Creative Commons – The Plainsrunner – Chapter Thirty-Two

Continuing the serial release of The Plainsrunner under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license – (CC-BY-SA).

Tallgrass’s mom discovers something in space..

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Chapter Thirty-Two – Harmonics

Tallgrass’s mother, Sage, and his father, Professor Tailor, finally had a major breakthrough in their study of the artifacts. It had to do with the vibrations. They had studied the vibrations exhaustively and found nothing. There were no hidden patterns there. No secret code to discover. The only thing they could say with any certainty was that there was a correlation between the length of time a person spoke and the length of the ensuing vibration. But that was all. Every path from there led to a dead end.

The other vibrations, the ones triggered by the proximity of the two artifacts, were a different matter. Once again, on their own, there was nothing there. They just vibrated as long as they were within two meters of each other. That might have been it if the Professor hadn’t had a pupil who was majoring in mathematics as well as physics, with a minor in music. One day she was in the lab assisting with an experiment, when she said, “Professor, can you hear the harmonics?”

“The what?” asked the Professor.

“The harmonics,” said the young woman, who happened to have perfect pitch. “From the way these vibrations interact with each other.”

The Professor bent close. “I don’t hear anything,” he said.

“No, sorry,” she said. “Of course not. I can’t hear it either. It’s not audible.”

“Then what?” said the Professor.

“You can feel it,” she said, putting her hands on both gliders.

He put his hands beside hers and cocked his head. Then he looked at her and shrugged.

“Can’t you feel it?” she asked.

He started to shake his head, then stiffened. “After you spoke,” he said. “Nothing before, but after …” He stopped and looked at her with wide eyes. “And again after I spoke.”

She was nodding vigorously. “It gets stronger when we talk.” she said. “Are you sure you couldn’t feel it before?”

“Positive,” he said. “Only after we talked.”

“Hm,” she said. “I guess it’s a little weak, but I can definitely feel it.” Then she sang a sustained note of clear pitch, and they felt the harmonic form like a standing wave. She slid the note up and down, and they felt the response follow. He sang a note, not nearly as pure as hers, and they felt another harmonic. Then they both made notes and moved them around, and felt the vibrations from the two artifacts. They played for a while, then they happened to catch each other’s eye and their singing broke down into laughter. For a few minutes they were helpless to do anything. Imagining what would have happened if someone had walked in on them made them laugh so hard that they had to sit on the floor.

When they got hold of themselves, they got busy setting up the apparatus for a proper experiment. They still needed to sing, because the gliders wouldn’t respond to artificially produced tones, only to voices. They did find, though, that they could use recordings of voices, which allowed the Professor’s pupil to get on with her other studies.

The experiments produced tangible results which could be reported to the journals and published. They weren’t able to draw any concrete conclusions from it, other than that two artifacts in close proximity would produce interesting harmonics with their mingled vibrations. It was frustrating. Here they were finally getting somewhere, and the results were so clear and tantalizingly suggestive, but ultimately inconclusive. The Professor lost a lot of sleep, wracking his brain to no good purpose. He spent many hours with Sage, going around and around with it, and coming up with nothing useful.

The published papers got a response from the scientific community, both from independent researchers and from the other people who also held artifacts. With much discussion, and months of painstaking protocol, they arranged to bring the artifacts together and see what would happen. The three held by universities and museums were easier, while the three in private hands were more difficult. The private owners naturally wanted to profit from it, in the form of wealth and prestige rather than scientific knowledge. When they were told that wouldn’t happen, that five gliders would be enough, two of them agreed to join anyway. They must have seen some advantage to being part of something that was catching the imagination of the world, rather than holding out. The third one refused, probably out of spite, and was quickly forgotten, other than in a few news stories on the theme of miserliness.

That wasn’t the only news. Sage also discovered something through her astronomical studies. Her latest area of interest was the Lagrangian points, where the gravity of the bodies in the solar system interacted and formed areas of relative stability. She had been studying them long enough that she had a feel for how they should behave.

Professor Trueway called Tallgrass to his office, saying that he had some important news regarding his mother. Tallgrass hurried there as quickly as he could, trying to keep the worry and anxiety at bay. When he burst into the office, his face betraying his feelings, he saw a smile fade from the Professor’s.

“What is it?” he asked breathlessly. “What’s happened to my mom?”

The Professor’s smile fell completely away. He hastened to reassure Tallgrass. “Nothing,” he said. “Nothing has happened to her. It’s nothing like that.”

“Then what?” said Tallgrass, slowing down and getting control of his breath. “What’s this about?”

“It’s okay,” said the Professor. “I’m sorry I worried you.” He frowned. “I should have thought.”

By now Tallgrass was calm. He was relieved, but still curious “That’s okay, Professor,” he said. “Just tell me.”

“Oh, of course,” said the Professor. “Well, not to beat around the bush, your mother has made a discovery. In astronomy. She’s discovered something exciting.”

“Exciting? How?” asked Tallgrass. “And how did you find out before I did? She always sends me a notice when she publishes a paper.”

“She hasn’t published it yet. I found out about it because I’m on the mailing list for her newsletter.”

“She has a newsletter?” Tallgrass felt strange learning something about his mother from someone she didn’t even know.

