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CHAPTER 8 Random Access

Ellie ignored random access and advanced sequentially through the television stations. Lifestyles of the Mass Murderers and You Bet Your Ass were on adjacent channels. It was clear at a glance that the promise of the medium remained unfulfilled. There was a spirited basketball game between the Johnson City Wildcats and the Union-Endicott Tigers; the young men and women players were giving their all. On the next channel was an exhortation in Parsi on proper versus improper observances of Ramadan. Beyond was one of the locked channels, this one apparently devoted to universally abhorrent sexual practices. She next came upon one of the premier computer channels, dedicated to fantasy role-playing games and now fallen on hard times.

Accessed to your home computer, it offered a single entry into a new adventure, today's apparently called Galactic Gilgamesh, in holes that you would find it sufficiently attractive to order the corresponding floppy disk on one of the vending channels. Proper electronic precautions were taken so you could not record the program during your single play. Most of these video games, she thought, were desperately flawed attempts to prepare adolescents for an unknown future.

Her eye was caught by an earnest anchorman from one of the old networks discussing with unmistakable concern what was described as an unprovoked attack by North Vietnamese torpedo boats on two destroyers of the U. S. Seventh Fleet in the Gulf of Tonkin, and the request by the President of the United States that he be authorized to “take all necessary measures” in response. The program was one of her few favorites, Yesterday's News, reruns of network news shows of earlier years. The second half of the program consisted of a point-by-point dissection of the misinformation in the first half, and the obdurate credulity of the news organizations before any claims by any administration, no matter how unsupported and self-serving. It was one of several television series produced by an organization called REALI-TV— including Promises, Promises, devoted to follow-up analyses of unfulfilled campaign pledges at local, state, and national levels, and Bamboozles and Baloney, a weekly debunking of what were said to be widespread prejudices, propaganda, and myths. The date at the bottom of the screen was August 5, 1964, and a wave of recollection—nostalgia was not the appropriate word—about her days in high school washed over her. She pressed on.

Cycling through the channels, she rushed past an Oriental cooking series devoted this week to the hibachi, an extended advertisement for the first generation of general-purpose household robots by Hadden Cybernetics, the Soviet Embassy's Russian-language news and comment program, several children's and news frequencies, the mathematics station displaying the dazzling computer graphics of the new Cornell analytic geometry course, the local apartments and real estate channel, and a tight cluster of execrable daytime serials until she came upon the religious networks, where, with sustained and general excitement, the Message was being discussed.

Attendance in churches had soared all over America. The Message, Ellie believed, was a kind of mirror in which each person sees his or her own beliefs challenged or confirmed. It was considered a blanket vindication of mutually exclusive apocalyptic and eschatological doctrines. In Peru, Algeria, Mexico, Zimbabwe, Ecuador, and among the Hopi, serious public debates took place on whether their progenitor civilizations had come from space; supporting opinions were attacked as colonialist. Catholics debated the extraterrestrial state of grace. Protestants discussed possible earlier missions of Jesus to nearby planets, and of course a return to Earth. Muslims were concerned that the Message might contravene the commandment against graven images. In Kuwait, a man arose who claimed to be the Hidden Imam of the Shiites. Messianic fervor had arisen among the Sossafer Chasids. In other congregations of Orthodox Jews there was a sudden renewal of interest in Astruc, a zealot fearful that knowledge would undermine faith, who in 1305 had induced the Rabbi of Barcelona, the leading Jewish cleric of the time, to forbid the study of science or philosophy by those under twenty-five, on pain of excommunication. Similar currents were increasingly discernible in Islam. A Thessalonian philosopher, auspiciously named Nicholas Polydemos, was attracting attention with a set of passionate arguments for what he called the “reunification” of religions, governments, and peoples of the world. Critics began by questioning the “re.”

