InterstellarNet: Origins (8 page)

Within minutes of leaving the Frischs’ apartment, Dean had phoned Bridget. Within the hour, she had booked an evening flight to Frankfurt from Geneva. She brought with Sven Olssen, the ITU analyst who had first identified ET’s radio-frequency replay.

They began the next day with a tour of the old city’s medieval cathedral, after Frau Frisch called Dean to postpone his return until late morning. The excitement the day before had exhausted her husband. Dean scarcely noticed the cathedral, eager to resume the conversation. At the stroke of eleven, brushing aside Olssen’s soft grumbling, Dean rushed everyone into a cab.

“So, Dean,” Herr Frisch greeted them, “you return with friends. These ideas of mine may have some merit.”

Bridget laid a hand on Frisch’s sleeve. “Very much so. Your insights are most helpful. We appreciate your help.”

“I wish I had insights to offer for the entire design.” Frisch pointed at the alien schematic, still draped across the dining room table. “This whole section continues to elude me.”

Dean laughed ruefully. “And an entire United Nations task force.”

Frisch wheeled closer. “Well, as I am sure everyone has seen, this section provides input to the focusing and aiming circuits that drive the phased array. If so, some of this strange area generates direction information. Parts of the circuit seem to do signal modulation and frequency shifting. Mostly we see what appear to be control loops. What and how they control I do not understand. It is so complex, loop within loop within loop.”

They sat staring at the schematic. After a while, Sven said, “If this were software, I would call it spaghetti code. Everything is intertwined.”

“While we’re confessing to odd associations, I can top that.” Bridget traced a circuit loop. “I’m reminded of something far more venerable. Maybe it was seeing the old cathedral this morning, but loops within loops bring to mind wheels within wheels. Pre-Copernican astronomy: deferents, epicycles, and equants.”

Dean’s mind turned neither to software nor Ptolemaic astronomy. Something in the schematic, or in the comments about the design, reminded him in some way of challenges he had faced
before
the task force.

And then the metaphorical light bulb of enlightenment switched on.

11

With only twenty days remaining until ET’s reply window opened, COPUOS called a hearing to decide whether and how to respond. Rampaging Earth First protesters delayed the session’s start by a day.

How had von Clausewitz described war? As a continuation of political relations by other means, Charise remembered. If so, then diplomacy by means of street protests could surely be sanctioned. The real danger was not below, in the boisterous streets. It was here in the United Nations Building itself, where the wasteful, pointless fixation on ET continued.

US-G Kim synopsized the progress since the last COPUOS review. Completion of reading ET’s message. Overviews of the catalogue and the shopping list. Specific reply windows proposed by ET, the first window opening in nineteen days. The opportunity after that lay a full two years off. The purported immense benefits of obtaining ET’s offered technologies. Earth’s “unfortunate” lack of answers to ET’s questions. The race to enhance Earth’s largest transmitters so that ET could detect a detailed message and not only the carrier wave.

Through it all, Charise held her tongue.

Then it was Dean Matthews’s turn. He began, “Many have expressed surprise, and some disappointment, that ET’s message is commercial in nature. That approach has come to make sense to me. Our task force has not been an inexpensive undertaking. Radio telescopes are not inexpensive instruments. Adapting transmitters for interstellar use, sacrificing the use of spectrum…these are all very real costs. Governments have historically found SETI a hard investment to justify. Dialogue with another star, however intellectually stimulating, can quickly come to seem less worthy of financial support than today’s natural disaster or international incident.”

Charise watched and listened intently, distrusting Matthews’s every syllable. It was all false sympathy: a setup. She wondered what his angle would be.

Matthews continued, “Can humanity maintain a purely intellectual conversation in which answers to our questions will come, at best, after a sixteen-year delay? Will we maintain financial support for such a dialogue? I don’t presume to speak for Earth; that is the responsibility first of this committee, and then, based on your recommendation, for the entire United Nations.”

Liar
, she thought.
Your aim is
precisely
to sway that opinion.

He had not paused for her thoughts. “ET, however, has reached a conclusion for
his
society. Communications with Earth are to be self-supporting. ET has thus constrained our decision. There must be value to him in our reply. Perhaps we can also learn about each other’s cultures, but only if our relationship works economically.

“Here is the crux of our problem. ET has more sensitive radio receivers than we, more powerful transmitters, better telescopes. His knowledge exceeds ours in the areas, chemistry and materials science, in which he solicits our contributions. While there may be exceptions, potentially trade-worthy technologies in our most advanced laboratories, we are entangled in ownership issues here on Earth.

“The question becomes, quite simply, what do we have to trade?”

What had happened to deciding
if
they wanted to trade? Charise cleared her throat. “It is a rather delicious irony that the developed world’s knowledge is not commercial.”

Matthews ignored her barb. “We’ve all felt hampered throughout this investigation by how little we know about ET. Well, ET knew less about us when he sent his message than we now know about him. By recognizing how ET jumped to conclusions about Earth, we may discover how to be more realistic about him.

“Effectively, ET could hear us whispering, but not make out anything we said. We presume ET sent us a transmitter design because he inferred from our weak transmissions that Earth could not talk any louder. That’s incorrect. He offers us his sophisticated chemistry and apparently feels, with
no
basis that we can see, that our chemistry must be comparably advanced. That is also wrong.

