The Seeker: A Pax Aeterna Novel

by Trevor Wyatt

  I raised my hand, and the professor nodded at me. “I don’t necessarily agree,” I said. “Instead of being intimidated, they could just as easily be spurred on to develop their technology, because they would have proof that it could be done.”

  “It might depend on how advanced they were,” said a young man with a blonde buzz cut. “If they were on the level of Cro-Magnons, say, they might run and hide, whereas if they were as advanced as Persia around the time of Jesus, they might ride out to investigate, with weapons ready but not intending to attack.”

  “Or if they were like Nazi Germany, they might just start shooting in the hope of capturing that shiny starship.” Alyce said, turning to look at him.

  “Any one of these possibilities could be true,” Professor Guss said. “Which is why you would, one hopes, as captain of that Union ship, spend a good amount of time observing them clandestinely. We currently have no laws covering First Contact, even though we have been exploring nearby star systems for many years. There have been efforts to create such laws, but the idea of intelligent extraterrestrial life simply isn’t taken seriously at the higher echelons of our government. One day that will change, but by then it may be too late.

  “But let’s move on to other scenarios,” he said. “We won’t consider the possibility of contacting a benevolent species, because that’s a happy-ending sort of thing. Peace and love, blah blah blah.” He smiled at the ripple of laughter in the hall. “Let’s assume that you are the captain of an exploratory vessel that has entered a system that is home to a technologically advanced civilization. As you approach the target planet you see that it is ringed with myriad satellites, hundreds, maybe thousands. Perhaps there are bases on the outlying planets. You’ve taken care to avoid contact with them, and once you arrive at the home world, you’re glad you did. Scans tell you that many of the orbital stations are carrying nuclear as well as conventional weapons. The planet’s surface is environmentally degraded by mining for elements used in making weapons, and by insufficiently shielded nuclear plants. You may be surprised that they haven’t yet blown themselves to atoms or poisoned themselves to death.”

  Laughter rippled across the hall again, but this time it was a little muted. After all, something like this almost happened to our own planet.

  “Miss Teodosio?” He lifted his eyebrows at her.

  “I’d definitely want to lay off at a distance and observe them,” said Alyce.

  “So would I,” he said, “but for the sake of the discussion, let’s say they detect you and start shooting.”

  She blinked. “I wouldn’t return fire,” she said.

  “Why not? They have proved their aggressive nature. It’s clear that if they manage to get out of their system, they could spread that aggression and perhaps prove to be a danger to us. Why wouldn’t you at least knock the attacking satellites out of space?”

  I raised my hand again. “I’d sequester them,” I said. “Make sure they couldn’t be a threat to anyone else. Maybe incapacitate their weapons satellites and put up our own, to keep an eye on them.”

  “But doing that would be the same as interfering with their natural advancement, as Miss Teodosio suggested a while ago.”

  I bit my lips. “In the strict sense, yes; but if their ‘natural advancement’ would imperil us or other species, it would be justified. Uhm, in my opinion.”

  “And if this sequestration or segregation results in extreme hardship for them? When we could have assisted them to mature past their ‘primitive’ behavior?”

  We students cast uneasy glances at each other.

  “They’d have every reason to fear and hate us, if we shot down their satellites,” Alyce said. “I’d say do nothing, but establish an observation post to keep an eye on them. If they get out of hand, I don’t know... some sort of escalation would be necessary.”

  “Possibly, possibly,” said Professor Guss. “And we can leave it at that point.”

  “But what’s the answer, sir?” I asked. “How can we know what to do?”

  Professor Guss smiled at me. “That will be for you or one of your colleagues to tell us,” he said. “And I wish you luck. Because there really is no answer.”

  * * *

  Now here I am in a situation close to the one posited by the professor. And I have no idea what to do. I'm winging it, but I won’t tell anyone else that’s the case. I glance over at Ashley in her station, and I see her looking me. I’m sure she suspects. I give her a smile that is as calm as I can make it. To Ghosal, I say, “I apologize if I’m causing any stress, Command Legate,” I say, “but my orders are to determine what happened to our ship. I regret to say that we can’t leave until we accomplish that task.”

  “Perhaps I haven’t made myself clear,” Ghosal says, and there is a distinct edge to the translated voice. Our computers aren’t as sophisticated as ground-based machines, but are even so running neural networks with strong learning capabilities. They’re very good at analyzing subtext from both tone and body language, and it’s obvious that they’ve been able to educate themselves about the Sonalian emotional spectrum. Professor Guss would be happy.

  “You’re trespassing in our territory,” Ghosal goes on, “but we’ve no wish to be punitive. I offer you a choice: Come as an ambassador to the Home Planet or leave.” And for the first time, I see Ghosal smile. It isn’t a pleasant sight. “Or you can die,” he says.

  “You’re threatening me?” I ask, surprised despite myself. I think, Professor, I wish you were here with me now. I could benefit from some calm insight!

  And I hear him reply, Don’t react to his words. Think: What is he truly upset about? His civilization is familiar with others. There is something different here for him, and he is being reactionary. That doesn’t jibe with the idea of a cosmopolitan space-faring species. Perhaps there’s a personal for him in your interactions.

