Collected Short Fiction, page 192
Dry laughter rustled through the audience.
“Perhaps only a MacDonald,” MacDonald continued, “would be, willing to spend his life waiting and listening. I have no son, but for those of you who might be wondering, I do have a daughter who is now a member of the Project staff.
“The real work of the Project, however, is not performed by the director but by the staff. The members sit in front of me and I would like them to stand as a group and be introduced to you—”
After the applause had faded to only a handclap or two MacDonald said, “Thousands of men and women have given their time, their energies, their devotion, their lives to the Project in its nearly a century and a half. Their work has helped the Project reach this point in time and history and I would like to mention each by name, but to do so would take far more than the thirty minutes we have at our disposal. You will find their names in the Project booklet available at the door as you leave and as a tribute to all of them we have placed a symbolic seat at each end of the speaker’s pit to remind us of them and of their indispensable contributions. You may, of course, consider them occupied by any of the past staff members—by John White, for instance, or his son Andrew, by Ronald Olsen or by Charles Saunders or by any or all of them or by the spirit of the past, by the unknown staff members. I think of them as being occupied by my father and my grandfather.”
THE Siberian premier pulled himself heavily to his feet.
“Mr. MacDonald, I have heard it said that apparitions of your father and your grandfather—what some have called a ‘Presence’—have been seen in the computer room of the Project, and I have it on reliable authority that the computer is capable of creating such illusions and that it has been instructed to speak in the voice of your father or your grandfather—”
MacDonald looked steadily up at the big man in his robe and said, “The computer can present holographic displays of information, as you will see before long, I hope, but it is our belief that illusions such as the one to which you refer are beyond its present capability. If some of us believe that the spirits of the past members of the Project linger in the computer in the form of dialogue and other inputs—why, we all need comfort and spiritual assistance at times, and strong men bequeath powerful memories.
“The computer will be taking over the majority of this presentation in a few minutes, for no human is quick enough to interpret the hoped-for signals as they arrive—and this is what the computer has been prepared to do for these past one hundred and fifty years. That preparation and its accumulated information and programs and linkages have made it an incredibly complex creation, but we should not project into it our own fears or hopes. When you hear the computer speak you may judge for yourself whether it speaks like my father or my grandfather or, as some maintain, like me or like a composite of all of the voices it has ever heard. We could instruct it in such matters, but we do not. Perhaps, as I said, we ourselves prefer to think of it as at least a half-conscious ally.
“Now the time has come to turn the occasion over to the computer. Its presentation will consist of vocal communication and holographic displays. It will begin with a short history of the Project. When or if a signal is received either on our own antennae or on those of the Big Net orbiting Earth, with which it is in continual communication, the presentation will be interrupted . . .”
NEWS: An estimated two billions persons were gathered around their holovision sets today or tonight—since the broadcast circled the Earth it is impossible to be precise—to watch the opening ceremonies of the Day of the Reply being broadcast from Arecibo. The other two billion were trying to get to a holovision set . . .
STATISTICS: Half the entering class at Stanford Medical School chose the new, abbreviated ten-year curriculum.
The Bureau of Population today announced a two percent increase in the world birth rate over the same period last year.
The Office of Environment said today that five cases of industrial and three cases of individual pollution had been reported by citizens in the past week. Only ten cases in all were reported during all of last year.
IN ITS recounting of the Project’s history—with pictures, still and moving, within the holographic square that formed itself beside MacDonald—the computer had reached the dramatic moment when the radio telescope in orbit around the Earth—called the Big Net—had recorded a tape which, with others, had routinely been sent to the Project. A long-dead man named Saunders had begun the process of deciphering that had revealed the Voices. But the computer interrupted itself—then said in its own matter-of-fact tones, “I am receiving new signals from Capella.”
The audience stirred and sat erect. All over the Earth men, women and children drew closer to their sets. In the live audience at the Project a man fainted and a woman began to weep.
“The signals I am receiving from Capella,” the computer said, “are similar to those I have been receiving continuously over the past ninety years, but there is a significant difference. The signal is being repeated now for possible interference or signal loss. Now other signals are coming in one after the other.”
The audience leaned forward. “I can now display the new message,” the computer said.
In black and white spaces within the holographic square, the message took shape.
“Messages are being received too rapidly,” the computer said, “for all to be displayed at this time. “I will select a few for your consideration.”
The first message was replaced by others flashed in the square at intervals of about ten seconds each.
“These seem to be building a vocabulary of words and numbers and operators,” the computer said. And a few seconds later: “I now can state within acceptable limits of error that the messages are transmitting a vocabulary. At the present rate of reception a reasonably complete dictionary and perhaps a grammar as well will be available within twenty-four hours. Symbols are being substituted for pictures which no longer are adequate for the complex data to come. I anticipate that as soon as the dictionary is complete the pictures will cease and the information will arrive entirely in symbols and other abstractions, which will raise the level of communication to that of history, narrative art and possible mathematical equations.
