directed at us especially. We do not know whether any transmitters are in direct contact with each other. There are indications that they use distinct codes. Data thus far are insufficient for more than the most tentative and fragmentary suggestions of possible meaning.”
“I know! Everybody does. You’ve told me already, and it was unnecessary then.”
Yukiko fought down irritation. The machine was godlike in its power, it could do a million years’ worth of human reasoning in a day, but it had no right to patronize her... It didn’t intend to. It habitually repeated itself to humans because many of them needed that. She eased, let the emotion surge and die like a wave. Calm, she said, “As I understand it, the messages are not about mathematics or physics.”
“They do not appear to be, and it seems implausible that civilizations would spend time and bandwidth exchanging knowledge that all must certainly possess. Perhaps they concern other sciences, such as biology. However, that implies that our understanding of physics is incomplete, that we have not by now delineated every possible kind of biochemistry in the universe. We have no evidence for such an assumption.”
“I know,” Yukiko repeated, but patiently. “And I’ve heard the argument that it can’t be politics or anything like that, when transmission times are in centuries. Do they compare histories, arts, philosophies?”
“Conceivably.”
“I believe that. It would make sense.” Unless organic life withers away. But won’t machine minds also wonder about the ultimate? “I want to master your ... analysis. I’m aware I can’t make any contribution, nothing original. Let me follow along, though. Give me the means to think about what you have learned and are learning.”
“That could be done, within limits,” said the gentle voice. “It would require much time and effort on your part. Do you care to explain your reasons?”
Yukiko couldn’t help it, her words trembled. “They, those beings, they must be advanced far beyond us —”
“Not likely, my lady. To the best of present-day knowledge, and it appears seamless, nature sets bounds on technological possibilities; and we have determined what those bounds are.”
“I don’t mean in engineering, I mean in, in understanding, enlightenment.” Inner peace was gone. Her pulse stammered. “You don’t see what I’m talking about. Would anybody nowadays, any human being?” Except Tu Shan and perhaps, if they tried, the rest of our fellowship. We hark back to when people felt these questions were real.
“Your purpose is clear,” said the electronics mildly. “Your concept is not absurd. Quantum mechanics fails at such levels of complexity. Mathematically speaking, chaos sets in, and one must make empirical observations.”
“Yes, yes! We must learn the language and listen to them!”
Did she hear regret within the inexorability? The system could optimize its reactions for her. “My lady, what information we have is totally inadequate. The mathematics leaves no doubt. Unless the character of what we receive changes in fundamental ways, we shall never be able to interpret it for any such subtleties. Be warned, if that is what interests you, studying the material will be an utter waste of your time.”
She had not dared lift hopes too high, but this smashed down upon her.
“Instead, wait,” counselled the system. “Remember, our robotic explorers travel at virtual light speed. They should begin arriving at the nearer sources, to observe and interact, in about a millennium. Perhaps fifteen centuries after that, we will begin to hear from them, and truly begin to learn. You are immortal, my lady. Wait.”
She smothered tears. I am .not a saint. I cannot endure that long while existence has no meaning.
6
Suddenly, warningless, the rock gave way under Tersten’s boots. For an instant he seemed frozen, arms flung wide, against an infinity of stars. Then he toppled from sight.
Svoboda, second in file, had time to thump her staff down and squeeze the firing button. Gas jetted white from vents as a piton shot into stone. The barrel locked onto the upper part of the shaft. She clung. The line slammed taut. Even under lunar gravity, that force was brutal. Her soles skidded on a treacherously thin dust layer. Gripping the staff, she kept upright.
Violence ended. Silence pressed on the faint cosmic hiss in her earplugs. She had been yanked forward about two meters. The line continued upslope and over a verge formed when the ledge they had been following went to pieces. It should have been strained tight by Tersten’s weight. She saw with horror that it drooped slack. Had it broken? No, it couldn’t have.
“Tersten!” she cried. “Are you all right?” The wavelength diffracted around the edge. If he hung there, it was only about a meter below. She got no response. The seething gibed.
She turned her head more than her body toward Mswati behind her. His beltflash cast a pool of undiffused light at his feet. Through a well-nigh invisible helmet it dazzled her, made him a shadow against the starlit gray of the mountainside. “Come here,” she ordered. “Carefully, carefully. Take hold of my staff.”
“Yes,” he acknowledged. Though she hadn’t been leading the climb, she was the team captain. The expedition was her idea. Moreover, she was a Survivor. The others were in their twenties or thirties. Beneath all the informality and fellowship, they bore a certain awe of her.
“Stand by,” she said when he reached her. “I’m going ahead to look. If more crumbles, I’ll try to spring back, and may well fall off the ledge. Be prepared to brake me and haul me up.”
“No, I will go,” he protested. She dismissed that with a chopping gesture and set off on hands and knees.
It was a short crawl, but time stretched while she felt her way forward. On her right a cliff went nearly sheer into a nightful abyss. Flexible as skin, tough as armor, her space-suit wouldn’t protect her against such a fall. Vision searched and probed. Sensors in the gloves told her more through her hands than they could have learned naked. At the back of her mind, it annoyed that she should be aware of sweat-smells and dry mouth. While the suit recycled air and water, at the moment she was overloading its thermostat and capacity for breaking down wastes.
The suface held. The ledge continued beyond a three-meter gap. She made out pockmarks near the break in it. So, she thought—she must not agonize over Tersten, not yet—once in the past a shotgun meteoroid shower had struck here. Probably radiation spalling then weakened the stone further, turning that section into an unforeseeable trap.
Well, everybody had said this undertaking was crazy. The first lunar circumambulation? To go clear around the moon on foot? Why? You’ll endure toil and hardship and danger, for what? You won’t carry out any observations a robot can’t do better. You won’t gam anything but a fleeting notoriety, largely for your foolishness. Nobody will ever repeat the stunt. There are gaudier thrills to be had in a sensorium, higher achievements among the computers.
“Because it is real,” was the best retort she found.
She came to the edge and put her head over. On the horizon a sliver of rising sun shone above a crater. It turned desolation into a jumble of light and dark. Her helmet saved her eyesight by immediately stopping the glare down to a dull gold. Elsewhere it stayed clear. Her heart thuttered. Tersten dangled beneath her, limp. She loudened radio reception and heard snoring breath.
“He’s unconscious,” she reported to Mswati. Examining: “I see what the trouble is. His line caught in a crack on this verge. Impact jammed it in tight.” She rose to her knees and tugged. “I can’t free it. Come.”
The young man joined her. She rose. “We don’t know how he’s injured,” she said. “We must be gentle. Secure the end of my line and lower me over the side. I’ll clasp him and you haul us both in, me on the bottom to absorb any shocks and scrapes.”
That went well. Both were strong, and, complete with spacesuit and backpack full of intricate chemistries, a person weighed only some twenty kilos. While he was in her arms Tersten opened his eyes and moaned.
They laid him out on the ledge. Waiting till he could speak, Svoboda gazed west. The heights dropped down toward a level darkness that was Mare Crisium. Earth hung low, daylit part marbled white and blue, unutterably lovely. Memories of what it had once been struck like a knife. Damnation, why did that have to be the one solitary planet fit for humans?
Oh, the lunar cities and the inhabited satellites were pleasant, and unique diversions were available there.
