Tom Swift and the Visitor From Planet X (16 page)

"Pal, what you’re saying is logical, but sometimes logic gets a person off the track." Tom went on: "Look at it this way.
We
think of the symbols as things designed to be seen with the eye. But the X-ians may understand them as purely
abstract
sets of spatial relationships—unvarnished ideas, you might say. To them, the fact that they reflect photons of light into human optical organs may seem an unimportant detail."

Tom’s father offered, "If what you say is valid, Tom, then Exman’s evident capacity for seeing, hearing, and finding the
meaning
in his experiences—it’s all the more remarkable, as much a surprise to him as to us."

"Look at the screen!" Bud exclaimed.

I HAVE A FUNCTION-COMPATIBLE SENSATION
AS I HEAR WHAT YOU ARE SAYING.
PERHAPS IT IS WHAT YOU CALL
P-L-E-A-S-U-R-E.
ALTHOUGH I AM NOT CERTAIN OF WHAT ‘BELIEVING’ IS,
I BELIEVE YOU ARE RIGHT, TOM.
MY STATEMENT IS PARADOXICAL
YET I DETECT TRUTH WITHIN IT.

"Right from the horse’s mouth!" Tom laughed. "No offense, Exman—just a human idiom." The scientist-inventor abruptly snapped his fingers. "Good grief—
symbols!
I need to take a look at the most recent set of inscribed symbols." He explained to his father about the discovery in Canada.

Before Tom went to his lab computer, he took another glance at the communications screen.

ANTI-X

"What do you mean by
anti-X?"
Tom asked aloud. "That term is not known by us, Exman."

I DO NOT KNOW WHAT ‘ANTI-X’ MEANS.
I HAVE THE ‘BELIEVING’ SENSATION THAT
IT IS IMPORTANT
TO GIVE YOU THESE SYMBOLS.
I DO NOT KNOW WHAT CAUSES ME
TO ACT IN THIS MANNER.
YET I FIND THAT
I BELIEVE WITHOUT KNOWING.

Tom shrugged. "Something more to study! But let’s look at the new space symbols."

Tom accessed and opened the pictures from Canada.
"Jetz!"
Bud exclaimed. "Jackpot!" The new set of clustered inscriptions were clearly like the mathematical figures used by Tom’s space friends and their superiors on their home planet.

"Is any sort of coherent message emerging yet?" Damon Swift asked his son.

Tom glanced over them carefully. "Even the ones I recognize from previous messages don’t add up to anything," he pronounced. "Maybe comparing them to the other two sets will bring out a context."

But after a time Tom had to admit his frustration. "As near as I can make out, it’s just a jumble of vague ideas—something about alternatives, experimentation, some references to time..."

Mr. Swift pointed to one cluster. "If you intersect the figures from all three sources, the fragments in this portion may suggest the idea of shielding or blocking."

"Yes, or some kind of imposed restriction." Tom stroked his chin. "If only we had a clue as to why the X-ians are communicating in this manner! They didn’t have any trouble sending us their messages about Exman in the usual way, over the magnifying antenna."

"I recommend you continue refraining from asking them about it directly," Mr. Swift advised. Since the arrival of Exman, Tom had only transmitted a brief announcement into deep space, to no response. "There may be some importance in our deciphering the cryptogram independently of their assistance."

Tom flinched as Bud clapped a fist into his palm.
"Hey!
—here’s a thought! What if those radio messages about Exman didn’t come from those bigshot ‘Masters’ in the first place!" Bud glanced toward Ole Think Box and lowered his voice to a dramatic whisper.
"What if Exman’s a ringer?
You’ve released a lot of info about the symbols since you let the world know about the Swift space contacts—why couldn’t someone like the Brungarians be faking the whole thing?"

"You mean create a
bogus
energy-brain to mislead us?" Tom shook his head in skeptical disbelief. "I just can’t accept that Nattan Volj’s crew are so far ahead of us technologically." But at Bud’s urging Tom had to concede that the Brungarian faction had already demonstrated advanced technology in producing the earthquakes and using them as weapons.

Baffled, troubled, Tom went home for the evening. After supper he spent some time trying to relax, chatting with his mother and father about their plans to attend the Wickliffe funeral in Thessaly, which was to be held the next day. At a late hour, as he retired to his upstairs bedroom, his bedside phone rang softly.

