Otherness by David Brin

be.

    We never really threw our things away. We just put them down for a while.

    Now they are coming home.

MILLENIUM

    Picked clean, it holds a certain sterile beauty. A valley of bare, trampled clay between steep hills. Bare clay covered with four million skeletons, the only man-made things now left behind.

    It makes a pretty scene—Hyperion Boneyard. Peaceful.

    All the hordes are gone. Just a few of us remain, sitting around, waiting.

    Things are happening just over the rim, where Los Angeles can be heard fast turning into something different again. By now one theory or another must have proved true. Or else no one cares anymore about past truths, so involved are they in rapid changes. Merging the reclaimed into what's shiny new. But some of us stay in Hyperion, fed from time to time by kindly visitors. We wait, keeping vigil for others who cannot.

    Sometimes it rains. Bones sink slowly into the softening mud.

    Full of nutrients, I hear. Bones are. They belong in good earth.

    Yesterday I thought I saw a condor, winging near the sun.

    Yes, yes. I know things are going on elsewhere. I'll go take part again, really. Soon as I've rested. Thought a few things out. Seen events through to their conclusion.

    I'll just stay a little while longer . . . and watch the first oaks grow.

The Dogma of Otherness

    It all began when my publisher sent me out on what used to be called a Chautauqua circuit—public seminars and panels and rubber-chicken dinners—to promote my books. That's when I began noticing something very strange about the way people have started thinking these days.

    Publicity tours can be pretty tedious at times. Even science-fiction conventions start to blur after too long an exposure. Maybe that's why I started seeing things I otherwise would have ignored.

    It started innocuously enough: my second novel was about genetically engineered dolphins, and its no secret that—next to unicorns—those friendly sea mammals are just about everybody's favorite creatures. People at these gatherings seemed mostly to like the way I handled them.

    Inevitably, though, someone in the crowd would ask what I think of porpoise intelligence here and now, in the real world.

    It's predictable. There is something compelling about a species that so obviously (for lord knows what reason) likes us . People want to know more about them. They ask how much progress has been made in teaching dolphins to speak our language. Or have researchers yet learned to talk to them in theirs?

    Such questions are based on so many implicit assumptions . . . I really hate disappointing folks, but there is a duty to tell the truth.

    "I'm not a real expert," I tell them. "But the data are pretty easy to interpret. I'm afraid real dolphins simply aren't all that smart. Those folktales about high cetacean intelligence, at or above our level, are just stories. It's a shame, but they just aren't true."

    This, apparently, is not how a lecturer remains popular. Not once has the reaction varied.

    " But you cant know that !"

    A universal mutter of agreement. Angry, nodding heads.

    " If we can't communicate with them, it must be because we're not smart enough !"

    I reply as best I can. "Well, Professor Luis Herman of the University of Hawaii has worked for a long time with the deepwater species Steno bredanensis —widely recognized as one of the brightest breeds. Dr. Herman has, indeed, proved that the higher dolphins are pretty smart animals. They can parse four- and even five-element command 'sentence' signals at least as well as those famous 'sign-language' chimpanzees. In fact, the evidence for dolphins is more rigorous than it is for chimps."

    This has them smiling. But I make the mistake of going on.

    "Nevertheless, the basic problem-solving skills of even the brightest porpoise cannot match those of a human toddler. I'm afraid if we want other minds' to talk to, we're going to have to look elsewhere . . . or construct them