  Personal? I reply. How can that be? I don’t know him. I have no idea what his background could be. I don’t know what his cultural imperatives are.

  Then you’d better think about them, Guss says, and his shade evaporates.

  I haven’t got time to ponder abstract concepts like cultural imperatives—why has my mind even thrown that idea into my consciousness? Ghosal says, “These are not threats, Captain. They are statements of fact. You must choose which path you will pursue.”

  The screen blanks out.

  Chapter 16

  Jeryl

  I am left staring at a blank screen, with everyone in CNC waiting to see what I will say or do. I’m waiting to find out, as well.

  What I do is stand, lift my chin, and say, “I’ll be in my office.” Without another word I leave CNC.

  I need to think about what Professor Guss had to say about cultural imperatives because there’s something there—I’m sure of it.

  But there’s another little detail I want to check on, as well, and as soon as I’m alone I do it. I signal Gunny, the Armory AI, and have a brief discussion with him. After I’m done, I am satisfied that the Seeker stands no chance of winning a firefight with Ghosal’s ship. Analysis of the behemoth’s systems show that we are not only outgunned, we would most likely be chased down and swatted out of space with little effort on the part of the Sonali.

  They aren’t a great deal more advanced than we are, but the gap is wide enough to give them an edge. We could probably improve our navigation and propulsion systems to match them—I know for a fact that we have ships on the drawing board that would be able to put up a stiff defense against Ghosal—but the Union hasn’t put any crash programs into development because there has been no need. The Outers aren’t any more advanced than the Union, so the improvement in our military capabilities hasn’t been a priority.

  Until now.

  But what I really want to think about is what Professor Guss said about possible differences between intelligent species. Because there’s a hint there, I believe, if I can find it quickly enough.

  * * *

 
“So let’s talk about the day after First Contact,” Professor Guss said at the beginning of another lecture. “You can talk to each other, and relations are being established. This is a good time to reflect on adaptation. Both sides are going to have to make changes in their worldviews if the relationship is to be successful. So you need to be aware of three levels of interaction: cultural exclusives, cultural electives, and cultural imperatives.”

  He paused, and there was silence in the hall. No one had a clue what he was talking about.

  “You’re thinking that you’ve wandered into a sociology class,” he said, smiling. “In a way, you have. But sociology is at the bottom of all the things I am trying to teach you. Without some understanding of how the other guy’s social relationships and interactions work, you’ll never get beyond the ‘C-A-T spells cat’ and ‘1 plus 1 equals 2’ stage of communication. What I am saying here is that the problems only begin when you first meet.”

  He snapped his fingers and a virtual data board appeared. On it were written three things: cultural exclusives, cultural electives, and cultural imperatives.

  “So, what is a cultural exclusive,” he said. “These are local customs. Earth is one planet, but it’s broken up into countries and nations, and those are broken up into states or territories, which are further broken into regions. Cultural exclusives pertain to regional people. To give a broad example, if you were a Christian, you wouldn’t go to a Muslim country and try to act like a Muslim. That would be deeply insulting. By the same token, you can joke about your own family, but if an outsider makes fun of them, you’ll be furious. That’s a cultural exclusive.” He looked around. “Are we clear on that?”

  There are murmurs of agreement from the audience, including me.

  “Good. Now let’s move up the ladder to cultural electives. Those are customs also, but you needn’t conform to them. For example, in the Czech Republic it used to be customary for alcohol to be offered at the start of a business meeting, even if it was eight o’clock in the morning. If you wished to be considered polite, you’d take a sip. It needn’t be more than that. Muslims would offer coffee to signal friendship. And so on.”

  More murmurs of agreement and understanding, much nodding of heads.

  “And at the top of the list are cultural imperatives,” said the professor. “Now, these are customs that you simply must adhere to if you want to be successful and show genuine respect. This becomes slippery. To be successful in a post-first-contact world, you will have to build a relationship with the other side.” He paused. “I see many puzzled looks. As if to say, ‘Well, that’s obvious, Professor Guss.’ It should be, I agree; but it really isn’t. Upon meting the representative of an alien civilization, you have to understand that you will not be communicating with the civilization—you will be communicating with a person, even if he doesn’t look like any person you ever heard of. And if you don’t build a relationship with him—or her, or it, whatever—you are doomed to fail because at the bottom, communication is between people, not companies or religions. Can anyone tell me why this is?”

  I thought as hard as I ever have in my life, because I was sure I understood his line of reasoning. I raised my hand.

  “Yes, Mr. Montgomery,” he said, nodding at me.

  I took a breath. “You have to build trust,” I said.

  He grinned. “That is exactly right. Trust will make or break a deal. Is there another example of a cultural imperative?”

  A Japanese girl raised her hand. “In my culture,” she said, “you can’t act in such a way as to lose face or to cause someone else to lose face.”

  “Excellent,” the professor said. “There are other examples, of course. In Japan prolonged eye contact is considered offensive.” The Japanese girl nodded. “However,” said Professor Guss, “Arab and Latin American regions strong eye contact is necessary or else you’ll be regarded as evasive and untrustworthy. So you have to have an awareness of the culture with which you are communicating.”

