Terry Pratchett - The Long Mars

Joshua said with some heat, ‘We aren’t talking about biology here, but about conscious beings. Even if they could destroy us, there’s not a shred of evidence that they ever would .’

‘Actually there is,’ Mac said.

‘What evidence?’

‘The very fact that we’re willing to sit here debating whether to wipe out an evidently sentient, human-like species. We’re setting a kind of precedent just by talking like this, don’t you see? And if we can conceive of such an act, why not them in the future?’

‘Ridiculous,’ Joshua said. ‘That’s the kind of thinking that could have turned the Cold War hot and killed us all off decades before Step Day. Nuke the other guy just in case he ever gets the ability to nuke you.’

‘Actually, no,’ Maggie intervened. ‘The thinking isn’t as crude as that, Joshua. Over the last few decades mankind has got better at dealing with existential threats – which are usually low likelihood but with extreme consequences. We didn’t see Yellowstone coming particularly well. But we are planning to push rogue asteroids away, for instance – well, we were before Yellowstone anyhow. I’d say the basic philosophy is that you should act on such threats, ideally with public consent, investing resources at a level you somehow judge to be proportionate to the likelihood of the event and the severity of the outcome.’

‘And in this case,’ Mac said heavily, ‘we’re weighing the risk of annihilation by these Next – or indeed a range of lesser horrors, such as slavery at their hands – against the cost of a single nuclear weapon, and some kind of campaign of rooting-out and extermination to follow. That, and the deaths of an unknown number of innocents. Regular humans, I mean to say. Although I suppose the Next children are innocent too.’ He looked at Maggie, and Joshua. ‘I think that’s all I have to say.’

For a while there was silence in the sea cabin. Then Maggie said, ‘Shit, Mac. You put up a good fight. Joshua, please tell me he’s wrong.’

Joshua looked at Mac. He said, ‘Well, I can’t tell you about Darwin. Never knew the guy. Or Columbus, or Cortés, or the Neanderthals. I don’t have any great theories. All I can tell you is about the people I know.

‘I guess the first Next I got to know properly, in retrospect, was a kid called Paul Spencer Wagoner. As you know, you have it in your files. I met him here, in fact, in Happy Landings. He was five years old. Now, all these years later, I’ve brought him back here. He’s down there on the ground, sitting on your damn bomb. Nineteen years old . . .’

He spoke about what he’d seen of the growing-up of Paul Spencer Wagoner. The parents who grew uncomfortable in a turbulent Happy Landings. How the emotional stresses caused by the very nature of Next children had shattered the family. How a lost little boy had found sanctuary in the Home where Joshua himself had been brought up. How the traumatized young man he’d become, as institutionalized as any life prisoner, was yet full of life, leadership, compassion when among his own.

‘These are our children,’ he said sternly. ‘All of ours. So they’re brighter than us. So what? Would a father kill his son just because the son is smarter than him? You can’t eliminate difference, just because you fear it.’ He glanced at Maggie. ‘I can tell that you wouldn’t, Captain. Not with trolls and a beagle in your crew, for God’s sake.’

Not to mention a robot cat, Maggie thought.

‘I mean – tell me why you brought these non-humans on board.’

Maggie thought about that. ‘To make a point against the small-minded and the naysayers, I guess. And . . .’ She remembered what Snowy had said as they had puzzled over a nation of sentient crab-like creatures, a very long way from home: Your thought, my thought-tt, always at mer-hhrcy of blood, of body. Need other blood, other bodies, to p-hhrove thought. My blood not you-hhrs. My thought not you-hhrs . . . ‘For diversity,’ she said. ‘A different point of view. Not necessarily better, or worse. How else are we going to see the world properly, save through the eyes of others?’

‘That’s it,’ Joshua said. ‘The Next represent something new, however challenging we might find them. Diversity. What is life for if not to embrace that? And – well, they are of us. I’ve no more to say, Captain. I hope that’s enough.’

‘Thank you, Joshua.’ She thought she could feel the decision coalescing in her head. Best to be sure. ‘How about a closing statement? One more line from each of you. Mac?’

Mac closed his eyes and sat back. ‘You know, my own worst fear isn’t slavery, or even extinction. It’s that we’ll come to worship them. Like gods. How does the commandment have it? “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” Exodus, chapter 20, verse 3. We have a biological, moral, even a religious mandate to do this, Maggie.’

She nodded. ‘Joshua?’

‘I guess my final point is a practical one. You can’t get them all , here today. Doctor, you say you can hunt the rest down. I doubt it. They’re too smart. They’ll find ways to evade us we haven’t even thought of. You won’t kill them all. But they’ll remember you tried .’

And Maggie felt a chill, deep in her soul.

Mac sighed, as if all the tension had gone out of him. ‘So is that it? Are we done? You want we should leave you alone for a while?’

She smiled. ‘No need.’ She tapped the screen built into her desk. ‘Nathan?’

‘Yes, Captain?’

She hesitated one more second, reconsidering her choice. Then she said to Joshua and Mac, ‘The logic is clear to me. Morally and strategically it would be wrong to attempt this extirpation. Even if it worked, which it might not. We can’t save ourselves by eliminating the new. We just have to learn to get along with them – and hope they forgive us.’

‘Captain?’

‘Sorry, Nathan. Go down there with Captain Cutler, and get that damn bomb out of the ground. I’ll disarm it from up here, right now. Take care of it personally, son.’

‘Yes, Captain.’

With a grimace, she fetched Cutler’s briefcase from the floor and opened it up. ‘Mac, while I do this, why don’t you pour a drink? You know where the glasses are. Joshua, will you join us?’

Mac stood. ‘Getting to be a habit, Maggie.’

‘Just pour the damn drinks, you old quack.’

But as he did so, she saw the downturn of his mouth, the tension in his neck, the emptiness in his eyes. He had lost the argument, though he had done his damnedest to win it. And she thought she knew how he was feeling now. What if he’d won? How could he have lived with that? What had she done to him – at what cost to her old friend had she won this day?

She met Joshua’s gaze. There was understanding in his expression. Understanding, and sympathy – for her, and Mac.

Shi-mi emerged, out of nowhere. Maggie hadn’t known she was in the room. She leapt on to Joshua’s lap, and he welcomed her with a stroke. ‘Hello, little girl.’

Shi-mi hissed at Mac, and Mac hissed back.

Then Mac pushed back his chair, stood up, and made for the door. ‘I reckon I’ll go and torment Ed Cutler a little. Maybe I could borrow your prosthetic hand, Joshua. Hey, Ed! Mein Führer – I can walk!’

‘I’ll tell you one thing,’ Joshua said to Maggie, when he’d gone. ‘This won’t mean much to you, but my headache has gone away. Maybe it means we made the right choice, here today. What do you think, Shi-mi?’

The cat just purred, and pushed her head into his artificial hand for a more vigorous stroke.

AMONTH AFTER THE return of the Armstrong and Cernan from Happy Landings, Lobsang announced he wanted to visit the place himself, one more time.