The Borscht was brightly lit and full of delicious smells. The Borscht had also changed—no more boozing and no more merrymaking. Gutalin didn’t come here anymore, turned up his nose, and Redrick Schuhart had probably stuck his freckled mug inside, scowled, and went off. Ernest was still in jail; his old lady was enjoying being in charge: there was a steady respectable clientele, the whole Institute came here for lunch, as did the senior officers. The booths were cozy, the food was tasty, the prices were moderate, the beer was always fresh. A good old-fashioned pub.
Noonan saw Valentine Pillman sitting in one of the booths. The Nobel laureate was drinking coffee and reading a magazine folded in half. Noonan approached. “May I join you?” he asked.
Valentine raised his dark glasses at him. “Ah,” he said. “Feel free.”
“One second, let me wash my hands,” said Noonan, remembering the sore.
He was well known here. When he came back and sat down across from Valentine, there was already a small grill with sizzling barbecue and a tall stein of beer on the table—neither warm nor cold, just the way he liked it. Valentine put the magazine down and took a sip of coffee.
“Listen, Valentine,” said Noonan, cutting a piece of meat and dipping it in the sauce. “How do you think it’s all going to end?”
“What are you talking about?”
“The Visit. Zones, stalkers, military-industrial complexes—the whole stinking mess. How could it all end?”
For a long time, Valentine stared at him through his opaque black lenses. Then he lit up a cigarette and said, “For whom? Be more specific.”
“Well, say, for humanity as a whole.”
“That depends on our luck,” said Valentine. “We now know that for humanity as a whole, the Visit has largely passed without a trace. For humanity everything passes without a trace. Of course, it’s possible that by randomly pulling chestnuts out of this fire, we’ll eventually stumble on something that will make life on Earth completely unbearable. That would be bad luck. But you have to admit, that’s a danger humanity has always faced.” He waved away the cigarette smoke and smiled wryly. “You see, I’ve long since become unused to discussing humanity as a whole. Humanity as a whole is too stable a system, nothing upsets it.”
“You think so?” said Noonan with disappointment. “Well, that may be…”
“Tell me the truth, Richard,” said Valentine, obviously amusing himself. “What changed for you, a businessman, after the Visit? So you’ve learned that the universe contains at least one intelligent species other than man. So what?”
“How can I put it?” mumbled Richard. He was already sorry that he started the subject. There was nothing to say here. “What changed for me? For example, for many years now I’ve been feeling a bit uneasy, apprehensive. All right, so they came and left immediately. And what if they come back and decide to stay? For me, a businessman, these aren’t idle questions, you know: who they are, how they live, what they need. In the most primitive case, I’m forced to consider how to modify my product. I have to be ready. And what if I turn out to be completely superfluous in their society?” He became more animated. “What if we’re all superfluous? Listen, Valentine, since we’re on the subject, are there answers to these questions? Who they are, what they wanted, if they’ll come back…”
“There are answers,” said Valentine with an ironic smile. “Lots of them, pick any you like.”
“And what do you think?”
“To be honest, I’ve never let myself seriously consider it. For me, the Visit is first and foremost a unique event that could potentially allow us to skip a few rungs in the ladder of progress. Like a trip into the future of technology. Say, like Isaac Newton finding a modern microwave emitter in his laboratory.”
“Newton wouldn’t have understood a thing.”
“You’d be surprised! Newton was a very smart man.”
“Oh yeah? Anyway, never mind Newton. What do you actually think about the Visit? Even if not seriously.”
“Fine, I’ll tell you. But I have to warn you, Richard, that your question falls under the umbrella of a pseudoscience called xenology. Xenology is an unnatural mixture of science fiction and formal logic. At its core is a flawed assumption—that an alien race would be psychologically human.”
“Why flawed?” asked Noonan.
“Because biologists have already been burned attempting to apply human psychology to animals. Earth animals, I note.”
“Just a second,” said Noonan. “That’s totally different. We’re talking about the psychology of intelligent beings.”
“True. And that would be just fine, if we knew what intelligence was.”
“And we don’t?” asked Noonan in surprise.
“Believe it or not, we don’t. We usually proceed from a trivial definition: intelligence is the attribute of man that separates his activity from that of the animals. It’s a kind of attempt to distinguish the master from his dog, who seems to understand everything but can’t speak. However, this trivial definition does lead to wittier ones. They are based on depressing observations of the aforementioned human activity. For example: intelligence is the ability of a living creature to perform pointless or unnatural acts.”
“Yes, that’s us,” agreed Noonan.
“Unfortunately. Or here’s a definition-hypothesis. Intelligence is a complex instinct which hasn’t yet fully matured. The idea is that instinctive activity is always natural and useful. A million years will pass, the instinct will mature, and we will cease making the mistakes which are probably an integral part of intelligence. And then, if anything in the universe changes, we will happily become extinct—again, precisely because we’ve lost the art of making mistakes, that is, trying various things not prescribed by a rigid code.”
“Somehow this all sounds so… demeaning.”
“All right, then here’s another definition—a very lofty and noble one. Intelligence is the ability to harness the powers of the surrounding world without destroying the said world.”
Noonan grimaced and shook his head. “No,” he said. “That’s a bit much… That’s not us. Well, how about the idea that humans, unlike animals, have an overpowering need for knowledge? I’ve read that somewhere.”
“So have I,” said Valentine. “But the issue is that man, at least the average man, can easily overcome this need. In my opinion, the need doesn’t exist at all. There’s a need to understand, but that doesn’t require knowledge. The God hypothesis, for example, allows you to have an unparalleled understanding of absolutely everything while knowing absolutely nothing… Give a man a highly simplified model of the world and interpret every event on the basis of this simple model. This approach requires no knowledge. A few rote formulas, plus some so-called intuition, some so-called practical acumen, and some so-called common sense.”
“Wait,” said Noonan. He finished his beer and banged the empty stein down on the table. “Don’t get off track. Let’s put it this way. A man meets an alien. How does each figure out that the other is intelligent?”
“No idea,” Valentine said merrily. “All I’ve read on the subject reduces to a vicious circle. If they are capable of contact, then they are intelligent. And conversely, if they are intelligent, then they are capable of contact. And in generaclass="underline" if an alien creature has the honor of being psychologically human, then it’s intelligent. That’s how it is, Richard. Read Vonnegut?”
“Damn it,” said Noonan. “And here I thought you’d sorted everything out.”
“Even a monkey can sort things,” observed Valentine.
“No, wait,” said Noonan. For some reason, he felt cheated. “But if you don’t even know such simple things… All right, never mind intelligence. Looks like there’s no making heads or tails of it. But about the Visit? What do you think about the Visit?”