| 昵 称： |
校长 |
| 积 分： |
2775 |
| 财 富： |
3775 |
| 等 级： |
大学生 |
|
Story of Your Life
by Ted Chiang
Originally published in Starlight 2, ed. Patrick Nielsen Hayden.
Published in hardcover by Tor Books, October 1998; trade paperback,
November 1999.
Copyright 1998 by Ted Chiang. All rights reserved. Reprinted by
permission.
Your father is about to ask me the question. This is the most important
moment in our lives, and I want to pay attention, note every detail. Your dad
and I have just come back
from an evening out, dinner and a show; it's after midnight. We came out
onto the patio to look at the full moon; then I told your dad I wanted to
dance, so he humors me and
now we're slow-dancing, a pair of thirtysomethings swaying back and
forth in the moonlight like kids. I don't feel the night chill at all. And
then your dad says, "Do you want
to make a baby?"
Right now your dad and I have been married for about two years, living
on Ellis Avenue; when we move out you'll still be too young to remember the
house, but we'll show you
pictures of it, tell you stories about it. I'd love to tell you the
story of this evening, the night you're conceived, but the right time to do
that would be when you're ready to have
children of your own, and we'll never get that chance.
Telling it to you any earlier wouldn't do any good; for most of your
life you won't sit still to hear such a romantic--you'd say sappy--story. I
remember the scenario of your
origin you'll suggest when you're twelve.
"The only reason you had me was so you could get a maid you wouldn't
have to pay," you'll say bitterly, dragging the vacuum cleaner out of the
closet.
"That's right," I'll say. "Thirteen years ago I knew the carpets would
need vacuuming around now, and having a baby seemed to be the cheapest and
easiest way to get the job
done. Now kindly get on with it."
"If you weren't my mother, this would be illegal," you'll say, seething
as you unwind the power cord and plug it into the wall outlet.
That will be in the house on Belmont Street. I'll live to see strangers
occupy both houses: the one you're conceived in and the one you grow up in.
Your dad and I will sell the
first a couple years after your arrival. I'll sell the second shortly
after your departure. By then Nelson and I will have moved into our
farmhouse, and your dad will be living
with what's-her-name.
I know how this story ends; I think about it a lot. I also think a lot
about how it began, just a few years ago, when ships appeared in orbit and
artifacts appeared in meadows. The
government said next to nothing about them, while the tabloids said
every possible thing.
And then I got a phone call, a request for a meeting.
* * *
I spotted them waiting in the hallway, outside my office. They made an
odd couple; one wore a military uniform and a crew- cut, and carried an
aluminum briefcase. He seemed
to be assessing his surroundings with a critical eye. The other one was
easily identifiable as an academic: full beard and mustache, wearing
corduroy. He was browsing through
the overlapping sheets stapled to a bulletin board nearby.
"Colonel Weber, I presume?" I shook hands with the soldier. "Louise
Banks."
"Dr. Banks. Thank you for taking the time to speak with us," he said.
"Not at all; any excuse to avoid the faculty meeting."
Colonel Weber indicated his companion. "This is Dr. Gary Donnelly, the
physicist I mentioned when we spoke on the phone."
"Call me Gary," he said as we shook hands. "I'm anxious to hear what you
have to say."
We entered my office. I moved a couple of stacks of books off the second
guest chair, and we all sat down. "You said you wanted me to listen to a
recording. I presume this has
something to do with the aliens?"
"All I can offer is the recording," said Colonel Weber.
"Okay, let's hear it."
Colonel Weber took a tape machine out of his briefcase and pressed PLAY.
The recording sounded vaguely like that of a wet dog shaking the water out of
its fur.
"What do you make of that?" he asked.
I withheld my comparison to a wet dog. "What was the context in which
this recording was made?"
"I'm not at liberty to say."
"It would help me interpret those sounds. Could you see the alien while
it was speaking? Was it doing anything at the time?"
"The recording is all I can offer."
"You won't be giving anything away if you tell me that you've seen the
aliens; the public's assumed you have."
Colonel Weber wasn't budging. "Do you have any opinion about its
linguistic properties?" he asked.
"Well, it's clear that their vocal tract is substantially different from
a human vocal tract. I assume that these aliens don't look like humans?"
The colonel was about to say something noncommittal when Gary Donelly
asked, "Can you make any guesses based on the tape?"
"Not really. It doesn't sound like they're using a larynx to make those
sounds, but that doesn't tell me what they look like."
"Anything-- is there anything else you can tell us?" asked Colonel
Weber.
I could see he wasn't accustomed to consulting a civilian. "Only that
establishing communications is going to be really difficult because of the
difference in anatomy. They're
almost certainly using sounds that the human vocal tract can't
reproduce, and maybe sounds that the human ear can't distinguish."
"You mean infra- or ultrasonic frequencies?" asked Gary Donelly.
"Not specifically. I just mean that the human auditory system isn't an
absolute acoustic instrument; it's optimized to recognize the sounds that a
human larynx makes. With an
alien vocal system, all bets are off." I shrugged. "Maybe we'll be able
to hear the difference between alien phonemes, given enough practice, but
it's possible our ears simply
can't recognize the distinctions they consider meaningful. In that case
we'd need a sound spectrograph to know what an alien is saying."
Colonel Weber asked, "Suppose I gave you an hour's worth of recordings;
how long would it take you to determine if we need this sound spectrograph or
not?"
"I couldn't determine that with just a recording no matter how much time
I had. I'd need to talk with the aliens directly."
The colonel shook his head. "Not possible."
I tried to break it to him gently. "That's your call, of course. But the
only way to learn an unknown language is to interact with a native speaker,
and by that I mean asking
questions, holding a conversation, that sort of thing. Without that,
it's simply not possible. So if you want to learn the aliens' language,
someone with training in field
linguistics-- whether it's me or someone else--will have to talk with an
alien. Recordings alone aren't sufficient."
Colonel Weber frowned. "You seem to be implying that no alien could have
learned human languages by monitoring our broadcasts."
"I doubt it. They'd need instructional material specifically designed to
teach human languages to nonhumans. Either that, or interaction with a human.
If they had either of those,
they could learn a lot from TV, but otherwise, they wouldn't have a
starting point."
The colonel clearly found this interesting; evidently his philosophy
was, the less the aliens knew, the better. Gary Donnelly read the colonel's
expression too and rolled his eyes.
