The Black Cloud Part 16

'Then I hope you'll keep them to yourself. We're right under the surface here in this department.'

'I'm sorry but they concern you, and I'm afraid they'll mean more work.'

'Look here, Chris, why don't you take your coat off and start doing some real work instead of interrupting the good intentions of the proletariat? Well, what's the trouble? Let's hear it.'

'The trouble is we're not giving enough attention to the receiving end, to us here as the receiving end, I mean. Once we start to transmit with the television camera we shall presumably get replies in the same form as we transmit. That's to say a received message would appear as words on a television tube.'

'Well, what's the matter with that? It'll be nice and easy to read.'

'Yes, that's all right so far as it goes. But remember that we can only read about a hundred and twenty words a minute, whereas we're hoping to transmit at least a hundred times faster than that.'

'We shall have to tell Johnny Boy up there to slow down the speed of his replies, that's all. We'll tell him that we're such dimwits that we can only deal with a hundred and twenty words a minute, instead of the tens of thousands that he seems capable of gobbling up.'

'All very good, Harry, I'm not quarrelling with anything you say.'

'Only you're wanting me to do more work, eh?'

'That's right. How did you guess? My idea is that it'd be nice to hear the Cloud's messages acoustically, as well as to read 'em off a tube. We'll get much more tired reading than listening.'

'To quote Alexis, I think it's a b.l.o.o.d.y awful idea. You realize what it involves?'

'It means you'll have to keep sight and sound equivalents. We could use the electronic computer for that. We've only got to store about five thousand words.'

'Only!'

'I don't see it's going to mean very much work at all. We shall have to go over individual words quite slowly to the Cloud. I'm reckoning about a week for it. As we show off each word we put some key part of our T.V. signal on to punched tape. That shouldn't be difficult. You can also put the sound of the words on to punched tape, using a microphone, of course, to get the sound into an electrical form. Once we've got it all on tape we can put it into the computer any time we like. There'll be quite a lot of storage needed so we'll use the magnetics. It'll be easily fast enough. And we'll put a conversion programme in the high-speed store. Then we can either read the Cloud's messages on a television tube or hear 'em over a loud-speaker.'

'I'll say this for you, Chris. I never knew anyone who was better at finding work for other people. I take it that you'll write the conversion programme.'

'Of course.'

'A nice armchair job, eh? Meanwhile us poor devils can slave away with our soldering irons, burning holes in our trousers and heaven knows what. What voice shall I use for the sound?'

'Your own, Harry. That's your reward for having all those holes burned in your trousers. We shall all be listening to you for hours on end!'

As time went on, the idea of a conversion of the Cloud's messages into sound seemed to commend itself more and more to Harry Leicester. After a few days he began to go around with a more or less permanent grin on his face, but n.o.body could discover the joke.

The television system turned out highly successful. After four days of transmission a message was received that read: 'Congratulations on improvement of technique.'

This message appeared on the television tube since the sound-conversion system was not yet working.

The transmission of individual words proved rather more difficult than had been expected, but eventually it was accomplished. The transmission of scientific and mathematical works turned out a simple matter. Indeed it soon became clear that these transmissions were only serving to acquaint the Cloud with the state of human development, rather as a child shows off its attainments to an adult. Books dealing with social issues were then run through. Their choice was a matter of some difficulty and in the end a large and rather random sample was televised. It became clear that the Cloud was having more difficulty in absorbing this material. At length the message came, still read on the television tube: 'Later transmissions appear most confused and strange. I have many questions to ask, but would prefer to deal with them at some future time. Incidentally your transmissions are interfering very seriously, on account of the proximity of your transmitter, with various external messages that I wish to receive. For this reason I am providing you with the following code. In future always use this code. I intend setting up an electronic s.h.i.+eld against your transmitter. The code will serve as a signal that you wish to penetrate the s.h.i.+eld. If it is convenient you will be allowed to do so. You may expect to receive a further transmission from me in approximately forty-eight hours from now.'

