Arkady Strugatsky

»»»»»>■»»»>»»»»»»>»»»»■> WANDERERS AND TRAVELLERS

The water beneath the surface was not very cold and yet I felt chilled. I had been sitting at the bottom of the lake under the steep bank for more than an hour, carefully turning my head from side to side and peering into the green-coloured shadows. One had to sit very still because septopods are sensitive and mistrustful animals that can easily be frightened away by the slightest sound or abrupt movement, and then they would disappear and come back only at night—when it was better not to have anything to do with them.

An eel wriggled under my feet, and a pompous striped perch swam to and fro. Each time it passed, it stopped to stare at me with its round vacant eyes. When it left, a shoal of small silvery fish found a feeding-ground above my head. My shoulders and knees had become quite numb with cold and I was beginning to worry lest Masha should get tired of waiting for me and would dive into the water to my rescue. She would be waiting for me, sitting right at the edge of the water, worried and ready to start searching. I could picture her so clearly that I had almost made up my mind to get out; it was then that a septopod appeared from behind some water-plants only twenty paces away.

The septopod was rather a big specimen. It appeared all of a sudden, as noiselessly as a ghost, with its grey body thrusting forward. Its whitish mantle was throbbing in a soft, almost feeble manner, sucking in and throwing out

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water, and the septopod itself was slightly swaying from side to side as it went. Its arms, very much like the tattered ends of an old grey rag, were dragging behind it, while the narrow chink of its lustreless eye, half covered by the eyelid, shone wanly in the dim light. It swam slowly, as they usually do in the daytime, as if it were in a trance, I had no idea where it was going, or why. No doubt it was prompted by some dark and primitive urge such as guides the movements of amoebae.

I raised my marking rifle slowly and aimed at the septo-pod's inflated back. The little silvery fishes rushed aside and disappeared. It seemed to me that the eyelid covering the animal's eye moved. I pulled the trigger and immediately pushed off the ground to escape the caustic sepia. When I looked again, the septopod was nowhere to be seen, while a dense bluish-black inky fluid was dissolving in the water at the bottom of the lake. I surfaced and swam to the shore.

It was a hot fine day. A thin white mist hung over the lake and the sky was clear and blue. A few grey clouds were building up behind the woods.

A stranger was sitting on the grass in front of our tent. He wore brightly-coloured bathing trunks and a band around his forehead. He was sun-tanned and gave the impression of a very strong man, as if there were not muscles but strong ropes beneath his skin. Standing in front of him, in a blue bathing suit, was my daughter. My long-legged Masha, with her hair hanging down over her thin shoulders.

No, she wasn't waiting wistfully by the water for her father as I had pictured. She was chattering away with this wiry stranger, gesticulating and evidently explaining something to him. For a moment I felt hurt that she took no notice of my reappearance.

But the stranger had noticed me. He turned his head quickly and studied me attentively, then smiled and waved his hand. Masha turned round and shouted joyfully. 'Ah, here you are at last!'

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I climbed out onto the grass, removed the diving-mask and wiped my face. The stranger continued to examine me with a smile on his face.

'How many have you marked?' asked Masha in a businesslike manner. 'Only one,' I answered, my jaws still stiff with cold.

'Bad luck,' said Masha. She helped me to take off the aquastat and I stretched out on the grass.

'Yesterday he marked two septopods,' explained Masha, 'and four the day before yesterday. If it goes on like thatj we shall have to move on to another lake.' She took a towel and began to rub me down. 'You look like a frozen goose,' she said laughingly. 'And this is Leonid Andreevich Gorbovsky. He is an astro-archaeologist. Leonid Andreevich, meet my father, Stanislav Ivanovich.'

Leonid Andreevich nodded.

'Feeling cold?' he asked. 'It's nice here—green grass, sunshine . . .'

'He'll soon be all right,' said Masha, rubbing me with all her might. 'He's generally a cheerful fellow; it's just that he gets so cold in the water . ..'