“Yes,” said Trueway. “That’s common practice these days.” He shrugged modestly. “I even have one.” He waved that away. “Besides, even if I wasn’t on her mailing list, we’ve been keeping in touch anyway.”

“About me, I suppose,” said Tallgrass.

“Well, yes, of course.”

Tallgrass frowned. “I hope she hasn’t been …”

“What? Oh, no! No. She never interfered. She just wanted to, I guess, keep track of you. I think she misses you quite a bit, Tallgrass.”

Tallgrass’s frown slowly went away. Of course she missed him. He missed her. If she wanted to “keep track” of him, how could he complain about that? How many times had he caught himself wishing she was near when he had something on his mind? They were a quarter of a world apart for the first time in their lives. Apart from the person who was the biggest part of their lives. He smiled and nodded his head. “Of course she does,” he said. It still felt strange to be learning something about her from someone she’d never met, but he could see that it made sense. He felt his view of the world expanding. He nodded again and said, “So, what did she discover?”

“Ah, yes,” said Trueway. “It’s quite exciting. At least it is to me. I have a strong interest in the field.” He saw exaggerated patience forming on Tallgrass’s face, and hurried on. “You know that she has been working on Lagrangian points, don’t you?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Tallgrass. “She’s explained them to me.”

“Good. Do you know which one is L1?”

“Yes. That’s the one between here and the Sun.”

“That’s right. Well, that’s where she made her discovery. She noticed that there’s something wrong with the bodies trapped in the L1 Lagrangian point.”

“Something wrong?”

“Yes. She says there don’t seem to be as many as there should be. And there seems to be a large body there. Larger than it should be. Something that large shouldn’t have got trapped there.” Trueway rubbed his hands together, and said, “I can’t wait for the paper to come out.”

“Something that’s too large to be there?” said Tallgrass. “Then how did it get there?”

“Exactly,” said Trueway. “How did it get there?”

“If it couldn’t be there naturally …” began Tallgrass.

“Then did someone put it there?” finished Trueway. “Yes.”

“You don’t think …” Tallgrass stopped. “Who could have put it there?”

“If someone put it there, then it was either us or it was someone else, obviously. Either way, it looks like some of the old legends might be true after all.”

“Where we used to have a grand civilization, and we flew up into space,” said Tallgrass.

“Much as we are doing now,” said Trueway. “Or there’s the other legend,” he said quietly. “The one where someone came here from another world and sent destruction down from the sky.”

They were both quiet for a while before Tallgrass said, “If that’s true, then they’ll notice us, and what’s to stop them from doing it again?”

“True,” said Trueway. “But they should have noticed by now. If they were watching, they would have seen that we’re building up. And then there’s all the radio we’re using.”

“Radio!” said Tallgrass. “Right. The worst taboo. At least among the villages.”

“So,” said Trueway, “if they knocked us down because we got too big, and for using radio, then where are they?”

“You’re right,” said Tallgrass. “If the legends are true, and something did come from the sky and destroy us, then why isn’t it happening again? And if that legend isn’t true, then who put that big thing in my mom’s Lagrangian point?”

“Well, maybe that legend isn’t true. Or maybe it is true and those people have died out, or gone away. Or maybe we did put it there during our high civilization. Or it could be something we haven’t thought of. It’s even possible that it’s completely natural and there’s just something about gravity that we don’t understand yet.”

Tallgrass thought about all that, then said, “Is there any way to find out for sure? Can we look at it with better telescopes? What about that one they’re talking about putting in orbit?”

“That’s still in the talking phase,” said Trueway. “You’ve seen the satellites we’re putting up now. We’re nowhere near doing something like that yet.”

“What about a better ground-based telescope, then?”

“Your mother is working on that. With her reputation, she can get time on any telescope she wants, so she has used most of them. There’s one more that she thinks might get her better data, but it will be a few months before she can get on it.”

“Couldn’t she get on it earlier if she wanted?”

“Probably, but the other astronomers are also doing important work, and she respects that. Besides, with the object being between us and the Sun, she wants to get just the right position on our orbit so they’re not in a direct line. Then she can mask the Sun with the horizon and get a better look. Even so, it’s a good thing the telescope is at such a high elevation, so the sky’s not as bright.”

“Oh, right,” said Tallgrass. “I didn’t even think of that.” He stared out the window of the Professor’s office, thinking, then said, “How about flying a telescope up really high in an airplane? Up where the sky is really dark. Or, wait, a balloon.”

“Both good ideas, and both with their problems, as you can imagine.”

“Of course,” said Tallgrass. “You can’t put a very big telescope on an airplane, and the balloon project would take time.”

“That’s right. So all things considered, we’re not going to get the answer any time soon.” Trueway caught Tallgrass’s eye and held it. “That’s why we’re working on something else.”

“Oh?” said Tallgrass, his interest piqued.

“Yes,” said Trueway. “Something that will take more than a few months, but something we’re going to have to do eventually, no matter what kind of telescopes we have.”

Tallgrass didn’t get it right away, but then the light went on. “Are you talking about a manned expedition?”

“I am. First we’ll have to convince everyone, but once we do that, I think we can be ready in about ten years.”