"None, and less than that," I said. "There're billions of wrong combinations, and only one right one."
"That particular problem," she said, "would take longer than the life of this universe to solve. Now, raise it to the power of itself, and you have the odds against two worms forming a direct nerve-to-nerve contact for communication. Don't take my word for it," she added. "Run a simulation on the nearest terminal."
"No, it's all right. I'll take your word for it. But couldn't the worms have some kind of internal decoding?"
"We thought of that too," Fletcher said. "We had two fellows from the Minsky Foundation looking into that very problem. They said it was possible only if the creature was almost entirely brain and very little else. So far, we haven't found the evidence of that. Have you had the opportunity to see any of the photo-isotomographs?"
"I've seen the demonstrations, but I haven't had the opportunity to poke around on my own." A photo-isotomograph was a three-dimensional map. Easy to make. You thin-slice a frozen worm, taking a picture of the cross section after each slice. You store all the pictures in a computer-the computer holds the data as a three-dimensional array that can then be explored as a visual display. You can examine any part of the worm's body, inside or out, from any angle. With a joystick you can move around through the entire body, tracing the paths of blood vessels, nerves and other structures. So far, most of what we'd seen still fell into the category of "other structures." There were organs inside the worms with no apparent function. Were they evolutionary leftovers, the equivalent of the human appendix-or were they something else, on biological standby and still waiting to be activated?
"I'll get you lab time if you want," Fletcher said. "If you can prove they have the computing power to do that kind of encoding, I'll dance naked with a big pink worm."
"You're that sure, huh?"
"I'm that sure, yes."
"Hm-" I said. "But that still raises another question-"
She glanced at her watch again. "It'd better be a short one."
I said, "If not for communication, then what are the tickler nerves for?"
Fletcher smiled. "Stimulation. Very intense stimulation. Probably very sexual. Communication is a kind of hug. The density of the strands, plus the tickler nerves, must make it a very intense experience. You saw the rigidity of their `climax,' didn't you?"
I nodded, but I asked, "Now is that one a theory or a fact?"
A flicker of annoyance crossed her face. I was immediately sorry I'd asked the question; it was the kind of thing General Poole might have said. But Dr. Fletcher let it pass. "It's an extrapolation," she corrected. "In our own ecology, we know that as life-forms become more sophisticated, the sexual experiences become more intense. So do the rituals, so do the mechanisms of communication. Humans are the best example of all. The worms may be a good halfbillion years further down the evolutionary line than anything that's evolved on Earth, but it doesn't mean they're necessarily more intelligent; it does imply several orders of magnitude of adaptation. Who knows? The worms could be what Terran earthworms might evolve into. You ought to know that sexual reproduction not only encourages evolution, it also self-selects for more sexuality in the species. "
I grinned. "Okay, I concede the point."
She looked at her watch once more, looked annoyed, but didn't leave-not yet. "Listen, James-" she said to me. "You're asking all the right questions. If you ask enough of the right questions, you'll probably retrace most of the steps we've taken in the last eighteen months. Right now, we're bang up against this communication thing-and I'm terribly afraid we're overlooking something so obvious that even a lieutenant could see it." She gave me a speculative smile. "Have you been noticing anything?"
"Well..." I began cautiously, "there is something. Um-you've seen our videos, haven't you? The ones from the chopper?"
"I have, yes."
"Did you notice anything about the bunnydogs and that little dance they did?"
"You mean, did it remind me of the herd?"
"Then you recognized it too."
She said, "It's an obvious comparison."
"I think it's more than that. You were the one who gave me the clue. Remember what you called the clustering phenomenon in the herd? You called it an `enrollment process."'
"It's a lot more than that," Fletcher said. "It's an essential way for the herd to mortar its identity. It's the glue that holds the members there."
"Yes, of course-but to someone who isn't a member of the herd, it's something else. It's an... invitation."
"All right. So?" And then it hit her. She looked up at me in surprise. "The bunnydogs?"
"Uh huh. Exactly. I'm thinking that their dance was an invitation to Colonel Tirelli and myself to come out and join them?"
A thoughtful expression appeared on her face. "Wait a minute." She unclipped her phone from her belt and punched a number. "Jerry? Fletch. I'm going to be late. Can you handle-?" She listened a moment. "Oh, good. All right. Thanks." She refolded the phone and reattached it to her belt. "All right-you've obviously been thinking about this. Give me the rest."
"Well, while I was in the hospital, I did a lot of reading. I looked up Dr. Fromkin's essays on communication." She frowned when I said the name. "Is there something wrong?" I asked. "I thought you were one of his students. You once told me that you'd done the Mode training."
"Yes, I did-and I got a lot out of it-but... I don't like what it's become. I don't like the- Never mind. Go on with what you were saying."
"Well-the point of his study seemed to be that human beings don't very often experience true communication. In fact, most of us don't even know what true communication really is. If you look it up in a dictionary, communication is defined as an exchange of agreed-upon symbols. Fromkin says that's an inaccurate description of communication. He goes on at some length to demonstrate this-"
"I'm familiar with the essays," Fletcher interrupted. "You don't need to do the whole recap."
"All right, well-Fromkin makes the point that true communication is actually the transmission of experience. If I could take a feeling out of my head and pour it directly into yours, that would be true communication. He says if we could function with that kind of communication, our perception of ourselves, the universe, everything, would be transformed. A race like that would be like gods. That's why I was thinking about the worms."
Fletcher nodded. "We went down that tunnel. So far, we haven't found any cheese. But go on."
"Well, that was only my first thought. The thing that really blew me away was what Fromkin said about language. He said that language is ineffective for transmitting experience. A language is really just a set of concepts-so while it's terrific for describing the physical universe, it's totally inappropriate for describing the personal universe; that is, the universe of individual experience. I mean, try to describe love, right? The best that language can do is evoke experience. That human beings do so well is testament to our commitment to communication more than our ability.
"WlIat he said absolutely has to happen before a transmission of experience can occur is a relationship of communication. Communion. Right? Well-that's what the herd clustering is, isn't it? A relationship? It's a willingness to be together. And that's what the bunnydog clustering is too, I'll bet." I studied her face eagerly. "What do you think?"
She said slowly, "I think... you've done very well." She took my arm. "Come on, let's go for a walk. I'll buy you a cup of coffee. Real coffee. My office."