Andrea Höst - In Arcadia [Touchstone - Extras]

Tsur Selkie sat exactly as he had before: very upright, hands on knees, formal but without the curt, no-time-to-waste attitude Cass' diaries had suggested. Laura had not seen him as Cass originally had—in a command environment during a crisis—and she could not decide if this innately formal but relaxed version of a KOTIS officer marked the change from a period of extreme danger to the current peace, or if he was attempting to put her and Sue at ease.

"In this session, I would like to cover probable reactions on your world, should a delegation be sent—or a ship locate your world. I understand there is no designated leader of Earth. And the gate is located in a non-central part of the world?"

Laura produced a map of Earth from among her mass of scans, and gave him a short history of Earth’s major political divisions, and Australia’s current position.

"So at first you’d be dealing with the Australian authorities. Who will be bemused, but then…" Laura grimaced. "Well, they’re politicians. They will insist on many photo opportunities, but they’re likely to be extremely enthusiastic about any kind of trade negotiations."

"No, don’t forget you’d be dealing with whoever is waiting on the street, first," Sue put in.

"I suppose so," Laura said. "Our family and the Caldwells and Doctor Jamandre. But if word of the gate has spread to enough people, there might be press waiting."

"A circus," Sue said in English, then added: "Chaos and excited shouting. Which would continue without end, really. A bit like how Cass is treated here—so many people painfully eager to meet her—but rather worse because on Earth the Muinan delegation would represent two of the seven great villain motivations."

Sue was obviously feeling less tongue-tied today. Laura, who rarely failed to be entertained by her sister, had to admit she also wanted to know how this man would react to some high grade nonsense.

But Tsur Selkie took the opening volley without blinking. "Which are?"

"Money and living longer." Sue took a long drink of juice, watching him with immense interest. "The other five are revenge, saving or bringing back a dead loved one, world domination, good intentions, and just because ."

"Would Muinan technology not also represent the potential for world domination?" Tsur Selkie asked, taking villain motivations entirely seriously. "It is an important consideration for us—that we might destabilise your planet’s political balance. Would other nations, for instance, make war upon your Australia to gain control of the gate to Muina?"

The question was a reminder that this was a conversation of consequence. Not that Sue would be easily quashed: she firmly believed that humour opened the mind to unexpected viewpoints.

"An attack on Australia isn’t likely," Laura said. "Too many allies with big guns. But control of any delegation is a different matter. The knowledge, the power they would represent is immense. And…" She hesitated, but there was no point hedging around something so obvious. "There might be attempts to kidnap them, to force them to share everything they know."

"Lots of aging billionaires out there," Sue muttered.

"Lots of aging government officials, too." Laura stared down at her hands, and then out at a lake framed in gold-specked green, before meeting the eyes of the patiently waiting KOTIS officer. "While I’m still very keen to have Muina open relations using the gate, I could not say that a delegation could visit in complete safety."

He nodded, as if this was only what he expected her to say. "The same problem occurs for the Caldwell children. They have the interface installation, which represents a large advance for your people. Could we allow them to return, and not be concerned with their safety?"

That was a depressing consideration, but neither Laura nor Sue could deny that anyone returning would likely be intensely studied.

"The possibility that we will locate your world through the deep space of the Ena has increased, however," he continued. "I would not care to predict an imminent discovery, but I now consider contact to be an eventual probability."

"What’s changed?" Laura asked, surprised and pleased.

"Exploration in the Ena’s deep space has long involved expensive drone losses, but we have recently been trialling sending out large groups of much smaller and simpler units. Their instruments do not have the same range as our original explorer units, but we are gaining data far more quickly than ever before."

"Finding Earth is still in the possibly never category, though?" Sue asked.

"It remains a matter of chance, but the use of drone shoals greatly increases the odds. To that point, we are beginning long-range planning for ship-based contact. Cassandra previously stated that if there is a rift opening from Ena’s deep space anywhere on Earth, it will be located in something known as the Bermuda Triangle . Would you agree with that?"

"The Triangle’s a story, nothing more," Sue said, firmly. "Earth is a heavily-travelled planet, and I think we’d have seen a whole lot more disappearances in recent years if there was an enormous invisible gash in the sky so close to a major continent. Unless not all rifts to deep space are so large as Muina’s?"

"Those we have observed all have similar proportions."

"Then, if there’s a rift into Ena deep space at all, it’s got to be somewhere completely outside the travel routes. Somewhere completely away from people, where even light aircraft don’t fly."

"Antarctica?" Laura guessed.

"Best option. Otherwise, I don’t know, northern Russia?"

They went through the likely locations, and the closest nations to them, and then moved on to the probable world reaction to a spaceship turning up and asking to chat.

"There’s plenty of precedent for that sort of thing in our fictions," Laura said.

"Oh, boy, is there," Sue said.

"Extra-terrestrial contact stories fall into a few distinct groups," Laura went on. "Aliens show up, and the people of Earth are brutal and cruel to them. Aliens show up and try to annihilate us. Aliens show up and make peaceful overtures, and…"

"And it’s all fun and games until the plasti-flesh masks come off." Sue grinned and mimed lifting away her face.

"Plasti-flesh?" Tsur Selkie repeated, sounding out the English carefully.

"I suppose Cass would know by now if Muinans were really lizard people in disguise," Sue added.

Tsur Selkie’s flicker of a smile made an appearance, but he only said: "We must account for a precedent for deception?"

"Trojan horse aliens," Sue said, and then explained Trojan horses.

For the remainder of the session, they told him alien contact stories. ET , War of the Worlds , Independence Day , The Thing , Space Battleship Yamato . Aliens drawing the people of Earth into intergalactic wars, aliens testing the worthiness of humans, or simply being mystic and vague and incomprehensible. It was an involved conversation, because Tsur Selkie would always ask for explanations when they fell back on English terms and phrases.

"Does all this fiction really help you, Tsur Selkie?" Laura asked, after they had explored a dozen different flavours of First Contact disaster.

"It gives me a frame for the psychology of your world. It appears that, while there are smaller groups that would react negatively, those who have weaponry that could reach us at a considerable distance are not likely to use it immediately, unless some major misstep occurs?"

They agreed that the chances of missiles being launched were low, with some caveats depending on exactly where the Muinan ship revealed itself.

"So then you’d need to decide which country to land in…" Sue said. "How complicated this all is."