by Rick Cook
He grinned. “And once you figure out the drive, you need to take it pretty far out from your sun. Someplace where the geodesies are—ah—nice and ‘flat’ to run your first tests.”
He took a pull on his stein of beer. “Besides,” he added, “I don’t think they had our incentives to find an efficient star drive. That’s Dr. Dolan’s theory anyway.”
“That’s an odd thing to say about a star-faring culture,” Carlotti put in.
“Not as odd as it sounds,” Ludenemeyer said. “I gather they spread from star to the next nearest star and they don’t much care about spectral type.
“With their culture they don’t need habitable planets and within broad limits one solar system’s pretty much as good as another to them. I doubt they go as much as ten light-years in a hop and in this part of the galaxy, stars are only an average of three lightyears or so apart.
“We never thought of that. We went into space looking for habitable planets—new Earths. We had to have something that would let us travel fast between stars, so we looked and looked until we found it. They simply went from star to star, so they could settle for something less.
“It’s more than that. The physics underlying the KOH drive are extremely subtle, indeed counterintuitive. The formalism that expresses the possibility is damn clumsy for expressing the normal range of physical phenomena.”
One of the other scientists grinned. “What he’s saying is it’s not the sort of thing you stumble across by accident. You got to go looking for it and then there’s a lot of luck in finding it.”
“And they don’t have a KOH drive?”
“Not at all.”
“It is a remarkable situation,” Father Simon said.
“I imagine we will find many more remarkable things as we learn more about them,” MacNamara said. “Or whenever the rest of us can talk to them.”
“That’s being worked on right now,” Father Simon assured him. “The computer crew is retraining the translation programs now.”
At the same time, Aubrey was having a very uncomfortable interview with the captain.
“Dr. Aubrey,” Jenkins said for the third time. “I don’t want anything more said about the drive, at least until we know where we stand.”
“Captain, it is not really your decision.”
“Doctor, everything that bears on the safety and welfare of this ship is my decision and m my opinion the details of the drive definitely do.”
“You’re arrogating a great deal to yourself, Captain.”
“I’m trying to protect my ship in a difficult and possibly dangerous situation.”
“So the stranger is the enemy,” Aubrey said bitterly. “Haven’t we had enough of that attitude? Hasn’t it cost us enough?”
“Dr. Aubrey, I am not assuming anything of the sort,” Jenkins said, stung. “It seems to me you are the one who is taking a great deal on yourself.”
“The Ship’s Council is the focus of decision making for everyone on this ship.”
“The Ship’s Council has not discussed this matter,” Jenkins retorted. “Until it agrees on a course of action you are acting unilaterally. And if it agrees, I still must decide to go along.”
Aubrey smiled. “What do you propose to do, Captain? Censor every man and woman on this ship?”
“I propose to exercise my prerogative and take the ship out of here immediately if I do not like the trend of events,” Jenkins snapped back. “We can argue about it later and you can present information at my court martial if you like. But until that time, neither you nor anyone else will discuss details of the drive with the aliens.”
A throwback! Andrew Aubrey fumed. A twentieth-century throwback in command of this of all expeditions. He stalked the corridor alone, trying to work off some of the blind rage. He had known the captain was difficult, and wedded to the archaic methods of the Space Force, but this . . .
He was so angry and so wrapped in his own thoughts he nearly knocked Sharon Dolan down when she came around a corner.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Dr. Dolan,” he said, recovering. “I didn’t see you.”
“Are you all right, Dr. Aubrey?”
He let his breath out in a long sigh. “Yes, I’m all right. I just had a rather—unsatisfactory—interview with the captain.”
“About the aliens and the drive?”
Aubrey chuckled with brittleness. “News does travel, doesn’t it?”
“Well, no. Just that everyone knows you want to give the principles of the drive to the aliens. What else could you be talking to the captain about?” She paused. “I take it he didn’t agree?”
“No. He actually threatened to jump us out of the system if we tried to reveal the drive. Subconsciously, Captain Jenkins still confuses the stranger with the enemy.”
“I don’t believe that!” Sharon said, more sharply than she meant to.
“I think it’s true nonetheless. Oh, I can understand it to an extent. They are frightful looking enough. But Dr. Dolan, we can’t afford that kind of thinking! Fear of the alien almost destroyed us when the alien was nothing more than a human who didn’t think exactly as we did. We can’t afford another war, ever.”
“I know,” Sharon told him. “My family is Irish.”
No one knew who started it and there were almost as many reasons why as there were scholars studying it. The important thing was that as the twenty-first century dawned, the United States and the Soviet Union fought a brief, futile and suicidal nuclear war.
Compared to what could have been, it wasn’t much of a war. Both sides had spent nearly two decades building defenses against nuclear-armed missiles. Neither nation’s missile defense system was perfect, but they both worked. The Americans stopped nearly ninety-nine percent of the warheads aimed at their territory and the Soviets somewhat less, perhaps ninety-five percent.
