“Now, listen,” Manship began shouting in desperation. “Can you or can you not hear me?”
“You can shut off the power, Srin,” Professor Lirld commented. “No sense in wasting it. I believe we have as much of this creature as we need. If any more of it is due to materialize, it will arrive on the residual beam.”
The flefnobe on Manship’s left rapidly spun the strange spheroid he was holding. A low hum, which had filled the building and had been hardly noticeable before, now died away. As Srin peered intently at the patches of light on the surface of the instrument, Manship suddenly guessed that they were meter readings. Yes, that’s exactly what they were—meter readings. Now, how did I know that? he wondered.
Obvious. There was only one answer. If they couldn’t hear him no matter how loudly he shouted, if they gave no sign that they even knew he was shouting, and if, at the same time, they seemed to indulge in the rather improbable feat of talking his native language—they were obviously telepaths. Without anything that looked like ears or mouths.
He listened carefully as Srin asked his superior a question. It seemed to sound in his ears as words, English words in a clear, resonant voice. But there was a difference. There was a quality missing, the kind of realistic bite that fresh fruit has and artificial fruit flavoring doesn’t. And behind Srin’s words there were low, murmuring bubbles of other words, unorganized sentence fragments which would occasionally become “audible” enough to clarify a subject that was not included in the “conversation.” That, Manship realized, was how he had learned that the shifting patches of light on the spheroid were meter readings.
It was also evident that whenever they mentioned something for which no equivalent at all existed in English, his mind supplied him with a nonsense syllable.
So far so good. He’d been plucked out of his warm bed in Callahan Hall by a telepathic suitcase named something like Lirld which was equipped with quantities of eyes and tentacles. He’d been sucked down to some planet in an entirely different system near the center of the galaxy, clad in nothing but apple-green pajamas.
He was on a world of telepaths who couldn’t hear him at all, but upon whom he could eavesdrop with ease, his brain evidently being a sufficiently sensitive antenna. He was scheduled shortly to undergo a “careful examination,” a prospect he did not relish, the more so as he was evidently looked upon as a sort of monstrous laboratory animal. Finally, he was not thought much of, chiefly because he couldn’t pmbff worth a damn.
All in all, Clyde Manship decided, it was about time that he made his presence felt. Let them know, so to speak, that he was definitely not a lower form of life, but one of the boys. That he belonged to the mind-over-matter club himself and came of a long line of IQ-fanciers on both sides of his family.
Only how?
Vague memories of adventure stories read as a boy drifted back to him. Explorers land on a strange island. Natives, armed with assorted spears, clubs and small boulders, gallop out of the jungle to meet them, their whoops an indisputable prelude to mayhem. Explorers, sweating a bit, as they do not know the language of this particular island, must act quickly. Naturally, they resort to—they resort to—the universal sign language! Sign language. Universal!
Still in a sitting position, Clyde Manship raised arms straight up over his head. “Me friend,” he intoned. “Me come in peace.” He didn’t expect the dialogue to get across, but it seemed to him that voicing such words might help him psychologically and thus add more sincerity to the gesture.
“—and you might as well turn off the recording apparatus, too,” Professor Lirld was instructing his assistant. “From here on out, we’ll take everything down on a double memory-fix.”
Srin manipulated his spheroid again. “Think I should modulate the dampness, sir? The creature’s dry skin seems to argue a desert climate.”
“Not at all. I strongly suspect it to be one of those primitive forms which can survive in a variety of environments. The specimen seems to be getting along admirably. I tell you, Srin, we can be very well satisfied with the results of the experiment up to this point.”
“Me friend,” Manship went on desperately, raising and lowering his arms. “Me intelligent entity. Me have IQ of 140 on the Wechsler-Bellevue scale.”
“You may be satisfied,” Glomg was saying, as Lirld left the table with a light jump and floated, like an oversized dandelion, to a mass of equipment overhead, “but I’m not. I don’t like this business one little bit.”
“Me friendly and intelligent enti—” Manship began. He sneezed again. “Damn this wet air,” he muttered morosely.
“What was that?” Glomg demanded.
“Nothing very important, Councilor,” Srin assured him. “The creature did it before. It is evidently a low-order biological reaction that takes place periodically, possibly a primitive method of imbibing glrnk. Not by any stretch of the imagination a means of communication, however.”
“I wasn’t thinking of communication,” Glomg observed testily. “I thought it might be a prelude to aggressive action.”
The professor skimmed back to the table, carrying a skein of luminescent wires. “Hardly. What could a creature of this sort be aggressive with? I’m afraid you’re letting your mistrust of the unknown run away with you, Councilor Glomg.”
Manship had crossed his arms across his chest and subsided into a helpless silence. There was evidently no way to make himself understood outside of telepathy. And how do you start transmitting telepathically for the first time? What do you use?
If only his doctoral thesis had been in biology or physiology, he thought wistfully, instead of The Use of the Second Aorist in the First Three Books of the Iliad. Oh, well. He was a long way from home. Might as well try.
He closed his eyes, having first ascertained that Professor Lirld did not intend to approach his person with the new piece of equipment. He wrinkled his forehead and leaned forward with an effort of extreme concentration.
Testing, he thought as hard as he could, testing, testing. One, two, three, four—testing, testing. Can you hear me?
“I just don’t like it,” Glomg announced again. “I don’t like what we’re doing here. Call it a presentiment, call it what you will, but I feel we are tampering with the infinite—and we shouldn’t.”
I’m testing, Manship ideated frantically. Mary had a little lamb. Testing, testing. I’m the alien creature and I’m trying to communicate with you. Come in, please.
“Now, Councilor,” Lirld protested irritably. “Let’s have none of that. This is a scientific experiment.”
“That’s all very well. But I believe there are mysteries that flefnobe was never meant to examine. Monsters as awful-looking as this—no slime on the skin, only two eyes and both of them flat, unable or unwilling to pmbff, an almost complete absence of tentacles—a creature of this sort should have been left undisturbed on its own hellish planet. There are limits to science, my learned friend—or there should be. One should not seek to know the unknowable!”
Cant you hear me? Manship begged. Alien entity to Srin, Lirld and Glomg: This is an attempt at a telepathic connection. Come in, please, someone. Anyone. He considered for a moment, then added: Roger. Over.