I suppressed a smile.
Then Colonel Weber asked, "Suppose you were learning a new language by
talking to its speakers; could you do it without teaching them English?"
"That would depend on how cooperative the native speakers were. They'd
almost certainly pick up bits and pieces while I'm learning their language,
but it wouldn't have to be
much if they're willing to teach. On the other hand, if they'd rather
learn English than teach us their language, that would make things far more
difficult."
The colonel nodded. "I'll get back to you on this matter."
* * *
The request for that meeting was perhaps the second most momentous phone
call in my life. The first, of course, will be the one from Mountain Rescue.
At that point your dad
and I will be speaking to each other maybe once a year, tops. After I
get that phone call, though, the first thing I'll do will be to call your
father.
He and I will drive out together to perform the identification, a long
silent car ride. I remember the morgue, all tile and stainless steel, the hum
of refrigeration and smell of
antiseptic. An orderly will pull the sheet back to reveal your face.
Your face will look wrong somehow, but I'll know it's you.
"Yes, that's her," I'll say. "She's mine."
You'll be twenty-five then.
* * *
The MP checked my badge, made a notation on his clipboard, and opened
the gate; I drove the off-road vehicle into the encampment, a small village
of tents pitched by the
Army in a farmer's sun-scorched pasture. At the center of the encampment
was one of the alien devices, nicknamed "looking glasses."
According to the briefings I'd attended, there were nine of these in the
United States, one hundred and twelve in the world. The looking glasses acted
as two-way
communication devices, presumably with the ships in orbit. No one knew
why the aliens wouldn't talk to us in person; fear of cooties, maybe. A team
of scientists, including a
physicist and a linguist, was assigned to each looking glass; Gary
Donnelly and I were on this one.
Gary was waiting for me in the parking area. We navigated a circular
maze of concrete barricades until we reached the large tent that covered the
looking glass itself. In front of
the tent was an equipment cart loaded with goodies borrowed from the
school's phonology lab; I had sent it ahead for inspection by the Army.
Also outside the tent were three tripod-mounted video cameras whose
lenses peered, through windows in the fabric wall, into the main room.
Everything Gary and I did would
be reviewed by countless others, including military intelligence. In
addition we would each send daily reports, of which mine had to include
estimates on how much English I
thought the aliens could understand.
Gary held open the tent flap and gestured for me to enter. "Step right
up," he said, circus barker-style. "Marvel at creatures the likes of which
have never been seen on God's
green earth."
"And all for one slim dime," I murmured, walking through the door. At
the moment the looking glass was inactive, resembling a semicircular mirror
over ten feet high and
twenty feet across. On the brown grass in front of the looking glass, an
arc of white spray paint outlined the activation area. Currently the area
contained only a table, two
folding chairs, and a power strip with a cord leading to a generator
outside. The buzz of fluorescent lamps, hung from poles along the edge of the
room, commingled with the
buzz of flies in the sweltering heat.
Gary and I looked at each other, and then began pushing the cart of
equipment up to the table. As we crossed the paint line, the looking glass
appeared to grow transparent; it was
as if someone was slowly raising the illumination behind tinted glass.
The illusion of depth was uncanny; I felt I could walk right into it. Once
the looking glass was fully lit it
resembled a life- size diorama of a semicircular room. The room
contained a few large objects that might have been furniture, but no aliens.
There was a door in the curved rear
wall.
We busied ourselves connecting everything together: microphone, sound
spectrograph, portable computer, and speaker. As we worked, I frequently
glanced at the looking glass,
anticipating the aliens' arrival. Even so I jumped when one of them
entered.
It looked like a barrel suspended at the intersection of seven limbs. It
was radially symmetric, and any of its limbs could serve as an arm or a leg.
The one in front of me was
walking around on four legs, three non-adjacent arms curled up at its
sides. Gary called them "heptapods."
I'd been shown videotapes, but I still gawked. Its limbs had no distinct
joints; anatomists guessed they might be supported by vertebral columns.
Whatever their underlying
structure, the heptapod's limbs conspired to move it in a
disconcertingly fluid manner. Its "torso" rode atop the rippling limbs as
smoothly as a hovercraft.
Seven lidless eyes ringed the top of the heptapod's body. It walked back
to the doorway from which it entered, made a brief sputtering sound, and
returned to the center of the
room followed by another heptapod; at no point did it ever turn around.
Eerie, but logical; with eyes on all sides, any direction might as well be
"forward."
Gary had been watching my reaction. "Ready?" he asked.
I took a deep breath. "Ready enough." I'd done plenty of fieldwork
before, in the Amazon, but it had always been a bilingual procedure: either
my informants knew some
Portuguese, which I could use, or I'd previously gotten an intro to
their language from the local missionaries. This would be my first attempt at
conducting a true monolingual
discovery procedure. It was straightforward enough in theory, though.
I walked up to the looking glass and a heptapod on the other side did
the same. The image was so real that my skin crawled. I could see the texture
of its gray skin, like corduroy
ridges arranged in whorls and loops. There was no smell at all from the
looking glass, which somehow made the situation stranger.
I pointed to myself and said slowly, "Human." Then I pointed to Gary.
"Human." Then I pointed at each heptapod and said, "What are you?"
No reaction. I tried again, and then again.
One of the heptapods pointed to itself with one limb, the four terminal
digits pressed together. That was lucky. In some cultures a person pointed
with his chin; if the heptapod
hadn't used one of its limbs, I wouldn't have known what gesture to look
for. I heard a brief fluttering sound, and saw a puckered orifice at the top
of its body vibrate; it was
talking. Then it pointed to its companion and fluttered again.
I went back to my computer; on its screen were two virtually identical
spectrographs representing the fluttering sounds. I marked a sample for
playback. I pointed to myself and
said "Human" again, and did the same with Gary. Then I pointed to the
heptapod, and played back the flutter on the speaker.
The heptapod fluttered some more. The second half of the spectrograph
for this utterance looked like a repetition: call the previous utterances
[flutter1], then this one was
[flutter2flutter1].
I pointed at something that might have been a heptapod chair. "What is
that?"
The heptapod paused, and then pointed at the "chair" and talked some
more. The spectrograph for this differed distinctly from that of the earlier
sounds: [flutter3]. Once again, I
pointed to the "chair" while playing back [flutter3].
