Then the question returns again: Where is everybody?
Imagine a race of intelligent creatures, human beings, living in their own world. They have developed in isolation, and have split into many local cultures, some have advanced to high civilizations, others have remained struggling in the Stone Age. But all of them are members of a fully human species, and as intelligent as we are. Suddenly, their world is visited by a vastly superior race. To simplify matters, we will assume that the visitors are also human in form. The first contacts are friendly enough. Soon, though, it becomes clear that the visitors have measured the natives and found them lacking. The visitors begin to take over the natives’ world.
Fighting begins. The natives lack the advanced technology of their opponents. Within a few generations the natives cease to exist, except for scattered tribes in the back country. The natives have not merely been beaten in a war. They have been virtually extinguished by a superior culture. Through intermarriage, through susceptibility to new diseases, through an emotional response that can only be described as “racial shock,” the natives either die away or are genetically engulfed by the newcomers. This actually happened to the American Indians.
What would happen if a vastly superior race suddenly dropped out of the blue, straightened out our political squabbles, handed us a child’s primer of fusion reactors, and generally took over the planet? Could our deep-grained pride stand such a shock, or would we go into a racial decline?
Look at it another way. Anthropologists are interested in studying man’s nearest relative, the primate apes. A good deal has been learned by observing chimpanzees and other apes in captivity. But the basic question of why we live in cities while our closest relatives live in trees can only be answered by studying the primates in their natural habitat. This is not easy to do because the key to the entire scheme is that the animals under scrutiny must never know they are being watched. Only by remaining “invisible” can the scientists learn how apes behave naturally.
Now let us consider the reactions of an advanced race that discovers intelligent life on the planet Earth. It seems reasonable to assume that the ethics of an intelligent race will advance together with its technology, even if the ethics advance more slowly. Any race capable of developing interstellar travel, it would seem, should also be intelligent and ethical enough to observe a relatively primitive race like our own without interfering with us. Why should they contact us? They have far more to learn by keeping us under surveillance. Thus, they might well have a “closed door” policy about contacting us, but an “open window” attitude about observing us.
Where is everybody? If you assume that: (1) an intelligent race can develop interstellar travel; (2) such a race can detect signs of intelligence at great distances in space; and (3) one or more such races have indeed evolved on “second generation” stars—then the answer may be this: They may be watching us right now, using us to learn more about the phenomenon called intelligence, and waiting for us to reach the maturity necessary before we can join them as galactic equals.
... or they may not even watch. Could be, the star charts show Sol III as “unmapped; uninhabited; nonarable; overrun with poison ego. Infectious entropy-accelerator.”
Or we might be succulent pickings for any number of star-market buyers. Does the peach tree know about canning and slicing? Do you have yourself announced by an aphid butler if you spend an hour watching an anthill?
On the other hand, will you really worry about whether the ants know that you are watching? Or what interpretation they may put on it, if they do?
In what he himself calls “a satire of hasty conclusions,” André Maurois here sets forth a first lesson in alien-watching. If there is come small confusion in identifying the true alien, bear in mind that it is a parable, not a primer. As for who watches the watchers—it it an old question, and adds a certain spice to the game.
THE EARTH DWELLERS
André Maurois
By the end of 1970 friendly relations had been established between the Earth and most of the major planets, and terrestrial scientists became anxious to compare their own hypotheses and doctrines with those of their colleagues in other worlds. But such comparisons were often difficult, because, as is well known, the eminent physicists of Venus, Jupiter, and Mars had no perception of either light or sound, and lived in a world of radiations of which we had hitherto been quite ignorant. But the theory of sensorial equivalents made rapid progress, and at the date of writing (1992) it may be said that we are capable of transposing every language of the planetary system into Earth language— except Saturnian.
One of the most interesting discoveries due to this new philology was that of books written about ourselves, the Earth Dwellers, by the scientists of foreign planets. Mankind had not the slightest idea that for millions of years past he had been under observation, thanks to instruments very much more powerful than his own, by the naturalists of Venus, Mars, and even Uranus. Terrestrial science lagged far behind the science of neighboring bodies, and as our organs were insensitive to the radiations utilized by these observers, it was impossible for us to know that, in the most secret moments of our lives, we were sometimes within the field of vision of a celestial ultramicroscope.
Nowadays these works can be consulted by any scholar in the library of the League of Planets. They provide most commendable reading for young men eager to devote themselves to the learned sciences, not only because of their great intrinsic interest, but also because of the sense of humility which they cannot fail to evoke. To observe the incredible errors made by beings of such high intelligence and so wonderfully equipped for research, one cannot refrain from reverting to a number of our own human affirmations, wondering whether we have not observed plants and animals very much as the Martians observed us.
One case in particular strikes us as worthy of careful study: that of the Uranian scholar A.E. 17, who published his book, Man and His Life, in 1959. [Original Uranian edition, 1959. First terrestrial edition, 1982.] Until the War that book was the standard work not only in Uranus but also, in translations, among the inhabitants of Venus and Mars. To ourselves it is readily accessible because, alone among our fellow-planetaries, the Uranians share with us the sense of sight, which makes their vocabulary approximate closely to ours. Moreover, the experiments carried out by A.E. 17 were such as completely to upset the Earth throughout a period of six months; and we have access to the terrestrial account of these events in the newspapers and memoirs of the time.
We propose here:
(a) To describe briefly a few of the events noted on our own planet in the year 1954;
(b) to show what interpretation the eminent A.E. 17 put on his own experiments.
THE MYSTERIOUS SPRINGTIME
In the month of March, 1954, numerous observers throughout the Northern Hemisphere gave surprising reports of atmospheric conditions. Notwithstanding fine and cool weather, storms of the utmost violence were bursting suddenly within strictly limited zones. Ships’ captains and airplane pilots reported to the Central Meteorological
Bureau that their compasses had for several seconds behaved quite wildly for no conceivable reason. In several places, under a clear sky, people saw what appeared to be the shadow of a huge cloud passing over the ground, although no such cloud was visible. The newspapers published interviews with the eminent meteorologists, who explained that they had anticipated this phenomenon, which was due to sunspots and would come to an end with the equinoctial tides. But the advent of the equinox only brought stranger happenings in its wake.