“Do you have a word for those with whom you have mutually beneficial relationships?”
“Friends,” said the darmat, PHANTOM translating the word the first time it had been received. “We call them friends.”
“We are friends,” said Rissa.
“Yes.”
“The kind of material you’re made out of—the material we call dark matter—is all of it alive?”
“No. Only tiny fraction.”
“But you say there has been living dark matter for a very long time?”
“Since the beginning.”
“Beginning of what?”
“Of—all the stars combined.”
“Of the totality of everything? We call that the universe.”
“Since the beginning of the universe.”
“That’s an interesting point right there,” said Jag, sitting on Keith’s left. “The idea that the universe had a beginning… it did, of course, but how does it know that? Ask it about that.”
“What was the universe like in the beginning?” said Rissa into the mike.
“Compressed,” said the darmat. “Small beyond small. One place, no time.”
“The primordial atom,” said Jag. “Fascinating. It’s right, but I wonder how such a creature would deduce that?”
“They communicate by radio,” said Lianne, turning around at InOps to face Jag. “They probably reasoned it out the same way we did: from the cosmic microwave background and the redshifting of radio noise from distant galaxies.”
Jag grunted.
Rissa continued her dialogue: “You have told us that neither you personally, Cat’s Eye, nor this group of darmats is anywhere near that old. How do you know that darmat life existed all the way back to the beginning.”
“Had to,” replied the darmat.
Jag barked dismissively. “Philosophy,” he said. “Not science. They just want to believe that.”
“We have not existed nearly that long,” said Rissa into the microphone stalk. “We have not found any evidence for life of any type made out of our kind of matter that is more than four billion years old.” PHANTOM converted the time expression into something the darmat could understand.
“As said earlier, you are insignificant.”
Jag barked at PHANTOM. “Query: How was the translation for ‘insignificant’ derived?”
“Mathematically,” said the computer in the appropriate language into each individual’s earpiece. “We established that the difference between 3.7 and 4.0 was ‘significant,’ but that the difference between 3.99 and 4.00 was ‘insignificant.’ ”
Jag looked at Rissa. “So in this context the word might convey a different sense. It might mean something metaphoricai—a ‘late arrival’ could be equated with insignificance, for instance.”
Thor looked over his shoulder at the Waldahud and grinned. “Don’t like the idea of being dismissed out of hand, eh?”
“Don’t be abrasive, human. It’s simply that we have to be careful when generalizing the use of alien words. And besides, perhaps he’s referring to the signaling probe. At less than five meters in length, it could indeed be termed insignificant.”
Rissa nodded and spoke into the mike. “When you say we are insignificant, are you referring to our size?”
“Not size of speaking part. Not size of part that ejected speaking part.”
“So much for outsmarting him,” said Thor, grinning. “He knows that the signaling probe came from this ship.” Rissa covered the mike with her hand; the gesture was as good a signal as any to PHANTOM to temporarily halt transmission. “It doesn’t matter, I guess.” She removed her hand and spoke again to Cat’s Eye.
“Are we insignificant because we haven’t been around as long as you have?”
“Not a question of time length; a question of time absolute. We here from beginning; you not. By definition, we significant, you not. Obviously so.”
“I don’t know about that,” said Keith, good-naturedly. “The good guys are never first, only better.”
Rissa covered the mike and looked at him. “Regardless, I think we should steer clear of philosophy until we’re more comfortable with each other. I don’t want to accidentally give offense and cause him to clam up.”
Keith nodded.
Rissa spoke into the mike again. “Presumably there are other communities of darmats.”
“Billions of communities.”
“Do you interact with them?”
“Yes.”
“Your radio signals are not powerful, and are close to the frequency of the microwave background radiation. They would not be perceptible over a great distance.”
“True.”
“Then how do you interact with other darmat communities?”
“Radio-one only for local talk. Radio-two for communication between communities.”
Lianne turned to Rissa. “Is he saying what I think he’s saying? That the darmats are natural transmitters of hyperspace radio?”
“Let’s find out,” said Rissa: She faced the mike again. “Radio-one travels at the same speed as light, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Radio-two travels faster than light, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Jesus,” said Keith. “If they use hyperspace radio, how come we’ve never encountered their signals before?”
“There are an infinite number of quantized hyperspace levels,” said Lianne. “None of the Commonwealth races has had hyperspace radio for more than fifty years, and the whole Commonwealth uses only about eight thousand quantized levels; it’s quite possible that we’ve never happened to key into one of the ones the darmats use.” She turned her gaze to Rissa. “The way we do hyperspace radio requires an enormous amount of energy. It would be well worth pursuing this topic. They may have a method of doing it that takes a lot less power.”
Rissa nodded. “We use a kind of radio-two, as well. Will you tell us more about how yours works?”
“Tell all,” replied Cat’s Eye. “But little to tell. We think one way, thought is private. We think another way, thought is transmitted on radio-one. We think a third, harder way, and thought is transmitted on radio-two.”
Keith laughed. “It’s like asking a human to explain how speech works. We just do it, that’s all. It’s—”
“Forgive me for interrupting, Dr. Lansing,” said PHANTOM, “but you asked me to remind you and Dr. Cervantes of your 14:00 appointment.”
Keith’s face fell.
“Damn,” he said. “Damn.” He turned to Rissa. “It’s time.”
She nodded. “PHANTOM, please get Hek down here to continue the dialogue with Cat’s Eye.”
As soon as Hek had arrived, they both rose from their chairs and left the room.
Keith and Rissa exited from the elevator and walked the short distance to the oversized black door with the giant fluorescent orange “20” painted on it. The locking bolts pulled aside. The noise they made had always been faintly familiar to Keith, but this time he finally placed it: it was just like the sound of a rifle being cocked in an old-time western movie.
Most doors aboard ship split down the middle with the two panels moving into pockets on either side, but this heavy one slid as one piece to the left—safety demanded there be no seams or weak points in the seal.
Rissa gasped. Keith felt his jaw go slack.
There were well over a hundred Ibs in the docking bay, lined up in neat rows—like a parking lot filled with wheelchairs. “PHANTOM, how many are there?” Keith said softly.
“Two hundred and nine, sir,” replied the computer. “The entire ship’s complement of Integrated Bioentities.”
Rissa shook her head slightly. “She said only her closest friends would attend.”
“Well,” said Keith, stepping into the room, “Boxcar is very personable. I guess all the Ibs aboard consider her a close friend.”