“The idea went that once you had a basic information set of number, geometry, scale, and atomic notation, you could move from there to real conversation, except that they were talking about signals sent to alien races light-years away.
“If you got good enough, and could establish a gray scale and a color scale, you could send detailed pictures. I don’t think anyone back then ever considered sending fully three-dimensional moving images, but the principle is the same. The first series of messages back and forth between the Moon and whatever the hell is on the other end of the wormhole closely resembled the number sequences I’ve just described.”
“Wait a second,” Larry objected. “This whole technique you’re describing is a means for sending messages to someone who doesn’t understand your language.”
“Right. In essence the first thing you do is send a grammar book to make sure they understand what follows.”
“But they’re sending messages to their own people,” Larry protested. “That’s nuts.”
“All I know is what I saw when I unbuttoned the message traffic. The computer was able to break it in real time into a two-dimensional grid. I had to walk the program through interpretation of the first outgoing message-grid—what the math examples were, what symbols they were using for numbers and atomic structures. Once the computer got the idea, it was off and running, learning the new language on its own. I just sat there and watched it. It was a classic example of the sort of grid messages we all dreamed up a million times in my xeno-bio classes—just more elaborate and sophisticated.
“You know about that twenty-one-centimeter signal coming from somewhere on the Moon. No one can find its source transmitter. That signal seems to go through to the Charonians on the other side. They send back a copy of the message at a doubled wavelength to signal receipt, and then send their own messages. Then the Lunar Charonian transmitter echoes the message from the other side. Once or twice the Lunar transmitter sends a perfect echo and then a slightly altered one. I didn’t get it until I compared the two copies. It was correcting the wormhole Charonian’s language errors.
“There’s no doubt in my mind on two points: That the Lunar Charonian had to teach whatever-it-was-sending-to the Lunar Charonian language. And that the receiving whatever-it-was was expecting a language lesson. It was too fast off the mark, replied too quickly. Which suggests the receiver had to be prepared to receive this message— even though they did not understand the language. It demonstrated that by making mistakes as it learned.”
“Except you’re not talking about a language here,” Larry said. “At least not so far as I can see. Has there been any arbitrary code in these signals that you couldn’t unbutton, something that might be commentary or orders or abstract thought symbols?”
Marcia looked as if she was about to protest, but then she stopped. “No, there wasn’t. Nothing unaccounted for. Just the data stream. I’ve been able to decode it all down into pictorial images of one degree or another of sophistication. So if you want to nitpick, then no, it’s not a true natural language.”
“Hold it there,” McGillicutty said. “The sons of bitches are sending messages here. How the hell can it not be a language?”
“Because, if you really want to nitpick, they aren’t actually messages, either,” Larry said. “They’re pictures. The sender and receiver have agreed on a set of transmission standards, a procedure for sending data.”
“So what?”
“They can only send data—not advice, abstracts, or ideas.”
“What’s the difference?”
“The difference between a picture of your Aunt Minnie and a letter telling what you think of the old girl,” Larry said. “According to Dr. MacDougal, there’s no residual signal left over that might be used as a symbol set for interpretative discussion. It’s as if I had come in here with pictures, and data, but without any words to tell you what it all meant.”
“If what you’re saying is true,” Sondra said, “then maybe they don’t need language. Because they don’t need interpretation.”
Larry looked at her for a second. “Go on. What’s your point?”
“They don’t need a language capable of interpretation or opinion or theories because there is no possibility of disagreement. Their responses are all Pavlovian. If every member of their species always respond to the same stimuli in the same way, language would be redundant.”
“In effect, a mass mind. It doesn’t need communications,” Daltry said. “Separated by great expanses of time and space, but so like each other they always reach the same conclusions.”
“It sort of makes sense,” Sondra said, “but then why the grammar lessons?”
“Language drift,” Lucian suggested. “Enough time has passed since their last contact that the two parties expected to be mutually unintelligible. Maybe they think very nearly alike, but there was some drift, either in attitude or simply in styles of notation.”
“How long are you talking about before that could happen?” Larry asked.
“I’m no expert,” Lucian said, “but we can read and understand Shakespeare, and he was eight hundred years ago—but there’s certainly been drift since then. Any decent record keeping and memory storage system would slow the process down. If you’re dealing with computers that can remember for you, you’re talking at least thousands of years since they talked with each other. Maybe millions.”
“Millions of years?” Daltry said with a faint gasp.
Larry cleared his throat. “That’s not quite as incredible as it sounds. We’ve got some evidence that suggests the Charonians have been around a long, long time. There’s a whole new situation that our group on Pluto decided to keep under wraps until we got here, something we couldn’t trust to radio or message laser. In fact the team from Pluto is agreed that we will not divulge this data to this committee until we get some assurances that it will be kept quiet. We don’t want to spread panic.”
“How could anything panic us more than losing Earth?” Daltry asked.
“Having people thinking you did it,” Sondra said.
“You’ve already got the Naked Purples in Tycho claiming they did it.”
“But they couldn’t have! No one could possibly believe them,” Marcia protested. Heads turned to see who was talking. “No one could imagine the Purples had the ability to do this. I ought to know,” she added.
“But supposing people had reason to imagine just that?” Sondra asked gently. “Suppose there was some good, hard, unnerving evidence that this thing was being run from the Moon? Worse than the mystery radio beams. Don’t you think someone might panic? Perhaps attack the Moon to prevent further disasters?”
“No one would do that,” Marcia protested.
Sondra swept her hand around the table, indicating everyone. “We’re here from all the settled planets and major habitats. Can you all honestly say that you’re positive that your governments might not drop one of your nastier noisemakers on the Purps—or on the Moon generally— if they thought there was even a microscopic chance it would do some good? No matter who got hurt? And you from the Moon—what would your people do if they thought one of the other worlds was about to make a sudden preemptive attack? What would your government do?”
Again there was silence.
At last Chancellor Daltry cleared his throat. “Speaking for the Lunar contingent, I can pledge my group to silence. As you may have gathered from the lack of press or other attention, we have done what we could to keep this meeting quiet for the time being, and I have no desire to step into the spotlight just yet. What of the other delegations? Will you keep silent on this new evidence outside this group?”