Sphere

Sphere Page 12

"I only wanted to know where the strawberry shortcake was."

"Gone," Fletcher said promptly. "Captain and I came back from funeral duty and we sat down and ate the whole thing, just like that." She shook her head.

"Maybe Rose'll make some more," Harry said.

He found Beth in her laboratory, on the top level of D Cyl. He walked in just in time to see her take a pill.

"What was that?"

"Valium. God."

"Where'd you get it?"

"Look," she said, "don't give me any psychotalk about it - "

" - I was just asking."

Beth pointed to a white box mounted on the wall in the corner of the lab. "There's a first-aid kit in every cylinder. Turns out to be pretty complete, too."

Norman went over to the box, flipped open the lid. There were neat compartments with medicines, syringes, bandages. Beth was right, it was quite complete - antibiotics, sedatives, tranquilizers, even surgical anesthetics. He didn't recognize all the names on the bottles, but the psychoactive drugs were strong.

"You could fight a war with the stuff in this kit."

"Yeah, well. The Navy."

"There's everything you need here to do major surgery." Norman noticed a card on the inside of the box. It said "MEDAID CODE 103."

"Any idea what this means?"

She nodded. "It's a computer code. I called it up."

"And?"

"The news," she said, "is not good."

"Is that right?" He sat at the terminal in her room and punched in 103. The screen said:

HYPERBARIC SATURATED ENVIRONMENT

MEDICAL COMPLICATIONS (MAJOR-FATAL)

1.01 Pulmonary Embolism

1.02   High Pressure Nervous Syndrome 1.03 Aseptic Bone Necrosis

1.04   Oxygen Toxicity

1.05   Thermal Stress Syndrome

1.06   Disseminated Pseudomonas Infection 1.07 Cerebral Infarction

Choose One:

"Don't choose one," Beth said. "Reading the details will only upset you. Just leave it at this - we're in a very dangerous environment. Barnes didn't bother to give us all the gory details. You know why the Navy has that rule about pulling people out within seventy-two hours? Because after seventy-two hours, you increase your risk of something called 'aseptic bone necrosis.' Nobody knows why, but the pressurized environment causes bone destruction in the leg and hip. And you know why this habitat constantly adjusts as we walk through it? It's not because that's slick and hightech. It's because the helium atmosphere makes body-heat control very volatile. You can quickly become overheated, and just as quickly overchilled. Fatally so. It can happen so fast you don't realize it until it's too late and you drop dead. And 'high pressure nervous syndrome' - that turns out to be sudden convulsions, paralysis, and death if the carbondioxide content of the atmosphere drops too low. That's what the badges are for, to make sure we have enough CO2 in the air. That's the only reason we have the badges. Nice, huh?"

Norman flicked off the screen, sat back. "Well, I keep coming back to the same point - there's not much we can do about it now."

"Exactly what Barnes said." Beth started pushing equipment around on her counter top, nervously. Rearranging things.

"Too bad we don't have a sample of those jellyfish," Norman said.

"Yes, but I'm not sure how much good it would do, to tell the truth." She frowned, shifted papers on the counter again. "Norman, I'm not thinking very clearly down here."

"How's that?"

"After the, uh, accident, I came up here to look over my notes, review things. And I checked the shrimps. Remember how I told you they didn't have any stomach? Well, they do. I'd made a bad dissection, out of the midsagittal plane. I just missed all the midline structures. But they're there, all right; the shrimps are normal. And the squid? It turns out the one squid I dissected was a little anomalous. It had an atrophic gill, but it had one. And the other squid are perfectly normal. Just what you'd expect. I was wrong, too hasty. It really bothers me."

"Is that why you took the Valium?"

She nodded. "I hate to be sloppy."

"Nobody's criticizing you."

"If Harry or Ted reviewed my work and found that I'd made these stupid mistakes ..."

"What's wrong with a mistake?"

"I can hear them now: Just like a woman, not careful enough, too eager to make a discovery, trying to prove herself, too quick to draw conclusions. Just like a woman."

"Nobody's criticizing you, Beth."

"I am."

"Nobody else," Norman said. "I think you ought to give yourself a break."

She stared at the lab bench. Finally she said, "I can't." Something about the way she said it touched him. "I understand," Norman said, and a memory came rushing back to him. "You know, when I was a kid, I went to the beach with my younger brother. Tim. He's dead now, but Tim was about six at the time. He couldn't swim yet. My mother told me to watch him carefully, but when I got to the beach all my friends were there, body-surfing. I didn't want to be bothered with my brother. It was hard, because I wanted to be out in the big surf, and he had to stay close to shore.

