Happiness: A Planet (38 page)

“That sacrificial vanguard,” Jorge said, “goes some way to explaining their lack of regard for the sanctity of life.”

“Nonsense,” the Senate Member for South Five said. “As
I said before, look at our own sperm production. We send forth millions in the hope that one arrives. Safety in numbers. That fact of our physiology doesn’t figure greatly in our philosophies. Though I think this reproductive analogy could prove to be misleading. It would be as valid a comparison to call the inland sea the Nautili womb and this trail the birth canal.”

“And the savages who fish in that sea,” Tulla said, “butchers and abortionists.”

“
Yes.
Whichever way you look at it one can see why they’re so fiercely protective of their seas.”

Coffee drunk, bloodied and bruised legs ruefully examined, they trooped quietly back out into the silent night. The trail, having passed the shallow apex of the road, was now going noticeably faster. The group concentrated on overtaking it, slowed their pace once they were level with its forward edge.

“I’ve been thinking about your idea of igniting the brown dwarves,” the Senate Member for South Five and Tulla were walking together. “You could easily hurry the process along. Soon as you have a hydrogen-carbon reaction you’d only — on any one of a brown dwarf’s planets — have to sow some blue algae to start a life cycle. Depends of course on exactly what criteria the Nautili need. You do realise they’re probably carnivorous?”

“Probably.” Tulla was tired. “Whatever... it will still take millions of years.”

“Not necessarily. You’re forgetting that the Nautili are capable of moving planets. Nor are they necessarily carnivorous. Many of the smaller molluscs are herbivores. Scavengers in fact. Detritus feeders. Like them the Nautili’s entire armoury could be solely for self-protection.”

Tulla’s phone jangled into the mountains’ silence. Tevor Cade’s voice was an excited scream that all those about Tulla could hear.

“They’re transmitting! They’re transmitting! Long and loud. Like nothing we’ve ever had before. All in their own language. They’re talking to us dammit!”

“Now there’s a happy man,” the Senate Member said.

“How long?” Tulla asked Tevor.

“Half an hour now. Half an hour solid! I couldn’t believe it. I can’t believe it. This is it! This is it!”

All those about Tulla enthusiastically conjectured on the meaning of this latest development. Awen stood apart to film that excited group of gesticulating grey figures on the embankment above the road, above the onward rolling slime trail. He then raced ahead of them down to the end of the road.

The ocean was as calm as the inland sea had been. Awen set up two tripods to film the trail’s arrival. The rest of the group, their momentary agitation abated, came wearily at a pace with the slime trail, took turns to look through the camera that Awen had leant Tulla.

Dawn was whitening the sky when the silver trail reached Awen’s photoelectric cells. Awen, knowing that his alarms would be buzzing in the empty cabin, imagined that he could hear them.

The trail then met the limpid water, and Awen dutifully recorded the first of the black fry to wriggle free of the slime and into the grey-green sea.

Thereafter thousands upon thousands of the black fry, possibly millions, with a quick wriggle left the slime and scattered into the ocean. Jorge Arbatov, Tulla Yorke, the Spokesman and the Senate Member for South Five stood by Awen on top of the embankment, on a cliff above the placid ocean, mesmerised by the spectacle.

When the first rays of the orange sun rose over the yellow mountains Tulla noticed that the fry were becoming fewer. Gradually there were less and less. Except for a few isolated wriggling dots the slime trail was soon almost clear.

“Does the length of the trail, I wonder,” the Senate Member said, “determine the number of Nautili on a planet? Or does the estimated length of the trail predetermine the number of young they produce?”

“Look!” shouted the Spokesman, pointing with his chubby arm.

Coming low over the road from the inland sea was a Nautili ship. Its dark diffuse shape hurtled towards them, passed them and plummeted into the ocean. Awen had dropped into a crouch. Another ship came. Awen turned swiftly as the ship shot overhead, changed cameras with unconscious sleight of hand and filmed it as it plunged into the deep blue sea, immediately turning back and changing cameras to film the next ship.

