Divine Intervention by Robert Sheckley

Author:Robert Sheckley [Sheckley, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Published: 2014-05-12T21:00:00+00:00

Wormworld

Dear Robert,

I can’t tell you how thrilled I am that you and I have been able to establish telepathic contact across the vastness of space. I still can hardly believe that I am in communication with an alien creature. Not that it is entirely unexpected. Many of the intelligent worms of my world believe that other worlds exist with intelligent worms living in them. Most of us also admit the possibility (some say probability) that there are intelligent races out there that are not worms at all, not even vermiform, but really quite different. Many of us have been working toward telepathic contact with these hypothetical other-worlders.

From your description of yourself (which I didn’t completely understand) you seem to possess a high degree of bilateral symmetry. So do we. Some of our best theoreticians have long predicted Necessary Degrees of Symmetry as a precondition for intelligent life. I must question a rather astounding statement you made in your recent communication. You told me that you are a nonworm intelligent creature from another solid world who makes neither worm- hole nor nonwormhole, but instead moves around on the outside of your world, in contact with its surface!

At least, I think that’s what you were saying!

Now, the idea that you are a nonworm intelligence communicating to me from another world is easy enough for me to grasp. But that you live on the outer surface of your world, rather than inside, where one would normally expect even a nonworm alien intelligence to live…

Is that really where you live? On the surface?

Please clarify! It’s really important for me to get this straight, for reasons I’ll explain in my next communication. Just now I have to sign off rather hurriedly and do some urgent tunnel-redirecting. Hope to hear from you soon.

Good to hear from you again. If I understand you correctly, you assert that you are a solid, three-dimensional creature, like me, but living on the outside of your world. And you also assert (or rather, I infer from your statements) that you know not only the shape of your world, but also its volume, radius, surface dimensions, and so forth.

Frankly, that’s hard to believe.

Is that what you meant?

Are you really a creature from some distant planet, or another worm somewhere playing tricks on me?

Talking with you has given me difficulties. The other worms know I’m sending out a powerful vibration aimed and tightly focused out into space. A lot of worms do that. But I keep on tracking a single area (your world), and that leads other worms to ask if I’ve gotten obsessive or just what the hell I think I’m doing.

Making up believable tales about why I’ve locked my beam onto a single distant source is easier than telling worms that I’m in contact with a being who lives on the surface of a sphere.

But to hell with the difficulties. As far as I’m concerned this is fascinating stuff. It is extremely interesting to hear tales of wonder from different far-off

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