The heptapod replied; judging by the spectrograph, it looked like
[flutter3flutter2]. Optimistic interpretation: the heptapod was confirming my
utterances as correct, which
implied compatibility between heptapod and human patterns of discourse.
Pessimistic interpretation: it had a nagging cough.
At my computer I delimited certain sections of the spectrograph and
typed in a tentative gloss for each: "heptapod" for [flutter1], "yes" for
[flutter2], and "chair" for [flutter3].
Then I typed "Language: Heptapod A" as a heading for all the utterances.
Gary watched what I was typing. "What's the 'A' for?"
"It just distinguishes this language from any other ones the heptapods
might use," I said. He nodded.
"Now let's try something, just for laughs." I pointed at each heptapod
and tried to mimic the sound of [flutter1], "heptapod." After a long pause,
the first heptapod said
something and then the second one said something else, neither of whose
spectrographs resembled anything said before. I couldn't tell if they were
speaking to each other or to
me since they had no faces to turn. I tried pronouncing [flutter1]
again, but there was no reaction.
"Not even close," I grumbled.
"I'm impressed you can make sounds like that at all," said Gary.
"You should hear my moose call. Sends them running."
I tried again a few more times, but neither heptapod responded with
anything I could recognize. Only when I replayed the recording of the
heptapod's pronunciation did I get a
confirmation; the heptapod replied with [flutter2], "yes."
"So we're stuck with using recordings?" asked Gary.
I nodded. "At least temporarily."
"So now what?"
"Now we make sure it hasn't actually been saying 'aren't they cute' or
'look what they're doing now.' Then we see if we can identify any of these
words when that other
heptapod pronounces them." I gestured for him to have a seat. "Get
comfortable; this'll take a while."
* * *
In 1770, Captain Cook's ship Endeavour ran aground on the coast of
Queensland, Australia. While some of his men made repairs, Cook led an
exploration party and met the
aboriginal people. One of the sailors pointed to the animals that hopped
around with their young riding in pouches, and asked an aborigine what they
were called. The aborigine
replied, "Kanguru." From then on Cook and his sailors referred to the
animals by this word. It wasn't until later that they learned it meant "What
did you say?"
I tell that story in my introductory course every year. It's almost
certainly untrue, and I explain that afterwards, but it's a classic anecdote.
Of course, the anecdotes my
undergraduates will really want to hear are ones featuring the
heptapods; for the rest of my teaching career, that'll be the reason many of
them sign up for my courses. So I'll
show them the old videotapes of my sessions at the looking glass, and
the sessions that the other linguists conducted; the tapes are instructive,
and they'll be useful if we're ever
visited by aliens again, but they don't generate many good anecdotes.
When it comes to language-learning anecdotes, my favorite source is
child language acquisition. I remember one afternoon when you are five years
old, after you have come
home from kindergarten. You'll be coloring with your crayons while I
grade papers.
"Mom," you'll say, using the carefully casual tone reserved for
requesting a favor, "can I ask you something?"
"Sure, sweetie. Go ahead."
"Can I be, um, honored?"
I'll look up from the paper I'm grading. "What do you mean?"
"At school Sharon said she got to be honored."
"Really? Did she tell you what for?"
"It was when her big sister got married. She said only one person could
be, um, honored, and she was it."
"Ah, I see. You mean Sharon was maid of honor?"
"Yeah, that's it. Can I be made of honor?"
* * *
Gary and I entered the prefab building containing the center of
operations for the looking glass site. Inside it looked like they were
planning an invasion, or perhaps an
evacuation: crewcut soldiers worked around a large map of the area, or
sat in front of burly electronic gear while speaking into headsets. We were
shown into Colonel Weber's
office, a room in the back that was cool from air conditioning.
We briefed the colonel on our first day's results. "Doesn't sound like
you got very far," he said. "I have an idea as to how we can make faster
progress," I said. "But you'll have
to approve the use of more equipment."
"What more do you need?"
"A digital camera, and a big video screen." I showed him a drawing of
the set-up I imagined. "I want to try conducting the discovery procedure
using writing; I'd display words
on the screen, and use the camera to record the words they write. I'm
hoping the heptapods will do the same."
Weber looked at the drawing dubiously. "What would be the advantage of
that?"
"So far I've been proceeding the way I would with speakers of an
unwritten language. Then it occurred to me that the heptapods must have
writing, too."
"So?"
"If the heptapods have a mechanical way of producing writing, then their
writing ought to be very regular, very consistent. That would make it easier
for us to identify
graphemes instead of phonemes. It's like picking out the letters in a
printed sentence instead of trying to hear them when the sentence is spoken
aloud."
"I take your point," he admitted. "And how would you respond to them?
Show them the words they displayed to you?"
"Basically. And if they put spaces between words, any sentences we write
would be a lot more intelligible than any spoken sentence we might splice
together from recordings."
He leaned back in his chair. "You know we want to show as little of our
technology as possible."
"I understand, but we're using machines as intermediaries already. If we
can get them to use writing, I believe progress will go much faster than if
we're restricted to the sound
spectrographs."
The colonel turned to Gary. "Your opinion?"
"It sounds like a good idea to me. I'm curious whether the heptapods
might have difficulty reading our monitors. Their looking glasses are based
on a completely different
technology than our video screens. As far as we can tell, they don't use
pixels or scan lines, and they don't refresh on a frame-by-frame basis."
"You think the scan lines on our video screens might render them
unreadable to the heptapods?"
"It's possible," said Gary. "We'll just have to try it and see."
Weber considered it. For me it wasn't even a question, but from his
point of view it was a difficult one; like a soldier, though, he made it
quickly. "Request granted. Talk to the
sergeant outside about bringing in what you need. Have it ready for
tomorrow."
* * *
I remember one day during the summer when you're sixteen. For once, the
person waiting for her date to arrive is me. Of course, you'll be waiting
around too, curious to see
what he looks like. You'll have a friend of yours, a blond girl with the
unlikely name of Roxie, hanging out with you, giggling.
"You may feel the urge to make comments about him," I'll say, checking
myself in the hallway mirror. "Just restrain yourselves until we leave."
"Don't worry, Mom," you'll say. "We'll do it so that he won't know.
