“Now, twelve thousand years ago is 10,000 B. C., the time when civilization was just starting up.
Isn't that right?” Joss asked.
“Unless you believe that the Earth was created in 4004 B. C.”
“No, we don't believe that, do we, Brother Rankin? We just don't think the age of the Earth is known with the same precision that you scientists do. On the question of the age of the Earth, we're what you might call agnostics.” He had a most attractive smile.
“So if folks were navigating ten thousand years ago, sailing the Mediterranean, say, or the Persian Gulf, Vega would have been their guide?”
That's still in the last Ice Age. Probably a little early for navigation. But the hunters who crossed the Bering land bridge to North America were around then. I must have seemed an amazing gift— providential, if you like—that such a bright star was exactly to the north. I'll bet a lot of people owed their lives to that coincidence.”
“Well now, that's mighty interesting.”
“I don't want you to think I used the word “providential” as anything but a metaphor.”
“I'd never think that, my dear.”
Joss was by now giving signs that the afternoon was drawing to a close, and he did not seem displeased. But there were still a few items, it seemed, on Rankin's agenda.
“It amazes me that you don't think it was Divine Providence, Vega being the Pole Star. My faith is so strong I don't need proofs, but every time a new fact comes along it simply confirms my faith.”
“Well then, I guess you weren't listening very closely to what I was saying this morning. I resent the idea that we're in some kind of faith contest, and you're the hands-down winner. So far as I know you've never tested your faith? I'm willing to do it for mine. Here, take a look out that window. There's a big Foucault pendulum out there. The bob must weight five hundred pounds. My faith says that the amplitude of a free pendulum—how far it'll swing away from the vertical position—can never increase. It can only decrease. I'm willing to go out there, put the bob I front of my nose, let go, have it swing away and then back toward me. If my beliefs are in error, I'll get a five-hundred-pound pendulum smack in the face.
Come on. You want to test my faith?”
“Truly, it's not necessary. I believe you,” replied Joss. Rankin, though, seemed interested. He was imagining, she guessed, what she would look like afterward.
“But would you be willing,” she went on, “to stand a foot closer to this same pendulum and pray to God to shorten the swing? What if it turns out that you've gotten it all wrong, that what you're teaching isn't God's will at all? Maybe it's the work of the Devil. Maybe it's pure human invention. How can you be really sure?”
“Faith, inspiration, revelation, awe,” Rankin answered. “Don't judge everyone else by your own limited experience. Just the fact that you've rejected the Lord doesn't prevent other folks from acknowledging His glory.”
“Look, we all have a thirst for wonder. It's a deeply human quality. Science and religion are both bound up with it. What I'm saying is, you don't have to make stories up, you don't have to exaggerate.
There's wonder and awe enough in the real world. Nature's a lot better at inventing wonders than we are.”
“Perhaps we are all wayfarers on the road to truth,” Joss replied.
On this hopeful note, der Heer stepped in deftly, and amidst strained civilities they prepared to leave. She wondered whether anything useful had been accomplished. Valerian would have been much more effective and much less provocative, Ellie thought. She wished she had kept herself in better check.
“It's been a most interesting day, Dr. Arroway, and I thank you for it.” Joss seemed a little remote again, courtly but distracted. He shook her hand warmly, though. On the way out to the waiting government car, past a lavishly rendered three-dimensional exhibit on “The Fallacy of the Expanding Universe,” a sign read, “Our God Is Alive and Well. Sorry About Yours.”
She whispered to der Heer, “I'm sorry if I made your job more difficult.”
“Oh no, Ellie. You were fine.”
“That Palmer Joss is a very attractive man. I don't think I did much to convert him. But I'll tell you, he almost converted me.” She was joking of course.
CHAPTER 11
The World Message Consortium
The world is nearly all parceled out, and what there is left of it is being divided up, conquered, and colonized. To think of these stars that you see overhead at night, these vast worlds which we can never reach. I would annex the planets if I could; I often think of that. It makes me sad to see them so clear and yet so far.
From their table by the window she could see the downpour spattering the street outside. A soaked pedestrian, his collar up, gamely hurried by. The proprietor had cranked the striped awning over the tubs of oysters, segregated according to size and quality and providing a kind of street advertisement for the specialty of the house. She felt warm and snug inside the restaurant, the famous theatrical gathering place, Chez Dieux. Since fair weather had been predicted, she was without raincoat or umbrella.
Likewise unencumbered, Vaygay introduced a new subject: “My friend, Meera,” he announced, “is an ecdysiast—that is the right word, yes? When she works in your country she performs for groups of professionals, at meetings and conventions. Meera says that when she takes off her clothes for working-class men—at trade union conventions, that sort of thing—they become wild, shout out improper suggestions, and try to join her on the stage. But when she gives exactly the same performance for doctors or lawyers, they sit there motionless. Actually, she says, some of them lick their lips. My question is: Are the lawyers healthier than the steelworkers?”
That Vaygay had diverse female acquaintances had always been apparent. His approaches to women were so direct and extravagant—herself, for some reason that both pleased and annoyed her, excluded—that they could always say no without embarrassment. Many said yes. But the news about Meera was a little unexpected.
They had spent the morning in a last-minute comparison of notes and interpretations of the new data. The continuing Message transmission had reached an important new stage. Diagrams were being transmitted from Vega the way newspaper wirephotos are transmitted. Each picture was an array raster. The number of tiny black and white dots that made up the picture was the product of two prime numbers. Again prime numbers were part of the transmission. There was a large set of such diagrams, on following the other, and not at all interleaved with the text. It was like a section of glossy illustrations inserted in the back of a book. Following transmission of the long sequence of diagrams, the unintelligible text continued. From at least some of the diagrams it seemed obvious that Vaygay and Arkhangelsky had been right, that the Message was in part at least the instructions, the blueprints, for building a machine. Its purpose was unknown. At the plenary session of the World Message Consortium, to be held tomorrow at the Elysee Palace, she and Vaygay would present for the first time some of the details to representatives of the other Consortium nations. But word had quietly been passed about the machine hypothesis.
Over lunch, she had summarized her encounter with Rankin and Joss. Vaygay had been attentive, but asked no questions. It was as if she had been confessing some unseemly personal predilection and perhaps that had triggered his train of association.