"Anyway, in the middle of the afternoon he comes out of the water screaming bloody murder, absolutely screaming. And tugging at his right side. It turned out he had been stung by some kind of a jellyfish. It was still attached to him, sticking to his side. Then he collapsed on the beach. One of the mothers ran over and took Timmy to the hospital, before I could even get out of the water. I didn't know where he had gone. I got to the hospital later. My mother was already there. Tim was in shock; I guess the poison was a heavy dose for his small body. Anyway, nobody blamed me. It wouldn't have mattered if I had been sitting right on the beach watching him like a hawk, he would still have been stung. But I hadn't been sitting there, and I blamed myself for years, long after he was fine. Every time I'd see those scars on his side, I felt terrible guilt. But you get over it. You're not responsible for everything that happens in the world. You just aren't."

There was a silence. Somewhere in the habitat he heard a soft rhythmic knocking, a sort of thumping. And the everpresent hum of the air handlers.

Beth was staring at him. "Seeing Edmunds die must have been hard for you."

"It's funny," Norman said. "I never made the connection, until right now."

"Blocked it, I guess. Want a Valium?"

He smiled. "No."

"You looked as if you were about to cry."

"No. I'm fine." He stood up, stretched. He went over to the medicine kit and closed the white lid, came back.

Beth said, "What do you think about these messages we're getting?"

"Beats me," Norman said. He sat down again. "Actually, I did have one crazy thought. Do you suppose the messages and these animals we're seeing are related?"

"Why?"

"I never thought about it until we started to get spiral messages. Harry says it's because the thing - the famous it - believes we think in spirals. But it's just as likely that it thinks in spirals and so it assumes we do, too. The sphere is round, isn't it? And we've been seeing all these radially symmetrical animals. Jellyfish, squid."

"Nice idea," Beth said, "except for the fact that squid aren't radially symmetrical. An octopus is. And, like an octopus, squid have a round circle of tentacles, but squid're bilaterally symmetrical, with a matching left and right side, the way we have. And then there's the shrimps."

"That's right, the shrimps." Norman had forgotten about the shrimps.

"I can't see a connection between the sphere and the animals," Beth said.

They heard the thumping again, soft, rhythmic. Sitting in his chair, Norman realized that he could feel the thumping as well, as a slight impact. "What is that, anyway?"

"I don't know. Sounds like it's coming from outside."

He had started toward the porthole when the intercom clicked and he heard Barnes say, "Now hear this, all hands to communications. All hands to communications. Dr. Adams has broken the code."

Harry wouldn't tell them the message right away. Relishing his triumph, he insisted on going through the decoding process, step by step. First, he explained, he had thought that the messages might express some universal constant, or some physical law, stated as a way to open conversation. "But," Harry said, "it might also be a graphic representation of some kind - code for a picture - which presented immense problems. After all, what's a picture? We make pictures on a flat plane, like a piece of paper. We determine positions within a picture by what we call X and Y axes. Vertical and horizontal. But another intelligence might see images and organize them very differently. It might assume more than three dimensions. Or it might work from the center of the picture outward, for example. So the code might be very tough. I didn't make much progress at first." Later, when he got the same message with gaps between number sequences, Harry began to suspect that the code represented discrete chunks of information - suggesting words, not pictures. "Now, word codes fall into several types, from simple to complex. There was no way to know immediately which method of encoding had been used. But then I had a sudden insight."

They waited, impatiently, for his insight.

"Why use a code at all?" Harry asked.

"Why use a code?" Norman said.

"Sure. If you are trying to communicate with someone, you don't use a code. Codes are ways of hiding communication. So perhaps this intelligence thinks he is communicating directly, but is actually making some kind of logical mistake in talking to us. He is making a code without ever intending to do so. That suggested the unintentional code was probably a substitution code, with numbers for letters. When I got the word breaks, I began to try and match numbers to letters by frequency analysis. In frequency analysis you break down codes by using the fact that the most common letter in English is 'e,' and the second most common letter is 't,' and so on. So I looked for the most common numbers. But I was impeded by the fact that even a short number sequence, such as two-three-two, might represent many code possibilities: two and three and two, twenty-three and two, two and thirtytwo, or two hundred and thirty-two. Longer code sequences had many more possibilities."

Then, he said, he was sitting in front of the computer thinking about the spiral messages, and he suddenly looked at the keyboard. "I began to wonder what an alien intelligence would make of our keyboard, those rows of symbols on a device made to be pressed. How confusing it must look to another kind of creature! Look here," he said. "The letters on a regular keyboard go like this." He held up his pad.

1        2        3        4        5        6        7        8        9        0

tab    Q      W      E       R       T       Y       U      I        O      P

caps  A       S       D      F       G       H      J        K       L       ;

shift  Z       X       C       V       B       N      M      ,         .         ?

"And then I imagined what the keyboard would look like as a spiral, since our creature seems to prefer spirals. And I started numbering the keys in concentric circles.

