the Dark Light Years (6 page)

"You're flattering me, Mihaly, just as you always do.”

"Does your husband never flatter you?”

"Well, I don't know. ... I don't know if Bruce - I mean -”

"You're being silly, the pair of you," Ainson said. "The noise in here is enough to make anyone senseless. Mihaly, I've had enough of all this frippery, and I'm surprised that you haven't too, Enid. Let's get down to business; I came here to hand the ETA's over to you officially, and that's what I want to do.

Can we discuss that in peace and quiet somewhere?”

Pasztor had trim eyebrows which rose towards his hair-line, descended, and then moved together in a frown.

"Are you trying to distract me from my duty to the bar-tender? Well, I suppose we can slip down to the new ETA enclosure, if you must. Your specimens should be installed by now, and the spaceport officials out of the way.”

Ainson turned to his wife, laying a hand on her arm.

"You come along too, Enid; the excitement up here isn't good for you.”

"Nonsense, my dear, I'm enjoying myself." She removed her arm from his grasp.

"Well really, you might show a little interest in the creatures we have brought back.”

"I've no doubt I shall hear about them for weeks!" She looked at the canyons of his face and said, in the same humorously resigned tone, "Very well, I'll come along if you can't bear to have me out of your sight. But you'll have to go and get my wrap, because it is too cool to go outside without it.”

Not making a graceful thing of it, Ainson left them. Pasztor cocked an eyebrow at Enid, and secured them a drink apiece.

"I don't know really whether I ought to have another, Mihaly. Wouldn't it be terrible if I got tipsy!”

"People do, you know. Look at Mrs. Friar over there. Now I've got you alone, Enid, instead of flirting with you as I have a mind to do, I have to ask you about your son, Aylmer. What is he doing now?

Where is he?”

He detected her brief flush. She looked away from him as she spoke.

"Don't please, don't spoil the evening, Mihaly. It's so nice to have Bruce back. I know you think he's a terrible old monster, but he isn't really, not underneath.”

"How is Aylmer?”

"He's in London. Apart from that, I don't know.”

"You are too harsh with him.”

"Please, Mihaly!”

"Bruce is too harsh with him. You know I say that as an old friend, as well as Aylmer's godfather.”

"He did something disgraceful, and his father turned "him out of the house. They have never got on well together, as you know, and although I am terribly sorry about the boy, it is much more peaceful without having both of them to cope with." She looked up at him to add. "And don't go thinking I always take the line of least resistance, because I don't. For years I had a real battle with them.”

"I never saw a face look less embattled. What did Aylmer do to bring this terrible edict down upon his head?”

"You must ask Bruce, if you're so keen to know.”

"There was a girl involved?”

"Yes. it was over a girl. And here comes Bruce.”

When the Master Explorer had settled the wrap about his wife's shoulders, Mihaly led them out of the hall by a side door. They walked along a carpeted corridor, down-stairs, and out into the dusk. The zoo lay quiet, though one or two London starlings moved belatedly to bed among the trees, and from its heated pool a Rungsted's sauropod raised its neck to gaze in a dun wonder at their passage.
Turning before they reached the Methane Mammal House, Pasztor led his companions to a new block constructed in the modern manner of sanded reinforced plastic blocks and strawed concrete with lead verticals.
As they entered by a side door, lights came on.

Reinforced curving glass separated them from the two ETA's. The creatures turned about as the lights came on, to watch the humans. Ainson made a half-hearted gesture of recognition towards them; it produced no perceptible reaction.

"At least they have spacious accommodation," he said. "Does the public have to throng here all day, pressing its beastly noses to the glass?”

"
The public will only be admitted to this block between 2.30 and 4 in the afternoon," Pasztor said, "In the mornings, experts will be here studying our visitors.”

The visitors had an ample double cage, the two parts separated by a low door. At the back of one room was a wide low bed padded with a plastic foam. Troughs filled with food and water lined one of the other walls. The ETA's stood in the centre of the floor; they had already amassed a fair amount of dirt about them.

Three lizard-like animals scuttled across the floor and flung themselves on to the massive bodies of the ETA's, They scuttled for a fold of skin and disappeared. Ainson pointed towards them.

"You see that? Then they are still there. They look very like lizards. I believe there are four of them all together; they keep close to the extra-terrestrials. There were two of them accompanying the dying ETA we took aboard the Mariestopes.
Probably they are synoecists or even symbionts.
The fool of a captain heard of them from my reports and wanted them destroyed - said they might be dangerous parasites - but I stood out against him.”

"Who was that? Edgar Bargerone?" Pasztor asked. "A brave man. not brilliant; he probably still clings to the geocentric conception of the universe.”

"He wanted me to be communicating with these fellows before we touched Earth! He has no conception of the problems confronting us.”

Enid, who had been watching the captives intently, looked up and asked, "Are you going to be able to communicate with them?”

"
The question is not as simple as it would appear to a layman, my dear. I'll tell you all about it another time.”

"For God's sake. Bruce, I'm not a child. Are you or aren't you going to be able to communicate with them?”

The Master Explorer tucked his hands into the hip flounces of his uniform and regarded his wife. When he spoke, it was smoulderingly, as a preacher from the
elevation
of a pulpit.

"With a quarter of a century's stellar exploration behind us, Enid, the nations of Earth - despite the fact that the total number of operational starships at any one time rarely exceeds a dozen - have managed to survey about three hundred roughly Earth-type planets. On those three hundred planets, Enid, they have sometimes found
sentient
life and sometimes not. But they have never found beings that could be regarded as having any more brain than a chimpanzee.
Now we have discovered these creatures on Clementina, and we have our reasons for suspecting that they may possess an intelligence equivalent to man's - the main circumstantial reason being that they have an - er, machine capable of travelling between planets.”

