Carl Sagan’s Hunt for Intelligent Life in the Universe (3 page)

He stopped. The bipedal steps hesitated. “Fluffy, are you lost?” From the sound of her voice, he could tell she was not ten body lengths behind. He heard a sound like branches clacking and realized it was Noa’s teeth snapping together. The cold mud beneath him seemed to wrap around his claws and hold him immobilized. An enormous drop of frigid water fell from a tree and landed squarely on his nose. The rest of him was well protected, but Noa ...

“Fluffy?” Noa cried.

Hsissh turned around and slid through the underbrush. He found Noa at the trees’ edge in a pair of “slippers” and thin “pajamas.” Soaked and shivering, she was hugging her body. She should have gone home, but instead she was crying his name.

Noa was trying to save him—again. It was foolish. She could suffer hypothermia, or get lost and injured. Her parents might not even be aware she’d gone missing until dawn; then, it might be too late. He crawled out of the undergrowth. Noa’s eyes widened at the sight of him, and she smiled as he hopped forward. Scooping him up, she touched her nose to his. “Fluffy, I found you!” Clutching him to her chest, she dashed back toward the house. “I climbed out the window, but it’s too high to get back in,” she whispered. Instead, she went through the front door, into the foyer, and then into the front room where her parents were reading.

Dad’s voice boomed through the house with such force that the floorboards reverberated. “Noa Sato, were you outside?”

“What were you doing out there?” Mom exclaimed. “You’ll catch your death of cold!”

Hsissh stiffened in Noa’s arms, but she didn’t seem to notice. Holding him up for her parents’ inspection, she said, “I found Fluffy!”

“I’m getting a towel,” Mom said. A few moments later, she wrapped one around Noa’s shoulders, but Noa pulled it off and wrapped it around Hsissh instead.

“The towel was for you!” said Mom.

“He’s wet and cold,” said Noa, gently drying Hsissh’s fur with the warm, absorbent fabric.

“Do not do that again, Noa!” Dad roared.

But Noa didn’t seem to hear either of them. Teeth still clacking, she carried Hsissh back to her room and set him down on her bed. As she slipped into dry pajamas, Hsissh made a show of prowling under the covers for rats. His protector wasn’t afraid of foes who were bigger or outnumbered her, or catching her death of cold, but she was terrified of the tasty little rodents.

He stuck his nose out of the blankets and gave the ‘all clear’ squeak and Noa bounded under the covers with a laugh. Her body was still trembling, and she pulled him close. Hsissh curled himself into a ball. Noa’s fingers traced the line of his spine, and then scratched him behind his ears. Her touch was as gentle as Third’s had been when Hsissh was just a hatchling. Her body was around his, much like how Third had coiled around Hsissh and Shissh as hatchlings and then kits. The down cover and mattress were as soft and warm as Third’s fur. The way Noa’s night light shone through the covering made everything soft and gilt around the edges, like a memory.

“Don’t do that again, Fluffy,” Noa whispered. “Please.”

She drifted off to sleep. Hsissh heard Mom’s footsteps by her door, and then Mom’s voice. “Oh, child, don’t do that to me again.” He could hear the tears in her voice; they were, he had learned, a symptom of mourning.

There was something about Mom’s plea that touched him. Noa was prone to misadventures, and Hsissh could see that begging her to be safe was like screaming into the void. It made him think of being with Third after her mind had been stripped by the wasting disease. Hsissh had begged her to slip into the wave, to stay with him. He kept pleading even after all hope was lost. Afterward, he’d admonished himself. He should have checked on her more frequently, in the waves and in the flesh. In the end, he found himself wishing for just a few more breaths of time to be with her, even just to have her nuzzle him in her wave-ignorant, mind-degenerated state. The memories of his pain, of Noa calling him in the dark, and Mom’s plea to her headstrong daughter … Hsissh knew why he stayed with the humans. It was because he couldn’t bring himself to leave.

“
W
hat the hell
!” Dad yelled, and lifted his feet out of Hsissh’s way. The “all-terrain vehicle” swerved and hit a bump. For a moment, they were airborne, and Hsissh braced his achy muscles for the inevitable reunion with the ground.

