Memoirs of a Space Traveler (15 page)

“If they begin to talk…”

“Our language arose in the course of social evolution and conveys information about analogous—or similar—states, for we all resemble one another. Because our brains are alike, you suspect that when I laugh, I feel what you feel when you’re in a good mood. But you can’t say that about
them
. Pleasures? Feelings? Fear? What happens to the meaning of such words when they are transferred from a blood-fed human brain to a row of electrical coils? And what if even those coils are absent, if the constructional similarity is done away with completely—what then? If you want to know: the experiment has already been carried out.”

He opened the door we had been standing in front of. We entered a large, white room lit by four lamps. It was warm and close, like a greenhouse. In the middle of the tile floor rose a wide metal cylinder from which thin pipes sprouted in various directions. A large, bulging lid hermetically sealed with a screw wheel gave it the appearance of a fermentation vat. On its sides were smaller portholes, round and tightly shut. The cylinder—I noticed this now—rested not on the floor but on a platform made of sheets of cork interlaid with sponge mats.

Diagoras opened one of the side portholes and pointed; I leaned over and peeked inside. What I saw defied all description. Behind the thick round glass spread a viscous structure consisting of thick stalks and gossamer bridges and festoons. The whole mass, completely motionless, remained mysteriously suspended: to judge from the consistency of that pulp or ooze, it should have sunk to the bottom of the tank. Through the glass I felt a light pressure on my face, as if from hot, stagnant air; I even smelled—though it might have been my imagination—the delicate, sickly-sweet odor of decay. The oozy substance shone as if there were a light somewhere within it or above it, and its thinnest filaments had a silvery gleam. Suddenly I noticed a slight movement. One gray-brown tentacle covered with pustular swellings rose and glided, through the loops of others, in my direction. With peristaltic spasms, as of slimy, repulsive intestines, it came up to the glass, pressed against it opposite my face, and made several feeble crawling motions before becoming still. I had the eerie feeling that this jelly was looking at me. A thoroughly disagreeable feeling, yet I was unable to pull away, as though out of shame. At that moment I forgot about Diagoras, who was watching me from the side, and about everything I had experienced thus far. With growing bewilderment I stared at the fungous ooze, absolutely certain that what faced me was not just a living substance but a real being. Why, I cannot say.

Nor do I know how long I would have stood and stared had it not been for Diagoras, who took me gently by the arm, closed the porthole, and turned the screw wheel hard.

“What is it?” I asked, as if he had wakened me. Only now came my reaction; it was with nausea and confusion that I looked at the fat scientist and the hot copper tank.

“A fungoid,” replied Diagoras. “The dream of cyberneticists—a self-organizing substance. I had to give up traditional materials. This one proved better. It’s a polymer.”

“Is it—alive?”

“What can I tell you? It has neither protein, nor cells, nor metabolism. I accomplished this after an enormous number of tests. To put it briefly, I initiated a chemical evolution. Selection was to give rise to a substance that would react to every external stimulus with internal change, not only to neutralize the stimulus but to free itself from it. First I exposed the substance to heat, magnetic fields, and radiation. But that was just the beginning. I gave it increasingly difficult tasks; for example, I used definite patterns of electric shocks from which it could free itself only by producing a specific rhythm of currents in reply… In this way I taught it conditioned reflexes, so to speak. But that, too, was a preliminary phase. It soon began to universalize; it solved increasingly difficult problems.”

“How is that possible, if it has no senses?”

