First Contact - Digital Science Fiction Anthology 1

by Ian Creasey

  “She – “ Unseemly it might be, but I felt reluctant to satisfy Psamathe’s curiosity; I told myself that Merro’s performance would disappoint her. “She holds on very tight. Her arms and legs are strong, and she wraps me in them and will not let go.”

  “Ah, a struggle,” she said, hooking my elbow and pulling it around my back. “I can offer you a struggle too.” She chuckled and began to search for the fastenings of my robe. “Prepare to do battle for the sweetest of all prizes.”

  “We will be late for the reception,” I said.

  “Unquestionably,” she purred. “They will all know exactly what we have been doing.”

  Psamathe’s playful, competitive eroticism was a window into her complex, subtle mind, so very different from Merro’s. In five years, Merro had avoided the socializing and friendships that made the members of Parliament seem more real than the remnants of family and friends at home. Except with a few of us, like Annika and Yitzakh. Except with me.

  What I did not say to my wife was that Merro’s intensity in bed was not about struggle. She clung to me with helpless, desperate longing, with hungry eyes that spoke of a starving soul. Now I began to fear what Merro might see revealed in my own eyes.

  Every delegate and spouse was present in the echoing, torch-lit ballroom, as were many of their children. Even Dzuling had appeared, looking woozy and leaning on one of her wives to keep from falling over.

  Yitzakh, dressed in one of the shiny black suits he wears only at the most festive events, was entertaining the spouses of five delegates with his favorite parlor trick. Both an accomplished polyglot and a gifted storyteller, he regaled them with a long, outrageous tale, shifting from one of their native languages to another, then to Lingua Franca, then to his own strange tongue and back again.

  After giving Orlando my congratulations, I contrived to steer him away from the punch bowl long enough to tell him of the communiqué from Olympia.

  He looked appalled. “You’re joking.”

  “No. They direct a complete reversal.”

  He took a long drink of punch, then belched silently. “Twenty-eight years. I wonder if they still feel the same way now.”

  “The same thought had occurred to me.”

  He held his breath for a moment, released it, then raised the spicy cup of punch to his lips but did not drink.

  Slowly he asked, “Do you want me to try to write the sixth draft along those lines?”

  I shook my head. “If I begin taking a hard line on Olympian interests, you can depend on Annika and Yitzakh to do the same for Himmel and Tikkun in other committees.”

  “Not to mention me,” said Orlando.

  “Not to mention you.”

  He took my arm and led me back toward the punch; I had not noticed when he finished his cup. “Those fellows on the home worlds,” he said. “They have no conception. We are not devices to be turned on and off. It takes years of building trust and loyalty to make a government like ours operate, if it operates at all.”

  “Yes.”

  “I wonder … “ He lowered his voice. “I wonder whether the microwave reception between Olympia and Bower is as reliable as it could be. Messages can be garbled.”

  “Or lost altogether,” I said.

  “Just so.”

  “Orlando? If you would refrain from mentioning this conversation to Psamathe, I would be obliged.”

  He nodded. He did not wink; on a face like his, it would seem absurd.

  Just then, a clerk from Communications came in through the main door. He found Merro and said something in her ear. She nodded, touched Annika’s arm, and followed the clerk out.

  The butler system had to call several times before I heard; Psamathe didn’t wake at all. I blinked to bring the room into focus, untangled myself from Psamathe’s warm, golden limbs, threw on my light wrap, walked down the hallway to the butler system’s node, and read the message.

  At the request of Delegate Merro of Kern, an Extraordinary Session of the Parliament of the Confederation of Inhabited Worlds is called for 1000 this morning. The attendance of all Delegates is requested.

  I had to read the note three times to understand it. Psamathe appeared as I was finishing breakfast, looking rumpled, soft, and disappointed, and asked what made me rise so early. I told her.

  “An Extraordinary Session? When have we had one of those?”

  “Never, so far as I know.”

