Michael Crichton - Sphere

Norman and Beth waited for him to figure it out. Norman thought: How can we ever get along without Harry? We need him. He is both the most important intelligence down here, and the most dangerous. But we need him.

CQX VDX MOP LKI XXC VRW TGK PIU YQA

“Interesting,” Harry said. “The letters are coming about every five seconds. So I think it’s safe to say that we know where it’s coming from. Wisconsin.”

Norman could not have been more surprised. “Wisconsin?”

“Yeah. This is a Navy transmission. It may or may not be directed to us, but it is coming from Wisconsin.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because that’s the only place in the world it could be coming from,” Harry said. “You know about ELF? No? Well, it’s like this. You can send radio waves through the air, and, as you know, they travel pretty well. But you can’t send radio far through water. Water is a bad medium, so you need an incredibly powerful signal to go even a short distance.”

“Yes…”

“But the ability to penetrate is a function of wavelength. An ordinary radio wave is short-shortwave radio, all of that. The length of the waves are tiny, thousands or millions of little waves to an inch. But you can also make ELF, extremely low-frequency waves, which are long-each individual wave is maybe twenty feet long. And those waves, once generated, will go a very great distance, thousands of miles, through water, no problem. The only trouble is that, since the waves are long, they’re also slow. That’s why we’re getting one character every five seconds. The Navy needed a way to communicate with their submarines underwater, so they built a big ELF antenna in Wisconsin to send these long waves. And that’s what we’re getting.”

“And the code?”

“It must be a compression code-three-letter groupings which stand for a long section of predefined message. So it won’t take so long to send a message. Because if you sent a plain text message, it would literally take hours.”

CQX VDX MOP LKI XXC VRW TGK PIU YQA IYT

EEQ FVC ZNB TMK EXE MMN OPW GEW

The letters stopped.

“Looks like that’s it,” Harry said.

“How do we translate it?” Beth said.

“Assuming it’s a Navy transmission,” Harry said, “we don’t.”

“Maybe there’s a codebook here somewhere,” Beth said.

“Just hold on,” Harry said.

The screen shifted, translating groups one after another.

2340 HOURS 7-07 CHIEF CINCCOMPAC TO BARNES DEEPHAB-8

“It’s a message to Barnes,” Harry said. They watched as the other letter groups were translated.

SURFACE SUPPORT VESSELS STEAMING NANDI AND VIPATI TO YOUR LOCATION ETA 1600 HOURS 7-08 DEEP WITHDRAW AUTOSET ACKNOWLEDGE GOOD LUCK SPAULDING END

“Does that mean what I think it means?” Beth said.

“Yeah,” Harry said. “The cavalry is on the way.”

“Hot damn!” Beth clapped her hands.

“The storm must be calming down. They’ve sent the surface ships and they’ll be here in a little more than sixteen hours.”

“And autoset?”

They had the answer immediately. Every screen in the habitat flickered. In the upper right corner of each appeared a small box with numbers: 16:20:00. The numbers ran backward.

“It’s automatically counting down for us.”

“Is there some kind of countdown we’re supposed to follow for leaving the habitat?” Beth said.

Norman watched the numbers. They were rolling backward, just as they had on the submarine. Then he said, “What about the submarine?”

“Who cares about the submarine,” Harry said.

“I think we should keep it with us,” Beth said. She checked her watch. “We have another four hours before it has to be reset.”

“Plenty of time.”

“Yes.”

Privately, Norman was trying to gauge whether they could survive for sixteen more hours.

Harry said, “Well, this is great news! Why are you two so hangdog?”

“Just wondering if we’ll make it,” Norman said.

“Why shouldn’t we make it?” Harry said.

“Jerry might do something first,” Beth said. Norman felt a burst of irritation with her. Didn’t she realize that by saying that, she was planting the idea in Harry’s mind?

“We can’t survive another attack on the habitat,” Beth said.

Norman thought, Shut up, Beth. You’re making suggestions.

“An attack on the habitat?” Harry said.

Quickly, Norman said, “Harry, I think you and I should talk to Jerry again.”

“Really? Why?”

“I want to see if I can reason with him.”

“I don’t know if you can,” Harry said. “Reason with him.”

“Let’s try anyway,” Norman said, with a glance at Beth. “It’s worth a try.”

Norman knew he would not really be talking to Jerry. He would be talking to a part of Harry. An unconscious part, a shadow part. How should he go about it? What could he use?

He sat in front of the monitor screen, thinking, What do I know about Harry, really? Harry, who had grown up in Philadelphia as a thin, introverted, painfully shy boy, a mathematical prodigy, his gifts denigrated by his friends and family. Harry had said once that when he cared about mathematics, everybody else cared about slamdunking. Even now, Harry hated all games, all sports. As a young man he had been humiliated and neglected, and when he finally got proper recognition for his gifts, Norman suspected, it came too late. The damage was already done. Certainly it came too late to prevent the arrogant, braggart exterior.

I AM HERE. DO NOT BE AFRAID.

“Jerry.”

YES NORMAN.

“I have a request to make.”

YOU MAY DO SO.

“Jerry, many of our entities are gone, and our habitat is weakened.”

I KNOW THIS. MAKE YOUR REQUEST.

“Would you please stop manifesting?”

NO.

“Why not?”

I DO NOT WISH TO STOP.

Well, Norman thought, at least we got right down to it. No wasting time. “Jerry, I know that you have been isolated for a long time, for many centuries, and that you have felt alone during all that time. You have felt that nobody cared about you. You have felt that nobody wanted to play with you, or shared your interests.”

YES THIS IS TRUE.

“And now at last you can manifest, and you are enjoying this. You like to show us what you can do, to impress us.”

THIS IS TRUE.

“So that we will pay attention to you.”

YES. I LIKE IT.

“And it works. We do pay attention to you.”

YES I KNOW IT.

“But these manifestations injure us, Jerry.”

I DO NOT CARE.

“And they surprise us, too.”

I AM GLAD.

“We’re surprised, Jerry, because you are merely playing a game with us.”

I DO NOT LIKE GAMES. I DO NOT PLAY GAMES.

“Yes. This is a game for you, Jerry. It is a sport.”

NO, IT IS NOT.

“Yes, it is,” Norman said. “It is a stupid sport .”

Harry, standing beside Norman, said, “Do you want to contradict him that way? You might make him mad. I don’t think Jerry likes to be contradicted.”

I’m sure you don’t, Norman thought. But he said, “Well, I have to tell Jerry the truth about his own behavior. He isn’t doing anything very interesting.”

OH? NOT INTERESTING?

“No. You are being spoiled and petulant, Jerry.”

DO YOU DARE TO SPEAK TO ME IN THIS FASHION?

“Yes. Because you are acting stupidly.”