An intricate pattern of lights flashed across the television tube. They were followed by a further message: 'Please confirm that you have received this code and can use it.'

Leicester dictated the following reply: 'We have made a recording of your code. We believe that we can use it but are not certain. We will confirm at your next transmission.'

There was a delay of about ten minutes. Then the reply came: 'Very well. Good-bye.'

Kingsley explained to Ann Halsey: 'The delay is due to the time required for the transmission to reach the Cloud and for the reply to get back here. These delays are going to make short speeches rather unprofitable.'

But Ann Halsey was less interested in the delays than in the tone of the Cloud's messages.

'It sounded just like a human,' she said, wide-eyed with amazement.

'Of course it did. How could it have done otherwise? It's using our language and our phrases, so it's bound to sound human.'

'But the "good-bye" sounded so nice.'

'Nonsense! To the Cloud "good-bye" is probably just a code word for ending a transmission. Remember that it's learned our language from scratch in about a fortnight. That doesn't look very human to me.'

'Oh, Chris, you're exactly what the Americans call a "sad sack". Isn't he, Geoff?'

'What, Chris a sad sack? I should just say he is, ma'am, the biggest G.o.d-almighty sad sack in Christendom. Yes, sir! Seriously, Chris, what did you think of it?'

'I thought the sending of a code was a very good sign.'

'So did I. Very good for our morale. Heaven knows we need it. This last year hasn't been easy. I think I feel better than I've felt since the day I picked you up at Los Angeles airport, and that seems at least a lifetime ago.'

Ann Halsey wrinkled her nose.

'I can't understand why you go all goofy over a code, and why you poured cold water on my "good-bye".'

'Because, my dear,' answered Kingsley, 'the sending of the code was a reasonable rational thing to do. It was a point of contact, of understanding, quite unconnected with language, whereas the "good-bye" was only a superficial linguistic gloss.'

Leicester walked across to join them.

'This two-day delay is rather fortunate. I think we can get the sound system working by then.'

'How about the code?'

'I'm pretty sure it's all right, but I thought it'd be best to be on the safe side.'

Two days later in the evening the whole company a.s.sembled in the transmitting lab. Leicester and his friends busied themselves with last-minute adjustments. It was nearly eight o'clock when preliminary flashes appeared on the tube. Words soon began to appear.

'Let's have some sound,' said Leicester.

There were broad grins and laughter as a voice came over the loud-speaker, for it was the voice of Joe Stoddard that spoke. For a minute or so most people thought of a hoax, but then it was noticed that the voice and the words on the tube were the same. And decidedly the sentiments were not those of Joe Stoddard.

Leicester's joke had some advantage. Of necessity he had not been given sufficient time to include voice inflexions: each word was always p.r.o.nounced the same way, and the words were always spoken at the same rate, except at the end of sentences where there was always a slight pause. These disadvantages of the sound reproduction were to some extent compensated by the fact that in natural speech Joe Stoddard did not show much inflexion anyway. And Leicester had cleverly timed the rate of delivery of the words to agree pretty closely with Joe's natural speech. So although the Cloud's speech was obviously an artificial imitation of Joe, the imitation was quite a good one. n.o.body ever really got used to the Cloud speaking with the easy slow burr of the West Country, and n.o.body ever quite got over the indescribably comic effect of some of Joe's misp.r.o.nunciations. Ever afterwards the Cloud was known as Joe.

Joe's first message ran roughly as follows: 'Your first transmission came as a surprise, for it is most unusual to find animals with technical skills inhabiting planets which are in the nature of extreme outposts of life.'

Joe was asked why this should be so.

