The Fountains of Paradise - Arthur C. Clarke Page 0,29

endless voyage, after its brief transit of their solar system, Starglider gives the location of its home world—already awaiting a direct call from the newest member of the galactic communications network.

“In our case, we can take some pride in the fact that, even before it had transmitted any star charts, we had identified its parent sun and even beamed our first transmissions to it. Now we have only to wait one hundred and four years for an answer. How incredibly lucky we are, to have neighbors so close at hand!”

It was obvious from its first messages that Starglider understood the meaning of several thousand basic English and Chinese words, which it had deduced from an analysis of television, radio, and, especially, broadcast video-text services. But what it had picked up during its approach was a very unrepresentative sample from the whole spectrum of human culture; it contained little advanced science, still less advanced mathematics, and only a random selection of literature, music, and the visual arts.

Like any self-taught genius, therefore, Starglider had huge gaps in its education. On the principle that it was better to give too much than too little, as soon as contact was established, Starglider was presented with the Oxford English Dictionary, the Great Chinese Dictionary (Mandarin edition), and the Encyclopaedia Terrae. Their digital transmission required little more than fifty minutes, and it was notable that immediately thereafter Starglider was silent for almost four hours—its longest period off the air. When it resumed contact, its vocabulary was immensely enlarged, and more than ninety-nine percent of the time it could pass the Turing test with ease—that is, there was no way of telling from the messages received that Starglider was a machine, and not a highly intelligent human.

There were occasional giveaways—for example, incorrect use of ambiguous words, and the absence of emotional content in the dialogue. This was only to be expected; unlike advanced terrestrial computers, which could replicate the emotions of their builders, when necessary, Starglider’s feelings and desires were presumably those of a totally alien species, and therefore largely incomprehensible to man.

And, of course, vice versa. Starglider could understand precisely and completely what was meant by “the square on the hypotenuse equals the sum of the squares on the other two sides.” But it could scarcely have the faintest glimmer of what lay in Keats’s mind when he wrote:

Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam

Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn….

Still less

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate….

Nevertheless, in the hope of correcting this deficiency, Starglider was also presented with thousands of hours of music, drama, and scenes from terrestrial life, both human and otherwise. By general agreement, a certain amount of censorship was enforced here. Although mankind’s propensity for violence and warfare could hardly be denied (it was too late to recall the Encyclopaedia), only a few carefully selected examples were broadcast. And, until Starglider was safely out of range, the normal fare of the video networks was uncharacteristically bland.

For centuries—perhaps, indeed, until it had reached its next target—philosophers would be debating Starglider’s real understanding of human affairs and problems. But on one point there was no serious disagreement. The hundred days of its passage through the solar system altered irrevocably men’s views of the universe, its origin, and their place in it.

Human civilization could never be the same after Starglider had gone.

15. Bodhidharma

As the massive door, carved with intricate lotus patterns, clicked softly shut behind him, Morgan felt that he had entered another world. This was by no means the first time he had been on ground once sacred to some great religion. He had seen Notre-Dame, Hagia Sophia, Stonehenge, the Parthenon, Karnak, Saint Paul’s, and at least a dozen other major temples and mosques. But he had viewed them all as frozen relics of the past, splendid examples of art or engineering but with no relevance to the modern mind. The faiths that had created and sustained them had all passed into oblivion, though some had survived until well into the twenty-second century.

But here, it seemed, time had stood still. The hurricanes of history had blown past this lonely citadel of faith, leaving it unshaken. As they had done for three thousand years, the monks still prayed, and meditated, and watched the dawn.

During his walk across the worn flagstones of the courtyard, polished smooth by the feet of innumerable pilgrims, Morgan experienced a sudden and wholly uncharacteristic indecision. In the name of progress, he was attempting