The Magnificent Wilf Read online

  “I’m very pleased and flattered, sir,” said Tom. “I’ll be particularly happy if Lucy and I don’t have to talk about Mr. Rejilla’s visit; and I take it I won’t be responsible to Miles or have to talk about my work at all with anyone but you?”

  “That’s right,” said Domango. “And you, Lucy?”

  He turned his attention to her.

  “Do you have any comment or objection to any of this?” he added. “I want it to be something you’re both happy with. For one thing, Lucy, you’ll be considered with Tom as on full-time duty for the Secretariat. If you have questions or doubts, let me have them now. Because, to be frank with you both, I’m hoping Mr. Rejilla was right; and, somewhere along the line, what he discovered in you may make it possible for you to give us much greater insights into the other Alien races we come into contact with.”

  “I think it’s a fine idea,” said Lucy. “Do I understand you right, Mr. Secretary? You do want me working along with Tom?”

  “Absolutely,” said Domango. “You were equally praised by Mr. Rejilla, and apparently have equal potential to be helpful to the Secretariat. I’m sorry, though, that I don’t have the authority from the Oprinkians right now to expose you, as well, to the same special briefing that Tom has had.”

  “I understand,” said Lucy reassuringly—but thinking a little wistfully all the same about access to whatever it was that had enabled Tom to absorb nine hundred and twenty-seven languages in a little over an hour and a quarter, so that he spoke each like a native.

  “Mr. Rejilla’s going to try to arrange for an exception in your particular case,” went on Domango, “so you can get that training eventually; since the technology was given us with the understanding that it was for our whole world, eventually; but it was to be kept under certain strict controls to begin with.”

  “I really don’t mind waiting,” lied Lucy.

  “It shouldn’t be too bad, meanwhile,” said Domango. “Since you and Tom will ordinarily be together when you’re in touch with Aliens. Also, if your work takes you off-Earth, you’ll be on worlds at least like ours—that is at least on probation to be rated as civilized—and you may be omni-lingual at some time, we hope, in the near future.”

  “Good!” said Lucy.

  A dulcet chime sounded on the air. Domango pressed a button on his desk unit.

  “Who is it?” he asked.

  A feminine voice answered.

  “Albert Miles to see you, sir.”

  “Tell him to wait,” said Domango. He punched the button again and turned his attention back to Tom and Lucy. Tom’s earlier twinge of conscience about Daneraux’s fate was now replaced by a warm, pleasant sensation at the thought of Albert Miles outside, cooling his heels in the Secretary’s inner reception office, with not even a spider to look at while he waited.

  “Well, I think that covers everything,” said Domango. “Tom, as Technical Advisor Grade One, you’ll naturally have to have an office to yourself. We’re a little short on space, as you know, but we’ve arranged to have you take over one of the conference rooms on a temporary basis; until Building and Grounds finishes building a new wall to cut off some of Albert’s space and make a separate room for you.”

  “Thank you,” said Tom, smiling.

  “The construction is already underway,” Domango went on. “In fact, Albert has been having a little difficulty getting things done, he tells me, with all the work going on. That may be why he is here now. You may already be aware of it, but an Alien is due to arrive —the Ambassador of the Jaktal Empire is going to be here in ten days for an official visit. He’ll be bringing some of the Empire’s barbarian subject Races, with him. The private and special information on them, too, has now been released to add to your briefing, Tom. You two must be ready for that visit.”

  “Yes sir,” they both said.

  “Then that takes care of everything, I think,” said Domango. “Since we’ve only got those few days between now and then, Tom—and since you’ve also got clearance generally in this matter of Alien technology—I suggest you concentrate on exploring the details of as much general Alien culture and conditions as the briefings made available to us, so that you actually can perform as a Technical Advisor on Alien galactic Races.”

  “I’ll do that, Mr. Secretary.” Tom was, in fact, impatient to explore this earlier peripheral information. He had a boundless curiosity; and had gone through some rather elaborate struggles to get a position on the Secretariat staff.

  “I know,” Domango said, “this will probably be rather like asking you to memorize the Encyclopaedia Britannica, even with the incredible speed with which these Alien devices work—”

  “I can do it,” said Tom, bravely.

  “If you can, I will be very greatful,” said Domango. “Now, if you’ll forgive me, I think I’d better let Albert in to see me.”

  He stood up behind his desk and shook hands with first Lucy, and then Tom, with the utmost courtesy.

  “Goodbye for the moment then,” he said.

  “Goodbye sir,” said Tom and Lucy both; and went out. Albert glared at them briefly on his way in.

  “Isn’t there any more to it than that?” asked Lucy, as Toni lifted his burden into the official automated Secretariat limousine, lent them by Domango for their use during the next ten days. The Secretariat owned five such limousines; and they were primarily for transporting important Alien visitors.

  “Yes,” said Tom, putting the laptop-sized device down on the floor of the limousine’s back seat, as the vehicle itself pulled away into noon rush-hour traffic. “I was surprised when I first saw it, myself. But as Domango explained to me, most of these Alien devices have been refined over hundreds, if not thousands, of years, so that they’re very compact.”

