‘Does the Monolith keep your friend Halman so busy that he can’t talk to me?’ he complained to Poole. ‘What does he do with his time, anyway?’
It was a very reasonable question; and the answer came, like a thunderbolt out of a cloudless sky, from Bowman himself – as a perfectly commonplace vidphone call.
33
Contact
‘Hello, Frank. This is Dave. I have a very important message for you. I assume that you are now in your suite in Africa Tower. If you are there, please identify yourself by giving the name of our instructor in orbital mechanics. I will wait for sixty seconds, and if there is no reply will try again in exactly one hour.’
That minute was hardly long enough for Poole to recover from the shock. He felt a brief surge of delight, as well as astonishment, before another emotion took over. Glad though he was to hear from Bowman again, that phrase ‘a very important message’ sounded distinctly ominous.
At least it was fortunate, Poole told himself, that he’s asked for one of the few names I can remember. Yet who could forget a Scot with a Glasgow accent so thick it had taken them a week to master it? But he had been a brilliant lecturer – once you understood what he was saying.
‘Dr Gregory McVitty.’
‘Accepted. Now please switch on your Braincap receiver. It will take three minutes to download this message. Do not attempt to monitor: I am using ten-to-one compression. I will wait two minutes before starting.’
How is he managing to do this? Poole wondered. Jupiter/Lucifer was now over fifty light-minutes away, so this message must have left almost an hour ago. It must have been sent with an intelligent agent in a properly addressed package on the Ganymede-Earth beam – but that would have been a trivial feat to Halman, with the resources he had apparently been able to tap inside the Monolith.
The indicator light on the Brainbox was flickering. The message was coming through.
At the compression Halman was using, it would take half an hour for Poole to absorb the message in realtime. But he needed only ten minutes to know that his peaceful life-style had come to an abrupt end
34
Judgement
In a world of universal and instantaneous communication, it was very difficult to keep secrets. This was a matter, Poole decided immediately, for face-to-face discussion.
The Europa Committee had grumbled, but all its members had assembled in his apartment. There were seven of them – the lucky number, doubtless suggested by the phases of the Moon, that had always fascinated Mankind. It was the first time Poole had met three of the Committee’s members, though by now he knew them all more thoroughly than he could possibly have done in a pre-Braincapped lifetime.
‘Chairperson Oconnor, members of the Committee – I’d like to say a few words – only a few, I promise! – before you download the message I’ve received from Europa. And this is something I prefer to do verbally; that’s more natural for me – I’m afraid I’ll never be quite at ease with direct mental transfer.’
‘As you all know, Dave Bowman and Hal have been stored as emulations in the Monolith on Europa. Apparently it never discards a tool it once found useful, and from time to time it activates Halman, to monitor our affairs – when they begin to concern it. As I suspect my arrival may have done – though perhaps I flatter myself.’
‘But Halman isn’t just a passive tool. The Dave component still retains something of its human origins – even emotions. And because we were trained together – shared almost everything for years – he apparently finds it much easier to communicate with me than with anyone else. I would like to think he enjoys doing it, but perhaps that’s too strong a word.’
‘He’s also curious – inquisitive – and perhaps a little resentful of the way he’s been collected, like a specimen of wildlife. Though that’s probably what we are, from the viewpoint of the intelligence that created the Monolith.’
‘And where is that intelligence now? Halman apparently knows the answer, and it’s a chilling one.’
‘As we always suspected, the Monolith is part of a galactic network of some kind. And the nearest node – the Monolith’s controller, or immediate superior – is 450 light-years away.’
‘Much too close for comfort! This means that the report on us and our affairs that was transmitted early in the twentyfirst century was received half a millennium ago. If the Monolith’s – let’s say Supervisor – replied at once, any further instructions should be arriving just about now.’
‘And that’s exactly what seems to be happening. During the last few days, the Monolith has been receiving a continuous string of messages, and has been setting up new programs, presumably in accordance with these.’
‘Unfortunately, Halman can only make guesses about the nature of those instructions. As you’ll gather when you’ve downloaded this tablet, he has some limited access to many of the Monolith’s circuits and memory banks, and can even carry on a kind of dialogue with it. If that’s the right word – since you need two people for that! I still can’t really grasp the idea that the Monolith, for all its powers, doesn’t possess consciousness – doesn’t even know that it exists!’
‘Halman’s been brooding over the problem for a thousand years – on and off – and has come to the same answer that most of us have done. But his conclusion must surely carry far more weight, because of his inside knowledge.’
‘Sorry! I wasn’t intending to make a joke – but what else could you call it?’
‘Whatever went to the trouble of creating us – or at least tinkering with our ancestors’ minds and genes – is deciding what to do next. And Halman is pessimistic. No – that’s an exaggeration. Let’s say he doesn’t think much of our chances, but is now too detached an observer to be unduly worried. The future – the survival! – of the human race isn’t much more than an interesting problem to him, but he’s willing to help.’
Poole suddenly stopped talking, to the surprise of his intent audience.
‘That’s strange. I’ve just had an amazing flashback… I’m sure it explains what’s happening. Please bear with me.’
‘Dave and I were walking together one day, along the beach at the Cape, a few weeks before launch, when we noticed a large beetle lying on the sand. As often happens, it had fallen on its back and was waving its legs in the air, struggling to get right-way-up.’
‘I ignored it – we were engaged in some complicated technical discussion – but not Dave. He stepped aside, and carefully flipped it over with his shoe. As it flew away I commented, “Are you sure that was a good idea? Now it will go off and chomp somebody’s prize chrysanthemums.” And he answered, “Maybe you’re right. But I’d like to give it the benefit of the doubt.”
‘My apologies – I’d promised to say only a few words! But I’m very glad I remembered that incident: I really believe it puts Halman’s message in the right perspective. He’s giving the human race the benefit of the doubt…’
‘Now please check your Braincaps. This is a high-density recording – top of the u.v. band, Channel 110. Make yourselves comfortable, but be sure you’re free line of sight. Here we go…’
35
Council of War
No one asked for a replay. Once was sufficient.
There was a brief silence when the playback finished; then Chairperson Dr Oconnor removed her Braincap, massaged her shining scalp, and said slowly:
‘You taught me a phrase from your period that seems very appropriate now. This is a can of worms.’
‘But only Bowman – Halman – has opened it,’ said one of the Committee members. ‘Does he really understand the operation of something as complex as the Monolith? Or is this whole scenario a figment of his imagination?’
‘I don’t think he has much imagination,’ Dr Oconnor answered. ‘And everything checks perfectly. Especially the reference to Nova Scorpio. We assumed that was an accident; apparently it was a – judgement.’
‘First Jupiter – now Scorpio,’ said Dr Kraussman, the distinguished physicist who was popularly regarded as a reincarnation of the legendary Einstein. A little plastic surgery, it was rumoured, had also helped. ‘Who will be next in line?’
‘We always guessed,’ said the Chair, ‘that the TMAs were monitoring us.’ She paused for a moment, then added ruefully: ‘What bad – what incredibly bad! – luck that the fmal report went off, just after the very worst period in human history!’
There was another silence. Everyone knew that the twentieth century had often been branded ‘The Century of Torture’
Poole listened without interrupting, while he waited for some consensus to emerge. Not for the first time, he was impressed by the quality of the Committee No one was trying to prove a pet theory, score debating points, or inflate an ego: he could not help drawing a contrast with the often bad-tempered arguments he had heard in own time, between Space Agency engineers and administrators, Congressional staffs, and industrial executives.