breadboard stage, as you can see. It’s been years since I last handled a soldering iron and a voltmeter, too, so we may well have a simple electronic failure somewhere in this mass of wiring—but it wasn’t a task I could leave to a technician.”
He waved them to seats while he made final adjustments. Egtverchi remained standing in the rear of the room in the shadows, motionless except for the gentle rise and fall of his great chest as he breathed, and an occasional sudden movement of his eyes.
“There will be no image, of course,” the count said abstractedly.
“This giant J-J coupling you describe obviously doesn’t broadcast in that band. But if we are very lucky, we may get some sound… Ah.”
A loudspeaker almost hidden in the maze crackled and then began to emit distant, patterned bursts of hissing. Except for the pattern, it seemed to Ruiz-Sanchez to be nothing but noise, but the count said at once:
“I’m getting something in that region. I didn’t expect to pick it up so soon. I don’t make much sense of it, however.”
Neither did Ruiz, and for a few moments he had all he could do to get over his amazement. “Those are signals—the Message Tree is broadcasting now?” he said, with a touch of incredulity.
“I hope so,” the count said drily. “I have been busy all day installing chokes against any other possible signal.”
The Jesuit’s respect for the mathematician came close to awe. To think that this disorderly tangle of wiring, little black acorns, small red and brown objects like firecrackers, the shining interlocking blades of variable condensers, massively heavy coils, and flickering meters was even now reaching directly through the subether, around fifty light-years of space-time, to eavesdrop on the pulses of the crystalline cliff buried beneath Xoredeshch Sfath…
“Can you tune it?” he said at last. “I think those must be the stutter pattern—what the Lithians use as a navigational grid for their ships and planes. There ought to be an audio band—”
Except, he recalled suddenly, that that band couldn’t possibly be an “audio” band. Nobody ever spoke directly to the Message Tree—only to the single Lithian who stood in the center of the Tree’s chamber. How he got the substance of the message transformed into radio waves had never been explained to any of the Earthmen.
And yet suddenly there was a voice.
“—a powerful tap on the Tree,” the voice said in clear, even, cold Lithian. “Who is receiving? Do you hear me? I do not understand the direction your carrier is coming from. It seems inside the Tree, which is impossible. Does anyone understand me?” Silently, the count thrust a microphone into Ruiz’ hand. He discovered that he was trembling.
“We understand you,” he said in Lithian in a shaky voice. “We are on Earth. Can you hear me?”
“I hear you,” the voice said at once. “We understood that what you say is impossible. But what you say is not always accurate, we have found. What do you want?”
“I would like to speak to Chtexa, the metallist,” Ruiz said. “This is Ruiz-Sanchez, who was in Xoredeshch Sfath last year.”
“He can be summoned,” said the cold, distant voice. There was a brief hashing sound from the speaker; then it went away again. “If he wishes to speak to you.”
“Tell him,” Ruiz-Sanchez said, “that his son Egtverchi also wishes to speak to him.”
“Ah,” said the voice after a pause. “Then no doubt he will come. But you cannot speak long on this channel. The direction from which your signal comes is damaging my sanity. Can you receive—a sound-modulated signal if we can arrange to send one?”
Michelis murmured to the count, who nodded energetically and pointed to the loudspeaker.
“That is how we are receiving you—now,” Ruiz said. “How are you transmitting?”
“That I cannot explain to you,” said the cold voice. “I cannot speak to you any longer or I will be damaged. Chtexa has been called.”
The voice stopped and there was a long silence. Ruiz-Sanchez wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand.
“Telepathy?” Michelis muttered behind him. “No, it fits into the electro-magnetic spectrum somewhere. But where? Boy, there sure is a lot we don’t know about that Tree.”
The count nodded ruefully. He was watching his meters like a hawk but, judging from his expression, they were not telling him anything he did not already know.
“Ruiz-Sanchez,” the loudspeaker said. Ruiz started.
It was Chtexa’s voice, clear and strong.
Ruiz beckoned at the shadows, and Egtverchi came forward. He was in no hurry. There was something almost insolent in his very walk.
“This is Ruiz-Sanchez, Chtexa,” Ruiz said. “I’m talking to you from Earth—a new experimental communications system one of our scientists has evolved. I need your help.”
“I will be glad to do whatever I can,” Chtexa said. “I was sorry that you did not return with the other Earthman. He was less welcome. He and his friends have razed one of our finest forests near Gleshchtehk Sfath, and built ugly buildings here in the city.”
“I’m sorry, too,” Ruiz-Sanchez said. The words seemed inadequate, but it would be impossible to explain to Chtexa exactly what the situation was—impossible, and illegal. “I still hope to come some day. But I am calling about your son.”
There was a brief pause, during which the speaker emitted a series of muted, anomalous sounds, almost yet not quite recognizable. Evidently the Lithians’ audio hookup was catching some background noise from inside the Tree, or even outside it. The clarity of the reception was astonishing; it was impossible to believe that the Tree was fifty light-years away.
“Egtverchi is an adult now,” Chtexa’s voice said. “He has seen many wonders on your world. Is he with you?”
“Yes,” Ruiz-Sanchez said, beginning to sweat again. “But he does not know your language, Chtexa. I will interpret as best I can.’’
“That is strange,” Chtexa said. “But I will hear his voice. Ask him when he is coming home; he has much to tell us.”
Ruiz put the question.
“I have no home,” Egtverchi said indifferently.
“I can’t just tell him that, Egtverchi. Say something intelligible, in heaven’s name. You owe your existence to Chtexa, you know that.”
“I may visit Lithia some day,” Egtverchi said, his eyes filming. “But I am in no hurry. There is still a great deal to be done on Earth.”
“I hear him,” Chtexa said. “His voice is high; he is not as tall as his inheritance provided, unless he is ill. What does he answer?”
There simply was not time to provide an interpretive translation; Ruiz-Sanchez told him the answer literally, word by word from English into Lithian.
“Ah,” Chtexa said. “Then he has matters of import to his hand. That is good, and is generous of the Earth. He is right not to hurry. Ask him what he is doing.”
“Breeding dissension,” Egtverchi said, with a slight widening of his grin. Ruiz-Sanchez could not translate that literally; the concept was not in the Lithian language. It took him the better part of three long sentences to transmit even a dubious shadow of the idea to Chtexa.
“Then he is ill,” Chtexa said. “You should have told me, Ruiz-Sanchez. You had best send him to us. You cannot treat him adequately there.”
“He is not ill, and he will not go,” Ruiz-Sanchez said carefully. “He is a citizen of Earth and cannot be compelled. This is why I called you. He is a trouble to us, Chtexa. He is doing us hurts. I had hoped you might reason with him; we can do nothing.”
The anomalous sound, a sort of burring metallic whine, rose in the background and fell away again.
“That is not normal or natural,” Chtexa said. “You do not recognize his illness. No more do I, but I am not a physician. You must send him here. I see I was in error in giving him to you. Tell him he is commanded home by the Law of the Whole.”
