Donald Moffitt - Genesis 02

Ang about it. Ang said the only difference between keys is that they’re higher or lower.”
    “Colors!” Jao said suddenly. “Numbers have different colors. That’s how I remember them. Equations transform the colors. I thought everybody saw numbers that way.”
    “Drugs will induce that kind of cross talk sometimes,” Ame said. “Your nervous system just happens to work that way naturally.”
    Jao grinned. “Hey, Ame, what if you see flashing lights when you bump your elbow?”
    “What about it?”
    “Me, I get a pain in my elbow when I see flashing lights.”
    Bram cut through the clowning. “So our new neighbors have a neural hookup between the sounds of their language and some sort of visual grid?”
    “And they see the different planes of polarized light, don’t forget that.”
    “What kind of eyes must they have?” he wondered.
    “Nothing like ours. Or the longfoots. Or the Cuddlies. Or any other kind of mammalian life we know about.” She hesitated. “They may not have a continuous field of vision. They may see things as a mosaic.”
    It was a very strange thought. “What would the world look like to them?” Bram wondered aloud.
    “We’ll have to ask them, won’t we?”
    Bram turned his attention to Jao’s screen. Jao was fiddling with images. He had made a sort of netlike structure out of green lines. The net kept stretching itself out of shape and changing the relationships between its warp and woof. It also kept trying to bend itself around various abstract three-dimensional shapes.
    The snaps and clicks kept pouring from the loudspeaker. Bram could see that each one generated an orange dot within the distorted squares of the net. The showers of dots kept trying to arrange themselves into patterns within the ever-changing net.
    “Are we still trying to get their attention on the frequency they use?” Bram asked.
    “Yar, I’ve got a loop going on the transmitter. Trist is trying to raise their ship with the same program. Imitating their grid without knowing the coordinates is gobbledy-gook, but they still should extract a pattern.”
    Bram shook his head. “I thought they might have tried to contact us by now. The way they set down so abruptly after their flyover of our camp.”
    “We’re keeping watch from a little way up the moonrope,” Jao said. “Some volunteers set up a telescope station on top of the stalled moon car. They’ll let us know right away if anything starts moving in our direction.” He adjusted a dial. “But I don’t think they’re coming. It’s going to be up to us.”
     
    Jorv showed up a few minutes later, impatient to start. He wore a vacuum suit with the helmet tucked under his arm. “I’ve been suited up for an hour,” he said. “When do we go?”
    “Not for a couple of hours,” Bram said. “They’re getting the walkers wound up and rounding up supplies and equipment. And some of our people need time to get ready.”
    That was Heln. She was putting together her material on ants, bees, beavers, wolves, rats, apes, elephants, antelopes—all the vanished animals of Earth that had lived in groups. If intelligence had evolved from any of them, their descendants would resemble them as little as man resembled the tree shrew. Heln wanted to be prepared to spot basic characteristics and extrapolate from them.
    “Why delay?” Jorv said pugnaciously. “Pick up a few extra air bottles and get going.”
    “Don’t you want time to get organized?” Bram countered. Jorv had nothing with him, not even a camera or a pad to take notes on.
    “What for? Get a look at them, I say. Plow through the data afterward.”
    Ame came around and put a hand on Jorv’s arm. “It’s not just a case of observing them, Jorv,” she said. “We’ll work from your opinions—but we have to try to communicate with them, too.”
    “Why don’t you meet us at the vehicle air lock in, say, two hours,” Bram said.
    Jorv walked out, shaking his head and muttering.
    Bram helped Jao pack up his computer signboard and image library, while Ame went to give Heln a hand and to collect Shira, her paleobiologist colleague. Heln turned out to be a small, pert redhead, loaded down with a portable reader, cartridges, pad and easel, recorder, and other equipment.
    When they arrived at the walker stables, Bram saw that only two walkers were equipped and ready for him, not the three he had arranged for.
    “Where’s the other vehicle?” he asked the ostler, a squat, muscular