“The scientists have won this debate. So, for example, most of the data–although, I wish to point out, not all–acquired by the United States and the Soviet Union have been exchanged. Most of the data from all other countries have been exchanged worldwide. We are happy we have made this decision.”
Ellie whispered to Kitz, “This doesn’t sound like `hardball’ to me.”
“Stay tuned,” he whispered back. “But there are other kinds of dangers. We would like now to raise one of them for the Consortium to consider.” Baruda’s tone reminded her of Vaygay’s at lunch the other day. What was the bee in the Soviet bonnet?
“We have heard Academician Lunacharsky, Dr. Arroway, and other scientists agree that we are receiving the instructions for building a complex machine. Suppose that, as everyone seems to expect, the end of the Message comes; the Message recycles to the beginning; and we receive the introduction or–the English word is `primer’?–primer which lets us read the Message. Suppose also that we continue to cooperate fully, all of us. We exchange all the data, all the fantasies, all the dreams.
“Now the beings on Vega, they are not sending us these instructions for their amusement. They want us to build a machine. Perhaps they will tell us what the machine is supposed to do. Perhaps not. But even if they do, why should we believe them? So I raise my own fantasy, my own dream. It is not a happy one. What if this machine is a Trojan Horse? We build the machine at great expense, turn it on, and suddenly an invading army pours out of it. Or what if it is a Doomsday Machine? We build it, turn it on, and the Earth blows up. Perhaps this is their way to suppress civilizations just emerging into the cosmos. It would not cost much; they pay only for a telegram, and the upstart civilization obediently destroys itself.
“What I am about to ask is only a suggestion, a talking point. I raise it for your consideration. I mean it to be constructive. On this issue, we all share the same planet, we all have the same interests. No doubt I will put it too bluntly. Here is my question: Would it be better to burn the data and destroy the radio telescopes?”
A commotion ensued. Many delegations asked simultaneously to be recognized. Instead, the conference co-chairmen seemed mainly motivated to remind the delegates that sessions were not to be recorded or videotaped. No interviews were to be granted to the press. There would be daily press releases, agreed upon by the conference co-chairmen and the leaders of delegations. Even the integuments of the present discussion were to remain in this conference chamber.
Several delegates asked for clarification from the Chair. “If Baruda is right about a Trojan Horse or a Doomsday Machine,” shouted out a Dutch delegate, “isn’t it our duty to inform the public?” But he had not been recognized and his microphone had not been activated. They went on to other, more urgent, matters. Ellie had quickly punched into the institutional computer terminal before her for an early position in the queue. She discovered that she was scheduled second, after Sukhavati and before one of the Chinese delegates.
Ellie knew Devi Sukhavati slightly. A stately woman in her mid-forties, she was wearing a Western coiffure, high heeled sling-back pumps, and an exquisite silk sari. Originally trained as a physician, she had become one of the leading Indian experts in molecular biology and now shared her time between King’s College, Cambridge, and the Tata Institute in Bombay. She was one of a handful of Indian Fellows of the Royal Society of London, and was said to be well placed politically. They had last met a few years before, at an international symposium in Tokyo, before receipt of the Message had eliminated the obligatory question marks in the titles of some of their scientific papers. Ellie had sensed a mutual affinity, due only in part to the fact that they were among the few women participating in scientific meetings on extraterrestrial life.
“I recognize that Academician Baruda has raised an important and sensitive issue,” Sukhavati began, “and it would be foolish to dismiss the Trojan Horse possibility carelessly. Given most of recent history, this is a natural idea, and I’m surprised it took so long to be raised. However, I would like to caution against such fears. It is unlikely in the extreme that the beings on a planet of the star Vega are exactly at our level of technological advance. Even on our planet, cultures do not evolve in lockstep. Some start earlier, others later. I recognize that some cultures can catch up at least technologically. When there were high civilizations in India, China, Iraq, and Egypt, there were, at best, iron age nomads in Europe and Russia, and stone age cultures in America.
“But the differences in the technologies will be much greater in the present circumstances. The extraterrestrials are likely to be far ahead of us, certainly more than a few hundred years farther along–perhaps thousands of years ahead of us, or even millions. Now, I ask you to compare that with the pace of human technological advancement in the last century.
“I grew up in a tiny village in South India. In my grandmother’s time the treadle sewing machine was a technological wonder. What would beings who are thousands of years ahead of us be capable of? Or millions? As a philosopher in our part of the world once said: The artifacts of a sufficiently advanced extraterrestrial civilization would be indistinguishable from magic.’
“We can pose no threat to them whatever. They have nothing to fear from us, and that will be true for a very long time. This is no confrontation between Greeks and Trojans, who were evenly matched. This is no science fiction movie where beings from different planets fight with similar weapons. If they wish to destroy us, they can certainly do so with or without our coopera–”
“But at what cost?” someone interrupted from the floor. “Don’t you see? That’s the point. Baruda is saying our television broadcasts to space are their notice that it’s time to destroy us, and the Message is the means. Punitive expeditions are dear. The Message is cheap.”
Ellie could not make out who had shouted out this intervention. It seemed to be someone in the British delegation. His remarks had not been amplified by the audio system, because again the speaker had not been recognized by the Chair. But the acoustics in the conference hall were sufficiently good that he could be heard perfectly well. Der Heer, in the Chair, tried to keep order. Abukhirnov leaned over and whispered something to an aide.
“You think there is a danger in building the machine,” Sukhavati replied. “I think there is a danger in not building the machine. I would be ashamed of our planet if we turned our back on the future. Your ancestors”–she shook a finger at her interlocutor–“were not so timid when they first set sail for India or America.”
This meeting was getting to be full of surprises, Ellie thought, although she doubted whether Clive or Raleigh were the best role models for present decision making. Perhaps Sukhavati was only tweaking the British for past colonial offenses. She waited for the green speaker’s light on her console to illuminate, indicating that her microphone was activated.
“Mr. Chairman.” She found herself in this formal and public posture addressing der Heer, whom she had hardly seen in the last few days. They had arranged to spend tomorrow afternoon together during a break in the meeting, and she felt some anxiety about what they would say. Oops, wrong thought, she thought.
“Mr. Chairman, I believe we can shed some light on these two questions–the Trojan Horse and the Doomsday Machine. I had intended to discuss this tomorrow morning, but it certainly seems relevant now.”
On her console, she punched in the code numbers for a few of her slides. The great mirrored hall darkened.
“Dr. Lunacharsky and I are convinced that these are different projections of the same three-dimensional configuration. We showed the entire configuration in computer simulated rotation yesterday. We think, though we can’t be sure, that this is what the interior of the Machine will look like. There is as yet no clear indication of scale. Maybe it’s a kilometer across, maybe it’s submicroscopic. But notice these five objects evenly spaced around the periphery of the main interior chamber, inside the dodecahedron. Here’s a close-up of one of them. They’re the only things in the chamber that look at all recognizable.
“This appears to be an ordinary overstuffed armchair, perfectly configured for a human being. It’s very unlikely that extraterrestrial beings, evolved on another quite different world, would resemble us sufficiently to share our preferences in living room furniture. Here, look at this close up. It looks like something from my mother’s spare room when I was growing up.”