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发信人: bhfbao (嗖嗖与嗖嗖), 信区: SFworld
标  题: Contact I-8
发信站: 哈工大紫丁香 (Wed Feb  2 15:23:56 2000), 转信

发信人: isabel (伊莎贝尔~戒网中), 信区: SFworld
发信站: BBS 水木清华站 (Thu Jan 27 01:15:57 2000)

发信人: Sandoval (Companion Protector), 信区: SciFiction
标　题: Contact Part I - 8
发信站: The unknown SPACE (Tue Jan 25 01:04:21 2000) WWW-POST

CHAPTER 8
Random Access

The theologian may indulge the pleasing task of describing
Religion as she descended from Heaven, arrayed in her native
purity. A more melancholy duty is imposed on the historian.
He must discover the inevitable mixture of error and
corruption which she contracted in a long residence upon
Earth, among a weak and degenerate race of beings.
-Edward Gibbon
The Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire, XV
Ellie ignored random access and advanced sequentially
through the television stations. Lifestyles of the Mass
Murderers and You Bet Your Ass were on adjacent channels. It
was clear at a glance that the promise of the medium
remained unfulfilled. There was a spirited basketball game
between the Johnson City Wildcats and the Union-Endicott
Tigers; the young men and women players were giving their
all. On the next channel was an exhortation in Parsi on
proper versus improper observances of Ramadan. Beyond was
one of the locked channels, this one apparently devoted to
universally abhorrent sexual practices. She next came upon
one of the premier computer channels, dedicated to fantasy
role-playing games and now fallen on hard times. Accessed to
your home computer, it offered a single entry into a new
adventure, today's apparently called Galactic Gilgamesh, in
holes that you would find it sufficiently attractive to
order the corresponding floppy disk on one of the vending
channels. Proper electronic precautions were taken so you
could not record the program during your single play. Most
of these video games, she thought, were desperately flawed
attempts to prepare adolescents for an unknown future.
Her eye was caught by an earnest anchorman from one
of the old networks discussing with unmistakable concern
what was described as an unprovoked attack by North
Vietnamese torpedo boats on two destroyers of the U.S.
Seventh Fleet in the Gulf of Tonkin, and the request by the
President of the United States that he be authorized to
"take all necessary measures" in response. The program was
one of her few favorites, Yesterday's News, reruns of
network news shows of earlier years. The second half of the
program consisted of a point-by-point dissection of the
misinformation in the first half, and the obdurate credulity
of the news organizations before any claims by any
administration, no matter how unsupported and self-serving.
It was one of several television series produced by an
organization called REALI-TV-including Promises, Promises,
devoted to follow-up analyses of unfulfilled campaign
pledges at local, state, and national levels, and Bamboozles
and Baloney, a weekly debunking of what were said to be
widespread prejudices, propaganda, and myths. The date at
the bottom of the screen was August 5, 1964, and a wave of
recollection-nostalgia was not the appropriate word-about
her days in high school washed over her. She pressed on.
Cycling through the channels, she rushed past an
Oriental cooking series devoted this week to the hibachi, an
extended advertisement for the first generation of
general-purpose household robots by Hadden Cybernetics, the
Soviet Embassy's Russian-language news and comment program,
several children's and news frequencies, the mathematics
station displaying the dazzling computer graphics of the new
Cornell analytic geometry course, the local apartments and
real estate channel, and a tight cluster of execrable
daytime serials until she came upon the religious networks,
where, with sustained and general excitement, the Message
was being discussed.
Attendance in churches had soared all over America.
The Message, Ellie believed, was a kind of mirror in which
each person sees his or her own beliefs challenged or
confirmed. It was considered a blanket vindication of
mutually exclusive apocalyptic and eschatological doctrines.
In Peru, Algeria, Mexico, Zimbabwe, Ecuador, and among the
Hopi, serious public debates took place on whether their
progenitor civilizations had come from space; supporting
opinions were attacked as colonialist. Catholics debated the
extraterrestrial state of grace. Protestants discussed