“George!” Mom exclaimed, using her own pet name for Dad.

“That damn werfle just crawled under my feet!” Dad roared, bringing the vehicle under control.

“Fluffy, come here!” said Noa, and Hsissh slunk past Mom and Dad to the back of the vehicle and the relative safety of Noa’s lap. She stroked his sore back with warm, gentle hands, and he gingerly curled into a ball. His old rib injury hurt, and this body was getting old, period.

Noa’s cousin John threw up his hands, as did her little sister Masako. “Fluffy is going to church with us again!” they cried in unison. It was Hsissh’s tenth such visit in the three cycles of the sun since he’d joined the family. “Yay!” shouted Noa, Masako, and John. Kenji was quiet, his eyes focused on the window.

“He stays in the car!” said Dad.

“It’s too hot in the car, George,” Mom said and Dad grumbled.

Noa drew her hand down Hsissh’s back. Ish had mapped human brain activity, what areas were energized by different patterns in speech, sight and hearing. Hsissh, if he concentrated, could use the waves to feel what areas were excited and read Noa’s thoughts. She was so quiet, he did so now. He saw his body through her eyes. His spine was visible through his thinning fur, as were the joints of his limbs. He felt her feelings, too. She was afraid of losing him. Death wasn’t eternal for him, like it would be for her. He could speak into her mind, and tell her so—and he had—but she discounted the voice in her head. It hadn't come from the active nanos that now let her talk to her grandparents, and new friends, solar systems away with only a thought. Her nanos told her it was “her imagination.”

“He’s getting so skinny,” said Masako.

“He’s getting old,” said Noa, and Hsissh could hear the hitch in her voice. He couldn’t hang onto this body for much longer, which was one of the reasons why he was going to church today. He wasn’t sure how much time he had left, and he wanted to be with her as much as possible. This body had long ago decided that her family was his family, and he got the same rush of bonding hormones being with them that he did being with Shissh. When the time would come to change this body for another, those hormones would disappear. Intellectually, he knew it was for the best. Emotionally … he felt his hearts sink into a space near his gullet.

“Why do we have to go to church?” Noa said, her hand pausing its path. “You don’t believe in The Three Books!” She didn’t want to go. In her mind she was imagining zipping through the forest on her bicycle with Hsissh in a padded basket at the front, nose lifted to the wind.

“Because it’s our community,” Dad rumbled.

“It’s stupid,” Noa grumbled.

Hsissh wouldn’t call it stupid, he’d call it hopeless. Humans were doomed. He was glad Noa was leaving, joining the Galactic Fleet and leaving this planet behind.

“If God were really all-powerful and didn’t want us to eat the stupid apple, He wouldn’t have let the snake into the garden,” Noa muttered.

No one answered. Hsissh agreed that it was implausible; all the stories from the Three Books seemed so to him. It was odd that the implausible stories tied them, though ever so slightly, to the waves. Maybe it was because the waves were beyond what was plausible in observable Newtonian physics and the stories put believers in the correct mindset?

“And if He didn’t want me to be a pilot, why would He make me want it so much?” Noa whispered. Hsissh lifted his nose toward hers and wiggled his whiskers. Noa’s parents didn’t discourage her from leaving the planet, but among the people of The Three Books, she was considered odd at best, a “dangerous little girl” at worst.

Seeing his whiskers quirking, Noa smiled and Hsissh felt her mood lift.

“There is a crash,” said Kenji out of nowhere, in a toneless voice.

Dad slowed the vehicle, and Noa’s eyes went to the window. Hsissh struggled to lift his protesting muscles. Outside, he saw a peculiar car protruding from a ditch. It had no wheels and lay flat on the ground. A family was standing around it, fanning themselves with their Three Books.

Noa touched the neural port at the side of her head. It had been activated a cycle ago. For a moment, her eyes became glazed. “It’s a LX0001 hover craft,” Noa said, gleaning the information from the “ethernet.” “The new model’s antigrav was formulated to handle Luddeccea’s gravity.”

