Contact - Carl Sagan [161]
Eda had also been told about a message deep inside a transcendental number, but in his story it was not? or e, the base of natural logarithms, but a class of numbers she had never heard of. With an infinity of transcendental numbers, they would never know for sure which number to examine back on Earth.
"I hungered to stay and work on it," he told Ellie softly, "and I sensed they needed help-some way of thinking about the decipherment that hadn't occurred to them. But I think it's something very personal for them. They don't want to share it with others. And realistically, I suppose we just aren't smart enough to give them a hand."
They hadn't decrypted the message in?? The Station-masters, the Caretakers, the designers of new galaxies hadn't figured out a message that had been sitting under their thumbs for a galactic rotation or two? Was the message that difficult, or were they…? "Time to go home," her father said gently. It was wrenching. She didn't want to go. She tried staring at the palm frond. She tried asking more questions.
"How do you mean `go home'? You mean we're going to emerge somewhere in the solar system? How will we get down to Earth?"
"You'll see," he answered. "It'll be interesting." He put his arm around her waist, guiding her toward the open airlock door.
It was like bedtime. You could be cute, you could ask bright questions, and maybe they'd let you stay up a little later. It used to work, at least a little.
"The Earth is linked up now, right? Both ways. If we can go home, you can come down to us in a jiffy. You know, that makes me awfully nervous. Why don't you just sever the link? We'll take it from here."
"Sorry, Presh," he replied, as if she had already shamelessly prolonged her eight o'clock bedtime. Was he sorry about bedtime, or about being unready to denozzle the tunnel? "For a while at least, it'll be open only to inbound traffic," he said. "But we don't expect to use it."
She liked the isolation of the Earth from Vega. She preferred a fifty-two-year-long leeway between unacceptable behavior on Earth and the arrival of a punitive expedition. The black hole link was uncomfortable. They could arrive almost instantaneously, perhaps only in Hokkaido, perhaps anywhere on Earth. It was a transition to what Hadden had called microintervention. No matter what assurances they gave, they would watch us more closely now. No more dropping in for a casual look-see every few million years.
She explored her discomfort further. How…heological…the circumstances had become. Here were beings who live in the sky, beings enormously knowledgeable and powerful, beings concerned for our survival, beings with a set of expectations about how we should behave. They disclaim such a role, but they could clearly visit reward and punishment, life and death, on the puny inhabitants of Earth. Now how is this different, she asked herself, from the old-time religion? The answer occurred to her instantly: It was a matter of evidence. In her videotapes, in the data the others had acquired, there would be hard evidence of the existence of the Station, of what went on here, of the blackhole transit system. There would be five independent, mutually corroborative stories supported by compelling physical evidence. This one was fact, not hearsay and hocus-pocus.
She turned toward him and dropped the frond. Wordlessly, he stooped and returned it to her.
"You've been very generous in answering all my questions. Can I answer any for you?"
"Thanks. You answered all our questions last night."
"That's it? No commandments? No instructions for the provincials?"
"It doesn't work that way, Presh. You're grown up now. You're on your own." He tilted his head, gave her that grin,