“I know. You can talk around in circles on it.”
“You cannot sidetrack the conclusion,” said Alice, “that an intelligence somehow is involved. We shy away from it, of course, because of our biological bias. Such a thing as that big black box, we say, cannot be alive. There’s no living thing on Earth like it, so it cannot be alive. It’s so illogical, too. That’s another reason we recoil from it. It’s processing cellulose and why should it want cellulose? We use cellulose to make paper and perhaps other things as well. I’m not up on cellulose. But this thing can’t be intending to make paper, so it makes no sense. No one has stopped to consider that cellulose may be a treasure to it, that trees are a bonanza. Just like gold or diamonds would be to us. It may have traveled across many light-years to find a planet where cellulose exists. There wouldn’t be, throughout the galaxy, too many planets where trees, or the equivalent of trees, would grow.”
“I have the horrible feeling,” said Porter, “that you are leading up to something.”
“Yes, I am,” she said. “A parallel in history that may teach a lesson. Here is a thing that plops down on top of us and begins to take what it wants, without asking us, ignoring us—doing the same thing the white men did when they came to the Americas or to Africa or wherever else they went. As arrogant as we were, as self-satisfied, as assured as we were of our right to do it.”
“I’m afraid,” he said, “that there are others who will be saying the same thing. You are the first, but there will be others. The Indians, for one.”
“The native Americans,” said Alice.
“All right. Have it your way. Native Americans.”
“There’s another thing,” she said. “We have to make every effort to communicate with our visitor. It may have so many things to tell us. Some things, perhaps, that we have never even thought about, have never conceptualized. New viewpoints and perspectives. ‘What we could learn from it may change our lives. Turn us around. I have always thought that somewhere along the way, we got off on a wrong track. The visitor, just possibly, could put us back on the right track.”
“I agree with you,” he said, “but how do we go about talking with it? To do any good, if it’s capable of doing us any good, it couldn’t be just pidgin talk. It would have to be a meaningful conversation. That might be hard to come by—if we can talk with it at all.”
“It would take time,” she said. “We’ll have to be patient. We must give it, and ourselves, a chance. Above all, we should do nothing to drive it away. We should hang in there, no matter what it takes.”
“So far, Alice, there has been no suggestion that we should drive it away. Even if we wanted to, there’s no one who has the least idea of how to go about it.”
14. LONE PINE
Kathy woke in the middle of the night, huddling in the bed, cringing against the darkness and the cold of the motel room pressing down upon her.
The cold, she thought, the cold and darkness. And knew that she was not thinking so much of the present cold and darkness, here in this small room, as of the cold and darkness through which the visitor had passed to arrive on Earth.
Had she been dreaming of it, she wondered, the dream, now forgotten, translating into this first waking moment? If so, she had no recollection of the dream.
But the thought of the visitor and of the chill emptiness of outer space still continued to persist. From how far out, she wondered, had it come? Perhaps across light-years, with the glint of unknown suns faint specks of hazy light in the all-engulfing darkness. Propelled across the cosmos, driven by a purpose of its own, driven by an emptiness of soul as deep and wide as the emptiness of galactic space, driven by a hunger unlike the hunger that an inhabitant of the planet Earth might feel, seeking, perhaps, the Earth or another planet like the Earth. And why the Earth, or a planet like the Earth? Because it would have trees? Fiercely, she shook her head, for it must be more than that. There must be something more than trees.
Maybe, she told herself, it was doing no more than exploring, mapping the galaxy, or following some dim, cobbled-together chart that some earlier traveler might have put together, following it in the fulfillment of a mission that the human mind might not have the capability to grasp.
The cold and dark, she thought again, wondering why it was that she continued to come back to the cold and dark. But there would be more, she thought, than the cold and dark. There would be, as well, the loneliness, the smallness of one’s self in the never-ending gulf where there could exist no flicker of compassion or even of awareness, but only a great uncaring that took no notice of anything that moved or made its way across it. What kind of creature, she wondered, could stand up in the face of this great uncaring? What kind of creature could consign itself to the maw of nothingness? What sort of motive must it have to drive itself into the continuing emptiness? Perhaps it had a purpose—for to do what it had done, there must be a purpose. But if its purpose were the Earth, then it could not have known when it started out that it would achieve its purpose. Certainly, no one in even the most shallow depths of space could know of Earth, or have any inkling of Earth.
Poor, lonely thing, she thought. Poor frightened eater of the trees. Poor creature of so far away, coming into Earth from the great uncaring.
15. WASHINGTON, D.C.
Porter had gotten into his pajamas and was turning down his bed when the phone rang. He glanced at the clock on his bedside table; it was almost two o’clock.
“This is Jack,” said the voice on the other end of the line. “Jack Clark. Were you asleep?”
“In another minute, I would have been.”
“Dave, I think this is important. Can you come down to the White House? Meet us in your office.”
“Who is us?”
“Me, NASA, the science advisor, Whiteside.”
“Not the President?”
“He’s asleep. We don’t want to wake him. There are a few things we should talk out.”
“Such as?”
“Your line is not secured. I can’t tell you. I repeat, it is important.”
“Be there in ten, maybe fifteen, minutes.”
“On second thought, maybe I should get the White House chief of staff in on this too. You have any objection?”
“Hammond? Sure. Why not? By all means, get him in.”
“All right, then. We’ll be expecting you.
Porter put the phone back in the cradle. Now what the hell? he wondered. Clark was excited and concerned; it could be heard in his tone of voice. Perhaps, Porter thought, no one else could have known. But he did. He’d known Jack Clark for a long time.
He took another look at the bed. Why not just sack out, he asked himself, and to hell with Clark and the others? God knows, he needed the rest. In the last twenty-four hours, he had logged little sleep. But he knew that he was only trying the thought on for size. In fifteen minutes, he would be walking down the corridor toward the press office. He started taking off his pajamas, heading for the chest of drawers to get socks and underwear.
In the driveway, before he got into the car, he stood for a moment, looking at the sky. Somewhere to the north, some distance off, he could hear the mutter of a plane coming in to land. He looked for the blinking lights of the craft, but they could not be seen. Out in the street, fallen leaves made a rustling sound as they were driven along the pavement by the wind.
Everyone except Hammond was present and waiting when he entered the door of the press room. Against the wall, the wire machines made soft chortling noises. The kitchen had brought up coffee; a gleaming urn sat on one of the desks, with white coffee mugs ranged in a huddled group.
Whiteside had taken the chair behind Porter’s desk, was teetering back and forth in it. Crowell, the NASA man, and Dr. Allen sat side by side on a small sofa. Clark was filling coffee cups preparatory to passing them out. Hammond came striding briskly through the door.
“What is going on?” he asked. “You sounded urgent, Jack.”
“I don’t know how urgent,” said Clark. “It’s something we should talk over. The shuttle went out and the station has sent the word.”