Roxie, you ask me what I think the weather will be like tonight. Then I'll
say what I think of Mom's date."
"Right," Roxie will say.
"No, you most definitely will not," I'll say.
"Relax, Mom. He'll never know; we do this all the time."
"What a comfort that is."
A little later on, Nelson will arrive to pick me up. I'll do the
introductions, and we'll all engage in a little small talk on the front
porch. Nelson is ruggedly handsome, to your
evident approval. Just as we're about to leave, Roxie will say to you
casually, "So what do you think the weather will be like tonight?"
"I think it's going to be really hot," you'll answer.
Roxie will nod in agreement. Nelson will say, "Really? I thought they
said it was going to be cool."
"I have a sixth sense about these things," you'll say. Your face will
give nothing away. "I get the feeling it's going to be a scorcher. Good thing
you're dressed for it, Mom."
I'll glare at you, and say good night.
As I lead Nelson toward his car, he'll ask me, amused, "I'm missing
something here, aren't I?"
"A private joke," I'll mutter. "Don't ask me to explain it."
* * *
At our next session at the looking glass, we repeated the procedure we
had performed before, this time displaying a printed word on our computer
screen at the same time we
spoke: showing HUMAN while saying "Human," and so forth. Eventually, the
heptapods understood what we wanted, and set up a flat circular screen
mounted on a small
pedestal. One heptapod spoke, and then inserted a limb into a large
socket in the pedestal; a doodle of script, vaguely cursive, popped onto the
screen. We soon settled into a
routine, and I compiled two parallel corpora: one of spoken utterances,
one of writing samples. Based on first impressions, their writing appeared to
be logographic, which was
disappointing; I'd been hoping for an alphabetic script to help us learn
their speech. Their logograms might include some phonetic information, but
finding it would be a lot
harder than with an alphabetic script.
By getting up close to the looking glass, I was able to point to various
heptapod body parts, such as limbs, digits, and eyes, and elicit terms for
each. It turned out that they had an
orifice on the underside of their body, lined with articulated bony
ridges: probably used for eating, while the one at the top was for
respiration and speech. There were no other
conspicuous orifices; perhaps their mouth was their anus too. Those
sorts of questions would have to wait.
I also tried asking our two informants for terms for addressing each
individually; personal names, if they had such things. Their answers were of
course unpronounceable, so for
Gary's and my purposes, I dubbed them Flapper and Raspberry. I hoped I'd
be able to tell them apart.
* * *
The next day I conferred with Gary before we entered the looking-glass
tent. "I'll need your help with this session," I told him.
"Sure. What do you want me to do?"
"We need to elicit some verbs, and it's easiest with third- person
forms. Would you act out a few verbs while I type the written form on the
computer? If we're lucky, the
heptapods will figure out what we're doing and do the same. I've brought
a bunch of props for you to use."
"No problem," said Gary, cracking his knuckles. "Ready when you are."
We began with some simple intransitive verbs: walking, jumping,
speaking, writing. Gary demonstrated each one with a charming lack of
self-consciousness; the presence of
the videocameras didn't inhibit him at all. For the first few actions he
performed, I asked the heptapods, "What do you call that?" Before long, the
heptapods caught on to what
we were trying to do; Raspberry began mimicking Gary, or at least
performing the equivalent heptapod action, while Flapper worked their
computer, displaying a written
description and pronouncing it aloud.
In the spectrographs of their spoken utterances, I could recognize their
word I had glossed as "heptapod." The rest of each utterance was presumably
the verb phrase; it looked
like they had analogs of nouns and verbs, thank goodness. In their
writing, however, things weren't as clear-cut. For each action, they had
displayed a single logogram instead of
two separate ones. At first I thought they had written something like
"walks," with the subject implied. But why would Flapper say "the heptapod
walks" while writing "walks,"
instead of maintaining parallelism? Then I noticed that some of the
logograms looked like the logogram for "heptapod" with some extra strokes
added to one side or another.
Perhaps their verbs could be written as affixes to a noun. If so, why
was Flapper writing the noun in some instances but not in others?
I decided to try a transitive verb; substituting object words might
clarify things. Among the props I'd brought were an apple and a slice of
bread. "Okay," I said to Gary, "show
them the food, and then eat some. First the apple, then the bread."
Gary pointed at the Golden Delicious and then he took a bite out it,
while I displayed the "what do you call that?" expression. Then we repeated
it with the slice of whole wheat.
Raspberry left the room and returned with some kind of giant nut or
gourd and a gelatinous ellipsoid. Raspberry pointed at the gourd while
Flapper said a word and displayed a
logogram. Then Raspberry brought the gourd down between its legs, a
crunching sound resulted, and the gourd reemerged minus a bite; there were
corn-like kernels beneath the
shell. Flapper talked and displayed a large logogram on their screen.
The sound spectrograph for "gourd" changed when it was used in the sentence;
possibly a case-marker. The
logogram was odd: after some study, I could identify graphic elements
that resembled the individual logograms for "heptapod" and "gourd." They
looked as if they had been
melted together, with several extra strokes in the mix that presumably
meant "eat." Was it a multi-word ligature?
Next we got spoken and written names for the gelatin egg, and
descriptions of the act of eating it. The sound spectrograph for "heptapod
eats gelatin egg" was analyzable;
"gelatin egg" bore a case marker, as expected, though the sentence's
word order differed from last time. The written form, another large logogram,
was another matter. This
time it took much longer for me to recognize anything in it; not only
were the individual logograms melted together again, it looked as if the one
for "heptapod" was laid on its
back, while on top of it the logogram for "gelatin egg" was standing on
its head.
"Uh-oh." I took another look at the writing for the simple noun-verb
examples, the ones that had seemed inconsistent before. Now I realized all of
them actually did contain the
logogram for "heptapod"; some were rotated and distorted by being
combined with the various verbs, so I hadn't recognized them at first. "You
guys have got to be kidding," I
muttered.
"What's wrong?" asked Gary.
"Their script isn't word-divided; a sentence is written by joining the
logograms for the constituent words. They join the logograms by rotating and
modifying them. Take a
look." I showed him how the logograms were rotated.
"So they can read a word with equal ease no matter how it's rotated,"
Gary said. He turned to look at the heptapods, impressed. "I wonder if it's a
consequence of their bodies'
radial symmetry: their bodies have no 'forward' direction, so maybe
their writing doesn't either. Highly neat."
