Eden Page 20
"What does that mean?" asked the Engineer.
The Doctor shook his head. "I have no idea."
"But the one that came with us … he was by himself."
"Consider the circumstances that led to that."
The Engineer made no reply.
"Listen," said the Captain, "this is getting us nowhere. We didn't gather information systematically, because we're not a research team. We had other worries, of the 'struggle-for-survival' variety. Now we must decide on a course of action. Tomorrow Digger will be working. We'll have a total of two robots, two semiautomata, Digger and Defender, who may also help in the unearthing of the ship. I don't know if you're familiar with the plan the Engineer and I worked out. The basic idea is to lower the ship first to the horizontal, then stand it upright by packing soil under the hull. That's the method the ancient pyramid-builders used. We'll cut our 'glass wall' into pieces we can use to build a scaffold. There's enough material, and we already know that the substance can be melted and welded at high temperatures. Using the wall that the inhabitants of Eden have so thoughtfully provided us with will shorten the task dramatically. We may be able to take off in three days." He paused, seeing the men stir. "Therefore I wanted to ask you: do we take off?"
"Yes," said the Physicist.
"No," said the Chemist, almost at the same time.
"Not just yet," the Cyberneticist said.
A silence. Neither the Engineer nor the Doctor had voted.
"I think we should leave," the Engineer said at last. Everyone looked at him with astonishment. He went on:
"I felt differently before. It's a question of the price. Just the price. Undoubtedly we could learn much more, but the cost of obtaining that knowledge … it might be too great. For both sides. After what has happened, the possibility of peaceful contact, of coming to an understanding, is, it seems to me, extremely remote. Each of us, whether we like it or not, has his own concept of this world. Mine was that terrible things were going on here, and that we should intervene. As long as we were Robinson Crusoes going through our wreckage and making repairs, I said nothing. I wanted to wait until I knew more, and until we could make use of our machines. But I see now that each intervention on behalf of what we hold to be good and right will end the way our last excursion did: with the use of the annihilator. We can always justify ourselves, of course, argue self-defense, and so on—but instead of helping, we're destroying."
"If we only had better knowledge…" said the Chemist.
The Engineer shook his head.
"With better knowledge we'd see that each side was right in its own way…"
"Whether the murderers are right or wrong," the Chemist objected, "someone should give thought to their victims."
"But what can we offer them besides Defender's annihilator? Suppose we reduce half the planet to ashes in order to stop these incomprehensible roundups and exterminations. What then?"
"It's not a simple matter of right and wrong," said the Captain, joining the argument. "Everything that's happening here is part of an ongoing historical process. Your impulse to help is based on the assumption that the society is divided into heroes and villains."
"Into oppressors and oppressed," said the Chemist. "That's not the same thing."
"All right. Let's imagine that a highly developed race, arriving on Earth during our religious wars several hundred years ago, had decided to enter the conflict—on the side of the weak. Wielding its power, it forbids the burning of heretics, the persecution of dissenters, et cetera. Do you honestly think it would be able to make its humanitarian rationalism accepted throughout the planet? Remember: almost the whole of mankind were believers then. The aliens would have to pound us down to the last man, in which case there would be no one left to benefit from their idealism!"
"Then you think it's impossible for us to help!" said the Chemist with vehemence.
The Captain looked at him a long time before replying.
"Help, my God. What do you mean by help? What's taking place here, what we're witnessing, is the product of a specific civilization, and we would have to destroy that civilization and create a new one—and how are we supposed to do that? These are beings with a physiology, psychology, and history different from ours. You can't transplant a model of our civilization here. And you would have to construct one, too, that would continue to function after our departure… I suspected, for quite some time, that you had ideas similar to those of the Engineer. And that the Doctor agreed with me, which is why he kept discouraging us from making analogies to Earth. Am I right?"
"Yes," said the Doctor. "I was afraid that through an access of noble-mindedness you would all want to establish 'order' here, which in practice would mean a reign of terror."
"Maybe the oppressed would like a different life … but are too weak," said the Chemist. "And if we saved some who were condemned…"
"We saved one," the Captain retorted. "Now perhaps you can tell us what to do with him."
The Chemist had no reply.
"The Doctor is also in favor of leaving?" said the Captain. "Good. Including me, that makes a majority."
He broke off. His eyes grew round. He had been sitting facing the door—the half-open door. In the silence they heard only a faint lapping of water, and turned to follow the Captain's stare.
In the doorway stood the doubler.
"How did he get out…?" But the Physicist's words died on his lips. He saw his mistake. This was not their doubler. Theirs was locked in the first-aid room.
On the threshold was an enormous dark-skinned doubler, its smaller torso bent low and the head almost touching the lintel. The creature was dressed in a brown material that hung straight and encircled the small torso like a collar. Wound around the collar was a thick tangle of green wire. Through a slit on the side gleamed a broad metallic belt. The doubler did not move. Its flat, wrinkled face and two large blue eyes were covered by a transparent, funnel-shaped shield. From the shield ran thin gray strands that coiled around the smaller torso several times and crisscrossed in front, forming a kind of pocket, in which rested its hands, similarly bandaged. Only the knobby tips of the fingers protruded.
