“Yes, but it is not necessary,” he said.
“Why not?” I barked.
“Because they are already transmitting one to us.”
45
I’d talked to a number of different aliens by now, but the Worms were a strange lot even by galactic standards. They didn’t use words. They used images. Transmitted symbols, which Marvin didn’t know how to break into English phrases. All he could do was give us the image they were sending and send one back that he deemed appropriate. I felt like I was drawing pictographic notes to an ancient Egyptian pen pal-but I had little idea what the pictures really meant.
As I studied the language, I recalled the strange chamber we’d found back on Helios, the one with various sculptures made out of resins. I had always suspected the sculptures were formed by Worm excretions. I’d originally guessed the chamber to be an art gallery of sorts. I now believed the chamber was a library, school, or some other repository of knowledge. For a digging species, the Worms were highly visual-or maybe they felt the images with tactile sensory input, rather than looked at them. Whichever was the case, they definitely communicated with images and three-dimensional shapes. In a way, I was impressed. A lot of information could be stored in a three-dimensional structure. Our language was purely symbolic, and thus it took a lot of words to describe a concept.
What was the old adage? That a picture was worth a thousand words… Well, the Worms had gone one further with that. They communicated essentially in little statues of captured thought. A sculpture to them told a story. It was stored data in a physical form, rather than using standard symbols drawn or computer-generated.
I didn’t have the time to get excited about this cultural meeting, and in any case all our xenologists had died by this point of the expedition. Once Marvin had explained the communications system to me, we got down to business.
“All right then,” I said, “they talk with shapes and images. But how are we going to transmit them? We don’t have time to make clay models, here.”
“They have a reduced symbol set for low-tech communications,” Marvin said. “It uses a standard group of symbols, arranged in a series. The exact meaning is up to interpretation, however.”
“Great,” I said. “What are they sending now?”
“They are repeating three symbols,” Marvin said. “The first symbol is an image of a raging Worm warrior.”
“Okay, we’ve got that. Go on.”
“The second is that of a razor-backed fluke-a common, much-hated parasite that lives inside Worms of lower caste. The last one resembles a meteor falling. It is the symbol for destruction.”
My bridge crew looked at one another unhappily. No one had to do much guessing about these symbols.
“So,” Gorski said, “We’re hateful parasites and they are coming to rightfully destroy us.”
I nodded. “It sounds like it. Nice of them to transmit this vengeful message-how many times?”
“Somewhat over seventy thousand repeats have been noted according to signal logs,” Marvin said.
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s great. Thousands of repeated threats. Let’s try to talk. Suggestions?”
Everyone hesitated. I couldn’t blame them. Who wanted to be the first to talk to an enraged enemy? I had less concerns than most. I figured if they already hated us, we had little to lose.
“Maybe we should send the same thing back at them,” Gorski said. “Didn’t you do that with the Macros to get them talking? So that they knew we understood and wished to talk?”
I chuckled. “Yeah. But the Macros were making demands, not screaming threats. You think we should start off by shouting screw you too back at our enraged attackers, eh? I’m not sure how that will defuse the situation.”
No one else had any hot ideas, so I told Marvin to send a new message. “Let’s try a symbol for peace and harmony,” I said.
“I’m not aware of such a symbol. There is one for love-but that is more in tune with erotic interest. Another indicates submission to a superior.”
“Fantastic. We don’t want to mate with them. Hmm. What indicates cooperation?”
“I’m not aware of such a symbol.”
“Come on,” I said. “Stretch that big brain of yours, Marvin! Don’t the Worms ever team up to do anything together?”
“They form groups for hunting, procreation and war parties.”
“Let’s try hunting. Send them a symbol suggesting we team up as a hunting party. What is that symbol?”
“An image of a fat, underground grub being sliced open.”
“Disgusting,” Sandra said.
I smiled at her. “Just their equivalent of a juicy steak, I’m sure. Send it, Marvin.”
“Message sent,” he said.
We waited a few tense seconds. “Any reaction?” I asked finally, not being able to contain myself.
“They have stopped sending their three threatening images,” Marvin said.
“They are thinking that one over,” I said. “We’re going to have to catalogue these symbols and how they worked out. Earth can analyze these for future contact. Assuming we survive this encounter, of course.”
“I’m already recording, Colonel,” Gorski told me. He was tapping and opening save files as we went, capturing the data blips coming in and combining the signals with the descriptions Marvin gave us. Hopefully, we would learn to talk to them on our own eventually.
“Let’s send them this,” I said, “I want an image of one of these flukes, and a strong negative signal. Deny we are the flukes, or that they are.”
“Message sent,” Marvin said.
I looked at him with a sudden thought. It would be so easy for him to screw us. Once again, I had placed myself within the power of a machine, reliant upon Marvin for my own well-being. The only reason I trusted him at all in this instance was that I was convinced he believed himself to be in danger as well.
“Incoming message,” Marvin said suddenly. “It’s the same thing. Warrior, fluke and destruction.”
“What is the symbol for machine? Do they have one?”
“Yes.”
“Send machine-destruction back,” I said.
“Done…they’ve stop sending their repeated message,” Marvin said after a brief pause. While we worked with him, his four camera eyes studied his environment. One watched Welter at the helm controls. One watched me, while the last two seemed to be stretching until the nanite arm was wire-thin to watch Gorski with his calculations and recordings. I knew that Marvin was studying us just as closely as we were studying him.
“The Worms must be puzzling it out,” Major Sarin said, speaking up for the first time. “They must be wondering why we are trying to talk to them at all.”
“Any change in their approach, Gorski?” I asked.
“None, sir.”
“Okay,” I said. “Marvin, is there a symbol meaning the speaking individual? Something like a pronoun, such as ‘I’ or ‘me’?”
“There is an image for the basic Worm. A common, non-specific individual.”
“Sounds like ‘we’,” I said. “Send them the symbols for we, machine, negative.”
“They are now responding with the symbol for of an egg-stealing mite,” Marvin said.
“That means they are calling us liars, right?” I asked.
“The symbol translates into thief, liar or villain,” Marvin said.
“That can’t be good,” Gorski commented.
“Wrong,” I said, shaking my head, “it is good, because it means they understood our message. Marvin, send them the liar image and the negative symbol. Then repeat we, machine, negative.”
“They’ve stopped transmitting,” Marvin said.
“Okay,” I said. “The question is how we prove to them we aren’t Macros, when we are in a Macro ship.”
“Is there a symbol for a human?” Major Sarin asked.
“No, not to my knowledge,” Marvin said.
“Yeah, let’s not even tell them about that,” I said. “Remember, if they know we are humans, they’ve only seen us as the guys who fought our way into their city and blew it up. I think we are better off as anonymous, machine-hating friends.”