Part 9 (1/2)

A few of the Center astronomers made their cases against any reply right away, in tones of subdued outrage. She wondered why scientists so often couched their views in abstract terms while giving their game away by the tone of voice, seemingly unaware that most people could read their emotions more tellingly than their ideas. It all seemed funny now, as she watched it from the high perch her quirky physiology had cooked up for today. She had told Kingsley that she didn't do drugs anymore because she could get the same effect by standing up fast, but he had taken the joke completely deadpan. Did she honestly look that frail?

Maybe, but she could still track the labyrinths of the argument as it worked around the room. The same views emerged in different guises, long on logic, br.i.m.m.i.n.g with unstated pa.s.sion.

We have no right to speak for all the human race.

But only we have a prayer of knowing how to respond.

How can you? The idea's outrageous!

It might be dangerous to answer. The thing could learn how to destroy us.

It might be dangerous not to answer. And it has huge energies at its command already.

It's already taken the giant step of learning our languages. That implies an intelligence far beyond ours. Don't try to second-guess it.

But the sheer arrogance-!

Have you considered that it might be dangerous either way?

Finally Arno spoke. ”This is still a matter of some secrecy, though we cannot expect it to remain so for long. It is also a matter under the governance of the United States, occurring on our territory, though in an international facility.”

Protests, exclamations, as everybody in the room saw which way it was going to go. Arno brushed them aside.

”I have gotten a quick okay from the White House. They believe a reply is in order, and soon. I have been authorized to transmit one simple line.”

He looked at Benjamin, and Channing saw that somehow they had planned this, right in front of her, and she had missed it. Maybe she was more feeble than she thought. Here she was at the center of historic events, distracted by her itches and not tracking.

Benjamin said, peeling off the words, ”We desire converse also.”

2.

An answer came from the Eater at the minimum possible interval, allowing for the 8.7 Astronomical Units it had to cross-seventy-two minutes.

By this time Arno had told Benjamin and Martinez to keep their staff ”in order,” meaning that they were not to leak any whisper of the messages. His U Agency team held a ”briefing” for the Center astronomers, rather delicately laying out the security precautions that would henceforth surround the Center's activities. In the middle of this conference, the reply arrived.

I AM ENGAGED TO CONVERSE.MY FORMS WILL MAKE ORDER TO CONVEY MEANING.

”What in h.e.l.l does that mean?” Arno asked in a tight tone, the first sign of tension Benjamin had detected in the man.

”I would venture,” Kingsley said in his humble mode, ”that it is organizing itself for a high-bit rate transmission.”

Arno looked puzzled, as did most of the rest of those crowded into the Big Screen Room. Kingsley said smoothly, ”I noticed that it transmitted when Arecibo could receive-indeed, when it was near the zenith at Arecibo's longitude.”

Benjamin said, ”We've been using it a lot to map the ionized regions near the Eater's core. These last few days the team at Arecibo bounced radar signals off it.”

Kingsley nodded. ”So it probably has noticed that half the time our largest receiver is out of view, on the other side of the Earth from the Eater. The Eater wishes to use the biggest dish we have, presumably to transfer a great deal, or else it would simply send messages to every radio telescope we have. I expect, then, that from now on it will use the second-largest facility-Goldstone, in the California desert-when Arecibo is out of its sight. We should find a third dish and send the coordinates in our own next message, so communication is continuous.”

This quick a.n.a.lysis impressed even Benjamin, who reluctantly nodded; he had not thought of the problem, much less solved it.

Arno folded his arms. ”Well, looks like we got a dialogue going here. What do we say next?”

Channing's thin voice began, and one of Arno's men started to talk over it, only to cut off abruptly when Arno shot him a severe glance, eyebrows clamped down tightly above hard eyes. Channing started again. ”Ask the basics. Where it's from, what it is, what it wants.”

This seemed so sensible to the small group-the Gang of Four plus some U Agency types who seemed spooked by Arno's authority-that they accepted it, arguing only over the phrasing of the questions.

Again the response came back in only a few seconds more than the computed delay time due to the finite speed of light.

I AM ONLY ME SELF ALONE. A COMPOSITION OF FIELDS.

”What fields?” Arno wondered.

Kingsley looked at Benjamin. ”I suspect, following on Dr. Knowlton's discoveries, that the black hole's magnetic domain itself is talking to us.”

Astonishment met this bold venture. Benjamin saw Kingsley's thread and said, ”If we're dealing with some...well, magnetic life...here, that would explain a lot.”

Channing said weakly, slowly, ”The fields are strong. Maybe they can contain information-say, stored in the form of Alfven waves, the most common form of magnetic waves.”

Benjamin pointed out that Arecibo's high resolution radar image showed glowing filaments threading around the Eater's core. ”The tightest picture we can get so far comes from the Very Long Baseline Array, though, picking out details a few kilometers in size. There's a tight knot of structures in the strong field region near the hole.”

Amy Major asked incredulously, ”But how did they get get there?” there?”

Kingsley smiled. ”I quite know how you feel. This is more bizarre than anything in our astrophysical zoo. Somehow, something has impressed knowledge and intelligence into a magnetic structure.”

One of the U Agency men said, ”Well, a lot of our technology stores data in magnetic cores, but those're lattices. Iron, say, oriented in well-defined states by the field. But this But this...”

He let his silence speak for him, and judging from the open skepticism on many of the faces in the room, Benjamin could see the idea was not going over well. For reference, Benjamin tapped in a command and summoned forth the latest mapping in the microwave frequencies. At the core, just barely visible as a broad dot in these frequencies, was a disk. He knew that it was dense and hot, the captured ma.s.s like a glowing phonograph record, turning around the spindle hole that would eventually swallow it all.

A filmy cloud surrounded this bright core, laced by striations that detailed a.n.a.lysis had already shown to be ”magnetic flux tubes,” in the astrophysical jargon. The intricate architecture of these lines suggested an outline. ”An hourgla.s.s,” Benjamin said abruptly, seeing the structure anew.

Dimly visible, once the eye knew where to look, the symmetric funnel was undeniable.

”The hole is at the center,” Kingsley observed, ”that unresolved dot. It draws matter in along those ducts, into an accretion disk.”

”Can't see any disk there,” one of the U Agency astronomers put in.

”Hard to see at this angle, I'll wager,” Kingsley came back smoothly. ”And perhaps not luminous at these particular frequencies, compared with the electron emission in the strong fields.”

One of the house theorists already had a mathematical simulation of the inner region, which she presented as a slice diagram. Depending on the weather around the black hole, there could either be THICK INFLOW THICK INFLOW from a wide angle, or from a wide angle, or THIN INFLOW THIN INFLOW into a disk at the equator of the system. The inflow formed a into a disk at the equator of the system. The inflow formed a THICK DISK THICK DISK, which could be slowly swallowed as it spiraled into the hole, reaching MAXIMUM PRESSURE MAXIMUM PRESSURE very near the inner edge. But the energy released by the white-hot ma.s.s, just before it dived into the hole, kept open twin funnels. very near the inner edge. But the energy released by the white-hot ma.s.s, just before it dived into the hole, kept open twin funnels.

[image]

”In this model,” the theorist said, ”the funnels serve to eject ma.s.s, like a rocket nozzle. In steady-state, the funnel wall is static.” The hourgla.s.s shape of the funnels was striking.

The entire region was only the size of a large building. The larger magnetic realm beyond this could hold enormous stores of ma.s.s, organized by the coherent field structure.