  “The traffic is somewhat thick,” came the automated voice of the limousine. “Should I turn on my siren? Or would you prefer to fly instead, sir?”

  “Oh I think, fly,” said Tom, with a wave of his hand.

  “Yes, sir,” said the limousine. It lifted into the air and soared away above all the confusion on the ground toward Tom and Lucy’s home, a hundred and fifty miles west.

  “What an excellent way to travel,” said Lucy, gazing out the window at some clouds they were passing by. She looked again at the device Tom had brought into the back seat. “I don’t suppose I could just listen in from time to time, when it’s teaching you something?” she said.

  “You could, of course,” said Tom. “But it would be a betrayal of my trust. You heard Domango. On the other hand, maybe it’ll only be a matter of a few weeks before you’re authorized to use it yourself.”

  “There’s that, I suppose,” said Lucy, looking out at the clouds again.

  “On the other hand,” said Tom, “I’m specifically allowed to share absolutely necessary information with you. That effectively means I can tell you about anything I find that is interesting—that’s quite permissible. Since the device will automatically note and store what I tell you, however, even if we aren’t in the same room with it, what I tell you can’t add up to any full revelation of any single area of information.”

  They exchanged the kind of glance between them that only married couples of experience can exchange.

  “It will be very interesting to hear what you tell,” said Lucy.

  “You’re going to set it up in the library?” she asked, when they got home. The library was actually a little nook off one corner of the living room, but it had loaded bookshelves and a curtain that could be pulled, to separate it off from the living room—although usually it was left open.

  “Go walk?” telepathed Rex, eagerly, coming in.

  “I’m afraid not now, old son,” said Tom. “Work.”

  Rex’s ears drooped. His tail drooped.

  “No walk?” he asked.

  “I’ll go out for a little while with you, Rex,” said Lucy. “But just for a few minutes. I’ll leave you when you start sniffing around after things. You’ve got lots
to look at and roam around in.”

  It was true. Their home was not in any way an extraordinarily large and expensive house. But it was lucky enough to have a backyard that ran up against a section of parkland that was as yet uncleared. Essentially this parkland was full of bushes, spruce and fir trees and such like.

  There were small paths all the way through it. In addition, there were three magnificent trees in the backyard itself, that were a heritage from the time of the farmhouse that had occupied this site, before it had been turned into a residential area.

  What with the park’s fencing and their own, Rex had an enclosed area of about five acres to roam in and investigate. These five acres were peopled by squirrels, a raccoon or two, rabbits and other small creatures, as well as birds in season. There was a bird feeder in the backyard and a bird bath, but neither of these attracted Rex as much as the uncleared area.

  That space had been the strongest part of Tom’s argument in getting Lucy to agree to their having Rex as a puppy. Tom had always wanted a Great Dane. On the other hand, Rex—although he had not known it as a puppy—needed a kingdom, not a city lot; and this was it.

  Lucy and Rex went out and Tom settled down with the device. Apparently, its only controls were the single touch-point that turned it on or off. The device, he remembered, was sensitive both to his touch and voice.

  “Details of Races represented on the Council for our Galactic Sector,” he said, and laid his finger on the touch-point. Immediately, the house was nowhere around him. He was off among Alien worlds.

  This time he seemed to be under water.

  If it was not water he was under, then he was in some other dense medium which made it difficult to see anything at a distance, although the medium was transparent. That is to say, most of it was transparent. Very close to him was a large black area, about the size of the front end of a cross-country truck.

  “Welcome, visitor,” said what seemed to be two voices speaking at once, one incredibly deep and one almost as high-pitched as the chirping of a bird. They spoke in unison, and it was only their tones that identified them as separate voicings.

  There was also no apparent movement in the black area he was seeing, but the voices seemed to be coming from it. He looked more closely at the large black area, leaning his head out a little to one side; and saw that it was not just a black area close up, but the front end of what seemed to be a large dark body stretching away until its further end was lost in the blurring effect of the medium that surrounded them.

  “Since you are watching this particular material,” the voices went on, “you are, relative to me, a creature from a small race. Therefore I, from a relatively large race and with an undoubtedly greatly different environment than the one you are familiar with on your own homeworld, have deliberately been chosen to be your Answerer in this instance.”

  “Why?” asked Tom, still craning his head out to see if he could not at least glimpse the further end of this creature.

  “To emphasize the fact,” said the two voices, “that there is no comparability between races. If you consider yourself large in your own terms, somewhere there is an Alien race much larger. If you consider yourself small in your own terms, then somewhere there is a civilized race much, much smaller.”

  This Alien, Tom thought, was like nothing so much as a whale—but an enormous whale. The mother of all whales.

  “Now,” the voices were going on, “further conversation is up to you. It has been determined that what is best absorbed by any civilized mind is something about which that mind is curious in the first place. Therefore we do not instruct, we merely answer any and all questions. Do not feel that you might ask any question that would be emotionally distasteful or unkind to me. We are too dissimilar for any question of yours to produce any such emotional reaction. Now, I leave it to you. Ask what you wish.”