I couldn't believe it; I was working with someone who modified the word
"neat" with "highly." "It certainly is interesting," I said, "but it also
means there's no easy way for us
write our own sentences in their language. We can't simply cut their
sentences into individual words and recombine them; we'll have to learn the
rules of their script before we
can write anything legible. It's the same continuity problem we'd have
had splicing together speech fragments, except applied to writing."
I looked at Flapper and Raspberry in the looking glass, who were waiting
for us to continue, and sighed. "You aren't going to make this easy for us,
are you?"
* * *
To be fair, the heptapods were completely cooperative. In the days that
followed, they readily taught us their language without requiring us to teach
them any more English.
Colonel Weber and his cohorts pondered the implications of that, while I
and the linguists at the other looking glasses met via videoconferencing to
share what we had learned
about the heptapod language. The videoconferencing made for an
incongruous working environment: our video screens were primitive compared to
the heptapods' looking
glasses, so that my colleagues seemed more remote than the aliens. The
familiar was far away, while the bizarre was close at hand.
It would be a while before we'd be ready to ask the heptapods why they
had come, or to discuss physics well enough to ask them about their
technology. For the time being, we
worked on the basics: phonemics/graphemics, vocabulary, syntax. The
heptapods at every looking glass were using the same language, so we were
able to pool our data and
coordinate our efforts.
Our biggest source of confusion was the heptapods' "writing." It didn't
appear to be writing at all; it looked more like a bunch of intricate graphic
designs. The logograms
weren't arranged in rows, or a spiral, or any linear fashion. Instead,
Flapper or Raspberry would write a sentence by sticking together as many
logograms as needed into a giant
conglomeration.
This form of writing was reminiscent of primitive sign systems, which
required a reader to know a message's context in order to understand it. Such
systems were considered
too limited for systematic recording of information. Yet it was unlikely
that the heptapods developed their level of technology with only an oral
tradition. That implied one of
three possibilities: the first was that the heptapods had a true writing
system, but they didn't want to use it in front of us; Colonel Weber would
identify with that one. The
second was that the heptapods hadn't originated the technology they were
using; they were illiterates using someone else's technology. The third, and
most interesting to me, was
that the heptapods were using a nonlinear system of orthography that
qualified as true writing.
* * *
I remember a conversation we'll have when you're in your junior year of
high school. It'll be Sunday morning, and I'll be scrambling some eggs while
you set the table for
brunch. You'll laugh as you tell me about the party you went to last
night.
"Oh man," you'll say, "they're not kidding when they say that body
weight makes a difference. I didn't drink any more than the guys did, but I
got so much drunker."
I'll try to maintain a neutral, pleasant expression. I'll really try.
Then you'll say, "Oh, come on, Mom."
"What?"
"You know you did the exact same things when you were my age."
I did nothing of the sort, but I know that if I were to admit that,
you'd lose respect for me completely. "You know never to drive, or get into a
car if--"
"God, of course I know that. Do you think I'm an idiot?"
"No, of course not."
What I'll think is that you are clearly, maddeningly not me. It will
remind me, again, that you won't be a clone of me; you can be wonderful, a
daily delight, but you won't be
someone I could have created by myself.
* * *
The military had set up a trailer containing our offices at the looking
glass site. I saw Gary walking toward the trailer, and ran to catch up with
him. "It's a semasiographic
writing system," I said when I reached him.
"Excuse me?" said Gary.
"Here, let me show you." I directed Gary into my office. Once we were
inside, I went to the chalkboard and drew a circle with a diagonal line
bisecting it. "What does this
mean?"
"'Not allowed'?"
"Right." Next I printed the words NOT ALLOWED on the chalkboard. "And so
does this. But only one is a representation of speech."
Gary nodded. "Okay."
"Linguists describe writing like this--" I indicated the printed words
"--as 'glottographic,' because it represents speech. Every human written
language is in this category.
However, this symbol--" I indicated the circle and diagonal line "--is
'semasiographic' writing, because it conveys meaning without reference to
speech. There's no
correspondence between its components and any particular sounds."
"And you think all of heptapod writing is like this?"
"From what I've seen so far, yes. It's not picture writing, it's far
more complex. It has its own system of rules for constructing sentences, like
a visual syntax that's unrelated to
the syntax for their spoken language."
"A visual syntax? Can you show me an example?"
"Coming right up." I sat down at my desk and, using the computer, pulled
up a frame from the recording of yesterday's conversation with Raspberry. I
turned the monitor so he
could see it. "In their spoken language, a noun has a case marker
indicating whether it's a subject or object. In their written language,
however, a noun is identified as subject or
object based on the orientation of its logogram relative to that of the
verb. Here, take a look." I pointed at one of the figures. "For instance,
when 'heptapod' is integrated with
'hears' this way, with these strokes parallel, it means that the
heptapod is doing the hearing." I showed him a different one. "When they're
combined this way, with the strokes
perpendicular, it means that the heptapod is being heard. This
morphology applies to several verbs.
"Another example is the inflection system." I called up another frame
from the recording. "In their written language, this logogram means roughly
'hear easily' or 'hear clearly.'
See the elements it has in common with the logogram for 'hear'? You can
still combine it with 'heptapod' in the same ways as before, to indicate that
the heptapod can hear
something clearly or that the heptapod is clearly heard. But what's
really interesting is that the modulation of 'hear' into 'hear clearly' isn't
a special case; you see the
transformation they applied?"
Gary nodded, pointing. "It's like they express the idea of 'clearly' by
changing the curve of those strokes in the middle."
"Right. That modulation is applicable to lots of verbs. The logogram for
'see' can be modulated in the same way to form 'see clearly,' and so can the
logogram for 'read' and
others. And changing the curve of those strokes has no parallel in their
speech; with the spoken version of these verbs, they add a prefix to the verb
to express ease of manner,
and the prefixes for 'see' and 'hear' are different.
"There are other examples, but you get the idea. It's essentially a
grammar in two dimensions."
He began pacing thoughtfully. "Is there anything like this in human
writing systems?"
"Mathematical equations, notations for music and dance. But those are
all very specialized; we couldn't record this conversation using them. But I
suspect, if we knew it well
enough, we could record this conversation in the heptapod writing
system. I think it's a full-fledged, general-purpose graphical language."
