Existence
Page 22
No.
Pretty emphatically no.
“Uh.” He blinked a few times, then continued. “Does it mean ‘food’? ‘Eat’? ‘Wash up before dinner’? ‘Welcome stranger’?”
An approving beat greeted his final guess, and the dolphin flicked the tooth-pocked mullet toward Hacker, who felt suddenly ravenous. He tore the fish apart, stuffing bits of it through his helmet’s narrow chowlock, caring very little about salt water squirting in, along with chunks of red flesh.
Welcome stranger? he pondered. That’s mighty abstract for a dumb beast to say. Though I’ll admit, it’s friendly.
ENTROPY
In his prescient novel The Cool War, Frederik Pohl showed a chillingly plausible failure mode, in which our nations and factions do not dare wage open conflict, and so settle upon tit-for-tat patterns of reciprocal sabotage, each attempting to ruin the other’s infrastructure and economy. Naturally, this sends civilization on a slow death spiral of degrading hopes.
Sound depressing? It makes one wonder—what fraction of the “accidents” that we see have nothing to do with Luck?
Oh sure, there are always conspiracy theories. Superefficient engines that were kept off the market by greedy energy companies. Disease cures, suppressed by profit-hungry pharmaceutical giants. Knaves, monopolists and fat cats who use intellectual property to repress knowledge growth, instead of spurring it on.
But those dark rumors don’t hold a candle to this one—that we’re sliding toward despair because all the efforts of good, skilled men and women are for naught. Their labors are deliberately spiked, because some ruling elites see themselves engaged in a secret struggle on our behalf. And this tit-for-tat, negative-sum game is all about the most dismal human pastime.
War.
—Pandora’s Cornucopia
27.
EMISSARY
“We’ve reconsidered the matter, Lacey. Given that poor Hacker is still missing at sea, we should not impose on your time of worry. It won’t be necessary for you to fly to our upcoming meeting of the clade, so far away from the search for your son. We’ll manage, even though we’ll miss your wisdom in Zurich.”
I’ll bet, Lacey thought, pondering the stately blonde who was portrayed seated in front of her, full-sized, through a top quality threevee holistube. Unlike their earlier exchange, back at the Chilean observatory, images now went both ways, between plush, high-security communications lounges in two far-apart branches of the Salamander Club—one of them perched high upon the Alps and the other here in Charleston, where magnolia scents wafted indoors on waves of sultry, junglelike heat, despite a double-seal entrance. Both rooms were decorated so similarly that the seam, separating real from depiction, was easy to ignore. It felt as if the women were chatting across a gap of two meters, not thousands of kilometers.
Security from eavesdropping came the same way as before—using twinned parrot brains as uncrackable encoding devices. Only now, the birds at each end were neuroplugged directly to elaborate transmission systems, allowing more sophisticated use of cephalo-paired encryption. This high-fidelity image helped Lacey read cues in the other woman’s expression. She didn’t need any sophisticated facial analysis program.
Sympathy is only an excuse, Helena. Deliberation is over. The peers have already reached a decision about the Prophet’s proposal, haven’t they? And you know it’s one I’d fuss about.
Testing that hypothesis, she ventured: “Maybe I should come anyway. I’ve hired skilled people to handle the rescue effort. If I hang around, I’ll just get in the way. Or else wilt in this damned humidity. A distraction might help pull my mind away from fretting—”
Transit delay was negligible as Helena duPont-Vonessen interrupted.
“Our thought exactly, dear. A diversion from worry may be just the thing. Hence, we do have a task for you. One that should engage your intellect far better than visiting a bunch of stodgy trillionaire gnomes.” Helena smiled at her own disarming jest. “Also, it will keep you much closer to the scene, in case the searchers find … in case they have need of you.”
Lacey felt her mind veer away from the icy place where she kept anguish over her missing son. That helped propel her the other way, into cool, analytical examination of Helena’s true meaning.
