“I am Devaraja Rashuri, Chairman of the Pangaean Consortium.”
A carefully calculated hesitation, and he continued, “It is with joy that I address you tonight, joy at the marvels of the Universe in which we live and joy that I am privileged to be alive at this moment in human history.
“I will let others explain to you the how and the why of the good news I have to share with you. I leave to them the task of placing my words in context and answering the questions they will raise.
“But before I proceed, I am obliged to offer an explanation some will take as an apology. It is not an apology, for I am convinced that all that was done was necessary.
“Since its inception, the Consortium has been keeping a secret—a secret kept for no reason other than to be certain that what we thought was so, truly was. Because of the unequaled importance of the issue, we owed it to you to be certain.
“No doubt now remains.
“So I come before you to share with you that secret. After hours of pondering I find no way but the simplest will do.”
The picture of Rashuri faded, and the massed billions watching were taken on an imaginary space flight much like the familiar sequence which each day, in each community of Earth, marked the start of the broadcast day. Except that this star was a little smaller and a little redder, and this trip ended on the surface of the second planet, not the third.
“We now know without any doubt that under another sky on another world, orbiting another star too faint in our own sky for most of us to see, there is life. These are beings that hold faith, know love, and celebrate their good fortune to exist. They are our brothers in the Universe.”
In the animation on the screen, there were figures moving in the distance, too far away and too obscured by haze to be seen clearly.
“Of their numbers, their shapes, their lives, we can only guess. But we know their minds stir with curiosity like ours do, and that their hearts stir with daring and bravery.
“We know that because they have sent a message to us, and that message tells of a tiny ship sent into the dark and lonely void that lies between our worlds. They are coming to meet us, to join hands with us. And we will go out to light the path for them, to greet them and guide them here as our guests. As we now count the years, they will reach our world in 2027. But I propose that we consider it Year 1 of a new Galactic Era.
“You need and have the right to know the many details of how this was discovered and confirmed, and about our preparations for their visit, and for the next two hours the men and women who have worked on those matters will share that with you. But I urge you not to let the details obscure the key point—
“We are not alone in the Universe.”
Rashuri paused. “Each of us has cause to think on that and realize what it means for them. For myself, it has renewed my pride in my membership in the human family—and my sense of responsibility. For all our foibles, we are Earth’s best. It falls to us to represent our world in this startling new arena. We must recognize both the honor and the burden of that duty. We must send our best sons and daughters as envoys. We must be at our finest when the Senders arrive, at peace with ourselves and in harmony with nature. And we must allow their differences not to frighten us, but to teach us the difficult lesson of the oneness of mankind.”
Rashuri’s speech was followed by a basic astronomy lesson which showed how to find Cassiopeia in the night sky and attempted to make clear the great distances at which its various components lay.
Next came a slightly sanitized docudrama depicting the message’s discovery. Allen Chandliss was portrayed as a much younger man, earnest of face and strong of mind, and nothing was said of his death. Penny Eddington, AKA Agatha, was described as a member of Tsiolkovsky Technical Institute, with her age not noted and a current—that is, putatively adult—portrait used. But aside from such omissions and careful phrasings, the tale was reasonably accurate.
A tour of PANCONTRAC was used as a vehicle to present the message and its translation, and ambiguous scenes from Sriharikota and the Orbital Operations Center were used as backdrop to an explanation of Project Star Rise. Not mentioned were Tai Chen’s defense platforms, the first of which was at that moment en route to the orbit of Pluto. Rashuri and his advisors hoped to avoid even the suggestion of xenophobia.
Eddington’s turn came in a heavily edited “interview” with a NET newscaster. Through the miracle of videotape, he appeared calm, reasonable, and confident as he described the life of the Senders of Mu Cassiopeia.
But the large-eyed, gracile Senders, as described by Eddington and given life by the NET’s graphic artists, were themselves more eloquent. The Sender family, six adults and two young, stood on an alien plain, speaking in a melodious but alien tongue, contemplating the setting of an alien sun, while subliminal messages spoke home… trust… friendship…family.
Then it was time not to talk, but to listen.
Through the last weeks of 2016 and into the new year, Rashuri’s agents listened in the public squares and the drinking houses to the call-in talk shows and to the comedians’ routines. His sociometrists sampled opinion and tested understanding. His economists watched productivity. His security forces watched Consortium installations. All were under the same orders: “Tell me nothing until you are certain—which way is it going to go?”
For the first three days, there was an edge to the atmosphere at Consortium headquarters. There was a bull market in rumors: industrial productivity was up ten percent (it wasn’t); the white inhabitants of Capetown were rioting (they weren’t); NET director Weddell had resigned in disgrace (he hadn’t).
A follow-up broadcast was made, with more “footage” of the Senders and answers to the most common questions or misconceptions catalogued by Moraji’s operatives. But still no one came to Rashuri, and some went out of their way to avoid him.
