Originator (7 page)

“What they found was an earlier, previous civilisation, hidden beneath the ruins of the primary, more recent ruins. A Talee civilisation, much like the one they were supposed to be studying, but different in many ways. A lower threshold of technology, belonging to an earlier era. And evidence of sudden, violent, simultaneous, thermonuclear destruction. Perhaps three thousand years before the previous near-extinction event.”

This time no one at the table even breathed. It was too awful to contemplate. And far too frightening.

“This previous Talee civilisation must have been aware of
their
catastrophe, just as this present Talee civilisation is aware of their own,” Cai continued in quiet, sombre tones. “But somehow, in the second catastrophe, with the complete elimination of life on the homeworld, all memory of the first event was lost. Talee returned to their homeworld more than a thousand years later, thinking that this was a once-and-once-only event and never again could anything like it occur. But painstaking investigation finally revealed to us the truth.

“Talee destroyed themselves
twice
. The second time, in full knowledge of what had happened the first time, and all in the psychological and cultural aftermath of that first event, and all the ‘never agains' that accompanied it. Now you know why the Talee will not talk to you, nor meet with you, nor trade with you. Talee live in constant fear of disturbance, of disequilibrium, of politics, of even emotion itself. They fear themselves, they fear others, and they fear greatly the consequences of every single action they take. They deliberate endlessly, and for the most part, do nothing. They are a people without faith in themselves, and they cannot believe that any contribution they could make to your current circumstances could possibly be an improvement. Humanity, in this current matter, is on its own.”

“We think it's here,” said Fleet Captain Reichardt, pointing to a spot on the holographic star chart above the table. “The Talee homeworld, C-492 on our charts. No doubt the Talee call it something more interesting.”

The chart showed League space, a faint shade of red, and Federation space in blue. And here, several hundred light-years beyond the League's farthest reach, a collection of stars that might stretch, if these hypothetical models were real, as far as Federation and League combined.

“This is as far as you think Talee outposts reached in the second age?” Ari asked, pointing to the farthest expanse of that colourless territory, hovering between the projection paddles.

“It's all guesswork,” said Reichardt. “But given what we're pretty sure the Talee ships can do, which is in turn based on some pretty nifty physics equations that remain purely theoretical for us but appears to be completely practical with them . . . yes. This is as far as we think they got. And now, thanks to our friend Cai, we have a timeline, and the timeline appears to match.”

Now they were in Operations, the
other
most secure room in FSA HQ. About them was a semicircle of seats for interactive presentations, big screens on the wall behind, and a projection table here, in the middle. All the semicircle chairs were empty, but the seats around the projection table were full—the same people as previously but now including Reichardt and also Chief Boyle, Head of League Affairs. Still no Chief Shin. It surprised Sandy a little; Ibrahim was usually more consensual in interdepartmental matters. Matters with FedInt must be bad then.

Reichardt was the FSA's favourite Fleet Captain, and Sandy's in particular. He was a Federation loyalist and a pragmatist, meaning that he'd repeatedly demonstrated a commitment to the
idea
of the Federation, with all its constituent parts equal, and not just some parts above the others. Given recent turmoil in Federal governance, Fleet command had found itself without Grand Council guidance, thanks to the counter-coup the FSA had pulled to dispose of the previous Council by force, after that Council had used Operation Shield to frame-and-remove the FSA's newly acquired teeth to solve a dispute over the Federal Constitution.

Operation Shield had been implemented with Fleet help, hardly the first time Fleet had been found meddling in Federation governance to achieve outcomes some Fleet Captains desired. Post-coup, the FSA had gone after those captains hard. Several had surrendered and were in custody. One had suicided. Others remained in service, Fleet command refusing further action, but with trials ongoing. And a few more, most embarrassingly for Fleet Command, were OWO—Operating Without Orders—with ships and crew.

