Agent to the Stars, John Scalzi [paper ebook reader .TXT] 📗

Two thousand Yherajk sprouted tentacles and waved back.

“I have said that you acknowledge the host of the ship and wish them happiness at this moment of the journey,” Gwedif said. “It’s more or less the correct response and doesn’t commit you to anything further. Was that all right?”

“Yes,” I said, sitting back down.

“Good,” Gwedif said. “Uake is now speaking to you about the journey, and what we have learned of your people through your radio and television transmissions. What he’s saying is completely untranslatable due to the complexity of the High Speech structures he is using, but the upshot of it is that while your transmissions point to a rich and fascinating culture, we also have found them contradictory and confusing at the same time. There is no structure to your planet’s transmissions into space.”

“Well, it’s television, you know,” I said. “It’s meant to be understood by humans and not intended for anyone else. You’re just getting the leakage. I do believe that we have a scientific program that is beaming messages for alien cultures into outer space, but that’s the only thing that’s intended for non-human audiences.”

“The ientcio wishes to inform you that we have indeed received those messages from SETI and have found them….amusing is probably the best word. Television is much more interesting.”

It was a good thing Carl Sagan wasn’t alive to hear those words. Gwedif continued. “The ientcio says that we have found that we have been able to learn something of you from television and radio. Some of us, and I am obviously being referred to here, have learned English, and have begun to piece together something of a world and cultural history of your planet.

“But we have become aware that we have been quite unable to make a clear distinction between what is factual and what is fictional — what represents your true culture and what constitutes your imaginings. We understand the distinction, for example, between your news reports and your entertainment programs. But we lack the context to tell which is the exaggeration of the other. This is a source of frustration for us — to the Yherajk, you can at times seem to be a culture of pathological liars, unable yourselves to tell the difference between truth and falsity. You can see how that can make us nervous to initiate contact. We need someone to help us create a context, so we can separate the truth from the lies and make an accurate reckoning of the status of your planet.

“This is of specific interest to us as it relates to your planet’s tendencies towards the idea of alien contact. The SETI program implies that your planet is actively seeking contact with other peoples, but your entertainments show you to be hostile to the idea, full of the fear that the peoples you encounter will try to subjugate your planet. Moreover, when you do show aliens as friendly or benevolent, they tend to be humanoid in appearance. When they are hostile or violent, they tend to appear like us. Obviously, this is very worrying.”

“I think you are underestimating the influence of special effects budgets on that particular question,” I said.

“The ientcio agrees that this might be the case — again it comes to a question of context and knowledge of the culture. He hopes that now you may understand our predicament.

“You are one of the most powerful men in the industry that creates the programs that are beamed off of your planet, and have become so because of your character and intelligence. You are in a unique position to help us understand the distinctions between what is real and what is fanciful, between the things that your planet hopes for and the things that your planet fears. It is his hope, and he wishes to stress, the hope of every Yherajk on this ship, that you would be able to help us in our efforts to understand your people, to give us a grounding in the reality of humanity that only a human can.”

I blinked. “Is that it? You want advice?”

“For starters,” Gwedif said.

“Well, of course I’ll help you with that any way I can,” I said. “But I don’t know how much help that will be. You understand that even humans don’t understand humanity most of the time. I could tell you everything I know, but it would only be my opinion. And it would take years to get it all down at that.”

“The ientcio understands that you are just one man among billions. Nevertheless, of those billions, you are one whose skills and mind lend themselves most favorably to our needs. As for taking years to know what you know —” Gwedif stopped for a moment, seemed to collect himself.

“As for taking years,” he continued, “We have another way.”

*****

Tom, did Joshua ever tell you how the Yherajk reproduce? No? Well, I’m not too surprised about that; it’s an immensely personal event. On the cell level, all Yherajk are the same — massive colonies of asexually reproducing, single-celled organisms. But their experiences are different and unique to each Yherajk. Think of them as a race of identical twins, sharing the same genetic information but obviously separate people, divided by their individual experiences.

When humans learned about genetics, they began arguing whether people are the way they are due to genetics or environment; what our genes are versus our experiences. With the Yherajk, this isn’t even a debate — since they’re all the same genetically, who they are is all about experiences. Personality is all.

Yherajk personalities are remarkable things. For example, once they are formed, they can be transferred. Their personalities don’t have to stay in a particular body. That personality and set of experiences can go from one body to another — if, for example, that body were dying of disease or something else of that nature. Yherajk do a much simplified version of this when they transmit information; a single Yherajk can go off and have a set of experiences, and when it comes back, it connects with an entire group and ‘downloads’ its memories to the whole group. Then all the Yherajk there know what that one knew.

