Ben Bova - New Earth

“You have?” Jordan replied, surprised. “And they all accepted?”

“Yes, of course.” Adri’s expression became slightly guilty. “I’m afraid I told them that we’re holding this dinner in Dr. Meek … er, in Harmon’s honor.”

Meek’s shaggy brows shot up. “My honor?”

“Why, yes,” Adri replied. “Today is your birthday, isn’t it?”

“No, my birth—” Meek’s face eased into a knowing grin. “Yes, it is my birthday, of a sort. I’ve come to life today, haven’t I?”

And the three of them headed down to the dining hall.

It was a long, boisterous dinner, with real wine and lots of laughter. Jordan looked over the faces of the team: Brandon, Hazzard, Longyear, and all the others. All the suspicions were gone. All the fears. Adri relaxed enough to dig heartily into a spicy roast. Aditi sat next to Jordan, beaming at him.

“It’s done,” she said into his ear. “You’re going to help us.”

“And you’re going to help us,” he said.

Then he got to his feet and tapped his wineglass with a spoon. All the conversations stopped. Every face along the table turned toward Jordan. Even people at other tables looked toward him, their faces filled with curiosity and hope.

“It was a countryman of mine,” Jordan began, “who said: I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.”

“Come on, Jordy,” Brandon groused.

Yamaguchi said, “We’re not going to war, are we?”

“In a sense,” Jordan said, “we will be going to war. War against the human race’s ancient enemies: ignorance, fear, and the ultimate enemy—death.”

The entire dining hall fell absolutely quiet.

“We’ve got to convince the people of Earth that they’re in mortal danger. And once we’ve done that—”

“Assuming we can,” Hazzard said.

“I assume that we can and we will. And once we do, we have to search out other intelligent species and protect them from the gamma burst that’s spreading across the galaxy.”

“We must help them to survive,” Elyse said.

“That is our task,” said Jordan. “That is our mission. Are we up to the challenge?”

“Damned right we are,” Brandon snapped.

Longyear broke into a crooked grin and said, “We few, we happy few.”

Adri, seated across the table from Jordan, slowly rose to his feet. “To continue in the vein that Jordan started with, let each of us therefore brace himself—and herself—to our duty.”

Jordan finished, “And so bear ourselves that if the human race lasts a billion years, our descendents will still say, This was their finest hour.”

Everyone in the dining hall broke into applause.

Jordan sat down, and Aditi squeezed his arm. “I’m proud of you, Jordan.”

“I couldn’t have done it without you,” he said.

“Of course you could have. And you would have. But I’m happy that I’m here beside you.”

“It’s a huge task that we have ahead of us,” said Jordan. “It won’t be easy to convince the people of Earth that they’re in danger.”

“And others are in danger, too,” Aditi said. “The people of Earth can help them to survive.”

Jordan nodded. “We struggle against the inevitable.”

“Nothing is inevitable, Jordan.”

He grasped her hand tightly. “Not as long as you’re with me.”

“I will be, wherever you go.”

Adri raised his voice to be heard over the laughter and talk of the others.

“Long life to you, Jordan Kell. Long life and happiness to you all.”

Jordan dipped his chin in acknowledgment. “Happiness is working hard at a task worth doing.” Then he turned to Aditi and added, “With the woman you love at your side.”

If this wasn’t so stupid, Pancho Lane said to herself, it would be funny.

As a newly elected member of the World Council, Pancho had flown to Earth from the Goddard habitat in orbit around Saturn on a special high-g boost just to attend this session of the Council. And here she was, sitting at the foot of the long conference table, while the leaders of the human race made asses of themselves through this farce of a meeting.

Chiang Chantao was sitting in his powerchair up at the head of the table, more machinery than human being, wheezing and frowning and trying to make himself heard while the others argued and shouted at one another.

They have a lot to argue about, Pancho admitted to herself. The meeting had originally been scheduled to discuss who the next chairman of the World Council should be. Chiang Chantao was set to retire at the end of this term and there was still an enormous amount of work to be done to alleviate the effects of the monstrous greenhouse floods.

Two days before the meeting convened, though, the communications from New Earth started arriving. The first mission had arrived safely. The planet was indeed almost completely Earthlike.

And then the lightning bolt. New Earth was populated by human beings! They—the entire planet—had been constructed by a machine intelligence that had originated on another world, twelve thousand light-years away.

The aliens had a message, and a mission. A massive wave of lethal gamma radiation was sweeping outward from the core of the galaxy. It would reach Earth in two thousand years. When it did, it would wipe out all life on Earth.

They don’t believe it, Pancho realized. They don’t want to believe it. But the human explorers on New Earth believed it. They presented evidence that the best astronomers in the solar system were now poring over.

“Two thousand years from now!” shouted the councilman from the European Union. “Even if it’s true, we don’t have to lift a finger for a dozen centuries, maybe more. It’s not our problem.”

“That’s what people said a hundred years ago about the global warming,” said Felicia Ionescu, her face a picture of barely controlled contempt. “And now look where we are.”

A new round of jabbering erupted: accusations, denials, recriminations.

Douglas Stavenger, seated on Pancho’s right, glanced at her. The expression on his face was a mixture of exasperation and disgust.

Stavenger wasn’t actually present in the room, of course. His body teeming with nanomachines, he was not allowed to set foot on Earth. He was attending this fractious meeting through a virtual reality telepresence: his three-dimensional holographic image looked quite solid, almost as if he were actually in the conference room. Pancho had to stare hard to see that his image was slightly transparent, like a ghost.

Stavenger got to his feet. All heads turned to him, all the yammering stopped. Even Chiang’s rheumy eyes fixed on him. The room fell absolutely silent.

“Two thousand years is a long time,” he began, “but from what Jordan Kell and the others have told us, there are other intelligent races that need to be saved.”

“Is that our responsibility?” Chiang croaked, from behind his breathing mask.

For several heartbeats Stavenger did not reply. He simply stared at the chairman. It took three seconds for the words spoken in this meeting to reach Stavenger, on the Moon, and for his response to get back to Earth. The time seemed to stretch endlessly.

At last he said, “I believe we have a moral obligation to do whatever we can to save life, wherever we can reach it.”

Anita Halleck, seated at the chairman’s left, objected, “But we have so much work to do right here on Earth. How can we afford this new … new … crusade?”