UFO groups had organized round-the-clock vigils at Brooks Air Force Base, near San Antonio, where the perfectly preserved bodies of four occupants of a flying saucer that had crash-landed in 1947 were said to be languishing in freezers; the extraterrestrials were reputed to be one meter tall and to have tiny flawless teeth. Apparitions of Vishnu had been reported in India, and of the Amida Buddha in Japan; miraculous cures by the hundreds were announced at Lourdes; a new Bodhisattva proclaimed herself in Tibet. A novel cargo cult was imported from New Guinea into Australia; it preached the construction of crude radio telescope replicas to attract extraterrestrial largesse. The World Union of Free Thinkers called the Message a disproof of the existence of God. The Mormon Church declared it a second revelation by the angel Moroni.

The Message was taken by different groups as evidence for many gods or one god or none.

Chiliasm was rife. There were those who predicted the Millennium in 1999—as a cabalistic inversion of 1666, the year that Sabbatai Zevi had adopted for his millennium; others chose 1996 or 2033, the presumed two thousandth anniversaries of the birth or death of Jesus. The Great Cycle of the ancient Maya was to be completed in the year 2011, when—according to this independent cultural tradition—the cosmos would end.

The convolution of the Mayan prediction with Christian millenarianism was producing a kind of apocalyptic frenzy in Mexico and Central America. Some chiliasts who believed in the earlier dates had begun giving away their wealth to the poor, in part because it would soon be worthless anyway and in part as earnest money to God, a bribe for the Advent.

Zealotry, fanaticism, fear, hope, fervent debate, quiet prayer, agonizing reappraisal, exemplary selflessness, closed-minded bigotry, and a zest for dramatically new ideas were epidemic, rushing feverishly over the surface of the tiny planet Earth. Slowly emerging from this mighty ferment, Ellie thought she could see, was a dawning recognition of the world as one thread in a vast cosmic tapestry. Meanwhile, the Message itself continued to resist attempts at decryption.

On the vilification channels, protected by the First Amendment, she, Vaygay, der Heer, and to a lesser extent Peter Valerian were being castigated for a variety of offenses, including atheism, communism, and hoarding the Message for themselves. In her opinion, Vaygay wasn't much of a Communist, and Valerian had a deep, quiet, but sophisticated Christian faith. If they were lucky enough to come anywhere near cracking the Message, she was willing to deliver it personally to this sanctimonious twit of a television commentator. David Drumlin, however, was being made out as the hero, the man who had really decrypted the prime number and Olympic broadcasts; he was the kind of scientist we needed more of. She sighed and changed the channel once again.

She had come around to TABS, the Turner-American Broadcasting System, the only survivor of the large commercial networks that had dominated television broadcasting in the United States until the advent of widespread direct satellite broadcasting and 180-channel cable. On this station, Palmer Joss was making one of his rare television appearances. Like most Americans, Ellie instantly recognized his resonant voice, his slightly unkempt good looks, and the discoloration beneath his eyes that made you think he never slept for worrying about the rest of us.

“What has science really done for us?” he declaimed. “Are we really happier? I don't mean just holographic receivers and seedless grapes. Are we fundamentally happier? Or do the scientists bribe us with toys, with technological trinkets, while they undermine our faith?”

Here was a man, she thought, who was hankering for a simpler age, a man who has spent his life attempting to reconcile the irreconcilable. He has condemned the most flagrant excesses of pop religion and thinks that justifies attack on evolution and relativity. Why not attack the existence of the electron? Palmer Joss never saw one, and the Bible is innocent of electromagnetism. Why believe in electrons? Although she had never before listened to him speak, she was sure that sooner or later he would come around to the Message, and he did:

“The scientists keep their findings to themselves, give us little bits and pieces—enough to keep us quiet. They think we're too stupid to understand what they do. They give us conclusions without evidence, findings as if they were holy writ and not speculations, theories, hypotheses—what ordinary people would call guesses. They never ask if some new theory is as good for people as the belief that it tries to replace.

They overestimate what they know and underestimate what we know. When we ask for explanations, they tell us it takes years to understand. I know about that, because in religion also there are things that take years to understand. You can spend a lifetime and never come close to understanding the nature of Almighty God. But you don't see the scientists coming to religious leaders to ask them about their years of study and insight and prayer. They never give us a second thought, except when they mislead us and deceive us.

