“Careful,” he cried. “What if he means it?”
“I quite agree,” Stepanov thundered at his team. “We have to accept, of necessity—
“—at least, as a tactic,” he growled sidelong at Sciavoni. “Go ahead, Ph’theri,” begged Sciavoni, signalling his orchestra to soft-pedal it. “Tell us any way you want to—” “We Sp’thra are in a hurry,” said the alien. “Because of our mode of travel. The technique is non-negotiable, understand. But I may say as courtesy information that, in general terms, it involves sailing the tides of space. There is a balance of energies as the spiral arms of the galaxy rub against one another. As their energy fields tense, slip and leap. Let me make a comparison. A planet has a hard surface over a soft core. The surface slides this way and that in sections. Consequently it has earthquakes. Likewise the arms of the galaxy rub against each other till they bleed energy. Till stars must explode. Or till they are forced to swallow themselves—to disappear to a point—”
“Collapsars,” an American voice murmured, enthralled. “We Sp’thra sail near the fault lines where the tension is greatest—the cracks in the dish of curved space. Space is a bowl that perpetually cracks and remakes itself like the planetary crust. We can measure the course of the tides that flow underneath space and beneath light—through the sub-core of the universe, on which matter floats and light flies—and sail these—”
“So you can travel faster than light!” boomed a golden crew-cut astronomer from California.
“No! We sail below light—using the points where the tide is about to change, to throw us quickly on our way. But only some tides are fast and powerful, others are slow and weak. And tides periodically reverse. The fastest tide to the Sp’thra twin worlds is available at present. Soon it will switch and flow back out again, diminishing. Either we hurry—or go the long way round, sailing slowly on lesser tides to reach a major tide-race. We came slowly into your solar system for the reason that tides are too ’choppy’ to sail where much large matter is irregularly dispersed. We have to revert to orthodox planetary drive. The tide effect only becomes feasible beyond your outermost gasgiant’s orbit in deep space—”
A remark that would have produced some consternation up till the year before, when the trans-Plutonian planet Janus had been found at last and named after the two-faced Roman god of doorways—doorway to the Solar System and doorway to the Stars.
As it was, the Californian grinned at a colleague and said:
“Like surfboard riders! Seems there’s truth in my kids’ comics—these guys’d be Silver Surfers, I guess, only they’re a bit tarnished looking, and ride a beachball instead of a surfboard—!”
“This tide business could explain the whole damn setup of collapsars, quasars, gravity waves—right down to the organization of stellar populations!” his older, grizzled colleague flung back excitedly.
“What is this orthodox planetary drive, please?” interrupted the Russian, who had earlier asked about the star drive.
Ph’theri raised one hand, set that thumb of his to playing tick-tack across the orange mark on his palm. Caution, Stop, thought Sole. A universal traffic signal?
“That question is technical, in the ‘trading’ category—”
“Go on, Ph’theri,” Sciavoni said hastily. “We’re just excited.”
Ph’theri lowered his hand.
“Let me give you an example of trading. Who can read the tides to best advantage? Obviously a swimmer whose mind is evolved by tidal rhythms on his planet. We Signal Traders found after much searching of stars by slow means, a world of Tide Readers. These beings trade us their services. It is a highly assessed trade, and still essential to us—”
“Are they fishes, birds, or what, these Tide Readers’?” enquired a ruddy-faced Navy man, whom Sciavoni recollected was involved in a project down in Miami to train whales and dolphins to service subsea stations and defuse mines—one of the leading hunters for the key to the so-called Cetacean Languages.
Ph’theri fluttered a hand impatiently.
“They read atmosphere tides, but theirs is a gasgiant world, and they are methane swimmers—”
“Fair question, you’ll admit, Sciavoni,” the sailor apologized in a blustery way. “Maybe we’ve got ourselves a tradeable commodity in our whales. Whales as starship pilots, imagine—”
“We saw your whales on television,” Ph’theri retorted dismissively. “You have no concept of the tide forces operating in a gasgiant. There is no analogy on this planet. Only the gasgiant is as vast and complex as the star tides. Even so, the Tide Readers need our machines to stand between their minds and the reality—”
“You can’t build machines to read these tides yourself?” the sailor grunted, disappointed.
“Let me explain. We did not evolve in that way. But the Tide Readers did. Tide-reading is an inherited part of their reality, coded into their nervous systems. We Sp’thra cannot instinctively read the tides, no matter what machine-assist is used. Yet the steersman has to be a living being, to react flexibly enough. We buy this ability of theirs—”
Yet hereabouts the alien’s cool detachment evaporated. A queer change seemed to be coming over him. Like a medium going into a spirit trance, he began to elaborate, almost lyrically:
“’Their-Reality’, ‘Our-Reality’, Tour-Reality’—the mind’s concepts of reality based on the environment it has evolved in—all are slightly different. Yet all are a part of ‘This-Reality’—the overall totality of the present universe—”
His voice rose shrill with emphasis.
“Yet Other-Reality outside of this totality assuredly exists! We mean to grasp it!”
His eyes blinked rapidly. He licked his lips in a lizardy way.
“There are so many ways of seeing This-Reality, from so many viewpoints. It is these viewpoints that we trade for. You might say we trade in realities—”
Like a patent medicine salesman launching into his spiel—or was it more like an obsessed visionary? The latter was perhaps nearer the truth, Sole decided, as the alien talked on raptly:
“We mean to put all these different viewpoints together, to deduce the entire signature of This-Reality. From this knowledge we shall deduce the reality modes external to It—grasp the Other-Reality, communicate with it, control it!”
“So then,” broke in Sole, getting excited himself, “what you people are doing is exploring the syntax of reality? Literally, the way a whole range of different beings ‘put together’ their picture of reality? You’re charting the languages their different brains have evolved, in order to get beyond this reality in some way? That’s the idea?”
“Nice,” conceded Ph’theri. “You read our intention well. Our destiny is to signal-trade at right angles to This-Reality. That is the tide of our philosophy. We have to journey out at right angles to this universe. By superimposing all languages. And our language inventory for This-Reality is nearly done—”
Sole was not interrupting now—as the others had been with their clamour about technology—but clearly touching upon an obsessive chord deep in the alien, harmonizing with his people’s search among the stars.
Sciavoni was nervous at first; then accepted Sole’s lead as the only visible thread in the labyrinth.
Ph’theri regarded him sadly.
“The length of time already elapsed is agony to us—”
“Agony? Why is that?”
“Perhaps the answer will mean nothing to you. It is our quest, not yours, to go at right angles to This-Reality. Maybe a quest specific to our species?”