  “Tithonos,” she said, regarding me with her clever eyes. “We gave up twenty years of our lives, and everyone we knew, to serve Olympia. Now, when it matters most, remember it.”

  The sky had turned grey overnight, and the flagstones were cold. The Chamber was nearly full when I arrived; the light through its stained-glass windows muted, and the delegates’ seats seemed farther apart than they should. Merro, sitting painfully straight at her own desk across the hall, held her face in a tight mask. I tried to catch her eye, but she did not respond.

  At exactly 1000 she stood, looking frightened. If not for the microphone pasted to her throat, she would have been inaudible, for her voice was a raspy whisper.

  “Last night I received a message from the Designee of Kern, sent 39.4 standard years ago. The astronomical observations that have puzzled our astrophysicists for decades have finally been resolved. Our sun is beginning a period of brightening and enhanced flare activity that will increase steadily over the next several centuries. Within 180 years of the date of the message, less than 140 years from now, it will render the surface of Kern uninhabitable.”

  Several people gasped. Merro’s voice quavered, but her face remained fixed, as if cast in bronze.

  She continued. “There is no known way to prevent this calamity. The forces involved are too large, and the time too short. Our only option is planet-wide evacuation.”

  A burst of confused chatter began in the hall, but Merro overrode it. “Our world has a population of over 250 million. A strict fertility-control plan was ordered just before the message was sent, and the Designee believes that our numbers will be reduced to 200 million within fifty years; but even so, the project is nearly impossible. No more than two evacuations to any of the nearest inhabited worlds are feasible in the time remaining. Conservatively, 200,000 vessels of the largest size will be required.”

  Somebody let out a loud “huh!” of surprise. Merro continued.

  “Given the limits on our planetary technology and access to the natural resources in Kern’s upper crust, we cannot manufacture and launch more than a fraction of that number. We appeal, therefore, to our brothers and sisters of other worlds. If the thirty-five inhabited planets within eighty light years of Kern devote themselves to the task, no more than 5,700 ships will be required from each planet. Our engineers have calculated that it is possible for you to achieve this.”

  In a violation of protocol, Floran of Viridia interrupted. “Possible, yes, but barely so. Building 5,700 maximum-capacity ships within, what, twenty years, would strain Viridia’s resources to the breaking point. Our economy would collapse. Chaos and even civil war could follow.”

  Merro’s jaw tightened. “I agree. The Designee sent his plea to the thirty-five worlds at the same time he sent it to us. We anticipate that they will raise the same objection noted by Delegate Floran. Therefore we ask the Parliament to resolve that all the Confederated Worlds will aid in this task, that they will transfer resources and wealth to the thirty-five proximate planets to offset the crushing cost of this emergency effort. It will make everyone a little poorer, but a whole people will be saved.”

  She sat down abruptly, her mouth thin and pale, her hands clasped tightly together.

  After a minute of whispering and shifting chairs, the Speaker stood. “According to normal procedure, the matter should be referred to an appropriate subcommittee for the statutory period of deliberation.”

  Merro shot up again. “Madam Speaker, the statutory period of subcommittee deliberation is two years. The periods of full committee considerati
on and Parliamentary debate are another three years together. We cannot wait! Unless this Parliament acts now, within a year at most, we will fail.”

  It looked as if the session would decompose into a squabble about procedure. Some argued that the irregularity of her request delegitimized it.

  “The Delegate of Himmel,” said the Speaker. Annika had risen, and she began to speak in a serious voice that almost hid the mischievous look on her face.

  “Madam Speaker, I believe that Article 23, Section 5(b) of the Charter provides for emergency action by the full Parliament.”

  The Chamber echoed with muttered questions as everyone called up the Charter on his or her desk. The section was exactly as Annika said, but the annotations confirmed that no one had ever invoked it.

  She continued, “Under the procedure set out in Section 5(b), I move for the appointment of an ad-hoc committee, to report back to the full Parliament in no more than thirty days.”

