Bears Discover Fire

“A communications protocol.” The sound of the voice was completely out of synch with the image’s mouth. Also, the sound did not seem to come from anywhere; I heard it directly with my mind, not my ears.

“From where?” asked Hvarlgen.

“A two-device.”

The lunies sitting in a row on the bed were absolutely still. No one in the room was breathing; including me.

“What is a two-device?” asked Hvarlgen.

This time the lips were almost in synch with the words; “One and”—the Shadow inclined toward us in a curious, almost courtly gesture—“the Other.”

The sound seemed to originate inside my head, like a memory of a voice. Like a memory, it seemed perfectly clear but characterless. I wondered if it were my voice, as the image was “my” image, but I couldn’t tell.

“What Other?” Hvarlgen asked.

“Only one Other.”

“What do you want?”

As if in answer, the image began to flicker again, and I was suddenly sick to my stomach. The next thing I knew I was looking down into the bowl, at the original dark non-substance we had called the Shadow. Though still dark it seemed clearer, and cold, and deep. I was suddenly conscious of the cold stars blazing through the dome overhead; the fierce vacuum all around; the cold plastic chair on my butt.

“Major?”

Hvarlgen’s hand was on my wrist. I looked up—to applause from the bed where the lunies were sitting, like bright yellow birds, all in a row.

“Nobody leaves!” said Hvarlgen. She went around the room. All agreed on what the Shadow had said. All agreed that it had been inside their heads, more like the memory of a voice, or an imaginary voice, than a sound. All agreed that it had not been my voice.

“Now everybody leave,” she said. “Dr. Kim and I need to have a talk.”

“Including me?” I asked.

“You can stay. And he can stay.” She pointed toward the bowl, which the lunies were placing back on its table.

They left it by the door.

“Damn!” said Hvarlgen. Irrationally, she shook the recorder but there was no record of the Shadow’s words, any more than of its image. “The problem is, we have no hard evidence of any communication at all. And yet we all know it happened.”

Dr. Kim took a snort of PeaceAble and smiled somewhat inscrutably. “Unless we think the Major here was hypnotizing us.”

“Which we don’t,” said Hvarlgen. It was late afternoon. We were having still more coffee under the magnolia.

“But what I don’t understand,” she said, “is how can it make us hear without making a print, a track in the air.”

“Clearly, it works directly on the hearing centers in the brain,” Dr. Kim said.

“Without a physical event?” said Hvarlgen. “Without a material connection? That’s telepathy!”

“It’s all physical,” said Dr. Kim. “Or none of it. Is that thing material? Maybe it accesses our brains visually. We were all looking at it when we heard it talk. The brain is stuff just as much as air is stuff. Light is stuff. Consciousness is stuff.”

“So why the physical contact at all?” I asked. “The Shadow’s not really here; I can’t feel it, we can’t touch it or even photograph it. Why does it have to enter my body at all? If it does, why can’t it just sort of slip in through the skin, or the eyes, instead of… the way it does.”

“Maybe it’s scanning you,” Hvarlgen said. “For the image.”

“And maybe it can only scan certain types,” said Dr. Kim. “Or maybe it’s restricted. Just as we might be forbidden to trade with Stone Age tribesmen, they—whoever or whatever they are—might have a prohibition against certain stages or kinds of life.”

“You mean the ‘New Growth’ business?” I asked.

“Right. Maybe old folks seem less vulnerable to them. Maybe the contact is destructive to growing tissue. Or even fatal. Look at what happened to Mersault. But I’m just guessing! And my guess is that you have not quite finished menopause, Sunda, right?”

She smiled. Just as her scowls were smiles, her smiles were grimaces. “Not quite.”

“See? And in my case, perhaps the flourishing cancer with its exorbitant greed for life was mistaken for youth.

Anyway… perhaps we are dealing with prohibitions. Formalities. Perhaps even the innovative mode of contact is a formality, like a handshake. What could be more logical?” Dr. Kim took another snort of PeaceAble, filling the infirmary with a sweet heavy smell.

“It’s hard to think of it as a handshake,” I said.

“Why? The anus, the asshole in vulgar parlance, is sort of a joke, but in our secret heart of hearts, for all of us, it’s the seat—so to speak—of the physical being. It may be perceived by this Other as the seat of consciousness as well.

We’re much more conscious of it than, say, the heart. Certainly more conscious of it physically than the brain. It alerts us to danger by tightening up. It even speaks from time to time…”

“Okay, okay,” said Hvarlgen. “We get the point. Let’s get back to work. Shall we go again?”

“Without the lunies?” Dr. Kim asked.

“Why not?”