“The transmitter design is the single largest part of the message. Analysis of the design has been enlightening. It is a more powerful transmitter than humans have cared to build, but we could build a transmitter that powerful if we so chose. The Undersecretary-General has explained how we are working to do just that. The interesting fact about ET’s radio design is not its power, but rather something it took a while to recognize.”

For the first time in his presentation Matthews directly met Charise’s gaze. “It appears that Earth has electronics technology
far
superior to that of ET.”

“Rioting Earth First demonstrators, unsuccessful at blocking the COPUOS hearing for a second day, have shut down parts of Manhattan up to two miles from the United Nations Building. Arrests now exceed two hundred. Sympathy protests are causing lesser disruptions in London, Canberra, Tokyo, Berlin, and Paris.

“Undeterred by but surely not unaware of the violence, the Lalande task force and the committee that oversees it continue to debate whether Earth will reply to ET.”

—AP World News

US-G Kim called a ten-minute break after Dean’s revelation.

Coordinating diplomats, Dean had noticed, was like herding cats. Thirty minutes later the headcount had only crept back to a quorum, with Ambassador Ganes prominent among the missing parties. A delaying tactic or just rudeness?

With a hint of impatience, Ambassador Roderigo reconvened the session.

Bridget flashed Dean a smile of encouragement. Hoping his jitters did not show he got back to work. “I worked at a satcom company before joining the task force, and that background provided a useful insight.

“To be pocket-sized, satellite-capable phones must manage without massive batteries and big antennas. We put the satellites in low Earth orbit to minimize power requirements for the phones. In these orbits, satellites constantly move in and out of sight. It takes a lot of software to sort out which satellite should handle a particular call, and when to hand off a call to another satellite. Meanwhile, the Earth rotates under the satellites, bringing different ground stations into play.”

“Yes, yes, Doctor.” Ambassador Ganes stood in the doorway, back from her extended break. “I am sure your former employer appreciates the advertisement. It isn’t clear that ET would be impressed.”

Two
gibes. Dean ignored both. “Because satellites move along their orbits while ground stations rotate with the Earth, there are continuously varying Doppler shifts over various links. The software must adjust.

“You will recall that ET’s signal maintained a constant wavelength. Achieving that constancy took correction in real time for the relative motion of Lalande 21185 and our sun, for the orbital motion of our planets, and for the rotation of our planets. The calculations resemble those with which I am familiar from the design of satellite constellations.

“Task-force analysts have closely studied ET’s transmitter design. Two observations surprised them. First, ET’s electronics are based not on transistors and integrated circuits, but on vacuum tubes. The second conclusion was more amazing, still. ET does not employ digital computing.”

At
vacuum tubes
the gallery had erupted in whispers. At Dean’s second revelation, the murmurs became a roar. US-G Kim glared at the visitors’ gallery. “If necessary, I will clear the room of all staff and invited guests.” He motioned at Dean to continue.

Dean waited till the whispering faded into the street noise. “I mentioned my background only to make a point. Doppler correction is familiar to me. The geometry can be messy, but the correction is easily programmed into a standard digital computer. Let’s contrast that with ET’s approach. He has a distinct analog control loop for each component of motion: his planet’s orbit, his planet’s rotation, Earth’s rotation, and so on.” More precisely, and of doubtful interest to the diplomats, ET’s transmitter employed coupled feedforward servo controls.

“ET’s system works, or we would never have heard him. That said, by our standards his approach is extremely cumbersome. Each correction factor is provided by a physically separate circuit, each circuit involving many vacuum tubes. Tubes are inherently less reliable than transistors, and that makes ET’s circuits prone to component failures.”

Police bullhorns and then a burst of gunfire (warning shots, Dean hoped) drowned out his words. In the momentary lull after the shots he heard sirens. Then the din returned, louder than ever. Ambassadorial scowls multiplied.

Dean dared to hope Earth First had overplayed its hand.

Raising his voice, he pushed on. “ET’s most advanced technologies appear to be chemistry and materials science. In these areas ET clearly exceeds human knowledge. But ET does not know what he does not know: solid-state physics. He probably never seriously investigated digital computing. Our pre-transistor computers were unreliable novelties, room-sized monstrosities with less computing capability than in my wristwatch. Digital computing simply isn’t practical without solid-state devices.”

And the protestors got louder still.

The supposedly multicultural rally on the streets had but one theme: resistance to change. Some inarticulate remembrance of Dean’s time on the Media committee nagged at him. Charise Ganes’s belligerence was part of the same unrecognized message.

He took a deep breath. “At this time, I’m privileged to introduce the task force’s recommendation. We
should
respond to the Lalande message, starting transmission in nineteen days as per ET’s request. We
should
order technology from ET’s catalogue.

“But as for payment, we propose to ignore ET’s shopping list. We would instead send introductory instructions in computing and the design of a few simple solid-state devices. We need not offer anything proprietary. Our accompanying catalogue will hint at more advanced device designs and digital algorithms.

“I would be surprised indeed if ET failed to find these new technologies far more attractive than anything he has requested.”

■□■

In a logical world, the presentation was complete. At the United Nations, the fun had only begun. As Roberto Ramos, the Chilean ambassador, was being recognized, Alex Klein tidied a sheaf of papers to signal a planted question.

“Dr. Matthews. A point of clarification, please. Does the task force propose that Earth’s trade goods be elementary computing and electronics techniques?”

“That is our recommendation, Ambassador,” Dean answered.

“Technology we all,” and here Ramos’s arm sweep encompassed the many nations comprising COPUOS, “have mastered and from which we have moved on.”