“I now am receiving certain simple messages in symbols alone.”
In the part of the audience near the Siberian premier people were turning to each other, discussing something in loud whispers. Others around the group were frowning at the disturbance. The premier stood up again, although some of his scientific delegation were gesturing him down. The Siberian group was more cohesive than most, since Siberia had come late to nationalism.
“Mr. MacDonald,” the premier said, “some concern has been expressed near me that the input of information is proceeding at such a rapid rate that the computer will not be able to handle it.”
“No danger,” MacDonald said.
“What I am saying, Mr. MacDonald,” the premier said, pulling his robe hem impatiently out of the hands of members of his retinue who sought to consult with him, “is that there may be unsuspected dangers involved in letting this reception continue.”
“I assure you,” MacDonald said, “that no danger exists.”
“Your assurance is not enough,” the premier said. “Since our words are being overheard and recorded by this computer I had hoped that as men of diplomacy we might understand each other without telling everything, but now I must speak without tact. The Capellans are technologically advanced and desperate, That combination may threaten a takeover of your computer and all the powers that it controls. The race we are dealing with must be the master of the computer—and who knows what other capabilities of communication and transportation those creatures may have. I ask you to take the precautions of a reasonable man and turn off your machine now while we evaluate the situation.”
A Siberian scientist stood up beside his premier and said, “I apologize for our leader. It is clear that he understands neither the nature of the computer nor that of the messages that have been received.”
MacDonald held up his hand and a semblance of order was restored. “Nevertheless, his apprehensions are natural and may be shared by others in the audience. We cannot entirely eliminate the possibility of an alien program superseding our instructions—but from forty-five light-years away without any prior knowledge of our computer, how it operates, how it is programed, without the possibility of feedback? The probabilities are infinitesimally small. Moreover, we have nothing to fear from the Capellans. That is obvious from the Reply we have just received. Put the Reply on again—”
The Reply again was displayed within the holographic square.
“And the original Message from Capella,” MacDonald said, “the one we received ninety years ago—place that beside the Reply.”
The two were displayed:
NEWS: A world is waiting for an explanation of the Reply received from Capella only a few minutes ago. Director MacDonald is expected to reveal at any moment the significance of the two messages. Premonitions have swept the circumference of the Earth. Some analysts already are pointing out the curiously empty appearance of the Reply.
The worldwide audience is estimated to have reached three billion . . .
NEWTON: I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only a boy playing on the seashore and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me . . .
“YOU will note,” MacDonald said, “that some parts of the two messages are identical and some are different. The most important difference is that the central figure is missing in the Reply. Next most important is the altered symbol for the sun in the upper right-hand corner—it now is the same as the one in the lower left-hand corner and the symbols that describe them are now identical—”
A black astronomer stood up in the front row. “But that is impossible,” he said quietly. “The suns could not have gone nova. We would have had visual evidence by now and the appearances of Capella have remained unchanged.”
“It means,” MacDonald said, “that we made an incorrect assumption ninety years ago when we thought the message said that the suns were going nova. It has troubled us all for a long time and some of us have even speculated about the possibility that seems confirmed now—what the message said about the suns referred to the moment in time when the large Capella suns consumed almost all of the hydrogen in their cores and moved off the main sequence. Their cores began to contract—their surface layers expanded and they became red giants with greatly increased temperature and luminosity. Those are the changes in: size and heat release of their suns: that the original message described.”
“And when did this happen?” the Siberian premier demanded.
“Some time between the recent and the distant past,” MacDonald said. “It could have been a thousand years ago—or some millions of years.”
The audience rippled with the implications of MacDonald’s statements, but the Siberian premier stood unmoved. “And what of the Capellans?”
“Please look again at the messages,” MacDonald said. “Notice that the Reply has eliminated all the so-called words or symbols along the left-hand side—all except one—and that one is the word for Capellan, and it is preceded by what I now judge to be the Capellan symbol for negation.”
“Negation?” the premier asked.
“The Capellans,” MacDonald said wearily, “are dead, gone, cremated. Even the symbols for their planets bear testimony to their fate. The superjovian is somewhat reduced in size from the expansion and heat of the near sun, which now is perhaps ten times its former size—and the smaller satellites of the superjovian all have been consumed except for one Earth-size planet—which we have taken in the past to be the home planet of the Capellans. And it apparently has lost considerable mass, perhaps by the boiling away of its oceans and atmosphere, perhaps by internal explosions.”