  “But that’s not going to be possible with extraterrestrials,” I said. “We will be in a cultural vacuum.”

  “And that,” said Professor Guss, “is precisely my point. You may well find yourself in a position where you are damned if you do and damned if you don’t.”

  “Well, what do we do then?”

  “You will have to weigh the possibilities as best you can, and take the course that results in the least amount of burning.”

  It was terribly frustrating. Guss’s class, which we cadets had taken almost as a lark, had become the most thought-provoking one of all. Whereas we could study navigational problems all week long and arrive at exact methodologies, we could discuss cultural imperatives for a year and never solve the problem.

  * * *

  What I have to do is to look at the situation from Ghosal’s point of view, much as it pains me to do so. From his viewpoint, we are interlopers, trespassers, no matter how valid our reasons are to ourselves. It could well be that the only proper way, in his view, to approach the problem was to politely ask to investigate the region of space in which the Mariner has vanished. As far as Ghosal is concerned, we have barged in without so much as a by-your-leave.

  The fact that we hadn’t had a clue that Ghosal’s ship was there or that the nebula was considered private property doesn’t matter in the least. Ignorance of the law, as the old saying goes, is no excuse.

  I tap my fingers on my console. I am going to have to do something I don’t want to do. Admiral Flynn isn’t going to like it. My crew isn’t going to like it. Hell, I don’t like it.

  Knowing that I am going to leave myself open to all sorts of criticism from every level of command, I close my eyes. Hellfire, Professor, I think, when you said there would be times when I’d be damned if I did and damned if I didn’t, you didn’t know the half of it.

  I brush off my uniform. A delaying tactic. I don’t want to go back out into the CNC and tell them what I have to tell them.

  I was wrong; there wasn’t a clue to be had in my memory of the professor’s discussion on cultural imperatives. Not as far as problem solving, anyway. The subtext is clear, however: this is a test of me, of Jeryl Montgomery. Jeryl has to do the right thing. Which means he can’t stand up to these Sonali bastards and dare them to shoot his ass off, because they will—along with the collective ass of his crew.

  I’m pretty fucking sure that these blue skinned bastards destroyed The Mariner.

  But the universe doesn’t care. And we can’t get any vengeance now.

  Jeryl Montgomery can risk his crew to stay and bring these people to justice.

  And he—I—dare not risk that.

  And so, with as much dignity and gravitas as I can muster, I reenter the CNC and say, “Mr. Ferriero, lay in a course for home.” There is dead silence as the Seeker’s FTL engines engage, flinging us into interstellar space.

  I am not happy.

  Chapter 17

  Jeryl

  Five years.

  Five years of war.

  Five years of blood. 4 billion humans dead.

  I haven’t shaved in two days. Used to be I was clean shaven every day. Part of the Armada regs.

  But somewhere along the line I stopped.

  Maybe it was during many of the battles where The Seeker lost power for non-essential things like lights in crew quarters.

  Or when we were sneaking along in radio silence and people were so jumpy that trying to shave would have resulted in a cut neck.

  In fact, the nagging thought in the back of my head returns again.

  If I could go back in time to when we first discovered the ruins of The Mariner … well then I would tell Admiral Flynn nothing. I wouldn’t even mention that damn ship.

  And then I would tell myself to turn the ship around and make the best possible speed back to Edoris station.

  Because It’s not like a lot of things went wrong. It’s like one thing went wrong.

  Me.

  I’m sitting in
one of the briefing rooms of Edoris station and I’m surrounded by three other ship captains. There’s a briefing that Admiral Flynn will be doing shortly. It’s going to be going over our part of the Wolf offensive. The Seeker has been tapped for a crucial role.

  No one knows what the Wolf Offensive entails just yet.

  But it’s something that’s going to hopefully bring this war to a close.

  Endless combat does more than make you stop shaving.

  It makes you start to think during that time. About the most random things in the universe.

  Sometimes I wonder if there’s something I could’ve done to prevent the war. You know that part of you that answers back with answers that you don’t want to hear?

  That’s the part of me that tells me that it’s not just something I could’ve done. It’s everything I could’ve done.

  I could’ve turned the ship around.

  I could’ve not brought up the fact that The Mariner was destroyed when I talked to the Sonali.

  I could’ve filed a different report with Armada Command.

  I could’ve spoken up when Armada Command began to question whether it was the Sonali that destroyed the mariner.

  From the very beginning Armada Command believed that the Sonali were responsible and it colored everything that they did.

  So there was never any diplomatic interchange. There was never any cultural awareness expeditions. Instead, immediately after first contact we turned being sent away from their territory into a border dispute prompted by what happened to The Mariner.

  The battle cry, “Remember The Mariner” began to resonate throughout the Earth, throughout the Union, even throughout the Outers.

  I’ve seen our worlds bombarded orbitally from above – killing millions on the surface. I’ve seen our retaliatory strikes. It took a while, but eventually our savagery shone through. We glassed Sonali planets – killing their civilians with something near glee.