Everyone sat in amazement at the sight. The doubler bent over even more and with a cough moved slowly forward.
"How did it get in?… Blackie is in the tunnel…" whispered the Chemist.
Then the doubler slowly withdrew. It went out, stood in the dark corridor for a moment, and entered a second time—or, rather, only stuck its head in just beneath the lintel.
"It's asking if it can enter," the Engineer said in a whisper. Then he shouted, "Come in! Come in!"
He got up and backed away along the opposite wall, and the others followed him. The doubler regarded the empty center of the cabin blankly. It entered and slowly looked around.
The Captain went to the screen, tugged at it to make it whir upward, which uncovered the blackboard. He asked the men to step aside, took a piece of chalk, and drew a small circle, then drew an ellipse around the circle, and a larger ellipse outside that, and another, and another—four in all. On each ellipse he placed a small circle. Then he approached the giant in the center of the room and stuck the chalk in its little fingers.
The doubler accepted the chalk awkwardly, looked at it, looked at the blackboard, then slowly went toward it. It had to incline its smaller torso, which stuck out at an angle from the collar, in order to touch the board with a bandaged hand. The men watched with bated breath. Clumsily, with effort, the doubler tapped the circle on the third ellipse several times; it nearly filled the circle with crushed chalk.
The Captain nodded. Everyone breathed freely. "Eden," he said, pointing at the circle. "Eden," he repeated.
The doubler watched his mouth with interest. It coughed.
"Eden," said the Captain slowly, enunciating clearly.
The doubler coughed several times.
"It can't speak," said the Captain, turning to his colleagues. "That's for sure."
The belt unwound, rustling like metal foil. The doubler's smaller torso leaned far over, as if to step from its body; bending almost in two, it grabbed the end of the foil with its fingers. The belt had uncoiled into a long sheet, which it held out, apparently offering it to them. The Captain and the Engineer reached out simultaneously, and both jumped. The Engineer gave a little cry. The doubler, apparently surprised, coughed several times, and the transparent shield wavered on its face.
"An electrical charge, but not very strong," the Captain explained to the others, then reached for the foil a second time. The doubler released it. They examined the gold surface in the light: it was completely smooth, featureless. The Captain touched it at random and once again felt a mild electric shock.
"What is it?!" growled the Physicist, and began to run his hand over the foil. Electric shocks made his fingers quiver. "Give me some powdered graphite!" he said. "It's there in the cabinet!"
He spread out the foil on the table, paying no attention to the twitching of his hand, sprinkled the foil with the graphite that the Cyberneticist had given him, and blew off the excess.
On the gold surface were tiny black dots scattered seemingly at random.
"Lacerta!" the Captain cried suddenly.
"Alpha Cygni!"
"Lyra!"
"Cepheus!"
They turned to the doubler, who was watching them calmly. Triumph gleamed in its eyes.
"A star map!" exclaimed the Engineer.
"Well, now we feel at home." The Captain grinned.
The doubler coughed.
"Is it electrical writing?"
"Apparently."
"How are the charges maintained?"
"Perhaps they have an electric sense!"
"Gentlemen, please! Let's proceed logically," said the Captain. "What now?"
"Show it where we're from."
"Right."
The Captain quickly erased the board and drew the constellation of the Centaur. He hesitated, calculating in his head how that region of the Galaxy would be seen from Eden. He made a thick dot to indicate Sirius, added a dozen lesser stars, and on top of the Great Bear drew a small cross indicating the Sun. Then he touched his own chest and that of all his men in turn, swept his arm around the room, and again tapped the cross with his chalk.
The doubler coughed, took the chalk from him, pushed its small torso over to the board, and filled in the Captain's sketch with three dots: Alpha Aquilae and the binary system of Procyon.
"An astronomer!" whispered the Physicist. "A colleague…"
"Very likely!" replied the Captain. "Now let's go on!" What followed was a great amount of drawing. The planet Eden, the ship's path, its entry into the gaseous tail, and the collision. Then the ship embedded in the ground—a cross-section of the hill and the ship.
The doubler looked at the drawings on the blackboard and coughed. It went to the table. From the green convolutions of its collar it extracted a thin, flexible wire, leaned over, and began moving the wire across the foil with extraordinary speed. This continued for some time. It stepped back, and the men sprinkled the foil with graphite, whereupon something strange occurred. Even as they were blowing away the excess powder, the emerging lines began to move.
First they saw a hemisphere with an oblique column inside. Then a small spot appeared and crept over the edge of the hemisphere. It grew larger and larger. They recognized the outline of Defender, though the sketch was inexact. Part of the curve of the hemisphere disappeared, and Defender entered through that gap. At that point everything disappeared, and the graphite on the foil was even. Suddenly it gathered to form the star map. Through the map emerged the figure of a doubler, sketched in long strokes. The doubler standing behind them coughed.
"That's him," said the Captain.
