Cradle (16 page)

Following the organization and agenda for the proclamation established in the Era
of Genius, between Cycles 371 and 406, the first microcycle of the transmission is
a complete summary of the entire plan. Two hundred nanocycles of this summary are
devoted to each of the five divisions governed by the Council of Leaders: administration,
information, communication, transportation, and exploration. After a planned break
of four hundred nanocycles, to allow receiver adjustments along the path of the signal,
the transmission of the actual Cycle 447 Proclamation begins. On and on it goes. It
does not stop until twenty microcycles later. Four complete microcycles are used for
in-depth explanations of the major projects to be undertaken in each of the five disciplines.
Of particular interest to the Committee for the Outer Shell, the group that governs
the huge concentric region defining the most distant reach where the Colonists claim
jurisdiction, is a plan from the Division of Exploration announcing the repatriation
to the Outer Shell of almost a million species from Zoo System #3.

(The transmission of the Proclamation, a wealth of information that can be translated
into language, pictures, sounds, and other sensory impressions depending on the receiving
beings and the sophistication of their decryption equipment, is the beginning of the
governmental process for each cycle. Based upon the Proclamation, regional bodies
or administrative agencies with subordinate jurisdictions then adjust their plans
for the cycle to be consistent with those announced by the Council of Leaders. This
procedure is defined in detail in the Articles of Colonial Confederation.)

The Proclamation is relayed throughout the Colony and the near reaches of the Inner
Shell by means of giant communication stations along the developed transportation
routes. These stations, actually information centres that store
all
Colony messages in their extensive libraries for as long as a hundred cycles, amplify
and retransmit the signal to the next station in the pattern some ten light microcycles
away. The edge of the Colony (and hence the beginning of the Inner Shell) was expanded
by the Boundary Decree in the Cycle 416 Proclamation to include all points up to three
light millicycles from the administrative centre. Thus, by the time the Proclamation
reaches the mammoth Zoo Complex, a combination of three stars and nineteen planets
(four of them artificial) just across the edge of the Colony, the message has been
relayed through three hundred stations.

The Committee of Zookeepers eagerly await the proclamation to find out the response
to their recommended expansion of the Zoo Complex. They are surprised to find their
proposal replaced by another repatriation plan. Once before, in Cycle 429, they had
proposed an expansion of the zoo to handle the explosion of successful progeny created
by the breakthroughs in adaptive genetic engineering during Cycles 426-428. At that
time also their request had been denied and the Council of Leaders had recommended
repatriation to solve the population problem. During Cycles 430-436 the population
of the Zoo Complex was kept approximately constant by these regular transfers of common
species back to their original homes.

But starting with Cycle 437, there was a rapid increase in interest in comparative
biology. It was triggered by the discovery of a fifth class of life form, called Type
E by the Council of Biologists, in Section 28 of the Outer Shell. Subsequent expeditions
to the same area showed not only that the dominant life type throughout Sections 28-33
was Type E, but also that Type A was surprisingly present as well in those sections.
This was the first time that natural evolution in any region had shown a predilection
for any kind of life form other than the Type A of the Colonists and its developed
hybrids. The quest to understand these unusual creatures led to the endangered species
expeditions in the Outer Shell in Cycles 440 and 441 and the creation, in Cycle 442,
of several worlds specifically to study the new Type E life forms.

Many of these new species flourished in Zoo System #3, causing population and space
problems again for the Committee of Zookeepers. The space shortage was especially
severe and it was exacerbated both by the need to segregate all the Type E life forms
and by their rapid reproduction. Therefore, at the beginning of the planning process
for this Cycle 447, the Committee of Zookeepers had proposed their small expansion
of the Zoo Complex, suggesting not only a fourth zoo system completely dedicated to
Type E life forms, but also a vigorous campaign for completing the repatriation of
all Colony and Inner Shell species with aggression coefficients below 14.

The Committee of Zookeepers are stunned by the scale of the Outer Shell repatriation
plan contained in the Cycle 447 Proclamation. In a lively technical discussion catalysed
by the unexpected proposal, the dangers of returning the Outer Shell life forms to
their original planets are vigorously reasserted. The Committee decide tentatively
to take an unusual step—to submit a Proclamation Variance to the Council of Leaders.
In the draft variance the Zookeepers point out that many genetic experiments have
been conducted with the new Type E forms, that the evolutionary possibilities for
the new species are therefore uncertain, that the monitoring frequencies and test
facilities in the Outer Shell are inadequate, and that the aggression coefficients
for many of the group are not yet accurately tabulated.

Before they actually submit the variance, however, the Committee of Zookeepers realize
that someone must have pointed out all these factors in the original debates. So why
was the repatriation policy promulgated? Was this part of some new overarching design
that downgrades the importance of zoological information altogether? Or is the policy
strictly political and possibly connected with the Message from Power #2?

In keeping with the laws of the Colony governing the dissemination and preservation
of important historical information, the official commentary of key Council-level
organizations accompanies the transmission of the Cycle 447 Proclamation. Of particular
interest to those involved in the Outer Shell repatriation project are the following
excerpts from the report of the Council of Engineers:

…The earliest repatriation to the Inner Shell was done on almost an
ad hoc
basis, simply transporting the life forms,
en masse
, to their original region or another of similar environment in a nearby sector. This
was accomplished by conducting a roundup of the tranquillized creatures at their zoo
habitats, loading them into huge cargo vessels maintaining internal conditions equivalent
to the habitat, and then dispersing them at their new home. This process worked adequately
for small transfers over short distances. It was also cheap. However, it had many
severe deficiencies that rendered it almost useless for sustained operations.

