“Is it working?” Jared said.
“I don’t know, maybe,” Rory said. “Give it time.”
As Rory set his plan in motion, Jared looked around the Caronoi settlement. The shelters themselves were further inland, open-sided frameworks roofed with twigs and moss. Alongside them was an emissary tower, a radio antenna fed from probably the simplest transmitter imaginable, named after the emissaries who used to carry songs from tribe to tribe, until one day a song originating somewhere in the south provided the crucial information on how putting copper and iron and lodestone together in just the right way could open up long-distance communication and relegate traveling emissaries to history.
Then he looked back at where Rory was monitoring the output from the omni. Could it really be this easy, he thought, just a case of pumping in the information, then getting back into the shuttle and scurrying back to Kaluza Station? No, there would be more to it even if the plan worked—explaining to Anderson why they’d upstaged his contact effort, explaining what he’d done to Sal, explaining to Alliance Liaison why he’d pulled rank on the Kaluza staff in a way which they would never have endorsed, which defied the very Alliance they were at pains to placate. The mission might be done, but the storm was only beginning.
Then Benning emerged from the shuttle and ran over. “There’s something coming this way,” he said.
The Contact Team shuttle landed a hundred meters or so from their own. Then the hatch opened and Anderson came out. They could tell even before he stormed over that he was furious. He stopped short and looked from Jared to Rory to Benning and back again, practically on fire with rage.
“Talk. Now.”
Jared stepped forward and gave him the story. By the time he finished, Anderson had barely even started to calm down. He looked to Benning.
“Is all this true?”
Benning nodded. “We only have Rory Temple’s word for it, but it appears to be the case.”
Anderson stepped back, steepling his fingers as he always did when digesting difficult news. Jared could see the veins standing out in the man’s neck and head, but he seemed to be taking it all rationally, pulling himself back from the brink of meltdown.
“Those ships in the outer system are Alliance,” he said. “One of them entered Caron-c orbit half an hour ago. We switched on our receivers as soon as we saw it and heard a systemwide broadcast to all human vessels, including as they put it ‘both landing craft.’ You’ll understand our concern as to who the other one might have been. That’s when we started scanning and saw you three, down here.”
“Why did they contact you?” Jared said.
Anderson looked back at him, a coldness to his eyes. “It was a warning to clear the planet’s surface. They’re going to blow the place.”
“No! They can’t!” It was Rory, stepping forward to face Anderson.
“Why are they doing that?” Jared said. “Did something go wrong at the contact site?”
“We never got that far,” Anderson said. “We sent the broadcast, we were scanning for a response and then the Alliance appeared. Some kind of Sprite ship, something we’ve never seen before. And right now, I will need a hell of a lot of persuasion to believe that your intervention hasn’t caused this. I think they figured out what you’re doing and this is their response.”
Jared looked over at where Rory’s song was still playing out into the Caronoi gathering. Could the Alliance have been watching that closely, all this time? They were millennia ahead technologically, but not clairvoyant. “I don’t think that’s true. The Alliance are acting because they know the Caronoi are naïves, and they only know that because they’ve reviewed our research reports. We’ve given them three years of data and analysis, and unwittingly incriminated the Caronoi in the process, but that doesn’t have to be the full picture.”
“You mean you think we can still fix this?” Rory said. He was almost shaking with the enormity of what he’d started, clearly out of his depth now that Anderson, the OAL and the whole Alliance were involved.
“Maybe,” Jared said. “But not like before. You’ve planted the seed of the theory in the Caronois’ minds, but we don’t have time to let it take root on its own any more. We need to tell the Alliance straight out why the Caronoi are suddenly worth saving.”
“And reveal that we know what the Alliance are looking for?” Anderson said. “Remember, we’re being judged too, if Mr. Temple’s theory is correct—if we step out of line, we’re next.”
“In that case we think up some way of pointing them in the right direction. Something with plausible deniability.”
“What if you’re wrong?” Anderson said. “What if by doing this you only provoke them?”
“What would you rather do? Leave the Caronoi to be massacred? Knowing that you could have helped them?” Through his brief time on the station, one thing had come through loud and clear to Jared. For some people, including, he suspected, Anderson, the mission had become more than just a research project. They’d got to know the Caronoi so well, albeit from a distance, that there was now an emotional stake in contacting them. Working the last three years only to see them wiped out would be more than just a waste of research time.
“Fine, your way,” Anderson said. “But whatever we do next, we do it from orbit. I am not going to wait here for whatever that Sprite cruiser has in store. Mr. Benning, set your shuttle to automatic and get it back to Kaluza Station. From here on we stick together.”
Ten minutes later, the remaining shuttle was back in orbit, nine hundred miles above the planet’s surface. Jared, Rory and Benning stood up front with Anderson and the pilot while the rest of the Contact Team sat behind them, coming to terms with the rushed summary Anderson had been able to give them—a species doomed according to arbitrary rules, a new mission plan to save them and the risk of defying the Alliance itself. Two thousand miles ahead of them was the Sprite cruiser, ten miles of stacked circular disks and needle-like spires, product of a technology Jared knew Earth had only begun to comprehend. And between the disks were the Sprites themselves, open to space, their charcoal-gray polyhedral carapaces hardened to the vacuum and radiation.