Luddeccea was the name the humans had given to this planet. Hsissh had heard of the antigrav vehicles. They were powered by the same technology that powered the time gates, albeit on a much smaller scale. They created a “bubble” in time that allowed the vehicles to counteract gravity and float over rocky terrain, and even above treetops. As Hsissh understood it, hovers were very common on Earth. However, the antigrav had to be calibrated for each planet. Local gravity, the relative position of the planet in its solar system, and the solar system’s position relative to the galactic core all had to be taken into account.

Dad sighed heavily and brought the car to a halt beside the immobile vehicle. “New tech … always buggy.”

“Kids, into the back; make room for the Benjamins!” Mom said, and Hsissh was hoisted by Noa as she scrambled over the seat. He knew she tried to make the move as comfortable as possible for him, but his joints hurt, and his body squeaked in protest. “Sorry, Fluffy,” Noa murmured, cradling him closer.

A few breaths later, the Benjamins were in the vehicle and Mom and Dad were occupied with making “small talk.” Hsissh settled onto Noa’s lap in the flat back portion of the vehicle. She was sitting cross-legged in her “Sunday finest.” Hsissh glanced up at her. Her eyes were on the Benjamin’s son, Sergei, sitting in the backseat. You didn’t have to use telepathy or even be human to know she was attracted to him, or that it was one-sided. The sight made the fur on the back of his neck prickle, and he couldn’t say why.

T
he sun was
bright above the front lawn of the Church of Three Books. The adults were off talking in the shade of the steeple. Hsissh was draped over Noa’s neck. She was hanging around some boys, of whom Sergei was one.

“You only think you want to be a pilot,” Jacob, one of Hsissh’s former tormentors, was saying.

“What is that supposed to mean?” Noa demanded, hands going to her hips.

Jacob shrugged. “You’ll fall for some boy and you won’t want to be a pilot anymore. My dad says so.”

And suddenly Hsissh knew what was bothering him about Noa’s eyes on Sergei. She wouldn’t be the first member of any species to be distracted by thoughts of procreation—Hsissh had often been, in this form and others. But she couldn’t afford to be.

The church doors opened, and the congregation began moving into the building. Spinning on her heels, Noa muttered, “I will be a pilot.” Stroking Hsissh’s tail, she added, “Watch me.”

Hsissh forced a long purr out of his chest. Her eyes slid to him and she smiled. As they moved into the shady interior and Noa took a seat at the pew, Hsissh desperately hoped that he would be able to see her achieve her dream.

As soon as everyone was seated, the church leaders—all male, and one for each of the books—raised their arms. “We will open with a prayer.”

Noa bowed her head and silence swept through the church.

“Hsissh!”

The whisper on the waves made his ears perk—the source was very close—as was the smell of fresh rat blood. Peering down the aisle, Hsissh’s nose twitched. He saw an unfamiliar young werfle on its hind legs waving at him. “Isn’t it amazing!” the werfle whispered across the waves. Hsissh blinked and was able to identify the consciousness in the new body. It was Ish. What was he doing here, so far from the human “capital” of Prime?

Ish put his two middle pairs of paws behind his back, and gestured with the top pair for Hsissh to join him. Hsissh didn’t really want to get up … but some deep social instinct within compelled him, as did the smell of fresh rat blood. He stiffly slid down to Noa’s lap, and before she could react, skittered to the floor and down the aisle. “Fluffy!” she whispered.

“Shhhhh … ” said Mom. “He’ll be fine.”

One of the church leaders cleared his throat. Noa settled and bowed her head. There was no sound except for Hsissh’s and Ish’s claws on the wooden floor. Ish’s claws were much louder because his young body was hopping up and down.

“Do you feel it? Do you feel their consciousness rising?” Ish said, spinning in a circle. Ish was older, wiser, and more prone to reflection and study than Hsissh—who was mostly prone to eating and sleeping—but the body Ish inhabited was young and vigorous. It made Hsissh tired just watching his excitement.