'For two quite simple reasons. Living on the surface of a solid body, you are exposed to a strong gravitational force. This greatly limits the size to which your animals can grow and hence limits the scope of your neurological activity. It forces you to possess muscular structures to promote movement, and it also forces you to carry protective armour against sharp blows as for instance your skulls are a necessary protection for your brains. The extra weight of muscle and armour still further reduces the scope of your neurological activities. Indeed your very largest animals have been mostly bone and muscle with very little brain. As I have already said, the strong gravitational field in which you live is the cause of this difficulty. By and large, one only expects intelligent life to exist in a diffuse gaseous medium, not on planets at all.

'The second unfavourable factor is your extreme lack of basic chemical foods. For the building of chemical foods on a large scale starlight is necessary. Your planet, however, absorbs only a very minute fraction of the light from the Sun. At the moment I myself am building basic chemicals at about 10,000,000,000 times the rate at which building is occurring on the whole entire surface of your planet.

'This shortage of food chemicals leads to a tooth-and-claw existence in which it is difficult for the first glimmerings of intellect to gain a foothold in compet.i.tion with bone and muscle. Of course once intelligence becomes firmly established, compet.i.tion with sheer bone and muscle becomes easy, but the first steps along the road are excessively difficult so much so that your own case is a rarity among planetary life forms.'

'And so much for the s.p.a.ce travel enthusiasts,' said Marlowe. 'Ask him, Harry, to what we owe the emergence of intelligence here on the Earth.'

The question was put, and after a time the answer came: 'Probably to the combination of several circ.u.mstances, among which I would rate as most important the development about fifty million years ago of an entirely new type of plant: the plant that you call gra.s.s. The emergence of this plant caused a drastic reorganization of the whole animal world, owing to the peculiarity that gra.s.s can be cropped to ground level, in distinction from all other plants. As the gra.s.slands spread over the Earth those animals that could take advantage of this peculiarity survived and developed. Other animals declined or became extinct. It seems to have been in this major reshuffle that intelligence was able to gain its first footing on your planet.

'There are several very unusual factors that made the decoding of your method of communication a matter of some difficulty,' went on the Cloud. 'Particularly I find it most strange that your communication symbols do not bear any really close connexion with the neurological activity in your brains.'

'We'd better say something about that,' remarked Kingsley.

'I bet we had. I didn't think you'd be able to keep quiet for long, Chris,' Ann Halsey remarked.

Kingsley explained his idea about A.C. and D.C. communication, and asked whether Joe himself operated on an A.C. basis. Joe confirmed that this was so and continued: 'This is not the only quaint feature. Your outstanding oddity is the great similarity of one individual to another. This allows you to use a very crude method of communication. You attach labels to your neurological states anger, headache, embarra.s.sed, happy, melancholy these are all labels. If Mr A wishes to tell Mr B that he is suffering from a headache he makes no attempt to describe the neurological disruption in his head. Instead he displays his label. He says: ' "I have a headache."

'When Mr B hears this he takes the label "headache" and interprets it in accordance with his own experience. Thus Mr A is able to acquaint Mr B of his indisposition even though neither party may have the slightest idea what a "headache" really consists of. Such a highly singular method of communication is of course only possible between nearly identical individuals.'

'Could I put it this way?' said Kingsley. 'Between two absolutely identical individuals, if that were possible, no communication at all would be necessary because each individual would automatically know the experience of the other. Between nearly identical individuals a quite crude method of communication suffices. Between two widely different individuals a vastly more complicated communication system is required.'

'That is exactly what I was trying to explain. The difficulty I had in decoding your language will now be clear. It is a language suited to nearly similar individuals, whereas you and I are widely separated, much more widely than you probably imagine. Fortunately your neurological states seem rather simple. Once I had managed to understand them in some degree, the decoding became possible.'

'Do we have anything neurological in common? Do you, for instance, have anything that corresponds to our "headache"?' asked McNeil.

