Tower of Glass

“Massage,” Krug said.

The timber and tone of his command caused a smoothly vibrating table to extrude itself from the wall. Three female androids, kept constantly on call, entered the room. Their supple bodies were bare; they were standard gamma models, who could have been triplets but for the usual programmed minor somatotype divergences. They had small high-set breasts, flat bellies, narrow waists, flaring hips, full buttocks. They had hair on their heads and they had eyebrows, but otherwise they were without body hair, which gave them a certain sexless look; yet the groove of sex was inscribed between their legs, and Krug, if his tastes inclined that way, could part those legs and find within them a reasonable imitation of passion. His tastes had never inclined that way. But Krug had deliberately designed an element of sensuality into his androids. He had given them functional — if sterile — genitals, just as he had given them proper — though needless — navels. He wanted his creations to look human (aside from the necessary modifications) and to do most human things. His androids were not robots. He had chosen to create synthetic humans, not mere machines.

The three gammas efficiently stripped him and worked him over with their cu

The room was furnished simply, even starkly: a lengthy rectangle that contained a desk, a data terminal, a small somber sculpture, and a dark drape that would, at the touch of a repolarizing stud, reveal the panorama of New York City far below. The lighting, indirect and subdued, kept the office in eternal twilight. On one wall, though, there blazed a pattern in brilliant yellow luminescence:

It was the message from the stars.

Vargas’ observatory had picked it up first as a series of faint radio pulses at 900 megacycles; two quick beats, a pause, four beats, a pause, one beat, and so on. The pattern was repeated a thousand times over a span of two days, then halted. A month later it showed up at 1421 megacycles, the 21-centimeter hydrogen frequency, for another thousand turns. A month after that it came in both at half and at double that frequency, a thousand of each. Still later, Vargas was able to detect it optically, riding in on an intense laser beam at a 5000-angstrom wavelength. The pattern was always the same, clusters of brief bursts of information: 2 … 4 … 1 … 2 … 5 … 1 … 3 … 1. Each subcomponent of the series was separated from the next by an appreciable gap, and there was a much larger gap between each repetition of the entire group of pulse-clusters.

Surely it was some message. To Krug, the sequence 2-4-1-2-5-1-3-1 had become a sacred number, the opening symbols of a new kabbalah. Not only was the pattern emblazoned on his wall, but the touch of his finger would send the sound of the alien signal whispering through the room in any of several audible frequencies, and the sculpture beside his desk was primed to emit the sequence in brilliant flashes of coherent light.

The signal obsessed him. His universe now revolved about the quest to make reply. At night he stood beneath the stars, dizzied by the cascade of light, and looked to the galaxies, thinking, I am Krug, I am Krug, here I wait, speak to me again! He admitted no possibility that the signal from the stars might be other than a consciously directed communication. He had turned all of his considerable assets to the task of answering.

— But isn’t there any chance that the “message” might be some natural phenomenon?

None. The persistence with which it arrived in such a variety of media indicates a guiding consciousness behind it. Someone is trying to tell us something.

— What significance do those numbers have? Are they some kind of galactic pi?

We see no obvious mathematical relevance. They do not form any apparent intelligible arithmetical progression. Cryptographers have supplied us with at least fifty equally ingenious suggestions, which makes all fifty equally suspect. We think that the numbers were chosen entirely at random.

— What good is a message that doesn’t have any comprehensible content?

The message is its own content: a yodel across the galaxies. It tells us, Look, we are here, we know how to transmit, we are capable of rational thinking, we seek contact with you!

— Assuming you’re right, what kind of reply do you plan to make?

I plan to say, Hello, hello, we hear you, we detect your message, we send greetings, we are intelligent, we are human beings, we wish no longer to be alone in the cosmos.

— In what language will you tell them this?

In the language of random numbers. And then, in not-so-random numbers. Hello, hello, 3.14159, did you hear that, 4.14159, the ratio of diameter to circumference?

— And how will you say this to them? With lasers? With radio waves?

Too slow, too slow. I ca