New Title 2

by S J MacDonald

  ‘So,’ Tamus went on, ‘I see two possible ways for this to work out. The first is that we issue you with a publication ban under the Security of the League Act, which is a legal document just like a court order, and having issued it to you we drop you back home. The second is that you agree to sign the Official Secrets Act with a voluntary commitment to refraining from publication of your analysis. Before you say anything…’ he held up a finger as Janil went automatically to anti-Establishment pugnacious mode, ‘I should tell you that in the event of your agreeing to sign the Act on a voluntary basis, we will then be in a position to discuss the situation… the, uh, ‘visit’,’ he said, with tiptoe delicacy, ‘directly, and in detail. I am not allowed to offer incentives in order to persuade you to sign the Act but I feel it only fair to tell you that this is an extremely unusual opportunity with outcomes which I do believe you would want if we were able to explain them to you ahead of you signing the Act.’

  Janil stared at him, working that out.

  ‘You mean – if I sign it, you’ll answer my questions?’

  Tamus inclined his head. ‘Full and frank disclosure,’ he said. ‘But you must accept that signing the Act commits you to keeping that information to yourself, not just now but probably for the rest of your life.’

  Janil struggled for several seconds. Part of him was revolted at the idea of becoming part of the Establishment’s conspiracy of silence over alien affairs. It felt like selling out, agreeing to become part of such government secrecy. On the other hand, they would answer his questions…

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Where do I sign?’

  There was more to it than that, of course. There was quite a lengthy bureaucratic procedure in which the Act had to be explained to him and certain parts of the document read aloud before he was allowed to sign it. During the quarter of an hour this took, the car continued to cruise at inter-continental height, joining one of the Great Orbital traffic lanes.

  As soon as he had signed the documents, Janil looked at Tamus with impatient expectation.

  ‘So – tell me about the quarians. Did they come with the Fourth?’

  ‘There is only one quarian visitor,’ Tamus informed him, ‘The lady you saw swimming. She is the newly appointed Quarian Ambassador – the first of her people to visit Telathor or any other League world. Her name is Silver and yes, she arrived with the Fourth five weeks ago, though she only went aboard the Heron a couple of weeks before that. Before then she was travelling aboard the Stepeasy, a private yacht whose owner works with the Diplomatic Corps on exodiplomacy matters. Ambassador Silver has, as you saw, been exploring some of Telathor’s sights both underwater and on land, as well as meeting with the president and many other officials.’

  Janil was radiant with delight, but at the same time, mystified.

  ‘But that’s amazing,’ he said. ‘Brilliant, brilliant news! So why isn’t it on the news? Why, why, why are alien visits kept so secret?’

  ‘Hmmmn,’ said Tamus, considering him. ‘I could,’ he observed, ‘spend the next hour – possibly the next week – debating with you the rights and wrongs of keeping exo-visits to restricted disclosure, but there is a five minute holo which I believe will explain our point of view on it far more eloquently than I could myself. It is, of course, compiled for the purpose of convincing people of the need to keep these matters confidential, but that doesn’t make it any the less genuine. Are you willing to watch it?’

  Janil assented, because he felt sure he would not be affected by government propaganda. He was rather looking forward to telling Tamus that the holo was puerile, his arguments specious and government policy fundamentally flawed. Then he would point out, at length, why that was.

  So, he was directed to watch a screen. While he did so, Tamus gazed out of the window. He had seen the holo before. Too many times.

  There was no background music or narrative on the holo, just clips from news channels and some footage evidently taken from the helmet cameras of emergency service personnel, linked by occasional black screens with white writing which gave statistical information.

  The introductory screens read simply, ‘On 6.15.27, a Presidential Directive was sent out from Chartsey, authorising all system presidents to inform their populations of the discovery of Quarus.

  ‘The Directive was delivered to each world by an exodiplomat whose role was to brief the president and chiefs of staff and support them through managing that disclosure.

  ‘On 32.15.27, the President of Altarb interrupted broadcasting to make a global announcement.’

  There followed the most infamous clip in the history of exodiplomacy – the president of Altarb, in a state of panic combined with fury at his aides and the diplomatic advisor having attempted to stop him going on holovision until he had calmed down enough to fully assimilate the briefing.

  His announcement, that ‘another race of aliens had been found’ and that they were ‘genetically engineered, like Marfikians’ had been disastrous, but it had been his final comment that had pulled the pin on the grenade. ‘I would advise you all,’ he said, in tones which foretold the imminent extinction of the planet, ‘to remain in your homes while we evaluate the potential threat this new species may pose to our world.’

  Following on from that were news clips of how the people of Altarb had reacted. The media broadcast the usual visual shorthand of riot reporting – trashed supermarkets, people smashing windows, vehicles on fire. But along with it was footage from the emergency services which showed the reality of that in brutal, graphic detail – people trampled underfoot and beaten to death by mobs, people shot, stabbed, burned. A small child, lost and wailing, kicked out of the way by a man who left her crumpled in the street.