"
Why make such a mystery of it, then?" Enid asked. "There are fairly simple tests devised for this situation; why not apply them? Do these creatures have a written script? Do they talk with each other?

Do they observe a code between themselves? Are they able to repeat a simple demonstration or a set of gestures? Do they respond to simple mathematical concepts? What is their attitude to-wards human artifacts - and, of course, have they artifacts of their own? How do -”

"Yes. yes, my dear, we entirely take your point: there are tests to be applied. I was not idle on the voyage home; I applied the tests.”

"Well, then, the results?”

"Conflicting. Conflicting in a way that suggests that the tests we applied were inefficient and insufficient - in a word, too steeped in anthropomorphism. And that is the point I was trying to make. Until we can define intelligence more nearly, we are not going to find it easy to begin communicating.”

"At the same time," Pasztor supplemented, "you are going to find it hard to define intelligence until you have succeeded in communicating.”

Ainson brushed this aside with the gesture of a
practical
man cutting through sophisms.

"First we define intelligence. Is the little spider,
argyroneta
aquatica, intelligent because she can build a diving bell and thus live underwater? No. Very well, then these lumbering creatures may be no more intelligent because they can construct a spaceship.
On the other hand, these creatures may be so highly intelligent, and the end-products of a civilization so ancient, that all the reasoning we conduct in our conscious minds, they conduct in their hereditary or subconscious minds leaving their conscious minds free for cogitation on matters - and indeed for forms of cogitation - beyond our understanding.
If that is so, communication between our species may be for ever out of the question. Remember that one dictionary
definition
of intelligence is simply 'information received'; if we receive no information from them, and they none from us, then we are entitled to say these ETA's are unintelligent.”

"This is all very puzzling to me," Enid said. "You make it sound so difficult now, yet in your letters you made it sound so simple. You said these creatures had come up and attempted to communicate with you in a series of grunts and whistles; you said they each possessed six excellent hands; you said they had arrived on what's it -on Clementina, by spaceship. Surely the situation is clear.
They are intelligent; not simply with the limited intelligence of an animal, but intelligent enough to have produced a civilization and a language.
The only problem is to translate their noises and whistles into English.”

Ainson turned to the Director.

"You understand why it isn't so easy, don't you, Mihaly?”

"Well, I have read most of your reports, Bruce. I know these are mammals with respiratory systems and digestive tracts much like ours, that they have brains with a similar weight ratio to our own, that possessing hands they would approach the universe with the same basic feeling we have that matter is there to be manipulated - no, frankly, Bruce, I can see that to learn their language or to get them to learn ours may be a difficult task, but I do feel you are overestimating the hazards of the case.”

"Do you? You wait till you've observed these fellows for a while. You'll feel differently. I tell you, Mihaly, I try to put myself in their place, and despite their disgusting habits I have managed to preserve sympathy towards them. But the only feeling I get - amid an ocean of frustration -is that they must, if they are intelligent at all, have a very different point of view to the universe from ours. Really, you'd imagine they were - they were -" he gestured at them, calm behind the glass - "holding themselves aloof from me.”

"We shall have to see how the linguists get on," Pasztor said. "And Bryant Lattimore of USGN Flight Advice -he's a very forceful man - I think you'll like him - arrives from the States tomorrow. His views will be worth having." It was not the remark to please Bruce Ainson. He decided he had had enough of the subject.

"It's ten o'clock," he said. "Time Enid and I were shuttling home; you know I keep regular hours when I'm on Earth. We've enjoyed the celebrations, Mihaly. We shall see you at the end of the week.”

They shook hands with returning cordiality. Provoked by one of the bursts of mischief that ensured he would never rise higher than his present sinecure, Sir Mihaly asked, "By the way, my friend, what was it Aylmer and the girl did that so conflicted with your point of view that you threw him out of your home?”

A tinge as of dusty brick mottled Bruce Ainson's throat and jowls.

"You'd better ask him yourself; he may see fit to gratify your curiosity; I don't see him any more," he said stiffly. "We'll find our own way out.

The shuttle on the district line climbed upwards through a night punctuated by the city's orchestra of lights. It clung dizzily to its thread of rail. Enid closed her eyes and wished she had swallowed an Antivom before they boarded; she was not a good
traveler
.

"A tubby for your thoughts," her husband said.

"I wasn't thinking, Bruce.”

After a silence, Ainson said. "What were you and Mihaly talking about while I went to get your wrap?”

"I don't remember. Trivialities. Why do you ask that?”

"How much did you see of him while I was away?”

She sighed, and the noise of the air flowing past the cab drowned the small sound she made.

"You always ask me that, Bruce, after each trip. Now stop being jealous or you'll give me ideas; Mihaly is very sweet but he means nothing to me.”

High above outer London, the district shuttle decanted them on to the great curled lip of the Outflank Ring. Their section of the newly-built structure was crowded, so that they preserved silence as they whirled towards the non-stop lane that would take them home. But once on the monobus, their silence continued to cling.
Neither felt comfortable in the other's lack of speech, fearing unknown thought.
Enid spoke first.

"Well, I'm glad success has come to you at last, Bruce. We must have a party. I'm very proud of you.

you know!”

He patted her hand and smiled at her forgivingly, as one might to a child.