Barrington Bayley - The Star Virus

“Facts are what science is about,” Redace said thoughtfully, stroking his chin.

“True, but they think the universe is constructed logically, brick by brick. They don’t realize how immensely mysterious and basically irrational it all is.” He invited them to be seated. “Well, you’re not here to discuss metaphysics. What’s it all about?”

Briefly Rodrone explained about his find and what conclusions they had been able to draw. Sinnt listened without interruption until he had finished.

“Yes… well you were right to come to me. Atomics is my field, and if it is an atomic device, as you think, I may be able to find out something. Let’s have a look at it, then. Where is it?”

“We have it in a Safe Room.”

“Bring it here, I don’t go traveling these days.”

Clave and Redace left to fetch the lens. Rodrone was alone with the bizarre scientist.

They sat facing one another, Sinnt staring unblinkingly from his shoulder camera. Rodrone knew he was being coldly, calmly appraised. For his own part, he found that it cost him a slight effort to be at ease with the man. It was hard to get used to the fact that he almost never turned his head; if he wished to shift his gaze, only the camera swiveled.

There was a strained silence for some seconds. Then, suddenly, Sinnt spoke in an unnatural voice.

“I had not ruled out the possibility that you were a Streall robot.”

The question was so unexpected that Rodrone laughed. “But why?”

“The Streall are normally very jealous of their artifacts. Your own story testifies to that. But your story could be an ingenious cover. Who knows that you are not a Streall tool, sent to take rather than to give?”

Completely mystified by these remarks, Rodrone asked, “To take what? Have you got something belonging to them too?”

Sinnt did not answer and for nearly a minute neither spoke. Then, to break the silence, Rodrone said, “And do you still consider me to be a robot?”

“No. I have given you a searching internal examination. I am satisfied that you are a human being and that you have not been tampered with. The Streall experience certain difficulties in understanding the human body, which are hard to mask. I would take the condition of your nervous system to be conclusive proof of your normality. In particular, they have never succeeded in following the complicated connections between the neocortex, the rear cortex, and the pineal gland, which is what makes man what he is and is unique to him.”

Rodrone remembered his own experience of the Streall’s off-beam attempts to control human nervous systems. But this thought was pushed aside by his amazement of Sinnt’s claim. While he had been sitting here the scientist had examined his body in every detail, even down to the functioning of his brain. This unparalleled feat explained why Sinnt had foregone the use of more normally aesthetic eyes. He was not content to limit his vision to the visible spectrum. His shoulder camera must be sensitive to all wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation from radio waves to high-frequency gamma rays, and no doubt was capable of receiving images from many other kinds of radiation as well. It would be able to function as an electron microscope, of course, and probably it had some sensitivity to the host of subtle, ghostlike radiations given off by atoms, but whose ultimate nature was completely unknown.

Sinnt had adapted himself to the needs of his research. Rodrone had noticed that the luminosity and color of his eye lenses seemed to vary slightly, but he had taken this to be due to the waxing and waning of his attention. Instead, it betokened his constant switching to alternative modes of vision.

But Rodrone was also surprised by the other’s interesting and informative remarks concerning man’s nature. How did he come to know so much about it, and furthermore how did he know so much about the Streall? There was something offbeat and odd about the way Sinnt launched into a conversation.

“Perhaps it is you who are the Streall robot,” he suggested.

“No such luck.” Sinnt broke into his creaking laughter. “Tell me,” he continued calmly, “have you never thought how extraordinary it is that there should be only two star-faring races in the galaxy?”

Indeed, Rodrone had exercised his mind with his question often. Other life there was in plenty, and numerous other species with intelligence—of a kind. But it was intelligence without the spark, the fire, that had enabled man— and presumably the Streall—to reverse his natural subservience to the environment. Thousands of civilizations in the Hub had risen to high levels, but always slowly and painfully, imbued with a passive acceptance of their limitations. It amazed Rodrone that nowhere—with the one exception—was man’s technological explosion repeated. True, there were a few who had succeeded in traveling to nearby moons and planets in huge, clumsy rockets; but where this happened it was invariably as the final triumph of a dying race. And Rodrone had always felt sympathetically for the occasional species which, on the last verge of extinction, had wonderingly discovered atomic energy much too late to save itself.

“You seem to think you know the answer,” he said somewhat sullenly to Sinnt.

“I know the answer, but I don’t know the reason. Man’s brain is constructed differently from that of any other intelligent species. That’s why he is so abnormally quick to discover, to invent, and to spread through the universe. In general the sentient brain conforms to a basic pattern throughout the galaxy. It is a logical, predictable pattern. Only man is the maverick, the sport, the freak that has broken nature’s rule. I say ‘rule,’ but for man’s presence, one would probably call it a law.”

“And you attribute it to the cortical connections?”

“Yes.”

This idea was new to Rodrone. He was pleased and intrigued by it. “But what about the Streall? They equal us in everything. They must also have these illogical ‘connections.’”

“The Streall? Not a bit of it. Their brains are pretty much like the others.”

“Then I’d say your theory breaks down, unless you have yet another explanation for their superiority.”

Sinnt grimaced, an extraordinarily ugly spectacle. “They’ve been around for a long time. They did it all slowly. If you think about it, they must find us pretty bewildering. A million years ago we couldn’t even add two and two, yet suddenly we jump up and challenge them.”

“I’m not challenging anybody,” Rodrone said. “Furthermore it seems to me that your last answer is a pure evasion. There must be some evolutionary principle at work here.”

He would have continued further, but a sharp whistling tone sounded. Sinnt pressed a lever under the edge of the table, at which the faces of Clave and Redace appeared on a small screen.

The scientist pressed another lever to admit them. “I only mention these matters,” he said casually, turning his shoulder apparatus towards Rodrone, “because the, er, lens your friends are bringing seems in some roundabout way to relate to them. At any rate, I have an idea that it may give us a new angle on this, er, evolutionary principle, as you call it.” He spoke haltingly, as though hedging around something he did not wish to speak about.

“So you think my theory that the lens is a galactic observing instrument is wrong?”

“Oh, not necessarily. I think your theory is a very good one. But in view of the Streall’s desperate attempts to recover it—using tactics reminiscent of a political power struggle—it is more than likely that it will be able to tell us something fundamental about the confrontation of the two races.”