Varosa Uman was still settling into a viewing chair.
“You’ve been aroused ahead of schedule because we have a visitation,” the First Principal said. “The Integrators responded to the latest development by advising us they want you to oversee our response. You will be replacing Mansita Jano, who has been the Situation Overseer since the first detection. He’s conducted a flawless response, in my opinion. You won’t find a better guide.”
A male with bright yellow facial feathers materialized beside the First Principal. Varosa Uman ordered a quick scan on her personal information system and confirmed that she was replacing one of the twenty leading experts on the history of visitations—a scholar with significant practical experience. Mansita Jano Santisi Jinmano.… had served on the committee that had worked on the last visitation. He had been a scholar-observer during the visitation twelve hundred years before that.
“It will be an honor to work with you, Mansita Jano.”
She could have said more. Mansita Jano’s expertise dwarfed her own knowledge of visitations. But the Integrators had picked her. She couldn’t let him think he could dominate her thinking.
He couldn’t be happy with the change. He knew he was better qualified. She would be harrying Siti with exasperated tirades if the Integrators had done something like that to her. But Mansita Jano was looking at her with polite interest, as if their relative positions had no emotional significance. And she would have donned the same mask, if their positions had been reversed.
A panoramic spacescape replaced the two figures. A line traced the path of an incoming visitation device—a standard minimum-mass object attached to a standard oversize light sail. It was a typical visitation rig and it behaved in a typical fashion. It spent twelve years slowing down and settling into its permanent orbit. It launched a subsidiary device at the third moon of the fourth planet and the subsidiary started working on an installation that would probably develop into a communications relay, in the same way the last two visitations had established relays on the same moon. It released three microweight orbit-to-surface devices (the last visitation had released two) and the survivors advanced to the next step in a typical visitation program.
All over the galaxy intelligent species reached a certain level and developed similar interstellar technologies. Each species thought it had reached a pinnacle. Each species saw its achievements as a triumph of intelligence and heroic effort.
The story became more interesting when the second visitation entered the system. Varosa Uman watched the two devices set up independent bases. She observed the first attack. Maps noted the locations of other incidents. The first visitor seemed to be the aggressor in every engagement.
The two orbiters definitely came from the same source. Their species had obviously generated at least two social entities that could launch interstellar probes. That happened now and then—everything had happened now and then—but this was the first time Varosa Uman’s species had dealt with a divided visitation. Was that why the Integrators had roused her?
It was a logical thought but she knew it was irrelevant as soon as she saw the encounter between the second visitor and a device that had obviously been created by a member of her own species.
“The unauthorized contacts have been initiated by an Adventurer with an all too familiar name,” the First Principal said. “Revutev Mavarka Verenka Turetva.… Mansita Jano was preparing to take action when the Integrators advised us they were putting you in charge of our response to the visitation.”
“I have received a cease-operations command from my organic predecessor,” the Resdell alter said. “This will be my last message. Do not anticipate a revival.”
The Betzino alter mimicked the thought processes of a woman who possessed a formidable intellect. Edna Betzino had been a theoretical physicist, a psychiatrist, and an investigatory sociologist specializing in military and semi-military organizations. In her spare time, she had become a widely respected cellist who was a devoted student of Bach and his twenty-second century successors. She had launched her own interstellar probe because she had never developed an institutional affiliation that would offer her proper backing.
The Betzino alter riffled through its databanks—as Betzino herself would have—and determined that Anthony Resdell lived in a governmental unit that had become a “single-leader state.” Messages from Earth had to cross eighteen light years so the information in the data banks was, of course, eighteen earth years out of date. The cease-operations command would remain in effect until the Resdell alter received a countermand from Anthony Resdell.
The ninety-five votes had now been reduced to sixty-five. Their creators had neglected to include a routine that adjusted the percentages so Betzino still controlled thirty votes. She would need the support of one minor member every time the community made a decision.
Three of the minor members wanted to continue discussions with the inhabitant who had made contact. Two objected, on the grounds the inhabitant was obviously an unofficial private individual.
“We have no information regarding his relations with their political entities,” the spokesman for the sex research community argued. “He could bias them against us when we try to make a proper contact.”
Their mobile device had exchanged language programs with the inhabitant’s contact device. The data indicated the inhabitant’s primary language had a structure and vocabulary that resembled the structure and vocabulary of the languages technologically advanced human societies had developed.
Betzino voted to maintain the contact. Switches tripped in response and the contact and language programs remained active.
There was a standard response to visitations. It was called the Message. Varosa Uman’s species had transmitted it twice and received it once.
Mansita Jano had initiated Message preparation as soon as he had been given responsibility for the visitation. He would have initiated contact with one of the visitors and proceeded to the final stages if Revutev Mavarka hadn’t started “bungling around.”
Mansita Jano believed Revutev Mavarka should be arrested before he could cause any more trouble. “We have documentary evidence Revutev Mavarka has committed a serious crime,” Mansita Jano said. “I think we can also assume the first visitor has a higher status than the visitor he’s been attempting to charm. The first visitor rebuffed his overtures. We have translated a communication in which it ordered the second visitor to cease operations.”
There was nothing sinister about the Message. It was, in fact, the greatest gift an intelligent species could receive. It contained all the knowledge twenty-three technological civilizations had accumulated, translated into the major languages employed by the recipient. With the information contained in the Message, any species that had developed interstellar probes could cure all its diseases, quadruple its intelligence, bestow millennia of life on all its members, reshape the life-forms on its planet, tap energy sources that would maintain its civilization until the end of the universe, and generally treat itself to the kind of society it had been dreaming about since it first decided it didn’t have to endure all the death and suffering the universe inflicted on it.
And that was the problem. No society could absorb that much change in one gulp. Varosa Uman’s species had endured a millennium of chaos after it had received its version of the Message.
It was an elegant defense. The Message satisfied the consciences of the species who employed it and it permanently eliminated the threat posed by visitors who might have hostile intentions. Interstellar war might seem improbable but it wasn’t impossible. A small probe could slip into a planetary system unannounced, establish a base on an obscure body, and construct equipment that could launch a flotilla of genocidal rocks at an unsuspecting world.
Varosa Uman’s people had never sent another visitor to the stars. As far as they could tell, all the species that had received the Message had settled into the same quiet isolation—if they survived their own version of the Great Turbulence.
“The Message can be considered a kind of conditioning,” a post-Turbulence committee had concluded. “The chaos it creates implants a permanent aversion to interstellar contact.”
Revutev Mavarka was an Adventurer—a member of a minority group that constituted approximately twelve percent of the population. Varosa Uman’s species had emerged from the Turbulence by forcing far-reaching modifications on the neurochemical reactions that shaped their emotional responses. They had included a controlled number of thrill-seekers and novelty chasers in their population mix because they had understood that a world populated by tranquil, relentlessly socialized serenes had relinquished some of its capacity to adapt. No society