Gary frowned. "So their writing constitutes a completely separate
language from their speech, right?"
"Right. In fact, it'd be more accurate to refer to the writing system as
'Heptapod B,' and use 'Heptapod A' strictly for referring to the spoken
language."
"Hold on a second. Why use two languages when one would suffice? That
seems unnecessarily hard to learn."
"Like English spelling?" I said. "Ease-of-learning isn't the primary
force in language evolution. For the heptapods, writing and speech may play
such different cultural or
cognitive roles that using separate languages makes more sense than
using different forms of the same one."
He considered it. "I see what you mean. Maybe they think our form of
writing is redundant, like we're wasting a second communications channel."
"That's entirely possible. Finding out why they use a second language
for writing will tell us a lot about them."
"So I take it this means we won't be able to use their writing to help
us learn their spoken language."
I sighed. "Yeah, that's the most immediate implication. But I don't
think we should ignore either Heptapod A or B; we need a two-pronged
approach." I pointed at the screen.
"I'll bet you that learning their two-dimensional grammar will help you
when it comes time to learn their mathematical notation."
"You've got a point there. So are we ready to start asking about their
mathematics?"
"Not yet. We need a better grasp on this writing system before we begin
anything else," I said, and then smiled when he mimed frustration. "Patience,
good sir. Patience is a
virtue."
* * *
You'll be six when your father has a conference to attend in Hawaii, and
we'll accompany him. You'll be so excited that you'll make preparations for
weeks beforehand. You'll
ask me about coconuts and volcanoes and surfing, and practice hula
dancing in the mirror. You'll pack a suitcase with the clothes and toys you
want to bring, and you'll drag it
around the house to see how long you can carry it. You'll ask me if I
can carry your Etch-a-Sketch in my bag, since there won't be any more room
for it in yours and you
simply can't leave without it.
"You won't need all of these," I'll say. "There'll be so many fun things
to do there, you won't have time to play with so many toys."
You'll consider that; dimples will appear above your eyebrows when you
think hard. Eventually you'll agree to pack fewer toys, but your expectations
will, if anything,
increase.
"I wanna be in Hawaii now," you'll whine.
"Sometimes it's good to wait," I'll say. "The anticipation makes it more
fun when you get there."
You'll just pout.
* * *
In the next report I submitted, I suggested that the term "logogram" was
a misnomer because it implied that each graph represented a spoken word, when
in fact the graphs didn't
correspond to our notion of spoken words at all. I didn't want to use
the term "ideogram" either because of how it had been used in the past; I
suggested the term "semagram"
instead.
It appeared that a semagram corresponded roughly to a written word in
human languages: it was meaningful on its own, and in combination with other
semagrams could form
endless statements. We couldn't define it precisely, but then no one had
ever satisfactorily defined "word" for human languages either. When it came
to sentences in Heptapod
B, though, things became much more confusing. The language had no
written punctuation: its syntax was indicated in the way the semagrams were
combined, and there was no
need to indicate the cadence of speech. There was certainly no way to
slice out subject-predicate pairings neatly to make sentences. A "sentence"
seemed to be whatever number
of semagrams a heptapod wanted to join together; the only difference
between a sentence and a paragraph, or a page, was size.
When a Heptapod B sentence grew fairly sizable, its visual impact was
remarkable. If I wasn't trying to decipher it, the writing looked like
fanciful preying mantids drawn in a
cursive style, all clinging to each other to form an Escheresque
lattice, each slightly different in its stance. And the biggest sentences had
an effect similar to that of psychedelic
posters: sometimes eye-watering, sometimes hypnotic.
* * *
I remember a picture of you taken at your college graduation. In the
photo you're striking a pose for the camera, mortarboard stylishly tilted on
your head, one hand touching
your sunglasses, the other hand on your hip, holding open your gown to
reveal the tank top and shorts you're wearing underneath.
I remember your graduation. There will be the distraction of having
Nelson and your father and what's-her-name there all at the same time, but
that will be minor. That entire
weekend, while you're introducing me to your classmates and hugging
everyone incessantly, I'll be all but mute with amazement. I can't believe
that you, a grown woman taller
than me and beautiful enough to make my heart ache, will be the same
girl I used to lift off the ground so you could reach the drinking fountain,
the same girl who used to
trundle out of my bedroom draped in a dress and hat and four scarves
from my closet.
And after graduation, you'll be heading for a job as a financial
analyst. I won't understand what you do there, I won't even understand your
fascination with money, the
preeminence you gave to salary when negotiating job offers. I would
prefer it if you'd pursue something without regard for its monetary rewards,
but I'll have no complaints.
My own mother could never understand why I couldn't just be a high
school English teacher. You'll do what makes you happy, and that'll be all I
ask for.
* * *
As time went on, the teams at each looking glass began working in
earnest on learning heptapod terminology for elementary mathematics and
physics. We worked together on
presentations, with the linguists focusing on procedure and the
physicists focusing on subject matter. The physicists showed us previously
devised systems for communicating
with aliens, based on mathematics, but those were intended for use over
a radio telescope. We reworked them for face-to-face communication.
Our teams were successful with basic arithmetic, but we hit a road block
with geometry and algebra. We tried using a spherical coordinate system
instead of a rectangular one,
thinking it might be more natural to the heptapods given their anatomy,
but that approach wasn't any more fruitful. The heptapods didn't seem to
understand what we were
getting at.
Likewise, the physics discussions went poorly. Only with the most
concrete terms, like the names of the elements, did we have any success;
after several attempts at representing
the periodic table, the heptapods got the idea. For anything remotely
abstract, we might as well have been gibbering. We tried to demonstrate basic
physical attributes like mass
and acceleration so we could elicit their terms for them, but the
heptapods simply responded with requests for clarification. To avoid
perceptual problems that might be
associated with any particular medium, we tried physical demonstrations
as well as line drawings, photos, and animations; none were effective. Days
with no progress became
weeks, and the physicists were becoming disillusioned.
By contrast, the linguists were having much more success. We made steady
progress decoding the grammar of the spoken language, Heptapod A. It didn't
follow the pattern of
human languages, as expected, but it was comprehensible so far: free
word order, even to the extent that there was no preferred order for the
clauses in a conditional statement,
in defiance of a human language "universal." It also appeared that the
heptapods had no objection to many levels of center-embedding of clauses,
something that quickly
defeated humans. Peculiar, but not impenetrable.