Then as the days wore on, some true rumors began to surface. In Mexico City, five thousand applied for one hundred new Consortium jobs. That might not have been odd, except that more than ninety percent of the applicants were already employed elsewhere, many at higher wages. In Paris, petitions bearing nearly twenty thousand signatures were delivered to the President, calling on him to bring France into the Consortium. But still no one came to Rashuri.
The Chairman remained placid and serene, both outwardly and inwardly. He knew, as well as anyone could, the limits of one man’s influence. On what was destined to be known by the misnomer Discovery Day, he had unleashed a force he could not direct or, in all likelihood, measurably deflect. If it was poised to carry them forward, it did not matter if it took months to gauge its impact. If it were poised to crush them, then perhaps it was better not to know until the last moment.
Over the first six months of 2017, Rashuri was to receive more than two score reports on how the news of the Senders and their ship had affected cultures around the globe. But well before the last of those was filed, he had come to his own judgment, based on a word, a telephone call, and a drawstring bag.
He first heard the word in the corridors of his own office area and took it at first for an error in pronunciation by a staffer less skilled in English. Then he heard it again, and questioned his own hearing: “—man—man.” He could not decide what the first syllable was, except that it seemed not to be “hu—”
It was not, but it took seeing it in print the first time for Rashuri to realize it. That was in one of the independent Australian newspapers. Above an interview with Eddington ran the headline, “MuMan Expert Reveals Alien Sex Secrets.” Rashuri called in Weddell.
“Did we do this?” he demanded, pointing at the headline.
“Oh, God, that. I’m embarrassed by it, too, but we did agree we had to cut Eddington loose,” Weddell said apologetically. “As long as we want him speaking for himself—”
“I don’t mean that. I mean this word, MuMan. Did we plant that? Did that come from us?”
“Oh—no. That’s street slang, just seemed to sp
ring up. The fact is, I have a proposal waiting action on my desk that we start using it ourselves. The field checkers are saying it’s much more widely used than ‘Sender’ or, God forbid, ‘Mu Cassiopeian,’ which a few of the science lads insist on. Unless you object, I was inclined to approve it. Ifs a garish word, I know, but people seem to prefer it.”
“I find it pleasing. Make the change.”
The radiophone call came from the President of Dixie, which was in itself an interesting surprise. None of the three American republics—Dixie, the United North, and Calalaska—had shown any interest in joining the Consortium. But only Dixie had completely and consistently rejected all contact, even trade.
“Chairman, can we take off our shoes and be friendly for a moment?” asked President Aubrey Scott.
“Of course, Mr. President.”
“Chairman—I’m gonna call you that because to be honest I can’t pronounce your damned name—Chairman, I’m embarrassed to tell you that I’ve been served poorly when it comes to this Consortium y’all have put together. They tell me now that you’ve put out the hand to us more than once, but one of my boys took it on himself to slap at it and send you packing. I want you to know that wasn’t my doing, and the fella that did it has been invited to move on, if you follow me.”
“I do, Mr. President,” said Rashuri, leaning back and enjoying the blarney. “If you want something done right—”
“You goddamn have to do it yourself, and that’s a sure bet,” the president finished for him. “What I’m getting at is that we should have been a part of this from the beginning, and it’s been damn tough explaining to my people why we weren’t without looking like a damn fool.”
“I can understand,” said Rashuri, now smiling broadly.
“What I’m thinking is that maybe we can make it up to you, if it isn’t too late. Let me put another fella on and explain what I mean.”
There was a rising hiss as an automatic level control somewhere in the electronic tie-line did its job, and then a new voice, deeper and with the barest of accents, came on.
“Chairman Rashuri. My name is Gil Henderson. Can you hear me all right?”
“Yes, Gil.”
“At the President’s request, I’ve made a survey of our resources to see what contribution we might be able to make to the Consortium. I’m very pleased to be able to tell you that four of the Shuttle II orbiters survived the ugliness of the past decades in operational or reparable condition. You’ll recall the Shuttle II was the heavy-lift cargo version with which they constructed SPS One?”
“Yes, Gil,” Rashuri said pleasantly, though he remembered the varieties of Shuttle hardware indifferently at best.
“We would like to place them at the disposal of the Consortium. A new Shuttle transporter plane has just been recertified, and as soon as you tell us where you want the spacecraft, we’re ready to ferry them to you. We also have two freighter loads of related equipment which are ready to be shipped as well. If that suits you, of course,” he added quickly.
“I’ll have to review your offer with my staff, of course,” said Rashuri, though he knew it would suit them very well indeed. But after five years of negotiating from weakness, he could not resist prolonging his first opportunity to negotiate from strength.
The drawstring bag was dragged into his office one spring day by a young woman wearing a Trade Division name badge. He had no glimmer what it might contain, since the bag was canvas and the woman a stranger.
“Chairman, may I use your desk a moment? There’s something I’d like to show you.”
He nodded, somewhat nonplussed.
“I felt like I should have a Saint Nick costume, bringing this thing down here,” she said, bending over to undo the knot holding the bag closed, thus favoring him with a glimpse of white bosom. “We’ve been collecting these for a while down in Trade and thought it might give you a chuckle to see them.”
