Fenrir: Chapter 7

[seawasp]

Stephanie had the title...

 

Chapter 7: An Uncomfortable Silence

     "This is the weirdest professional presentation I've ever worked on," said Dr. Faye Athena Brown as she popped the first References slide onto the screen. "I mean, look at that. We're referencing sixteen papers from eight different disciplines, three science fiction novels, one video game, and an Internet discussion. And that's just for this section of the presentation."

     Dr. Brown was an archivist and researcher that Stephanie had stolen – well, requested – from UCal at Berkeley, because her work with SNIT had shown her to be not just responsive but smart, finding not only the material requested but also relevant, related material that sometimes put your question in a new perspective. And she's sure doing that here, giving us useful cross-references in disparate fields.

     "Not unexpected," Dr. Dobyns said, reviewing notes on his laptop. "We are faced with the strangest and most exciting event in human history, after all. If our speculative fiction writers didn't have something relevant to say, they'd be very poor at their job, wouldn't they?"

     "How long until Fenrir arrives, again?" That was Dr. Chris Thompson, whose wide-ranging scientific experience included microbiology, ornithology, and ecology; he was working on trying to wring every possible guess about the biology of their visitors from the very limited clues available.

     "You mean when it settles into orbit?" Stephanie asked. "About –"

     "Here!" Faye tapped a few keys and suddenly there was a running countdown just above the presentation slide: FENRIR ARRIVAL: 45 Days, 17 hours, 27 minutes. As they all looked up, the 27 turned to a 26.

     Stephanie grinned. "Exactly. Or about one and a half months." It's been just a bit over six weeks since this all started. "I don't suppose we've gotten any response?"

     Dr. Dobyns shook his head, his beard emphasizing the motion. "Nothing."

"Which makes me extremely concerned," came a voice from the doorway.

     Stephanie glanced, did a double-take and leapt to her feet. "Madame President!"

     "Please, not that formality here. Call me Jeanne and I'll call you Stephanie."

     That's going to be a challenge. But nice gesture! "I'll… try, Jeanne. So what are you doing here? We're working on the next briefing presentation now."

     "Honestly? I hate Powerpoint. Oh, it has its place, no doubt, but I'd rather just discuss the results. And since I am the President, I can get away with that, can't I?"

     "Absolutely, Madame Jeanne President!" said York with a grin.

     "Wiseass," Jeanne responded with a smile of her own. "Dr. Thompson –"

     "Chris, if I'm calling you Jeanne."

     "Chris, then. Anything on our visitors' likely nature? I know I'm asking a ridiculous question given the circumstances."

     "I'm glad you said it, Jeanne. As my one uncle said, there's only so much stew you can make from one oyster.

     "So… yeah. We assume they're accelerating at something equal to, or less than, their normal gravity on their homeworld. You can argue some reasons for trying to exceed their normal gravity acceleration, but I don't think they'd be reasonable for a long-term transit like this."

     "So they come from a planet with roughly our gravity?"

     "Or higher, but they're accelerating slower because it's more comfortable, or maybe this is the maximum acceleration their drive can manage. Handwaving even faster from what we know, though, I would guess that they do have gravity about like ours. Main reason is that if you're doing an interstellar jump, you're going to want to get moving as fast as you can. If we agree that they're not going to risk dangerous acceleration for their population, then that says that they're likely running right at their normal comfort level."

     Chris touched some buttons and a little set of images appeared. "Of course, just because it has the same gravity doesn't mean it's much like Earth; it could be a lot less dense, and larger in diameter, or really dense and smaller, both of which have implications for atmospheric density, scale height, and so on." He indicated another image, showing several stars.

"On the positive side, we are almost certain that Fenrir came from this particular star. It's a K-class dwarf, so somewhat cooler than our own Sun. I would guess that their planet orbits more closely to their star than the Earth, and they might have a range of vision that dips a bit more into the infrared than ours, as its spectrum peaks more closely to orange than yellow, which is where old Sol peaks."

      "How certain are we that they have vision at all?"

