The alien said, “Our star is a brother to yours. Or would it be sister? During periods of the most intense communion, his wisdom-or hers?-is faultless. At times he is angry-unlike your star but these moments are not frequent. Nor do they last for longer than a few fleeting moments. Twice he has prophesied the termination of our civilization during times of great personal anger, but never has he felt it necessary to carry out his prediction. I would say that he is more kind than raging, more gentle than brutal. I believe he loves our people most truly and fully. Among the stars of the universe, his place is not great, but as of our home star, we must revere him. And, of course, we do.”
“Would you go on?” Reynolds asked.
Jonathon went on. Reynolds listened. The alien spoke of its personal relationship with the star, how the star had helped it during times of individual darkness. Once, the star had assisted it in choosing a proper mate; the choice proved not only perfect but divine. Throughout, Jonathon spoke of the star as a reverent Jewish tribesman might have spoken of the Old Testament God For the first time, Reynolds regretted having had to dispose of the tape recorder. When he tried to tell Kelly about this conversation, she would never believe a word of it. As it spoke, the alien did not blink, not once, even briefly, for Reynolds watched carefully.
At last the alien was done. It said, “But this is only a beginning. We have so much to share, Bradley Reynolds. Once I am conversant with your technical vocabulary. Communication between separate entities-the great barriers of language …”
“I understand,” said Reynolds.
“We knew you would. But now-it is your turn. Tell me about your star.”
“We call it the sun,” Reynolds said. Saying this, he felt more than mildly foolish-but what else? How could he tell Jonathon what it wished to know when he did not know himself? All he knew about the sun was facts. He knew how hot it was and how old it was and he knew its size and mass and magnitude. He knew about sunspots and solar winds and solar atmosphere. But that was all he knew. Was the sun a benevolent star? Was it constantly enraged? Did all mankind revere it with the proper quantity of love and dedication? “That is its common name. More properly, in an ancient language adopted by science, it is Sol. It lies approximately eight-“
“Oh,” said Jonathon. “All of this, yes, we know. But its demeanor. Its attitudes, both normal and abnormal. You play with us, Bradley Reynolds. You joke. We understand your amusement-but, please, we are simple souls and have traveled far. We must know these other things before daring to make our personal approach to the star. Can you tell us in what fashion it has most often affected your individual life? This would help us immensely. “
Although his room was totally dark, Reynolds, entering did not bother with the light. He knew every inch of this room, knew it as well in the dark as the light. For the past four years, he had spent an average of twelve hours a day here. He knew the four walls, the desk, the bed, the bookshelves and the books, knew them more intimately than he had ever known another person. Reaching the cot without once stubbing his toe or tripping over an open book or stumbling across an unfurled map, he sat down and covered his face with his hands, feeling the wrinkles on his forehead like great wide welts. Alone, he played a game with the wrinkles, pretending that each one represented some event or facet of his life. This one here the big one above the left eyebrow-that was Mars. And this other one-way over here almost by his right ear-that was a girl named Melissa whom he had known back in the 1970s. But he wasn’t in the proper mood for the game now. He lowered his hands. He knew the wrinkles for exactly what they really were: age, purely and simply and honestly age. Each one meant nothing without the others. They represented impersonal and unavoidable erosion. On the outside, they reflected the death that was occurring on the inside.
Still, he was happy to be back here in this room. He never realized how important these familiar surroundings were to his state of mind until he was forcefully deprived of them for a length of time Inside the alien starship, it hadn’t been so bad. The time had passed quickly then; he hadn’t been allowed to get homesick. It was afterward when it had got bad. With Kelly and the others in her dank, ugly impersonal hole of an office. Those had been the unbearable hours.
But now he was home, and he would not have to leave again until they told him. He had been appointed official emissary to the aliens, though this did not fool him for a moment. He had been given the appointment only because Jonathon had refused to see anyone else. It wasn’t because anyone liked him or respected him or thought him competent enough to handle the mission. He was different from them, and that made all the difference. When they were still kids, they had seen his face on the old TV networks every night of the week. Kelly wanted someone like herself to handle the aliens. Someone who knew how to take orders, someone ultimately competent, some computer facsimile of a human being. Like herself. Someone who, when given a job, performed it in the most efficient manner in the least possible time.
Kelly was the director of the moon base. She had come here two years ago, replacing Bill Newton, a contemporary of Reynolds’, a friend of his. Kelly was the protégé of some U.S. Senator, some powerful idiot from the Midwest, a leader of the anti-NASA faction in the Congress. Kelly’s appointment had been part of a wild attempt to subdue the Senator with favors and special attention. It had worked after a fashion. There were still Americans on the moon. Even the Russians had left two years ago.
Leaving the alien starship, he had met Kelly the instant he reached the air lock. He had managed to slip past her and pull on his suit before she could question him. He had known she wouldn’t dare try to converse over the radio; too great a chance of being overheard. She would never trust him to say only the right things.
But that little game had done nothing except delay matters a few minutes. The tug had returned to the moon base and then everyone had gone straight to Kelly’s office. Then the interrogation had begun. Reynolds had sat near the back of the room while the rest of them flocked around Kelly like pet sheep.
Kelly asked the first question. “What do they want?” He knew her well enough to understand exactly what she meant: What do they want from us in return for what we want from them?
Reynolds told her: They wanted to know about the sun.
“We gathered that much,” Kelly said. “But what kind of information do they want? Specifically, what are they after?”
With great difficulty, he tried to explain this too.
Kelly interrupted him quickly. “And what did you tell them?”
“Nothing,” he said.
Why?
“Because I didn’t know what to tell them.”
“Didn’t you ever happen to think the best thing to tell them might have been whatever it was they wished to hear?”
“I couldn’t do that either,” he said, “because I didn’t know. You tell me: Is the sun benevolent? How does it inspire your daily life? Does it constantly rage? I don’t know, and you don’t know either, and it’s not a thing we can risk lying about, because they may very well know themselves. To them, a star is a living entity. It’s a god, but more than our gods, because they can see a star and feel its heat and never doubt that it’s always there.”
“Will they want you back?” she asked.
“I think so. They liked me. Or he liked me. It. I only talked to one of them.”
“I thought you told us two.”
So he went over the whole story for her once more, from beginning to end, hoping this time she might realize that alien beings are not human beings and should not be expected to respond in familiar ways. When he came to the part about the presence of the two aliens, he said, “Look. There are six men in this room right now besides us. But they are here only for show. The whole time, none of them will say a word or think a thought or decide a point. The other alien was in the room with Jonathon and me the whole time. But if it had not been there, nothing would have been changed. I don’t know why it was there, and I don’t expect I ever will. But neither do I understand why you feel you have to have all these men here with you.”