The Hercules Text Read online

  “Clumsy?”

  “Awkward. Comparative degrees, for example, are expressed by numerical values, both positive and negative. It’s as if you talked about good on a scale of one to ten, without ever introducing better or best.”

  “That seems reasonably precise.”

  “Oh, it’s precise. My God, is it precise. Adjectives are the same way. Nothing, for example, is ever dark. They establish a quantification standard for illumination and then give you a benchmark on the standard. It’s maddening. But what really fascinates me is that if you translate it into English, freely substituting general terms, you get some very striking poetry. Except that it isn’t poetry, I don’t think, but I don’t know what else to call it.” She shook her head in bewilderment. “One thing I’ll tell you, Harry: in this form, the way they transmit it, it is not a natural language. It’s too mathematical.”

  “You think it’s something they devised purely for the transmission?”

  “Probably. And if that’s true, we’ll lose a major source of information about them. There’s a direct link between language and the character of its speakers. Harry, we really need to be able to send this stuff out. I know all sorts of people who should be getting a look at it. There are too many areas where I just don’t have the expertise. Sitting here bottled up with it, it’s frustrating.”

  “I know,” said Harry. “Maybe things’ll change now. Some clearances have come through, and we can start bringing in a few more people.”

  “It’s a code, Harry. That’s all it is: a code. And you know what’s strangest of all about it? We could have done better. In any case, what counts is that we’re starting to read it. It’s slow going, because there’s still a lot to do.” She discovered her sandwich, almost untouched, and took a bite. “I think Hurley’s going to be disappointed.”

  “Why?”

  “The bulk of the material that we’ve been able to break into so far reads like philosophy. Although we can’t even be sure of that because we don’t understand most of the terms, and maybe we never will. I’m not even sure we aren’t being subjected to some sort of interstellar gospel.”

  Images drifted through his mind of the President and Bobby Freeman reacting to that. “It’s the best thing that could happen to us,” he said.

  “Harry,” she replied, “I’m glad you think it’s funny, because there’s an awful lot of it. Listen: they divided their transmission into a hundred and eight sections. We’ve gotten into twenty-three of them so far, of which sixteen, and parts of several others, seem to have this general philosophical character.”

  “Is there any history? Do they tell us anything about themselves?”

  “Not that we’ve been able to find. We’re getting commentaries, but they’re abstract, and we can’t really make out what they relate to. There are long mathematical sections as well. We think we found a description of their solar system. If we’re reading it correctly, they have six planets, and the home world does have rings. They are circling the yellow sun, by the way.

  “But this other stuff. They paint with broad strokes, Harry. From what I’ve seen, they’re not much interested in the sorts of things you build weapons from. You know what I really think the transmission is? Basically?”

  Harry had no idea.

  “A series of expanded essays on the good, the true, and the beautiful.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “We know they’re interested in cosmology. They have enough knowledge of physics to baffle Gambini. They’ve supplied mathematical descriptions for all sorts of processes, including a lot of stuff we haven’t begun to identify. We’re probably going to learn what really holds atoms together and why water freezes at thirty-two degrees and how galaxies form. But there’s a sense in the text that all that is”—she searched for a word—“incidental. Trivial. The way they establish their credentials, perhaps. What they really seem interested in, where it seems to me their energy is, is in their speculative sections.”

  “It figures,” said Harry. “What else would we expect from an advanced race?”

  “They may have given us their entire store of knowledge. Everything they consider significant.”

  Harry was realizing that he enjoyed spending time with her. Her laughter cheered him, and when he needed to talk, she listened. Her ability to leave Philadelphia at every whim suggested that she had no strong emotional attachment there. Furthermore, she embodied a fierce independence that implied she was on her own. He did not, of course, ask her point-blank, since that would have conveyed the wrong impression. Leslie was far too prosaic a woman to engage his interest.

  Still, unaccountably, he felt comfortable with his conclusion that there was probably no man.

  They walked together toward the lab, Harry carefully keeping a proper distance, but warmly aware, perhaps for the first time, of her physical presence. She needed almost two strides to each of his. But she stayed with him, apparently lost in thought, although if he’d been watching carefully he might have noted that her eyes strayed occasionally in his direction and then looked quickly away.

  They walked across a bleak landscape under a gray-white December sky, threatening snow. When they arrived at the lab, Leslie hurried into the rear office that she’d taken over, and Harry wandered over to talk to Pete Wheeler.

  The priest was seated at a computer, painstakingly punching in numbers from a set of notes. He looked relieved to have a chance to get away from it. “Are you going to Kmoch’s meeting this afternoon?” he asked.

  “I haven’t decided yet.”

  “It’ll be an unfriendly audience. There’s a lot of hostility right now. Did you know that even Baines is beginning to get some pressure? The Academy wants him to refuse to cooperate further with the project. And to take a public stand.”

  “How the hell can anyone pressure Baines?”

  “Directly, they can’t. But you know how he is. He hates to have anyone think ill of him. Especially all those people he’s worked with for a lifetime. To make matters worse, of course, he thinks they’re right.”

  “How about you?”

