CHAPTER 41
Daycycle by daycycle, leap by leap, language grew into being.
Early on, the visual code became four-dimensional, figures depicted from various angles in space and shown changing with time. These representations would quickly have gone from solid geometry through non-Euclidean geometry to bewilderment, had not a computer simultaneously developed the appropriate equations. “Phase spaces, Riemannian spaces — I think they perceive them, live in them, with direct experience,” Dayan said. “When we send a set of tensors, does that come across to them as a … an object?”
“Yes, the conditions we live under must be as strange to them as theirs are to us,” Sundaram mused. “Stranger still, then, is that our transmissions do not leave them utterly baffled.”
Hypertext evolved, symbols in multiply connected arrays. Ever oftener, context revealed meanings, which led to the adoption of new symbols and more sophisticated grammar. For this, Simon was invaluable. Adapted to chaotically changeable environments, sensorium extending to single photons and electron transitions, ens instincts bred intuitions of what a message might refer to. On the other hand, it was usually humans who worked out the form of a reply or of a question; they were better at abstract thought, and their species had developed mathematics further.
When Simon proposed expanding the code, Yu designed and built circuits to employ sonics. Though the beings at the other end of the communications scarcely employed sound themselves, they promptly got the idea and returned equivalent signals. It never led to direct speech, but it did give expression to a wider range of concepts. “Like music, rhythm, tone — saying things that words can’t,” Mokoena suggested. “M-m, no, I don’t suppose that’s a real comparison.” However, she and Zeyd found it useful in describing their own kind of life, its chemistry, variousness, histories, folkways, perhaps a hint at its feelings and dreams.
Dazzlingly fast, the language expanded. The aliens seemed to make no mistakes, go up no blind alleys. When those aboard the ship did, the exchange quickly revealed where they were wrong. The code that resulted was a sort of human-Tahirian hybrid, heavily mathematical and graphical, individuality and emotion only implied — both parties burningly wanted to know! It did not translate well into English, still less into Tahirian. Yet there was discourse.
Einstein said once that the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.
To Nansen came Emil and asked, “(Would it be possible to take the remaining boat on excursions? We could make many worthwhile observations, for example, of the black hole and its beams from a more canted orbit.)”
“(No.)” A parleur could not utter the man’s sympathy for this spacefarer, idled and isolated. “(We cannot risk our only landable craft. Have you three nothing at all to do?)”
“(Leo and Peter will mate — without begetting, of course. The joining of life is a high art.)”
Is it enough, by itself to fill months or years for them? Nansen thought. Not among humans. Even Jean and I — He dodged away from the memories suddenly crowding in on him, as they so often did. “(We have a few probes left. Let us by all means lay out a research program for them.)”
“(I anticipated you would hold the boat in reserve),” Emil said. “(It has occurred to me that we can get more information from the probes — they will survive more missions before the unforeseeable overtakes them — if they are directed by us, not entirely by robots, from closer than the ship. Could we not put together a protective capsule with such controls and a motor? Low acceleration would suffice, and the excursions need not be hazardously lengthy.)”
“Por Dios!” Nansen cried. “(That is an interesting concept indeed.)” His mind leapfrogged. Shift cargo around to clear a large volume in the hull. Bring what tools and other equipment were necessary across to that workspace; spare materials were already abundantly stored over there. Keep busy, keep engaged — “(Let us talk further.)” Thank you for this, you who have not surrendered to apathy or to sorrow.
Hard labor would be a blessing. He had been following the revelations from Sundaram’s group, fascinated; but he was a layman, with nothing to contribute. Robots kept house. Envoy had no present need for a commander. He seldom even presided over dinner. His fellows generally snatched what food and sleep they must, at whatever hours were least inconvenient, and went back to their science. After that which they had undergone together, tacit consent had put them on first-name terms with him. He had recognized other overtures, tentative moves to lessen his aloneness, and had not responded. He appreciated their kindness, but appreciated more that it did not press itself upon him. The notion stayed with him that it was unwise, undutiful, for the captain to bare any wounds.