Maria waved a hand helplessly. “I know what I mean. I’m just not sure how to say it.”
“You have to have both,” Naarmegen supplied. “The small strings that happen to be English are specific, yes, but not complex enough to rule out chance. When you see a highly complex arrangement that’s also highly specific in some form of language, that’s when you conclude it was put together that way by an intelligence that understood the language and did it for a reason. So there’s your answer.”
Keene had been following with interest. It explained a lot of things about the Kronian world view. “And you say they’ve been able to define these properties rigorously? And quantify them?” he queried. “They’ve measured them in things like genetic codes and protein sequences?”
“Right,” Naarmegen affirmed.
“And what did they find?”
“About as conclusive as you could get. They loaded all the numbers to be biased in the direction of caution—in other words, more likely to miss a signature of intelligence when it was really there and write it off as chance, than to misread a false indication of one where there wasn’t any.”
“Okay.”
“When the complexity becomes too vast and the specificity too tight, you can eliminate chance as the cause. So where’s the cutoff? Philosophers typically used to take an improbability of fifty orders of magnitude as a universal bound beyond which chance processes could be eliminated as the explanation. The Kronians applied a boundary—get this, Lan—of a hundred and fifty orders of magnitude! And they find organization that exceeds it.” Naarmegen smiled expectantly. Keene whistled and looked away for a few seconds to digest the information.
In the front passenger seat, Jorff took an incoming call from Serengeti to check the calibration of the navigation grid laid down by satellites deployed from the Varuna. Beside him, Ivor, who had been listening, glanced back over his shoulder as he drove. “You don’t need scientific criteria and numbers,” he told the others. “It’s all there in the Bible, and now it’s happened again. The old world became corrupt and abandoned God, and set up its own gods. So God destroyed it, and now He’s creating a new world.”
Naarmegen glanced at Keene. Keene shrugged and shook his head to say that the ball was Naarmegen’s. Naarmegen paused to choose his words before answering. “You could be right, Ivor. For now, we’re just concerned with detecting the work of an intelligence. Whether it’s the god of any religion or not, or what its reasons are is another matter. Science can’t answer that.”
“It’s all in the Bible,” Ivor said again.
Jorff’s voice came from up front. “Check three-seven-five and two-oh-nine. We’re coming down from the ridge entering a canyon to exit the plateau complex. It’s rough going but passable.” The Scout had independent swivel-axles for all of its six balloon-tired wheels, and could practically climb a mountain. The Kronians had a lot of experience in designing vehicles for rugged terrains.
“What’s your updated ETA?” the operator at Serengeti asked from Jorff’s panel.
“Oh . . . maybe a couple of hours, judging by what we’re seeing from the probe. There’s a scarp of steep, muddy gullies with what look like steam vents that we may decide to go around.”
“Is Landen Keene there?” another voice asked. It sounded like Gallian’s.
Jorff looked back from his seat. “Gallian is on the circuit, from up in the ship, Dr. Keene. He wants a word with you. You can take it on the panel back there.”
Keene turned to activate the panel’s screen; Gallian’s features appeared on it moments later. They had talked before the Scout departed, when Keene had agreed to be the mission’s impromptu diplomat. But with Gallian’s ebullient way of going about everything, no plan ever stayed set for too long without addendums and afterthoughts.
“Ah, Lan! How is it to be home?” he inquired.
“I’ve had smoother rides in my time. This isn’t exactly a Texas interstate. What’s up?”
“We’ve been going over the pictures that came up. Those people appear extremely primitive, and they might still be traumatized or otherwise disturbed. Don’t take chances. Give all your personnel sidearms. The two SA troopers are authorized to carry rifles. Just as a precaution, eh?”