Jack McDevitt: Cauldron

Jason looked around for coffee. Lucy used only soft drinks, so there was none available.

She read his mind, had the grace to look guilty, but said nothing. Had the evening been quiet, she’d have offered to make it.

He sat down in front of one of the displays and brought up Sigma 2711. It was seven billion years old, give or take a few hundred million. Maybe a quarter more massive than the sun. At fourteen thousand light-years, it was far beyond the range of the superluminals. But there was evidence of a planetary system, though nothing had been sighted directly.

If the transmission got a confirmation, he could probably arrange to have the Van Entel take a look. The giant telescope would have no problem picking up planets at Sigma, if they existed.

“What do you think, Jason?” she asked.

The first streaks of gray were appearing in the east. “It’s possible,” he said. “Tommy, get me somebody at Kitt Peak.”

Lucy broke into a huge smile, the kind that says Do with me as you will, my life is complete. “And they told me,” she said, “nothing ever happens over here.”

“ Kitt Peak, ” said a woman’s voice. She seemed oddly cheerful, considering the hour.

“This is Jason Hutchins,” he said. “At Drake. We need confirmation on a signal.”

“ You got a hot one, Jason? ” He recognized Ginny Madison on the other end. They’d been together at Moonbase once, long ago.

“Hi, Ginny. Yes. We have a possible. I’d be grateful if you’d check it for us.”

“ Give me the numbers. ”

“ I have a partial translation, ” said Tommy.

“On-screen.”

“ Much of the text is an instructional segment, providing clues how to penetrate the message. ”

“Okay.”

“ Here are the opening lines. ”

GREETINGS TO OUR (unknown) ACROSS THE (unknown). THE INHABITANTS OF SIGMA 2711 SEND THIS TRANS MISSION IN THE HOPE THAT COMMUNION(?) WITH ANOTHER (unknown) WILL OCCUR. KNOW THAT WE WISH YOU (unknown). THIS IS OUR FIRST ATTEMPT TO COMMUNICATE BEYOND OUR REALM. WE WILL LISTEN ON THIS FREQUENCY. RESPOND IF YOU ARE ABLE. OR BLINK YOUR LIGHTS(?).

“ I took the liberty of substituting the name of their star. And, of course, I did some interpolation. ”

“Thank you, Tommy.”

“ Considering their desire to strike up a conversation, it’s unlikely they expected their message to be received so far away. This was probably aimed at a nearby system. ”

“Yeah. I expect so.”

“Jason,” said Lucy, “what do you make of the last line?”

“‘Blink your lights’?”

“Yes.”

“Metaphorical. If you can’t answer, wave.” He stared at the screen. “The frequency: I assume it’s 1662.”

“On the button.” The first hydroxyl line. It was where they’d always expected it would happen. The ideal frequency.

Ginny was back within the hour. “ Looks legitimate, ” she said. “ As far as we can tell. We’ve got confirmations through Lowell and Packer. We also ran it through ComData. They say it’s not ours, and we can’t find a bounce. ” Another broad smile. “ I think you’ve got one, Jason. Congratulations. ”

Word got around quickly. People began calling minutes after Ginny had confirmed. Has it really happened? Congratulations. What have you got? We hear you’ve been able to read some of it? These were the same people who’d passed him politely in the astronomical corridors, tolerating him, the guy whose imagination had run past his common sense, who’d wasted what might have been a promising career hunting for the LGMs that even the starships couldn’t find.

But he was well beyond starship country now.

Within a few hours Tommy had more of the text. It included a physical description of the senders. They had four limbs and stood upright, but they were leaner than humans. Their heads were insectile, with large oval eyes. Bat ears rose off the skull, and they had antennas. No sign of an olfactory system. No indication of an expression, or even if the face was capable of one. “Are the features flexible?” he asked Tommy. It was an odd question, but he couldn’t resist.

“ Information not provided, Jason. ”

“How big are they?”

“ No way to know. We share no measurement system. ”

That brought Lucy into the conversation. “You’re saying they could be an inch tall?”

“ It’s possible. ”

Jason propped his head on his hands and stared at the image. “Judging from the relative size of the eyes, it looks as if they live in a darker environment than we do.”

“ Not necessarily, ” said Tommy. “ The smaller a creature is, the larger its eyes should be relative to body size. They have to be big enough to gather a minimum amount of light. ”

There was more. Details of the home world: broad seas, vast vegetative entanglements, which eventually got translated as jungles .

And shining cities. They seemed to be either along coastlines or bordering rivers.

“ There are large sections of the transmission I still cannot read, ” said Tommy. “ Some aspects of the arrangement suggest they may be sound patterns. Speeches, perhaps. ”

“Or music,” said Lucy.

“ It is possible. ”

“Translate that ,” she continued, “and you could have a hell of a concert.”

Descriptions of architecture. Jason got the impression the aliens were big on architecture.

Accounts of cropped fields, purpose unknown, possibly intended as vegetative art.

“They’re poetic,” said Lucy.

“You think? Simply because they like to design buildings and grow flowers?”

“That, too.”

“What else?”

“Mostly, that they’re putting a bottle out into the dark.”

Jason called home to tell Teresa the news. She congratulated him and carried on about what a wonderful night it was, but the enthusiasm had a false note. She didn’t really grasp the significance of the event. She was happy because he was happy. Well, it was okay. He hadn’t married her for her brains. She was a charmer, and she tried to be a good wife, so he really couldn’t ask more than that.

Just before dawn, the transmission stopped. It was over.

By then all sorts of people had begun showing up. His own staff of off-duty watchstanders. The people who had for years not noticed that the Drake Center even existed: Barkley and Lansing from Yale, Evans from Holloway, Peterson and Chokai from Lowell, DiPietro from LaSalle. By midmorning the press had arrived, followed by a gaggle of politicians. Everybody became part of the celebration.

Jason broke out the champagne that had, metaphorically, been on ice for two and a half centuries and ordered more sent over from the Quality Liquor Store in the Plaza Mall. He held an impromptu press conference. One of the media types pinned the name Sigmas on the creatures, and that became their official designation.

After she’d gotten Prissy off to school, Teresa showed up, too, along with her cousin Alice. She was clearly delighted by the attention her husband was getting, and she sat for hours enjoying the warm glow of reflected celebrity. It was, in many ways, the happiest moment of his life.

Years later, when he looked back on that day, after the Sigmas had faded into history, it wasn’t the call in the night that stood out in his memory, nor Tommy’s comment, “ This one might be a genuine hit ,” nor even the message itself: “ Greetings to our (unknown) across the (unknown).” It wasn’t even Ginny’s confirmation. “ We can’t find a bounce.” It was Prissy, when she got home from school, where she’d already heard the news. It was odd: Nine years old, and she understood what her mother had missed.