     "Madame… Jeanne, we're not certain of anything other than they're technologically advanced. But the ability to sense light is extremely widespread in our own biology, from single-celled organisms and up, and it makes sense that they have to have some kind of way to perceive the light spectrum, because they have astronomy. Maybe they see radio waves, but I'd doubt it for a number of reasons; the way atmospheres that support life like ours block various wavelengths, I'd bet on visible light and near-infrared, so maybe between about four hundred or five hundred nanometers up to about twelve hundred or so."

     "Will they have radio, then?"

     He shrugged. "I can't imagine that they don't, really. To get to the level of technology they're at, they'd have to have a really comprehensive understanding of the universe, at least as good as ours, and the utility of all the different wavelengths, from long-wave radio all the way to the gamma and cosmic ray spectra, would be obvious."

     The President's mouth tightened. "Which returns me to the concern. If they are that advanced, they must be receiving our signals. They must be able to tell that these particular signals are directed at them; we're beaming them through our most powerful systems, focused on them. These signals would have to be the strongest they're receiving from us, yes?"

     "Absolutely," agreed York. "Probably by a couple of orders of magnitude."

     "Could they be so alien that they can't understand the progressions we're sending?"

     York and Chris glanced at each other, then York spread his hands in a "who knows?" gesture. "Could they? We know so little that we have to admit it's possible. But… they appear to have made technology that goes along lines we mostly understand. They had to have encountered the same basic problems, with the same answers, to thousands, to millions, of scientific, technological, engineering-related issues. They would have to have gained an intimate understanding of mathematics and its connection to the behavior of the natural world. So I would find it unlikely in the extreme that they couldn't  understand our transmissions, given any effort to do so."

     Stephanie felt a chill that had nothing to do with room temperature. "So either they don't consider it worth the effort to bother understanding our signal, or they're deliberately refusing to answer."

     "That…" York hesitated, then grimaced, running fingers through hair more sparse than it had been when he won his Nobel. "I am afraid I have to agree with that assessment."

     "So in your view, I am right to be concerned?" That was the tone of the President, not "Jeanne".

     "I don't…" York glanced to Stephanie.

     You're throwing this at me?

     But Dr. Dobyns had been throwing things her way, ever since he appeared, and she realized that this was the point. If she wanted to stay "Dr. Stephanie Bronson, discoverer of Fenrir", she couldn't let other people – even those ostensibly more educated and qualified – become the primary voice and face of Fenrir.

     All right. Grab on for the ride. "What Dr. Dobyns would like to say," Stephanie began, "is that as scientists we really don't like making those kind of statements. But you need one, so…" She took a deep breath. "Yes. You are. We only have experience with a few intelligent species of any kind – humanity, some cetaceans, birds, apes, and possibly cephalopods. Of those, only one is technologically advanced, so it's the only guide we have to work from.

     "If they aren't even bothering to decode it, it means that our presence or absence literally doesn't matter to them. Since they have come here, at considerable effort and expense however they might measure it, they had to know there was a living, if not at the time technologically advanced, planet here. Any reason I can come up with for them to not care that we're here is at the least worrisome."

     "And if they've interpreted it, but aren't answering?" the President asked when she paused.

     "Well… it doesn't quite imply the 'you are ants' possibility as the first does, but it's still problematic. Human history gives way too many bad possibilities. Perhaps their religion told them they were the only possible intelligent life; our very presence would threaten that and they'd be wanting to hide it from their own people as well as avoid contact with us. Or some of them want to answer, others don't, and there's a major conflict on board. Or they don't want to talk because they are afraid any conversation will reveal either their intentions, or a weakness. None of these are good situations."

     She looked at York. "Have we resolved any details on Fenrir itself?"

     "Not yet, I'm afraid. It's just approaching a distance where we can see that it's not just a point of light; getting details of any kind will not happen until it is almost here."

     The President nodded, sighed, and stood there quietly for a moment. "Thank you. Keep me updated on any change, no matter how small."

     "Absolutely, Madame President," Stephanie said, echoed by the others.

     When the door closed behind the President, Stephanie let a long-held breath out with a whoosh. "She is not happy."

     "No more am I," York said. "But I am absolutely happy that I am not in her shoes."

     That much Stephanie could agree with. Hard enough to deal with the science. The politics? Those would be the real killer.

     "All right, let's get back to it. Plenty of other people will be seeing this even if she doesn't need to, and this presentation's not going to write itself!"

 

 



No, they never do.