She doesn’t even suggest that I send a surrogate or representative to the meeting in Switzerland. She wants to deflect me to another topic altogether.
“Oh? And what task would you have in mind?” Lacey asked.
“To represent the First Estate—or, at least, our part of it—at the Artifact Conference in Washington. To be our eyes and ears, at this historic and disruptive event.
“After all, Lacey, isn’t this right up your alley? An abrupt culmination of everything you’ve dreamed about—contact with extraterrestrial life? Who, among all the members of our class, is better qualified to grasp the issues and implications?”
Lacey almost responded with irritation. Helena was offering her boffin work … almost like some big-domed hireling from the Fifth Estate.
Of course, it was also enticing.
Helena knows me. I’d love a chance to see this famous emissary probe from outer space.
But that wasn’t the point. Her aristocratic peers already had plenty of boffins hard at work on this very topic—either at the Artifact Conference in Washington or closely watching the data feeds—producing digested summaries and advice papers about the implications of an alien Message in a Bottle. Implications to the planet. To a teetering social compact. And to those sitting at the top of an unstable social pyramid.
They have decided already, Lacey realized, interpreting plenty from the other woman’s terse wording and guarded visage. This news of contact with an interstellar civilization must have tipped them over, uniting the leading families in consensus. They are just as upset and panic-ridden as those dopey demonstrators in a hundred cities, calling for the Livingstone Object to be destroyed.
Only, trillionaires didn’t join demonstrations. Lacey’s fellow patricians had other ways of taking action.
They’ve decided to join Tenskwatawa, the Prophet, she realized. And his Renunciation Movement.
Of course, she knew what that meant. Another surge in anti-intellectualism, fostered by populist politicians and mass media—at least, the portions that were controlled by two thousand powerful families. An ancient trick in the human playbook; get the masses lathered up in fear of “outsiders”—and what better outsiders than outright aliens? Whip up enough dread and the mob will gladly follow some elite, pledging fealty to men and women on horseback. Or yacht-back. Vesting them with power.
Lacey didn’t object to that part. Even before she met Jason, her parents and tutors had explained the obvious—that people aren’t naturally democratic. Feudalism was the prevalent human condition erupting in all eras and cultures, since history began to be recorded on clay tablets. Even in modern films and popular culture, the theme resonated. Millions who were descended from enlightenment revolutionaries, now devoured tales about kings, wizards, and secret hierarchies. Superheroes and demigods. Celebrities, august families, and inherited privilege.
This campaign in the media went way back. Subsidized court sages, from Confucius to Plato to Machiavelli, from Leni Riefenstahl to Hannah Niti, all warned against mob rule, preaching for noble authoritarianism. In his one and only book—circulated only within the clade—Jason compiled convincing arguments for newblesse oblige …
… though Lacey still wondered, now and then. Would either of them have found the case so compelling, if they weren’t already members of the topmost caste? The platonic crust?
Oh, no question, the species and planet would be better off guided by a single aristocracy, than by a fractious horde of ten billion short-tempered, easily-frightened “citizens” armed with nuclear and biological weapons. Government-by-the-people wasn’t her reason for being in love with the Enlightenment. Democracy was an unfortunate and potentially toxic side effect of the thing she really valued.
Though it had only been a few seconds, Helena grew visibly uncomfortable with Lacey’s thoughtful pause.
“So, will you do this for us? We’ll supply whatever staff and ai resources you’ll need, of course.”
“Of course. And that would include—?”
“Well. All the linguistic feeds and any experts you desire.”
“And simulation tools? For projection-analysis of social repercussions, all that?”
“Absolutely, the very best available.”
Really? It was all Lacey could do, not to arch an eyebrow skeptically. The latest versions that you and the inner circle use?
