Ratner's Star (8 page)

Eventually he reached the correct sector. Workmen were placing huge acetylene devices along the walls of the corridor, presumably to keep the shadow-flow from “spilling over.” He went to his quarters, sat at the module and began looking through the manuscript he'd had in his possession since leaving the Center to make the journey here. It was a handwritten document given to him by his friend and mentor, Robert Hopper Softly—a work-in-progress detailing Softly's observations on any number of mathematical topics. As he browsed he heard a tiny sound,
ibd
, and eventually noticed, to his left and just above eye level, that a message was appearing on the teleboard screen, a chalk-scrawl beamed by laser:

“The teacher of the secret book died between the fire-pillars at Tarentum. Those of his disciples not burned to death were killed by mobs. The mathematical brotherhood was dispersed. What, we ask, did it leave behind? A sense of order in nature. The notion of mathematical proof. The word ‘mathematics' itself. But the teaching didn't end, spreading through the Mediterranean, maintained in formal order for over two hundred years. Numbers as the basis of creation. The religious instinct arithmetized to regrettable effect. A dream of water put out by flames.”

He went inside to brush his teeth, mis-squirting a strip of toothpaste into the wash basin, where it formed a line and curve resembling a crumpled number four. Directing the tube at the figure he proceeded to close the curve, making line and zero, or ten from four. But sooner or later he would have to stop fooling around and brush his teeth. So he spoke a password to his mouth,
tetraktys
, and it opened.

Remarks from Softly's work-in-progress:

“The unattested cadence of the heavens had been based on the circles of Ptolemaic calculations, a format supported by the Polish monk Copernicus. All work on celestial events was superimposed on the mirages of animism, prophecy and the Christian occult. Motive soul drove the planets and it was held that every orbit described a musical scale. The problem of course and solution as well were distinctly mathematical, although not without some hearsay of the empyrean.”

When Billy stepped off the elevator he was in Space Brain Complex.
This was a vast computer area, quiet at the moment, no one in sight. In the middle of an open space stood a small office of frosted glass, a cubicle really, and he headed toward it. Sitting inside on a swivel chair was U.F.O. Schwarz, a densely packed individual weighing well over three hundred pounds. Attempting a jaunty sort of greeting he tried to pivot in the chair. Nothing moved, however. Concentrated flesh. Eye slits. Bubblelike hands. The chair was equipped with a footstool, which Schwarz managed to nudge toward the boy, kicking it soccer-style.

“Is that all one computer out there?”

“Space Brain.”

“Whose office?”

“Kind of cramped.”

“I have the feeling you carry it around with you.”

“That's about as funny as a dead kid's toy,” Schwarz said. “We're waiting for Nyquist but I guess I can bring you up to date in the meantime. We chose this time and place because we knew we'd have complete privacy. I'm the person who arranged with Professor Softly to bring you out here. Spoke to him in person. Reported certain recent events. He talked at length of your extraordinary abilities.”

Schwarz had a glass of orange juice in his right hand. He tilted the glass slightly now, the surface of the liquid assuming an elongate outline. Billy began guessing the large man's weight, keeping the figures to himself.

“What do you know about space?”

“Not much. Maybe even nothing.”

“Stars and planets.”

“Last night I saw a comet or something. I don't even know what it was. That shows how much I know.”

“Doubt it was a major comet,” Schwarz said. “One's long gone and the other's not due for a while.”

“Pure mathematics is my field.”

“We've been contacted by someone or something in outer space.”

“I do pure work. A lot of it is so abstract it can't be put on paper or even talked about. I deal with proof and nonproof.”

“Beings in outer space. Someone or something. An extraterrestrial civilization.”

“What about it?”

“They've contacted us. We picked them up on the synthesis telescope. They transmitted and we received. Pulses. Signals were transmitted in irregular pulses. We happened to be tuned to the right frequency. Space Brain has printed out a tape covered with zeros and ones. Mostly ones. The message was not repeated. This is unfortunate but not disheartening. One hundred and one pulses and gaps. The pulses we interpret as ones. The gaps or pauses as zeros. There are only two gaps. The transmission was fourteen pulses, a gap; twenty-eight pulses, a gap; fifty-seven pulses. Total of one hundred and one information units. One zero one is binary five, which may or may not mean something. One hundred and one is also the lowest three-digit prime. Then we have the arrangement of pulses—fourteen, twenty-eight, fifty-seven. Plenty to work with, don't you think? At any rate we are not alone. Something is out there and it is talking to us.”

“What is it saying?”

Schwarz paused here, locked into the framework of his petrified baby fat. What was odd about his way of speaking was the fact that nothing moved but his lips. Independent animation. Now, however, he raised the glass to his pouched face and nibbled at its rim. Billy heard a faint metallic tapping coming from well beyond the perimeter of the small office, less faint a moment later, then less again.

“That's our problem. We don't know what the transmission means. Space Brain has printed out hundreds of interpretations without coming up with anything we can call definitive. Dozens of men and women have also failed. Radio astronomers, chemists, exobiologists, mathematicians, physicists, cryptanalysts, paleographers, linguists, computer linguists, cosmic linguists. I'm sure you know Endor. We got Endor here to decode the message. Endor seemed the one man who couldn't fail. Famous the world over. Well versed in all aspects of extraterrestrial communication. A first-rate mathematician. A brilliant astrophysicist. Science prizes hand over fist. He worked at the message for a great many weeks. Then he worked some more. He kept saying it's probably so simple we can't see it. One day he stopped working and just sat in a chair in his room for about seventy-two hours. Finally he went to live in a hole in the ground. That's where he is at latest report. He's living in the ground. He
eats plants and worms and refuses to talk to anyone. You're our last hope, it looks like. When Field Experiment Number One became a functioning entity we never in our wildest dreams thought we'd be lucky enough to receive signals from a supercivilization so early in the game and then unlucky enough to be unable to unravel them. We feel certain it's a mathematical code of some kind. Probably a number code. Mathematics is the one language we might conceivably have in common with other forms of intelligent life in the universe. As I understand it, there is no reality more independent of our perception and more true to itself than mathematical reality.”