“And now they say they have a Message from the star Vega. But a star can't send a message.

Someone is sending it. Who? Is the purpose of the Message divine or satanic? When they decode the Message, will it end “Yours truly, God'… or “Sincerely, the Devil'? When the scientists get around to telling us what's in the Message, will they tell us the whole truth? Or will they hold something back because they think we can't understand it, or because it doesn't match what they believe? Aren't these the people who taught us how to annihilate ourselves?

“I tell you, my friends, science is too important to be left to the scientists. Representatives of the major faiths ought to be part of the process of decoding. We ought to be looking at the raw data. That's what the scientists call it, “raw. ” Otherwise… otherwise, where will we be? They'll tell us something about the Message. Maybe what they really believe. Maybe not. And we'll have to accept it, whatever they tell us.

There are some things the scientists know about. There are other things—take my word for it—they know nothing about. Maybe they've received a message from another being in the heavens. Maybe not. Can they be sure the Message isn't a Golden Calf? I don't think they'd know one if they saw one. These are the folks who brought us the hydrogen bomb. Forgive me, Lord, for not being more grateful to these kind souls.

“I have seen God face to face. I worship Him, trust Him, love Him, with my entire soul, with all of my being. I don't think anyone could believe more than I do. I can't see how the scientists could believe in science more than I do in God.

“They're ready to throw away their “truths” when a new idea comes round. They're proud of it.

They don't see any end to knowing. They imagine we're locked in ignorance until the end of time, that there's no certainty anywhere in nature. Newton overthrew Aristotle. Einstein overthrew Newton.

Tomorrow someone else'll overthrow Einstein. As soon as we get to understand one theory, there's another one in its place. I wouldn't mind so much if they had warned us that the old ideas were tentative. Newton's law of gravitation, they called it. They still call it that. But if it was a law of nature, how could it be wrong?

How could it be overthrown? Only God can repeal the laws of nature, not the scientists. They just got it wrong. If Albert Einstein was right, Isaac Newton was an amateur, a bungler.

“Remember, the scientists don't always get it right. They want to take away our faith, our beliefs, and they offer us nothing of spiritual value in return. I do not intend to abandon God because the scientists write a book and say it is a message from Vega. I will not worship science. I will not defy the First Commandment. I will not bow down before a Golden Calf.”

When he was a very young man, before he became widely known and admired, Palmer Joss had been a carnival roustabout. It was mentioned in his profile in Timesweek; it was no secret. To help make his fortune he had arranged for a map of the Earth in cylindrical projection to be painstakingly tattooed on his torso. He would exhibit himself at county fairs and sideshows from Oklahoma to Mississippi, one of the stragglers and remnants of a more vigorous age of rural itinerant entertainment. In the expanse of blue ocean were the four gods of the winds, their cheeks puffing forth prevailing westerlies and nor'easters. By flexing his pectorals, he could make Boreas swell along with the Mid-Atlantic. Then, he would declaim to the astonished onlookers from Book 6 of Ovid's Metamorphoses:

Monarch of Violence, rolling on clouds, I toss wide waters, and I fell huge trees…

Possessed of daemon-rage, I penetrate, Sheer to the utmost caverns of old Earth; And straining, up from those unfathomed deeps, Scatter the terror-stricken shades of Hell; And hurl death-dealing earthquakes throughout the world!

Fire and brimstone from old Rome. With some help from his hands, he would demonstrate continental drift, pressing West Africa against South America, so they joined, like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, almost perfectly at the longitude of his navel. They billed him as “Geos, the Earth Man.”