  Tom could feel his heart beating fast with excitement in his chest. A wealth of questions presented themselves to his mind, and he grabbed blindly at one that was closest.

  “How big are you?” he asked.

  “The part of me here—that which you see—” answered the Answerer, “would be, in your most familiar terms…”

  There was an infinitesimal pause.

  “—several hundred feet in what you would call length; and proportionate to that, in other dimensions. Those are the figures of course, as I say, only of the part of me that you see. The rest of me is elsewhere.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Tom. He waited for some kind of explanation, but the Alien said nothing. Apparently the other would answer only to direct questions.

  “You keep talking about yourself as an individual,” said Tom, getting more and more interested, “but I distinctly hear two voices from you. Do you have two parallel mechanisms for speaking—or what?”

  “No,” said the Answerer. “What you think you hear is the best possible translation of the fact that I speak over a much larger range than you do—now, that’s assuming that our communication methods are the same, which they aren’t—but for a practical answer to your question at the moment, let me just say that what I have—in terms of how you communicate—is a much larger vocal range. So that at any given time I’m speaking both in supersonic tones above the range you can hear and in the sub-sonic range, below. The result of this is that you are—or seem to be—hearing two voices speaking at once. But actually there’s only one.”

  “But,” said Tom, “you also talked about part of yourself being elsewhere. Does part of your body detach itself and go off and do something else?”

  “Not exactly,” said the Answerer. “It’s more the way you can think of one thing and your mind be busy with it while doing something else. I suppose it is, in fact, a sort of detachment; only, translated into the physical terms you would think of using.”

  “I suppose,” said Tom. The Alien Being’s answer did not quite make sense, but that was probably all the answer he would get.

  He continued asking questions, becoming more and more interested as he did so. In the case of some of these, he thought he understood the answer very well indeed—in others, not. In the end he sat talking to the Answerer for some time.

  “… You’re getting tired,” said the Answerer, finally. “I suggest you take a rest now, and let our conversation rest in the back of your mind. Little by little, it will begin to fit together—not only with your own experience and view of the universe, but with other things you will discover from other Answerers you will talk to. So I will say farewell for now.”

  “Farewell,” said Tom—and woke up to find Lucy shaking him.

  “Tom!” Lucy was saying. “Tom, wake up! Are you all right?”

  Tom sat up and blinked. Outside the windows of the house, it was late afternoon.

  “I’m fine,” he said. “… I think.”

  “Well it’s time for dinner,” said Lucy. “I’ve been fixing it. I came in, saw you looking concentrated there, and decided that I wouldn’t disturb you. But it’s down to the point where the food’s ready; and every time I come in, I see you looking exactly the same way. Finally, I got worried.”

  “I was talking to an Alien,” said Tom.

  “An Alien? What kind of an Alien?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Tom, still trying to sort out his memories of the conversation. “It’s something like the three spirits that come and visit Scrooge in Dickens’ Christmas Carol I met someone, but whoever it was was rather hard to describe—what he had to tell me was even harder to understand.”

  He shook his head, physically trying to put what he had just been through completely out of his mind.

  “Never mind,” he said, getting to his feet. “Now that I think of it, I’m starving!”

  He did his best to put the whole experience with the Answerer out of his mind for the moment, and by bedtime he had just about succeeded. That night he slept very soundly, but there were occasional dreams in which he was back in the underwaterlike environment talking to the
enormous Alien. If this was a sample, he thought, waking from one such dream with it still vivid in his mind, what would it be like with the other Answerers—or whatever they would call themselves—in the device he had brought home?

  During the rest of the ten days he found out. In fact, by the seventh day he had exhausted the variety of Answerers he met in the device and started back through them to get a clearer idea of what he had experienced with them before. He discovered first, to his surprise and then his intense interest, that each time through he could ask a completely new set of questions. In that respect the equipment seemed to have no limit.

  By the time the Jaktal Ambassador was due to arrive on Earth, however, Tom had been introduced only to a small fraction of the nine hundred and twenty-seven Alien races whose languages he had been taught by the same device; be began to realize what an impossible task it would be for him to familiarize himself completely, even with just the important Races. Each different type of Alien could take a lifetime of study to know.

  Nevertheless, as the first Answerer had predicted, he found what he learned from one of them beginning to make sense in context with what he learned from another, so that he did grow in understanding of the ones with which he talked. More than that, he began to get an idea of how alien an Alien had to be to exist on a totally different world.

  Meanwhile, he had met Aliens the size of ants, Aliens like skinny kangaroos, Aliens that were perfect spheres—more like bowling balls than anything else, except that they seemed to be capable of growing any number of tentacles practically instantaneously—and many seemed also able to levitate themselves and drift around on the local winds. These, and many more, had broken some kind of interior glass barrier of notions in him, about Aliens in general.

  But the day for the reception of the Jaktal Ambassador, put on by the Jaktal visitors themselves, finally arrived. Tom and Lucy rode to it in another of the Secretariat’s special limousines, with Tom feeling that he was much more prepared to meet in the flesh those Aliens who had come, like Mr. Rejilla, to his own native Earth.