"The singing," I said. I stared right back at her. "What is it?"
She wasn't flustered. She knew the answer. She'd read it in the briefing. She'd read it in The Red Book. Release 22.19A. "We know all about the's-singing. We exp-p-pected it. It's a…" She struggled with the words. "It's a-a reflex ph-phenomenon."
"What if The Red Book is wrong?" I asked.
I looked across the table at her. I didn't like myself for what I was about to do, but I had to do it. I had to make the point. I was going to send another message to General Wainright. Lizard was frowning; this scene was making her unhappy, but she made no move to stop me. She understood what I was doing-and the answer was more important than manners.
"Y-you wrote th-that p-part of th-the b-book," Dwan accused. She looked betrayed.
"And now I'm saying I might have been wrong. I've had second thoughts. So now, without referring to the book, you tell me what the singing is-what you think it is."
"W-well, th-the's-singing th-that we're hearing n-now is a-a-anticip-patory," Dwan began hesitantly. "They d-don't know what we are, b-but th-they're reacting to our sh-shape. Wh-when th-the lights g-go on, the w-worms w-will all g-go crazy. They'll see this airship as a v-vision in the sky of the b-biggest and m-most b-beautiful w-worm in the entire universe. And that w-will't-trigger a r-religious f-frenzy."
"A religious frenzy?" Captain Harbaugh raised an eyebrow.
I nodded. "That's what it looks like."
"Wh-what else would you c-call it?" Dwan stammered. "A giant v-vision of G-god appears in the sky and th-the c-crowd g-gets hysterical."
"That implies that the worms have enough intelligence to have a perception of God," I said. "And we know they don't. The worms have less smarts than chimpanzees. So, if it isn't a reaction to a vision of God, what is it?"
"It's-" Dwan stopped as she realized what I'd said. She looked stricken. Her expression crumpled and tears welled up in her eyes. She recognized immediately the flaw in her logic. "I-I'm sorry," she gulped. "I w-wasn't th-thinking." She'd made a mistake, and the pain of failure was an emotional blow beyond her ability to cope. I felt like a heel for embarrassing her in public.
"Go on, Jim," Lizard prompted.
I glanced away from Dwan. I wanted to go to her and explain that it wasn't her fault; it was my mistake, not hers; that's what I'd believed too when I wrote that part of the book. But-I'd have to do that later. I turned to Lizard and Captain Harbaugh. "See, this is what I've been thinking about for the last two days-and the more I think about it, the more right it feels. There's no such thing as one Chtorr. They don't exist as individuals. They exist as a song. The song is the identity, and the nest is the place where the song lives. The worms are just the instruments that the song uses." I looked from one to the other, letting the idea sink in.
Some of the crew around the display tables looked skeptical. Well, I'd already admitted up front that the idea was pretty far out. I glanced over at Dwan; her face was absolutely blank, she was searching her data banks for equivalent processes in nature.
Captain Harbaugh put both hands on the edge of the table and leaned forward to study the display. She looked intrigued. She nodded thoughtfully. "Yes," she said, almost to herself. "The same way language uses human beings."
Lizard's expression was darker, but she too was considering the idea; perhaps she was already seeing some of the ramifications. "Okay," she said, carefully laying it out for herself. "So, what you're saying is that the worms are just component parts-"
"Right."
"So… to them, the song would be the experience of God."
"Yes, that's exactly it. To a worm, the nest-song is God. And each and every worm knows that he or she or it, or whatever, is part of that God. And each and every worm knows that each and every other worm in the nest is also part of that same God. So when they look up in the sky and see us…" I left the sentence unfinished.
"I think I'm beginning to get it," said Lizard.
Captain Harbaugh looked back and forth between the two of us. "You're going too fast for me. Can I have the annotated version?"
"Sorry," I said. "Let me recap. See, here's the mistake we've been making. We've been thinking that when the worms look up and see a big purple airship in the sky, they're reacting to it as a vision of God, like it's an angel or visitation, and that therefore the songs are some kind of prayer. But that's a human perception. It could only be true if the worms were like humans and had minds of their own. But they don't. The worms don't have minds. So the question isn't simply what are they reacting to. They're reacting to a big worm, yes-but what do they intend? What could they possibly want from the sky-worm?"
"Amplification," said Dwan. Everybody turned to look at her. "More's-singing," she said. "Th-they w-want our super sky voice added to th-their song. They w-want enlargement."
"Right," I said. I licked my finger, drew a brownie point in the air for Dwan, then pointed at her, clicked my tongue, and winked in a you-got-it gesture. She nearly wet her pants with happiness.
I looked to Lizard and Captain Harbaugh. "That's my thought exactly. I think we should sing with the worms. I think we should take their song, digitize it, sample it, do a real-time analysis, expand it, synthesize a bigger voice, and feed it right back to them. At this height, if we want them to hear the song in sync, we'll have to do some forward projection to allow for the time delay. But that's part of the program."
"How long will it take to set up?" asked Lizard. She had ajr expectant look in her eyes.
"Well, actually, I wasn't planning to suggest it until after we saw what happened here. I was hoping to test it, but I was really thinking in terms of the Japuran mandala-"
"Yes, I know," said Lizard. She repeated her question. "How long will it take to set up?"
"It's all ready to go," I said modestly. "I spent most of the afternoon working out the algorithms with the Houston LI. The program is on-line and ready to run. All we have to do is activate it."
"I thought so," she smiled.
"And then what?" asked Captain Harbaugh. "What will that prove?"
I spread my hands wide. "In itself, nothing. But here's the second part of the experiment. We've got thousands of hours of worm songs stored and sampled and collated. The LI engines have extracted a lot of different patterns. There seem to be certain connections of harmony and rhythm and flavor, and we've tentatively assigned cmotional meanings to some of them. I was thinking-" I glanced around the table. Everybody was looking at me. Everybody was listening. "I was thinking that maybe this is how we can establish some kind of communication with them. We can start by echoing, but let's go beyond that. Let's broadcast other songs back to them. Let's see how they react to the sounds of different nests. Let's see what kinds of responses we can get from them. Maybe we might even find some song or set of songs that turns the worms peaceful-or that we can use against them. I don't know what we'll find. But it's certainly worth trying, isn't it?"
Lizard and Captain Harbaugh exchanged a glance. Each in her own way was thinking about the possibility. They moved away from the video table to discuss it in private. Lizard nodded at me to follow.
"Heisenberg?" said Captain Harbaugh. There was a whole conversation in that single word.[5]
Lizard shrugged. "We already knew that our presence was going to disturb the worms. There was no way we were ever going to get a neutral observation of a pure nest."
And I added the second half of that thought: "So if we're going in disturb them anyway, why not really disturb them? Why not do it for a purpose?"