She must have been telling the man a lot of things about me and was now anxious to save my face. Let her, I thought. I had no time to trouble about it myself—I was busy trying to get warm again.

'Masha and I were rather worried about you down there,' said Gorbovsky. 'We even wanted to dive after you, only I don't know how. I suppose you can't imagine a man whose job has got nothing to do with diving and who has never dived in his life.' He had been lying on his back and now turned on his side, propping up his head with his hand. 'I fly away tomorrow,' he said confidentially. 'God knows when I shall be lying by a lake again and if I shall ever have the chance of diving with an aquastat. . .*

'Go ahead then, try,' I offered.

He examined the aquastat carefully and touched it with his free hand.

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'Sure,' he said, and rolled over onto his back. He put his hands under his head and lay there looking at me from beneath his thin eyelashes. There was something very prepossessing about him. I can't tell what exactly, but there it was. Maybe it was his eyes—-so trusting and a little sad. Or maybe it was his ear that was sticking out from beneath the head-band in such a funny way. Having stared at me to his heart's content, he turned his gaze upon a blue dragon-fly that was balancing on a blade of grass.

He addressed it gently: 'Little dragon-fly, aren't you a beauty! So blue ... so transparent . . . Sitting there quietly waiting for someone to gobble up . . .' He stretched out his hand, but the dragon-fly took off and flew over to the rushes. Gorbovsky followed it with his eyes, then lay back again on the grass.

'How complex everything is, my friends,' he said meditatively, and Masha immediately sat down ready to listen, her eyes open wide. 'Just take this dragon-fly, for instance. So perfect, so graceful, and so content with everything! It gobbles up a fly, produces some offspring and then it is ready to die. Everything is simple, rational and elegant. No spiritual confusion, no love troubles, no self-consciousness, no aim in life . . :

'It's only a machine,' said Masha suddenly, 'a dull cybernetic machine!*

Well, wasn't she a bright child after all? I almost burst out laughing, but just managed to check myself in time— and only sniggered. Masha looked at me disapprovingly.

'Yes, it's dull,' agreed Gorbovsky. 'But just imagine, comrades, a giant dragon-fly with a wing-span of about seven metres, coloured a poisonous yellow-green with red stripes, and with foul black slime dripping from its jaws . . .'

He raised his eyebrows and looked at us curiously. 'Well, I see that you have got quite a clear mental picture of it. Though I was armed, I remember running away from them like mad . . . Do you think they've got anything in common, these two dragon-flies?'

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The green one is from another planet, I suppose,' I asked.

'Yes, of course.'

'From Pandora?'

'Exactly.'

'You want to know what they've got in common?'

'Yes.'

'Well, it's clear enough,' said I. 'Their information handling processes are at the same stage of development. A reaction ruled by instinct.'

'Words,' he sighed. 'No offence meant, but those are just mere words. They don't help me in the least. My task is to find some traces of Reason in the universe, and I am still not clear myself as to what Reason is. I am continually being told about different stages of information handling processes. I know that this dragon-fly and myself are at different stages, but I know it only by intuition. For instance, I find a termite-mound. How am I to know whether it has been constructed by an intelligent mind or not? On Leonida they found some buildings with neither windows nor doors. Are they the fruit of an intelligent mind? What am I to hunt for? Ruins? Inscriptions? Or rusty nails perhaps? What do I know of the traces these other creatures leave behind them? Suppose their sole aim in life is to destroy atmosphere whenever they encounter it . . . who knows? Or to build rings around the planets ... or to hybridise life ... or to create new life? For all I know, this dragon-fly might be a cybernetic machine that had the power of self-reproduction built into it many years ago. I am not speaking now of the bearers of Reason themselves. One could pass a dozen times by some nasty slippery monster wallowing in the dirt without taking any notice of it, while the monster keeps staring at you all the time with its round yellow eyes—and thinking: How very interesting! It must be a new kind. I'll come back here some day with an expedition and try to catch one . . .'