possible earlier missions of Jesus to nearby planets, and of
course a return to Earth. Muslims were concerned that the
Message might contravene the commandment against graven
images. In Kuwait, a man arose who claimed to be the Hidden
Imam of the Shiites. Messianic fervor had arisen among the
Sossafer Chasids. In other congregations of Orthodox Jews
there was a sudden renewal of interest in Astruc, a zealot
fearful that knowledge would undermine faith, who in 1305
had induced the Rabbi of Barcelona, the leading Jewish
cleric of the time, to forbid the study of science or
philosophy by those under twenty-five, on pain of
excommunication. Similar currents were increasingly
discernible in Islam. A Thessalonian philosopher,
auspiciously named Nicholas Polydemos, was attracting
attention with a set of passionate arguments for what he
called the "reunification" of religions, governments, and
peoples of the world. Critics began by questioning the "re."
UFO groups had organized round-the-clock vigils at
Brooks Air Force Base, near San Antonio, where the perfectly
preserved bodies of four occupants of a flying saucer that
had crash-landed in 1947 were said to be languishing in
freezers; the extraterrestrials were reputed to be one meter
tall and to have tiny flawless teeth. Apparitions of Vishnu
had been reported in India, and of the Amida Buddha in
Japan; miraculous cures by the hundreds were announced at
Lourdes; a new Bodhisattva proclaimed herself in Tibet. A
novel cargo cult was imported from New Guinea into
Australia; it preached the construction of crude radio
telescope replicas to attract extraterrestrial largesse. The
World Union of Free Thinkers called the Message a disproof
of the existence of God. The Mormon Church declared it a
second revelation by the angel Moroni.
The Message was taken by different groups as
evidence for many gods or one god or none. Chiliasm was
rife. There were those who predicted the Millennium in
1999-as a cabalistic inversion of 1666, the year that
Sabbatai Zevi had adopted for his millennium; others chose
1996 or 2033, the presumed two thousandth anniversaries of
the birth or death of Jesus. The Great Cycle of the ancient
Maya was to be completed in the year 2011, when-according to
this independent cultural tradition-the cosmos would end.
The convolution of the Mayan prediction with Christian
millenarianism was producing a kind of apocalyptic frenzy in
Mexico and Central America. Some chiliasts who believed in
the earlier dates had begun giving away their wealth to the
poor, in part because it would soon be worthless anyway and
in part as earnest money to God, a bribe for the Advent.
Zealotry, fanaticism, fear, hope, fervent debate,
quiet prayer, agonizing reappraisal, exemplary selflessness,
closed-minded bigotry, and a zest for dramatically new ideas
were epidemic, rushing feverishly over the surface of the
tiny planet Earth. Slowly emerging from this mighty ferment,
Ellie thought she could see, was a dawning recognition of
the world as one thread in a vast cosmic tapestry.
Meanwhile, the Message itself continued to resist attempts
at decryption.
On the vilification channels, protected by the First
Amendment, she, Vaygay, der Heer, and to a lesser extent
Peter Valerian were being castigated for a variety of
offenses, including atheism, communism, and hoarding the
Message for themselves. In her opinion, Vaygay wasn't much
of a Communist, and Valerian had a deep, quiet, but
sophisticated Christian faith. If they were lucky enough to
come anywhere near cracking the Message, she was willing to
deliver it personally to this sanctimonious twit of a
television commentator. David Drumlin, however, was being
made out as the hero, the man who had really decrypted the
prime number and Olympic broadcasts; he was the kind of
scientist we needed more of. She sighed and changed the
channel once again.
She had come around to TABS, the Turner-American
Broadcasting System, the only survivor of the large
commercial networks that had dominated television
broadcasting in the United States until the advent of
widespread direct satellite broadcasting and 180-channel
cable. On this station, Palmer Joss was making one of his
rare television appearances. Like most Americans, Ellie
instantly recognized his resonant voice, his slightly
unkempt good looks, and the discoloration beneath his eyes
that made you think he never slept for worrying about the
rest of us.
"What has science really done for us?" he declaimed.
