Roadside Picnic

"What can I say?” Noonan was mumbling. He was sorry that he had ever started the conversation. There was nothing to talk about. “What has changed for me? Well, for several years now I've been feeling uneasy, insecure. All right. So they came and left right away. And what if they come again and decide to stay? As a businessman, I have to take these questions seriously: who are they, how do they live, what do they need? On the most basic level I have to think how to change my product. I have to be ready. And what if I turn out to be completely superfluous in their system?” He livened up. “What if we are superfluous? Listen, Valentine, since we're talking about it, are there any answers to these questions? Who are they, what did they want, will they return?"

"There are answers,” Valentine said, smiling. “Lots of them, take your pick."

"And what do you think yourself?"

"To tell the truth, I never permitted myself the luxury of thinking about it seriously. For me the Visitation is primarily a unique event that allows us to skip several steps in the process of cognition. Like a trip into the future of technology. Like a quantum generator ending up in Isaac Newton's laboratory."

"Newton wouldn't have understood a thing."

"You're wrong. Newton was a very perspicacious man."

"Really? Well, who cares about him anyway. What do you think about the Visitation? You can answer unseriously."

"All right, I'll tell you. But I must warn you that your question, Richard, comes under the heading of xenology. Xenology: an unnatural mixture of science fiction and formal logic. It's based on the false premise that human psychology is applicable to extraterrestrial intelligent beings."

"Why is that false?” Noonan asked.

"Because biologists have already been burned trying to use human psychology on animals. Earth animals, at that."

"Forgive me, but that's an entirely different matter. We're talking about the psychology of rational beings."

"Yes. And everything would be fine if we only knew what reason was."

"Don't we know?” Noonan was surprised.

"Believe it or not, we don't. Usually a trivial definition is used: reason is that part of man's activity that distinguishes him from the animals. You know, an attempt to distinguish the owner from the dog who understands everything but just can't speak. Actually, this trivial definition gives rise to rather more ingenious ones. Based on bitter observation of the above-mentioned human activities. For example: reason is the ability of a living creature to perform unreasonable or unnatural acts."

"Yes, that's about us, about me, and those like me,” Noonan agreed bitterly.

"Unfortunately. Or how about this hypothetical definition. Reason is a complex type of instinct that has not yet formed completely. This implies that instinctual behavior is always purposeful and natural. A million years from now our instinct will have matured and we will stop making the mistakes that are probably integral to reason. And then, if something should change in the universe, we will all become extinct—precisely because we will have forgotten how to make mistakes, that is, to try various approaches not stipulated by an inflexible program of permitted alternatives."

"Somehow you make it all sound demeaning."

"All right, how about another definition—a very lofty and noble one. Reason is the ability to use the forces of the environment without destroying that environment."

Noonan grimaced and shook his head.

"No, that's not about us. How about this: 'man, as opposed to animals, is a creature with an undefinable need for knowledge'? I read that somewhere."

"So have I,” said Valentine. “But the whole problem with that is that the average man—the one you have in mind when you talk about 'us' and 'not us'—very easily manages to overcome this need for knowledge. I don't believe that need even exists. There is a need to understand, and you don't need knowledge for that. The hypothesis of God, for instance, gives an incomparably absolute opportunity to understand everything and know absolutely nothing. Give man an extremely simplified system of the world and explain every phenomenon away on the basis of that system. An approach like that doesn't require any knowledge. Just a few memorized formulas plus so-called intuition and so-called common sense."

"Hold on,” Noonan said. He finished his beer and set the mug noisily on the table. “Don't get off the track. Let's get back to the subject on hand. Man meets an extraterrestrial creature. How do they find out that they are both rational creatures?"

"I haven't the slightest idea,” Valentine said with great pleasure. “Everything I've read on the subject comes down to a vicious circle. If they are capable of making contact, then they are rational. And vice versa; if they are rational, they are capable of contact. And in general: if an extraterrestrial creature has the honor of possessing human psychology, then it is rational. Like that."