Albert Einstein once said, ‘Insofar as the propositions of mathematics give an account of reality they are not certain; and insofar as they are certain they do not describe reality.’
Carl was in the kitchen, stringing snow pea pods for dinner, when Renee came in. ‘Can I talk to you for a minute?’
‘Sure.’ They sat down at the table. She looked studiedly out the window: her habit when beginning a serious conversation. He suddenly dreaded what she was about to say. He hadn’t planned to tell her that he was leaving until she’d fully recovered, after a couple of months. Now was too soon.
‘I know it hasn’t been obvious—’
No, he prayed, don’t say it. Please don’t.
‘—but I’m really grateful to have you here with me.’
Pierced, Carl closed his eyes, but thankfully Renee was still looking out the window. It was going to be so, so difficult.
She was still talking. ‘The things that have been going on in my head—’ She paused. ‘It was like nothing I’d ever imagined. If it had been any normal kind of depression, I know you would have understood, and we could have handled it.’
Carl nodded.
‘But what happened, it was almost as if I were a theologian proving that there was no God. Not just fearing it, but knowing it for a fact. Does that sound absurd?’
‘No.’
‘It’s a feeling I can’t convey to you. It was something that I believed deeply, implicitly, and it’s not true, and I’m the one who demonstrated it.’
He opened his mouth to say that he knew exactly what she meant, that he had felt the same things as she. But he stopped himself: for this was an empathy that separated rather than united them, and he couldn’t tell her that.
STORY OF YOUR LIFE
Your father is about to ask me the question. This is the most important moment in our lives, and I want to pay attention, note every detail. Your dad and I have just come back from an evening out, dinner and a show; it’s after midnight. We came out onto the patio to look at the full moon; then I told your dad I wanted to dance, so he humors me and now we’re slow dancing, a pair of thirty-somethings swaying back and forth in the moonlight like kids. I don’t feel the night chill at all. And then your dad says, ‘Do you want to make a baby?’
Right now your dad and I have been married for about two years, living on Ellis Avenue; when we move out you’ll still be too young to remember the house, but we’ll show you pictures of it, tell you stories about it. I’d love to tell you the story of this evening, the night you’re conceived, but the right time to do that would be when you’re ready to have children of your own, and we’ll never get that chance.
Telling it to you any earlier wouldn’t do any good; for most of your life you won’t sit still to hear such a romantic – you’d say sappy – story. I remember the scenario of your origin you’ll suggest when you’re twelve.
‘The only reason you had me was so you could get a maid you wouldn’t have to pay,’ you’ll say bitterly, dragging the vacuum cleaner out of the closet.
‘That’s right,’ I’ll say. ‘Thirteen years ago I knew the carpets would need vacuuming around now, and having a baby seemed to be the cheapest and easiest way to get the job done. Now kindly get on with it.’
‘If you weren’t my mother, this would be illegal,’ you’ll say, seething as you unwind the power cord and plug it into the wall outlet.
That will be in the house on Belmont Street. I’ll live to see strangers occupy both houses: the one you’re conceived in and the one you grow up in. Your dad and I will sell the first a couple years after your arrival. I’ll sell the second shortly after your departure. By then Nelson and I will have moved into our farmhouse, and your dad will be living with what’s-her-name.
I know how this story ends; I think about it a lot. I also think a lot about how it began, just a few years ago, when ships appeared in orbit and artifacts appeared in meadows. The government said next to nothing about them, while the tabloids said every possible thing.
And then I got a phone call, a request for a meeting.
I spotted them waiting in the hallway, outside my office. They made an odd couple; one wore a military uniform and a crew cut, and carried an aluminum briefcase. He seemed to be assessing his surroundings with a critical eye. The other one was easily identifiable as an academic: full beard and mustache, wearing corduroy. He was browsing through the overlapping sheets stapled to a bulletin board nearby.
‘Colonel Weber, I presume?’ I shook hands with the soldier. ‘Louise Banks.’
‘Dr. Banks. Thank you for taking the time to speak with us,’ he said.
‘Not at all; any excuse to avoid the faculty meeting.’
Colonel Weber indicated his companion. ‘This is Dr. Gary Donnelly, the physicist I mentioned when we spoke on the phone.’
‘Call me Gary,’ he said as we shook hands. ‘I’m anxious to hear what you have to say.’
We entered my office. I moved a couple of stacks of books off the second guest chair, and we all sat down. ‘You said you wanted me to listen to a recording. I presume this has something to do with the aliens?’
‘All I can offer is the recording,’ said Colonel Weber.
‘Okay, let’s hear it.’
Colonel Weber took a tape machine out of his briefcase and pressed PLAY. The recording sounded vaguely like that of a wet dog shaking the water out of its fur.
‘What do you make of that?’ he asked.
I withheld my comparison to a wet dog. ‘What was the context in which this recording was made?’
‘I’m not at liberty to say.’
‘It would help me interpret those sounds. Could you see the alien while it was speaking? Was it doing anything at the time?’
‘The recording is all I can offer.’
‘You won’t be giving anything away if you tell me that you’ve seen the aliens; the public’s assumed you have.’
Colonel Weber wasn’t budging. ‘Do you have any opinion about its linguistic properties?’ he asked.
‘Well, it’s clear that their vocal tract is substantially different from a human vocal tract. I assume that these aliens don’t look like humans?’
The colonel was about to say something noncommittal when Gary Donnelly asked, ‘Can you make any guesses based on the tape?’
‘Not really. It doesn’t sound like they’re using a larynx to make those sounds, but that doesn’t tell me what they look like.’
‘Anything – is there anything else you can tell us?’ asked Colonel Weber.
I could see he wasn’t accustomed to consulting a civilian. ‘Only that establishing communications is going to be really difficult because of the difference in anatomy. They’re almost certainly using sounds that the human vocal tract can’t reproduce, and maybe sounds that the human ear can’t distinguish.’
‘You mean infra- or ultrasonic frequencies?’ asked Gary Donnelly.
‘Not specifically. I just mean that the human auditory system isn’t an absolute acoustic instrument; it’s optimized to recognize the sounds that a human larynx makes. With an alien vocal system, all bets are off.’ I shrugged. ‘Maybe we’ll be able to hear the difference between alien phonemes, given enough practice, but it’s possible our ears simply can’t recognize the distinctions they consider meaningful. In that case we’d need a sound spectrograph to know what an alien is saying.’
Colonel Weber asked, ‘Suppose I gave you an hour’s worth of recordings; how long would it take you to determine if we need this sound spectrograph or not?’
‘I couldn’t determine that with just a recording no matter how much time I had. I’d need to talk with the aliens directly.’