Much more interesting were the newly discovered morphological and
grammatical processes in Heptapod B that were uniquely two-dimensional.
Depending on a semagram's
declension, inflections could be indicated by varying a certain stroke's
curvature, or its thickness, or its manner of undulation; or by varying the
relative sizes of two radicals, or
their relative distance to another radical, or their orientations; or
various other means. These were non-segmental graphemes; they couldn't be
isolated from the rest of a
semagram. And despite how such traits behaved in human writing, these
had nothing to do calligraphic style; their meanings were defined according
to a consistent and
unambiguous grammar.
We regularly asked the heptapods why they had come. Each time, they
answered "to see," or "to observe." Indeed, sometimes they preferred to watch
us silently rather than
answer our questions. Perhaps they were scientists, perhaps they were
tourists. The State Department instructed us to reveal as little as possible
about humanity, in case that
information could be used as a bargaining chip in subsequent
negotiations. We obliged, though it didn't require much effort: the heptapods
never asked questions about anything.
Whether scientists or tourists, they were an awfully incurious bunch.
* * *
I remember once when we'll be driving to the mall to buy some new
clothes for you. You'll be thirteen. One moment you'll be sprawled in your
seat, completely
unself-conscious, all child; the next, you'll toss your hair with a
practiced casualness, like a fashion model in training.
You'll give me some instructions as I'm parking the car. "Okay, Mom,
give me one of the credit cards, and we can meet back at the entrance here in
two hours."
I'll laugh. "Not a chance. All the credit cards stay with me."
"You're kidding." You'll become the embodiment of exasperation. We'll
get out of the car and I will start walking to the mall entrance. After
seeing that I won't budge on the
matter, you'll quickly reformulate your plans.
"Okay Mom, okay. You can come with me, just walk a little ways behind
me, so it doesn't look like we're together. If I see any friends of mine, I'm
gonna stop and talk to them,
but you just keep walking, okay? I'll come find you later."
I'll stop in my tracks. "Excuse me? I am not the hired help, nor am I
some mutant relative for you to be ashamed of."
"But Mom, I can't let anyone see you with me."
"What are you talking about? I've already met your friends; they've been
to the house."
"That was different," you'll say, incredulous that you have to explain
it. "This is shopping."
"Too bad."
Then the explosion: "You won't do the least thing to make me happy! You
don't care about me at all!"
It won't have been that long since you enjoyed going shopping with me;
it will forever astonish me how quickly you grow out of one phase and enter
another. Living with you
will be like aiming for a moving target; you'll always be further along
than I expect.
* * *
I looked at the sentence in Heptapod B that I had just written, using
simple pen and paper. Like all the sentences I generated myself, this one
looked misshapen, like a heptapod-
written sentence that had been smashed with a hammer and then inexpertly
taped back together. I had sheets of such inelegant semagrams covering my
desk, fluttering
occasionally when the oscillating fan swung past.
It was strange trying to learn a language that had no spoken form.
Instead of practicing my pronunciation, I had taken to squeezing my eyes shut
and trying to paint semagrams
on the insides of my eyelids.
There was a knock at the door and before I could answer Gary came in
looking jubilant. "Illinois got a repetition in physics."
"Really? That's great; when did it happen?"
"It happened a few hours ago; we just had the videoconference. Let me
show you what it is." He started erasing my blackboard.
"Don't worry, I didn't need any of that."
"Good." He picked up a nub of chalk and drew a diagram:
"Okay, here's the path a ray of light takes when crossing from air to
water. The light ray travels in a straight line until it hits the water; the
water has a different index of
refraction, so the light changes direction. You've heard of this before,
right?"
I nodded. "Sure."
"Now here's an interesting property about the path the light takes. The
path is the fastest possible route between these two points."
"Come again?"
"Imagine, just for grins, that the ray of light traveled along this
path." He added a dotted line to his diagram:
"This hypothetical path is shorter than the path the light actually
takes. But light travels more slowly in water than it does in air, and a
greater percentage of this path is
underwater. So it would take longer for light to travel along this path
than it does along the real path."
"Okay, I get it."
"Now imagine if light were to travel along this other path." He drew a
second dotted path:
"This path reduces the percentage that's underwater, but the total
length is larger. It would also take longer for light to travel along this
path than along the actual one."
Gary put down the chalk and gestured at the diagram on the chalkboard
with white-tipped fingers. "Any hypothetical path would require more time to
traverse than the one
actually taken. In other words, the route that the light ray takes is
always the fastest possible one. That's Fermat's Principle of Least Time."
"Hmm, interesting. And this is what the heptapods responded to?"
"Exactly. Moorehead gave an animated presentation of Fermat's Principle
at the Illinois looking glass, and the heptapods repeated it back. Now he's
trying to get a symbolic
description." He grinned. "Now is that highly neat, or what?"
"It's neat all right, but how come I haven't heard of Fermat's Principle
before?" I picked up a binder and waved it at him; it was a primer on the
physics topics suggested for use
in communication with the heptapods. "This thing goes on forever about
Planck masses and the spin-flip of atomic hydrogen, and not a word about the
refraction of light."
"We guessed wrong about what'd be most useful for you to know," Gary
said without embarrassment. "In fact, it's curious that Fermat's Principle
was the first breakthrough;
even though it's easy to explain, you need calculus to describe it
mathematically. And not ordinary calculus; you need the calculus of
variations. We thought that some simple
theorem of geometry or algebra would be the breakthrough."
"Curious indeed. You think the heptapods' idea of what's simple doesn't
match ours?"
"Exactly, which is why I'm dying to see what their mathematical
description of Fermat's Principle looks like." He paced as he talked. "If
their version of the calculus of
variations is simpler to them than their equivalent of algebra, that
might explain why we've had so much trouble talking about physics; their
entire system of mathematics may
be topsy-turvy compared to ours." He pointed to the physics primer. "You
can be sure that we're going to revise that."
"So can you build from Fermat's Principle to other areas of physics?"
"Probably. There are lots of physical principles just like Fermat's."
"What, like Louise's principle of least closet space? When did physics
become so minimalist?"
