by Ken MacLeod
“But you can’t?” said Grant.
Horrocks tightened his lips for a moment and nodded. “Call it semiprivate. You’re her friend, you’re definitely welcome.”
“I see.” Grant didn’t sound happy.
Atomic returned with two mugs and two plates with meat pasties. Horrocks tasted. “Very good,” he said. He’d forgotten how hungry he was.
Grant leaned over and took a chunk of Atomic’s pasty. “Horrocks says he’s here to deliver a message to you.”
“I’m not surprised,” said Atomic. “I bet it’s from my rocking caremother, yes?”
Horrocks put down his mug so that it didn’t splash. “Yes,” he said. “In a manner of speaking. She convinced me of something, and asked me to convince you of it.”
“Well, what is it? That you and I are destined to be soulmates?”
“What?”
“Oh, I know her,” said Atomic. “She’s an incorrigible genetic speculator. When she sent me her used dress, I knew a boy couldn’t be far behind.”
Horrocks didn’t know where to look. He thought her very forward. It must be the city life. Only a few months ago she’d thought him uncouth for mentioning her genetic parentage, and now she talked like this! At least she hadn’t said “a used boy.” He ate another bite or two with a dry mouth, sipped coffee.
“It’s nothing like that!” he said. “Well, I can’t be sure of her intentions, but—”
“She sent you on some quite different pretext? That’s her way.” She stretched across the table to brush a crumb from Grant’s lip.
“No,” said Horrocks. “This isn’t a pretext. This is really important.”
“So spit it out”
“All right,” he said. “The aliens, the bat people, are at a stage of development very similar to that of our ancestors in the age of world wars. Internal-combustion engines, radio, the beginnings of television, airships, steamships, mass urbanisation. In at least one city, the probe has detected traces of crude attempts to concentrate radioactive isotopes.”
“Yes, and?”
“Some of the founder generation think the aliens too may be on the brink of an era of war.”
Atomic stared at him. Grant rapped a finger hard on the table.
“Speculation,” he said. “And wooden-headed technological determinist speculation, at that. We know nothing of the aliens’ social relationships, apart from the apparent slavery — which incidentally is far more widespread than at the same stage in human development, which rather undercuts your suggestion. They could be a single world empire, or a federation of anarchies, or a happy global cooperative commonwealth for that matter. We just don’t know.”
“What about the slaves?” asked Atomic. “Don’t they count?”
“We don’t even know they are slaves,” said Grant. “They could be beasts — very similar animals to the dominant species but without speech or self-awareness.”
“Hah!” said Atomic.
“Excuse me,” said Horrocks. “That’s beside the point.”
“And the point is?” said Grant.
“The point is, if these bat folk are going into their own twentieth century, their whatever-it-was century BG, then we can expect trouble down there. And out here.”
“Oh, come on,” said Atomic. “You don’t seriously expect them to come swarming up on — what? rockets? — brandishing nuclear explosives? Or building particle-beam projectors in their deserts?”
“Yes,” said Horrocks. “That’s exactly what we — what I — do expect, in a few decades, if they don’t blast each other back to barbarism first!”
“Oh, right,” said Atomic. “In a few decades, huh? By that time we could be trading partners. It’s not like we don’t have plenty to offer them.”
“I’m afraid that’s still missing the point,” said Horrocks. “For people in that stage, control is everything. Each power centre would use whatever they gained from trading with us to get one up on rival powers, and at the same time they’d see our colonization as an invasion of their space.”
“How can they believe that the planets of this system are theirs? They haven’t even landed probes on them!”
“Look at it this way,” said Horrocks. “If an immensely more powerful species or clade or whatever set up shop in some unclaimed part of the system, wouldn’t we feel a little uneasy?”
“It happens in the Civil Worlds,” said Atomic.
“Yes, but this is not among the Civil Worlds. This is what comes before the Civil Worlds. This is life on the primary. War, conquest, grabbing territory because if you don’t somebody else will—”
“They’re flyers,” said Atomic. “Maybe they don’t have the same territoriality as we do.”
