“Certainly,” said Valentine. “Imagine a picnic—”
Noonan jumped. “What did you say?”
“A picnic. Imagine: a forest, a country road, a meadow. A car pulls off the road into the meadow and unloads young men, bottles, picnic baskets, girls, transistor radios, cameras… A fire is lit, tents are pitched, music is played. And in the morning they leave. The animals, birds, and insects that were watching the whole night in horror crawl out of their shelters. And what do they see? An oil spill, a gasoline puddle, old spark plugs and oil filters strewn about… Scattered rags, burntout bulbs, someone has dropped a monkey wrench. The wheels have tracked mud from some godforsaken swamp… and, of course, there are the remains of the campfire, apple cores, candy wrappers, tins, bottles, someone’s handkerchief, someone’s penknife, old ragged newspapers, coins, wilted flowers from another meadow…”
“I get it,” said Noonan. “A roadside picnic.”
“Exactly. A picnic by the side of some space road. And you ask me whether they’ll come back…”
“Let me have a smoke,” said Noonan. “Damn your pseudoscience! Somehow this isn’t at all how I envisioned it.”
“That’s your right,” observed Valentine.
“What, you mean they never even noticed us?”
“Why?”
“Or at least they paid no attention.”
“I wouldn’t get too disappointed if I were you,” advised Valentine.
Noonan took a drag, coughed, and threw the cigarette down. “All the same,” he said stubbornly. “It couldn’t be… Damn you scientists! Where do you get this disdain for man? Why do you constantly need to put him down?”
“Wait,” said Valentine. “Listen. ‘You ask: what makes man great?’” he quoted. “‘Is it that he re-created nature? That he harnessed forces of almost-cosmic proportions? That in a brief time he has conquered the planet and opened a window onto the universe? No! It is that despite all this, he has survived, and intends to continue doing so.’”
There was silence. Noonan was thinking. “Maybe,” he said uncertainly. “Of course, from that point of view…”
“Don’t get so upset,” Valentine said kindly. “The picnic is only my hypothesis. And not even a hypothesis, really, but an impression. So-called serious xenologists try to justify interpretations that are much more respectable and flattering to human vanity. For example, that the Visit hasn’t happened yet, that the real Visit is yet to come. Some higher intelligence came to Earth and left us containers with samples of their material culture. They expect us to study these samples and make a technological leap, enabling us to send back a signal indicating we’re truly ready for contact. How’s that?”
“That’s much better,” said Noonan. “I see that even among the scientists there are decent men.”
“Or here’s another one. The Visit did take place, but it is by no means over. We’re actually in contact as we speak, we just don’t know it. The aliens are holed up in the Zones and are carefully studying us, simultaneously preparing us for the ‘time of cruel miracles.’”
“Now that I understand!” said Noonan. “At least it explains the mysterious bustle in the ruins of the factory. By the way, your picnic doesn’t account for that.”
“Why not?” disagreed Valentine. “Some little girl might have dropped her favorite windup doll.”
“Now cut that out,” said Noonan emphatically. “Some doll—the ground is shaking. Then again, of course, it could be a doll… Want some beer? Rosalie! Come here, old lady! Two beers for the xenologists! It really is a pleasure to talk to you,” he told Valentine. “A real brain cleansing—like someone poured Epsom salts under my skull. Otherwise, you work and work, but you never think about why or what for, grapple with what might happen, try to lighten your load…”
They brought the beer. Noonan took a sip and, looking over the foam, saw Valentine with an expression of fastidious skepticism, examining his stein.
“What, you don’t like it?” he asked, licking his lips.
“To be honest, I don’t drink,” said Valentine with hesitation.
“Oh yeah?” said Noonan in astonishment.
“Damn it!” said Valentine. “There has to be one nondrinker in the world.” He decisively pushed the stein away. “Order me a cognac, then,” he said.
“Rosalie!” Noonan shouted immediately, now completely mellow.