With chain of command inoperable, Reichardt had moved his carrier
Mekong
to immediate Callayan defensive orbit and declared himself at the FSA's disposal until a more traditional chain of command had been reestablished. Two more carrier captains had followed suit, and a number of smaller vessels. The Federation media were calling it The Emergency, the temporary suspension of democracy in the Federation, until Ranaprasana's Grand Committee found a mutually agreeable way to put it all back together again. Reichardt was now called by many the FSA's pet carrier captain. Sandy knew that the opposite was true, that far from being anyone's pet, Reichardt was probably the most free-thinking senior captain in the Fleet. Naturally Fleet had therefore not seen fit to promote him to Admiral, despite his obvious qualifications. The FSA had needed a means of enforcement against powerful Fleet Captains in their even more powerful warships, and Reichardt had volunteered himself and his carrier. He didn't care what it cost him, he was in Fleet to do the things that needed to be done, and took all personal satisfaction from that. Unsurprisingly he and Ibrahim, while not always in agreement, got along perfectly.

“Self-inflicted E.L.E. has been a theory in Fleet for a while,” Reichardt continued, “but I don't think it's ever been a favourite theory. Having it confirmed changes the picture quite a bit. Certainly it explains Pantala, the old Talee stations there, where League picked up their biological replication technology. Small outposts like that could have abandoned as soon as it started and headed home. Records that the outpost ever existed were then probably lost.”

“And League has found several more of these outposts,” Ibrahim added. Ari gave Ibrahim a particularly long and hard look. He'd phrased it as a statement, not a question. So he'd known for a while, probably in that secret file every new FSA Director got immediately upon appointment and was then forbidden to share with anyone else.

“Yes,” said Reichardt. Fleet, of course, was an information world unto itself. Like a secret society, sharing with almost no one. All that time out in the cold convinced them that no one else understood these matters like Fleet did or could be trusted with the knowledge. True or not, the belief had spawned a dangerous elitism. “We think at least two. Though we're unclear on what if any technology was harvested at these points. Pantala appears to be the primary source of GI technology.”

“We're looking at a very wide area of space,” said Hando, gazing at the projection. Holographic light gleamed off his bald head. “Talee were probably even more advanced at their second E.L.E. than we are now. So they'd have mining colonies, exploration colonies, research outposts. They'd be scattered all over, even more than we are. Yet still the E.L.E. managed to kill most of them, nearly all of them.”

Ibrahim frowned. “Explain.”

“No no no, he's right,” said Ari with more typically Ari-animation. “There are projection studies done to simulate a mass-extinction war between League and Federation, a mass V-strike conflict. It's pretty horrific stuff, but though most of the major worlds get wiped out, there's always small colonies and outposts surviving, too far off the beaten track for anyone to bother destroying.

“Then you run the simulation forward . . . you think about it, it only takes a few of those survivors to rebuild a civilisation. They have the technology, or at least the records to rebuild most of the tech that's been lost, they live in space so they wait until the worlds that have been hit recover habitable climates . . . some of them never do, but most are okay within a few decades, maybe longer, the bigger ones anyway. Civilisation's massively reduced in scale, but the technological level remains the same . . . all that remains is to build scale back up; reproduction technology makes that pretty easy, cloning, birth tanks, no need to wait for women to get pregnant, you could double a population in size every few years if you wanted. Do that often enough, it doesn't take too long in the scheme of things to turn a few hundred thousand people into tens of millions, and tens of millions into hundreds and even billions.”

“Recent experience tells me,” Sandy said drily, “that childcare for all those kids would be more of a problem than you make out.”

Laughter around the table. It was more of a humorous reaction than Sandy had expected or intended. Confronting this kind of problem for real, and not merely in the hypothetical, was stressful. People needed to laugh.

“Sure,” said Ari, smile fading. “Great big mess, of course. But the point is that recovery happens quite fast, all things considered. But Cai said the Talee took a thousand years.” He looked around the table, watching that sink in.

“So they lost all their technology,” Ibrahim murmured. “That implies the destruction was systemic.”