"Are we really happier? I don't mean just holographic
receivers and seedless grapes. Are we fundamentally happier?
Or do the scientists bribe us with toys, with technological
trinkets, while they undermine our faith?"
Here was a man, she thought, who was hankering for a
simpler age, a man who has spent his life attempting to
reconcile the irreconcilable. He has condemned the most
flagrant excesses of pop religion and thinks that justifies
attack on evolution and relativity. Why not attack the
existence of the electron? Palmer Joss never saw one, and
the Bible is innocent of electromagnetism. Why believe in
electrons? Although she had never before listened to him
speak, she was sure that sooner or later he would come
around to the Message, and he did:
"The scientists keep their findings to themselves,
give us little bits and pieces-enough to keep us quiet. They
think we're too stupid to understand what they do. They give
us conclusions without evidence, findings as if they were
holy writ and not speculations, theories, hypotheses-what
ordinary people would call guesses. They never ask if some
new theory is as good for people as the belief that it tries
to replace. They overestimate what they know and
underestimate what we know. When we ask for explanations,
they tell us it takes years to understand. I know about
that, because in religion also there are things that take
years to understand. You can spend a lifetime and never come
close to understanding the nature of Almighty God. But you
don't see the scientists coming to religious leaders to ask
them about their years of study and insight and prayer. They
never give us a second thought, except when they mislead us
and deceive us.
"And now they say they have a Message from the star
Vega. But a star can't send a message. Someone is sending
it. Who? Is the purpose of the Message divine or satanic?
When they decode the Message, will it end `Yours truly,
God'... or `Sincerely, the Devil'? When the scientists get
around to telling us what's in the Message, will they tell
us the whole truth? Or will they hold something back because
they think we can't understand it, or because it doesn't
match what they believe? Aren't these the people who taught
us how to annihilate ourselves?
"I tell you, my friends, science is too important to
be left to the scientists. Representatives of the major
faiths ought to be part of the process of decoding. We ought
to be looking at the raw data. That's what the scientists
call it, `raw.' Otherwise... otherwise, where will we be?
They'll tell us something about the Message. Maybe what they
really believe. Maybe not. And we'll have to accept it,
whatever they tell us. There are some things the scientists
know about. There are other things-take my word for it-they
know nothing about. Maybe they've received a message from
another being in the heavens. Maybe not. Can they be sure
the Message isn't a Golden Calf? I don't think they'd know
one if they saw one. These are the folks who brought us the
hydrogen bomb. Forgive me, Lord, for not being more grateful
to these kind souls.
"I have seen God face to face. I worship Him, trust
Him, love Him, with my entire soul, with all of my being. I
don't think anyone could believe more than I do. I can't see
how the scientists could believe in science more than I do
in God.
"They're ready to throw away their `truths' when a
new idea comes round. They're proud of it. They don't see
any end to knowing. They imagine we're locked in ignorance
until the end of time, that there's no certainty anywhere in
nature. Newton overthrew Aristotle. Einstein overthrew
Newton. Tomorrow someone else'll overthrow Einstein. As soon
as we get to understand one theory, there's another one in
its place. I wouldn't mind so much if they had warned us
that the old ideas were tentative. Newton's law of
gravitation, they called it. They still call it that. But if
it was a law of nature, how could it be wrong? How could it
be overthrown? Only God can repeal the laws of nature, not
the scientists. They just got it wrong. If Albert Einstein
was right, Isaac Newton was an amateur, a bungler.
"Remember, the scientists don't always get it right.
They want to take away our faith, our beliefs, and they
offer us nothing of spiritual value in return. I do not
intend to abandon God because the scientists write a book
and say it is a message from Vega. I will not worship
science. I will not defy the First Commandment. I will not
bow down before a Golden Calf."



