Happiness: A Planet (22 page)

“Thank you. But I did voluntarily agree to those conditions.”

Hambro Harrap had heard enough,

“Now look here...”

“Mr Harrap you remain in this office on sufferance.” Jorge loomed over him, “Understand this — you have come here without the Senate’s authority. We are in the midst of a crisis. Should you prove to be obstructive I’ll have you locked up. Is that not so Inspector?”

“It is,” Eldon assured Hambro.

Hambro glared at them both, and seeing their calm resolution cast angrily elsewhere about the room. He took the seat that Nero hastily vacated for him.

“Now tell me,” Jorge addressed Tevor Cade, “what you hope to achieve on Happiness? And how?”

In a practised speech Tevor Cade told him that he intended communicating with the Nautili, that his ship was a self-contained research unit specifically designed for such research. The ship would drop sonar buoys into the seas of Happiness. Upon the ship he would then assemble his own radio station. The sonar buoys would transmit to the Nautili simple messages on a variety of frequencies, would listen for any response from the Nautili. Once he had received a response he hoped to establish a simple rapport, together create a language through which both could communicate.

Tulla now took over the interview.

“Didn’t Dag Olvess try something like this a couple hundred years ago?” she asked him, added, “Without success?”

“Hardly without success. It’s on some of the positive results of his research that this project is based.”

“What makes you think, though, that you’ll have any more success than he had?”

“His were hit and miss affairs. Far too generalised an approach. As well as sound he transmitted light and colour. However, from the few responses that he and others have got, I have been able to confidently concentrate my research in a comparatively narrow sonic spectrum, and intensify the broadcasts in one site.”

“Where?”

Tevor asked for a map of Happiness’s oceans. Nero, with a bravura display of efficiency, obliged.

“Here.” With his finger Tevor Cade drew two lines across an ocean, “All the responses that Olvess and others have got have been in tropical waters. There is, on this planet, only one other area of tropical water of that dimension. Here, however, it is contained in this comparatively narrow channel between these two land masses. Therefore any Nautili passing through this channel are bound to hear my broadcasts. I will set up station on this estuary here. It’s a designated wilderness, already has a field station on site. That way my being there shouldn’t alarm the natives.”

“Will it do any harm?” Jorge asked Tulla.

“I shouldn’t think so,”
Tulla was studying the map projections on the four screens. “The Nautili didn’t take offence at Olvess’s attempts to contact them. But I don’t think it’ll work. As I said, it’s been tried before.”

“Not at such high density,” Tevor said.

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Tulla turned to him, “but isn’t this kind of experiment normally only permitted on uninhabited planets?”

“You’re wrong,” Tevor Cade happily corrected her. “In fact on one colonised planet they have a permanent listening post. And on other colonised planets limited attempts at communication have been made by the inhabitants themselves.”

“Without success.”

“They did get some responses.”

“I’ve heard this experiment described as ‘a bit like shouting at one another from different rooms.’”

“One day they might open the door.”

“Might.”

“I have been working on this for seven years now.” Tevor Cade drew himself up to his full height: he was still not as tall as Tulla, “And I guarantee that I will get a definite response within 72 hours of my first broadcast.”

Jorge Arbatov stared at the maps, flicked up Tevor Cade’s credentials onto another screen, studied them carefully. Hambro Harrap was similarly engaged in a study of Tulla Yorke. He had expected someone small and neat like Petre Fanne, someone pliable he could patronise, not this big blonde red-faced virago with a robust intellect, and who could, had she so wished, crush him with one blow of her huge hands.

“Right,” Jorge said. “You’ve got seven days starting from now. That’s two days to get there, five days to get results. By the time you reach your ship you will have my executive authority to begin your research immediately on landing. I suggest, though, that out of respect for your hosts, you first call on the Spokesman and inform him of your intentions before proceeding to the field station. In five days time Doctor Yorke and I will be leaving here. When I arrive on Happiness I will be taking over all dealings with the Nautili. You’d best,” Jorge crossed to the door and opened it, “be on your way.”

The cameraman watched them through his lens. Tevor Cade picked up his case and left. As Hambro Harrap passed Jorge he said quietly,

“If this was on record you’d...”

“Mr Harrap,” Jorge enunciated each word, “I conduct all official business on record. And be aware also of this,” Jorge made sure that he and Hambro were within the scope of the camera, “if any of your actions down there cause any of the inhabitants to be killed, or provoke any attack by the Nautili upon any Space installation, then I will make it my business to see that you never hold public office again. Goodbye.”

While Jorge Arbatov sat himself at his desk and dictated the necessary authorisation for Tevor Cade’s research on Happiness, the three people in the office behind him sat each in silence with their thoughts, each trying to ascertain their own course of action since Tevor Cade’s appearance.

Jorge turned slowly from his desk.

“You could have made a powerful enemy there,” Inspector Eldon Boone told him, referring to Hambro Harrap. Jorge grunted dismissively,

“Those concealed threats... They only have any power if you believe them. Mark that Nero. Besides, at my age, what’s it matter? Now,” he clapped his thin hands together, looked brightly at Tulla Yorke, “tell me why ‘Doctor’ Tevor Cade’s project will fail.”

So, with Nero Porsnin in attendance, began a meeting of three like-minded people. To each of those three their jobs were more important than any prestigious position they might hold; each was aware of their responsibilities; each wanted to understand. Hence the patience shown in the ensuing dialogue, hence the lack of rancour.

Tulla, having collected her thoughts, leant forward and rested her elbows on her knees, hands clasped tightly between them, “Like I said, it’s been tried before. Granted Tevor Cade is this time concentrating his efforts in a narrow band; but every single contact they have had before has ultimately proved worthless. I don’t see why this time it should be any different.”

