Charles Sheffield - Tomorrow and Tomorrow

“Drake, we have tried many things. We sent S-wave signals to that sector of the Galaxy. There was never any reply—”

“Back up, Tom. S-wave signals?”

“Fast signals. Superluminal signals, that employ an S-wave carrier to advance at high multiples of light speed.”

“You can travel faster than light? I thought that was impossible.”

“It is, for material objects. We have superluminal capability for signals only. Just as well that we do, because we really need it. How else could a composite with widespread components operate as a unit? Anyway, we sent fast signals to the silent region, but no reply was ever received. We wondered if the problem might be that the other entities could not detect superluminal messages. So we sent subluminal signals and inorganic probes. We waited for millions of years, knowing that all the time more of our stellar systems were becoming mute. Nothing returned. We sent ships bearing organic units, and ships carrying full composites. Nothing has ever come back.”

“Were your ships… armed?” Drake had to hunt the data banks for that final word, but apparently it gave Tom even more trouble. There was a long silence.

“Armed?” Tom said at last. He sounded perplexed.

“Equipped with weapons .” Drake wondered. Had aggressive impulses been stamped out completely, as an impediment to steady progress and the colonization of the Galaxy? When Tom didn’t answer, he added, “ Weapons are things able to inflict damage. Weapons would permit a ship to defend itself if it were to be attacked.”

Tom Lambert didn’t like that, either. His image flickered and wavered, as though whatever was communicating had suffered a temporary breakdown. Confusion bled in from the clamoring host of minds in the background.

“They had no ‘weapons.’ ” Tom was steadying again. “There are no ‘weapons.’ The details of the concept have been relegated to remote third-level storage, and it is poorly defined even there. What are you suggesting?”

“Something very simple. This galaxy is being—” Now Drake had to pause. He wanted to say ‘invaded,’ but that word had apparently vanished from the language.

“Something outside the Galaxy is moving into it,” he said at last. “Do you agree?”

“So it would appear.”

“And that something is displacing human civilization.”

“Yes. That is our fear, although we have no direct proof. But what could be doing this?”

“I have no idea. That’s something we’re going to find out. You’ve been making too many assumptions, Tom. One is that you are seeing something intelligent at work; something with a developed technology.”

“We made no such assumptions.”

“Of course you did. Not explicitly, but you did it. You say you sent signals and you received no reply — but even to expect a reply presumes that something out there is able to detect a signal, comprehend a signal, and reply to a signal. Suppose that the entity moving into our Galaxy has no intelligence at all?”

“Then we will never be able to communicate with it. We are doomed.”

“Why?” Drake, in spite of his own reservations about his ability to help, was becoming annoyed with the composites. They were such a spineless lot, ready to lie down and die before they were even touched. “Why are you doomed? You don’t need to communicate, you know. You just need to stop the— the—” Again, the need for a word that did not exist. The composites had not named the problem. “The blight,” he said at last. “The marauder, the Shiva, the destroyer, the whatever. we choose to call it. I don’t know if it’s intelligent or nonintelligent, but it’s changing the Galaxy in a way that’s deadly to humans. Even if the Shiva don’t mean to kill, they are silencing stellar systems by the billion. Never mind understanding what’s happening. That would be nice, but the main thing is, we have to defend ourselves against the effects.”

“But we have no idea how to do that.”

“I’m going to tell you how.” The amazing thing was that he was starting to believe his own words. It was a chilling reflection on the humans of earlier times. No one, no matter how much the pacifist, could in his own era go from child to adult without becoming steeped in the vocabulary, ideas, and procedures of war. Even games were a form of combat, using the language of conflict. Drake knew more than he realized about the theory and practice of warfare.

“We have to do a few things for ourselves,” he went on, “before we can consider external action. First, we have to create and become familiar with a new language. You must learn to speak War .” Drake said the last word in English. “You need to be able to think war, and before you can think it you have to be able to speak it. I will provide the concepts, you will deal with the mechanics of language creation. All right?”

Silence from Tom. Drake took it as reluctant assent, and went on. “Second, we must form something called a chain of command. You were right when you told me that this form of communication between us limits the rate of information transfer. We have to change the system. I’m sure I can’t deal directly with billions of composites, so we need a new structure. I will deal with no more than — how many? Let’s say six — I’ll work with half a dozen composites like you. Then each of you will work with six more, and so on to successive tiers. How many levels will be necessary to fit every composite into such a framework?”

“Nineteen levels will be enough.”

Tom’s reply was instantaneous. Drake tried to do the inverse calculation, and failed. Six to the nineteenth. How many billions, how many trillions? Let’s just say, a mind-boggling number.

And he was supposed to direct the actions of every one of them. How? He had no idea. Composers were not expected to run things. Had any musician in history ever managed a group bigger than an orchestra? The only one he could think of was the pianist Paderewski, who early in the twentieth century interrupted his performing career to become prime minister of Poland. Great pianist, average politician.

He pressed on, before worries and irrelevant thoughts like that could take over.

“Third, I must learn your science and technology. I don’t mean I have to understand it, because I’m quite sure I can’t. But I have to know what the technology can do. In return, I’ll tell you what weapons are, and you must learn what weapons do, and how to make them. I’ll warn you, you won’t like what you hear — any more than I’ll enjoy telling you.”

“We’ll learn.” Tom was calm now. He even shrugged his shoulders and ran his hands through his mop of red hair. “When we asked for help, you know, we didn’t assume that we’d be sitting around doing nothing. And we didn’t assume we’d enjoy our part of it.”

“I’ll go further. You won’t. Let’s begin by defining the first level of the chain of command. As I said, I can’t interface with you all the time, and I certainly can’t interface directly with umpteen billion composites.”

“Six hundred trillion.”

“Thanks.” Six hundred trillion. It was worse than Drake had thought. “So we set up the chain of command, then we’ll talk about self-defense. You ought to send that information immediately to the section of the Galaxy likely to be the next one threatened. It might help, and it can’t hurt.”

He would prove disastrously wrong on that last point, but he didn’t know it.

“Self-defense?” Tom said.

“Don’t worry about it. You won’t have to harm anything that doesn’t try to harm you. You’ll find self-defense easy. But