Joss was a great reader and, being unencumbered by a formal education past grade school, had not been told that science and classics were unseemly fare for ordinary people. Aided by his casual, rumpled good looks, he would ingratiate himself with librarians in the towns along the carnival's trek and ask what serious books he should read. He wanted, he told them, to improve himself. Dutifully, he read about winning friends and investing in real estate and intimidating your acquaintances without their noticing, but felt these books somehow shallow. By contrast, in ancient literature and in modern science he though he detected quality. When there were layovers, he would haunt the local town or county library. He taught himself some geography and history. They were job-related, he told Elvira the Elephant Girl, who questioned him closely on his absences. She suspected him of compulsive dalliances—a librarian in every port, she once said—but she had to admit his professional patter was improving. The contents were too highbrow, but the delivery was down home. Surprisingly, Joss's little stall began to make money for the carnival.

His back to the audience, he was one day demonstrating the collision of India with Asia and the resulting crinkling up of the Himalayas, when, out of a gray but rainless sky, a lightning bolt flashed and struck him dead. There had been twisters in southeastern Oklahoma, and the weather was unusual throughout the South. He had a perfectly lucid sense of leaving his body—pitifully crumbled on the sawdustcovered planking, being regarded with caution and something akin to awe by the small crowd—and rising, rising as if through a long dark tunnel, slowly approaching a brilliant light. And in the radiance he gradually discerned a figure of heroic, indeed of Godlike, proportions.

When he awoke he found a part of himself disappointed to be alive. He was lying on a cot in a modestly furnished bedroom. Leaning over him was the Reverend Billy Jo Rankin, no the present incumbent of that name, but his father, a venerable surrogate preacher of the third quarter of the twentieth century. In the background, Joss thought he could see a dozen hooded figures singing the Kyrie Eleison. But he couldn't be sure.

“Am I gonna live or die?” the young man whispered.

“My boy, you're gonna do both,” the Reverend Mr. Rankin replied.

Joss was soon overcome with a poignant sense of discovery at the existence of the world. But in a way that was difficult for him to articulate, this feeling was in conflict with the beatific image that he had beheld, and with the infinite joy that vision portended. He could sense the two feelings in conflict within his breast. In various circumstances, sometimes in mid-sentence, he would become aware of one or the other of these feelings making some claim on speech or action. After a while, he was content to live with both.

He really had been dead, they told him afterwards. A doctor had pronounced him dead. But they had prayed over him, they had snug hymns, and they even tried to revive him by body massage (mainly in the vicinity of Mauritania). They had returned him to life. He had been truly and literally reborn. Since this corresponded so well to his own perception of the experience, he accepted the account, and gladly. While he almost never talked about it, he became convinced of the significance of the event. He had not been struck dead for nothing. He had not been brought back for no reason.

Under his patron's tutelage, he began to study Scripture seriously. He was deeply moved by the idea of the Resurrection and the doctrine of Salvation. He assisted the Reverend Mr. Rankin at first in small ways, eventually filling in for him in the more onerous or more distant preaching assignments—especially after the younger Billy Jo Rankin left for Odessa, Texas, in answer to a call from God. Soon Joss found a preaching style that was his own, not se much exhortatory as explanatory. In simple language and homely metaphors, he would explain baptism and the afterlife, the connection of Christian Revelation with the myths of classical Greece and Rome, the idea of God's plan for the world, and the conformity of science and religion when both were properly understood. This was not the conventional preaching, and it was too ecumenical for many tastes. But it proved unaccountably popular.

“You've been reborn, Joss,” the elder Rankin told him. “So you ought to change your name.

Except Palmer Joss is such a fine name for a preacher, you'd be a fool not to keep it.”

Like doctors and lawyers, the vendors of religion rarely criticize one another's wares, Joss observed. But one night he attended services at the new Church of God, Crusader, to hear the younger Billy Jo Rankin, triumphantly returned from Odessa, preach to the multitude. Billy Jo enunciated a stark doctrine of Reward, Retribution, and the Rapture. But tonight was a healing night. The curative instrument, the congregation was told, was the holiest of relics—holier than a splinter of the True Cross, holier even than the thigh bone of Saint Teresa of Avila that Generalissimo Francisco Franco had kept in his office to intimidate the pious. What Billy Jo Rankin Brandished was the actual amniotic fluid that surrounded and protected our Lord. The liquid had been carefully preserved in an ancient earthenware vessel that once belonged, so it was said, to Saint Ann. The tiniest drop of it would cure what ails you, he promised, through a special act of Divine Grace. This holiest of holy waters was with us tonight.