Face on each ship looked like a black toenail clipping, from the side like a curved teardrop — blunt at the prow, sharp at the stern. Seven ships in all passed them by at five second intervals. Each ship was under ten meters in length. Each ship was black, a blackness that seemed to absorb the light, that was not even reddened by the rising sun; with each ship’s black reflection in the slime trail like a fleeting shadow.

The water became calm where the last ship had entered it. All was quiet except for a large bird calling far off over the mountains.

“How about that?” the Senate Member for South Five rubbed his stubble.

“Dammit dammit dammit!” Awen kicked a stone off the cliff. “Done it again! Didn’t you hear? No bloody noise!”

Now that Awen had drawn their attention to it all that the others could recall was a faint thrumming of the air as each ship had passed. Awen turned groaning in a frustrated circle, kicked another stone,

“Hardly a damn whisper. Done it again!” he shouted at the sea, “All this time and now nobody’ll believe it. Planets!”

Before that weary group with the bruised and bloodied legs reached the cabins, it was decided that the Spokesman would fly back alone to his farm while Jorge, Tulla and Awen would travel in the Senate Member for South Five’s plane to the estuary. After they had conferred with Tevor Cade, they would then join the Spokesman at his farm.

At the cabins Tulla and Awen separated to pack their belongings, stowed their luggage on the Spokesman’s plane, and boarded the Senate Member’s plane. The Senate Member’s plane was the first to leave.

On the plane Awen continued to intemperately demand explanations for the absence of noise from the Nautili ships. He had been offered all the conventional hypotheses, none of which satisfied him. Tulla had attempted to explain the old theories of dynamic propulsion, which she herself did not wholly understand and which, therefore, left Awen none the wiser.

Finally Awen exhausted Tulla and Jorge’s patience, and, exhausted too by their night’s work, they both dozed. Awen took himself forward to sit with the Senate Member.

“Why no noise?” he asked of him. The Senate Member was amused by Awen’s outrage,

“But there was a noise. You’ll notice it when you play your film back. Ever heard a stone thrown past you? It hums.” Awen had never had stones thrown at him.

“Can you throw stones at me when we land?” he asked the Senate Member. “I’ll film it fast. Then if I have missed the noise of the ships I can edit the stone over it.”

Satisfied with that compromise Awen was silent, considering exactly what he would have to do, checking the remaining film in his cameras, changing a lens.

“Couldn’t the Nautili,” he spoke the thought as it occurred to him, “have machines below the water? Machines that threw the ships up?” Awen became excited by his own idea, “That way they’d make the same noise as a thrown stone. Wouldn’t they?”

“Trouble is,” the Senate Member smiled at him, “there are many recorded accounts, independent accounts — though none on film — of their ships having been seen to accelerate. Both within Space and within a planet’s atmosphere. And not one account mentions an increase in noise levels. Even when the ships were exceeding the speed of sound.”

“Damn,” Awen said. The Senate Member laughed,

“I diagnose an incipient case of Nautili bug. You’re hooked.”

Both tired they yawned over the twinkling blue sea. A camera went automatically to Awen’s eye when the Spokesman called them from his plane.

“Just received a report,” he said. “We can detect the satellites again and we’re receiving transmissions from Space.”

“Looks like it worked then,” the Senate Member said.

“My gratitude and congratulations to the Director and Tulla Yorke,” the Spokesman said, asked for the Director’s permission for local reporters to visit the Nautili’s trail.

Awen went back to Tulla, woke her and told her the news. Tulla groggily nodded.

“Your road worked,” Awen tried to rouse some enthusiasm from her.

“Or would they,” Tulla said with a tired smile at herself, “have lifted the blockade anyway once the trail was laid?”

“Have to wait and see,” Awen patted her cheek, “what they’ve said to the Doctor.”

“Might have to wait some time,” Tulla closed her eyes.