He covered his eyes with his hand and started humming a tune. Masha sat staring at him and waiting for him to go on. I waited too, and thought sympathetically how difficult

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it is to work on a problem that has not been clearly defined. To keep on wandering in the darkness, finding no pleasure in one's job. I've heard about these astro-archaeologists. No one takes them seriously.

'And yet there is Reason in the Universe,' Gorbovsky suddenly said. 'There's no doubt about it. But it's quite different from what we expect it to be, and we just go on looking for it in the wrong place without having a definite idea of what we are looking for .. .'

'That's true,' I thought. 'No definite idea, the wrong place . . . The whole thing is extremely childish. Trying to find traces of ideas that once floated in the air.'

'Take, for instance, the Voice of Empty Space,' he continued. 'Have you ever heard about it? Probably not. Some fifty years ago they used to write a lot on the subject, but then they gave it up—couldn't discover anything. We've still got some "scientists" who, owing to their own laziness or poor education, advocate a sort of cheap anthropocentrism. Somewhere they have picked up the idea that Man is omnipotent, and they cannot allow themselves to admit that he is unable to solve the problem of the Voice. So they think it best to say that there isn't any Voice at all . . .'

'But what is it, "the Voice of Empty Space"?' asked Masha in a low voice.

'It's rather a curious phenomenon observed in some parts of the cosmos. If you set your on-board wireless for automatic tuning, sooner or later you will hear a calm indifferent voice that keeps repeating one and the same sentence in an unknown tongue. For many years they've been picking it up and many people have heard it, but they don't like to speak of it. It's not a very pleasant experience, you see. Imagine yourself on board a spaceship, alone on watch somewhere inconceivably far from Earth. The ether is free so there are no disturbances, only a faint rustling. And suddenly there is the Voice. Everyone else is asleep, and you are all alone in Space with it. It's really frightening, enough to make your flesh creep. Some recordings of the Voice have been made.

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Many scientists have tried to decipher it, and some still haven't given up, but to my mind they are just wasting their time. There are some other unsolved problems too, besides the Voice. Spacemen could tell you many an interesting story, but they don't like to blab . . .' He stopped and added with a sort of sad persistence: 'It should be understood that it's no simple matter. We don't even know what to expect. We could meet them any moment, face to face. And, you know, they may turn out to be much superior to us. A great deal is said about various collisions and conflicts, about a different understanding of what is good and human, but that isn't what I fear. What I am afraid of is an unprecedented humiliation of mankind. If that were to happen, it would be a great emotional shock. We are used to being so proud of ourselves. We have created such a wonderful world, we know so much, we have broken out into the Great Universe which we are discovering and investigating as if it were something quite new, while for them the Universe is their native home. They have been living there for millions of years just as we have on Earth and they merely wonder about us: "Where have these strange creatures arrived from?"■

He stopped abruptly and rose to his feet, listening to something. I started.

'It's thunder,' said Masha quietly. She was staring at him open-mouthed. 'It's thunder,' she repeated, 'we'll have a thunderstorm soon . . .'

Still he kept listening, searching the sky attentively with his eyes.

'No, it isn't thunder,' he said at last, and sat down. 'It's a liner. Can't you see it over there?'

A bright strip of light flashed through the dark clouds and disappeared. A faint noise of thunder was heard.

'Now I've got to sit here and wait,' he said vaguely.

He looked at me pleasantly and there was sadness and tense expectation in his eyes. Then it all disappeared, he relaxed and his eyes had the same trusting look in them again.

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'And what are you working on, Stanislav Ivanovich?' he asked.

I realised that he wanted to change the subject and began telling him about the septopods. I told him that these animals belong to the dibranchia sub class in the cephalopod molluscs group, and represent a special and previously unknown tribe of the octopus order. They have the following distinctive features: a reduced third left arm conjugate to the third right hectocodyledonal arm, three rows of suckers on each arm, an extremely powerful venous heart and no coelom whatsoever. I explained that they also have a highly developed and concentrated nervous system that distinguishes the septopods from all other representatives of the cephalopod group. There are some additional minor peculiarities not worth mentioning. The septopods were discovered quite recently when some individuals appeared on the east and south-east coast of Asia. A year later they were found in the lower reaches of the Mekong, the Yangtze, the Hwang Ho and the Amur, and in some small lakes situated at a considerable distance from the coast, as, for instance, in this lake. This is very striking, because cephalopods cannot live without salt and therefore they even tend to avoid arctic waters with their low salinity. And they almost never come out onto dry land. But septopods feel quite at home in fresh water bodies such as this lake and are not afraid to come out on to the banks. They get into boats and climb on to bridges, and quite recently two of them were found in a wood some thirty kilometres from here . . .

