Ian Watson - The Embedding

“Or a childish tantrum.”

“Yes, it expresses itself as a tantrum—I can see that. But is that all there is to it, for Christ’s sake! What sort of situation does this kind of reversion to babbling normally occur in? Only when a much younger child has suffered a brain injury then goes right back to the beginning of the language learning process again. Vidya’s far too old.”

“Unless the PSF has changed things?”

“Precisely, Sam! That’s what I’m thinking. The brain’s programme for acquiring speech must have been disrupted somehow.”

“Or speeded up?”

“One of the two. Wish I knew which. If you want my candid opinion, what we’re seeing here is some kind of clash between the brain’s own programme for generating language, and the programme we’ve imposed on it—the embedding programme. But the embedding programme isn’t simply being tossed out by the brain. The PSF allows a much greater tolerance of data. So his brain must be trying to weave the embedding into the brain’s ‘natural’ design for language. And the two designs just won’t and can’t match. The boy’s brain has jammed —on account of its sheer versatility. And that jamming has thrown him right back to a random babbling stage. The set of rules has failed him—so he’s reverting to Trial and Error methods. God knows what’ll come out of this present babble, though!”

Sam Bax saw Vidya race round the maze. He whipped the walls. He howled. He babbled incomprehensibly.

“The lad looks well enough co-ordinated,” he remarked. “Nothing much wrong there. Agile lad.”

“Watch , Sam.”

After several more circuits of the maze, Vidya cried out like an epileptic and collapsed beside the maze entrance. His slim body writhed about. His fingers flexed. He clawed at the floor as if to tug it up in strips. Finally he lay still.

“Dizzy! I’m not surprised. Running round and round like that.”

“Dizzy my arse! The boy had a fit. He was working himself up to it. He’s giving himself his own shock therapy. Discharging the contradictions in his mind.”

Rosson tapped out a fresh code on the console.

The screen cleared to the scene of Vidya’s recovery. The boy got up calmly and trotted into the maze.

“Now the next episode—”

“Lionel, I hate to break this off. But I’m expecting another call from the States.”

“Will that be Chris calling?”

“Sorry, Lionel. I simply won’t have Chris distracted.”

“I can imagine what he’ll have to say about that when he gets back here to find Vidya babbling his brains out and throwing fits!”

“Which is precisely why I won’t have Chris told now. But I’ll tell you what we 11 do. We’ll set a nurse on permanent stand-by. He can go in there and trank the child if there are any more incidents. We’ll keep him that way till Chris gets back. Keep him on ice. Will that suit you?”

Far from it.

However Sam Bax was already heading out of Sole’s room, leaving Rosson staring at a blank screen.

“Would you people do the same, Ph’theri?” Sole asked. “Would you trade us a living brain from one of the Sp’thra?”

“That depends on how we assessed the trade gain. Yes, if it was adequate.”

“So you wouldn’t personally refuse to trade your own brain, even? If you were chosen?”

“The Sp’thra are Signal Traders. Surely the trading of a live brain is the ultimate form of signal trading. The brain contains all the signals of a species.”

“How long will these brains be kept alive?” Sole was asking; but the astronaut who had earlier staked his claim so vociferously cried out:

“I’d want a ticket to the goddam stars in exchange for six human brains put in a tin box. Star travel, no less, sir!”

Ph’theri raised a hand, exposing the orange palm flash.

“You cannot hope to trade starship technology for six brains from a world such as this. You reject the trade deal, then?”

“We’re not necessarily rejecting anything,” Sciavoni protested quickly. “But you know exactly what you want. What are we getting out of it? It’s too vague. How far is this habitable world? We could probably detect it ourselves long before we had the means to go there. How far’s this intelligent race? Maybe so far communicating would be a waste of time! And these technological improvements—”

Sole’s query about how long the brains would stay alive was shelved for the moment, by tacit consent. The prospect, after all, was no more terrible—far less terrible indeed—than X or Y or Z happening elsewhere in the world, in Asia, Africa, or South America.

“To give the other side all the information,” argued Ph’theri in a finicky way, “is the whole content of the trade—”

“To be sure! But you really must let us know less approximately. We can’t buy a pig in a poke—”

Sciavoni mopped his brow, though the sun had barely risen on the building and the air within was merely warm. Sole realized how rigid his own stance had been for so many minutes past and made an effort to relax. The incoming sunlight woke other people up too, physically. A nose blew honkingly. Glasses were taken off and polished. Feet shuffled. Hands plunged into pockets. One man lit a cigarette, with a tiny stab of flame.

Ph’theri stared at the smoke and the smoker.

“You meet the sun with burning? Is that customary here?”

“More like habitual,” grunted Sciavoni sardonically.

Outside the window the ship Ph’theri had come in lay with the ramp jutting out of its side like the tongue of a man hanged at dawn.

“The technology we offer will enable you to reach the inner gasgiant of your system in twenty of your days. With good energy conservation. Or else reach the outermost gasgiant in one hundred days, retaining fifty per cent energy. You want other destinations listed?”

Sciavoni shook his head.

“We can work it out from that. How about the method?”

“The method will be adequate, you have the word of the Sp’thra for that. Signal Trading demands truth, otherwise there is only disorder and entropy, and reality will never be articulated—”

“Okay, damn it. How about those stars then? How far?”

Ph’theri’s ears crinkled, cubed and inflated, as he concentrated on the whispering of the wires.

“In your light years, the closest habitable planet known to the Sp’thra is approximately Two One units away—”

A Russian scientist calculated swiftly and looked crestfallen.

“Which means 82 Eridani, Beta Hydri, or HR 8832. Nothing closer. So Alpha Centauri and Tau Ceti and all those other promising stars are useless.”

“Not at all,” the younger of the Californian astronomers contradicted him. “The operative concept is ‘known to the Sp’thra’. Don’t forget that. We’ve no guarantee they know all the local stars.”

“The message distance is Nine Eight light years,” Ph’theri said flatly.

“One way?”

“True.”

“But that means—let’s see, ninety eight times two… one hundred and ninety six years to send a message and get an answer! Did I hear someone mention a pig in a poke, Sciavoni?”

“You did indeed.”

The astronomers began to squabble about tachyons—particles supposed to travel faster than light implied a shorter transit time—but Sole felt impatient.

“We need to find out some more about these peoples’ motives ,” he snapped. “Ph’theri—why are you so anxious to escape from ‘This-Reality’?”

“To solve the Sp’thra problem,” Ph’theri replied shortly.

“Maybe we can trade some help in solving it?”

“Very unlikely,” said Ph’theri coldly. “I would say it is species-specific to the Sp’thra.”