  “I guess some people have complained to the abbott. He says the Vatican isn’t worried, but there’s been some pressure from the American Church. But I don’t think there’ll be anything overt. They’re extremely sensitive right now about being seen as a roadblock to progress.”

  “The Galileo syndrome,” said Harry.

  “Sure.”

  “You look worried.”

  “I keep thinking how all this must look to Hurley. He’s in a no-win situation, and he’ll be damned no matter which way things go. You really want my opinion, Harry?” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Historically, governments are not good at keeping secrets. Especially about technology. The only one I can even think of that retained control of an advanced weapon for a long time was Constantinople.”

  “Greek fire,” said Harry.

  “Greek fire. And that’s probably it for the whole course of human history. Whatever we learn here, Harry, whatever’s in the Text, will soon be common property.” His dark eyes were troubled. “If Hurley’s right and we discover the makings of a new bomb or a new bug, it’ll be only a matter of time before the Russians have it, or the IRA, or the other assorted loonies of the planet.

  “I don’t think that’s the real danger, though God knows it’s serious enough. But at least it’s a danger everyone recognizes. Harry, we’re about to be inundated by an alien culture. This time we are the South Sea islanders.” He shut off his monitor. “Do you remember a couple of years ago when Gambini and Rimford and Breakers used to get into those long arguments about the number of advanced civilizations in the Milky Way? And Breakers always said that if there were others, we’d be able to hear some of them. They’d be transmitting to us.” Wheeler extracted the disc he’d been working with, and returned it to the master file. “I’ve got to get out of here for a while,” he said. “Want to come along?”

  “I just came in,” said
Harry. But he followed the priest outside, thinking about Breakers. He’d been a cynical old son of a bitch from Harvard who hadn’t lived quite long enough to hear the great question answered.

  “Baines published an article recently,” continued Wheeler, “titled ‘The Captain Cook Syndrome,’ in which he says a wise culture might recognize that contact with a more primitive society, however well intentioned, could do nothing but create problems for the weaker group. Maybe, he said, they’re silent out of compassion.

  “But our aliens chatter. They tell us everything. Why would they be different? Ed thinks they bungled the transmission code, made it more difficult than necessary. Could they be slow-witted? Could they possibly be incompetent?”

  “That’s hard to buy,” said Harry. “After they manipulated that pulsar. No, I can’t believe they’re dullards. Maybe their solitude has something to do with it.”

  “Maybe. But that doesn’t help us. Harry, we are about to be invaded as surely as if the little critters arrived in saucers and began rumbling around the terrain in tripods. The transmission, which we are now beginning to be able to read, is going to change us beyond recognition. Not just what we know, but how we think. And undoubtedly it’ll affect our values. It’s a prospect I can’t say I relish.”

  “Pete, if you feel that way, why are you helping?”

  “For the same reason everybody else is: I want to find out what they are. What they’ve got to say. And maybe what the implications are for us. It’s all I care about anymore, Harry. And it’s the same with everyone. Everything else in my life right now seems trivial. And that brings us back to Kmoch’s meeting, Harry. If I were standing outside looking in, I’d be pretty damned mad, too.”

  “Kmoch’s talking about a strike.”

  “He’s not the only one. But if you go in there today, you’ll be lucky if you don’t get assaulted. I mean, people are mad.”

  There were a few flakes in a stiff, cold wind coming out of the northwest. Just beyond the perimeter fence, three men crouched on the roof of a two-story frame, repairing shingles. In the adjoining back yard, two teenagers were unloading firewood from a pickup.

  Wheeler wore an ugly oversized green cap. “It belonged to a student I had a few years ago at Princeton in a cosmology class. I admired it pretty openly, I guess, and at the end of the semester he gave it to me.” It jutted far out over his eyes.

  “It looks like something you took from a mugger,” Harry said.

  They stopped at an intersection and waited for a mail truck to pass. “I’ve got something to tell you,” said the priest.

  Harry waited.

  “I found some equations in the text that describe planetary magnetic fields: why they develop, how they work. Some of it we know already, some of it we don’t. They go into a lot of detail, and it isn’t really my specialty. But I think I can see a way to tap the earth’s magnetic field for energy. Lots of energy.”

  “Can we get at the magnetic field to use it?” asked Harry.

  “Yes,” replied Wheeler. “Easily. All that’s necessary is to put a few satellites up, convert the energy to, say, a laser, and beam it to a series of receivers on the ground. It’d probably solve our energy needs for the indefinite future.”

  “How certain are you?”

  “Reasonably. I’m going to tell Gambini about it this afternoon.”

  “You sound hesitant.”

  “I am, Harry. And I don’t really know why. Solving the power problem and getting away from fossil fuels sounds like a pretty good idea. But I wish I had a better notion how something like this, sprung all at once, might shake things up. Maybe we need an economist out here, too.”

  “You worry too much,” said Harry. “This is the kind of useful information we need. The good, the true, and the beautiful may make for interesting talk at lunch, but taxpayers would be more interested in doing something about their electric bills.”

  Harry called his White House number. “Please tell him we might have something,” he said.

  The voice on the other end belonged to a young woman. “Come in this evening. Seven o’clock.”