"It took a little experimentation, since the keys don't line up exactly, but finally I got it," he said. "Look here: the numbers spiral out from the center. G is one, B is two, H is three, Y is four, and so on. See? It's like this." He quickly penciled in numbers.

1        2        3        4        5        612    711    9        9        0

tab    Q      W      E       R13   T5     Y4     U10   1        O      P

caps  A       S       D14   F6     G1     H3    J9      K       L       ,

shift  Z       X       C15   V7     B2     N8    M      ,         .         ?

"They just keep spiraling outward - M is sixteen, K is seventeen, and so forth. So finally I understood the message."

"What is the message, Harry?"

Harry hesitated. "I have to tell you. It's strange."

"How do you mean, strange?"

Harry tore another sheet off his yellow pad and handed it to them. Norman read the short message, printed in neat block letters:

HELLO. HOW ARE YOU? I AM FINE. WHAT IS YOUR NAME? MY NAME IS JERRY.

THE FIRST EXCHANGE

"Well," Ted said finally. "this is not what I expected at all."

"It looks childish," Beth said. "Like something out of those old 'See Spot run' readers for kids."

"That's exactly what it looks like."

"Maybe you translated it wrong," Barnes said.

"Certainly not," Harry said.

"Well, this alien sounds like an idiot," Barnes said.

"I doubt very much that he is," Ted said.

"You would doubt it," Barnes said. "A stupid alien would blow your whole theory. But it's something to consider, isn't it? A stupid alien. They must have them."

"I doubt," Ted said, "that anyone in command of such high technology as that sphere is stupid."

"Then you haven't noticed all the ninnies driving cars back home," Barnes said. "Jesus, after all this effort: 'How are you? I am fine.' Jesus."

Norman said, "I don't feel that this message implies a lack of intelligence, Hal."

"On the contrary," Harry said. "I think the message is very smart."

"I'm listening," Barnes said.

"The content certainly appears childish," Harry said. "But when you think about it, it's highly logical. A simple message is unambiguous, friendly, and not frightening. It makes a lot of sense to send such a message. I think he's approaching us in the simple way that we might approach a dog. You know, hold out your hand, let it sniff, get used to you."

"You're saying he's treating us like dogs?" Barnes said.

Norman thought: Barnes is in over his head. He's irritable because he's frightened; he feels inadequate. Or perhaps he feels he's exceeding his authority.

"No, Hal," Ted said. "He's just starting at a simple level."

"Well, it's simple, all right," Barnes said. "Jesus Christ, we contact an alien from outer space, and he says his name is Jerry."

"Let's not jump to conclusions, Hal."

"Maybe he has a last name," Barnes said hopefully. "I mean, my report to CincComPac is going to say one person died on a deepsat expedition to meet an alien named Jerry? It could sound better. Anything but Jerry," Barnes said. "Can we ask him?"

"Ask him what?" Harry said.

"His full name."

Ted said, "I personally feel we should have much more substantive conversations - "

" - I'd like the full name," Barnes said. "For the report."

"Right," Ted said. "Full name, rank, and serial number."

"I would remind you, Dr. Fielding, that I am in charge here."

Harry said, "The first thing we have to do is to see if he'll talk at all. Let's give him the first number grouping."

He typed:

00032125252632

There was a pause, then the answer came back:

00032125252632

"Okay," Harry said. "Jerry's listening."

He made some notes on his pad and typed another string of numbers:

00029213013210613182108142232

"What did you say?" Beth said.

" 'We are friends,' " Harry said.

"Forget friends. Ask his damn name," Barnes said.

"Just a minute. One thing at a time."

Ted said, "He may not have a last name, you know."

"You can be damn sure," Barnes said, "that his real name isn't Jerry."

The response came back:

0004212232

"He said, 'Yes.' "

"Yes, what?" Barnes said.

"Just 'yes.' Let's see if we can get him to switch over to English characters. It'll be easier if he uses letters and not his number codes."

"How're you going to get him to use letters?"

"We'll show him they're the same," Harry said.

He typed:

00032125252632 = HELLO.

After a short pause, the screen blinked:

00032125252632 = HELLO.

"He doesn't get it," Ted said.

"No, doesn't look like it. Let's try another pairing."

He typed:

0004212232 = YES.

The reply came back:

0004212232 = YES.

"He's definitely not getting it," Ted said.

"I thought he was so smart," Barnes said.

"Give him a chance," Ted said. "After all, he's speaking our language, not the other way around."

"The other way around," Harry said. "Good idea. Let's try the other way around, see if he'll deduce the equation that way."

Harry typed:

0004212232 = YES. YES. = 0004212232

There was a long pause, while they watched the screen. Nothing happened.

"Is he thinking?"

"Who knows what he's doing?"

"Why isn't he answering?"