“To tell the truth, I don’t understand it fully myself. I can only give you the principle. If you put a computer on a cybernetic ‘tortoise’ and let it into a big hall, equipped with a quality-of-function regulator, you will obtain a system devoid of ‘senses’ but which reacts to any change in the environment. If there is a magnetic field somewhere in the hall exerting a negative effect on the operation of the computer, it will immediately withdraw and search for a spot where such disturbances do not occur. The constructor need not even anticipate every possible disturbance, which may be mechanical vibrations, heat, loud sounds, the presence of electrical charges—anything. The machine does not ‘perceive,’ because it has no senses, so it does not feel heat or see light, but it reacts as though it does see and feel. Now, that’s only an elementary model. The fungoid”—he put his hand on the copper cylinder, which reflected his image like a grotesquely distorting mirror—“can do that and a thousand times more. My idea was to create a liquid medium filled with ‘constructional elements,’ from which the original organization could draw and build as it wished. That’s how the fungoid arose.”

“But what is it exactly? A brain?”

“I can’t tell you that; we have no words for it. To our way of thinking it isn’t a brain, since it doesn’t belong to any living creature, nor was it constructed to solve definite problems. However, I assure you it thinks—though not like an animal or a human being.”

“How do you know that?”

“It’s a long story. Allow me…”

He opened a door that was metal-plated and extremely thick, almost like the door of a bank vault; the other side was covered with sheets of cork and the same spongy material that supported the copper cylinder. In the next, smaller room there was also a light; the window was blocked with black paper, and on the floor, away from the walls, stood the same type of red copper vat.

“You have two…?” I asked, stunned. “But why?”

“A variant,” he replied, closing the door. I noticed how carefully he did so.

“I didn’t know which of them would function better. There are important differences in chemical structure and so on… I did have others, but they were no good. Only these two passed through all the stages of the selection process. They developed very nicely,” he went on, putting his hand on the convex lid of the second cylinder, “but I didn’t know whether that meant anything. They became quite independent of changes in their environment; both were able to guess quickly what I demanded of them—in other words, to react in a way that freed them from harmful stimuli. Surely you’ll admit that it’s something”—he turned toward me with unexpected vehemence—“if a gelatinous paste can solve with electrical impulses an equation given it by means of other electrical impulses…?”

“Of course, but as for thinking…”

“Maybe it’s not thinking,” he replied. “Names are not important here; the facts are. After a while both began to show increasing—what should I call it?—indifference to my stimuli, unless their actual existence was threatened. Yet my sensing devices registered exceptionally intense activity during this time, in the form of series of discharges.”

He took from the drawer of a small table a strip of photographic paper with an irregular sinusoidal line.

“Series of such ‘electrical attacks’ occurred in both fungoids, apparently without any external cause. I began to study the matter more systematically and discovered a strange phenomenon: that one”—he pointed to the door leading to the larger room—“produced electromagnetic waves, and this one received them. When I realized that, I noticed at once that their activity alternated; one was ‘silent’ while the other ‘broadcast.’”

“What are you saying?!”

“The truth. I immediately shielded both rooms—did you notice the sheet metal on the doors? The walls are also covered with it, but they are painted. This prevented radio contact. The activity of both fungoids increased, then fell almost to zero after a few hours. But the next day it was the same as before. Do you know what happened? They had switched to ultrasonic vibrations—they sent signals through the walls and ceilings…”

“That’s why you have the cork!”

“Exactly. I could have destroyed them, of course, but what good would that have done me? I placed both containers on sound-absorbing insulation. In this way I broke off their communication again. Then they started growing … until they reached their present size. They became almost four times larger.”

“Why?”

“I have no idea.”

Diagoras stood by the metal cylinder. He did not look at me; as he spoke, he repeatedly put his hand on the arched lid, as though to check the temperature.

“Their electrical activity returned to normal after a few days, as if they had succeeded in re-establishing contact. I eliminated thermal and radioactive radiation, installed every possible shield, screen, and proofing, used ferromagnetic sensors—all to no avail. I even moved this one down to the basement for a week, then took it out to a shed, which you might have seen—it’s a hundred feet from the house. But their activity during the whole time did not undergo the slightest change. The ‘questions’ and ‘answers’ that I registered and which I am still registering”—he pointed to the oscillograph under the shaded window—“have gone on continuously in series, night and day. They work incessantly. I tried to break in on their signaling with false ‘messages.’”

