She switched back to one of the cities. It was enormous, straddling two rivers. Lots of traffic moving in its streets. Cars. Vehicles that might have been trains or buses.
“Can we get a look at them?” asked Rudy. “The inhabitants?”
Yes. Phyllis focused on a street corner.
They were thick-waisted bipedal creatures, not unlike barrels with limbs. Vehicles moved past in a steady stream. Then there must have been a signal because they stopped and the creatures swarmed into the street. Most wore loose-fitting trousers and shirts. There was no distinguishing between sexes, nor could anyone figure out how big the creatures were. Their skin was slick, vaguely repulsive, in the way a reptile’s might be. They had faces: two eyes on the sides of the skull, rather than in front. “They started out as somebody’s prey,” said Antonio.
There was a nose and a mouth, but no sign of ears. The eyes were relatively large.
They watched a jet aircraft take off from a runway well outside the city. Moments later, another one followed.
“What are we going to do?” asked Antonio. “Go down and say hello?”
“In Academy days,” said Rudy, “that would have been prohibited.”
Hutch nodded. “The pilot would have been required to notify us, and we’d have sent a team.”
She was dazzling in that moment. Her eyes were filled with light. “And did anyone ever notify you?” asked Antonio.
“We never really found anybody. Not while I was there.”
“Except a few savages,” said Rudy.
The sheer joy that had swept through Antonio suddenly drained off at the prospect they might make a few notes and move on, leaving the contact to someone else. “So what do we do?” he asked.
Rudy was awestruck. Antonio could hear him breathing, watch him shaking his head as if he’d arrived in Paradise. “Not sure,” he said. They were outrunning the sun, leaving it behind. Ahead, more cities glittered in an approaching dawn.
WHEN THINGS CALMED down, Hutch realized she almost wished they’d found nobody home. Maybe that was what she was used to. Maybe in the end she was too cautious for this line of work. Or maybe she’d simply gotten old. “Last time we tried dropping by to say hello,” she said, “we lost some people.”
Rudy nodded and said something, but he wasn’t listening. His mind was down on the city streets.
“Phyl,” she said, “can you read any of the radio signals yet? What they’re saying?”
“Negative, Hutch. It’s going to take a while. For one thing, there seem to be quite a few different languages.”
“How long?”
“How long will it take? I’ll need a few days.”
“We can’t wait that long,” said Rudy. He was already looking aft, down the passageway that led past their compartments to the zero-gee tube and the access to the launch bay.
“Why not, Rudy? What’s your hurry?”
My God, wasn’t it obvious? “Come on, Hutch, we’re not going to play that better-safe-than-sorry game, are we?”
“Glad you see it my way, Rudy,” she said, in a tone that made it clear who was in charge. “We will not go plunging in. And anyhow, even if you went down this afternoon and shook somebody’s hand, you’d have a hard time saying hello.”
“I know. But goddam it—”
“Let’s just keep cool. Okay?” Then, to Phyclass="underline" “Let us know when we’re able to talk to them.”
“Okay.”
“Also, we’ll want to find someone we can have a conversation with. Try to find somebody like”—she smiled—“Rudy. Or Antonio. A physicist or a journalist. When you do, look for a way we can connect with him.”
THE AIS NEEDED almost four days to break through the language barrier. “Mostly it’s just entertainment,” Phyl said. “Drama. Adventure. Comedy. A lot like what we’d have. There’s probably also a fair amount of station-to-station traffic that we’re not getting. The broadcast stuff is likely to have a stronger signal.”
“Drama, adventure, and comedy. Can you let us take a look?”
“I’ll make them available. Do you have a preference?”
“Whatever you have,” said Rudy. “Maybe show us their quality stuff.”
“I have no way to make that judgment.”
Rudy tried not to look foolish. Of course. Kidding. “Just pick something at random. Can you provide a reading copy? It’ll be faster.”
“Of course.”
“Me, too,” said Antonio.
“And you, Hutch?”
“I’ll take as close as you can get to the broadcast version. Good show, Phyl. One more thing: If we’re able to set up a conversation with somebody, will you be able to do on-the-spot translation?”
“Not at the moment. I’m not yet proficient. And there will necessarily be some limitations.”
“Okay. That’s your next task. Pick one of the more widely used languages.”
A series of mode lamps began blinking. “I’ll be ready tomorrow at about this time.”
THE COMEDIES WERE slapstick. The creatures ran con games against each other, inevitably got caught, and fell down a lot. They pretended to skills they didn’t have, chased each other around the set, pursued hopeless get-rich-quick schemes, failed consistently in their efforts to score with members of the opposite sex.
Even up close, Hutch had trouble distinguishing the sexes. The females were smaller, but otherwise possessed no obviously different features. No breasts, no flaring hips, no sense of softness.
The shows contrasted to the relatively sophisticated comedy to which she was accustomed. When she commented along that line to Rudy, he smiled condescendingly. “You have to open your mind, Hutch. Don’t assume just because it’s different that it’s not at our level.”
“Rudy,” she replied, “it’s dumb. Falling over your feet constantly is dumb.”
The dramas were, for the most part, shows with villainous characters. Good guys and bad guys. White hats and black. The villain makes off with someone’s fiancée for reasons that often weren’t clear. A series of chases ensued. Inevitably there were shoot-outs with projectile weapons, and the female was recovered.
“What I don’t understand,” she told Antonio, “is that we know this civilization has been around a long time. How come the entertainment is at such a childish level?”
“I thought they were pretty good,” said Antonio.
There were news shows. And commentaries, although the latter seemed to be limited to scandal and discussions about celebrities. She heard no politics.
In the morning, all the males agreed that the shows were very much like Earth’s own. And that therefore it seemed inevitable that the inhabitants of Makai were remarkably human. “Not anatomically, obviously,” said Rudy. “But in all the ways that matter.”
“You don’t think anatomy matters?” asked Matt.
“I still think it’s dumb,” said Hutch. “I mean, these people, hundreds of thousands of years ago, were out looking around the galaxy. And now they’re watching Briggs and Comatose?”
“Briggs and who?”
“I made it up,” she said. “But you know what I’m trying to say. Whatever happened to evolution? Did they go backward?”
“You’re overreacting, Hutch,” Matt told her from the McAdams. “Give these people a break. It’s entertainment. So it’s not Bernard Shaw. What do you want?”
Jon couldn’t resist a chuckle. “You think modern entertainment is sophisticated?” he asked.
That put her on the defensive. “It’s okay,” she said.
“How does it rank with Sophocles?”
“Well, hell, Jon, be reasonable—”
“I’m doing that. Ask yourself what Euripides’ audience would have thought of the Night Show.”
She let it go. There’d be no winning that argument.
THAT AFTERNOON, PHYL announced she was prepared to act as an interpreter. “And I may have found somebody.”