Waiting for the Riddlers
by Charles Sheffield
Humans and Riddlers may have misunderstood each other from the first moment of contact. That is one conclusion of this report. It is also, if I may be allowed to interpolate a personal statement as the official head of Earth’s delegation, our probable best hope.
The problem was partly one of expectations. Mile-long spaceships; vast flotillas, girdling Earth in their thousands and bristling with weapons; subtle ethereal messages, drifting in as radio signals from the stars and requiring painstaking decoding after their detection.
Sorry; none of the above. No one, in all the millions of words written about first contact, had told us to be ready for a single, stubby vessel. No one had told us to look for four fronded purple plants sitting in garbage cans of dark soil.
Even after the first shock, we didn’t do well. How was our delegation to know that the plants were no more than a habitation, and the Riddlers themselves comprised a commensal intelligent multi-cell mold that lived among the roots?
Luckily, they took it very well. Maybe I should say, we thought they took it well; with the Riddlers, you could never be sure of their thinking. I can be sure, though, that their interpretive equipment produced a most realistic chuckle of amusement when I explained our misunderstanding.
“Not a problem,” it said. “It takes all sorts to make a Galaxy. This won’t count against you when it comes to acceptance within the Federation. Why, we doubt if we’ll even bother to report it.”
Words intended to reassure (I think) but also enough to alarm me and the other five delegation members who had flown with me up to the Riddler ship.
“What will count against us?” I asked.
“Very few things. Of course, it would be a mistake to fire any more of those silly nuclear rockets at us. A number of Federation members strongly believe that new applicants ought to be potty-trained before they are considered eligible for admission. But we happen to believe other criteria are more important. Go back home and wait. We will beam down to you three questions, in increasing order of difficulty. Your answers, provided to us in each case within twenty-four hours of asking, will be used to decide your eligibility.”
Note that they did not say “riddles.” The name that the media of Earth gave them, the Riddlers, came about only because of their first question. They termed it the establishing question.
“What is it that walks on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and three legs in the evening?”
An odd beginning, for beings with no legs at all. Or was that itself a hint, offered to us at the very start? I’ve wondered about that, a hundred times. Suppose the tubs of soil and the fronded plants housed nothing but transmission and receiving equipment, and the Riddlers themselves remained far away? Suppose they did not want us to know their true shapes, for good and sufficient reason?
Those suspicions only came to me later At the time the question seemed so simple and familiar that we were at first reluctant to give the answer. However, we couldn’t think of any sensible alternative, so twelve hours after we received their transmission I sent our answer to what has been known to humans for four thousand years as the Riddle of the Sphinx: “The creature that walks on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and three legs in the evening is a human being.”
“Thank you.” Their reply came at once. “Sounds fine to us, but if you will please wait…”
What alternative did we have? Their ship zipped away from Earth orbit, with an acceleration that made it clear they had the inertialess drive we have wanted for so long. One day later the Riddlers were back.
“The second question we will term the question of judgment,” they said. “Who is the greatest human who has ever lived? It is desirable that humans agree on the answer that you provide to us.”
If the first problem had been trivially easy, this one was impossibly hard. The greatest human? What did the adjective mean? Was it a trick question? Did all humans have to agree on the answer? How significant was the fact that the Riddlers had giggled in the middle of the transmission?
We had twenty-four hours. We could have spent twenty-four years without reaching a consensus. We didn’t know how the Riddlers judged greatness, and requests for clarification produced no answer from them. Greatness might be scientific, artistic or religious. It could mean the tallest or fattest human. It might be in terms of all-around accomplishments, rather than achievement in only one field. It could even mean—though no one but Admiral Rawson supported the idea—the most successful military conqueror.
The arguments back on Earth were horrendous. Twenty-two hours of heated discussion produced bunches of candidate names. Christ, Shakespeare, Napoleon, Mozart, Newton, Confucius, Bach, Moses, Da Vinci, Mohammed, Aristotle, Julius Caesar, Einstein, Buddha, Socrates, Imhotep…
Twenty-two hours also proved that humans would never agree. Moslems vetoed Christ and Buddha. Artists vetoed scientists, scientists pooh-poohed the list of artists. Minority groups complained of Western Judeo-Christian bias. Feminists objected to every name, and proposed an all-female slate of candidates.
Consensus? Forget it. But no answer was the worst answer of all. As head of the delegation, I was forced to make a decision. I sent our reply: “The greatest human who ever lived was the one who discovered the use of fire.”
It was a cop-out, of course, since we could not offer a name. All I can say is that we avoided all problems of race, color, creed, religion, gender, and sexual preferences, and someone had to decide.
“Very good,” the Riddlers said. “A most interesting answer. If you will please wait…”
Their ship vanished, as rapidly as before. This time we waited for over three weeks, biting our racial metaphorical fingernails. Finally the Riddlers returned.
“The last question we will term the question of ethics,” their transmission said. “It is more complex than the first two, so please listen carefully. Are you ready?”
“We are ready.” But I wasn’t sure what the Riddlers meant by “ready,” and I crossed my fingers when I said it.
“Let us suppose that you are accepted into the Universal Federation of species. As you expand through the Galaxy, you encounter numerous other star-faring civilizations. Suppose that you meet an unscrupulous and ambitious race, which, following an Earth tradition, we will call the Bad Guys. The Bad Guys seek to gain an advantage over humans, but they do not know you well. To learn as much as possible about you, they undertake a diabolical experiment. On a remote Earth-like planet, far off the usual space-lanes and with no intelligent life, they introduce a tribe of animals genetically close to humans: chimpanzees, brought there from Earth. However, by means of an externally imposed radiation field, the Bad Guys raise the intelligence of the chimps to match the intelligence of humans. The Bad Guys can then observe the development of a native civilization on the planet, without ever allowing their own presence to become known, and they will learn more about humans. Do you understand?”
“Certainly. But we have not heard a question.”
“We have not yet asked one. To proceed: humans, traveling those far-off regions of the Galaxy distant from the usual spaceways, discover the planet on which the Bad Guys are conducting their experiment. The Bad Guys flee, leaving intact the engine that generates the intelligence-enhancing field. It is discovered by the human explorers.
“The humans now face a dilemma. Suppose that they go away and allow the augmenting field to remain in operation. Then, when the elevated chimps achieve spaceflight and move beyond their home planet, the brave explorers will decline to animal intelligence and be unable to operate their ships. They will inevitably die. The way to the stars will be closed. The alternative is to turn off the field, allow the chimps to lapse back to primitivism, and hope that time and evolution will permit the development of a naturally intelligent species on the planet. Do you understand all this?”