Red Dot: Contact. Will the gravest threat come from closer to home than we expect? by Eugene Linn Page B

an immediate liking to Cindy. “And you’re definitely the person I need to talk to for a briefing I’ve got to give today. Where are we headed? How are we going to interpret these messages, and how long will it take?”
    “Each country, the ones that are home to one of the thirty-six languages, is feeding their results to everyone else at the U.N. Extraterrestrial Command.” Cindy delivered each statement emphatically and enthusiastically, as if sharing choice news with a good friend. “We’ll get more words, they’ll get better at putting words together, and the more words we understand, the easier it will be. We can start to use sentence structure or meaning to infer new words.”
    Her eyes widening, Claire said, “That sounds encouraging, Cindy. How long do you think it’ll be before we can begin to actually understand each other?”
    “I wouldn’t be surprised if we have some breakthroughs and some setbacks. We’ve run some numbers on the computer, and our guess is we’ll really start communicating in about two weeks.”
    “Wow,” said Claire, as she thought for a minute, catching a low drone of conversation around them and the occasional scrape of plastic rakes moving pieces of paper. “Now—the ‘why.’ Why are they communicating in ordinary written languages? Why are they having so much trouble doing it?”
    Cindy didn’t lose a beat as she eagerly answered. “First, why they’re communicating in everyday languages…” Here, she turned toward Ahmet, expecting a reaction.
    “Here we go, getting warm and fuzzy,” Ahmet said, shaking his head with a laugh. “Get out your family photos.”
    “It’s not a popular theory with the math people, but I think maybe the aliens want to communicate with us, as many of us as possible, on a personal level. Thirty-six different written languages, red dots all over the world… Of course, that’s just speculation.”
    Wearing an unaccustomed frown, Ahmet said, “That’s not out of the question, but it seems unlikely, and I’m afraid it will lead us to underestimate the danger from the aliens.”
    “Believe me,” Cindy said, “the power the ETs have to do harm scares me, too. But as an anthropologist, I’ve seen what happens when some profound event or movement shakes people’s belief systems. And D9 is catching us at a bad time. We’ve just begun manned outer space travel, and have encountered no life outside Earth, not even bacteria or viruses. So it’s still easy to believe in Earth and life on Earth as the center of everything.
    “In five hundred years, almost everyone will have been into outer space, maybe to work or as a tourist. We’ll have colonies on planets and moons, and will have discovered at least some simple life forms. A visit from ETs then wouldn’t be such a shock.
    “But now it’s a huge shock that will make us question our beliefs or self image. There is no doubt some of us will lash out in that case. And people have a great capacity to do harm. ETs potentially have greater power and might use it to harm us. Might. I think the certainty that mankind will resort to violence makes people a greater threat than ETs.”
    The three scientists stood in silence for a few moments before Cindy continued.
    “And now, why they’re having so much trouble communicating—that’s really hard to say. We’ve been talking a lot about that here, and Wyatt had an interesting idea, didn’t he?” she said, looking at Ahmet. “Why don’t we have him explain it to Claire?
    “You’re right,” said Ahmet. “I’ll go get him” He turned and walked to the stairwell and part way down. “Wyatt, hey Wyatt!” he shouted down the stairs. “Someone wants to talk to you.”
    As Ahmet returned smiling, Cindy said, “Shame on you! You’ll scare him to death.”
    “He’s a little shy,” Ahmet said to Claire.
    In about a minute, Wyatt’s baby face and profuse blond curls haltingly headed up the stairs.
    Denver One employed many young