland animals had more or sometimes less. But eyes had evolved at least three times on Earth, quite independently, as well as on the Kzin homeworld and many others. So eyes of some sort were credible, even if they were cameras hooked up to a computer.
Eventually I stopped. It seemed to have listened and perhaps watched in silence. Then it seemed to be hesitant. It used the symbol I had worked out that was something like a question mark, although there was not just one of them, but a whole platoon, all slightly different. Then it gave me a word, flashing. I tried to analyze it. I got some examples of the components and focused on them. I think it was something like a symphony orchestra or a rock band, but made up of tendrils of seaweed, but they might have been a bit more active than seaweed. And it made a noise like the ocean, only maybe a bit more regular. I played the Sibelius, and it seemed to feel this was more like it. I’d always associated the piece with wind over vast forests, but it was closer to the alien music if that’s what it was. I checked some more samples, and they were totally different, some maybe a bit like Chinese music, but most like nothing on Earth. Or on Wunderland, either. At the same time, I quite liked some of it. It was kind of eerie, but interesting.
This was all fascinating stuff, but not really what I wanted to know. I showed the helmet a video recording of a science fiction movie that had hit the network only a year ago. After seeing a sample, the helmet paused, filled the screen with a whole lot of question marks and gave me a new word and a noise that sounded like a waterfall with growls and howls breaking through. It was certainly not a simple thing. Trying to analyze the components gave things like video clips, most of them quite unrecognizable as anything I had seen, but one looked like animals running around a desert. Not so much real animals, as something like cartoons, and the animals changed into other sorts of beasts as they went. It looked like something you might have nightmares about.
About this time, I noticed the bar icon. It had changed. There was a thin black line which had moved a small distance from the right; to the left of it was the golden color, to the right it was violet. Of course, I recognized the significance straight away. I concentrated on the thin black line and moved it with eye movements until it was right in the middle of the bar. The picture changed. I was watching something like one of the videos. I paused it, and interrogated the helmet. It seemed to confirm my worst suspicions. I did some more analysis and checked my guesses. When you get pretty much what you expect, you conclude that you’ve got it pretty well sussed out. I thought for a moment, then exited and took the helmet off.
I looked around. Silver was there, and most of the crew, looking at me as if I had two heads.
“I think I know what is on this bar,” I told them. “I’m not really sure of anything, you understand, but it looks to me as if what you have here is something halfway between an opera and a video soapie. It would take about a month to play the whole thing, and frankly I doubt you’d get much out of it.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“What in hell is a soapie?” One of the crew asked in bewilderment.
Silver explained. “’Tes one o’ they stories the bards tell, on’y played out, like strollers, and stored on video so ye can download it if ye’ve nothin’ better to do wi’ yer time. An epic, like.”
I knew the kzin had their own epics in plenty, but this news certainly did not please the pirates.
“Ye mean the whole bar is nothin’ but a sort of storybook?”
“Well, ’tes no great surprise,” Silver said expansively. He had his head tilted and his eyes wide open. “And it tells us somethin’ important, which is that these here aliens what left the records is type-one intelligence, as the humans call it.”
This was true, but not at all surprising. Theory says there are seven possible types of intelligence, where intelligence is the ability to model the universe in order to make conditional probabilistic predictions. All the intelligent lifeforms we have met have been type one, except for a few tales of encounters with a type four, the so-called Outsiders who sold “We Made It,” the manual for the hyperdrive which Dimity Carmody translated. And all our computer intelligences have been based on our own type, of course. To a type-one intelligence, the universe at our scale looks like a four-dimensional manifold, spacetime, invariant under the Lorentz group, although it takes some time to figure that out. Time flows along a line to type-one intelligence. Other types structure the universe in quite different ways. I know about
this from school, as I suppose most people do these days, but apart from possibly Silver himself the crew didn’t have much by way of education, and this meant little to them.
“Well, ’tes but one bar, there be millions of others,” said Rraangar. This cheered them up.
“Aye, find us one wi’ some technology on it, something we can sell and make a mort o’ money,” another said.