First and foremost, the ontogenetic development of the creatures was completely interrupted
by the repatriation procedure. They were frightened by their removal, disturbed by
their necessarily reduced locus of movement during transit, and once situated in their
new locales, bothered by even minute differences from their earlier homes. Their memories,
even if electronically cleansed, retained an intense sense of loss that undermined
their adjustment. All these conditions taken together led to a marked phylogenetic
increase in aggression coefficient, across the board, that did not significantly damp
in some of the species for ten to fifteen generations….

…From the point of view of spacecraft design, both the size and distance of the proposed
transfers precluded using mature specimens long before the biological and developmental
problems were thoroughly understood. When the Cycle 432 Proclamation called for increased
repatriation within the Colony and the Inner Shell, there was some panic at the Council
of Engineers because it was thought that transportation vehicles on a near planetary
scale might be required. Fortunately, the Committees on Biological Engineering and
Advanced Robotics proposed that future transfers be accomplished using suspended zygotes
together with new versions of the superintelligent robots serving as zoo monitors.

After a few early problems with the zygote technique, it was more or less perfected,
at least for the Types A and B life forms so prevalent in the Colony. Repatriation
success ratios for the last ten cycles are very high, even for the more difficult
Types C and D. However, such success ratios should not be expected in the implementation
of the Cycle 447 Proclamation. Not only are some of the target life forms the newest
and least understood in the Zoo Complex, but also they will be repatriated, in many
cases, to a distant, poorly documented biological environment where monitoring is
as infrequent as every three or four hundred millicycles. Some of the more advanced
Type E forms have amazingly short life spans for intelligence, as little as five or
six millicycles, which means that fifty to a hundred generations may elapse between
progress checks….

…But all in all it is a magnificent challenge for engineering. Many transfer vehicles
will fly well outside the standard transportation infrastructure and therefore must
be able to forage raw materials on their own. Conditions at the target worlds may
have changed, so adaptability and the processing of new information will play a critical
role in the design. The electronic components will have more failures due to the long
flight times, meaning that extraordinary fault correction systems must be developed
and tested….

And from the Council of Historians:

It is useful to begin our mostly negative comment on the Outer Shell repatriation
plan by reminding all Colonists that our Council includes the longest continuously
active intelligence pool of any Council in the Directory. Two of our groups have direct
memories of the Era of Genius through many generations of biological refresh. Thus
it is natural that our approach to any proposed project is to assess its merit in
terms of its role in the overall evolution and/or strategy of our society. It is not
our desire to dampen the youthful zeal that thrills at the acquisition of new knowledge
or the prospect of great adventure; rather, we would like to place a sense of perspective
on all Colony endeavours and measure the future impact of any perceived changes in
basic policy….

The proposed repatriation scheme is still another step in the dangerous folly of unbridled
frontierism that began, in our opinion, with the Boundary Decree of Cycle 416. Instead
of discussing the details of the proposed plan without reference to its historical
context (there are excellent descriptions of the elements of the plan in the report
by the Council of Engineers—some of the significant short-term risks are listed in
the report by the Council of Biologists), we wish to delineate its dangers by including
it in our broad indictment of the entire genus of adventures spawned by the Boundary
Decree….

…The justifications advanced for frontierism always sound good on the surface. Its
proponents point out that societal change is produced by new information outside the
ordinary sweep of events, that frontierism is essentially aimed at producing this
kind of new knowledge, and that the resulting change in perspective that comes from
a new view of the universe forces the proper and regular reassessment of our culture.

History is usually in general agreement with the advocates of frontierism and that
is doubtless why this repatriation proposal and similar other previous exploration
activities have been so enthusiastically supported. However, there are limitations
to the benefits redounding from new information, especially when frontier investigations
reveal knowledge that is either inimical to the fundamental structure of the society
or beyond the comprehension of its most learned groups. In these cases the diffusion
through the society of the new information is unsettling, instead of being enriching
and uplifting, and actually undermines the security of the established institutions.

A perfect example of what happens when frontierism is embraced without constraint
can be seen in the events of the last thirty cycles that led to the receipt of the
Message from Power #2 in the middle of Cycle 444. The Boundary Decree initiated the
process by establishing, in effect, a new jurisdictional domain for the Colonists.
The old central Colony had no rigorous boundary. Significant development extended
out to only two light millicycles distance from the administrative centre. The outermost
permanently maintained station was at that time a mere ten light millicycles away.
The Decree of Cycle 416 regularized the nearby universe, creating four concentric
worlds and expanding the central Colony itself to a radius of three light millicycles.
Three specific Shells were also created, with the Outer Shell defined to be the entire
region between twelve and twenty-four light millicycles away from the administrative
centre.

This Outer Shell contained fifty thousand unexplored star systems in a volume a thousand
times greater than that of the old central Colony. During the period between Cycles
425 and 430, almost half of the major initiatives identified in the cyclical proclamations
were involved, in one way or another, with the exploration of the Outer Shell. (It
should be pointed out that during those five cycles there was also documented speculation
that such a rapid expansion in our knowledge base might have unforeseen ramifications,
but the negativists, as they were called, were drowned out by the collective fascination
with the exploratory binge.) Then, in Cycle 433, our new class of interstellar drones,
specifically designed to study and categorize the many worlds of the Outer Shell,
encountered a large, quiescent spacecraft of unknown origin. Careful
in situ
investigations were unsuccessful in their attempts to correlate the engineering components
of the spaceship with any known technological base for a spacefaring species.