InterstellarNet: Origins (4 page)

■□■

“You’ve got incoming,” Bridget announced.

For a Brit, she had a fair grasp of American slang. Dean still reserved judgment whether he had any cause to worry.

He was nonetheless suspicious. It was eight in the evening for him, and that made it the middle of the night in Switzerland. Moreover, she had called over the ’net despite the lousy voice quality of Internet telephony.

The task force had provided its members with encryption devices of unusual robustness for their PCs. He guessed she wanted to secure the call. That turned out to be the case.

“What’s going on?” he asked once they had opened a secure session.

“You know there are ITU staffers on the Signals committee. One gave me a sneak preview of their latest finding. You’ll surely hear all about it in Media. Judging from the tizzy your friends got into over ‘us’ and ‘them,’ this item is sure to throw them for a circle. A head’s up seemed in order.”

For a
loop
, Dean thought to himself. “What is it?”

“Watch.”

She opened two windows on his PC. In a red window she ran the animation of ET’s “us”-labeled spectral flipbook. The other window, in green, showed a similar sequence of images. She slid the second window over the first, and re-ran them superimposed. The green charts were in all cases a superset of the red.

“Green is our best-guess reconstruction of Earth’s aggregated RF emissions over time. The big energy spikes are from TV transmitters and ballistic missile early warning radars.”

“When does your animation start?”

She grinned from the corner of his screen still showing real-time video. “The best match between ET’s spectrum animation and our reconstructed data starts in mid 1950.”

She had used
incoming
correctly: ET had lobbed a figurative bombshell at them.

■□■

Apropos of the New York venue, it was
déjà vu
all over again: another short-notice Media meeting. So far only the task force had the explosive news. If Media moved quickly, this time they could shape the world’s impressions.

ET had in 1958 captured signals emitted by Earth in 1950. Then he had waited thirty-six years to respond. Why?

“It’s devastating,” said Dr. Shah, a psychologist. “ET could not be bothered to answer us. Are we so insignificant?”

Thanks to Bridget, Dean had had a few hours to ponder the matter. He had spent much of the time surfing the Internet. “A purposefully delayed response is not the only possibility. Perhaps ET is just explaining how Earth came to his attention. His astronomers might routinely survey radio energy inbound from neighboring stars, and not have immediately recognized our ‘signal’”—he waggled his fingers as exaggerated quotation marks—“for what it was.

“ET sent us a systematically constructed message, much of which we almost instantly understood. He sent it at very high power levels. Whatever signal he’s gotten from Earth was
much
weaker, unintended leakage from TV and radio and military radars, and it was all jumbled together. None of that was designed for him to recognize or decode. I’m guessing, but what may have eventually convinced ET that we’re here and aware is the rapid increase in power levels and in the range of frequencies being used. I doubt ET extracted any meaning from the mish-mash.”

Dr. Shah imitated Dean’s gesture. “About those air quotes…what did you mean?”

“The signals ET received from us were
very
faint. ‘I Love Lucy’ was not meant as an interstellar communication. If ET’s signal were as low-powered as what Earth emits even today, we might never have noticed it.”

Michel Margot, a Belgian sociologist, broke the thoughtful silence that had come over the committee. “You suggest we can’t know how long ET delayed after suspecting our presence.”

Dean nodded.

“But his radio technology is more advanced than ours.”

“Correct.”

“But not greatly more advanced, or his response would likely have come sooner.” Margot took Matthews’s silence as assent. “That’s good. There could be an adverse reaction to a perceived technology gap.” To the group, the sociologist added, “This seems a responsible position to articulate.”

Heads bobbed in what Chairman Ricard apparently mistook for unanimous agreement. He assigned a staff writer to draft a press release.

The phrase “not greatly more advanced” allowed a significant degree of ambiguity. ET had radio receivers in 1958 more sensitive than any Earth operated today. His high-power transmitter was a marvel. In the interest of an announcement more devoid than usual of spin, Matthews kept to himself the thought of how much he would like to obtain ET’s radio technology.

“In the United Nations General Assembly today, the Secretary-General urgently requested an emergency supplemental authorization. He stated that the UN’s budget has been unusually strained by peacekeeping duties across the Balkans, sub-Saharan Africa, and the former Indonesia. He pointed to growing requests for humanitarian assistance by the UN High Commissioner on Refugees. The Lalande 21185 task force was also identified as an unanticipated expense.

“Delegates from the Conference of Less Developed Countries responded skeptically, suggesting that the U.N. reallocate scarce resources to its core missions. Charise Ganes, the U.N. ambassador from Belize, spoke for many of her peers. ‘Of what value is an arithmetic lesson from the stars? How many AIDS vaccinations, how much famine relief, could we provide with funds we are now squandering on ET?’

“Rising polarization on the subject of funding for the Lalande investigation seems certain to conflict with the proposed international treaty on interstellar communications. That treaty, recently passed by the General Assembly and awaiting ratification by member states, mandates that any response to ET be developed under UN auspices.”

—BBC World New Service

5

“To ET.”

Dean rarely toasted with iced tea, but Barbara White seldom drank anything stronger. Barb stood five foot zip in high heels; she said her tolerance for booze was best measured in thimblefuls.

“To NetSat,” Dean returned.

Barb was the CEO and founder of NetSat. Dean had been employee number four before taking his leave of absence. They went back a long time together.