"Well, the word 'least' is misleading. You see, Fermat's Principle of
Least Time is incomplete; in certain situations light follows a path that
takes more time than any of the
other possibilities. It's more accurate to say that light always follows
an extreme path, either one that minimizes the time taken or one that
maximizes it. A minimum and a
maximum share certain mathematical properties, so both situations can be
described with one equation. So to be precise, Fermat's Principle isn't a
minimal principle; instead
it's what's known as a 'variational' principle."
"And there are more of these variational principles?"
He nodded. "In all branches of physics. Almost every physical law can be
restated as a variational principle. The only difference between these
principles is in which attribute is
minimized or maximized." He gestured as if the different branches of
physics were arrayed before him on a table. "In optics, where Fermat's
Principle applies, time is the
attribute that has to be an extreme. In mechanics, it's a different
attribute. In electromagnetism, it's something else again. But all these
principles are similar mathematically."
"So once you get their mathematical description of Fermat's Principle,
you should be able to decode the other ones."
"God, I hope so. I think this is the wedge that we've been looking for,
the one that cracks open their formulation of physics. This calls for a
celebration." He stopped his pacing
and turned to me. "Hey Louise, want to go out for dinner? My treat."
I was mildly surprised. "Sure," I said.
* * *
It'll be when you first learn to walk that I get daily demonstrations of
the asymmetry in our relationship. You'll be incessantly running off
somewhere, and each time you walk
into a door frame or scrape your knee, the pain feels like it's my own.
It'll be like growing an errant limb, an extension of myself whose sensory
nerves report pain just fine, but
whose motor nerves don't convey my commands at all. It's so unfair: I'm
going to give birth to an animated voodoo doll of myself. I didn't see this
in the contract when I signed
up. Was this part of the deal?
And then there will be the times when I see you laughing. Like the time
you'll be playing with the neighbor's puppy, poking your hands through the
chain-link fence separating
our back yards, and you'll be laughing so hard you'll start hiccuping.
The puppy will run inside the neighbor's house, and your laughter will
gradually subside, letting you catch
your breath. Then the puppy will come back to the fence to lick your
fingers again, and you'll shriek and start laughing again. It will be the
most wonderful sound I could ever
imagine, a sound that makes me feel like a fountain, or a wellspring.
Now if only I can remember that sound the next time your blithe
disregard for self preservation gives me a heart attack.
* * *
After the breakthrough with Fermat's Principle, discussions of
scientific concepts became more fruitful. It wasn't as if all of heptapod
physics was suddenly rendered
transparent, but progress was steady. According to Gary, the heptapods'
formulation of physics was indeed topsy-turvy relative to ours. Physical
attributes that humans defined
using integral calculus were seen as fundamental by the heptapods. As an
example, Gary described an attribute that, in physics jargon, bore the
deceptively simple name "action,"
which represented "the difference between kinetic and potential energy,
integrated over time," whatever that meant. Calculus for us; elementary to
them.
Conversely, to define attributes that humans thought of as fundamental,
like velocity, the heptapods employed mathematics that were, Gary assured me,
"highly weird." The
physicists were ultimately able to prove the equivalence of heptapod
mathematics and human mathematics; even though their approaches were almost
the reverse of one another,
both were systems of describing the same physical universe.
I tried following some of the equations that the physicists were coming
up with, but it was no use. I couldn't really grasp the significance of
physical attributes like "action"; I
couldn't, with any confidence, ponder the significance of treating such
an attribute as fundamental. Still, I tried to ponder questions formulated in
terms more familiar to me:
what kind of world-view did the heptapods have, that they would consider
Fermat's Principle the simplest explanation of light refraction? What kind of
perception made a
minimum or maximum readily apparent to them?
* * *
Your eyes will be blue like your dad's, not mud brown like mine. Boys
will stare into those eyes the way I did, and do, into your dad's, surprised
and enchanted, as I was and am,
to find them in combination with black hair. You will have many suitors.
I remember when you are fifteen, coming home after a weekend at your
dad's, incredulous over the interrogation he'll have put you through
regarding the boy you're currently
dating. You'll sprawl on the sofa, recounting your dad's latest breach
of common sense: "You know what he said? He said, 'I know what teenage boys
are like.'" Roll of the eyes.
"Like I don't?"
"Don't hold it against him," I'll say. "He's a father; he can't help
it." Having seen you interact with your friends, I won't worry much about a
boy taking advantage of you; if
anything, the opposite will be more likely. I'll worry about that.
"He wishes I were still a kid. He hasn't known how to act toward me
since I grew breasts."
"Well, that development was a shock for him. Give him time to recover."
"It's been years, Mom. How long is it gonna take?"
"I'll let know when my father has come to terms with mine."
* * *
During one of the videoconferences for the linguists, Cisneros from the
Massachusetts looking glass had raised an interesting question: was there a
particular order in which
semagrams were written in a Heptapod B sentence? It was clear that word
order meant next to nothing when speaking in Heptapod A; when asked to repeat
what it had just said,
a heptapod would likely as not use a different word order unless we
specifically asked them not to. Was word order similarly unimportant when
writing in Heptapod B?
Previously, we had only focused our attention on how a sentence in
Heptapod B looked once it was complete. As far as anyone could tell, there
was no preferred order when
reading the semagrams in a sentence; you could start almost anywhere in
the nest, then follow the branching clauses until you'd read the whole thing.
But that was reading; was
the same true about writing?
During my most recent session with Flapper and Raspberry I had asked
them if, instead of displaying a semagram only after it was completed, they
could show it to us while it
was being written. They had agreed. I inserted the videotape of the
session into the VCR, and on my computer I consulted the session transcript.
I picked one of the longer utterances from the conversation. What
Flapper had said was that the heptapods' planet had two moons, one
significantly larger than the other; the
three primary constituents of the planet's atmosphere were nitrogen,
argon, and oxygen; and 15/28ths of the planet's surface was covered by water.
The first words of the spoken
utterance translated literally as "inequality-of-size rocky-orbiter
rocky-orbiters related-as-primary-to-secondary."
Then I rewound the videotape
————————————————————————————————————————————————
爱因斯坦：我毫无保留地相信，上帝是不掷骰子的。
玻尔：爱因斯坦，别指挥上帝应该怎么做！
霍金：上帝不但掷骰子，他还把骰子掷到我们看不见的地方去！
|