When he was a very young man, before he became widely known
and admired, Palmer Joss had been a carnival roustabout. It
was mentioned in his profile in Timesweek; it was no secret.
To help make his fortune he had arranged for a map of the
Earth in cylindrical projection to be painstakingly tattooed
on his torso. He would exhibit himself at county fairs and
sideshows from Oklahoma to Mississippi, one of the
stragglers and remnants of a more vigorous age of rural
itinerant entertainment. In the expanse of blue ocean were
the four gods of the winds, their cheeks puffing forth
prevailing westerlies and nor'easters. By flexing his
pectorals, he could make Boreas swell along with the
Mid-Atlantic. Then, he would declaim to the astonished
onlookers from Book 6 of Ovid's Metamorphoses:

Monarch of Violence, rolling on clouds,
I toss wide waters, and I fell huge trees...
Possessed of daemon-rage, I penetrate,
Sheer to the utmost caverns of old Earth;
And straining, up from those unfathomed deeps,
Scatter the terror-stricken shades of Hell;
And hurl death-dealing earthquakes throughout the
    world!

Fire and brimstone from old Rome. With some help from his
hands, he would demonstrate continental drift, pressing West
Africa against South America, so they joined, like the
pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, almost perfectly at the longitude
of his navel. They billed him as "Geos, the Earth Man."
Joss was a great reader and, being unencumbered by a
formal education past grade school, had not been told that
science and classics were unseemly fare for ordinary people.
Aided by his casual, rumpled good looks, he would ingratiate
himself with librarians in the towns along the carnival's
trek and ask what serious books he should read. He wanted,
he told them, to improve himself. Dutifully, he read about
winning friends and investing in real estate and
intimidating your acquaintances without their noticing, but
felt these books somehow shallow. By contrast, in ancient
literature and in modern science he though he detected
quality. When there were layovers, he would haunt the local
town or county library. He taught himself some geography and
history. They were job-related, he told Elvira the Elephant
Girl, who questioned him closely on his absences. She
suspected him of compulsive dalliances-a librarian in every
port, she once said-but she had to admit his professional
patter was improving. The contents were too highbrow, but
the delivery was down home. Surprisingly, Joss's little
stall began to make money for the carnival.
His back to the audience, he was one day
demonstrating the collision of India with Asia and the
resulting crinkling up of the Himalayas, when, out of a gray
but rainless sky, a lightning bolt flashed and struck him
dead. There had been twisters in southeastern Oklahoma, and
the weather was unusual throughout the South. He had a
perfectly lucid sense of leaving his body-pitifully crumbled
on the sawdust-covered planking, being regarded with caution
and something akin to awe by the small crowd-and rising,
rising as if through a long dark tunnel, slowly approaching
a brilliant light. And in the radiance he gradually
discerned a figure of heroic, indeed of Godlike,
proportions.
When he awoke he found a part of himself
disappointed to be alive. He was lying on a cot in a
modestly furnished bedroom. Leaning over him was the
Reverend Billy Jo Rankin, no the present incumbent of that
name, but his father, a venerable surrogate preacher of the
third quarter of the twentieth century. In the background,
Joss thought he could see a dozen hooded figures singing the
Kyrie Eleison. But he couldn't be sure.
"Am I gonna live or die?" the young man whispered.
"My boy, you're gonna do both," the Reverend Mr.
Rankin replied.
Joss was soon overcome with a poignant sense of
discovery at the existence of the world. But in a way that
was difficult for him to articulate, this feeling was in
conflict with the beatific image that he had beheld, and
with the infinite joy that vision portended. He could sense
the two feelings in conflict within his breast. In various
circumstances, sometimes in mid-sentence, he would become
aware of one or the other of these feelings making some
claim on speech or action. After a while, he was content to
live with both.
He really had been dead, they told him afterwards. A
doctor had pronounced him dead. But they had prayed over
him, they had snug hymns, and they even tried to revive him
by body massage (mainly in the vicinity of Mauritania). They
had returned him to life. He had been truly and literally
reborn. Since this corresponded so well to his own
perception of the experience, he accepted the account, and
gladly. While he almost never talked about it, he became
convinced of the significance of the event. He had not been
struck dead for nothing. He had not been brought back for no
reason.
Under his patron's tutelage, he began to study
Scripture seriously. He was deeply moved by the idea of the
Resurrection and the doctrine of Salvation. He assisted the
Reverend Mr. Rankin at first in small ways, eventually
filling in for him in the more onerous or more distant
preaching assignments-especially after the younger Billy Jo
Rankin left for Odessa, Texas, in answer to a call from God.
Soon Joss found a preaching style that was his own, not se
much exhortatory as explanatory. In simple language and
homely metaphors, he would explain baptism and the
afterlife, the connection of Christian Revelation with the