The reply came: 'In a broad sense we share the emotions of pleasure and pain. But this is only to be expected of any creature that possesses a neurological complex. Painful emotions correspond to a sharp disruption of neurological patterns, and this can happen with me as well as with you. Happiness is a dynamic state in which neurological patterns are being extended, not disrupted, and this too can happen with me as well as with you. Although there are these similarities, I imagine that my subjective experiences are very different from yours, except in one particular like you I regard painful emotions as emotions that I wish to avoid, and vice versa vice versa for happy emotions. for happy emotions.

'More specifically, your headaches arise from a faulty blood supply that destroys the precision of the electrical firing sequences in your brain. I experience something very akin to a headache if radio-active material gets into my nervous system. It causes electrical discharges in much the way that happens in your Geiger counters. These discharges interfere with my timing sequences and produce an extremely unpleasant subjective experience.

'Now I wish to inquire into quite a different matter. I am interested in what you call "the arts". Literature I can understand as the art of arranging ideas and emotions in words. The visual arts are clearly related to your perception of the world. But I do not understand at all the nature of music. My ignorance in this respect is scarcely surprising, since as far as I am aware you have transmitted no music. Will you please repair this deficiency?'

'Here's your chance, Ann,' said Kingsley. 'And what a chance! No musician ever played to an audience like this!'

'What shall I play?'

'How about the Beethoven you played the other night?'

'The Opus 106? It's a bit fierce for a beginner.'

'Come on, Ann. Give old Joe the works,' encouraged Barnett.

'There's no need to play if you don't want to, Ann. I took a recording,' said Leicester.

'What's the quality like?'

'As good as we'll get it from a technical point of view. If you were satisfied with the performance we can start transmitting more or less straight away if you wish.'

'I think I'd prefer you to use the recording. It sounds ridiculous, but I've an idea that I might be nervous if I started to play to that thing, whatever it is.'

'Don't be silly. Old Joe won't bite.'

'Perhaps he won't but I'd still prefer to use the recording.'

And so the recording was transmitted. At the end came the message: 'Very interesting. Please repeat the first part at a speed increased by thirty per cent.'

When this had been done, the next message was: 'Better. Very good. I intend to think this over. Good-bye.'

'My G.o.d, you've finished him, Ann!' exclaimed Marlowe.

'It defeats me how music can have any appeal for Joe. After all, music is sound and we've agreed that sound oughtn't to mean anything to him,' remarked Parkinson.

'I don't agree there,' said McNeil. 'Our appreciation of music has really nothing to do with sound, although I know that at first sight it seems otherwise. What we appreciate in the brain are electrical signals that we receive from the ears. Our use of sound is simply a convenient device for generating certain patterns of electrical activity. There is indeed a good deal of evidence that musical rhythms reflect the main electrical rhythms that occur in the brain.'

'That's very interesting, John,' Kingsley exclaimed. 'So you might say that music gives the most direct expression of the activities of our brains.'

'No, I wouldn't put it as strongly as that. I would say that music gives the best index of the large-scale patterns in the brain. But words give a better index of the fine-scale patterns.'

And so the discussion continued until far into the night. All aspects of the Cloud's statements were argued over. Perhaps the most striking remark came from Ann Halsey.

'The first movement of the B flat major Sonata bears a metronome marking requiring a quite fantastic pace, far faster than any normal pianist can achieve, certainly far faster than I can manage. Did you notice that request for an increase of speed? It makes me feel a little s.h.i.+very, although probably it was only some queer coincidence, I suppose.'

At this stage it became generally agreed that information concerning the Cloud's real nature should be pa.s.sed to the political authorities. Various Governments were again getting radio communication to work. It was found that, provided a three-centimetre transmission was propagated vertically, the ionization in the atmosphere could be maintained at a value favourable for communication at a wave-length of about ten centimetres. Once more Nortonstowe became an information clearing-house.

n.o.body was really happy at disseminating information about the Cloud. Everybody felt that communication with the Cloud would be taken out of Nortonstowe's control. And there was so much that the scientists wished to learn. Kingsley was strongly opposed to pa.s.sing information to the political authorities, but on this point he was overruled by general opinion, which felt that, regrettable as it might be, secrecy should no longer be maintained.