As a result only about four hundred million people died worldwide.
Most of Europe and vast tracts of North America and Eurasia were turned into blasted ruins and the economic and political face of the planet was turned upside down. But by the skin of its teeth humanity survived.
Technically, you could say that the United States won. After all, the United States of America still existed—or rather a country bearing that name and with more-or-less the same territory still existed. The Soviet Union had dissolved into a welter of competing republics. The European Community existed only as a pale shadow. But a twentieth-century American would have had a hard time seeing his country in what now called itself the “USA.”
Aubrey grinned without humor. “Do you know how I spent my weekends in high school? I was a ghoul.”
“A ghoul?”
“I grew up in upstate New York, in one of the safe zones. Right after the war there was a refugee camp there. Tens of thousands of people packed in from New York City, Rochester, Buffalo, all over.”
He licked his lips. “Well, nearly all of them died, of course. You know how it was, no food, no medicine, radiation poisoning, disease—plus the winters. They have terrible winters there.” He sighed and hurried on. “Anyway, they died and were buried in mass graves. Row after row of trenches, hacked out by hand because they couldn’t afford to use a bulldozer and the bodies dumped in without coffins or shrouds and then they’d mound the earth over them. Forty years later and those mounds were still two or three feet high.”
“I know,” Sharon whispered. “I’ve seen the like.”
Aubrey took another deep breath. “Well, that was fine at the time, but the land where the camp stood was good farmland. As the population built back up they saw they couldn’t let it lie fallow. Besides, they thought that even after all that time the bodies were contaminating the water. We had a lot of sickness in the summertime. So the remains of the camp, including the graves, had to go.”
“And you . . .”
Again the drawn, deathshead grin. “I got the job. I was away at school during the winter so I didn’t have regular employment. So I was thrown into t
he labor pool with all the drunks and bums they could corral and that was our job for two summers.
“We went out there with shovels and picks and opened the mounds and turned the soil, sifting out every bone we could find, ignoring the stench as best we could, and piling all of them up for hauling and disposal.”
He paused. “I was luckier than some. I never got sick. But I would get back to camp and I would wash and wash and wash until my skin was raw and I could still smell the death on me.”
Aubrey looked as if he would throw up. Then he took another deep, shuddering breath and turned back to Sharon, apparently the old Andrew Aubrey again.
“Anyway, that’s when I decided that we had to change or it would be all humanity in those pits the next time. I think we are changing, too. But now we’re at a critical point and we have to deal with someone who is still infected with the old ways of doing things.”
“Captain Jenkins is a reasonable man,” Sharon told him. “I’m sure you can reason with him.”
Aubrey relaxed. “Perhaps you’re right, Dr. Dolan.” Then he smiled. “Yes, I’m sure the captain will be reasonable when we have more evidence to convince him.”
One by one the screens lit up, showing the feces of the leaders of the most powerful colonies in the system. The meeting was not to exchange information, it was to decide what to do. They had all been monitoring negotiations with the aliens.
“We meet to seek common direction,” the Council President said after finishing the opening ritual. “There are strangers among us and we must decide how to deal with them. They are not of any known lineage,” he continued, knowing full well this was news to no one. “They are a new and undiscovered kind of being.
“Their ship is vastly smaller than any known faster-than-light craft. The aliens admit they have a drive which works on new principles, but they refuse to share it with us.”
“Then let us take it!” one of the smaller colonies trumpeted. “They are deep within our system.”
“They can also vanish in an instant,” the Council President retorted. “Since they discovered we do not have the drive, their ship is held constantly ready to leave. At the first suspicion of trouble they will disappear.”
“What is it they want?” asked the leader of the conservatives, the oldest member on the Council.
“That is unclear. They seem eager to trade knowledge with us, but they insist that they must refer matters back to the elders of their lineage. They will offer nothing of value.”
“Then why don’t they leave?” the elder snapped. “Why do they remain and cause dissension?”
The Council President made the equivalent of a shrug. “Apparently they hope to gain from us without giving us anything substantial in return.”
“Do they think us such weaklings?”
Again the shrug. “That, too, is unclear. Seemingly there is some uncertainty among their elders as to the proper course to pursue. They say that others will come after them who will be more willing to discuss their drive.” He made a dismissing motion, as if to brush off an insect. Long experience had taught the colonists that cultures which built starships seldom visited a system more than once. They collapsed too quickly.
“As long as they stay there is hope,” one of the other councilors observed. “Let us wait and watch.”
“There is one other cause for hope. They desire to communicate with us. If we talk to them perhaps we can resolve the uncertainty and gain what we want.”
