“You’ve been pouring matter into Cygnus A for the last six hundred million years?”
“Well, what you’ve detected by radio astronomy was just some of our early feasibility testing. We’re much further along now.”
And in due course, in another few hundred million years she imagined, radio astronomers on Earth–if any–will detect substantial progress in the reconstruction of the universe around Cygnus A. She steeled herself for further revelations and vowed she would not let them intimidate her. There was a hierarchy of beings on a scale she had not imagined. But the Earth had a place, a significance in that hierarchy; they would not have gone to all this trouble for nothing.
The blackness rushed back to the zenith and was consumed; Sun and blue sky returned. The scene was the same: surf, sand, palms, Magritte door, microcamera, frond, and her…father.
“Those moving interstellar clouds and rings near the center of the Galaxy–aren’t they due to periodic explosions around here? Isn’t it dangerous to locate the Station here?”
“Episodic, not periodic. It only happens on a small scale, nothing like the sort of thing we’re doing in Cygnus A. And it’s manageable. We know when it’s coming and we generally just hunker down. If it’s really dangerous, we take the Station somewhere else for a while. This is all routine, you understand.”
“Of course. Routine. You built it all? The subways, I mean. You and those other…engineers from other galaxies?”
“Oh no, we haven’t built any of it.”
“I’ve missed something. Help me understand.”
“It seems to be the same everywhere. In our case, we emerged a long time ago on many different worlds in the Milky Way. The first of us developed interstellar space-flight, and eventually chanced on one of the transit stations. Of course, we didn’t know what it was. We weren’t even sore it was artificial until the first of us were brave enough to slide down.”
“Who’s `we’? You mean the ancestors of your…race, your species?”
“No, no. We’re many species from many worlds. Eventually we found a large number of subways– various ages, various styles of ornamentation, and all abandoned. Most were still in good working condition. All we did was make some repairs and improvements.”
“No other artifacts? No dead cities? No records of what happened? No subway builders left?” He shook his head. “No industrialized, abandoned planets?” He repeated the gesture.
“There was a Galaxy-wide civilization that picked up and left without leaving a trace–except for the stations?”
“That’s more or less right. And it’s the same in other galaxies also. Billions of years ago, they all went somewhere. We haven’t the slightest idea where.”
“But where could they go?” He shook his head for the third time, but now very slowly.
“So then you’re not…”
“No, we’re just caretakers,” he said. “Maybe someday they’ll come back.”
“Okay, just one more,” she pleaded, holding her index finger up before her as, probably, had been her practice at age two. “One more question.”
“All right,” he answered tolerantly. “But we only have a few minutes left.”
She glanced at the doorway again, and suppressed a tremor as a small, almost transparent crab sidled by.
“I want to know about your myths, your religions. What fills you with awe? Or are those who make the numinous unable to feel it?”
“You make the numinous also. No, I know what you’re asking. Certainly we feel it. You recognize that some of this is hard for me to communicate to you. But I’ll give yon an example of what you’re asking for. I don’t say this is it exactly, but it’ll give you….”
He paused momentarily and again she felt a tingle, this time in her left occipital lobe. She entertained the notion that he was rifling through her neurons. Had he missed something last night? If so, she was glad. It meant they weren’t perfect.
“…flavor of our numinons. It concerns pi, the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. You know it well, of course, and you also know you can never come to the end of pi. There’s no creature in the universe, no matter how smart, who could calculate pi to the last digit–because there is no last digit, only an infinite number of digits. Your mathematicians have made an effort to calculate it out to …”
Again she felt the tingle.
“…none of you seem to know.. .. Let’s say the ten-billionth place. You won’t be surprised to bear that other mathematicians have gone further. Well, eventually–let’s say it’s in the ten-to-the-twentieth-power place–something happens. The randomly varying digits disappear, and for an unbelievably long time there’s nothing but ones and zeros.”
Idly, he was tracing a circle out on the sand with his toe. She paused a heartbeat before replying.