Leicester had made recordings of the conversations with the Cloud and these were broadcast over the ten-centimetre channels. Governments everywhere had no scruples themselves about maintaining secrecy however. The man-in-the-street never learned of the existence of life in the Cloud, for as time went on events took such a turn as to make secrecy quite imperative.

No Government at this time possessed a one-centimetre transmitter and receiver of appropriate design. For the time being at least, therefore, communication with the Cloud had to be made from Nortonstowe. Technicians in the U.S. pointed out, however, that ten-centimetre transmission to Nortonstowe and thence by one centimetre would allow the U.S. Government and others to establish contact with the Cloud. It was decided that Nortonstowe should become a clearing-house, not only for conveying information over the Earth but also for communication with the Cloud.

The personnel at Nortonstowe divided into two roughly equal camps. Those who supported Kingsley and Leicester wished to veto the politicians' plan openly and violently by telling the various Governments to go to h.e.l.l. The others, led by Marlowe and Parkinson, argued that nothing was to be gained by such defiance, since the politicians could if necessary secure their own way by main force. A few hours before a communication from the Cloud was expected the argument between the two groups became acute. It was resolved by compromise. It was decided that a technical hitch would prevent any ten-centimetre transmissions being received at Nortonstowe. Thus the Governments would be able to hear the Cloud, but they wouldn't be able to talk to it.

And so it came to pa.s.s. That day the highest and most honoured of the human species listened to the Cloud and were unable to reply. It turned out that the Cloud made a bad impression on its august audience, for Joe began talking frankly about s.e.x.

'Will you please resolve this paradox?' he said. 'I notice that a very large portion of your literature is concerned with what you call "love", "profane love" mostly. Indeed, from the specimens available to me I estimate that nearly forty per cent of literature is concerned with this subject. Yet nowhere in literature could I find out what "love" consists of, always the issue is very carefully avoided. This led me to believe that "love" must be some rare remarkable process. Can you imagine my surprise when at last I learnt from medical textbooks that "love" is only a very simple ordinary process shared by a great variety of other animals?'

There were some protests at these remarks from the highest and most honoured of the human species. They were silenced by Leicester who cut their transmissions from the loud-speakers.

'Aw, dry out,' he said. Then he handed a microphone to McNeil. 'I reckon this is your turn, John. You'd better try to give Joe an answer.'

McNeil did his best: 'Viewed from a wholly logical point of view the bearing and rearing of children is a thoroughly unattractive proposition. To a woman it means pain and endless worry. To a man it means extra work extending over many years to support his family. So, if we were wholly logical about s.e.x, we should probably not bother to reproduce at all. Nature takes care of this by making us utterly and wholly irrational. If we were not irrational we simply wouldn't be able to survive, contradictory as this may sound. It's probably the same with all the other animals too.'

Joe was speaking again: 'This irrationality, which I suspected and which I am glad to hear you recognize, has a serious, more grim, aspect. I have already warned you that the supply of chemical foods is pitifully limited on your planet. It is only too likely that an irrational att.i.tude towards reproduction will lead to more individuals being born than can possibly be supported by such slender resources. Such a situation would carry great dangers with it. Indeed it is more than likely that the rarity of intelligent life on planets as a whole arises from the general existence of such irrationalities in their relation to food shortage. I consider it not unlikely that your species may shortly become extinct. This view is confirmed, I find, by the far too rapid rate at which human populations are now increasing.'

Leicester pointed at a group of winking lights.

'The politicians are trying to get through Moscow, Was.h.i.+ngton, London, Paris, Timbuctoo, Uncle Tom Cobbly, and all. Shall we let 'em through, Chris?'

Alexandrov made the first political speech of his life.