“Come with me,” I told them, and led the way out of the room and down the ramp. They all followed me obediently. At the moment, I had them under control, but it wasn’t going to last and I hope Silver was ready for what was to come.
We went out through the great arch and fifty paces beyond, then I turned and pointed to something I remembered having glanced at before. At the time, it meant nothing. Now, it meant a lot. Over the arch was a pattern that was faint but still recognizable to the eye that had seen a lot of similar things in the past two days.
“What is it? That pattern o’ lines?” the Kzin with a bandage on his skull asked, mystified.
There was a set of eight traces that must have been twice the height of a Kzin, and many times longer. Each trace was the waveform-like script.
I pulled out my phone and scanned through my homemade dictionary. “That one. Do you agree it’s pretty much the same as what I recorded?”
“Aye, it be similar, I grant ye. Be it some kind o’ writin’, d’ye say?”
“Yes. And I know what it means, roughly at least. It says literature, or maybe drama,” I told them, waiting for the wave to break.
They were puzzled rather than angry.
“What the man-kit is tellin’ us is that the whole tower be full o’ nothin’ but storybooks,” Silver said heavily. “Somethin’ like the Te-vaarar or Lord Chmeee at the Pillars. Nothin’ of any interest to us, or anyone else wi’ a grain o’ sense.”
This caused a buzz which turned bitter. “Ye ha’ nothin’, ye ha’ brought us here for kit’s nonsense, Silver, and ye need t’ pay for it wi’ your ears!” one of them screamed. Others snarled. I had, I thought, heard a lot of kzin snarling lately.
They pulled out their wtsais as one and turned savagely on Silver, who was standing next to me and picked me up and threw me behind him in one move.
“Avast there, companions,” Silver said quite mildly. “By the lore o’ the brotherhood, ye’ve no sense at all. All it means is that we are at the wrong tower. ’Tes a small matter. We jest ha’ to find the right one.”
“Which might be a world away, and us wi’ no more than our legs, Silver!” another screamed and moved slowly forward, the others following him.
“Ah, but there you be wrong, Tar-Marrak. D’ye have such little faith? Sure, and ye can kill me and add my ears to your ring, though some of ye will go down first. And then where will ye be? Stranded, that’s where. And me the on’y one can get ye off. No, I ha’ put my brain to some use, while ye ha’ been fillin’ up on rum, ye sots. I knows how to get away from here, I does, an’ ye does not. So suppose ye all put those wtsais away and listens t’ me for a little while.”
“Ah, we’re tired o’ listenin’ t’ ye, Silver, what good has it done us?” one cried.
“What good has it done ye? Why, ye’re alive, are ye not? Which is more than can be said for those what didn’t listen, they’re rotting away now, in various places, I’m thinkin’. And if ye won’t listen now, why, ’tes here where ye’ll rot. On cruel red dirt under a violet sky and a green sun is where ye’ll lay your bones, that I promise ye. For there’s no way out save the one I know of. An’ ye follow me, I’ll lead ye to the true tower, aye, and the pinnace. Then home we go, companions, back into space where the stars are yer allies, and there’s many a world will welcome a spacer wi’ more money than he can dream of. More money than the whole world ye will be standin’ on is worth.”
This made them pause. They growled, but they slowly sheathed their wtsais.
“Then show us how to get away from this damned place, for there’s nothing here for any of us,” Rraangar growled.
“Oh, well, when we ha’ made more money than there is in the whole rift, maybe we’ll be back to take these things. There be a market even for this rubbish, I’m thinkin’, but I agree, ’tes not worth much. On’y a few billions, maybe. Small pickings in comparison wi’ what we shall find wi’ a small amount o’ lookin’, I fancy. So back up into the tower, my fine Heroes, up to the third level. For I ha’ been using my skull, so I has, as ye shall see.”
I had no idea what he meant, except that he was planning to use the discs. How he knew which ones to use I had no idea.
