“You have a friend named Meera who's a striptease artist? With international venue?”
“Since Wolfgang Pauli discovered the Exclusion Principle while watching the Folies-Bergere, I have felt it my professional duty as a physicist to visit Paris as much as possible. I think of it as my homage to Pauli. But somehow I can never persuade the officials in my country to approve trips solely for this purpose. Usually I must do some pedestrian physics as well. But in such establishments—that's where I met Meera—I am a student of nature, waiting for insight to strike.”
Abruptly his tone of voice shifted from expansive to matter-of-face. “Meera says American professional men are sexually repressed and have gnawing doubts and guilt.”
“Really. And what does Meera say about Russian professional men?”
“Ah, in that category she knows only me. So, of course, she has a good opinion. I think I'd rather be with Meera tomorrow.”
“But all your friends will be at the Consortium meeting,” she said lightly.
“Yes, I'm glad you'll be there,” he replied morosely.
“What's worrying you, Vaygay?”
He took a long time before answering, and began with a slight but uncharacteristic hesitation.
“Perhaps not worries. Maybe only concerns…. What if the Message really is the design drawings of a machine? Do we build the machine? Who builds it? Everybody together? The Consortium? The United Nations? A few nations in competition? What if it's enormously expensive to build? Who pays? Why should hey want to? What if it doesn't work? Could building the machine injure some nations economically? Could it injure them in some other way?”
Without interrupting the torrent of questions, Lunacharsky emptied the last of the wine into their glasses. “Even if the message cycles back and even if we completely decrypt it, how good could the translation be? You know the opinion of Cervantes? He said that reading a translation is like examining the back of a piece of tapestry. Maybe it's not possible to translate the Message perfectly. Then we wouldn't build the machine perfectly. Also, are we really confident we have all the data? Maybe there's essential information at some other frequency that we haven't discovered yet.
“You know, Ellie, I though people would be very cautious about building this machine. But there may be some coming tomorrow who will urge immediate construction—I mean, immediately after we receive the primer and decrypt the Message, assuming that we do. What is the American delegation going to propose?”
“I don't know,” she said slowly. But she remembered that soon after the diagrammatic material had been received der Heer began asking whether it was likely that the machine was within reach of the Earth's economy and technology. She could offer him little reassurance on either score. She recalled again how preoccupied Ken had seemed in the last few weeks, sometimes even jittery. His responsibilities in this matter were, of course—
“And Dr. der Heer and Mr. Kitz staying at the same hotel as you?”
“No, they're staying at the Embassy.”
It was always the case. Because of the nature of the Soviet economy and the perceived necessity of buying military technology instead of consumer goods with their limited hard currency, Russians had little walking-around money when visiting the West. They were obliged to stay in secondor third-rate hotels, even rooming houses, while their Western colleagues lived in comparative luxury. It was a continuing source of embarrassment for scientists of both countries. Picking up the bill for this relatively simple meal would be effortless for Ellie but a burden for Vaygay, despite his comparatively exalted status in the Soviet scientific hierarchy. Now, what was Vaygay…
“Vaygay, be straight with me. What are you saying? You think Ken and Mike are jumping the gun?”
“Straight. ” And interesting word; not right, not left, but progressively forward. I'm concerned that in the next few days we will see premature discussion about building something that we have no right to build. The politicians think we know everything. In fact, we know almost nothing. Such a situation could be dangerous.”
It finally dawned on her that Vaygay was taking a personal responsibility for figuring out the nature of the Message. If it led to some catastrophe, he was worried it might be his fault. He had less personal motives as well, of course.
“You want me to talk to Ken?”
“If you think it's appropriate. You have frequent opportunities to talk to him?” He said this casually.
“Vaygay, you're not jealous, are you? I think you picked up on my feelings for Ken before I did.
When you were back at Argus. Ken and I've been more or less together for the last two months. Do you have some reservations?”
“Oh no, Ellie. I am not your father or a jealous lover. I wish only great happiness for you. It's just that I see so many unpleasant possibilities.”
But he did not further elaborate.
They returned to their preliminary interpretations on some of the diagrams, with which the table was eventually covered. For counterpoint, they also discussed a little politics—the debate in America over the Mandala Principles for resolving the crisis in South Africa, and the growing war of words between the Soviet Union and the German Democratic Republic. As always, Arroway and Lunacharsky enjoyed denouncing their own countries” foreign policies to one another. This was far more interesting than denouncing the foreign policies of each other's nation, which would have been equally easy to do. Over their ritual dispute about whether the check should be shared, she noticed that the downpour had diminished to a discreet drizzle.
By now, the news of the Message from Vega had reached every nook and cranny of the planet Earth. People who knew nothing of radio telescopes and had never heard of a prime number had been told a peculiar story about a voice from the stars, about strange beings—not exactly men, but not exactly gods either—who had been discovered living in the night sky. They did not come from Earth. Their home star could easily be seen, even with a full moon. Amidst the continuing frenzy of sectarian commentary, there was also—all over the world, it was now apparent—a sense of wonder, even of awe. Something transforming, something almost miraculous was happening. The air was full of possibility, a sense of new beginning.
“Mankind has been promoted to high school,” an American newspaper editorialist had written.
There were other intelligent beings in the universe. We could communicate with them. They were probably older than we, possibly wiser. They were sending us libraries of complex information. There was a widespread anticipation of imminent secular revelation. So the specialists in every subject began to worry.
Mathematicians worried about what elementary discoveries they might have missed. Religious leaders worried that Vegan values, however alien, would find ready adherents, especially among the uninstructed young. Astronomers worried that there might be fundamentals about the nearby stars that they had gotten wrong. Politicians and government leaders worried that some other systems of government, some quite different from those currently fashionable, might be admired by a superior civilization. Whatever Vegans knew had not been influenced by peculiarly human institutions, history, or biology. What if much that we think true is a misunderstanding, a special case, or a logical blunder? Experts uneasily began to reassess the foundation of their subjects.
Beyond this narrow vocational disquiet was a great and soaring corner, of bursting into a new age—a symbolism powerfully amplified by the approach of the Third Millennium. There were still political conflicts, some of them—like the continuing South African crisis—serious. But there was also a notable decline in many quarters of the world of jingoist rhetoric and puerile self-congratulatory nationalism. There was a sense of the human species, billions of tiny beings spread over the world, collectively presented with an unprecedented opportunity, or even a grave common danger. To many, it seemed absurd for the contending nation states to continue their deadly quarrels when faced with a nonhuman civilization of vastly greater capabilities. There was a whiff of hope in the air. Some people were unaccustomed to it and mistook it for something else—confusion, perhaps, or cowardice.