The map disappeared, leaving only the doubler. Then the doubler disappeared, and the map replaced it. This was repeated four times. Spread as though by an invisible breath, the graphite once again arranged itself into an outline of the hemisphere with the broken curve. The doubler's silhouette appeared, much smaller, crawled toward the gap, and made its way in. The hemisphere disappeared. The oblique cylinder of the ship became larger. In front, beneath the hull, there was an opening. Through it the doubler entered the ship. The graphite scattered in random clumps: end of message.
"That's how it got here, through the loading hatch!" said the Engineer. "We left the damn thing open!"
"Wait—do you know what occurred to me?" the Doctor said. "Maybe they wanted, with that wall, not so much to shut us in as to prevent their—their scientists from contacting us!"
They turned to the doubler. It coughed.
"Well, enough of this," said the Captain. "It's been a very pleasant social gathering, but we have more important business before us! As for guerrilla warfare—forget it. We must go about this systematically. I suppose we ought to start with mathematics. The Physicist can handle that. Mathematics, and metamathematics, of course. The theory of matter, field theory. And then information theory, programming languages, semantics. Grammar, logic, vocabulary. All that belongs to you," he said to the Cyberneticist. "And once we've set up that bridge, there's biology, metabolism, economics, social forms, group behavior, and so on. There we won't have to be in such a hurry. Meanwhile"—he turned to the Cyberneticist and the Physicist—"you two get started. You have the films to help you, the computer, the library. Use whatever you need."
"To start with, we could take him around the ship," said the Engineer. "What do you think? That might tell him a few things. And he'll see that we're hiding nothing from him."
"Yes, that's important," the Captain agreed. "But—until we're able to communicate with him properly—don't let him into the first-aid room. That might cause some sort of misunderstanding. Now, let's make a tour of the ship. What time is it?"
It was three in the morning.
XIII
The tour of the ship took quite a while. The doubler was especially interested in the atomic pile and the robots. The Engineer drew sketch after sketch for it, filling four notebooks in the engine room alone. The guest made a detailed inspection of the microgrid, was amazed to find it entirely submerged in a tank of liquid helium—a cryotronic brain, superconductive for quick reactions—but soon grasped the purpose of the cooling. It coughed for a long time and looked with approval at the diagram the Cyberneticist drew for it. Evidently they could communicate much more easily by diagrams than by trying to represent basic words through gestures or symbols.
At five in the morning the Chemist, the Captain, and the Engineer went off to bed. Blackie, after closing the loading hatch, stood guard in the tunnel, while the other three men took the doubler to the library.
"Wait," said the Physicist as they passed the laboratory. "Let's show it the periodic table. There are illustrations of the electron orbitals of the atoms."
They went in. The Physicist was rummaging through a pile of papers in the cabinet when they heard a ticking.
"What's that?" the Doctor asked.
The Physicist looked up, heard the ticking, too. His eyes widened. "It's the Geiger. There must be a leak…"
He ran to the counter. The doubler, looking at the different instruments, now approached the table, and the counter began rattling like the roll of a drum.
"It's the doubler!" said the Physicist, aiming the metal cylinder with both hands at the huge alien. The counter whirred louder.
"He's radioactive? What does that mean?" asked the Cyberneticist.
The Doctor, pale, took the cylinder from the Physicist and swept the air with it in the direction of the doubler. The higher he raised it, the weaker the sound. Near the creature's clumsy, stout legs, the counter whirred and its red light went on.
The doubler moved
its eyes from one man to another, surprised but not alarmed by what they were doing. It clearly didn't understand.
"He came through the opening Defender made in the wall," the Doctor said softly. "There's a radioactive patch there…"
"Keep your distance!" the Physicist said. "He's giving off more than a milliroentgen a second! Unless we wrap him in ceramite foil; then perhaps we could risk it…"
"I'm more concerned about him!" the Doctor said, raising his voice. "How long do you think he was exposed? What kind of dosage did he get?"
"I—I have no idea…" the Physicist said. "You should do something! An acetate bath… Look at him—he doesn't know!"
The Doctor rushed out of the laboratory without saying a word. He returned a moment later with the first-aid radiation kit. At first the doubler resisted their gestures for telling it to lie down, but eventually it submitted.
"Gloves!" the Physicist shouted, because the Doctor was touching the doublet's skin with his bare hands.
"Should we wake the others?" asked the Cyberneticist, standing off to the side.
"No need," muttered the Doctor, pulling on thick gloves. He leaned over the doubler. "So far, nothing… There'll be a rash in ten, twelve hours, assuming…"
"If we could only communicate," the Physicist said, half to himself.
"A transfusion … but how?" The Doctor closed his eyes. "The other one!" Then added, more softly, "No, I can't. First I would have to type both bloods, test for agglutination…"
"Listen." The Physicist pulled him aside. "It's probably bad. He must have crossed the radioactive area the second the temperature dropped, and there would have been plenty of isotopes there, rubidium, strontium, rare earths. Are there white corpuscles in his blood?"
"Yes, but they're not like human ones."
"All rapidly multiplying cells are hit in the same way, regardless of the species. Though he probably has more resistance than man…"
"What makes you say that?"