"Hello?" he answered warily.

"Hello, Tom."
It was easy to tell whom the voice belonged to. Eldrich Oldmother! The realization gave Tom a sinking feeling in his stomach.

Was the mysterious Prophet and Exemplar about to give Tom another warning of disaster?

"MR. OLDMOTHER, it’s not that I mind hearing from you, but how did you get this number?" Tom demanded, keeping his voice low and as level as he could manage. "Very few people know it, and it’s changed frequently to provide me and my family with some privacy. It’s only available to a few key contacts and personal friends."

"I’d suggest that you get some better friends." The man chuckled dryly. "Just being funny. In fact, one of those key contacts of yours—someone in a government position, whom I shall not name—happens to be a member of the Informatics Church. I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t hesitate to tap his sense of religious awe."

"Where are you?"

"Where am I?
In a good place—
as we say in the Church. Does it matter?"

"I suppose not," was the answer. "Why are you calling me?"

"Ah! To provide information. It may be vital in some way," replied Oldmother. "No, nothing to do with any more of the quake disasters. I have nothing new on that front."

"All right then. What is it?"

"I have no idea."

"I’m
tired
and one second from hanging up, Mr. Oldmother!" Tom grated.

"I’m quite serious, young man," Oldmother persisted. Tom could almost
hear
his sardonic smile coming through the wires. "I don’t know
what
it is—that is, what it
means.
But I do know what it looks like. It looks like words!"

Tom decided to hold his tongue. Eventually the voice continued. "I went to bed early. Prophets get worn out like everybody else, you know. I had been talking on the phone, and I left pad and pen on the nightstand. When I woke up a little while ago, words had been scrawled over the notes I had written earlier—big words, uneven letters, in a hand I don’t recognize. Definitely not mine."

"What do they say? I don’t have to guess, do I?"

"They say—not in any sort of order; they’re all over the pad, every which way—
balala, caspian, stone, rozkhuld, brother.
You’ll forgive my untutored pronunciation on a couple of those. I’ll spell them out so you can note them down."

After Oldmother did so, Tom asked if there were anything more. "Yes, one further bit of writing. An afterthought, perhaps. This one is written all-together, as if to show that it’s a complete phrase.
Behold I am with you always.
Recognize it?"

"Of course," Tom replied. "From one of the Gospels in the Bible. Does it have some kind of significance in your church, Mr. Oldmother?"

"None that I can think of. I wrote my
own
bible. Now, back to bed. Good luck, my friend. I’ll be in touch again—soon, I’d think." The line went dead.

Tom shook his head disgustedly at the dead phone in his hand.

The next morning Tom reported the bizarre call to Ames. "Tom, how sure are you that this guy isn’t just a schizo with a peculiar sense of humor?"

Tom shrugged. "He did seem to know some things about us, and about Exman. And then there’s the little matter of his having advance word on the California quake!"

"True," the security chief conceded. "But this pile of words is hardly useful. For example, does ‘caspian’ refer to the Caspian Sea? Or are we supposed to be on the lookout for someone named ‘Balala Caspian’? Brother!—whose brother? And then this biblical reference. No doubt he’s referring to himself, as Prophet."

"I don’t know what to do with all this any more than you do, Harlan." Tom concluded: "Anyway, back to the lab and our visitor."

Tom worked with Hank and Arv to give the visitor from Planet X the voice of an earthling. "I like your general approach, Tom," said Hank. "If we can teach our buddy here to produced some kind of variable signal output—in real time—AM and FM modulated to mimic human sound production—and if—"

"That’s enough, Sterling!" Arv interrupted with a remonstrating grimace. "Tom, this young man needs to pick up a bit of my Swedish optimism."

"First time I’ve ever come across the notion of Swedish
optimism!"
joked Hank.

Tom held up his hands for a time out. "I’m pretty sure Exman will be able to surprise us, you two. You never know what he’ll pull out of his mechanical sleeve."

The morning ended with the three technical experts shaking hands all around. Exman’s miniaturized "voice box" was a success! At first, during the test phase, the visitor’s vocal signals were digitally recorded. After giving Exman the go-ahead and recording for several moments, Tom switched over to the playback. A weird squeaky jumble of noises could be heard. But one word seemed to come through fairly distinctly.
"Universe!"