Not altogether unsatisfactory, the Council President mused. The meeting had not gone badly at all. There had been the usual interminable wangling as the leaders of the factions squabbled and jockeyed for advantage. There had been the heightened tension of having a great prize dangled before them. But in the end the Colonial Council had agreed on a general course of action. The conservatives had stayed pretty much in line and even 246 had been less obstreperous than usual. All things considered, the Council President decided, it was more than he had hoped for.
The Council President’s screen lit up. There stood the leader of the conservative faction.
“A proposal,” the old one said without preamble.
“I will entertain it,” the Council President replied. By the All-Father, what now?
“We have taken counsel among ourselves. We desire to destroy the newcomer.”
The Council President’s beak snapped in response. “Unacceptable!”
“Hear what we offer,” the old one said.
“It is insufficient,” the Council President trumpeted. “No matter what it might be it is insufficient.”
“These—things—are dangerous,” the old one said. “They threaten the stability of the entire system.”
“These ‘things’ are very powerful,” the Council President countered. “Can you be so sure we can destroy them?”
“They are merely young and crude.” The old one made a dismissive gesture. “There is only one small ship of them. An easy mark for a combined attack.”
“We know little about them.”
“We know enough. They can be destroyed and destroyed they must be.”
“Are you so certain we can learn their drive from the wreckage?”
Again the dismissive gesture. “Their drive is unimportant.”
The Council President blinked. “No one else thinks so.”
“Then they are blinded fools! The Order of Heaven is important and that must be preserved.”
“The consensus is that we can do both.”
“No!” The old one’s beak snapped. “We exist in a very tight orbit within many competing fields. Already we are threatened to be pulled from our course. We do not need another potential to further complicate our calculations.”
“New opportunities open up new orbits,” the Council President responded. “With the drive we could spread our lineages through the galaxy in our lifetimes. We would become the greatest Founders of all.”
“When blinded by the sun be very careful how you reach for the next branch,” the old one warned. “Already they produce dangerous strains. Consider 246’s action.”
The Council President repeated the old one’s dismissal. “246 is acting as always.”
“He broke the Covenants. He broke the Covenants and got away unpunished.”
“We should add new conflicts merely to punish an upstart for a technical violation?”
“His violations will not always be technical,” the old one warned. “And since you are so infatuated with these creatures’ star drive, consider what would happen if 246 were to obtain it.”
“246 will not obtain it. They are a weak lineage with deep obligations yet to be discharged.”
“Are they so weak as they were two hands of cycles ago?” the old one asked sharply. “With each cycle beneath the yoke of that madman they grow stronger. They build, they ignore their obligations and they grow.”
The Council President snorted. This was an old, tired argument. “246’s obligations are so heavy there is no hope of meeting them in the approved fashion.”
“Then let them suffer for their foolishness,” the old one retorted. “They attempted to upset the Order of Heaven and now they collect the consequences. Let them serve as an object lesson to all would-be rebels against Heaven.”
“You would drive them to desperation and to the unthinkable. It is our policy to defer their obligations and that is a settled matter.”
“It is your policy to let them grow so strong they can threaten us all.”
“It is my policy to maintain the Will of Heaven so long as the Mandate rests with me.”
“Or,” he asked shrewdly, “would you rather that all Colonies acted together to give 246 a generation ship and send its present leaders out to start a new founding?”
The oldster tossed his head in negation, the folds of flesh shaking from the violence of the gesture. “Why should we deprive our own lineages of the opportunity of our own Foundings merely to be rid of this upstart and outlaw?”
It was a rhetorical question, just as the Council President’s had been. Launching a generation ship to another star to Found a new system was enormously expensive even for the Colonial civilization. There was enormous prestige in being part of a Founding Branch, but also great risk and hardship and huge expense for the sponsoring Colony. True, launching a Founding was one of the civilization’s standard ways of averting open conflict between irredeemably opposed groups, but the primary expense was always borne by the sponsoring Colony.
“Very well, then,” the Council President said. “It is my policy—and the will of the Council—to gratefully accept the gifts that Heaven puts within our reach.”
“This is not a gift of Heaven. It is a snare that will set us one against the other and ultimately destroy us all.”
“So you wish to throw it away?”
The old one shrugged. “We have lived long and well without it. Why should we nurture a thing that threatens us?”
“This thing does not threaten us,” the Council President repeated. “It promises to enrich us. Your request is rejected.”
The other stared at him in challenge. “We will speak of this again in Council.”
“So we shall,” the Council President agreed.
Old fool, the Council President thought as the image disappeared from the screen. So mired in the past that he cannot see the future. He froze, considering the other’s possible moves and his countermoves.
The conservatives could not win on the issue of destroying the strangers. Even most of the conservative faction saw the value of this new drive. The threat was that the conservative faction would align against him on other issues, hoping to build a challenge that would topple him.
The Council President made a gesture like brushing off an annoying insect. Let them! The conservatives had never been among the core of his support. So long as he remained strong and the orbits of the Council did not perturb too greatly there was nothing to fear from them.