Masha wasn't listening. She had heard it all a dozen times before. She went to the tent and came back carrying our radio. She switched on the automatic tuner and was evidently trying to pick up the Voice.

Gorbovsky, however, was particularly interested.

'And were those two specimens alive?' he asked.

'No, they were found dead. You see, this is a forest reserve, and the septopods had been trampled and half-eaten by wild boars. But they had been alive thirty kilometres

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away from the lake. Their mantle cavity was full of wet water plants. Probably the septopods preserve water for their land marches in this way. They must have been moving inland from these lakes in a southerly direction. It should be noted that all the captured individuals have been adult males. Not a single female or young one. Probably they can neither live in fresh water nor come out on land.

'All this is extremely interesting,' I went on, 'for as a rule sea-animals only change their mode of life as sharply as this during the period of reproduction. Then their propagation instinct urges them to move to unknown places. But with septopods this is absolutely out of the question. They are guided by some other instinct, more ancient and powerful. We are mainly concerned now with the problem of the migrations.

'That's why I keep sitting in this lake for ten hours a day. Today I marked one. If I am lucky, I shall mark a couple more before it gets dark. At night they become very aggressive and attack anything that tries to approach them, even humans. But that's only at night.'

Masha had now turned the wireless up to its full capacity and was enjoying the din.

'Turn it down a little, Masha,' I asked.

She complied.

'So you mark them,' said Gorbovsky. 'How odd! And with what, may I ask?'

'With supersonic generators,' I said pulling the magazine out of the marking rifle and handing him an ampule. 'We mark them with these "bullets". Inside the "bullets" there is a generator that can be heard in the water at a distance of some twenty or thirty kilometres.'

He took the ampule and examined it carefully. His face turned old and sad.

'Clever,' he muttered, 'very clever, and so simple . . .'

He went on turning it round in his fingers, then put it on the grass in front of me and got to his feet. He walked slowly and uncertainly over to his clothes, picked up his trousers

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and then stood still, holding them absently in his hands.

I watched him with some anxiety. Masha was holding the marking gun eager to explain how it worked, and she was watching Gorbovsky too, the corners of her mouth drooping mournfully. She is a sensitive child, and I have noticed several times that her face is apt to adopt the same expression as that of someone she is watching

Then, speaking in a low voice filled with irony, Gorbovsky said:

'It's really quite funny, to tell the truth . . . Such a close analogy! For centuries they used to sit in the depths and now they have risen to the surface and come out into an unknown and hostile world . . . What urges them on? An ancient dark instinct, you say? Or a method of handling information that has reached the stage of extreme curiosity? It certainly would have been better for the creatures to stay at home in the salty water, but something induces them to venture onto dry land . . .'

He roused himself and started pulling on his long old-fashioned trousers, hopping awkwardly on one leg.

Tell me, Stanislav Ivanovich, these septopods are not just primitive cephalopods, are they?'

'Certainly not,' I answered.

But he wasn't listening. He had turned towards the wireless and was staring at it. Powerful but somewhat disharmonious signals, like the disturbances caused by an X-ray installation, were coming from it. Masha put down the marking rifle.

'6.08,' she said, looking perplexed. 'It must be a service station.'

Gorbovsky listened to the signals with closed eyes and with his head inclined a little to one side.

'No,' he said at last, 'it's not a service station. It's me.*

'What?'

'Yes, it's me who is signalling, me, Leonid Andteevich Gorbovsky.'

'What for?'