“Birds are territorial,” said Grant.
Atomic glared at him for moment. “Point,” she conceded.
“Besides,” Horrocks went on, “the whole issue of controlling airspace, and by extension outer space, might be stronger with them, it’d be just about instinctual…”
“You’re forgetting something,” said Atomic. “Law of association. Extended markets. Division of labour. Mutual benefit.”
“You’re the one who thinks they have slaves,” said Horrocks. “But whether they have or not, I very much doubt that the bat people have learned the law of association.”
“Why not?” asked Grant. “Apart from the airships and steam engines, that is. Like I said, that kind of technological determinism doesn’t convince me.”
Horrocks looked from one to the other, nonplussed. “All right,” he said. “Let’s put it a different way. We need to be sure they do understand all that before we do anything that might set them at each others’ throats if they don’t. In our own interests, we need to be sure they are not going to come out and attack us in a few decades. I know we could improvise some kind of weapons against them — something like meteor defences, I guess — but we haven’t fought a war for thousands of years and if I’m right and you’re wrong, they’re about to become really good at it. Just like our ancestors were before they went to the Moon.”
Atomic drained her cup. “Putting it that way, maybe you’re right. So what do you propose that we do about it?”
This was the crux. Horrocks nerved himself. “Something you once suggested yourself. Hold back on colonization until we’re sure the aliens can handle it.”
Atomic looked regretful, and Grant thoughtful.
“I did hint at that myself once,” Atomic said. “Read my hate mail sometime.”
“Have a good look at what intraspecies war was like — sometime.”
“I don’t need to or want to. I already have the general idea, thank you.”
Horrocks closed his eyes for a moment. “Perhaps you need more than the general idea,” he said. “I know I did. But even based on the general idea, as you say, do you really think the annoyance and frustration of our ship generation weighs much in the balance?”
“It’s not so much that,” said Atomic. “It’s that the annoyance and frustration, as you put it, might be quite enough to produce a war all by itself. A war amongst ourselves.”
Horrocks was startled at how shocked he felt. He wanted to tell her to wash out her mouth. Not, on reflection, the most tactful thing to tell her.
“That may be putting it a little too strongly,” he said at last.
“Is it?” said Atomic. “The founder generation, yes, they’re our geneparents and careparents and we love them and they love us. But we know very well what they bred us and raised us for. To go out, to conquer the system, while they carry on their doubtless fascinating little intrigues and affairs and deals in this lovely habitat that feels to us like a hot room with too many people in it. We need vacuum on the other side of our faceplates to feel we’re breathing fresh air. And the thing is, that’s exactly what we were bred and raised to feel! If the founders try to stop us, they’re asking for trouble.”
“I know that!” cried Horrocks. People turned and stared. He l
owered his voice. “The founders know that too. What we’re — what I’m asking you, is whether you can see a way around that, some way to maybe channel all that energy and urge to explore into something other than…” His voice trailed off in the face of their set, sceptical smiles.
“I can tell you this,” said Atomic. “And you can tell my caremother and her clique and anybody else you care to: if we don’t get out, our energy and urges are going to be channelled into something they won’t like,”
Grant nodded. “You said it, Atomic.”
Atomic stood up. “I think we’re finished here.” Horrocks watched them leave.
The Engineer’s Dream was known as a deep hang, a disreputable venue near the axis of the forward cone, popular with habitat trainers, microlight pilots, maintenance coordinators, and other low-responsibility crew members. Horrocks drifted through the hatch into its hazy air and narrow-spectrum artificial light and toed off for the drinks wall, where he broke off a bulb, crooked his elbow through a loop, and turned to survey the scene. Time of day wasn’t an issue here, the entire circadian rhythm being based on on-shift or off-shift, but the place was in one of its phases where only a score or so of people were in. Good: he wanted that sense of drinking at the wrong hour.