myths of classical Greece and Rome, the idea of God's plan
for the world, and the conformity of science and religion
when both were properly understood. This was not the
conventional preaching, and it was too ecumenical for many
tastes. But it proved unaccountably popular.
"You've been reborn, Joss," the elder Rankin told
him. "So you ought to change your name. Except Palmer Joss
is such a fine name for a preacher, you'd be a fool not to
keep it."
Like doctors and lawyers, the vendors of religion
rarely criticize one another's wares, Joss observed. But one
night he attended services at the new Church of God,
Crusader, to hear the younger Billy Jo Rankin, triumphantly
returned from Odessa, preach to the multitude. Billy Jo
enunciated a stark doctrine of Reward, Retribution, and the
Rapture. But tonight was a healing night. The curative
instrument, the congregation was told, was the holiest of
relics-holier than a splinter of the True Cross, holier even
than the thigh bone of Saint Teresa of Avila that
Generalissimo Francisco Franco had kept in his office to
intimidate the pious. What Billy Jo Rankin Brandished was
the actual amniotic fluid that surrounded and protected our
Lord. The liquid had been carefully preserved in an ancient
earthenware vessel that once belonged, so it was said, to
Saint Ann. The tiniest drop of it would cure what ails you,
he promised, through a special act of Divine Grace. This
holiest of holy waters was with us tonight.
Joss was appalled, not so much that Rankin would
attempt so transparent a scam but that any of the
parishioners were so credulous as to accept it. In his
previous life he had witnessed many attempts to bamboozle
the public. But that was entertainment. This was different.
This was religion. Religion was too important to gloss the
truth, much less to manufacture miracles. He took to
denouncing this imposture from the pulpit.
As his fervor grew, he railed against other deviant
forms of Christian fundamentalism, including those aspirant
herpetologists who tested their faith by fondling snakes in
accord with the biblical injunction that the pure of heart
shall not fear the venom of serpents. In one widely quoted
sermon he paraphrased Voltaire. He never thought, he said,
that he would find men of the cloth so venal as to lend
support to the blasphemers who taught that the first priest
was the first rogue who met the first fool. These religions
were damaging religion. He shook his finger gracefully in
the air.
Joss argued that in ever religion there was a
doctrinal line beyond which it insulted the intelligence of
its practitioners. Reasonable people might disagree as to
where that line should be drawn, but religions trespassed
well beyond it at their peril. People were not fools, he
said. The day before his death, as he was putting his
affairs in order, the elder Rankin sent word to Joss that he
never wanted to lay eyes on him again.
At the same time, Joss began to preach that science
didn't have all the answers either. He found inconsistencies
in the theory of evolution. The embarrassing findings, the
facts that don't fit, the scientists just sweep under the
rug, he said. They don't really know that the Earth is 4.6
billion years old, any more than Archbishop Ussher knew that
it was 6,000 years old. Nobody has seen evolution happen,
nobody has been marking time since the Creation.
("Two-hundred-quadrillion-Mississippi..." he once imagined
the patient timekeeper intoning, counting up the seconds
from the origin of the world.)
And Einstein's theory of relativity was also
unproved. You couldn't travel faster than light no matter
what, Einstein had said. How could he know? How close to the
speed of light had he gone? Relativity was only a way of
understanding the world. Einstein couldn't restrict what
mankind could do in the far future. And Einstein sure
couldn't set limits on what God could do. Couldn't God
travel faster than light if He wanted to? Couldn't God make
us travel faster than light if He wanted to? There were
excesses in science and there were excesses in religion. A
reasonable man wouldn't be stampeded by either one. There
were many interpretations of Scripture and many
interpretations of the natural world. Both were created by
God, so both must be mutually consistent. Wherever a
discrepancy seems to exist, either a scientist or a
theologian-maybe both-hasn't been doing his job.
Palmer Joss combined his evenhanded criticism of
science and religion with a fervent plea for moral rectitude
and a respect for the intelligence of his flock. In slow
stages he acquired a national reputation. In debates on the
teaching of "scientific creationism" in the schools, on the
ethical status of abortion and frozen embryos, on the
admissibility of genetic engineering, he attempted in his
way to steer a middle course, to reconcile caricatures of
science and religion. Both contending camps were outraged at
his interventions, and his popularity grew. He became a
confidant of presidents. His sermons were excerpted on the
Op Ed pages of major secular newspapers. But he resisted
many invitations and some proffered blandishments to found
an electronic church. He continued to live simply, and
rarely-except for presidential invitations and ecumenical
congresses-left the rural South. Beyond a conventional
patriotism, he made it a rule not to meddle in politics. In
a field filled with competing entries, many of dubious
probity, Palmer Joss became, in erudition and moral
authority, the preeminent Christian fundamentalist preacher
of his day.