Joss was appalled, not so much that Rankin would attempt so transparent a scam but that any of the parishioners were so credulous as to accept it. In his previous life he had witnessed many attempts to bamboozle the public. But that was entertainment. This was different. This was religion. Religion was too important to gloss the truth, much less to manufacture miracles. He took to denouncing this imposture from the pulpit.

As his fervor grew, he railed against other deviant forms of Christian fundamentalism, including those aspirant herpetologists who tested their faith by fondling snakes in accord with the biblical injunction that the pure of heart shall not fear the venom of serpents. In one widely quoted sermon he paraphrased Voltaire. He never thought, he said, that he would find men of the cloth so venal as to lend support to the blasphemers who taught that the first priest was the first rogue who met the first fool. These religions were damaging religion. He shook his finger gracefully in the air.

Joss argued that in ever religion there was a doctrinal line beyond which it insulted the intelligence of its practitioners. Reasonable people might disagree as to where that line should be drawn, but religions trespassed well beyond it at their peril. People were not fools, he said. The day before his death, as he was putting his affairs in order, the elder Rankin sent word to Joss that he never wanted to lay eyes on him again.

At the same time, Joss began to preach that science didn't have all the answers either. He found inconsistencies in the theory of evolution. The embarrassing findings, the facts that don't fit, the scientists just sweep under the rug, he said. They don't really know that the Earth is 4. 6 billion years old, any more than Archbishop Ussher knew that it was 6,000 years old. Nobody has seen evolution happen, nobody has been marking time since the Creation. (“Two-hundred-quadrillion-Mississippi…” he once imagined the patient timekeeper intoning, counting up the seconds from the origin of the world.)

And Einstein's theory of relativity was also unproved. You couldn't travel faster than light no matter what, Einstein had said. How could he know? How close to the speed of light had he gone?

Relativity was only a way of understanding the world. Einstein couldn't restrict what mankind could do in the far future. And Einstein sure couldn't set limits on what God could do. Couldn't God travel faster than light if He wanted to? Couldn't God make us travel faster than light if He wanted to? There were excesses in science and there were excesses in religion. A reasonable man wouldn't be stampeded by either one. There were many interpretations of Scripture and many interpretations of the natural world. Both were created by God, so both must be mutually consistent. Wherever a discrepancy seems to exist, either a scientist or a theologian—maybe both—hasn't been doing his job.

Palmer Joss combined his evenhanded criticism of science and religion with a fervent plea for moral rectitude and a respect for the intelligence of his flock. In slow stages he acquired a national reputation. In debates on the teaching of “scientific creationism” in the schools, on the ethical status of abortion and frozen embryos, on the admissibility of genetic engineering, he attempted in his way to steer a middle course, to reconcile caricatures of science and religion. Both contending camps were outraged at his interventions, and his popularity grew. He became a confidant of presidents. His sermons were excerpted on the Op Ed pages of major secular newspapers. But he resisted many invitations and some proffered blandishments to found an electronic church. He continued to live simply, and rarely—except for presidential invitations and ecumenical congresses—left the rural South. Beyond a conventional patriotism, he made it a rule not to meddle in politics. In a field filled with competing entries, many of dubious probity, Palmer Joss became, in erudition and moral authority, the preeminent Christian fundamentalist preacher of his day.

Der Heer had asked if they could have a quiet dinner somewhere. He was flying in for the summary session with Vaygay and the Soviet delegation on the latest progress in the interpretation of the Message. But south-central New Mexico was crawling with the world's press, and there was no restaurant for a hundred miles in which they could talk unobserved and unheard. So she made dinner herself in her modest apartment near the visiting scientists” quarters at the Argus facility. There was a great deal to talk about. Sometimes it seemed that the fate of the whole project was hanging by a presidential thread. But the little tremor of anticipation she felt just before Ken's arrival was occasioned, she was vaguely aware, by more than that.