  The statistics which followed were almost as harrowing for the mathematics student. There were deaths and injuries on a global scale. Then followed statistics about the numbers of people who had committed suicide, and how many of them had murdered members of their family before killing themselves. During the footage of those incidents Tamus stared resolutely at the horizon, but Janil stared, flinching occasionally but mesmerised with horror. An even more frantic clip of the president making another global address showed him attempting to explain that he had not meant to suggest that any attack or invasion was imminent or even probable; he’d just wanted people to stay at home in order to keep things calm. It would have been funny if the outcome had not been so catastrophic. The death toll had run into thousands. Nearly half a million had suffered some kind of injury. The economic impact alone was devastating. The president, afterwards, had claimed that he had been misinformed and badly advised.

  Then, just as Janil was feeling very strongly that that catastrophe was the president’s fault and that nothing like that would have happened if the news had been handled with sensitivity, the holo moved on to look at the picture League wide.

  It was not good. World after world flashed up with a simple data-screen which gave a rating of how well the disclosure had been managed, casualty figures and an evaluation of whether it was considered safe to proceed to the next stage of informing the public about Quarus. Even on worlds where the disclosure handling rating was ‘excellent’ there were casualties and a negative impact on the global economy, and very few worlds achieved the ‘safe to proceed’ evaluation.

  Telathor was one of those worlds. Janil knew quite a bit about this from the Telathoran perspective, though it had happened so long ago that his parents had been kids themselves at the time. He’d studied it, not just swallowing whole the Alien Truth version of events but digging up archive footage of it from datanet and conducting his own analysis.

  It had, on the whole, been a very positive experience for Telathor. Their president at the time had handled it exactly as advised by the Diplomatic Corps, with a gentle build up over several days, allowing rumours to leak out that there was exciting news in the offing and the media speculating that this might be the discovery of a new, friendly species by the Exploration C
orps. It had still been a global stop event when the president made the announcement, of course, as the discovery of a new world and alien people was always going to be, but the crowds out on Telathor’s streets had been there to celebrate, not attempting to flee the cities en masse. T-shirts of the first images of quarians to be released had gone on sale within an hour, and home-made banners greeting the quarians had been slapped up on many a building, with high excitement and hope that they might turn up at any time.

  There had been massive disappointment when it had been revealed that the whole thing had been a hoax perpetrated by a group of students on Chartsey. The tiny minority of people who’d refused to believe that it had been a hoax had formed the Alien Truth organisation.

  And now Janil saw them vindicated. The ‘hoax’ story really had been a huge government cover up. But they’d been wrong about one thing. The initial revelation, the original story about the quarians, had not been leaked to the media by courageous activists, but had been officially released by the government themselves. It had only been when they saw the reaction to it that they had pulled the story back.

  Janil hardly knew what to think about that. He found himself in the unusual position for a conspiracy theorist of feeling that the government should not have released that information in the first place. The image of that little girl being kicked out of the way would stay with him for the rest of his life. He was feeling quite queasy.

  ‘Perhaps a drink of water?’ Tamus suggested. Janil realised that he was staring at a blank screen, and that he had been doing so for a little while, not moving or speaking. Finding that Tamus was offering a bottle of water he accepted it and sipped some, more to buy himself time to compose himself and get his thoughts in order than because he really wanted it. ‘I know,’ Tamus said, with evident sympathy, ‘it is very high impact. Sorry about that. But a picture, as they say, is worth a thousand words. And that is genuine footage and accurate facts from across the League. And it does, I believe, address the question of why our governments are now so very cautious about any revelation of exo-matters to the general public.’

  A rather patriotic indignation flared in Janil, which surprised him since he’d never believed that he had any patriotic feeling towards his own world. Patriotism, he’d have said, was manipulation by the Establishment.

  ‘But it was all right on Telathor!’ he protested.

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ Tamus agreed. ‘But in principle and practice… well, Mr Caldova, suppose we were looking at a picture here where, say, the Jatira region had responded very positively but there’d been riots and casualties in other areas. Would you, as a matter of principle or practicality, decide to go ahead with giving the Jatirans more information while withholding it from the rest of the planet?’

  ‘No, of course not, that would be…’ Janil began, then broke off as he realised that he had been guilty of a rather embarrassing kind of parochialism, not seeing his own world as part of the League network.

  ‘Unethical and ultimately impossible to enforce,’ said Tamus. ‘The media is easily controlled in such matters and it has to be said they are generally very cooperative, too, recognising that they are in many ways the guardians of public safety. People do, however, communicate between worlds, not just on business but with friends and family, people travel, go on intersystem holidays, there is no world in the League which doesn’t have extensive links with others. And despite what many conspiracy organisations believe, we neither have the powers nor the resources to intercept every piece of mail or monitor every passenger who travels between worlds. So, ultimately, anything which is public knowledge and recognised as such by the media and authorities on one world will become known to all the others. So it is, and has to be, an all or nothing decision. Either we tell the whole League, or none of our worlds.’