Jorge, when woken, gave his permission for the local reporters to visit the trail, suggested that the Spokesman issue an official statement and that the police planes resume their patrols. Awen relayed that message to the Senate Member, who relayed it to the Spokesman.

On landing at the research station Awen was the first out of the plane, ran across the apron to the research ship. On Awen’s entrance Tevor Cade removed some headphones. His haggard features said that he too had not slept the previous night.

“Let’s hear it then.” Awen primed cameras, “From the beginning.”

Tevor Cade obediently keyed some buttons, flicked a switch. The noise that filled the ship was not the hooting whistling cacophony of the Nautili’s last mass transmission — prior to the destruction of the buoys — this was a mellifluous sound, like underwater woodwinds practising their scales. Nor were the oscilloscope patterns on the screens as ragged and erratic as before. Now they flowed harmoniously one into the other.

Jorge, Tulla and the Senate Member had followed Awen into the ship. All were standing in various listening postures. Jorge Arbatov had his bald head bowed and slightly twisted. Head still aslant he looked over to Tevor Cade,

“This is new?”

For answer Tever Cade sombrely nodded. Aware of the onerous task ahead of him he displayed a distinct lack of jubilation.

“I have already identified some of the phrases from their lexicon,” he stopped the recording. “This phrase,” he fingered buttons, “is used quite often.”

Tevor Cade played them a five note sequence from the lexicon. Then he searched up the recording of the transmission, played the same five note sequence, ran the recording on and played it to them again.

“Any idea what it means?” Jorge asked him.

“None. Could be a common verb, a preposition. Could be a common noun, the road for instance. And look at it. A typical phrase. No simple five note variation by anyone’s reckoning. Though this is one of the simpler ones. In one phrase we have five five note chords. Nor is their lexicon progressing from the simple to the complex. The order is according to their rules.”

“When will you know sufficient to be able to transmit to them?”

“No idea. They’ve reverted to the hourly transmissions; and not one of the phrases sent in their last hourly transmission was used in the broadcast. What I think is that they’ve decided on this method of communicating with us and they’re not going to come even half-way to help us. If we’re clever enough to crack it then they’ll talk to us. But there’s going to be no compromise with them. When will the Elysian recordings be here?”

Jorge smoothed a hand over his bald pate,

“Another 41 days yet. Have you tried it through a voice box?”

“Came up with gibberish or blanks. Translated that five note sequence once as ‘are’, once as ‘the’. Trouble is there is no discernible syntax. The results are similar to those produced when a voice box attempts a translation of a machine language. I’ll, of course, have a shot in that direction, if only as a matter of elimination. But I don’t hold much hope. What is required, and I think is our best bet, is a massive interface, incorporating concepts as well as language. But to explore every possibility I am going to need help. More machines, more funds.”

Jorge stretched his thin neck, smiled at Tevor,

“We’ve got eighty years. In that time we should make some headway.”

Tulla, despite her own tiredness and sense of anticlimax, did not like to see Tevor Cade so depressed,

“And if we can talk to them by that time the possibilities are endless. We could, for instance,” she enthusiastically went on, “lay beacons across the eighty year gap, guide them to their new planets. If they can leap galaxies they should be easily capable of crossing that small gap. Providing that they know beforehand that they have a safe destination. Or, in that eighty year gap, if they can move planets to a satisfactory orbit, we can build seas for them to their specification. That’s what we’ve got to get across to them.”

Tevor Cade glumly nodded, and sighed,

“That might prove more difficult than you imagine. Because, supposing we do talk to them, I’ve got the suspicion that their perception of space may not be the same as ours. Our charts of available planets may, therefore, make no sense to them. Nor are the mathematics going to be easy. It’s already a near certainty that they don’t count as we do. I had supposed, assuming they’re cephalopods, added to which they’re now using an eight note musical scale, that they would employ a binary system. But there is no further evidence of it here. Therefore we are going to have to first explain to them how we count before we can demonstrate our computations. And to talk to them I’ll need more resources.”