"It’s talking!" Tom cried out.

"Trying to, but not succeeding very well," noted Hank. "Not to be pessimistic."

Nevertheless, the three were jubilant at this first breakthrough. Eagerly they began making adjustments aimed at sending the modulated feed through the mechanical speaking unit Tom had devised. Tom was just about to switch on the tape recorder again when the telephone rang.

"Maybe I should get an unlisted number here at the plant, too!" The young inventor was annoyed at being interrupted at such a crucial moment, but picked up the phone. "Tom speaking."

"You have an urgent call from Washington," the operator, Jilly, informed him. "Just a moment, please."

Wes Norris of the FBI came on the line. "Say, Tom, I presume this is high priority for you—those ground inscriptions?"

"Absolutely! Something new?"

"New, if no longer totally unexpected. The fourth set of symbols has turned up in New Jersey, gouged into a dry riverbed just outside Zell Junction. Photos are on the way to you."

"This may mean we’re about to crack open the whole thing!" exclaimed Tom excitedly. "I don’t suppose anybody saw how the inscriptions were laid down, did they?"

"No," was the reply. "It’s a bit unnerving, in fact. After your geographic theory was confirmed by the Canada event, we had teams of agents scattered all over the general area where the next set was predicted. By luck, several agents were on the scene, not one hundred yards away. With no warning and no known cause, they suddenly lost their power of sight!"

"You mean they went blind?"

"In a manner of speaking," said Norris. "Blinded, at least. They told us that whenever they tried to look toward the river bed where the inscriptions were appearing, the middle of their visual field just sort’ve went
blank.
I don’t mean it turned black, or was obscured. There wasn’t any noticeable break in the visual field—what their eyes were seeing. They said it was like ‘what it looks like behind your head—nothing’s there at all’. Maybe you know what that means. But their vision returned to normal instantly when the inscriptions were in place. Quite a trick!"

"I’ll say!" declared the young inventor. "I’ve read of similar conditions brought on by neurological damage, though. In ‘blindsight’ the victim imagines, or hallucinates, that he can see even though his visual system is physically dead. There are also conditions where a person can see perfectly, but is unable to recognize even familiar objects even though the memory itself is not impaired. And some patients lose the ability to consciously perceive motion, or the right or left halves of objects. And they don’t even understand that what they are seeing is incomplete."

"The mind’s an amazing thing, that’s for sure," remarked the FBI man. "But I guess you know that."

Tom received Norris’s digitized pictures presently, and showed them to Arv and Hank as he compared them to the three previous sets. "Well, they’re space symbols, that’s for sure," Arv declared. "Do you have what you need to figure the whole thing out?"

Tom sighed. "I’m not sure. Nothing is exactly leaping out at my agile young mind. There’s probably some trick as to just how to integrate them all into one symbol-set giving the message—something mathematical, I’d guess. Right now it still looks like an unsolved cryptogram."

"Good grief, a lotta work those guys are putting you through," observed Hank with the snort of an impatient engineer. "And for what? Maybe it’s just an exercise."

"No, I’m sure it’s important."

After his friends left for a late lunch in the plant cafeteria, a knock on the door announced the arrival of Mr. Swift, still somberly dressed from the funeral service. "All very beautiful, and very sad," he reported. "I had a chance to speak to a number of Munson’s relatives and professional acquaintances. It seems some people ultimately make themselves popular by going away, if you see what I mean. Munson knew very well that he could be difficult at times." Damon Swift hesitated, and Tom realized there was something more to be said.

"What is it, Dad?"

"Tom, this wonderful work you’re doing with Exman—it’s important and, as usual, brilliant. Pure science."

"But?"

"But thinking in terms of your usual inventiveness, it comes across as rather
specialized.
I don’t suppose the public will find very many uses for an energy-brain canister. Even one designed by the famous Tom Swift!" Tom saw a sly twinkle in his father’s eye.

"Dad, something tells me you’ve thought of a new use for this Think Box of mine!"

Mr. Swift nodded, smiling. "Yes I have. You’ve adapted several approaches developed in so-called Artificial Intelligence work to actual sense-perception mechanisms. It occurs to me these inventions could be used to assist living humans as well as energy brains from space—persons with injuries to their sense organs, or victims of neurological damage."