Anyone outside of the clade—which meant 99.9996 percent of humanity (almost exactly)—would have called Lacey part of any “inner circle.” It went beyond mere wealth and its ability to buy influence. Family also mattered. Especially as the generation of self-made moguls in China, Russia, and the Americas departed, leaving their fortunes to privilege-born heirs, letting the old logic of bloodlines reassert itself. And yet, Lacey knew—despite her marriage to Jason, and the way her own parents helped stave off the Bigger Deal—even those ties never guaranteed real power. Or being truly in the know.
You still wondered, always—who are the real Illuminati? Those who know the really big secrets? The fellows who have the dirt and can blackmail even the most idealistic politicians. Those discreetly pulling strings and playing the world’s people—yes, including me—like pieces on a chessboard?
Does even Helena wonder about that?
When it came to most of the scions, princes, sheiks, and neolords whom Lacey knew—many of them convinced they were high intellects, because sycophants had flattered them and given them high marks at Oxbridge—well, one had to hope and pray that none of them was a secret string puller! Surely, any cabal of aristocratic titans ought to be smarter, by far.
Could it be that they don’t exist? Perhaps every part of the aristocracy thinks that someone else is really guiding affairs?
Lacey wasn’t sure which possibility felt more frightening. A cryptic superelite of mighty meddlers, working their will beyond her sight … or else that things actually were as they seemed, a mélange of cartels and “Estates,” of impudent guilds and impotent legacy nations, plus a bewildering fog of “smart” citizen-mobs and ephemerally frightening ais … all desperately tugging at the tiller, with the result that no one was really steering the ship. Nobody at all.
She answered, carefully.
“Hm. I … suppose some top ai tools would help. Can I access the Quantum Eye in Riyadh?”
Helena blinked, shifting back in her chair. This request went a bit further than diverting one crackpot old lady from bigger matters.
“I … I can approach the Riyadhians. Though, as you know, they tend to be a bit—”
“Suspicious? But aren’t they fully committed members of our clade? So, if there’s consensus that my mission is important—”
She left the sentence hanging. And it worked. Helena nodded.
“I don’t expect that will be a problem, Lacey. My factotum will contact yours about details. Only now, I am so sorry, but I must run. The Bogolomovs are arriving, and you know how much they love ceremony. They actually think they’re czars or boyars or something, complete with a family tree made of fairy dust and forged DNA!”
Helena chuckled demurely, then straightened and met Lacey’s eyes, with a level gaze of apparently sincere affection.
“Please accept our blessings, dear one. Our prayers are with you, for Hacker to be found and safely returned to you.”
Lacey thanked the younger woman, with all the back-and-forth that it took to bring polite conversation to a close. Only, her heart wasn’t in it. And, after the holistube went blank, she was left in silence, sitting in the leather-trimmed lounge, feeling miserable. Alone.
First, Jason has to go racing toward the nearest disaster area on Awfulday, instead of staying sensibly away from danger, becoming an iconic hero of newblesse oblige … as if that sort of honor ever did a widow any good …
… then Hacker goes hurtling himself into space—exhibiting all of Jason’s bravado without any of the showy responsibility …
… and now it comes to this. I am being cauterized by my peers. Set aside. Removed from deliberations that might affect the shape of civilization for generations to come. All because—with good reason—they fear I’ll be unhappy about their choice.
Shall I resign? Maybe join one of the other coalitions of do-gooder rich?
There were plenty of those, some of them more suitable for a philanthropist with her science-loving bent. Tech billionaires and first-generation entrepreneurs, fizzing with excitement over the Havana Artifact. Some, she knew well, as cosponsors of her Farseeker Telescope. Not all of the superwealthy were superreactionary. Not even a majority.
But those other rich folk tended to act as individuals or in small groups, pursuing personal passions and separate interests. The same fetish for uniqueness that had made them affluent prevented any action in concert. Not even the wary, tentative grouping that called itself the Naderites.
None of them—separately or all together—could match the influence, power, or Machiavellian ruthlessness of the clade.
If I step outside, I’ll join the billions. Those to whom history happens … instead of ordering it up, like a meal on a plate.