  I seconded the motion. The Speaker consulted the Manual and the Charter and, determining that a full vote was not required for the appointment, said, “The motion is in order. Delegates Merro, Annika – “ She saw my raised finger. “ – Tithonos and Yitzakh will make up the Committee and report in the allocated period. This Extraordinary Session is adjourned.”

  Five minutes later, Annika, Yitzakh, Merro, and I came together at the rostrum. I was about to suggest a timetable, but Annika took my hand and Merro’s and placed them one atop the other. She raised them while bowing her head, until her rune touched Merro’s fingers. Then she lowered our hands, said something low and solemn in the nasal language of Himmel, performed a half-pirouette, and tripped away.

  Yitzakh proposed a meeting time. I waited until Merro left the Chamber, then asked him, “Did you understand that?”

  “Certainly. Annika said, Before love, all things must give way. It’s a fragment of the Himmelli ceremony of betrothal.”

  For twenty-five days, I did nothing but the work of the ad-hoc committee. Merro’s detailed knowledge of Kern, Annika’s mastery of precedent and tradition, Yitzakh’s delicate touch with language, and my own grasp of the shifting loyalties and rivalries within the Parliament fit together like the pieces of a mosaic. I spent hours consulting the delegates of planets that would be called upon to send ships to the rescue, and delegates of wealthy worlds that would be asked to fund them.

  We drafted a bill committing the Confederation as a whole to undertake the evacuation of Kern. The initial investment would amount to a painful six percent of planetary trade revenues for two decades from all worlds not directly involved in the fleet, to be paid as trade credits to the planets building the ships. The extension of credits would begin immediately in order to provide seed capital.

  Responses ranged from passionate support to outraged opposition. The Speaker set a period of fifty days in which to deliberate and confer before a vote; only a fraction of the delegates would have the opportunity to speak in unlimited debate, an unheard-of restriction. Without the leisure of a decade in which to evolve a consensus, we found ourselves making unaccustomed appeals to sentiment, vanity, and greed, manipulating our colleagues with a shamelessness that fascinated and appalled us.

  Merro became more distant during this time. I shared her bed less often, and when I did, I thought I felt a surge of anger behind the fierceness of her embrace.

  Perhaps forty days into the deliberations, I shared a luncheon with Orlando, a meal heavy in the shellfish of which he was especially fond. I took the opportunity to ask his views on the evacuation resolution, about which he had said little.

  “No doubt you’ll find a way to buy my vote as you’ve bought so many others,” he said with a sour expression.

  “Buy your vote? Will I have to?”

  “How not? Surely you don’t expect me, without bribery, to agree that the whole human universe has to take responsibility for the irresponsible actions of one planet.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Two hundred and fifty million people, Tithonos. The human population on Kern is only about three centuries old, and there were only five thousand at the start. Do you know what that means? It means that the average Kernish woman in each generation has borne five children who survived to adulthood. They breed like rabbits!

  “And then there’s the location itself. Technically Kern is a habitable world, but it’s circling a K5 star! Any astrophysicist would warn you, and must have warned them, about the hazards around such a sun. The planet never had a good supply of building materials near the surface, and the Kerners haven’t concentrated on the sorts of industries that would allow them to exploit what they’ve got. They put themselves in this position, and now they’re asking us to pull them out of the fire. How many billions, for how many generations, will have their futures wrecked because of this? How many beggars will starve? How many do we trade for them?”

  “I do not think such a calculation can be made. They are human.”

  Orlando shook his heavy head. “Such platitudes are unbecoming and dishonest of you, Tithonos. It’s clear why you are trying so hard to pass this bill.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Olympians excel at misdirection and façade, but Kerners wear their hearts on their sleeves. Look who’s fighting for the resolution: Annika, Yitzakh, Dzuling, and above all, you. This was never about humanity, never even about Kern. So far as the delegates are concerned, this is all about Merro.”