It had been a chance encounter at the shopping mall. They had retreated to the food court. “Is ET still being mum?”

“Yup.” Dean bit into a taco. “Not that it could be kept secret were ET to begin talking again. In any case, it will be a while before we understand the things he’s already had to say.”

“So when can I expect you back?”

“I can’t tell yet, Barb.” Pause. “Not till we’re done.”

She knew him too well. “What’s the problem?”

“What we’re learning is astounding. Just ET’s replay of what he received from Earth will teach us a
lot
about radio propagation across interstellar distances. And I work every day with brilliant people.”

“Uh-huh. So why do I sense a big ‘but’ in there somewhere?”

He grimaced. “Think of the most bureaucratic dealings you’ve ever had with the government. This is worse. On top of a clumsy committee process, we’ve got all the international politics. Most prospective announcements get inanely entangled with nineteenth-century colonialism and fears of possible Third World misperception. Apparently our paramount mission is to build up humanity’s self esteem.”

“Then come back to NetSat. I need my chief strategist.”

“Barb…let’s not go there. This work is too important.”

It was not the answer she wanted. She picked at her food, brightening as another matter came to mind. “Hey, I owe you a compliment. Your recommendation paid off.”

Dean guessed she meant the wrap-up memo he had written on his way out the door from NetSat. He
really
disliked loose ends. “The constellation reconfig?”

“The same. As you proposed, it’ll be an easy software fix to keep our satellites and ground stations from broadcasting directly on a Lalande 21185 line of sight. We’ll lose a little capacity, but we maintained our launch schedule. It
sure
beat trying to start over on a new frequency to accommodate your ET buddies. That could have put us out of business.”

“I’m glad it worked out.”

Her wristwatch beeped on the hour. “Gotta run. Listen, it was great seeing you, and I
do
want you back sometime.”

After a good-bye hug she left and he finished his late lunch. Their conversation had put an unaccustomed monetary perspective on the task force’s work: the cost of foregone use of spectrum. That was on top of the direct cost of investigations, UN-sponsored and other, about which so many countries were already complaining.

It hit Dean midway through his final taco. How about
ET’s
economics? Even without knowing how ET allocated resources, it stood to reason ET had made a major investment to contact Earth. His transmitter and its power requirements had to be enormous. For how long would ET’s society, whatever the form that took, be willing to operate it? Was
that
why ET had gone off the air?

Congress had canceled NASA’s SETI program in 1993. At the time, the agency was spending about a nickel per taxpayer on the effort. Luckily, private institutions had ponied up the money to keep the effort alive. Now many of the developing countries were objecting to UN funding of the Lalande task force.

Would ET’s society work any differently?

There was a new urgency to decoding ET’s full message. They had to answer while—Dean fervently hoped—ET continued to listen.

6

With intellectual discipline that many found intimidating, ET’s message continued to build a common vocabulary. Some speculated that much of ET’s delay in responding had been time spent formulating the elegant reply.

Animations of motion introduced mechanics and ET’s notation for the calculus. Cartoons of atoms with emission spectra identified elements and ET’s symbols for them. Cartoons using the element symbols showed simple molecular representations, which were used to illustrate a simple chemical reaction. An image of a simple wet cell labeled with its chemical reaction provided a symbol for voltage, beginning a review of electrical engineering.

The purpose for all this common vocabulary was still unknown when the task force was summoned to present its status to a philosophically divided COPUOS.

■□■

“The Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space will come to order,” the chairman announced, his amplified voice booming in the crowded UN meeting room.

Ambassador and chairman Juan Roderigo, although Harvard-educated, had spoken in his native Spanish—and Charise approved. English was the worldwide language of technology, trade, and air traffic control, but diplomats should not—and she was pleased to see, in this case
did
not—succumb. That Belize had once been British Honduras in no way altered her opinion.

Of course
Spanish
was the conqueror’s language in Argentina. She sighed inwardly. There was no escaping cultural imperialism.

Charise sat with the COPUOS members rather than among the task force. While a technician adjusted the sound level, she surveyed the audience.

Only the task force’s Steering Committee had been invited, but someone had gotten Dean Matthews a guest pass. The Satterswaithe woman, Charise supposed, perhaps on the basis of the scientist’s liaison duties. Charise did not approve; Matthews was too often impulsive and insensitive at Media group meetings. As a COPUOS guest, she expected him to observe silently.

Undersecretary-General Kim spoke for his task force. In brief: ET heard us; after an unexplained delay, he answered; he was now building a common vocabulary with us.

Nods all along the dais suggested that the summation had been understood. Roderigo paid the task force the obligatory compliments for their hard work. The ambassadors from the US, Japan, Peru, and several western European countries followed suit.

Then Maurice Mbeke of Congo spoke. Charise’s colleague and friend spoke in fluent French, but his message, like his dashiki, was distinctly Afrocentric. “I think—no, I know—that I speak for many others in asking why the aliens have expended so much effort in communicating with us. We will resist interstellar colonialism, physical or cultural.”

Charise would have been astonished had Mbeke spoken otherwise. A pleasant surprise was the level of support Mbeke’s words engendered. Speaker after speaker, especially from the nations who had most recently joined COPUOS, endorsed his comments. Even a few industrialized countries voiced anxiety about ET.