He exchanged nods with a few people hanging in the central mesh, none of whom he fancied talking to, and then noticed Genome Console at the far end on her own. Focused on an inhaler, she didn’t see him so he pinged her. She turned, saw him, waved and rolled to place her feet on the wall. One swift thrust brought her over. A neat somersault docked her in the same loop as himself. She wore something like an opaque black sphere with holes for wrists, ankles and neck, but a sphere that had crinkled and shrunk inward to cling here and there, mostly there. Her fair hair floated wild. “Well, hello,” she said. “Where have you been? The gang all thought you’d gone flatfoot.”
“It was just for a few days,” said Horrocks.
“A few days at a time,” she said. “You’ve been going down there for weeks.”
“Doing business with passengers.”
“I don’t believe that for a minute. Fancy a sniff?” She waved her inhaler. Horrocks checked the cartridge: red clouds and a lightning-flash, an obscure brand name.
“No thanks.” Horrocks swigged a squirt. “But you’re right. I got caught up in something.”
“Ah!” said Genome, her eyes bright from her sniff. “You and that flatfoot girl.” She tilted her head back, sighting him along her nose. “She’s trouble.”
“She is that,” Horrocks said. “How do you know about her, anyway?”
“She’s biologged your little contretemps already.”
It had been hours. “You follow it?”
“I track the feeds. Bad habit I picked up from Grey.”
“Oh,” said Horrocks. For some reason it was a name he didn’t welcome hearing. “How is he, by the way?”
“Perverse,” said Genome. “Like all that Red Sun crowd.”
“Red Sun crowd?” Horrocks had an alarmed moment when he thought she alluded to his dealings with the Red Sun Circle.
“You know, all the people from back there.” She waved over her shoulder. “The old crew hands are as bad as passengers, sometimes.”
“Oh, right. They’ve been so long in the ship it’s like—”
“They have to make life more complicated than it needs to be,” she said.
“You’re right there,” said Horrocks, with more force than he’d meant.
“Ah!” said Genome again. “Her caremother got under your skin, did she?” She grinned at his open mouth. “Atomic biologged that, too.”
Horrocks had to laugh. “What do you think of the substance of it?”
“The argument? Huh.” She took a long sniff and stared into the distance. “I sure don’t want these little flatfoot breeders on the ship for much longer. Or their parents, come to that.”
“Just go ahead as planned?”
“Yup.”
“What about the aliens?”
“Rock the aliens,” said Genome. “Look, in fifty years they’ll have data colonies and science robots and all that Civil Worlds shower crawling all over them. They might as well get used to us in the meantime. Let it sink in that they’re not — ta-da! — alone in the universe, and they’ll soon sort out their little squabbles.”
“Suppose they have a little squabble with us?”
“So what?” Genome said. “What are they going to send up against us? Kites?”
“I’m sure you’ve heard what I’ve said on that score,” said Horrocks. “I’m more concerned about what fighting them would do to us.”
Genome shrugged. “We’d have plenty of time to prepare. Discuss. Sort out the morality of the thing. It’s not something you can do anything about now.”
Horrocks broke off another drink. “I suppose not,” he said. “I have a nasty feeling I’ve been inveigled into one of these founder intrigues that has nothing whatever to do with the ostensible bone of contention.”
“Yeah,” said Genome. “Probably some speculative ramp at the back of it.” She sighed. “Grey was always doing things like that. Watched the terrestrials market like a crow eyeing a caterpillar, every time he fired off one of his daft rants.”
“Past tense now, is he?”
She shifted in the loop. “As far as I’m concerned, yes.”
Horrocks guessed he mirrored her embarrassment. They gazed at each other for a minute. Having known Genome since childhood no longer struck Horrocks as a difficulty. In a sense he had not known her at all. Her directness was refreshing, her sharing of his age and background attractive. He told her so.