  MONITOR

  The stars are silent.

  Voyager among dark harbors, I listen, but the midnight wind carries only the sound of trees and water lapping against the gunwale and the solitary cry of the night swallow.

  There is no dawn. No searing sun rises in east or west. The rocks over Calumal do not silver, and the great round world slides through the void.

  —Stanza 32 from DS 87

  Freely translated by Leslie Davies

  (Unclassified)

  11

  A BUBBLE UNIVERSE drifting over a cosmic stream: Rimford’s features widened into a broad grin. He pushed the mound of paper off the coffee table onto the floor and, in a sudden surge of pleasure, lobbed a ball-point pen the length of the room and into the kitchen.

  He went out to the refrigerator, came back with a beer under one arm, and dialed Gambini’s office. While he waited for the physicist to answer, he pulled the tab and took a long swallow.

  “Research Projects,” said a female voice.

  “Dr. Gambini, please. This is Rimford.”

  “He’s tied up at the moment, Doctor,” she said. “Can I have him call you?”

  “How about Pete Wheeler? Is he there?”

  “He went out a few minutes ago with Mr. Carmichael. I don’t know when he’ll be back. Dr. Majeski’s here.”

  “Okay,” said Rimford, disappointed. “Thanks. I’ll try again later.” He hung up, finished the beer, walked around the pile of paper on the floor, and sat down again.

  One of the great moments of the twentieth century and there was no one with whom to share it.

  A quantum universe. Starobinskii and the others might have been right all along.

  He didn’t understand all the mathematics of it yet, but he would; he was well on the way. By Christmas, he thought, he would have the mechanism of creation.

  Much of it was clear already. The universe was a quantum event,, a pinprick of space-time. It had been called into being in the same way that apparently causeless events continue to occur in the subatomic world. But it had been a bubble, not a bang! And once in existence, the bubble had expanded with exponential force. There’d been no light barrier during those early nanoseconds, because the governing principles had not yet formed. Consequently, its dimensions had, within fractions of an instant, exceeded those of the solar system, and indeed those of the Milky Way. There had been no matter at first, but only the slippery fabric of existence itself erupting in a cosmic explosion. Somehow an iron stability had taken hold, expansion dropped below light speed, and substantial portions of the enormous energy of the first moments were converted into hydrogen and helium.

  Not for the first time in his life, Rimford wondered about the “cause” of causeless effects. Perhaps he would find also the secret of the unaccountable: the de Sitter superspace from which the universal bubble had formed. Perhaps, somewhere in the transmission, the Altheans would address that question. But Rimford understood that, no matter how advanced a civilization might be, it was necessarily tied to this universe. There was no way to look past its boundaries or beyond its earliest moments. One could only speculate, regardless of the size of the telescope or the capability of the intellect. But the implications were clear.

  He paced the small living room, far too excited to sit still. There were any number of people with whom he would have liked to talk, men and women who had dedicated their lives to this or that aspect of the puzzles to which he now held partial solutions, but security regulations stood in the way. Parker, for example, at Wisconsin, had invested twenty years trying to explain why the velocity of universal expansion and the gravity needed to reverse the outward flight of the galaxies were very nearly identical. So balanced, in fact, that even after the computations that included nonluminous matter in the equation, the question of an open or closed universe remained unanswered. Why should that be? Rimfo
rd’s eyes narrowed. They had long suspected that the perfect symmetry of the two was somehow dictated by natural law. Yet that was an unacceptable condition, because absolute cosmic equilibrium would have precluded the formation of the galaxies.

  But now he had the math, and he saw how symmetry between expansion and contraction was generated, how it was in fact two sides of a coin, how it could have been no other way. Yet, fortunately for the human race, the tendency toward equilibrium was offset by an unexpected factor: gravity was not a constant. The variable was slight, but it existed, and it induced the required lag. That would also explain, he was sure, recently found disparities between deep space observations and relativity theory.

  What would Parker not give for five minutes tonight with Rimford!

  Unable to sit still, Baines left the cottage, drove out to Greenbelt Road, and turned east under slate skies.

  He’d been on the highway about half an hour when rain began to fall, fat icy drops that splashed like wet clay against the windshield. Most of the traffic disappeared into a gray haze, headlights came on, the rain stopped, the sky cleared, and Rimford sailed happily down country roads until he came to a likely looking inn on Good Luck Road. He stopped, went in, collected a scotch, and ordered a prime steak.

  His old notion of the initial microseconds of the expansion, which had included the simultaneous creation of matter with space-time, brought about by the innate instability of the void, seemed to be wrong on all counts. He wondered whether some of his other ideas were also headed for extinction. In the mirror across the room, he looked oddly pleased. The scotch was smooth, accenting his mood. Assuring himself that no one was watching, he raised a toast, downed the rest of the drink, and asked for another.

  He was surprised at his own reaction. His life work had blown up. Yet he felt no regrets. It would have been good to be right. But now he knew!

  He had never had a better steak. Midway through the meal, he scribbled an equation on a cloth napkin, and propped it up where he could see it. It was a description of the properties and structure of space. If any single mathematical formula could be said to constitute the secret of the universe, that was it!