Joss was not exactly business, so they got around to him while loading the dishwasher.

“The man is scared stiff,” Ellie said. “His perspective is narrow. He imagines the Message is going to be unacceptable biblical exegesis or something that shakes his faith. He has no idea about how a new scientific paradigm subsumes the previous one. He wants to know what science has done for him lately. And he'd supposed to be the voice of reason.”

“Compared to the Doomsday Chiliasts and the Earth-Firsters, Palmer Joss is the soul of moderation,” der Heer replied. “Maybe we haven't explained the methods of science as well as we should have. I worry about that a lot these days. And Ellie, can you really be sure that it isn't a message from—”

“From God or the Devil? Ken, you can't be serious.”

“Well, how advanced beings committed to what we might call good or evil, who somebody like Joss would consider indistinguishable from God or the Devil?”

“Ken, whoever those beings are in the Vega system, I guarantee they didn't create the universe.

And they're nothing like the Old Testament God. Remember, Vega, the Sun, and all the other stars in the solar neighborhood are in some backwater of an absolutely humdrum galaxy. Why should I Am That I Am hang out around here? There must be more pressing things for him to do.”

“Ellie, we're in a bind. You know Joss is very influential. He's been close to three presidents, including the president incumbent. The President is inclined to make some concession to Joss, although I don't think she wants to put him and a bunch of other preachers on the Preliminary Decryption Committee with you, Valerian, and Drumlin—to say nothing of Vaygay and his colleagues. It's hard to imagine the Russians going along with fundamentalist clergy on the Committee. The whole thing could unravel over this.

So why don't we go and talk to him? The President says that Joss is really fascinated by science. Suppose we won him over?”

“We're going to convert Palmer Joss?”

“I'm not imagining making him change his religion—let's just make him understand what Argus is about, how we don't have to answer the Message if we don't like what it says, how interstellar distances quarantine us from Vega.”

“Ken, he doesn't even believe that the velocity of light is a cosmic speed limit. We're going to be talking past each other. Also, I've got a long history of failure in accommodating to the conventional religions. I tend to blow my top at their inconsistencies and hypocrisies. I'm not sure a meeting between Joss and me is what you want. Or the President.”

“Ellie,” he said, “I know who I'd put my money on. I don't see how getting together with Joss could make things much worse.”

She allowed herself to return his smile.

With the tracking ships now in place and a few small but adequate radio telescopes installed in such places as Reykjavik and Jakarta, there was now redundant coverage of the signal from Vega at every longitude swath.

A major conference was scheduled to be held in Paris of the full World Message Consortium. In preparation, it was natural for the nations with the largest fraction of the data to hold a preparatory scientific discussion.

They had been meeting for the better part of four days, and this summary session was intended mainly to bring those such as der Heer, who served as intermediaries between the scientists and the politicians, up to speed. The Soviet delegation, while nominally headed by Lunacharsky, included several scientists and technical people of equal distinction. Among them were Genrikh Arkhangelsky, recently named head of the Soviet-led international space consortium called Intercosmos, and Timofei Gotsridze, listed as Minister of Medium Heavy Industry, and a member of the Central Committee.

Vaygay clearly felt himself under unusual pressures: he had resumed chain smoking. He held the cigarette between his thumb and forefinger, palm up, as he talked.

“I agree that there is adequate overlap in longitude, but I'm still worried about redundancy. A failure in the helium liquifier on board the Marshal Nedelin or a power failure in Reykjavik, and the continuity of the Message is in jeopardy. Suppose the Message takes two years to cycle around to the beginning. If we miss a piece, we will have to wait two more years to fill in the gap. And remember, we don't know that the Message will be repeated. If there's no repeat, the gaps will never be repaired. I think we need to plan even for unlikely possibilities.”

“What are you thinking of?” der Heer asked. “Something like emergency generators for every observatory in the Consortium?”

“Yes, and independent amplifiers, spectrometers, autocorrelators, disk drives, and so forth at each observatory. And some provision for fast airlift of liquid helium to remote observatories if necessary.”