With a smooth motion, she hoisted the bag over Rashuri’s desk, inverted it, and let the contents spill out. A writing set went skittering off the desk as a casualty, but Rashuri neither noticed nor would have minded. He had dropped back into his seat and was laughing, one hand over his eyes, about what had come tumbling onto his desk.
“Well—how do you like them?”
Rashuri looked up, shaking his head in mock disbelief. A multicolored mound of dolls and figurines had taken over his desk top and part of the surrounding floor. He reached out and picked up one to examine it, stroked the twin feathers which had been used for MuMan antennae, examined the three-fingered MuMan hands, admired the deep-set MuMan eyes.
“How many are there?”
“This isn’t all of them. We’ve collected more than three hundred varieties, and that’s not counting the patterns that show up in more than one area.”
“I see there’s no agreement about fur color.” She laughed. “No, sir. Without a pronouncement by Eddington, I guess there’s room for speculation.” It was at that point that Weddell walked in for his regularly scheduled weekly conference.
“What the devil are those?” he exclaimed, stopping short.
Rashuri held one high, facing it toward Weddell. “MuMans, every one.”
“Oh, good God, no one told me this was happening,” Weddell moaned. “We’re going to have to put a stop to that. We can’t have the Senders arriving and finding these little icons all over the place. What would they think?”
“Let it go. Any contact is years away,” said Rashuri. “The dolls are harmless. Are you forgetting we created this to give the people a focus?”
“But not this kind—”
“Let it go,” Rashuri said firmly. To the woman from Trade, he said, “I am very glad you thought to show me. May I keep this one?”
“Certainly, Chairman. I hope Charan likes it.”
Rashuri raised an eyebrow. “Charan is too old and too busy for such things.” He noted her bafflement and added, “I wish it for myself.”
He did not concern himself with whether she understood why.
Several months later, Driscoll also received a visitor with an unexpected package. In this case the visitor was not a stranger, it was Dr. James Avidsen, at thirty-two the youngest of the “old guard” from the Star Rise module D team. Having once made much over being born in 1985, the year calculated for the Sender departure, Avidsen now bore good-naturedly the nickname Starchild, even to wearing it on his badge.
“What do you have for me?” asked Driscoll, taking the envelope Avidsen proffered and tearing it open. Inside were a dozen sheets of paper bound together at one corner.
“I’d rather you drew your own conclusions,” said Avidsen, settling in a chair as though he expected to be there for a while. Driscoll rubbed his eyes. “I take it you wouldn’t be here if this wasn’t of some importance?”
“I’d rather you drew your own conclusions,” Avidsen repeated. “But the fact is, I’m not sure anyone else can properly evaluate that argument.”
Drawing a pair of reading glasses from a leather pouch, Driscoll took up the papers, which were written in a fine hand. The second sheet bore little but mathematical symbols, and Driscoll spent several minutes perusing it before continuing. When he reached the final page some thirty minutes after he had begun, he turned back to the second page, and looked over the rim of his glasses at Avidsen.
“These are my equations,” said Driscoll. “Some of the expressions are expanded, but this is my theorem, my unified field theorem.”
“I know. But, applied in novel fashion.”
“Tell me about it.”
“You never considered them in that context?”
“No,” said Driscoll, setting the papers down. “Never. But then, I didn’t anticipate the fission blanket, either, even though it proceeds directly from the theorem.”
“And it proved to work.”
“Yes. But we still don’t understand why it does what it does except in terms of symbolic analogues. The cascade effect, the energy multiplier�
��”
“But that hasn’t stopped us from using it. Is this author right? Can we do for gravity what we did with the weak force—alter its strength selectively?”
“The effects of the blanket were permanent, not selective.”
Avidsen nodded. “The blanket operated on matter. The gravity gradient drive would operate on spacetime.”
“So you’ve named it already.”
“You haven’t answered my question. Does the argument pass muster?”
Driscoll slowly moved the top sheet in a small circle with a touch of his forefinger. “He uses my equations for a special case solution to relativity theory. Intuitively the solution is false. No ship can drag itself forward. Parity is not conserved. Mass-energy is not conserved.”
“Reality has been counterintuitive before.”
“I know,” said Driscoll, and coughed. “Then tell me how you see the implications.”
Avidsen leaned forward. “Much as the author does. To accelerate, the gravity projector would create a massless gravitational field ahead of the ship, close enough to have an effect but far enough away to avoid any serious tidal forces. The ship would ‘fall’ into the artificial gravitational well—except that the well will be moving at exactly the same velocity, since it’s a projection from the ship, and not a real phenomenon. The stronger the field, the steeper the slope of the gravity well and the faster the ship will move.”
“Like a man picking himself up by his bootstraps.”
“A fair analogy.”
“And equally impossible.”
Avidsen shook his head slowly. “Don’t mistake me. I have difficulties with it myself. But I was unable to find the error in the argument. If your theorem holds, then it would seem—that’s why I wanted your input. I thought perhaps those expanded expressions, some error there—”
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