“It’s worth the effort surely?”

“No,” Tulla decidedly shook her head, “it’s not. If something doesn’t work then, no matter how you concentrate your efforts or your funds, it will still not work. Might look impressive, but it won’t get results. It’s scientific dogmatism. Oh the intentions are good, but what good are good intentions if it’s doomed to failure?”

“Why will it fail?”

“On their own evidence. Tevor Cade quotes Dag Olvess. Olvess was responsible for the bulk of the early research. Yet Olvess’s final paper dismissed, discounted all his own research, when he said that he didn’t think we yet had the means to communicate with the Nautili. Tevor Cade is still employing those same means.”

“Doctor Cade did say that his research was based on responses that Olvess had got?”

“Yes, Olvess got responses. And others have since. But that’s all that they are — responses. In most cases it has been the Nautili, or some other marine creature, parroting back their own transmissions. It is not, nor has it ever been, communication; merely an exchange of noises.”

Jorge, in his role of devil’s advocate, moved to speak again. Tulla forestalled him,

“It’s more than just a lack of success in acquiring hard evidence. Like me you must have encountered many feasible, but unprovable, theses. One doesn’t dismiss those theses out of hand because there’s no hard facts to support them. But the very premise for this research is mistaken. And all the available evidence, thus far, points in that direction. It is a pointless experiment. They know what the result will be before they attempt it. Of course every time they hope it will be different; but the results are always the same. If you punch a man on the nose he will bleed. Same happens every time.”

“You think Tevor Cade is about to, metaphorically, punch the Nautili on the nose?”

“Yes. Though not in the sense that he will offend them. They don’t appear to have been offended by it before.”

“Why are you so opposed to it then?”

“Because it’s a waste of time and money. The only reason, I believe, there are those who persevere with this experiment is because, like Olvess, they believe in the power of words. Olvess, who began this line of enquiry, was a philosopher. Philosophers deal first and foremost with and through words. Tevor Cade, the latest recruit,” she signified the screen where his credentials were still on display, “is a psychologist. A profession that relies on words. And ‘Doctor’ Tevor Cade has also spent so long campaigning for funds that he has, in effect, become a politician. Politicians believe that words are actions. Which is why Hambro Harrap has been so readily persuaded to fund the research. All believe in the power of words; and yet, ironically, not one of them is a linguist.”

Aware that she might be being seen as unreasonably prejudiced, Tulla Yorke reined herself in, took a deep calming breath, and continued,

“For hundreds of years now we have spoken one language. We are no longer used to communicating across language barriers. Out on the edges, where we still occasionally encounter primitive languages, machines do the work for us. We use, we own, one language. Of course we have the jargons, the lingua franca of the various professions — doctors, Service, technicians, police... But that slang is easily accessible to the rest of us. Comprehensible to us. The syntax is the same. There are no pitfalls of misunderstood emphasis. Nor do we get, with people moving on as they do, local dialects arising. We are simply not accustomed anymore to talking across a divide. And the divide we have here is not between two groups of the same species, but between two vastly different species. The differences in thinking have to be profound. For instance all our scientific thinking is directed towards symmetry. We expect to find symmetry. Do the Nautili? We don’t know. And what do they know about us? How much are they judging us by their standards? That we don’t know either. And language is based on shared assumptions.”

None chose to dispute her assertions.

“We have to start somewhere though,” Jorge said. “As we do with savages.”

“That’s a mistaken analogy. The Nautili are civilised beings. Probably as sophisticated as us, but different. I agree that one day we will have to communicate directly with them. But that’s not the first step. First we have to win their confidence, to make it worth their while to talk to us.”

“We could win their confidence by talking to them.”

“As I said, they are probably as sophisticated as us. They probably have their own version of career politicians, have probably learnt like us not to take them too seriously. The only reason Hambro Harrap is going there is because he wants the political kudos that will come from his being the first to talk to them. And politicians abuse language. Unlike those of us who struggle with it to express the truth, they glibly turn it about to obscure the truth. So, eventually, one can believe nothing they say. Would you believe anything Hambro Harrap or his Nautili equivalent has to say?”

Jorge conceded her point.

“And language,” she continued, “any language, carries its own values. With the Nautili we are going to have to first create the values, then use those values as a basis for communication.”

The three men sat on in thoughtful silence, Nero frowning over ideas new to him.

“I am still not entirely satisfied,” Jorge said, “that simply talking to them won’t work.”

“Take this one hard fact,” Tulla said. “Where they have only listened Olvess and his successors have heard nothing. Only when they have made sonar broadcasts have they received a sonar response. I don’t believe that the Nautili communicate among themselves by sonar. It is either an alien or a primitive medium to them. While out in space no-one has detected, nor even chanced upon, radio communication between Nautili. We have seen their ships, but no-one has ever seen a Nautili. We therefore cannot deduce from their physiognomy how they might communicate. No-one, I emphasise no-one, has detected any form of communication between Nautili. Neither light, nor sound, nor radio. Infra-red, ultra-violet — all have been tried. Hence the widespread suspicion that they might be telepathic.”

“If they are telepathic wouldn’t they have tried to contact us?”

“What if we’re not?”

“So how do we discover if they are telepathic?”

“By,” Tulla hopelessly surrendered to the logic, “communicating with them on a medium known to both of us. But sonar alone has already been proved, time and again, not to be that medium.”

“Supposing that Tevor Cade fails,” Jorge sat back in his chair, “how then do you propose to communicate with them?”