“Worse than systemic,” Ari said. “Genocidal.” Deathly silence. The air felt very cold, all previous humour forgotten. “They didn't just try to win a conflict. They . . . whatever constitutes a ‘side' for the Talee, racial, religious, ideological, I doubt Cai will enlighten us . . . they tried to exterminate each other, right down to the last individual, to the last functioning microcircuit. Every outpost, every mining colony.”

“Technology survived on Pantala,” Hando countered. “For League to find.”

“Pantala shouldn't have habitable atmosphere anyway,” Ari replied, “there's so little vegetation. Federation's never had a chance to study it, what if it used to be more habitable? What if the Talee never left? What if it got hit, maybe not a V-strike, maybe biological, chemical . . . who knows what other advanced nastiness the Talee have? All traces of life gone, including much of the native stuff, but the old habitations remain?”

“Shit,” Chief Boyle murmured, rubbing his forehead. “League would know, they've had Pantala for over a hundred years. Something like that, they'd know. Which means they've known the Talee are a post-E.L.E. species for a long time.”

“Speculation at this point,” Reichardt cautioned them. “But worthwhile.”

“Whatever.” Ari cut them off with an impatient gesture. “The point is that if the Talee wiped themselves out as part of some psychological condition, they had it
real
bad. So the question then becomes, was this
just
the technology that made them crazy? Or is it something native to Talee psychology? Because if it's the latter, we might be okay here. If it's the former . . .”

Sandy shook her head. “I don't think it's that simple. I know it's dangerous to speculate given how little we've seen of the Talee . . . but their recent behaviour doesn't suggest an aggressive or violent species at all. Quite the contrary. And they made Cai, and if it's possible to judge a people by their creations, Cai's nature speaks very well of them.”

Ibrahim nodded a little, stroking his short beard. It was as good as a comment from him, when his people were talking. He liked to sit, and think, and absorb.

“But certain psychological types are reactive,” Sandy continued. “Compulsive Narrative Syndrome proves that the human addiction to narrative patterns is not a matter of violence. Very nice and apparently nonviolent people
have become so convinced in the rightness of a particular narrative that they end up doing terrible, violent things. Predisposition to violence is not a factor in a person's predisposition to fanatical belief.

“The Talee could quite easily be a very kind and gentle people, but if there's something in their psychology that predisposes them toward exponential, catastrophic pattern-recognition cascades, then introduce the wrong sort of uplink technology into that and there's no telling how it could blow up. The real thing we have to be worried about is the degree of interaction between the uplink technology and the psychology. League are using Talee tech, far more than they ever admitted, because of course they never admitted they borrowed Talee tech in the first place. Whether that technology will interact worse with human psychology, or better, or whatever, is the real question.”

“Whoever's in charge of Pantala research would know,” Reichardt said solemnly.

“That might be hard,” said Sandy. “I'd rather take a run at Margaritte Karavitis, Renaldo Takewashi's woman on the inside of that operation.”

“Or Takewashi himself,” Ari added. “He might even cooperate.”

“And then,” said Ibrahim, “we do have an example in our hands of some of the most advanced Talee uplink technology, in the head of a human subject.”

Everyone looked at Ibrahim. Then at Sandy. Sandy nodded slowly, heart beginning to thump in dull panic.

“Sir,” she said, “I know you're not suggesting it. But just so we're clear—if it's a choice between me subjecting my little boy to invasive testing or the entire human race dying, then the human race dies. I'm sorry, I'm completely unreasonable about his well-being. Completely.”

No one challenged her on the logical contradiction that if the human race died, so did Kiril. She made her point. Everyone stayed quiet.

Except Ibrahim. “I understand your position completely. How ever, surely there must be some medium?” Sandy's heart thumped harder. She blinked hard, fighting the redness that threatened to descend. About the table, everyone watched cautiously.

“Perhaps,” she admitted with difficulty.

“I cannot tell you what that medium is, Cassandra,” said Ibrahim. “We all know there should be further tests, not merely aimed at his well-being, as previous tests have been, but at truly understanding what is going on in
his head. But the decision must be yours. And his, of course, small boys have rights too. If he refuses, then that's that. But I'm quite sure he won't refuse if you tell him it's safe.”