“Ellie, do you agree?”

“Absolutely.”

“Anything else?”

“I think we should continue to observe Vega on a very broad range of frequencies,” Vaygay said.

“Perhaps tomorrow a different message will come through on only one of the message frequencies. We should also monitor other regions of the sky. Maybe the key to the Message won't come from Vega, but from somewhere else—”

“Let me say why I think Vaygay's point is important,” interjected Valerian. “This is a unique moment, when we're receiving a message but have made no progress at all in decrypting it. We have no previous experience along these lines. We have to cover all the bases. We don't want to wind up a year or two from now kicking ourselves because there was some simple precaution we forgot to take, or some simple measurement that we overlooked. The idea that the Message will cycle back on itself, as far as we can see, that promises cycling back. Any opportunities lost now may be lost for all time. I also agree there's more instrumental development that needs doing. For all we know there's a fourth layer to the palimpsest.”

“There's also the question of personnel,” Vaygay continued. “Suppose this message goes on not for a year or two but for decades. Or suppose this is just the first in a long series of messages from all over the sky. There are at most a few hundred really capable radio astronomers in the world. That is a very small number when the stakes are so high. The industrialized countries must start producing many more radio astronomers and radio engineers with first-rate training.”

Ellie noted that Gotsridze, who had said little, was taking detailed notes. She was again struck by how much more literate the Soviets were in English than the Americans in Russian. Near the beginning of the century, scientists all over the world spoke—or at least read—German. Before that it had been French, and before that Latin. In another century there might be some other obligatory scientific language—Chinese, perhaps. For the moment it was English, and scientists all over the planet struggled to learn its ambiguities and irregularities.

Lighting a fresh cigarette from the glowing tip of its predecessor, Vaygay went on. “There is something else to be said. This is just speculation. It's not even as plausible as the idea that the Message will cycle back on itself—which Professor Valerian quite properly stressed was only a guess. I would not ordinarily mention so speculative an idea at such an early stage. But if the speculation is sound, there are certain further actions we must begin thinking about immediately. I would not have the courage to raise this possibility if Academician Arkhangelsky had not come tentatively to the same conclusion. He and I have disagreed about the quantization of quasar red shifts, the explanation of superluminal light sources, the rest mass of the neutrino, quark physics in neutron stars… We have had many disagreements. I must admit that sometimes he has been right and sometimes I have been right. Almost never, it seems to me, in the early speculative stage of a subject, have we agreed. But on this, we agree.

“Genrikh Dmit'ch, would you explain?”

Arkhangelsky seemed tolerant, even amused. He and Lunacharsky had been for years engaged in personal rivalry, heated scientific disputes, and a celebrated controversy on the prudent level of support for Soviet fusion research.

“We guess,” he said, “that the Message is the instructions for building a machine. Of course, we have no knowledge about how to decode the Message. The evidence is in internal references. I give you an example. Here on page 15441 is a clear reference to an earlier page, 13097, which, by luck, we also have.

The later page was received here in New Mexico, the earlier one at our observatory near Tashkent. On page 13097 there is another reference, this to a time when we were not covering all longitudes. There are many cases of this back referencing. In general, and this is the important point, there are complicated instructions on a recent page, but simpler instructions on an earlier page. In one case there are eight citations to earlier material on a single page.”

“That's not an awfully compelling arguments, guys,” replied Ellie. “Maybe it's a set of mathematical exercises, the later ones building on the earlier ones. Maybe it's a long novel—they might have very long lifetimes compared to us—in which events are connected with childhood experiences or whatever they have on Vega when they're young. Maybe it's a tightly cross-referenced religious manual.”

“The Ten Billion Commandments.” Der Heer laughed.

“Maybe,” said Lunacharsky, starting through a cloud of cigarette smoke out the window at the telescopes. They seemed to be staring longingly at the sky. “But when you look at the patterns of crossreferences, I think you'll agree it looks more like the instruction manual for building a machine. God knows what the machine is supposed to do.”