"Let's give him a chance, Hal, okay?"

The reply finally came:

YES. = 0004212232 2322124000 = SEY

"Uh-uh. He thinks we're showing him mirror images."

"Stupid," Barnes said. "I knew it."

"What do we do now?"

"Let's try a more complete statement," Harry said. "Give him more to work with."

Harry typed:

0004212232 = 0004212232, YES. = YES. 0004212232 = YES.

"A syllogism," Ted said. "Very good."

"A what?" Barnes said.

"A logical proposition," Ted said. The reply came back: ,=,

"What the hell is that?" Barnes said.

Harry smiled. "I think he's playing with us."

"Playing with us? You call that playing?"

"Yes, I do," Harry said.

"What you really mean is that he's testing us - testing our responses to a pressure situation." Barnes narrowed his eyes. "He's only pretending to be stupid."

"Maybe he's testing how smart we are," Ted said. "Maybe he thinks we're stupid, Hal."

"Don't be ridiculous," Barnes said.

"No," Harry said. "The point is, he's acting like a kid trying to make friends. And when kids try to make friends, they start playing together. Let's try something playful."

Harry sat at the console, typed: ===

The reply quickly came back: ?,

"Cute," Harry said. "This guy is very cute."

He quickly typed: =,=

The reply came: 7 & 7

"Are you enjoying yourself?" Barnes said. "Because I don't know what the hell you are doing."

"He understands me fine," Harry said. "I'm glad somebody does."

Harry typed:

PpP

The reply came:

HELLO. = 00032125252632

"Okay," Harry said. "He's getting bored. Playtime's over. Let's switch to straight English."

Harry typed:

YES

    .

The reply came back:

0004212232

Harry typed:

HELLO

There was a pause, then:

I AM DELIGHTED TO MAKE YOUR ACQUAINTANCE. THE PLEASURE IS ENTIRELY MINE I ASSURE YOU.

There was a long silence. Nobody spoke.

"Okay," Barnes said, finally. "Let's get down to business."

"He's polite," Ted said. "Very friendly."

"Unless it's an act."

"Why should it be an act?"

"Don't be na?ve," Barnes said.

Norman looked at the lines on the screen. He had a different reaction from the others - he was surprised to find an expression of emotion. Did this alien have emotions? Probably not, he suspected. The flowery, rather archaic words suggested an adopted tone: Jerry was talking like a character from a historical romance.

"Well, ladies and gentlemen," Harry said, "for the first time in human history, you are on-line with an alien. What do you want to ask him?"

"His name," Barnes said promptly.

"Besides his name, Hal."

"There are certainly more profound questions than his name," Ted said.

"I don't understand why you won't ask him - "

The screen printed:

ARE YOU THE ENTITY HECHO IN MEXICO?

"Jesus, where'd he get that?"

"Maybe there are things on the ship fabricated in Mexico."

"Like what?"

"Chips, maybe."

ARE YOU THE ENTITY MADE IN THE U.S.A.?

"The guy doesn't wait for an answer."

"Who says he's a guy?" Beth said.

"Oh, Beth."

"Maybe Jerry is short for Geraldine."

"Not now, Beth."

ARE YOU THE ENTITY MADE IN THE U.S.A.?

"Answer him," Barnes said.

YES WE ARE. WHO ARE YOU?

A long pause, then:

WE ARE.

"We are what?" Barnes said, staring at the screen.

"Hal, take it easy."

Harry typed, WE ARE THE ENTITIES FROM THE U.S.A. WHO ARE YOU?

ENTITIES=ENTITY?

"It's too bad," Ted said, "that we have to speak English. How're we going to teach him plurals?"

Harry typed, NO.

YOU ARE A MANY ENTITY?

"I see what he's asking. He thinks we may be multiple parts of a single entity."

"Well, straighten him out."

NO. WE ARE MANY SEPARATE ENTITIES.

"You can say that again," Beth said.

I UNDERSTAND. IS THERE ONE CONTROL ENTITY?

Ted started laughing. "Look what he's asking!"

"I don't get it," Barnes said.

Harry said, "He's saying, 'Take me to your leader.' He's asking who's in charge."

"I'm in charge," Barnes said. "You tell him."

Harry typed, YES. THE CONTROL ENTITY IS CAPTAIN HARALD C. BARNES.

I UNDERSTAND.

"With an 'o,' "Barnes said irritably. "Harold with an 'o.' "

"You want me to retype it?"

"Never mind. Just ask him who he is."

WHO ARE YOU?

I AM ONE.

"Good," Barnes said. "So there's only one. Ask him where he's from."

WHERE ARE YOU FROM?

I AM FROM A LOCATION.

"Ask him the name," Barnes said. "The name of the location."

"Hal, names are confusing."

"We have to pin this guy down!"