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He laughed a little. It was a sad laugh.

'Ask me another,' he said. 'I should like to know that myself.' He pulled on his shirt. 'Why, on returning from their regular cruise number en 101 - en 2657, have three pilots and their spaceship become the source of radio waves with a length of 6.083 metres?'

We remained silent. He stopped for a moment, and bent down to buckle his sandals.

'We have been examined by doctors. We have been examined by physicists.' He rose and brushed the sand and pieces of grass from his trousers. 'And they all came to the conclusion that it was impossible. One could have laughed oneself into a fit at their puzzled faces. But as for us, we were really past laughing. Tolya Obozov refused to take his holiday and went to Pandora. He said he preferred to emit signals as far from Earth as possible. Valkenstein went to work at a submarine station. Only I remained here, wandering around and signalling. And all the time I expect something to happen. I don't know exactly what, but it frightens me. I am full of anticipation and fear at one and the same time. Do you follow me?'

'I don't know,' I said dubiously, and looked at Masha out of the corner of my eye.

'You are right,' he said catching the hint. He took the wireless out of Masha's hands and raised it to his ear, 'Nobody knows. It's been going on for a month now without interruption and the signals don't seem to get any weaker. "Wha . . . whee . . . wha . . . whee"—like that, day and night. No matter whether we are happy or sad, hungry or well fed, or working or just loafing about. "Wha . . . whee . . ." all the time. Tariel is emitting less, however. "Tariel" is my spaceship. It has been laid up for the present. Just to be on the safe side. Its signals are jamming some control signals directed to Venus, and this annoys the operators over there; they keep sending inquiries. Tomorrow I shall take it away somewhere farther away . . .' He drew himself to his feet and slapped his sides with his hands. 'Well, it's time

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I was going. Good-bye! I wish you luck. Good-bye, Mashenka! Don't start racking your young brains over what I've been saying. It's much too complicated for you.'

He waved his hand, nodded and walked away. He looked very long-legged and awkward. When he was passing our tent, he stopped for a moment and said:

'You should be more considerate with those septopods, you know. This marking of yours might be the cause of some serious trouble for the creatures . . .'

He left. I lay in the grass on my stomach for a while, then looked at Masha. She was following Gorbovsky with her eyes. It was clear that Leonid Andreevich had produced a deep impression on her. But not on me. I wasn't in the least troubled by his considerations about the bearers of Universal Reason being much superior to us. Let them be. To my mind the more superior they proved to be, the less chances there were of our getting in their way. We would be like the small fry that easily swim through the large meshes of a fishing-net. As to pride, humiliation, emotional shock . . . Probably we would get over that, somehow. I am sure I would. The fact that we are discovering and studying a Universe which has long been known and inhabited by them makes no difference. We haven't made ourselves at home there yet! They are still only a part of nature for us to discover and investigate, no matter how superior to us they might be . . . They are outsiders, and that's that.

Although, let's face it, if I were to be marked the way I mark the septopods . . .

I looked at my watch and sat up. It was time to get down to work again. I copied down the number of the last ampule, checked the aquastat, then went over to the tent where I picked up the supersonic locater and put it into the pocket of my bathing trunks.

'Give me a hand, Masha,' I said, and started pulling on the aquastat.

Masha was still sitting in front of the wireless and listening to the unfading 'wha . . . whee . . .' She came over and

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helped me with the aquastat, and we jboth stepped into the water. I switched on the locater under the water. The signals started sounding—my marked septopods were wandering dreamily about the lake. I exchanged a significant look with Masha and launched out. Masha spat out some water, brushed back the wet hair from her forehead and said:

'Still, there must be a difference between a spaceship and a slippery bag of wet seaweed . . .'

I told her to wait on shore, and submerged. No, if I were Gorbovsky, I shouldn't be so nervous. It is not to be taken seriously, and the same with all that astro-archaeological nonsense of his. Traces of ideas . . . Emotional shock . . . There won't be any shock. Most likely we won't even notice one another's existence. What do they care about us, after all?