But it requires physical contact and takes a great deal of time. The Yherajk High Speech, which is an even more simplified version of this, performs the same function by encoding a concept as an aromatic molecule, which is then set aloft and automatically decoded by the Yherajk who come in contact with it. It’d be like having an entire memory created in your head simply by someone saying a word. Fascinating stuff, Tom.

In Yherajk reproduction, the personalities do something else entirely — they meld with another personality. The Yherajk join together into one mass, and, rather than simply transferring information or even a ‘soul’ from one body to another, the individual souls interact over the entire mass of their combined body. Some portions of one personality end up being dominant, and other portions from the other personality end up being dominant.

After those personality traits are figured out, the mass splits into two parts. One of those parts splits again and becomes the original Yherajk that had melded, with their own personality traits and memory intact, but physically smaller than they were before. The other part is an entirely new personality: it has the memories and intellect of its parents, but it comes with a brand new ‘soul,’ if you will, made of the new, melded personality, and it’s ready to go — there’s no childhood, per se, with the Yherajk.

This melding isn’t easy — it requires the Yherajk in question to surrender their will and allow another entity, another soul, to mingle freely with its own. This other soul surrenders to you and you to it — complete communion. But with the ultimate risk: a Yherajk’s defenses are down — the other Yherajk, if it has been insincere in the joining, can attack the other’s personality and destroy it, replacing it totally with its own. This is a “soul death,” and causing it to happen is the worst crime a Yherajk can commit against another Yherajk. A large part of the reluctance of the Yherajk to speak about their reproduction comes from its potential to change in an instant from an act of perfect union to one of the ultimate rape.

But it’s rare — far more rare than murder is with us. Most of the time, it is a joyous experience — and apparently better for them than sex is for us.

The interesting thing is that while nearly all reproductions occur between two Yherajk, there is no theoretical barrier on having the melding occur between three, four or even more. It’s vastly more complicated, and it takes longer for the personality traits to suss out, but it can be done. Gwedif told me that one of the great memory epics of the Yherajk involved a exploring colony, under siege from attackers, who all melded together in the desperate hope of birthing a hero who could save them from destruction. The colony numbered 400. It worked — of course. Otherwise it wouldn’t be an epic. For millennia, partially out of respect for the epic, that had been the record.

The ientcio of the Ionar was planning to break that record. He proposed 2000 — the entire crew of the Ionar. And one human as well.

*****

“I’m not following you,” I said to Gwedif, after he translated the ientcio’s proposal.

“The ientcio implores you to meld with us,” Gwedif said. “Pool your knowledge with ours and help us birth a new Yherajk — one that has an intimate understanding of humanity, who can help us learn, quickly, easily, whether our two people can be joined in friendship. It would be a great gift — and you would be remembered not only as our first human friend, but also a parent, the most important parent, of the greatest Yherajk in our race’s long history. As he will be — one that two thousand of us have surrendered our wills to create. It is a powerful event.”

I looked out into the mass of Yherajk, and got the distinct impression that two thousand of them were waiting for me to say something. Anything. Tom, I got stage fright. But there was nowhere to go.

I stalled for time. “I don’t know if you noticed this,” I said, “But I’m not a Yherajk. I don’t meld very well.”

“With your permission, the ientcio says,” Gwedif said, “I will act as your conduit.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

Gwedif paused for a moment. “Aw, hell,” he said at last. “Uake has just sent some High Speech crap that I’m not even going to try to translate. Carl, what it means is that I’d stick tendrils into your brain, read your memories, and transmit them to the rest of the crew. Bluntly speaking, I’ll be rooting around your skull, looking for the good stuff.”

“It sounds painful,” I said.

“It won’t be, I promise,” Gwedif said. “But you’re going to feel stuffed-up like you wouldn’t believe. Carl, don’t misunderstand, I’ll be effectively downloading your brain to the group. In the melding union, there are no secrets — and the offspring of this melding will know what you know. We know we’re asking a lot of you, more than has been asked of any of us. If you don’t want to do this, then don’t.”

“What will happen if I say no?” I asked.

“Nothing,” Gwedif said. “We would never try to compel you to a melding.”

I looked out at the crew. “And every one of you is willing to do this?”

“We are.”

“What if one of you tries to take over the rest? Isn’t that possible? What would happen to me?”

“You’ll be connecting to the group through me,” Gwedif