“You faked the signals? Then you know what they mean?”

“Not for the life of me. But you can record on tape what one person says in an unknown language and replay it for someone else who also speaks that language. That’s what I tried to do, and failed. They still send each other the same impulses, those damned signals—but in what manner, I have no idea.”

“It could be an independent, spontaneous activity,” I observed. “You have no conclusive proof, after all.”

“In a sense I do. You see, the time is also recorded on the tapes. Thus a clear correlation exists: when one is broadcasting the other is silent, and vice versa. Lately the intervals have increased considerably, but the pattern hasn’t changed. Do you realize what I’ve done? One can guess the plans, the good or bad intentions, the innermost thoughts of a silent person from his facial expression and his behavior. But my creations have no face or body—just as you postulated before—and now I stand helpless, without a chance of understanding. Should I destroy them? That would be an admission of failure! They don’t want contact with man—or is that as impossible as contact between an ameba and a turtle? I don’t know. I don’t know anything!”

He stood by the gleaming cylinder, his hand on its lid. It was no longer me he was speaking to; he could even have forgotten I was there. Nor did I hear his last words—my attention had been drawn by something odd. As he spoke, with increasing vehemence, he kept lifting his right hand and placing it on the copper surface; something about the hand seemed not right. Its movement was unnatural. Whenever his fingers came near the metal, they shook for a second—shook rapidly, unlike a nervous tremor. But before, when he gestured, his movement had been steady and decisive, with no trace of shakiness. I looked at his hand more closely now; amazed and shocked, yet hoping that I was mistaken, I stammered:

“Diagoras, what is wrong with your hand?”

“What? What hand?” He looked at me in surprise. I had interrupted his train of thought.

“That,” I pointed. He brought his hand near the shiny surface. It began shaking. Open-mouthed, he held it up to his eyes. The shaking immediately stopped. Once more he looked at his hand, then at me, and very cautiously, millimeter by millimeter, brought it up to the metal. When the fingertips touched the surface, the muscles started twitching slightly, and the twitching spread to the entire hand. He stood still, an indescribable expression on his face. Then he clenched his fist, propped it on his hip, and moved his elbow toward the copper surface. The muscles of the forearm twitched where the skin came in contact with the cylinder. He stepped back, raised his hands to his eyes, and examined them in turn, whispering: “So it was I…? I myself … through me … then
I
was … the subject of the experiment…”

I thought he would burst into hysterical laughter, but he thrust his hands into his apron pockets, walked silently across the room, and said in a changed voice:

“I don’t know whether that has any—but enough. You’d better go now. I have nothing else to show, and besides…”

He broke off, went up to the window, tore away the black paper covering it, and threw open the shutters. Breathing loudly, he looked out into the darkness.

“Why don’t you go?” he mumbled without turning around. “That would be best.”

I did not want to leave like that. The scene, which later, in my memory, would strike me as grotesque—the copper vat filled with those oozing intestines that had turned his body into an involuntary messenger of unknown signals—at that moment horrified me and filled me with pity for the man. That is why I would prefer to end my story here. For what happened afterward was senseless: his outburst against me, that I had—he said—intruded; his angry face, the insults and the shouting—all that, and the submissive silence with which I left, seemed like a clichéd nightmare. To this day I do not know whether he threw me out of his gloomy house because he
wanted
to or whether…

But I could be wrong. Possibly both of us then were the victims of a delusion, and we hypnotized each other. Such things do happen.

But, then, how is one to explain the discovery made quite accidentally about a month after my Cretan expedition? While investigating a malfunction in a power line not far from Diagoras’s estate, several workmen tried to gain entrance to his house. At first they were unsuccessful. When they finally broke in, they found the building deserted and all the machines destroyed, except for two large copper vats that were untouched and completely empty.

I alone know what they contained, and it is precisely for that reason that I dare not make conjectures connecting those contents with the disappearance of their creator, who has not been seen since.