Hsissh didn’t respond. The first few times Hsissh had come to church he’d been excited, too. He’d felt some of the congregation’s minds touch the wave and experienced the same elation he’d felt when his first blind hatchlings had cracked through their shells. But his hatchlings had soon opened their eyes; the humans never left their bodies.

“No, they’re not,” Hsissh said. “They’ve been doing this for all of their recorded history.” He’d learned that through Noa’s history lessons.

“Don’t be such a pessimist,” Ish said. He delicately touched his nose to Hsissh’s, but his hind legs continued to hop. “We’re witnessing evolution!”

Hsissh didn’t agree. Noa had to become a pilot, so she could get off Hsissh’s world and live. He didn’t have Shissh’s worries about spreading black waters, or Ish’s scientific enthusiasm, Hsissh cared only about the human girl who had twice endangered her life trying to save him. He looked at her now, her eyes darting down the aisle to check on him as though he were the kit, not her, and he felt the same rush of feelings he’d felt for his blind hatchlings.

“Does it matter that they can’t touch the wave?” Hsissh said to Ish. “They are telepathic in their own way.”

Ish sniffed derisively. “If their satellites go down, or their time gates go offline, they are trapped in their own minds. Light beams, radio, and microwaves … they are as primitive as their speech. Their ethernet is a trap, distracting them from true oneness.”

Hsissh thought of the minds across the galaxy Noa spoke to. She’d joined a Reserve Fleet Training Corps. It was a group for adolescents who dreamed of joining the Fleet; through them she’d found support for her ambitions and discovered that although her dreams weren’t
average
for a young girl, they weren’t
weird,
and she wasn’t a deviant.

He bowed his head. She had confessed to her friends that the only thing she was worried about was leaving her “pet Fluffy.” His hearts beat painfully at the thought. “Does it matter though?” he whispered. “Maybe they aren’t wave aware, maybe they will never be … but they feel as much as we do.” Even though they’d evolved light years away from one another. Even though they weren’t wave-aware. Perhaps it was because they were creatures that had to raise helpless young communally, too?

Ish lowered his head and narrowed his eyes at Hsissh, his hindquarters’ furious hopping abruptly coming to a stop. “Are you crazy, Hsissh? Rats have feelings, too … even lizzar do!”

“But it’s not the same,” Hsissh said. “Rats don’t grieve their dead for decades.”
Like I do,
he almost said.

Ish raised his head and put a paw through his whiskers. “Rats don’t live long enough, Hsissh.”

Hsissh’s body hunched. “We could communicate with the humans if we wanted to, we could even discuss the wave with them; they see its existence—”

“Through the primitive mirror of their mathematics,” said Ish. “Until they feel it, they can’t know it.”

“They could still be useful!” Hsissh protested. “They have opposable thumbs and fighting machines!”

Ish’s whiskers twitched. “Are you worried about Shissh’s dark waters?” He poked Hsissh’s chest with a sharp claw. “I can feel you are not, Hsissh. You’ve become too close to your humans, or that old body of yours has. We cannot announce ourselves to the humans. Announce ourselves, and we would, at least temporarily, lose the upper hand. It would be very inconvenient if they tried to wipe out our host species.”

“We’re thinking of wiping them out,” Hsissh countered.

Ish got very still. “Only on this planet, Hsissh. They will still have their sanctuaries on other worlds.” Ish’s eyes bored into Hsissh’s, and then his consciousness did as well. Probing Hsissh’s memories, Ish found the ones where Hsissh tried to talk telepathically to Noa—and succeeded—and then failed due to her mind’s rationalizations.

“You’re lucky you didn’t succeed in that,” Ish said, the wave crackling with malevolence. “It would ruin my observations and their natural evolution—and you’d be ostracized, if not condemned to have your pattern dissolved.”

Hsissh swished his tail. “I never tried to tell her I was sentient … I just tried to let her feel that she doesn’t have to worry about me.”

Ish’s frame relaxed. “You’re young—well, not your body, you look terrible—and I see you didn’t successfully break any rules.” He put a claw through a whisker. “They’re your ‘pets,’” he said, using the human word. “And you’re worried. But don’t be. They’ll evolve; you’ll see.”