Ian Watson - The Embedding

“But you didn’t come from that direction,” a heavy Russian voice like dumplings in a greasy soup protested.

“True, we have been further out—we return inwards now. But our home star is in the direction I say—One One Zero Three away, using your light year units—”

Eleven hundred and three light years .

A moment of disbelief; then shock waves rippled through the room.

“Tell us how you travel so far!—how is it possible?” demanded the same oil and suet voice.

The reply flicked back across their heads like a full stop on a typesheet, a tight blackball.

“No—”

Sole scrutinized those alien features. What expressions did another of the Sp’thra read in them? What did those soundless flickerings of the tongue signify? The narrowing and subsequent bulging of the eyes? The faint colour shifts of the otherwise grey skin? Ph’theri’s eyes possessed a double nictitating membrane that flickered across the bulge of the eyes from either side. Every time he blinked, the twin membranes met each other—a brief, transparent window that lagged an instant behind the reopening of the eyelids, giving the eyes a kind of cloudy afterglow. Ph’theri blinked maybe once a minute to begin with, later more rapidly.

Sole also wondered how easy the visitor found it to read the ape signals of Homo Sapiens.

The refusal had triggered a spate of minor arguments in the room—about faster than light particles, and hibernation travel, holes in the fabric of space, and relativity—that grew noisier and more chaotic till abruptly Ph’theri held up his hands.

Bright orange patches the size of a large coin spotted each of his palms. The long thumb sprouting from the centre of his wrist bone and normally resting on the middle finger of three, was now twisted aside to display this orange patch.

A Russian woman physiologist fiddled with her own hand, manipulating it, trying to work out what sort of dexterity that isosceles arrangement of the hand might make possible.

The central thumb seemed exceptionally mobile. It arced across the orange blush on the palm and back again, in a pendulum or metronome action. Demonstrating impatience? Giving warning? As Ph’theri swung his thumbs to and fro, covering and uncovering the orange patches, Sole heard Zwingler gasp and saw him swing his own twin ruby moons into action, defensively.

Ph’theri’s abrupt, absurd gestures had their effect: people stopped chattering and gaped at him.

“I must make one thing clear,” the alien said loftily. “There are answerable questions, and non-answerable questions, at this stage. The formula for discussion is trading information. We owe you some free data, for the trading language you supplied us. Since we took the trouble to come to this planet, naturally we shall assess the trade value. Is this acceptable? If not, we mean to leave—”

Another babble, of astonished protests, began to grow.

But Sciavoni quickly nailed it dead.

“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—”