  I should have foreseen the outcome. We were accustomed to the “big picture,” the interstellar scale, the long view of centuries. Merro’s vivid descriptions of the children of Kern, the hardscrabble everyday existence, may have swayed a few, and some were inclined to be generous at the start. But Orlando was right: nearly all who voted for the rescue did so for love of Merro herself; her people were an abstraction.

  Merro’s house let me in without challenge. I found her in the solarium, ten thousand crystal panes revealing the comfortable, pampered landscape. She was looking out at the setting sun and the first bright stars. Her face was stone, if stone can bleed.

  I put my arms around her from behind. She turned and leaned her forehead on my collarbone, her breathing harsh.

  “Not even a close vote,” she said at last. “I couldn’t even muster a decent fight.”

  “We couldn’t,” I said.

  “It wasn’t your battle.”

  She stood still, locking her hands at the small of my back and pressing into me. Then she turned her head so that her cheek was against my chest.

  “I’m going back,” she said.

  “What?”

  “I’m leaving for Kern, probably within two months.”

  Nothing moved, but my body felt heavier, while hers felt like air, like water.

  She continued, “A ship is due from Bifrost, continuing in the direction of Viridia and Kern. The total trip will only be about fifty years, or two for me.”

  “You will go back to a doomed planet?”

  “It won’t be ‘doomed’ till after I’m dead.”

  “But why?” I asked.

  “Because nothing that I do here, nothing, makes any difference. Even physical labor to build the escape ships would be better than this.”

  I swallowed. I saw three more stars come out.

  “I will go with you,” I said.

  There was a pause. Her cheek still rested against my chest.

  “I will go with you,” I repeated. “I won’t leave you. I will help you in your struggle.”

  “You won’t,” she said.

  “Yes, I will.” I took a deep breath, not knowing what I was going to say until I said it: “I love you.”

  “No, you won’t,” she said – only it was more of a snarl. Abruptly she pushed against me and broke away, then strode to the other side of the room.

  “Merro, I – “

  “You won’t. I won’t allow it. Isn’t it bad enough that I steal the body of another woman’s husband? Now you’d make me the murder
er of a family?”

  “I love – “

  “Don’t love me,” she ordered. “I’m not yours to love. You’re not mine … “

  I thought I heard a catch in her voice, and stupidly drew encouragement from it. “Merro, I want to be yours. I want – “

  “I don’t care!” She was shouting now. “I won’t have it! You cannot shame me like this. Get out.”

  “What?”

  But she turned her back to me, half-ran out of the solarium, and did not return. After a half-hour’s silent wait, I returned to Psamathe.

  I have spent the last month turning my existence before me in my hands, like an oversized, garish jewel. I have devoted my adulthood, as Psamathe says, to the service of Olympia. But membership in the Parliament does not serve Olympia; realistically it cannot. I would have betrayed any of Olympia’s interests for the sake of my colleagues here, and I can think of no one apart from Merro who would have done otherwise. She was right to say that nothing we do here matters.

  Then there is Merro herself, and Psamathe. I should have broken off the affair as soon as I realized the shame it caused Merro. Even if I could forgive myself that, Psamathe deserved a husband who would not allow his dalliance to become an embarrassment. When I began to see Merro’s face in my dreams, that was the time to end it.

  To sum up, then: I have been too foolish to work anywhere but the Parliament, too feckless to do so diligently on behalf of my people, too weak to give my wife her due, and too selfish to honor the needs of the mistress I loved. What remains?

  I am going to Kern.

  I will not be traveling with Merro, although we will both ride the Bifrost vessel. She has not spoken to me since that night, nor do I expect her to begin.

  Psamathe and I sent the registration of our divorce to Olympia a few days ago, along with her consent to replace me as Olympia’s Delegate to the Tortoise Parliament. She still believes that Olympia will benefit from the diligence of our Delegate here. I have lost that faith, lost it with each “No” vote answering Merro’s plea for help.