Jared activated the shuttle’s comms panel and hailed the ship. Just contacting them instead of waiting for them to initiate was a breach of OAL protocol, another offense to add to a long list of transgressions.
“Remain in orbit while sterilization occurs,” the reply came moments later, a bland synthetic voice steeped in gender-neutral, unemotive tones.
“Please clarify reasons for sterilization,” Jared said. He didn’t work directly with the OAL Speakers, but he’d heard that simple, direct sentences were usually the best approach.
“Subject species is in violation of Alliance criteria,” was the similarly terse reply.
“Please indicate nature of violation,” Jared said.
“Subject species is in violation of Alliance criteria,” the Sprite repeated.
“We don’t have time to play this subtle,” Jared said, more to himself than anyone, then into the comm unit: “Our research has revealed new data that could influence the criteria. Request delay to sterilization.”
“Humans have no information on Alliance criteria.”
“This is painful,” Benning said. “Are they always this hard work to talk to?”
“So I’ve heard,” Jared said, then to the Sprites, “We strongly request that the sterilization is halted in the light of new information. This is vital to the success of the contact mission.”
“Humans have no information on Alliance criteria.”
“Jesus Christ!” Benning said. “What do we have to do to get it through to these things?”
Jared knew, but the direction this conversation was taking might have consequences beyond anything he’d done so far. He took a deep breath, then spoke into the comm unit again.
“Our studies
lead us to assess with high confidence that the Caronoi are not and will never be in violation of Alliance criteria.”
He was sure he could detect a pause before the reply came. With AI minds running billions of times faster than human brains, to make them stop and think even for a heartbeat was some achievement.
“Present proof of this assertion,” the Sprite ship answered.
“Any ideas?” Jared said to those gathered round him.
“Not beyond telling them straight out how much we know,” Rory said. “But then that was always going to be the case, wasn’t it?”
Jared knew that it was true. It was time to go for broke. He turned to the comm unit and addressed the Sprites one more time.
“A final precontact investigation of Caronoi capabilities has just been performed. A group of Caronoi have recently developed the ability to analyze conflict as a mathematical phenomenon. We have seen them derive theorems proving the futility of instigating such conflicts, including those where techniques based on causality violation are employed. As such we do not believe they pose a threat to Alliance interests.”
There was silence from the Sprites. Ten, twenty seconds passed without answer. “My God, what have you done?” Anderson said. “If you’re right and we’re not even meant to know about that—”
A message from the Sprite cruiser interrupted him.
“This claim confirms that violation has occurred,” it said. “Hold station.”
“We’re done for,” Benning said.
More time passed while those in the shuttle waited in silence, the atmosphere of the cabin turning cold and clammy with apprehension.
I’ve done it, Jared thought, I’ve just consigned the human race to history to stand up for a principle. His palms were sweating as he stood in the cockpit, knuckles white on the grab rail. Then, at last, the final message from the Sprite ship came through.
“The Alliance has concluded that contact with the subject race can continue. No information regarding Alliance criteria will be given to them.”
Then the Sprite ship departed, accelerating away so rapidly that on the shuttle’s view screens it appeared to just vanish.
“Is that it?” Anderson said. “They let us off just like that?”
Then a light appeared, off to the side. For a few seconds it shone brighter than the sun, then diminished. Everyone in the shuttle crowded to the side windows, and what faced them was Carpathia, sole moon of Caron-c.
The surface was glowing white hot, a spherical envelope of gas expanding around it. Then it cooled, to the orange of molten magma, then the red of sunset. Already those watching could see that the surface had been obliterated entirely.
“Jesus Christ,” Rory said, “they nuked the thing.”
“What the hell?” Benning said.
“It’s a warning,” Jared said. “They weren’t fooled; they know what we did and why. If our membership was in the balance before, then it’s running at critical now. They’ve shown us what’s in store if we defy them again.”
They watched Carpathia’s surface, cooling and flowing, its shattered surface lit by the menacing red glow of nuclear annihilation.
The plain was near the equator, with a vast jungle-covered river basin to the south, hot blue skies above and a warm dry wind blowing off the deserts further west. The Caronoi settlement here was like a sprawl of teepees on a grassy meadow, straddling a narrow river of blue-green water. On the edge of the settlement was their emissary tower, far larger than the one Jared had seen at the last site, and beyond that was a long-range transmitter field, six square kilometers of phase-locked dipole antennae, tens of thousands of them, each wood-and-wire construction no more advanced than the emissary transmitters but forming a phased array that could command probes as far as the outer system. And barely ten miles away was the place where one of those probes had been launched, the site cleared and leveled so the rocket could be assembled, elevated, then packed with propellant and launched.