“Did you just fart?”

“This is serious,” Schwarz said. “Try to pay attention.”

“We're in a little room here without any air blowing through.”

“This may be the most important day of your life.”

“Have some mercy.”

“Numerically the transmission is very suggestive. Everyone who's worked on it got off to a great start. But they all fizzled out. After Endor left for the hole, your name came up. All you have to do is tell us what they're saying. We have the capacity to transmit an answer. Pretend you're the imperial mathematician. The emperor and his cousin the bishop want to know the meaning of a new star in the heavens. In the town square the witch-hunters are gathering twigs.”

Olin Nyquist tapped on the door frame with the point of his silver cane. He was evidently blind, an angular man with a high forehead and well-honed jutting chin. Small crisp flakes adhered to the inner edge of each eye.

“It's all a question of shape,” he said.

He moved to a corner of the office and stood motionless, shoulders wedged between adjoining walls.

“Shape, design, emblematic pattern.”

U.F.O. Schwarz explained that Nyquist was an astral engineer in charge of simulation programs for the synthesis radio telescope here. One such program was based on the fact that the dish antennas not only picked up radio emissions but also took galactic photographs as clear and detailed as those taken by optical telescopes. These pictures, already
somewhat “artificial,” being the result of radio data received, mixed and computer-converted to electrical impulses, were then broken down and stylized even further by Space Brain, which was able to simulate gas outflows, explosions, the expansion of molecular clouds and other observed and probable phenomena. The result was known as the “computer universe.”

“In some shape or other we try to find the pictorial link between the universe and our own senses of perception,” Nyquist said. “What does the universe look like? A balloon that's expanding? A funnel full of ball bearings? A double helix? A strip of paper twisted and connected in a one-sided ring? Where are we in the universe? We can't see enough of it to say. Some of us think the universe is closed. We think it has positive curvature. We think it pulsates in cycles of expansion and contraction, every beginning and end defined in fire. Of course it wasn't very long ago that the universe was regarded solely in geometric terms. Circles, squares, equilateral triangles. Back far enough, I suppose, people used animal shapes or parts of animals' bodies to explain what sort of design they were part of. A whale's tail perhaps. I never thought I'd see in braille/A cosmos structured like a tail.”

“Cracks,” Schwarz said.

“Tiny cracks in the model are becoming evident, it seems. There is the problem of absolute velocity. There is the suspicion of matter crossing over to us from elsewhere. There is the lack of cause and effect in the behavior of elementary particles. Certain basic components of our physical system defy precise measurement and definition. Are we dealing with physics or metaphysics? Maybe we need a fundamental reconstruction of our ideas of space and time, or space-time, or space-time sylphed, if the latest theory is to be taken seriously. I plan to introduce sylphing compounds into the computer universe. That may tell us something. What we need at this stage of our perceptual development is an overarching symmetry. Something that constitutes what appears to be—even if it isn't—a totally harmonious picture of the world system. Our naïveté, if nothing else, demands it. Our childlike trust in structural balance.”

“The common snowflake,” Schwarz said.

“Think of the fundamental order of atomic structure as seen in the periodic table. Think of the laws of planetary motion. Consider the fact that, relative to their respective diameters, the average distance between stars is roughly the same as the average distance between atomic particles in interstellar space. Is this mere ‘coincidence'? From the Medieval Latin. To happen together. Something and its shadow. Think of the secretion patterns of red ants. The shell of a chambered nautilus. The cubic crystals in ordinary table salt. The honeycomb, the starfish, the common snowflake—all so stunningly reasoned in surface configuration. But not nearly final enough to soothe our disquiet. However, there's always the view that an ultimate symmetry is to be avoided rather than sought, the reason being that this structural balance represents not victory over chaos and death but death itself or what follows upon death. A logarithmic spiral. The polyhedral cohesion of virus crystals.”

“The wiggle,” Schwarz said.

“The star is a common G dwarf. It's called Ratner's star. It lies away from us a bit toward the galactic center. We've analyzed the variation or wiggle in its path and we believe the object in question is a low-mass planet that occupies the star's habitable zone. If you can decipher what the residents of this planet are saying, it may mark the beginning of an exchange of information that could eventually tell us where we are and what the universe looks like. It's safe to assume the Ratnerians are superior to us. They may help us draw a picture. A seamless figure no less perfect than its referent. I'd personally rejoice, although it's hardly likely I'd still be here for the receipt of such information. I think I'm finally tired of being made to journey from speculation to accepted fact and from there to sudden doubt, denial and contention. Does the red shift, for example, really mean what it seems to? I visualize an eight-column headline in the newspaper.
UNIVERSE SAID TO CEASE EXPANDING; BEGINS TO FALL BACK ON ITSELF; MILLIONS FLEE CITIES
. Of course if evidence of universal blueshifting is ever found, it will merit the smallest note. This is documentary void. Not void whose essence is terror. Not the human sensorium streaked with darkness.”