  ‘But surely, it could be handled in such a way that people don’t panic,’ said the student, betraying both his naivety and a rather touching faith in human nature, ‘if people could just be educated…’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ said Tamus. ‘And we are, I assure you, working on that. It is one of the prime concerns of the Diplomatic Corps and something every government in the League is working to address. It is one of the biggest challenges of our age, as we are moving into contact with other species, even other worlds beyond the Firewall, to bring our people into a state of readiness to cope with that information, after centuries in which the word ‘alien’ has been associated only with terrifying threat. The existence of such groups as Alien Truth, pushing for greater public awareness of the existence of other species and of their visits to our worlds, is actually beneficial to that process and that, in fact, is the reason why we do not attempt to silence them. On the contrary, governments often give them a quiet little helping hand, passing information to them that they want to see pushed out into public awareness without actually making an official disclosure themselves. The only time authorities intervene in such matters is if the organisation concerned is working negatively, for instance, in causing public alarm by claiming there’s going to be an alien invasion. There is, I assure you, a concerted push by authorities across the League to raise public awareness and confidence to the ultimate goal of being able to give full and frank disclosure on exodiplomacy matters. But that is, it has to be said, a long and complex process – as things stand, it is unlikely that you or I will see that in our own lifetime.’

  ‘Hey!’ said Janil, in instinctive protest. He was about to say, ‘Come off it! It can’t be that hard! You ought to be able to do it within a few years!’ but Tamus held up a hand to interrupt him.

  ‘Please,’ he said, ‘understand that it is the responsibility of the President of the League to make that call, based on the information provided by the Diplomatic Corps. So, for the next two minutes, Mr Caldova, you are the League President, all right? This is your call entirely, your decision, your responsibility. The facts are, as things stand, that if you inform the general public of the fact that the quarian ambassador is visiting the League, there will be an estimated ninety thousand deaths, between four and seven million injuries and a League-wide economic impact resulting in hardship and austerity measures. You’re the boss; you’re the man in the big chair. So, what do you want to do?’

  Janil didn’t even need to think about that one. He really wished he’d taken a Travcalm. He didn’t normally get sick in aircars unless conditions were turbulent, but there was something about the motion of this smoothly gliding car that was making him feel nauseous.

  ‘Of course, obviously, you can’t,’ he conceded, and with that, conceded a great deal. All his beliefs about the motives for governments keeping this secret, for one thing. ‘But I would want to know,’ he said, rallying, ‘that everything was being done, every effort made to educate and inform the public so that the truth could be told as quickly as possible.’

  ‘Well, I cannot pretend that every member of every authority involved across the League is burning the midnight oil trying desperately to solve this by the end of next week,’ said Tamus, drily. ‘This is a problem the authorities have been working on since before we were born and it is very unlikely to be resolved until after we die. So there isn’t, admittedly, any great sense of urgency about it. But it is something that all concerned are working on, quietly and patiently, because it is quiet patience that is needed here, not gung-ho enthusiasm likely to cause more problems than it solves. If you doubt that, you are welcome to spend some time with the Diplomatic Corps, studying their reports and advisories. And if you do come up with an idea for improving how we are all attempting to resolve this, I’m sure they would be pleased to discuss it with you.’

  Janil blushed a little as he realised how presumptuous it was of him to suggest that he might know better how this massive problem could be resolved than all the people who were currently at work on it. Before he could say anything, though, Tamus moved on.

  ‘In the meantime, though, perhaps we might set that aside,’ he suggested. ‘As I do hav
e something of rather more immediate import to explain. You see…’ he gave Tamil a quick little smile, ‘you remember I mentioned to you that the various security services had engaged in a rather regrettable contest over which of them could get you to come in for an interview? Well, that contest came to the notice of Ambassador Silver herself. And when she discovered that the reason you were in such demand was because you’d correctly predicted where she would be swimming and had actually seen her, she was very amused, commented how clever you were, and said that she would like to meet you.’ Seeing the blood drain out of Janil’s face and his eyes become unfocussed, the civil servant gave practiced advice, ‘Just put your head down between your knees and try to breathe slowly.’ A little pat on Janil’s shoulder as he complied. ‘Sorry about that.’

  It did take a while for Janil to recover, mostly because he was laughing too much to breathe properly. Once he was sitting up, had got his breath back and had sipped some water, though, he turned a look on Tamus which was radiant with joy.

  ‘I get to MEET her?’ When Tamus nodded he whooped, excitement too wild to be formed into words.

  ‘The Diplomatic Corps passed the request to us,’ Tamus explained. ‘That’s protocol in such matters, as they don’t pick up our citizens without the agreement of the system authorities. On this occasion we said that we would explain the situation and put the request to you ourselves – not because we feel that the Diplomatic Corps would put any pressure on you, but merely the fact of being picked up by the Diplomatic Corps may be felt to be intimidating.’

  Janil understood that, even in the whirlwind of his delight. As scary as it had been to be taken out to that car by the police and find himself being taken off by a stranger, at least the man was Telethoran, an employee of his own government. There would have been whole new layers of fear if he’d been taken away by unknown offworlders. At the same time, he was aware of another implication in what Tamus was saying.