Yet Bronowski’s talk took him back to the youthful joys of making slow sense of what seemed a random collection of symbols, and combined it with sufficient difficulty to add great honor to the task. Bronowski was a cryptogram-mist on the grandest scale, and it was the description of the steady encroachment of reason upon the unknown that Lament enjoyed.
All would yet have gone for nothing—the triple coincidence of Bronowski’s appearance at campus, Lament’s youthful cryptogrammic enthusiasm, the social pressure of an attractive young lady—were it not for the fact that it was the next day that Lamont saw Hallam and placed himself firmly and, as he eventually found, permanently, in the doghouse.
Within an hour of the conclusion of that interview, Lamont determined to see Bronowski. The issue at hand was the very one that had seemed so obvious to himself and that had so offended Hallam. Because it brought down censure on him, Lamont felt bound to strike back—and in connection with the point of censure specifically. The para-men were more intelligent than man. Lamont had believed it before in a casual sort of way as something more obvious than vital. Now it had become vital. It must be proved and the fact of it forced down the throat of Hallam; sideways, if possible, and with all the sharp corners exposed.
Already Lamont found himself so far removed from his so-recent hero worship that he relished the prospect.
Bronowski was still on campus and Lamont tracked him down and insisted on seeing him.
Bronowski was blandly courteous, when finally cornered.
Lamont acknowledged the courtesies brusquely, introduced himself with clear impatience, and said, “Dr. Bronowski, I’m delighted to have caught you before you left. I hope that I will persuade you to stay here even longer.”
Bronowski said, “That may not be hard. I have been offered a position on the university faculty.”
“And you will accept the position?”
“I am considering it. I think I may.”
“You must. You will, when you hear what I have to say. Dr. Bronowski, what is there for you to do now that you’ve solved the Etruscan inscriptions?”
“That is not my only task, young man.” (He was five years older than Lamont.) “I’m an archaeologist, and there is more to Etruscan culture than its inscriptions and more to pre-classical Italic culture than the Etruscans.”
“But surely nothing as exciting for you, and as challenging, as the Etruscan inscriptions?”
“I grant you that.”
“So you would welcome something even more exciting, even more challenging, and something a trillion times as significant as those inscriptions.”
“What have you in mind, Dr.—Lamont?”
“We have inscriptions that are not part of a dead culture, or part of anything on Earth, or part of anything in the Universe. We have something called para-symbols.”
“I’ve heard of them. For that matter, I’ve seen them.”
“Surely, then, you have the urge to tackle the problem, Dr. Bronowski? You have had the desire to work out what they say?”
“No desire at all, Dr. Lament, because there’s no problem.”
Lament stared at him suspiciously, “You mean you can read them?”
Bronowski shook his head. “You mistake me. I mean I can’t possibly read them, nor can anyone else. There’s no base. In the case of Earthly languages, however dead, there is always the chance of finding a living language, or a dead language already deciphered, that bears some relationship to it, however faint. Failing that, there is at least the fact that any Earthly language was written by human beings with human ways of thought. That makes a starting point, however feeble. None of this is the case with the para-symbols, so that they constitute a problem that clearly has no solution. An insolubility is not a problem.”
Lamont had kept himself from interrupting only with difficulty, and now he burst out, “You are wrong, Dr. Bronowski. I don’t want to seem to be teaching you your profession but you don’t know some of the facts that my own profession has uncovered. We are dealing with para-men, concerning whom we know almost nothing. We don’t know what they are like, how they think, what kind of world they live on; almost nothing, however basic and fundamental. So far, you are right.”
“But it’s only almost nothing that you know, is that it?” Bronowski did not seem impressed. He took out a package of dried figs from his pocket, opened them and began to eat. He offered it to Lamont, who shook his head.
Lamont said, “Right. We do know one thing of crucial importance. They are more intelligent than we are. Item one: They can make the exchange across the inter-Universe gap, while we can play only a passive role.”
He interrupted himself here to ask, “Do you know anything about the Inter-Universe Electron Pump?”
“A little,” said Bronowski. “Enough to follow you, Doctor, if you don’t get technical.”
Lamont hastened on. “Item two: They sent us instructions as to how to set up our part of the Pump. We couldn’t understand it but we could make out the diagrams just sufficiently well to give us the necessary hints. Item Three: They can somehow sense us. At least they can become aware of our leaving tungsten for them to pick up, for instance. They know where it is and can act upon it. We can do nothing comparable. There are other points but this is enough to show the para-men to be clearly more intelligent than we are.”
Bronowski said, “I imagine, though, that you are in the minority here. Surely your colleagues don’t accept this.”
“They don’t. But what makes you come to that conclusion?”
“Because you’re clearly wrong, it seems to me.”
“My facts are correct. And since they are, how can I be wrong?”
“You are merely proving the technology of the para-men is more advanced than ours. What has that to do with intelligence? See here”—Bronowski rose to take off his jacket and then sat down in a half-reclining position, the soft rotundity of his body seeming to relax and crease in great comfort as though physical ease helped him think— “about two and a half centuries ago, the American naval commander Matthew Perry led a flotilla into Tokyo harbor. The Japanese, till then isolated, found themselves faced with a technology considerably beyond their own and decided it was unwise to risk resistance. An entire warlike nation of millions was helpless in the face of a few ships from across the sea. Did that prove that Americans were more intelligent than the Japanese were, or merely that Western culture had taken a different turning? Clearly the latter, for within half a century, the Japanese had successfully imitated Western technology and within another half a century were a major industrial power despite the fact that they were disastrously beaten in one of the wars of the time.”
Lamont listened gravely, and said, “We thought that, too, Dr. Bronowski, though I didn’t know about the Japanese—I wish I had the time to read history. Yet the analogy is wrong. It’s more than technical superiority; it’s a matter of difference in degree of intelligence.”
“How can you tell, aside from guessing?”
“Because of the mere fact that they sent us directions. They were eager for us to set up our part of the Pump; they had to have us do it. They could not physically cross over; even their thin foils of iron on which their messages were incised (the substance most nearly stable in either world) slowly grew too radioactive to keep in one piece, though, of course, not before we had made permanent copies on our own materials.” He paused for breath, feeling himself to be too excited, too eager. He mustn’t oversell his case.
Bronowski regarded him curiously. “All right, they sent us messages. What are you trying to deduce from that?”
“That they expected us to understand. Could they be such fools as to send us rather intricate messages, in some cases quite lengthy, if they knew we would not understand? ... If it hadn’t been for their diagrams, we would have ended nowhere. Now if they had expected us to understand, it could only be because they felt that any creatures like ourselves with a technology roughly as advanced as their own (and they must have been able to estimate that somehow—another point in favor of my belief) must also be roughly as intelligent as themselves and would experience little difficulty in working out something from the symbols.”