But he played; he always had. For love of the crystalline mathematical puzzles he found in cryptography, for an avenue, an escape—it had, after all, brought him from an immigrant family in smalltown Oregon on to Berkeley, to Washington, and now finally to Pasadena. To meet the Snark. For that, the journey had been worth it.
He passed by another gray guard and into the conference room. No one there; he was early. He padded softly over thick carpets to the table and sat down. Mr. Ichino’s notes were in order, but he looked at them without focusing on the individual words. Secretaries came and went, placing yellow scratch pads and pens before each chair. An urn of coffee was wheeled in and set in a corner. A slight hollow pop disturbed Mr. Ichino’s muzzy meditations; it was a test of the pickup microphones inlaid at regular spacings around the conference table.
A secretary gave him the agenda and he studied it. There was only a list of attendees, no hint of the meeting’s purpose. Mr. Ichino pursed his lips as he read the names; there would be men here whom he knew only as distant figures in the news magazines.
All because of a vessel many millions of kilometers away. It seemed mildly ironic, considering the immediate and serious problems of the administration in Washington. But Mr. Ichino did not dwell on politics. His father had learned a stringent lesson of noninvolvement in Japan and made sure his son followed his example. From his earliest days of adolescence Mr. Ichino remembered his reluctance to join the poetry and language clubs in high school, because he felt the sharing of the tenuous emotions these things brought him, the nuances they called up, could not be a public thing. To write about them, perhaps—that was possible. But how to describe haiku except with another poem? To use anything more—slabs of words, sentences of explanation without grace or lightness of touch—was to crush the butterfly beneath a muddy boot.
He did finally summon up the sheer bravery to join the poetry club—though not French Studies, the other possibility—and found in it nothing to fear. Girls read their own stilted lines in high, nervous voices and sat down to beamed approval, followed by mild criticism from the teacher/sponsor. There were only three boys in the club but he could not remember them at all, and the girls now seemed to have merged into one composite: thin, willowy, eternally cold even in her cashmeres, her nostrils a pinched pale blue.
There was no clash of wills there, so the club marked a transition for him: he learned to speak before a group in his halting English, to define and explain and finally to disagree.
That was before mathematics, before the long years of concentration at university, before Washington and the dozens upon dozens of machine codes he devised, the monographs on cryptography that consumed his days and nights. The thin girls became—he looked up—secretaries in fashionably short skirts, coffee-bearers. And what had he become, that shy Japanese-American boy? Fifty-one years old, well paid, responsible, a bachelor consumed by work and hobbies. All clear, precise measures, but beyond that he was not sure.
“Mr. Ichino, I’m George Evers,” a deep voice said. Mr. Ichino stood up quickly with a sudden release of unexpected nervous energy, murmured words of greeting and shook the man’s hand.
Evers smiled thinly and regarded him with distant assessment. “I hope we aren’t taking too much of your time today. You and Mr. Williams”—he nodded as Williams appeared and walked to the coffee urn, long legs scissoring awkwardly—“are our experts on the day-to-day behavior of the Snark and we thought we should hear what you have to say before proceeding with the rest of the meeting.”
“I see,” Mr. Ichino said, surprised to find his voice almost a whisper. “The letter I received yesterday gave me no details, so—”
“On purpose,” Evers said jovially, hitching thumbs into his belt. “We merely want to get an informal idea of what you think that thing is up to. The committee here— the Executive Committee, actually, that’s the President’s title—is faced with a deadline and I’m afraid we’re going to have to come to a decision right away, sooner than we thought.”
“Why?” Mr. Ichino said, alarmed. “I was under the impression that there was no hurry.”
Mr. Evers paused and turned to wave to other men entering the long room and Mr. Ichino had the sudden impression of a man impatient to be off, to have the waiting finished, as though Evers knew the decision ahead and wanted to get beyond that dead moment to the action that followed. He noticed that Evers’s left hand, casually resting on the back of a chair, had a slight tremor.
“That machine isn’t willing to wait any more,” Evers said, turning back. “It gave us the word two days ago.”
Before he could reply Evers nodded and moved way, clasping hands with men in suits and pastel sports jackets who were filling the room. Williams, seated directly across the table, sent him a questioning glance.
Mr. Ichino shrugged elaborately in reply, glad that he was able to appear so casual. He looked around. Some of the faces he recognized. None were as important as Evers, who bore the ambiguous title of Presidential Advisor. Evers moved to the head of the table, still talking to the men nearest him, and sat down. Others who had been standing took their places and the secretaries left the coffee urn to fend for itself.
