Joe Haldeman - Marsbound

“I think I know the leaders’ written language well. But I’ve never heard anyone speak it. Doubtless there are nuances that I’ve missed.”

“Only one day.” We needed a scientist here. “I guess it could deflect a large enough asteroid to make a disaster like the dinosaur wipeout. Or release some kind of poison in the air. But wouldn’t that take more than a day?”

“Unless it was released at thousands of places all at once. But the ‘one day’ was only an implication. It could just stand for a short period of time. Maybe a short time in comparison to how long it normally takes for a species to go extinct. As I say, it’s hard to tell whether it’s being direct or speaking in metaphor and symbol.”

“Can you talk back to it?”

“I don’t see why not, at least in terms of technology. You could probably talk to it. It seems to understand English. Just go on the 6:00 news and say ‘Please, Mr. Other, don’t destroy us in one day.’ But that would sort of give away our secret.”

“You could talk to it, though, in your leader language. I mean on the same news show. Without letting on that you’d talked to any human about what it said.”

“I’ll do something like that, eventually. But first I want to see how it reacts to the Drake diagram project. That should be ready in a day or so.” The Earth side scientists were arguing with a consortium on Earth—of course including the Chilean astronomer who’d “cracked the code,” and was turning out to be a real pain in the ass—trying to agree on a twenty-nine-by-nineteen matrix message to send back to Triton via ruby laser.

“Maybe they should just send block letters. GOT YOUR MESSAGE. PLEASE DON’T KILL US.”

In fact, they did a variation of that. The top five rows were taken up with the word PEACE in big block letters. Then there was a symbolic representation of an amino acid, alongside the same for some silicon-nitrogen molecule that might be a similar building block for its form of life, followed by a question mark.

A second message was a star map, looking down on the galactic plane, with Sirius at the center. (It would probably be the brightest star in their sky, too, if they came from nearby). The Sun’s position was identified with a cross. Then there was another question mark.

I wasn’t too sure about that one—I mean, We told you how peaceful we are. We’d never invade you. So why not tell us where you live?

The morning they were going to send the message, I got up at 5:00 and found a message that Dargo wanted to see me at eight.

That couldn’t be good news. Unable to concentrate on work, I surfed around the news and entertainment. I almost went to wake up Paul, but figured he was going to be busy with the message transmission, more ceremony than science. He was scheduled for three hours of VR interview after it, so he could use his sleep.

I was, too, which is why I couldn’t sleep. Dargo was probably going to tell me what I could and could not say. Good luck with that.

I dawdled over coffee and hard biscuits. At five after eight, her door was open.

“Please close it behind you. Please have a seat.” She was studying a clipboard and didn’t look up.

The chair was hard and low. She kept reading for a minute and looked up suddenly. “You had a Martian in your room day before yesterday.”

“So?”

“So what was he doing there?”

“Well, I guess you got me. We were having sex.”

“Carmen…”

“It’s pretty wonderful, with all those fingers. You should try it.”

“ Carmen! This is serious.”

“I’ve been in his room a hundred times. He was curious about what mine looked like. So?”

She just glared at me. She pushed a button on the clipboard and it started playing the first Brandenburg Concerto.

“You… you were eavesdropping.”

“You were committing treason. Against Earth. Against humanity.”

“Talking with Red. I do that all the time.”

“You’ve never whispered under music before.”

I raised my eyebrows and didn’t say anything.

“What were you two talking about?”

“You tell me. What does the recording say?”

She stared at me for long seconds, her mouth set in an accusing line. I knew that tactic, but finally broke the silence. “You don’t know what it says.”

“I can’t decipher much of it. But other people, specialists in sound spectroscopy, will be able to.”

“So send it to them.” I moved closer to her face. “And be prepared to explain how you got it.”

“You can’t threaten me. I have clear statements like this!” I heard my voice whisper “… got your message please don’t kill us.”

“You’re pleading with the Others, aren’t you? You can’t negotiate on behalf of the whole human race!”

“You have it totally wrong.” I stood up. “I have to talk to Red.”

“You don’t know what you’re doing. He’s not your friend . He’s the enemy.”

I paused at the door. “Do you have a favorite piece of music? Something loud?”

We only had about an hour before the Drake diagram thing, and of course Red would have to be there, too. I called and asked him to drop by my place on the way.

I found an ancient Louis Armstrong composition with the Hot Sevens, which gave us a pretty constant level of loud interference.

After I’d told him about the meeting with Dargo, he folded all four arms and thought for a minute.

“I see three courses of action, and inaction, with different degrees of danger,” he whispered.

“The easiest would be to just do nothing, and hope that Dargo lets sleeping cows lie.”

“Dogs. Sleeping dogs.”

“Ah. Then there is the extreme other end: assume that the Other is bluffing and just broadcast the truth. That would be almost equally simple, but if the Other isn’t bluffing, it might be the end of the human race—and perhaps Martians as well.”

“But it said Earth could be yours.”

“It would have no more need for us if the humans were gone. We don’t know whether it can lie. Like a sleeping dog, ha-ha.

“As a middle course, we might enlist a confederate or two, for insight and perspective. On the Martian side, it would have to be Fly-in-Amber. On the human side, the logical choice would be Dargo Solingen.”

“Out of the question.”

“This is not about personality, Carmen. I don’t get along with Fly-in-Amber, either.

“Your great military philosopher Sun Tzu said to ‘keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.’ He had some experience with alien invasions.”

“None that loll around in liquid nitrogen and zap you with killer lasers. What about Paul?”

“His engineering and science would be handy. But I suggested Dargo because she knows so much already. Making her an ally might buy her silence.”

He made a gesture I’d never seen before, pushing down on his head with both large hands until it was almost level with the ground. Then he released it with a sigh. “It’s a pity life is not a movie. In a movie we could just throw her out the air lock and go about our business.”

“Making it look like an accident.”

“Of course. But then the detective would figure us out and show up with handcuffs.”

“Quite a few, in your case.”

“Ha-ha. There is an intermediate course. We appear to enlist Dargo’s aid but don’t tell her everything.”

“Lie to her.”

“Perhaps a necessary evil.” I suddenly wondered how much of what Red had told me was the truth.

“What would we keep from her?”

“The threat itself? I take it she doesn’t yet know that I can understand the message. We could tell her that much, then claim it was something less disturbing.”