“We have been communicating with a race long dead?” the premier asked.
“Apparently,” MacDonald said. “They seem to have set up automated self-repairing equipment to pick up evidences of possible future civilizations and send a message to them. If the equipment received any response—indicating that a technological civilization was listening—it would begin sending—”
“What’s the point of all this if they are dead?”
“I have a message,” the computer said. “It has been sent in the simple vocabulary developed so far and there are some uncertainties in the exact meaning of certain words and phrases. But the message, with alternative readings, follows. I will present it visually for greater comprehensibility.”
People/
civilized beings/
intelligent creatures/
brothers/
to whom it may concern
Greetings from the people of Capella
The first satellite of God
Who are dead/
gone/
destroyed
We lived
We worked
We built
And we are gone.
Accept this, our legacy/
remains
And our good wishes/
kinship/
admiration/
brotherhood/
love.
“The Capellans are dead,” MacDonald said.
“And the Project?” the premier asked. “I suppose that your job is done.”
“In a sense,” MacDonald said. “Now the work of the world begins. The messages the computer is receiving, storing, analyzing, interpreting, contain what we assume to be the entire record of a civilization alien to almost everything we know except intelligence and emotion, a civilization considerably advanced beyond ours—not only its history but, if my assumptions are correct, its philosophies, culture, art, science, technology, theology and literature are now available to us.
“We have received a legacy more valuable than the physical possession of another world with all its natural treasures. The world’s scientists and scholars and everyone else who wishes may explore it.
“As for the Project itself, our search has lasted for less than a century and a half and we have come up with one major find. Who knows what civilizations, what strange and wonderful people, we may discover somewhere between here and the edges of the universe?”
The room was silent. The world paused and then resumed what it was doing.
But it was not the same world. It was a world bereft of a friend, yet not deprived of that friend—that cosmological friend.
And somewhere among the magnetic spots and fluxes, among the miniature relays, among the fugitive flows of electrons, a connection occurred, a memory stirred:
. . . and the silence surged
softly backward . . .
It was like the vagrant thought of the shadow that may have been sitting at either end of the speaker’s pit or of any of the thousands of men and women who had passed through the Project or lingered in its corridors and rooms for years, who remained in some form within the computer itself . . .
The transmission from Capella would continue for days or weeks or months, but eventually the last of the inheritance from another star would be handed over, the messages would cease and the silence would surge softly backward.
And then the radio telescope shaped like an ear of Earth held up on an arm to listen to the secrets of the universe and the radio telescope shaped like a bowl to catch the stardust, would come alive and begin a new search of the heavens for a message from the stars.
By then the computer would be at least half Capellan. No one but the computer would realize this until a half-century later, at about the time the Project would pick up a message from the Crab Nebula . . .
The Voices
Although this is the first James Gunn story to appear in these pages, his name will certainly not be new to most sf readers. He has been writing sf for more than 20 years with about 60 stories and several books to his credit. His most well known work is probably THE IMMORTAL (later dramatized as a TV series). Mr. Gunn, a past president of The Science Fiction Writers of America, currently teaches at the University of Kansas. Upcoming books include a novel, THE LISTENERS (of which this story forms a small part) and a soon to be published history of science fiction.
. . . a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men . . .
HE CAME PAST THE SAUcer-shaped valley lined with metal plates, past the big metal dish fixed against the sky, past the parking lot surfaced with packed white sea shells.
A crater shaped to hold the silence of the stars; an empty cup waiting patiently to be filled . . .
He came out of the vertical sunlight into the dark, through the glass doors into the one-story concrete building, down its cool, brightening corridors to the office marked “Director,” and past the middle-aged secretary to the office she guarded, where a man stood up behind a desk piled with papers.
They come into the corridor to watch the intruder, the pallid scientists and their brown clerks, their faces furrowed with facts, their eyes empty of meaning like blind oscilloscopes . . .
“My name is George Thomas,” the newcomer said.
“I’m Robert MacDonald,” said the man behind the desk.
They shook hands. MacDonald had a good handshake, Thomas thought, almost gentle but not feeble, as if he didn’t have to prove anything.
“I know,” Thomas said. “You’re director of this Project.” A sensitive man could draw inferences from the way he said it; Thomas didn’t care. “You know why I’m here.”
“Tell me again.”
The room was cool and pleasant and spare, a little like the man who worked in it. The air in the corridor had smelled of machine oil and ozone, but here was a smell that Thomas knew better, a smell that made him feel comfortable, of paper and old books. Behind the simple desk were tall book shelves built into the wall, and on the shelves were books with real leather bindings in brown and dark red and dark green. From where he sat Thomas could not quite make out the titles, but from a word or two he could tell that some of them, at least, were in foreign languages.