Der Heer had asked if they could have a quiet dinner
somewhere. He was flying in for the summary session with
Vaygay and the Soviet delegation on the latest progress in
the interpretation of the Message. But south-central New
Mexico was crawling with the world's press, and there was no
restaurant for a hundred miles in which they could talk
unobserved and unheard. So she made dinner herself in her
modest apartment near the visiting scientists' quarters at
the Argus facility. There was a great deal to talk about.
Sometimes it seemed that the fate of the whole project was
hanging by a presidential thread. But the little tremor of
anticipation she felt just before Ken's arrival was
occasioned, she was vaguely aware, by more than that. Joss
was not exactly business, so they got around to him while
loading the dishwasher.
"The man is scared stiff," Ellie said. "His
perspective is narrow. He imagines the Message is going to
be unacceptable biblical exegesis or something that shakes
his faith. He has no idea about how a new scientific
paradigm subsumes the previous one. He wants to know what
science has done for him lately. And he'd supposed to be the
voice of reason."
"Compared to the Doomsday Chiliasts and the
Earth-Firsters, Palmer Joss is the soul of moderation," der
Heer replied. "Maybe we haven't explained the methods of
science as well as we should have. I worry about that a lot
these days. And Ellie, can you really be sure that it isn't
a message from-"
"From God or the Devil? Ken, you can't be serious."
"Well, how advanced beings committed to what we
might call good or evil, who somebody like Joss would
consider indistinguishable from God or the Devil?"
"Ken, whoever those beings are in the Vega system, I
guarantee they didn't create the universe. And they're
nothing like the Old Testament God. Remember, Vega, the Sun,
and all the other stars in the solar neighborhood are in
some backwater of an absolutely humdrum galaxy. Why should I
Am That I Am hang out around here? There must be more
pressing things for him to do."
"Ellie, we're in a bind. You know Joss is very
influential. He's been close to three presidents, including
the president incumbent. The President is inclined to make
some concession to Joss, although I don't think she wants to
put him and a bunch of other preachers on the Preliminary
Decryption Committee with you, Valerian, and Drumlin-to say
nothing of Vaygay and his colleagues. It's hard to imagine
the Russians going along with fundamentalist clergy on the
Committee. The whole thing could unravel over this. So why
don't we go and talk to him? The President says that Joss is
really fascinated by science. Suppose we won him over?"
"We're going to convert Palmer Joss?"
"I'm not imagining making him change his
religion-let's just make him understand what Argus is about,
how we don't have to answer the Message if we don't like
what it says, how interstellar distances quarantine us from
Vega."
"Ken, he doesn't even believe that the velocity of
light is a cosmic speed limit. We're going to be talking
past each other. Also, I've got a long history of failure in
accommodating to the conventional religions. I tend to blow
my top at their inconsistencies and hypocrisies. I'm not
sure a meeting between Joss and me is what you want. Or the
President."
"Ellie," he said, "I know who I'd put my money on. I
don't see how getting together with Joss could make things
much worse."
She allowed herself to return his smile.



