Beyond the Ice Limit

42

TWO DECKS HIGHER, in the marine acoustics lab, Wong and Prothero were monitoring an acoustic device that techs in the control center had lowered to within half a mile of the creature. Wong had on a pair of earphones and a headset in which she could hear Prothero’s nasal voice.

“I’m ready to start broadcasting the who are you? blue whale vocalization,” he said. “It’s the sound two blue whales make when approaching each other from a distance—the whale hello, you could say. Let’s see how the Baobab responds. Are you set?”

“Set.”

“It’s going to sound different from what we’ve been hearing so far. Those sounds were sped up ten times for clarity. The real vocalizations are in the ten-to-thirty-nine-hertz range. A human can’t hear below twenty hertz, so it’ll sound really low, almost like a stutter, and you probably won’t catch it all.”

“I understand.”

“I’m going to broadcast for a minute, then give it a five-minute rest.” Prothero fiddled with some dials. “Broadcasting.”

It sounded to Wong like a series of extremely low groans and stutters. It went on for a minute, then fell into silence. Wong listened for a response. Five minutes went by. Nothing.

“I’m going to try it again,” said Prothero. “Upping the amplitude.”

He broadcast the whale greeting again. When it ended, there was a silence of about a minute—and then Wong heard another deep sound, very different: a long, drawn-out groan, followed by a stutter that faded over time into silence. A second sound followed, also long and low. She felt her heart accelerate. This was as unexpected as it was incredible: the thing had responded. They were communicating with an alien intelligence. Furthermore, she could hear that the Baobab was not simply repeating back what they had just played: rather, this was a new communication.

“You hear that?” said Prothero, his voice so excited it was squeaking like a teenager’s. “Motherfucker! It’s talking to us! There goes your theory that it’s just mindlessly playing back shit.”

“I concede the point,” Wong said. She wondered briefly what would happen if she told Prothero what she really thought of him. No…that could wait until later. When they were back in home port, maybe.

“Okay. I’m going to repeat who are you.”

The blue whale vocalization sounded. And the response came back, more rapidly this time.

“Did you get it on tape?” Prothero asked eagerly.

“Of course.”

“I don’t know what it means, but we’ll sure as hell find out. Let’s do it again.”

They repeated the same message, getting the same response.

“Wong, put that sound into the acoustic database and see what matches we get.”

“Already done.”

It didn’t take long for the computer to find a dozen matches in Prothero’s vast database of blue whale sounds. Once again, she looked up the circumstances under which the sounds had been recorded and forwarded the results to Prothero’s workstation. He labored for a while in silence.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ve sort of got a translation. The Baobab’s response was three distinct sounds. The first one seems to have something to do with time. It’s really drawn out, though; I figure that means ‘long time.’”

More typing. Prothero was muttering to himself, a number of Jesum Crows and Fuckin’ A’s that she heard, unwillingly, broadcast through the headset.

“Okay,” he said again. “The second vocalization involves distance. It, too, is abnormally drawn out. So it probably means something like ‘long distance.’ Or more like ‘far away.’ That’s it! We asked it: Who are you?” and it answered: “Long time. Far away.”

Wong felt a strange sensation, like ice, creeping down her neck. This was, without any doubt, a stunning moment.

“Then, there’s this third one. It sounds like the warning sound whales make upon encountering a fishing net or a trawl line.” He paused. “‘Net.’ I’m not a hundred percent sure about that one. And it doesn’t seem to fit the other two, but…” Prothero grew animated. “You realize what we’ve done?” he crowed, as if the magnitude of it had just burst over him. “We’re the first human beings to actually communicate with an alien intelligence! Holy fuck! It’s telling us it came a long distance over an extended period of time. Just like the Star Wars opening crawl, A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…”

The cold feeling spread. Wong had no idea why she suddenly felt this way, but it seemed to her that buried in the message was something unutterably lost and lonely. Long ago, far away…That didn’t feel like a message: it was more like a cry for help. And then how did that other word fit in, net?

Her thoughts were interrupted by Prothero. “Let’s keep going. Let’s see what else we can ask it—and get answers to.”

But there was nothing. They broadcast sounds for another hour, but there was no reply. It was as if the entity—for whatever reason—had gone abruptly silent.