“Gentlemen,” Evers said, calling them to order. “We will have to hurry things along, as you know, in order to meet the President’s new deadline. I spoke with him this morning. He is very concerned, and looks forward to reviewing the recommendations of this committee.”
Evers sat with his arms folded on the table before him, letting his eyes rove up and down the two lines of men.
“You have all seen—excuse me, all but Mr. Williams and Mr. Ichino here—seen the messages received from the Snark requesting a change of venue.” He paused for the ripple of polite laughter. “We are here to go into possible scenarios that could be initiated by the Snark’s arrival in near-Earth orbit.”
He gestured toward Mr. Ichino. “These two gentlemen are guests of the Committee today and are here solely to bring us up to date on the nonessential information the Division has been sending the Snark. They are not, of course, members of the Executive Committee itself.” In the bleached light his skin took on a high glaze as he focused on the aligned ranks of men, yellow pads scattered at random before them. A few were already taking notes.
Evers sat back, relaxing. “The Snark remained in Venus orbit to keep a strong channel to us, through our satellite. But we and it have transferred our, uh, dialogue to highflux channels now. We’re communicating directly, bypassing the satellite. Now the Snark wants to come to Earth.”
“To see our biosphere up close,” a thin man said at Evers’s left. “Which I don’t believe.”
Eyes turned to him. Mr. Ichino recognized the man as a leading games theorist from the Hudson Institute. He wore poorly-fitted tweeds; from an ornate pipe he puffed a blue wreath around himself.
“I believe the Snark—Walmsley’s term, isn’t it?—has been studying us quite well from Venus,” he said. “Look at what it asks for—a welter of cultural information, photographs, art. No science or engineering. It can probably deduce that sort of thing, if it needs, from radio and Three-D programs.”
“Quite right,” a man further down said. There were more assents.
“Then why come to Earth?” Evers said.
“To get a good look at our defenses?” someone said halfway down the long table.
“Perhaps, perhaps,” Evers replied. “The military believes the Snark may not care about our level of technology. For the same reason we wouldn’t worry about the spears of South Sea natives if we wanted to use their island as a base.”
“I’d worry,” said a swarthy man. “Those spears are sharp.”
Evers had a way of delaying his smile one judicious second, and then allowing it to spread broadly, a haughty white crease. “Precisely to the point. It can’t be sure without a closer look.”
“Snark has already had a look,” the Hudson Institute man murmured. “Through the Walmsley woman.”
There was a low flurry of comment around the room, agreeing. Mr. Ichino had heard rumors about this, and here was confirmation.
“Gentlemen,” Evers said, “we have seen the text of the Snark’s demand. It was quite strong. Acting on your earlier suggestion”—he nodded toward the Hudson Institute man, who was relighting his pipe—“I spoke with the President. He authorized me to send the Snark a go-ahead. I wrote the message myself—there was no time to consult this committee on the exact wording—and I have learned that our Venus satellite now detects a reignition of the Snark’s fusion torch.”
The table buzzed with comment. Mr. Ichino slumped back, reflecting.
“I explained to this … being … that we did not know, at first, whether it was friendly. I didn’t mention we still don’t know.”
“What did it say?” the Hudson Institute man asked. “It replied with a request to orbit Earth. Upon my advice, the President counter-proposed that the Snark orbit the moon for a while, so our men there—and in the vicinity—can observe it. A sort of mutual inspection, as it were.”
The man in tweeds puffed energetically and said, “We could do the job better from a near-Earth orbit.”
“True,” Evers said. “I suppose I can merely summarize our earlier doubts?” He leaned forward, face furrowed. “About why it didn’t try to get in touch with us first? Ex-Comm had to make the first move. Then, and only then, it responded.”
“Surveying strange solar systems must be a chancy business,” the man in tweeds said mildly.
“For both parties,” Evers said with a hollow jovial laugh. Mr. Ichino reflected that with success comes a reputation—if only in the mind’s eye of the successful—for wisdom. “But perhaps I should explain. The moon orbit option came about because of an alternate plan the Joint Chiefs have in mind. I suppose I needn’t add that we haven’t discussed this with the United Nations?” The room rustled with chuckles. “Well, the plan works best if the Snark stops by the moon. That isolates it, pins it down, within our zone of operations.”
