Arthur Clarke - Firstborn

Yuri stared at her. “By Christ, you’re heartless. This has been a human planet since the hunter-gatherers saw it wandering around the sky. And now we’re going to destroy it — finish the job for the Firstborn? We’ll be considered criminals as long as mankind survives.”

Bob Paxton tapped at buttons. “We’re trying to jam it but there are too many ways in.”

“That’s networks for you,” Cassie Duflot said. She glanced at Bella. “How do you feel?”

Bella thought it over. “Relieved. No more secrecy, no more lies.

Whatever becomes of us now, at least it’s all out in the open.”

Athena said, “We predict that twelve hours will be sufficient, but you may take longer if need be. I will speak to you again then.”

As she fell silent, Paxton glowered. “At last she zips it. Bud Tooke always did say Athena was a fruitcake, even when she was running the shield. Well, we got work to do.” He showed Bella fresh images of the damaged space elevators. “They cut the threads of every last one of them.”

Bella’s eyes were gritty as she tried to concentrate on what he was saying. “Casualties? Damage?”

“Each elevator was ruined, of course. But the upper sections have just drifted away into space; the crews can be picked up later.

The lower few kilometers mostly burn up in the atmosphere.” The screens showed remarkable images of falling thread, streams of silvery paper, some hundreds of kilometers long. “This is going to cost billions,” growled Paxton.

“Okay,” Bella said. “But an elevator can’t do much damage if it falls, can it? In that way it’s not like an earthbound structure, a building. The bulk of the mass, the counterweight, just drifts off into space. So the casualty projections—”

“Zero, with luck,” Paxton said reluctantly. “Minimal anyhow.”

Cassie put in, “There are no casualties reported from Mars either.”

Bella blew out her cheeks. “Looks like we all got away with it.”

Paxton glared at her. “Are you somehow equating these assaults? Madam Chair, you represent the legally constituted governments of the planet. The Liberator ’s action was an act of war. This is terrorism. We must respond. I vote we order the Liberator to blast that whole fucking ice cap off the face of Mars, and have done with it.”

“No,” Bella said sharply. “Really, Bob, what good would an escalation do?”

“It would be a response to the attacks on the Elevators. And it would put a stop to this damn security breach.”

Bella rubbed tired eyes. “I very much doubt that Athena is there. Besides — everything is changing, Bob. I think it’s going to take you a little time to adjust to that, but it’s true nevertheless.

Send a signal to Liberator. Tell them to hold off until further orders.”

“Madam Chair, with respect — you’re going to go along with this subversion?”

“We learned more in the last few minutes than in all our running around the solar system in the last months. Maybe we should have been open from the beginning.”

Cassie nodded. “Yes. Maybe it’s a mark of a maturing culture, do you think, that secrets aren’t kept, that truth is told, that things are talked out ?”

“Jesus Christ on a bike,” Paxton said. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this mush. Madam Chair — Bella — people will panic. Riots, looting. You’ll see. That’s why we keep secrets, Ms. Duflot. Because people can’t handle the truth.”

Cassie glanced at the softwall. “Well, that doesn’t seem to be true, Admiral. The first responses are coming in…”

Alone over the Martian pole, Edna and John sat fascinated as threads of the system-wide discussion unreeled on the displays of their consoles.

John said, “Look at this. People aren’t just voting on the Q-bomb, they’re collectively brainstorming other solutions. Interconnected democracy at its best. Although I fear there aren’t any other solutions to hand, this time.”

Edna said, “Some of the Spacers say, let the Q-bomb take out Earth. Earth is mankind’s past, space the future. So discard a worn-out world.”

John grunted. “And a few billion people with it? Not to mention almost all the cultural treasures of mankind. I think that’s a minority view, even among the Spacers. And here’s another thread about the viability of mankind if Earth were lost. They’re still a pretty small community out there. Small, scattered, very vulnerable… Maybe we still need Big Momma for a while yet.”

“Hey, look at this thread.” This discussion followed leads from members of something called the Committee of Patriots. “I heard of that,” Edna said. “It advises my mother.” She read, “ ‘The Firstborn dominate past and future, time and space. They’re so far advanced that compared to them…’ ” She scrolled forward. “Yes, yes. ‘The existence of the Firstborn is the organizing pole around which all of future human history must, will be constructed. And therefore we should accept their advanced wisdom.’ ”

John grimaced. “You mean, if the Firstborn choose to destroy the Earth, we should just submit?”

“That’s the idea. Because they know best.”

“I can’t say that strikes a chord with me. What else you got?”

In the silence of Wells Station, Athena spoke again. “It is time.”

Yuri looked around the empty air wildly. “You’re here?”

“I’ve downloaded a fresh avatar, yes.”

“It isn’t twelve hours yet.”

“No more time is needed. A consensus has emerged — not una-nimity, but overwhelming. I’m very sorry,” Athena said evenly.

“We are about to commit a great and terrible crime. But it is a responsibility that will be borne by all of us, mankind and its allies.”

“It had to be this way, Yuri,” Myra said. “You know it—”

“Well, I won’t fucking leave whatever you do,” Yuri said, and he stamped out of the room.

Alexei said, “Look at this discussion thread. ‘We are a lesser power. The situation is asymmetric. So we must prepare to fight asymmetrically, as lesser powers have always faced off greater ones, drawing on a history of fighting empires back to Alexander the Great. We must be prepared to make sacrifices to strike against them. We must be prepared to die…’ ”

“A future as a species of suicide bombers,” Grendel said. “But if those Martians in that other reality don’t respond, we still may have no future at all.”

Myra glanced over the summarized discussion threads, symbolized in the air and in the screens spread over the table. Their content was complex, their message simple: Do it. Just do it.

Ellie stood up. “Myra. Please help me. I think it’s time to talk to your mother.”

Myra followed Ellie to the Pit.

She was alone on Mars. The only one of her kind to have come through the crude time-slicing.

She had built herself a shelter at the Martian north pole, a spire of ice. It was beautiful, pointlessly so, for there was none but her to see it. This was not even her Mars. Most of this time-sliced world, for all the cities and canals that had survived, was scarred by cold aridity.

When she saw the array of symbols burning in the ice of Mir, the third planet, it gave her a shock of pleasure to know that mind was here in this new system with her. But, even though she knew that whatever lived on Mir was cousin to her own kind, it was a poor sort of comfort.

Now she waited in her spire and considered what to do.

The great experiments of life on the worlds of Sol ran in parallel, but with different outcomes.

On Mars, when intelligence rose, the Martians manipulated their environment like humans. They lit fires and built cities.