Jack Campbell - Invincible

He nodded, an image of Jane Geary flashing into his mind, followed by that of Commander Benan. But he wouldn’t say either name aloud.

“But,” Charban continued, “there are other sorts of people, like General Carabali, who are dangerous because of their capabilities, but in a very targeted way. General Carabali will only strike after carefully considering options and deciding this target must be hit in this way.”

“Sure,” Geary agreed. “I’ve met both types.”

“The spider-wolves strike me as being fundamentally of that second nature. They can be very deadly, but they always calculate their strikes. They always act to support their goals, and those goals and plans are well thought out. This pattern thing that the civilian experts came up with, for example. Just thinking in terms of that, in terms of how one action will impact not only those things around it but also anything that might somehow be tied to it, requires acting in a well-planned way. You or I might act in that fashion because we believe it is smart. The spider-wolves, I am convinced, act that way because they feel they must.”

Geary sat thinking about that for a while, Charban waiting patiently. “That’s scary, isn’t it?” Geary finally said. “An intelligent species that feels an obligation to think out its actions, to consider consequences. That makes them smarter than us.”

“Smarter? Perhaps. It depends on how you define ‘smarts.’” Charban shook his head. “Do they take chances? I don’t think so. Not as we would define it. What about leaps of faith? Unlikely, I am guessing. Spontaneous moves? Sudden inspirations driving immediate actions? No. I don’t think so. It’s all planned out carefully, thought out carefully.”

“Engineers,” Geary said. “Really good engineers. They do the planning before they act. They don’t build something they don’t expect to work. We could probably outreact them.”

“Or at least confuse them.” Charban hunched forward, his eyes on Geary’s. “But here’s what I think is the most important part of my assessment. Admiral, would a race that always plans ahead, that doesn’t like to deal with unanticipated or uncontrollable events or consequences, a race that wants to be sure of what will happen, would such a species ever begin a war by choice?”

That one was easy. “No.”

“No,” Charban repeated. “War is chaos. War is unpredictable. I heard a story once about an ancient king who asked an infallible oracle about what would happen if he invaded a neighboring kingdom, and the oracle answered that if he did that, a mighty kingdom would fall. Assuming that guaranteed victory, he invaded, only to be utterly crushed, his own kingdom destroyed. He hadn’t considered the possibility that the oracle’s answer meant that his kingdom would be the one to fall.”

“Unforeseen circumstances,” Geary said.

“Right. If humans were a rational species, we would take heed of such examples from our history, and no one would start a war. But some humans always convince themselves that ‘this time’ it will be different and that they can confidently predict the outcome. Why did the Syndic Executive Council start the war with the Alliance a century ago when they should have realized that even with enigma help they couldn’t have won? Even then it should have been obvious that a bloody stalemate was inevitable. But we humans find ways to fool ourselves. I don’t believe that the spider-wolves think like that. On the contrary, their bias to avoid the unpredictable might prevent them from ever being aggressive against their neighbors.”

Geary nodded. “But self-defense is another matter. Failure to have sufficient defenses would produce an outcome they don’t want, or introduce uncertainty into whether or not someone would attack.”

“Yes. Which is all a very convoluted way of answering your initial question. Yes, I believe we can trust the spider-wolves. I am certain that they don’t want to start a war with us. If we started a war with them, they would fight back with all of the cleverness and skill they possess. But they won’t begin a war with us. They don’t know what that would do to the pattern.”

It all fit together. “Self-interest.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Self-interest,” Geary explained. “How is every nonhuman intelligent species acting? In what they believe to be their own self-interest. The enigmas are convinced that hiding anything about themselves is vitally important, so they’ll do anything to keep us from learning anything. The bear-cows think we want to eat them, so they’ll do anything to stop us from doing that. And the spider-wolves think we can help anchor their pattern if we work together, or seriously disrupt it if we fought. The one thing they all have in common is the pursuit of what they have decided is their own self-interest.”

General Charban sat back, considering that. “Humans, too. Why are we here? Because we considered it important to know whether the enigmas could be dealt with short of war and to learn how powerful they were. It was in our self-interest to risk this fleet on such a mission.”

“The self-interest of humanity as a whole, you mean,” Geary said, hearing the acid in his tone.

“Just so,” Charban agreed. “This mission isn’t the sort of thing that promotes the self-interests of the humans in the crews. Perhaps we’re not so different in that respect from the enigmas or the bear-cows. Humanity is just as willing to sacrifice some of its own number in the name of the greater good. I’m going to pass your idea on to our civilian experts if that’s all right with you. It might offer a place, a concept, where we can make emotional contact with even the most alien of species.”

“Good.” Geary held out a restraining hand as Charban began to rise. “About the civilian experts…”

“I think we can trust them, Admiral,” Charban joked, then noticed Geary’s reaction. “Are you concerned about that?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been picking up some different impressions from them lately. Those I contact regularly I mean. I rarely deal directly with any of them but Dr. Setin and Dr. Shwartz now.”

“I see.” Charban relaxed in his seat again. “I’ve been working with all of them. You know there have always been three factions among our civilian experts? One small faction was convinced before we met a single alien intelligence that it would be a fight to the death between our species. Remarkably, that faction sees everything we’ve learned as supporting that argument. Another small faction started out believing that the universe would greet us with open arms of peace and friendship. They also remain unshaken in their position, blaming any contact problems on our own blunders.”

“The blunders of the military, you mean,” Geary said dryly.

“Of course. Then there’s the biggest faction, who to varying degrees like to wait to see the evidence before they decide what the evidence means. I’ve been frankly surprised to see so many of that sort with us, but that is due, I think, to the efforts of Dr. Setin in influencing who accompanied us.” Charban fell silent for a moment. “That group was badly shaken by the enigmas and the bear-cows. The evidence seemed to support the crowd that claimed the universe hates us. The discovery and interaction with the spider-wolves has been incredibly important in restoring their faith in the universe and in this mission.”

“You believe everything is all right there, then? There’s nothing I need to worry about?”

“I didn’t say that, Admiral.” Charban’s smile held no humor. “Soon after we return to Alliance space, academic and popular journals will be full of articles penned by our experts in which they will describe how very badly the military and some of the other civilian experts handled just about everything, and how only the presence of the authors of said articles prevented total and complete disaster.”