“And the zeros and ones finally stop? You get back to a random sequence of digits?” Seeing a faint sign of encouragement from him, she raced on. “And the number of zeros and ones? Is it a product of prime numbers?”
“Yes, eleven of them.”
“You’re telling me there’s a message in eleven dimensions hidden deep inside the number pi? Someone in the universe communicates by…mathematics? But…help me, I’m really having trouble understanding you. Mathematics isn’t arbitrary. I mean pi has to have the same value everywhere. How can you hide a message inside pi? It’s built into the fabric of the universe.”
“Exactly.” She stared at him.
“It’s even better than that,” he continued. “Let’s assume that only in base-ten arithmetic does the sequence of zeros and ones show up, although you’d recognize that something funny’s going on in any other arithmetic. Let’s also assume that the beings who first made this discovery had ten fingers. You see how it looks? It’s as if pi has been waiting for billions of years for ten-fingered mathematicians with fast computers to come along. You see, the Message was kind of addressed to us.”
“But this is just a metaphor, right? It’s not really pi and the ten to the twentieth place? You don’t actually nave ten fingers.”
“Not really.” He smiled at her again. “Well, for heaven’s sake, what does the Message say?” He paused for a moment, raised an index finger, and then pointed to the door. A small crowd of people was excitedly pouring out of it.
They were in a jovial mood, as if this were a long-delayed picnic outing. Eda was accompanying a stunning young woman in a brightly colored blouse and skirt, her hair neatly covered with the lacy gele favored by Moslem women in Yorubaland; he was clearly overjoyed to see her. From photographs he had shown, Ellie recognized her as Eda’s wife. Sukhavati was holding hands with an earnest young man, his eyes large and soulful; she assumed it was Surindar Ghosh, Devi’s long-dead medical-student husband. Xi was in animated discourse with a small vigorous man of commanding demeanor, he had drooping wispy mustaches and was garbed in a richly brocaded and beaded gown. Ellie imagined him personally overseeing the construction of the funerary model of the Middle Kingdom, shouting instructions to those who poured the mercury.
Vaygay ushered over a girl of eleven or twelve, her blond braids bobbing as she walked.
“This is my granddaughter, Nina…more or less. My Grand Duchess. I should have introduced you before. In Moscow.”
Ellie embraced the girl. She was relieved that Vaygay had not appeared with Meera, the ecdysiast. Ellie observed his tenderness toward Nina and decided she liked him more than ever. Over all the years she had known him, he had kept this secret place within his heart well hidden.
“I have not been a good father to her mother,” he confided. `These days, I hardly see Nina at all.”
She looked around her. The Stationmasters had produced for each of the Five what could only be described as their deepest loves. Perhaps it was only to ease the barriers of communication with another, appallingly different species. She was glad none of them were happily chatting with an exact copy of themselves.
What if you could do this back on Earth? she wondered. What if, despite all our pretense and disguise, it was necessary to appear in public with the person we loved most of all? Imagine this a prerequisite for social discourse on Earth. It would change everything. She imagined a phalanx of members of one sex surrounding a solitary member of the other. Or chains of people. Circles. The letters “H” or “Q.” Lazy figure-8s. You could monitor deep affections at a glance, just by looking at the geometry–a kind of general relativity applied to social psychology. The practical difficulties of such an arrangement would be considerable, but no one would be able to lie about love.
The Caretakers were in a polite but determined hurry. There was not much time to talk. The entrance to the air-lock of the dodecahedron was now visible, roughly where it had been when they first arrived. By symmetry, or perhaps because of some interdimensional conservation law, the Magritte doorway had vanished. They introduced everyone. She felt silly, in more ways than one, explaining in English to the Emperor Qin who her father was. But Xi dutifully translated, and they all solemnly shook hands as if this were their first encounter, perhaps at a suburban barbecue. Eda’s wife was a considerable beauty, and Surindar Ghosh was giving her a more than casual inspection. Devi did not seem to mind; perhaps she was merely gratified at the accuracy of the imposture.