flutterby is wired to understand that the image of the rival it attacks in a mirror is its own reflection. The more argument erupts, the more people grow wedded to defending their sophistries, and those who attempt to guide a resolution through compromise are seen as traitors to both groups.”
Gain tapped her fingers on the thick table edge. Her mouth worked. “You make it sound like they are a bunch of sociopaths.”
Captain Amanda shook her head, but Danilaw thought it was more in elaboration than contradiction. “Sociopathy is a relatively minor element. Basically, unrightminded humans are almost incapable of rational thought. If you think of them as small children, without impulse control, any understanding of the subjectivity of emotion, or the ability to compromise, you will not be far wrong. And the crew and passengers of the Kleptocracy-era sublight ships were the worst of the lot—delusional to the point of sacrificing entire ecologies on the altar of faith.”
Danilaw placed his hands on the table’s heavy surface, attracting the attention of Captain Amanda and his cabinet without the need to interrupt. “We might be dealing with a generation ship packed to the portholes with inbred religious fanatics. We might be dealing with an already extant war incoming.”
He had thought the implications of war would silence them for a minute, and the breath-held sigh that orbited the room confirmed his conjecture. It felt … curious to raise such a specter from the past. He might as well threaten them with pogroms or a genocide. Mass enslavement. Mutilations. Withheld medical care, exposure on ice floes, or a child sex trade. The bubonic plague or leprosy.
Yet antique horrors seemed somehow appropriate to a discussion of the antique hulk bearing down upon them. Danilaw could see the effect on each of the cabinet members: Administrator Jesse lowering his chin to his hands to stare moodily into the data displays embedded in the thick crystal tabletop; Administrator Gain rubbing the bridge of her nose with the last two fingers on her right hand, the thumb and the other two splayed across the olive skin of her temple and forehead as if he was making her eyes hurt. Semiotic indications of attention, concern, and concentration.
Jesse tipped his head. “But didn’t they worship the same god?”
“More or less,” said Captain Amanda. “But they appear to have found plenty of things to fight over anyway. Today we believe that many of these people’s brains never matured—that they suffered from temporal lobe malfunctions causing fanaticism and ideopathy, and that their frontal lobes never fully myelinated. Think of them as—potentially—toddlers with nuclear weapons.”
Conversation was more interesting than one man droning on and on. It held the audience better. And Danilaw would have used puppets if he thought it would get his cabinet to pay attention.
“But it’s also important to remember,” he added, “that any potential for violence or memetic pathology is balanced by the other possibilities of what we may find. A society different from ours, with cultural and social riches of its own. Hybrid vigor, including species of animals and plants entirely lost to Earth during the Quilian mid- Holocene extinction event—the so-called Eschaton. Art, science, technology. An entire parallel track of human culture.”
Administrator Gain said, “If I remember my history correctly, we should also consider that, compared to our society, these people were remarkably homogenous, genetically speaking, and of a type no longer well represented in our genetic pool. Almost all of them were drawn from Western European stock. If they can be rightminded, it’s an opportunity to—well, to outcross.”
“It’s an opportunity for a lot of things,” Danilaw said. “The sort of profound, universe-changing opportunity that comes along once or twice in a hundred years.”
“I take it from your comments that they haven’t hailed us yet?” Jesse said.
“No.” Danilaw smoothed the scratchy material of his work coat over his arms. “We’re contemplating sending a scull out to greet them, which is why Captain Amanda is with us. That, and she was instrumental in decoding the signal.”
Gain offered Amanda a respectful nod. Amanda returned it. “Research is my primary. Driving spaceships is a tertiary, but I need it for my work.”
“Well done,” Gain said.
Amanda looked down. “There are risks to sending out a scull—and even bigger risks to boarding the ship, if that is the choice we make. Debris, antagonizing any residents, contagion. I would recommend drones before any manned mission, although we should limit those contacts. Drones can seem quite threatening.”
Gain turned from the waist to face Danilaw directly. “You mentioned that they are still using radio broadcast technology. You may not know that there is a culture of radio hobbyists here on Fortune who still play with primitive equipment. I know a few; I think they could be brought in as consultants. We could contact them in advance.”
Jesse made a noise of agreement. Gain, finished speaking, seemed to be taking notes on her infothing. Amanda lifted a jug of water from the surface of the table, leaving a ring of condensation.
As she poured, she resumed. “I speak the language, though—or I speak the language they used when they left Earth. But as you can imagine, it’s been centuries for them as well, and no doubt the language has diverged.”
Danilaw spoke the tongue, too, or had accrued a tolerable understanding over the years, given how he fulfilled the arts requirement of his Obligation. A significant fraction of the seminal twentieth- and twenty-first- century rock and roll was in English, and the people consigned to—or escaping in—the
He’d have to arrange backup childcare for his sister’s kids, but that was a minor inconvenience. He could go.
“The good news,” Gain said, “is they don’t seem to be sneaking. But that doesn’t explain why they haven’t hailed us. If they had, those radio operators I mentioned would be talking of nothing else.”
Danilaw pulled another glass over and pushed it toward Amanda with his fingertips. She finished with her own and filled it without looking up, then offered the pitcher to Gain and Jesse. Jesse accepted and filled two more cups.
Danilaw drank and spoke. “There’s a possibility they don’t know we’re here. Remember, they left Earth just at the beginning of the quantum revolution. They should have artificial gravity, but we can’t be sure what directions their research will have taken since then—assuming they have advanced and not regressed. They are broadcasting on radio frequencies, which means they’re subject to lightspeed lag. And if they’re looking for evidence of habitation on those same frequencies, they won’t find anything. Or at least, not much—I assume your friends are a small group?”
“Not the biggest,” Gain admitted with a smile. “There’s a few dozen of us.”
“They may not even be looking.” Amanda set her water glass down and twirled it between her fingers. “Why would they expect us to have leapfrogged them? When they left Earth, its society seemed more likely to knock itself back to the Paleolithic—if it was
Her words fell into a silent room. Jesse fidgeted. Gain leaned forward on her elbows and, after a few moments, quietly said, “Will they want to fight us?”
Danilaw rolled his cup between his hands, stopping when the bottom squeaked painfully on the tabletop. “I don’t know,” he said. “Possibly.”
4
a library once
Though he heap up silver as the dust, and prepare raiment as the clay; He may prepare it, but the just shall put it on, and the innocent shall divide the silver.
Benedick watched the recording of the captured probe twice, leaning over Caitlin’s shoulder, trying not to think about the smell of her hair. So many mistakes; so many regrettable events in an existence measured in