When they brought the cognac, Noonan said, “Still, it’s not right. I won’t even mention your picnic—that’s a complete disgrace—but even accepting the hypothesis that this is, say, a prelude to contact, it’s still no good. Bracelets, empties—those I could understand. But why the slime? Or the bug traps or that disgusting fuzz?”
“Excuse me,” said Valentine, choosing a slice of lemon. “I don’t exactly understand your terminology. What traps?”
Noonan laughed. “That’s folklore,” he explained. “Stalkers’ jargon. Bug traps—those are the areas of increased gravity.”
“Oh, the graviconcentrates… Directed gravity. Now that’s something I would enjoy discussing, but you wouldn’t understand a thing.”
“Why not? I’m an engineer, after all.”
“Because I don’t understand a thing myself. I have a system of equations, but I haven’t a notion about how to interpret it. And the slime—that’s probably the colloidal gas?”
“The very same. You heard about the catastrophe in the Carrigan Labs?”
“I’ve heard something,” Valentine replied reluctantly.
“Those idiots placed a porcelain container with the slime into a special, maximally insulated chamber. That is, they thought that it was maximally insulated, but when they opened the container with the mechanical arm, the slime went through the metal and plastic like water through a sieve, escaped, and turned everything it touched into the same slime. The tally: thirty-five dead, more than a hundred injured, and the entire laboratory is completely unusable. Have you ever been there? It’s a gorgeous building! And now slime has seeped into the basement and lower floors… That’s a prelude to contact for you.”
Valentine made a face. “Yes, I know all that,” he said. “But you have to admit, Richard, that the aliens had nothing to do with this. How could they have known about the existence of military-industrial complexes?”
“Well, they should have known!” said Noonan didactically.
“And here’s what they’d say in reply: You should have long since gotten rid of military-industrial complexes.”
“That’s fair,” agreed Noonan. “Maybe that’s what they should have worked on, if they are so powerful.”
“So you’re suggesting interference with the internal affairs of mankind?”
“Hmm,” said Noonan. “That, of course, could lead us all sorts of places. Forget about it. Let’s return to the beginning of the conversation. How is it all going to end? Say, take you scientists. Are you hoping to acquire something fundamental from the Zone, something that could really revolutionize our science, technology, way of life?”
Valentine finished his drink and shrugged his shoulders. “You’re talking to the wrong man, Richard. I don’t like empty fantasies. When it comes to such a serious subject, I prefer cautious skepticism. Judging from what we’ve already acquired, there is a whole spectrum of possibilities, and nothing definite can be said.”
“Rosalie, more cognac!” yelled Noonan. “Well, all right, let’s try another tack. What, in your opinion, have we already acquired?”
“Amusingly enough, relatively little. We’ve found many marvels. In a number of cases, we’ve even learned how to adapt these marvels to our needs. We’ve even gotten used to them. A lab monkey presses a red button and gets a banana, presses a white button and gets an orange, but has no idea how to obtain bananas or oranges without buttons. Nor does it understand the relationship between buttons and oranges and bananas. Take, say, the spacells. We’ve learned to apply them. We’ve even discovered conditions under which they multiply by division. But we have yet to create a single spacell, have no idea how they work, and, as far as I can tell, won’t figure it out anytime soon. Here’s what I’d say. There are a number of objects for which we have found applications. We use them, although almost certainly not in the ways that the aliens intended. I’m absolutely convinced that in the vast majority of cases we’re using sledgehammers to crack nuts. Nevertheless, some things we do apply: spacells, bracelets that stimulate vital processes… all sorts of quasibiological masses, which caused such a revolution in medicine… We’ve gained new tranquilizers, new mineral fertilizers, we’ve revolutionized astronomy. In any case, why am I listing them? You know it all better than I do—I see you wear a bracelet yourself. Let us call this group of objects useful. You could say that, to a certain extent, these objects have benefited humanity, although we can never forget that in our Euclidean world every stick has two ends…”