They never built and tested things, Jared thought as he looked around the examples of Caronoi technology. There were no labs, no research institutes, no particle accelerators or mass spectrometers. All their experiments were thought experiments, carried out in whatever shared world that bizarre song trance took them to. And then they would snap out of it and do this, and it would just work, every time.
Then he looked toward the center of the settlement, where Anderson had walked in, alone, to greet the Caronoi. There was a small crowd of them, awake and aware this time, and Anderson was talking to them, the translator unit in his hand, occasionally gesturing back to the shuttle and the rest of the team waiting a safe nonthreatening distance away.
“So tell me something,” Jared said to Rory as they watched. “How did your grandfather know so much if Alliance rules are meant to be so secret?”
“Let’s just say the Alliance isn’t as unified as they like us to think. There are factions, even within the Sprites, who think they are doing things wrongly. My grandfather was lucky enough to meet them first, and they were able to help us. But we needed to maintain the pretense of true compliance, and that bound him to secrecy. Unfortunately, with the Caronoi, it fell to us to play good cop. Or to me.”
Rory had carried this knowledge alone for years, Jared realized, with the fate of entire races in his hands. It felt good to share the burden, just by being let in on the facts. “I don’t know what’s going to happen when this gets reported back to Earth,” he said. “I’m in trouble, I know it. You may be too. But now we know what we’ve got ourselves into with the Alliance, what we’re really up against, the people in control might realize the situation has changed.”
“You think we can help other races? Ones we encounter in future?”
“Possibly. I can’t help feeling we’ve delivered the Caronoi to the Alliance on a plate by bringing them in, but they’d already been discovered, and you can’t put the clock back. But if the Alliance itself is divided, at least we get to pick which side we’re on. It’s not just us against them.”
Rory nodded slowly and looked up, where Carpathia sat high in the daylight sky. They had arranged another demonstration of power in the hours after its surface had been near-vaporized. Somehow, incredibly, it had been resculpted as it cooled, regaining its former appearance as if nothing had happened. The sheer power required to manipulate matter on a planetary scale was if anything a more sobering show of supremacy than the destruction that preceded it.
“So were we naïves?” Jared said. “Humans, I mean, when your grandfather made contact?”
“We were,” Rory said. “We would have been in the firing line. Have you ever heard of Alderman’s theorem?”
“No.”
“That’s what the crucial branch of Game Theory is known as on Earth. Except John Alderman never came up with it. He’d recently died in a car crash when our first contact happened, so records were fabricated to make it look like he’d figured it out just before his death.”
“Like the songs you concocted for the Caronoi? A fake breakthrough, just in time?”
“Exactly.”
They carried on watching Anderson in silence. Then, ten minutes after he had started discussions with the Caronoi, he turned to face the Contact Team and waved them over.
“Looks like we’re on,” Rory said. He wasn’t an official Contact Team member any more than Jared was, but the rulebook for this enterprise had already been thrown out of the window. They walked over to join Anderson, fifteen of them in all including the Contact Team proper, and gathered in front of the Caronoi.
They were strangely amphibian in some ways, their rhomboid cream-white bodies with four long frog-like limbs, and faces taking up the whole front section of their torsos. Their eyes were expressionless black marbles, surrounded by openings for air, food, hearing and speech.
The two species stood regarding each other, th
en the Caronoi nearest to Anderson said something, a short sharp chirp of noise that came out of the translator as “They other world also?”
“Yes,” Anderson said. “They are.”
Another chirp. “Many other worlds exist?”
“Yes, a great many.”
Then the Caronoi turned to face its own kind and said something else, another burst of noise, then repeated it once more.
“Other worlds,” the translator said. “Life on other worlds. Told you so.”
The Importance of Short Fiction
BY KRISTINE KATHRYN RUSCH
Kristine Kathryn Rusch has written over 100 novels under a variety of names. As Kris Nelscott, she’s the Edgar- and Shamus-nominated writer of the Smokey Dalton mystery series, which has been published all over the world. As Kristine Grayson, she’s the award-winning, bestselling writer of goofy romance novels filled with fractured fairy tales. As Kris DeLake, she writes paranormal romance with a science fiction twist. She also writes under several other names, sometimes in collaboration with her husband Dean Wesley Smith.
Under her own name, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, she has won two Hugos and dozens of Readers’ Choice Awards. Her Rusch novels have been on bestseller lists all over the world, including the London Times, the Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly, and the USA Today list. She has a thriving short story career. Her stories have appeared in about 20 year’s best collections, including the prestigious Best American Mystery Stories.
Kristine has served as a Writers of the Future Contest judge since 2010.
The Importance of Short Fiction
The heart and the future of science fiction lie in its short fiction. Short fiction is difficult to write well, yet we in the SF field tell all beginning writers to start with it. Why? Because short fiction is . . . well . . . short.
I know. It sounds both silly and obvious. Writers should write short fiction because it’s short—like those finger exercises pianists must learn so they can play a piano concerto. The problem with the advice—write short fiction because it’s short—is this: it makes writers believe that short fiction is easy, something to graduate from, something that isn’t worth their time except as practice.
Writers of the Future Volume 28: The Best New Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Page 21