Читать книгу White Asparagus - D. R. Belz - Страница 12

I have just now stopped laughing at the news that episodes of “I Love Lucy” have been inadvertently reaching what exobiologists think are extraterrestrial intelligences in our neighboring star systems. Yet another news report says our star neighbors are going to be treated to a very deliberate and expensive broadcast of the Yale school song, “Boola, Boola.” The scientists behind the project think the song is friendly sounding and harmless.

It is.

But while we are about the business of broadcasting friendly earth sayings, I think we should consider these: Yabba-dabba-doo, Yippy-yi-yo-kiyay, Hootenanny, Yankee Doodle went to town, and so on.

I think it’s a little late to try to think up anything profound to say to our star neighbors, if they are, in fact, listening. Because if they are listening, they already know all about us. Nothing we can say now can ever recover Lucy’s “Ethel, do I have a plan!”

I’m sure Lucy, as our first interstellar ambassador, has explained everything to them, and yet has told them very little about us.

Certainly, they would now rather fly their light ships into the Gravity Cauldrons of Amber Arcturus Nine than land on our little world and announce their arrival like Michael Rennie in the original The Day Earth Stood Still. (They shot him, remember?) Without a doubt, on their star charts, three dots out from Sol, is a little red flag on a pin. To any inquisitive traveler of this part of the galaxy, the flag says “Beware: Earth.”

And that explains it all, and explains nothing.

I have a suspicion there’s a maxim in use out in the big blue universe that has been recognized everywhere, like American Express.

The maxim is: “Speak, for heaven’s sake, when you’re spoken to.”

Most three-year-old children on earth learn this advice as a matter of casual etiquette, but somehow retain only a very vague sense of the precept.

In the same way, Earth is one of the little children of the universe; we babble and squawk and pump out megawatts of disorganized radiation molded to the shape of our minds, interstellar maxims be damned.

We are somewhat egotistical in thinking that every capable intelligence out there is beating a path to our little mote. Even the Thumb People of Orb Cycle 49 think of Earth as some sort of practical joke invented by their radio astronomers. If intelligences have been receiving early television signals for years, they have better sense than to blunder into our missile sights.

There used to be a wonderfully effective TV commercial (perhaps our star neighbors have seen it) of a crowd of people in a stadium, watching a tennis match. One man mentioned that his broker is E.F. Hutton, and E.F. Hutton says— and of course the entire paid attendance and the players turned to listen. Wouldn’t it be nice if all the universe were like that crowd, and good old Earth like the unwitting fellow in the midst of it, ready to say something of cosmic import?

Imagine the surprise of our star-friends, if they were so whimsical as to train their ears to Earth and hear the last, frustrated strains of “Boola, Boola!” when all we meant to say was “Hello, how are you?”