With the tracking ships now in place and a few small but
adequate radio telescopes installed in such places as
Reykjavik and Jakarta, there was now redundant coverage of
the signal from Vega at every longitude swath. A major
conference was scheduled to be held in Paris of the full
World Message Consortium. In preparation, it was natural for
the nations with the largest fraction of the data to hold a
preparatory scientific discussion. They had been meeting for
the better part of four days, and this summary session was
intended mainly to bring those such as der Heer, who served
as intermediaries between the scientists and the
politicians, up to speed. The Soviet delegation, while
nominally headed by Lunacharsky, included several scientists
and technical people of equal distinction. Among them were
Genrikh Arkhangelsky, recently named head of the Soviet-led
international space consortium called Intercosmos, and
Timofei Gotsridze, listed as Minister of Medium Heavy
Industry, and a member of the Central Committee.
Vaygay clearly felt himself under unusual pressures:
he had resumed chain smoking. He held the cigarette between
his thumb and forefinger, palm up, as he talked.
"I agree that there is adequate overlap in
longitude, but I'm still worried about redundancy. A failure
in the helium liquifier on board the Marshal Nedelin or a
power failure in Reykjavik, and the continuity of the
Message is in jeopardy. Suppose the Message takes two years
to cycle around to the beginning. If we miss a piece, we
will have to wait two more years to fill in the gap. And
remember, we don't know that the Message will be repeated.
If there's no repeat, the gaps will never be repaired. I
think we need to plan even for unlikely possibilities."
"What are you thinking of?" der Heer asked.
"Something like emergency generators for every observatory
in the Consortium?"
"Yes, and independent amplifiers, spectrometers,
autocorrelators, disk drives, and so forth at each
observatory. And some provision for fast airlift of liquid
helium to remote observatories if necessary."
"Ellie, do you agree?"
"Absolutely."
"Anything else?"
"I think we should continue to observe Vega on a
very broad range of frequencies," Vaygay said. "Perhaps
tomorrow a different message will come through on only one
of the message frequencies. We should also monitor other
regions of the sky. Maybe the key to the Message won't come
from Vega, but from somewhere else-"
"Let me say why I think Vaygay's point is
important," interjected Valerian. "This is a unique moment,
when we're receiving a message but have made no progress at
all in decrypting it. We have no previous experience along
these lines. We have to cover all the bases. We don't want
to wind up a year or two from now kicking ourselves because
there was some simple precaution we forgot to take, or some
simple measurement that we overlooked. The idea that the
Message will cycle back on itself, as far as we can see,
that promises cycling back. Any opportunities lost now may
be lost for all time. I also agree there's more instrumental
development that needs doing. For all we know there's a
fourth layer to the palimpsest."
"There's also the question of personnel," Vaygay
continued. "Suppose this message goes on not for a year or
two but for decades. Or suppose this is just the first in a
long series of messages from all over the sky. There are at
most a few hundred really capable radio astronomers in the
world. That is a very small number when the stakes are so
high. The industrialized countries must start producing many
more radio astronomers and radio engineers with first-rate
training."
Ellie noted that Gotsridze, who had said little, was
taking detailed notes. She was again struck by how much more
literate the Soviets were in English than the Americans in
Russian. Near the beginning of the century, scientists all
over the world spoke-or at least read-German. Before that it
had been French, and before that Latin. In another century
there might be some other obligatory scientific
language-Chinese, perhaps. For the moment it was English,
and scientists all over the planet struggled to learn its
ambiguities and irregularities.
Lighting a fresh cigarette from the glowing tip of
its predecessor, Vaygay went on. "There is something else to
be said. This is just speculation. It's not even as
plausible as the idea that the Message will cycle back on
itself-which Professor Valerian quite properly stressed was
only a guess. I would not ordinarily mention so speculative
an idea at such an early stage. But if the speculation is
sound, there are certain further actions we must begin
thinking about immediately. I would not have the courage to
raise this possibility if Academician Arkhangelsky had not
come tentatively to the same conclusion. He and I have
disagreed about the quantization of quasar red shifts, the
explanation of superluminal light sources, the rest mass of
the neutrino, quark physics in neutron stars... We have had
many disagreements. I must admit that sometimes he has been
right and sometimes I have been right. Almost never, it
seems to me, in the early speculative stage of a subject,
have we agreed. But on this, we agree.
"Genrikh Dmit'ch, would you explain?"
Arkhangelsky seemed tolerant, even amused. He and
Lunacharsky had been for years engaged in personal rivalry,
heated scientific disputes, and a celebrated controversy on
the prudent level of support for Soviet fusion research.
"We guess," he said, "that the Message is the
instructions for building a machine. Of course, we have no
knowledge about how to decode the Message. The evidence is
in internal references. I give you an example. Here on page
15441 is a clear reference to an earlier page, 13097, which,
by luck, we also have. The later page was received here in
New Mexico, the earlier one at our observatory near
Tashkent. On page 13097 there is another reference, this to
a time when we were not covering all longitudes. There are
many cases of this back referencing. In general, and this is
the important point, there are complicated instructions on a
recent page, but simpler instructions on an earlier page. In
one case there are eight citations to earlier material on a
single page."
"That's not an awfully compelling arguments, guys,"
replied Ellie. "Maybe it's a set of mathematical exercises,
the later ones building on the earlier ones. Maybe it's a
long novel-they might have very long lifetimes compared to
us-in which events are connected with childhood experiences
or whatever they have on Vega when they're young. Maybe it's
a tightly cross-referenced religious manual."
"The Ten Billion Commandments." Der Heer laughed.
"Maybe," said Lunacharsky, starting through a cloud
of cigarette smoke out the window at the telescopes. They
seemed to be staring longingly at the sky. "But when you
look at the patterns of cross-references, I think you'll
agree it looks more like the instruction manual for building
a machine. God knows what the machine is supposed to do."

--
... In 2345, on the 10th anniversary of the Shivan attack
on Ross 128, the Vasudan emperor Khonsu II addressed the
newly formed GTVA General Assembly. The emperor inaugurated
an ambiguous and unprecedented joint endeavor: the GTVA
Colossus...

※ 来源:．The unknown SPACE bbs.mit.edu．[FROM: 204.91.54.100]

--

  --我对我自己的生活负责，是好是坏，是泪是笑，我一力承担。

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☆ 来源:．哈工大紫丁香 bbs.hit.edu.cn．[FROM: baohf.bbs@smth.org]

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