She waved her inhaler under his nose. “It’s a strong anti-inhibitor,” she said. “And you’ve been sidestreaming it for half an hour.”
“You have me at an advantage,” he said.
“So I have,” she said, and took it.
12 — View from a Height
“Tapes!” Nollam shouted. “Tapes!”
As Darvin and Kwarive rushed in to join the growing huddle around the telekinematographic receiver, two of Nollam’s fellow-technicians scrambled and fumbled to load and thread what looked like two kinematograph reels, one full and one empty, with no projector between them.
Darvin peered over Orro’s shoulder, conscious of Kwarive’s chin and hand-claws digging into his.
“We should have had them ready to roll,” he heard Orro grumble. He paid no attention. The screen demanded it all. The press was still growing. Behind and around him people were clambering up racks and leaning forward.
The moving picture was a grainier black-and-white than a kinematographic film, yet less jerky, more fluid and realistic. It showed the map Kwarive had drawn, and peering over it their own staring faces from a minute earlier, then them turning and running out of view. An uneasy laugh went up.
The image changed again, to a figure like a human being without wings, and with small eyes, ears, and nose. The face appeared hairless, with a tuft on the crown of the head. Its mouth was moving, it seemed in synchrony with the sound that boomed from the loudspeakers of the apparatus: EEE UUUUMMMM III-IHHH EEESSS EEEEE… It went on like that, a sound like surf in a cave. It was hard to hear, for a moment, as everybody in the room gasped or cried out, Kwarive loudest of all. Darvin shook with astonishment. Thus far he had not so much as imagined the aliens, and the vague swirl of images in his head that he’d associated with them had been of things far more alien than this.
The alien turned and pointed. What had seemed baggy, wrinkled skin on his arms and chest slipped and moved, revealing itself to be a body covering, like a cloak but fitted and shaped. The picture became for a moment incomprehensible, a patchwork of varied shapes interspersed with bright surfaces and overlaid with fuzzy white blobs. It rotated about a vivid white line drawn from the top of the screen to near the middle, and gave way to a much darker area dotted with clumps of bright spots. This was repeated several times, alternating light an
d dark.
“It’s the inside of a cylinder,” said Kwarive.
The view snapped into perspective. A cylinder: of course.
Orro jumped. “It’s the inside of the ship!”
“That’s ridiculous!” said one scientist. “Where are the occupants? Where is the machinery?”
“Too small to see!” shouted Orro above the hubbub. “The white puffs are clouds. The bright patches are lakes. We’re looking at a landscape rolled like a map.”
At that point everyone fell silent. The similarity of the scene to a view, from a greater height than any of them had flown, of an entire country curving upward and wrapped around overhead was irresistible.
“The thing is vast,” breathed Markhan, pushing forward from the back of the crowd.
“We knew that already,” said Darvin. “For it to be visible by telescope at its distance,”
The alien voice continued. The viewpoint zoomed downward. As it sank they all saw what seemed to be a gliding man, which as it passed closer turned out to be a small flying machine with a propeller at the front. Orro turned and grinned into Darvin’s face. The viewpoint reached ground level and settled on an open space, beyond which lay low buildings. A few of the aliens walked in and out of view, their legs long, their gait limber. They showed no awareness of the viewpoint, which Darvin presumed to be a camera.
The voice stopped and the picture changed again, to a scrolling display of line diagrams and row upon row of symbols. After some minutes of this the crowd began to relax and break up. Some who had rushed in drifted away, or hastened to their neglected duties. Some of the scientists went into immediate huddled conferences. Others remained transfixed by the incomprehensible sigils on the screen. The telekinematograph technicians paid more attention to the apparatus than to the display.
Markhan called one of them over. “More tapes!”
“Sorry, chief, we only have a couple more reels, and they’re right here.”
“How long does a tape last?”
“About half an hour.”
“Put out a call for more. Airship them in. Meanwhile, scrounge around for any used tapes. I don’t care what’s on them. Have them ready to tape over.”