The crew slowly went back to the tower and up the ramp to the third level, passing the second level where I had been learning so much. I suppose Bengar had done much the same as me, during his long time of solitude, and he had learned how to use the discs; maybe he had found out how to read the writing on them.
The crew went first, and Silver and I followed them. I was apprehensive; I feared that Silver knew something I did not, and the possibility he knew where my friends were was frightening. I hoped they kept a good guard, but they might easily assume that nobody could follow them by means of the discs, and Silver seemed to think he could.
We climbed up the ramp and they milled about on the third level, unsure where to go next. Silver calmly took his phone out of a pouch and pointed it at the wall.
“I knew that the ghost o’ K’zarr were an artifact, d’ye see, and I knew that there was someone about the place what could travel betwixt the towers. And it had to be by means of the discs, did it not? And the on’y question was, which one. So I put a few little spy cameras where they would be inconspicuous, but keep watch for me. And there ye see it, young Marthar herself, as I suspected.” He turned his phone so they could see what he was watching as he downloaded history from the spycam. I craned around and saw a tiny Marthar prowl confidently into the second room. The crew cheered, they would never have thought to do anything like this, and their confidence in Silver seemed to have been restored.
“And now we need to see what the camera in this room saw a little later,” Silver said confidently, and pointed his phone just inside the open doorway, on the wall. I could see nothing, but spycams were tiny. You could find them electronically with a scanner, but searching by eye was a waste of time unless you had years in which to do it and a powerful microscope. Again, Silver turned his camera in triumph towards the crew, so they could see the diminutive Marthar step confidently onto one of the discs towards the back and vanish. The crew cheered and rushed towards the disc. My stomach churned.
“Belay that, me hearties, we need a little care. Who knows what we may find on t’other side? Best go armed and go careful, I says. Me and the monkey goes first, and then ye follow, wi’ yer wtsais at the ready. I misdoubts we can go more than one at a time, but follow me briskly arter a count o’ five pulse beats atween ye.”
Which would give him time to kill them all one by one if he so chose. But I knew Silver would do no such thing until it was clear that he had no choice. And then he would dispose of the rest of the pirates without thinking twice about it.
Silver shouldered his way through them, picking me up with no trace of effort. “Back, messmates, and do not step on the wrong disc, or we’ll never see ye again.” The pirates looked at their feet cautiously. Then with me over his shoulder, Silver stepped directly on to the disc that Marthar had travelled by, holding me casually with one arm, the other holding the great cutlass he had drawn and ready. The helmet I had worn was dangling around his neck, held by the snakes, which he had tied into a bow.
We came into a world at sunset; it was cold and getting darker. Some of the brighter stars were shining in the sky, visible through one of the huge windows. I had never been here before, and I prayed that it was a waystation and that Marthar had long gone where Silver couldn’t find her. Silver looked around, grunted, stepped off the disc and put me down carefully. He picked his way towards the door, and I followed him. I turned at a slight mo
vement from the corner of my eye, and the kzin with the bandage was standing on the disc. He stepped off and followed us towards the doorway. We trooped down the ramp, passing the second floor, which presumably held rooms of alien bookreaders, the others following us slowly. Silver led us all out to look at the word over the arch. I stared, but in the failing light it was impossible to read. This one seemed to have weathered more. It looked older, though possibly less damaged at the top than the first tower.
“Can’t make it out at all,” Silver said. “I thinks we’re going to have to go inside and find out what’s in this tower, and Peter, ’tes as well I bought that helmet, for ye may have t’ help us here.”
“Look, Cap’n, there’s another tower o’er yonder.” One of the crew pointed and, sure enough, another tower loomed high against the darkling sky. It was many miles off, its base lost in vegetation, which seemed thicker and darker here. The ground was less red, but just as untouched by man or anything that might have grown crops deliberately. Silver took his phone, squinted at it and took a picture of the faint markings. Then he set the phone to clean up the image and emphasize the script. Then he held it out to me, and I looked at the word. It was just possible to see it now. I checked through my dictionary. It wasn’t there, and I said so. He just nodded thoughtfully.