Майкл Бишоп - The Final Frontier - Stories of Exploring Space, Colonizing the Universe, and First Contact

“Anyahera’s right,” I said. “The Mitanni will overrun the galaxy. We need to take a stand for—for what we are. Fire the weapons.”

We fell home to Earth and peach tea under the Lagos sun, and Thienne looked up into that sun and saw an empty universe. Looked down and saw the two people who had, against her will, snuffed out the spark that could have kindled all that void, filled it with metal and diligent labor: life, and nothing less or more.

I took a breath and pushed the contingencies away. “This isn’t a zero-sum game,” I said. “I think that other solutions exist. Joint outcomes we can’t ignore.”

They looked at me, their pivot, their battleground. I presented my case.

This was the only way I knew how to make it work. I don’t know what I would have done if they hadn’t agreed.

They chose us for this mission, us three, because we could work past the simple solutions.

The Mitanni ambassador stood between us as we fell down the thread of our own orbit, toward the moment of weapons release, the point of no return.

“We know that Mitanni society is built on the Duong-Watts malignancy,” Anyahera said.

The Mitanni woman lifted her chin. “The term malignancy implies a moral judgment,” she said. “We’re prepared to argue on moral grounds. As long as you subscribe to a system of liberal ethics, we believe that we can claim the right to exist.”

“We have strategic concerns,” Thienne said, from the other side of her. “If we grant you moral permit, we project you’ll colonize most of the galaxy’s habitable stars. Our own seedships or digitized human colonists can’t compete. That outcome is strategically unacceptable.”

We’d agreed on that.

“Insects outnumber humans in the terrestrial biosphere,” the Mitanni said. I think she frowned, perhaps to signal displeasure at the entomological metaphor. I wondered how carefully she had been tuned to appeal to us. “An equilibrium exists. Coexistence that harms neither form of life.”

“Insects don’t occupy the same niche as humans,” I said, giving voice to Anyahera’s fears. “You do. And we both know that we’re the largest threat to your survival. Sooner or later, your core imperative would force you to act.”

The ambassador inclined her head. “If the survival payoff for war outstrips the survival payoff for peace, we will seek war. And we recognize that our strategic position becomes unassailable once we have launched our first colony ships. If it forestalls your attack, we are willing to disassemble our own colonization program and submit to a blockade—”

“No.”Thienne again. I felt real pride. She’d argued for the blockade solution and now she’d coolly dissect it. “We don’t have the strength to enforce a blockade before you can launch your ships. It won’t work.”

“We are at your mercy, then.” The ambassador bowed her chin. “Consider the moral ramifications of this attack. Human history is full of attempted genocide, unilateral attempts to control change and confine diversity, or to remake the species in a narrow image. Full, in the end, of profound regret.”

The barb struck home. I don’t know by what pathways pain becomes empathy, but just then I wondered what her tiny slivered consciousness was thinking, while the rest of her mind thrashed away at the problem of survival: The end of the world is coming, and it’s all right; I won’t worry, everything’s under control—

Anyahera took my shoulder in silence.

“Here are our terms,” I said. “We will annihilate the Mitanni colony in order to prevent the explosive colonization of the Milky Way by post-conscious human variants. This point is non-negotiable.”

The Mitanni ambassador waited in silence. Behind her, Thienne blinked, just once, an indecipherable punctuation. I felt Anyahera’s grip tighten in gratitude or tension.

“You will remain in storage aboard the Lachesis,” I said. “As a comprehensive upload of a Mitanni personality, you contain the neuroengineering necessary to recreate your species. We will return to Earth and submit the future of the Mitanni species to public review. You may be given a new seedship and a fresh start, perhaps under the supervision of a preestablished blockade. You may be consigned to archival study, or allowed to flourish in a simulated environment. But we can offer a near-guarantee that you will not be killed.”

It was a solution that bought time, delaying the Duong-Watts explosion for centuries, perhaps forever. It would allow us to study the Duong-Watts individual, to game out their survivability with confidence and the backing of a comprehensive social dialogue. If she agreed.

It never occurred to me that she would hesitate for even one instant. The core Mitanni imperative had to be survive , and total annihilation weighed against setback and judgment and possible renaissance would be no choice at all.

“I accept,” the Mitanni ambassador said. “On behalf of my world and my people, I am grateful for your jurisprudence.”

We all bowed our heads in unrehearsed mimicry of her gesture. I wondered if we were aping a synthetic mannerism, something they had gamed out to be palatable.

“Lachesis,” Anyahera said. “Execute RKV strike on Mitanni.”

“I need a vote,” the ship said.

I think that the Mitanni must have been the only one who did not feel a frisson: the judgment of history, cast back upon us.

We would commit genocide here. The largest in human history. The three of us, who we were, what we were, would be chained to this forever.

“Go,” I said. “Execute RKV strike.”

Thienne looked between the two of us. I don’t know what she wanted to see but I met her eyes and held them and hoped.

Anyahera took her shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“Go,” Thienne said. “Go.”

We fell away from the ruin, into the void, the world that had been called Mitanni burning away the last tatters of its own atmosphere behind us. Lachesis clawed at the galaxy’s magnetic field, turning for home.

“I wonder if they’ll think we failed,” Anyahera said drowsily. We sat together in a pavilion, the curtains drawn.

I considered the bottom of my glass. “Because we didn’t choose? Because we compromised?”

She nodded, her hands cupped in her lap. “We couldn’t go all the way. We brought our problems home.” Her knuckles whitened. “We made accommodations with something that—”

She looked to her left, where Thienne had been, before she went to be alone. After a moment she shrugged. “Sometimes I think this is what they wanted all along, you know. That we played into their hands.”

I poured myself another drink: cask strength, unwatered. “It’s an old idea,” I said.

She arched an eyebrow.

“That we can’t all go home winners.” I thought of the pierced bleeding crust of that doomed world and almost choked on the word winners —but I knew that for the Mitanni, who considered only outcomes, only pragmatism, this was victory. “That the only real solutions lie at the extremes. That we can’t figure out something wise if we play the long game, think it out, work every angle.”

For n=3, solutions exist for special cases.

“Nobody won on Jotunheim,” Anyahera said softly.

“No,” I said. Remembered people drowning in acid, screaming their final ecstasy because they had been bred and built for pain. “But we did our jobs, when it was hardest. We did our jobs.”

“I still can’t sleep.”

“I know.” I drank.

“Do you? Really?”

“What?”

“I know the role they selected you for. I know you. Sometimes I think—” She pursed her lips. “I think you change yourself so well that there’s nothing left to carry scars.”