“Message received. Information slight. Send more.”
For the next week almost everyone was kept busy reading from suitably chosen books. The readings were recorded and then transmitted. But always there came short replies demanding more information, and still more information.
Marlowe said to Kingsley:
“It’s no good, Chris, we shall have to think up a new idea. This brute’ll soon exhaust the lot of us. My voice is getting as hoarse as an old crow with this constant reading.”
“Harry Leicester’s working on a new idea.”
“I’m glad of that. What is it?”
“Well, it may kill two birds with one stone. The slowness of our present methods isn’t the only trouble. Another difficulty is that a great deal of what we’re sending must seem shockingly unintelligible. A whole multitude of words in our language refer to objects that we see and touch and hear. Unless the Cloud knows what those objects are I don’t see how it can make sense of a great deal of the stuff we’re churning out. If you haven’t ever seen an orange or come in contact with an orange in some way, I don’t see how you could possibly know what the word “orange” means, however intelligent you were.”
“I can see that. What d’you propose to do?”
“It was Harry’s idea. He thinks he can use a television camera. Luckily I got Parkinson to lay some in. Harry thinks he can hook one up to our transmitter, and what’s more he’s pretty confident that he can modify it to do something like 20,000 lines instead of the miserable 450 or so lines of ordinary television.”
“That’s because of the much lower wave-length?”
“Yes, of course. We ought to be able to transmit an excellent picture.”
“But the Cloud doesn’t have a television tube!”
“Of course not. How the Cloud decides to analyse our signals is entirely its own business. What we must make sure of is that we’re transmitting all relevant information. So far, we’ve been doing a pretty poor job and the Cloud’s been quite right to complain.”
“How do you propose to use the television camera?”
“We’ll start by going through a whole list of words, demonstrating various nouns and verbs. This will be preliminary. It’s got to be carefully done but it shouldn’t take too long to go through about five thousand words — perhaps a week. Then we can transmit the contents of whole books by scanning the pages with the camera. It should be possible to deal with the whole
“That certainly ought to satisfy the brute’s thirst for knowledge. Well, I suppose I’d better get back to my reading! Tell me when the camera’s going to be ready. I can’t estimate how glad I’ll be to get rid of this chore.”
Later Kingsley could be seen in contact with Leicester. “I’m sorry, Harry,” he said, “but I’ve got some other problems.”
“Then I hope you’ll keep them to yourself. We’re right under the surface here in this department.”
“I’m sorry but they concern you, and I’m afraid they’ll mean more work.”
“Look here, Chris, why don’t you take your coat off and start doing some real work instead of interrupting the good intentions of the proletariat? Well, what’s the trouble? Let’s hear it.”
“The trouble is we’re not giving enough attention to the receiving end, to us here as the receiving end, I mean. Once we start to transmit with the television camera we shall presumably get replies in the same form as we transmit. That’s to say a received message would appear as words on a television tube.”
“Well, what’s the matter with that? It’ll be nice and easy to read.”
“Yes, that’s all right so far as it goes. But remember that we can only read about a hundred and twenty words a minute, whereas we’re hoping to transmit at least a hundred times faster than that.”
“We shall have to tell Johnny Boy up there to slow down the speed of his replies, that’s all. We’ll tell him that we’re such dimwits that we can only deal with a hundred and twenty words a minute, instead of the tens of thousands that he seems capable of gobbling up.”
“All very good, Harry, I’m not quarrelling with anything you say.”
“Only you’re wanting me to do more work, eh?”
“That’s right. How did you guess? My idea is that it’d be nice to hear the Cloud’s messages acoustically, as well as to read ’em off a tube. We’ll get much more tired reading than listening.”
“To quote Alexis, I think it’s a bloody awful idea. You realize what it involves?”
“It means you’ll have to keep sight and sound equivalents. We could use the electronic computer for that. We’ve only got to store about five thousand words.”
“Only!”
“I don’t see it’s going to mean very much work at all. We shall have to go over individual words quite slowly to the Cloud. I’m reckoning about a week for it. As we show off each word we put some key part of our T.V. signal on to punched tape. That shouldn’t be difficult. You can also put the sound of the words on to punched tape, using a microphone, of course, to get the sound into an electrical form. Once we’ve got it all on tape we can put it into the computer any time we like. There’ll be quite a lot of storage needed so we’ll use the magnetics. It’ll be easily fast enough. And we’ll put a conversion programme in the high-speed store. Then we can either read the Cloud’s messages on a television tube or hear ’em over a loud-speaker.”
“I’ll say this for you, Chris. I never knew anyone who was better at finding work for other people. I take it that you’ll write the conversion programme.”
“Of course.”
“A nice armchair job, eh? Meanwhile us poor devils can slave away with our soldering irons, burning holes in our trousers and heaven knows what. What voice shall I use for the sound?”
“Your own, Harry. That’s your reward for having all those holes burned in your trousers. We shall all be listening to you for hours on end!”
As time went on, the idea of a conversion of the Cloud’s messages into sound seemed to commend itself more and more to Harry Leicester. After a few days he began to go around with a more or less permanent grin on his face, but nobody could discover the joke.
The television system turned out highly successful. After four days of transmission a message was received that read:
“Congratulations on improvement of technique.”
This message appeared on the television tube since the sound-conversion system was not yet working.
The transmission of individual words proved rather more difficult than had been expected, but eventually it was accomplished. The transmission of scientific and mathematical works turned out a simple matter. Indeed it soon became clear that these transmissions were only serving to acquaint the Cloud with the state of human development, rather as a child shows off its attainments to an adult. Books dealing with social issues were then run through. Their choice was a matter of some difficulty and in the end a large and rather random sample was televised. It became clear that the Cloud was having more difficulty in absorbing this material. At length the message came, still read on the television tube:
“Later transmissions appear most confused and strange. I have many questions to ask, but would prefer to deal with them at some future time. Incidentally your transmissions are interfering very seriously, on account of the proximity of your transmitter, with various external messages that I wish to receive. For this reason I am providing you with the following code. In future always use this code. I intend setting up an electronic shield against your transmitter. The code will serve as a signal that you wish to penetrate the shield. If it is convenient you will be allowed to do so. You may expect to receive a further transmission from me in approximately forty-eight hours from now.”
An intricate pattern of lights flashed across the television tube. They were followed by a further message:
“Please confirm that you have received this code and can use it.”
Leicester dictated the following reply:
“We have made a recording of your code. We believe that we can use it but are not certain. We will confirm at your next transmission.”
There was a delay of about ten minutes. Then the reply came:
