Tatsuro placed his hands, palms upward, on the table, and his gaze slowly tracked around us all. He raised his eyebrows, and then sat back.
I was surprised and relieved that he’d said all he had. He, at least, had not been carried away by the Jovian’s rhetoric. Others didn’t welcome the cold water he’d poured on their hopes. I could see that from their faces, but nobody seemed willing to speak.
So I did.
‘There is one more point,’ I said, ‘which could bear clarification in the next exchange. The Jovian said that they wanted to enjoy their own part of the system, and leave us to enjoy ours. It would be very interesting to know just what parts they mean—what they consider theirs, and what ours. I seem to remember that this kind of property right was one of the issues we originally fell out about. He, or it, also mentioned repairing or recompensing harm done during the period of their so-called dreamtime. He said nothing of who was to compensate whom, for what.’
‘But surely he meant—’ someone began.
‘No!’ I insisted. ‘We can’t assume they mean the harm
they
did to us! They might mean the harm we did to them. Some very rich people became Outwarders, and they could still claim that we—that is, the Union—stole their property in the social revolution. In terms of their legal system, the bloodsucking usurers owned half the Earth, and they might want it back, and the rest as interest! The way I take what the Jovian said, our choice remains the same: we hammer them with the comets, or we live under their iron heel, submitting to whatever enslavement it would take to pay them off for their so-called property.’
‘Oh, Ellen!’ said Clarity. She looked at Tatsuro. ‘Sorry. Uh, comrade
chairman. Ellen’s comment I’m afraid sums up what’s precisely the wrong approach we should take to this situation. The idea that these post-human beings would be
interested
in Earth, or in interest—whatever that is—when they have the whole universe in front of them and the whole future before them, is just dragging up old fights. I don’t think we should even
mention
it. I’m not saying take them at their word, but let’s show them the sort of basic goodwill we show to any stranger, and not get bogged down in ancient history. ’
A ripple of amusement went around the committee at this fifty-year-old’s allocation of the youth of most of us to ancient history. Suze raised her hand. Tatsuro nodded.
‘Comrade Tatsuro,’ Suze said, ‘my sympathies are with Clarity, but I would like to say that Ellen has a point. If the Jovians do think in the way she described, then they could feel themselves justified in almost anything. On the other hand, if they have some version of the true knowledge, then anything they wanted to do to us would be its own justification, once they have the power. It would be very helpful if we could get them to demarcate now what’s to count as theirs, and what as ours, and to agree to build in that distinction to any future versions of themselves—something they can’t go back on without severe internal conflict. So that whether they’re moralists or egoists, they’ll go on respecting us.’
Tatsuro gave her an encouraging smile, and said: ‘Comrade Suze, you may be right, but that still comes down to trusting them. Without power, respect is dead. But our power needn’t be the capacity to destroy them—our own infants, and many lower animals, have power over us because our interests are bound up with theirs. Because
we
value
them
, and because natural selection has built that valuing into our nervous systems, to the point where we cannot even wish to change it, though no doubt if we wanted to we could. This is elementary: the second iteration of the true knowledge. The question we really have to answer, then, is whether the Jovians have come to value our independent existence.’
‘That,’ said Joe Lutterloh, speaking up suddenly, ‘comes back to surviving as wildlife or pets.’
The discussion then heated up, and went on for an hour or so until Tatsuro stopped it with nothing more than an impatient drumming of his fingernails on the table.
‘Comrades,’ he said firmly, ‘I think we’ve discussed this to the point where we have more than enough to bring to our next contact.
However
that turns out, I am more strongly persuaded than ever that Doctor Malley’s work on the wormhole must continue in parallel.’ He looked over at Malley, and at me. ‘I accept your reasons for wanting to witness the first contact, and to confirm
our
sincerity in making it—but can I take it that you’re satisfied?’
Malley nodded.
‘Very well. I’m sure you’re keen to return to the wormhole problem. Ellen, I think you’ve said all you need to say. I don’t see your contributing further to the discussion, or the negotiation. Am I right?’
‘I guess so,’ I said.
‘All right. See to it that a part of the far end of this room is sound-screened off, so that Doctor Malley can continue his work without distraction, and give him any further help he needs. If any developments require your attention, we’ll let you know.’
I stood up, gave the rest of the committee a comradely smile, and accompanied Malley back to his workstation. After a moment of hesitation, Suze followed.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘that’s us put in our place!’
I clapped her shoulder. ‘Not to worry. Tatsuro is actually paying us quite a compliment, however it looks to the others. He’s saying our work is as important as anything that’s likely to come out of the contact.’
Malley sat down at his workstation and gazed at the screen. He grasped his temples in his fingertips and rubbed. ‘You know, Ellen, he’s right. Because what we’re trying to do is get to the stars!’
‘That’s the spirit,’ I said. I looked back at the group around the table. Joe was once more disconnecting the external cameras. Another contact session was about to start. I wondered how far the Jovians would have changed in the time since our first contact, and how far we had.
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Suze, help me round up some robots to spin us a sound-screen.’
Over the next three hours I helped Malley with locating and collating thousands of recordings of the Gate, and with running through the navigational data from Wilde’s spacecraft, which had come through the wormhole the other way. Frustratingly, the paths were not commutative: it was not possible to take the path from the New Mars system and run it in reverse. Outside, through a plastic partition that let through light but not sound, I could see the committee going again and again into contact with the Jovian emissary. Suze was immersed in her study of New-Martian society, occasionally muttering to herself.
About 1500 GMT Clarity strolled in carrying three mugs of coffee. We all stopped work and leaned back and smiled at her gratefully.
‘Clarity, you should be charity,’ Malley said.
‘How’s it going?’ I asked.
Clarity wrinkled her small, perfect nose. ‘All right, I suppose,’ she said. ‘The Jovians are being very friendly, and they’re not just showing that
man-image now. There are other forms crowded around him, and sometimes they seem to be relaying replies through him. It’s like they’ve understood we’re getting used to them.’
‘Any progress on the virus front?’
‘No, they still say they haven’t pinned down the source of it themselves.’
‘Hah. What about the issue of who gets what?’
‘Oh, that! The Jovian was very taken aback that it should even come up. Insisted that they had no plans for any use of the system beyond Jupiter, which as he pointed out was quite big enough.’
I favoured her with an evil grin. ‘“No plans” still doesn’t mean anything, beyond what it literally says, which isn’t much. And
nothing
is big enough for exponential growth, which is what the old Outwarders were really keen on.’
She shrugged. ‘As you keep reminding us. Enjoy your coffee.’
‘Thanks.’
Malley watched her walk away, and Suze watched Malley. I caught Suze’s eye and smiled.
‘It’s the rejuve,’ I murmured.
‘What?’ asked Malley.
‘Nothing.’
‘You know what you are?’ Malley said to me. ‘You’re a hawk.’
‘Hey, I like that,’ I said. ‘I thought we all were out here, I just didn’t expect everyone to go all dovish as soon as their faceless enemies put on a face to talk to.’
Malley took his pipe out of a pouch on his belt, and clenched it between his teeth. He put it down again and took a sip of coffee. ‘You know,’ he said, with some regret, ‘I’m not sure I even like the
taste
of tobacco any more.’ He dropped the pipe and caught it again, several times, as though fascinated by its slow fall. He tilted his seat back and stared at the screen and poked around in his virtual workspace.
‘Back to work,’ he said.
He continued for another hour, and then he suddenly stopped. I was talking quietly with Suze at the time, as she refreshed my memories of the intricacies of anarcho-capitalist legal theory—something some of the Outwarders had bored me with back on the wreck-deck, and of which New Mars was an insanely logical outcome. It was like Ptolemaic epicycles, an endless addition of reinvented wheels. Why, I kept wondering, couldn’t these people
see
the answer?
Malley’s inarticulate sound of frustration interrupted us.
‘Is there a problem?’ I asked.
‘Is there a fucking problem.’ Malley took out his pipe again and this time
stuffed it with tobacco and lit it, puffing furiously. Small machines stopped what they were doing and sniffed the air. Some of them hastily extemporized firefighting equipment, and began to gather round.
‘I can’t do it,’ Malley said. ‘The whole thing depends on the angle you make to the wormhole when you pass into it. I can’t get it from the angle the mutineers’ colony ship made back in 2093—the wormhole goes through a cycle whose period I don’t know, and so far, calculating it is beyond any of the resources we’ve got. There’s a key to it somewhere, but it’s mathematically intractable. You’d have to have built the wormhole to know what it is.’
‘You can’t even make a best guess?’
‘Oh, sure,’ said Malley. ‘I can make a best guess. Wouldn’t bet my life on it, though.’
‘You don’t have to!’ I said. ‘We’ll test it with a probe. See if it comes back …’
Malley jabbed at his screen with the stem of his pipe. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Trouble is, we could be testing probes from now until doomsday. I mean, my best guess is no better than the best your chaps have come up with, and
they
haven’t had anything back.’
I fought to hide my dismay. There was no way we’d have time to mess around with test probes. We’d all been counting on Malley, confident that with his deep theoretical knowledge and our masses of data, he’d find us a path through.
Malley looked up at me, frowning.
‘Something’s puzzling me,’ he said.
‘Yes?’
‘This space-time path back here from New Mars … how come we have that, and not the one the other way?’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘it’s kind of funny. Wilde had the return path in his onboard computer, and we’ve been able to access it. The outward path—which may not even be a valid solution any more—he had in his head, so to speak. I mean, there was a time when both “his head” and the return path were stored programs in the same computer, but even if we’d known, we still can’t hack human minds, even minds in computers. No access path, no memory addresses …’
Malley smiled, thin-lipped. ‘I know that. What I was wondering is how Wilde was able to work out the return path from New Mars. Do the New Martians have super-advanced computers, or lots of brain-boosted physicists, or what?’
‘Not exactly,’ I said. ‘Over on New Mars, they have the stored original mind-states of the Outwarders, and the stored minds of some of the subsequent “macros” before their catastrophe. What they did—and it still gives me
the shivers to think about—was make copies of them, then restart the copies in a controlled environment—a standard nanotech tank, as it happens—then ask them to work out the return path, and when they’d got the answer to that question and a few others, like how to resurrect a lot of human minds and bodies they also had in storage … they, well, they basically tipped in the bleach! Something called Blue Goo, actually, a nanotech specific for wiping out nanoware.’
‘Jesus!’ said Malley. ‘You mean they generated an entire post-human culture in a virtual reality, asked it a few deep questions, and then
destroyed
it?’
‘Yes,’ I said. I chuckled at the appalled look on his face. Even Suze was astonished by this part of the story, which the Division hadn’t chosen to release. ‘OK, it was a bit risky—I wouldn’t trust a post-human culture, even if I did have it in a bucket. But, you know, full marks for initiative.’
‘And zero for morality,’ Malley said. ‘That’s like a small-scale version of what you had in mind for the Jovians and with less excuse.’
I nodded briskly. ‘Wilde does have his own take on the true knowledge,’ I said. ‘Even if he is a non-co.’
Malley sighed. ‘Let’s not get into that. So how did they get the original path, the path through the daughter wormhole to New Mars?’