* * *
“There ought to be signs of intelligent life everywhere, madam, truly,” the showman-scientist crooned, his low, rich voice spiced with a velvety Jamaican accent.
“Ancient aliens—so-very smaart—should have preceded us by eons, sprouting corn all across our so-bright galaxy, even before the sun was born, filling the cosmos with culture and upfull conversation.
“Hence, it be fretful-puzzling, even long-back when we first began looking for signs of technological civilization, that this welcoming cosmos seem sparse. Indeed, with only one proved example of sapient life—us!”
Profnoo gestured with both hands, rocking his oversize head so avidly that each of his super-elongated earlobes rattled against thick collar ruffles. He swept them back to join the twitching, multibraided draidlocks of cybactivated hair that served as both antennae-receivers and his public trademark—though he was only the best known of a dozen science supertainers who came from that gifted little island.
“I know that,” Lacey sighed. She didn’t need a razzle-artist astronomer to lay out—for a thousandth time—the dismal logic of the Fermi Paradox. Yet, Professor Noozone proceeded to do just that, perhaps out of eagerness to impress his patron. Or else, practicing a riff for his weekly audience.
“See here now.” The professor pointed to a holistank that showed some kind of primeval sea, with meteors flashing overhead. “Precursors of life appear to emerge anywhere that you have a flow of energy, plus a dozen basic elements immersed in liquid—not just water, but almost any kind of liquid at all! And not only on planets with surface oceans! But ten times as many little worlds that have seas, roofed with icy covers, like Europa, Enceladus, Miranda, Tethys, Titan, Oberon…”
She wanted to interrupt. To get the man back onto the topic of the Artifact. But Lacey knew that any expression of outright disapproval might quash him too much. In order to be wielded effectively, power had to wear gloves—a lesson she had tried, in vain, to teach her short-tempered son.
Anyway, the situation with Professor Noozone was entirely her own fault.
It serves me right, for choosing an adviser with the brain of a Thorne or a Koonin, but with the insecure ego of a Bollywood star and the put-on reggae drawl of a rastaman.
Bulgin
g implants throbbed just under the skin of Profnoo’s broad forehead, above dark, glinting eyes. The effect—totally intentional—made his cranium seem preternaturally large. Like an overinflated soufflé.
At least he doesn’t feel a need to lay the accent too thick, when he’s talking to me alone. Though his vowels were stretched and every “th” dropped into a “d” or “t” sound, she felt grateful that he wasn’t peppering in very many island slang expressions. In public, or on his shows, Profnoo can be hard to follow without subtitles!
Professor Noozone caused more images to dance about, with flourishes of a hand. “Indeed, our … your … earlier farseeker telescopes did find traces of life out there, on half a dozen planets! Those worlds, so far, proved disappointing. None of them exactly New Zion. Then there’s the next step. For life to rise-up an’ get smaart, an’ then technology-capable.
“Countless arguments have fumed and smoked over how much of a fluke it was, here on Earth, for humans to leap so far, so fast. And, if there very-truly are older races out there, how best to look for them. Does the lack of garish tutorial beacons mean there are no Elder Races out there, after all?
“But, irie. Of course, the arrival of the Livingstone Object seems to have settled that!” He chuckled with the satisfaction of someone whose side had proved right, after a century of debate.
“By the Artifact’s mere existence, and the plurality of alien types that it contains, we may conclude that we are surrounded by an upfull multitude of advanced civilizations! Their invitation to come-ya ‘join us’ … to become members of some maarvelous community of star-bredren … has already thrilled and inspired billions across our lonely planet. Though the prospect may disturb a few downpressing ginnygogs an’ trogs who are terrified of change.”
Profnoo seemed unaware of Lacey’s ironic grimace, or her conflicted loyalties. By personality, she ought to share his forward-looking eagerness. If not for her worries about Hacker, she, too, might have been fizzing about the prospect of First Contact. (Though she would express it with more reserve than the super-extrovert in front of her.)