Alien Nation #1 - The Day of Descent (12 page)

Which left the Elders with fewer than six chances out of every hundred translations to find a world that might offer hope to their people. And of those six chances, how many had been lost to them because the atmosphere seethed with ancient radiation from a long-ago war? How many had been lost to biospheres corrupted by the sudden introduction of artificial life forms for which no ecological checks and balances had ever evolved? How many were cloaked by ice, devoid of free water, or poisoned by planetary oceans brimming with unimaginable concentrations of sodium chloride?

Too many, Moodri knew, for the dream of freedom to have remained alive in the younger among them—those who were the firstborn on the ship and thus the next to take over as Elders when the last generation of the home-born died.

And now it seemed that Vondmac was about to tell them that this world, too, was unsuitable for them.

“What else is this world possessed by?” Moodri asked.

“According to the spectrographic readings, fully two thirds of the surface is covered by oceans polluted by sodium chloride,” Vondmac said.

Moodri sighed. They might just as well be oceans of sulfuric acid. But still, that meant that one third of the planet might be free of the poisonous liquid. And even at point eight seven the mass of Tencton, a planet was still a large place.

“Are the oceans alone enough reason for us to pass by this world?” Moodri asked.

“Alone?” Vondmac said. “No, not by themselves. They would add hazard and health problems to any resettlement, but I would assume there would be deserts enough to suit us.”

“Then what else is there on this world?” Melgil asked. Moodri could hear in the
binnaum
the same sense of despair that he himself felt.

Vondmac stared at a podling in the gently rocking swing beside her. The small one made a fist and sleepily tried to shove it into his toothless and flangeless mouth. Vondmac smiled and brushed a gentle knuckle across the podling’s spots. “At this distance, at this velocity,” the scientist said, “the world is radiating strongly in the electromagnetic spectrum from three meters to three centimeters.”

Moodri understood. “The world is home to a race of intelligent tool users,” he said. Life was everywhere throughout the stars, but intelligent self-awareness was rarer than a threefold lunar eclipse.

Melgil bowed his head. The Elders had discussed this possibility often. The only moral and ethical decision that could be made would be to pass the world by completely.

But Moodri was puzzled. The sun they were approaching was a regular course-correction star for the ships. It had been used dozens if not hundreds of times in the past. Moodri himself knew he had passed it before, almost a century earlier.

“Is this world not already in service to the ships?” Moodri asked.

Vondmac shook her head, acknowledging his quick appreciation of the conundrum they faced. “No, it is not,” she said. She held up a slender hand. “And before you ask, this star
has
been on the ship’s charts since we left Tencton, as has the third planet’s orbit. In fact, were I to judge from the drift error between the star’s projected position according to the charts and its actual position as established upon translation, I would estimate that the ship’s builders originally charted this star more than ten thousand years ago.”

“Ten thousand years,” Moodri said softly. He wondered if in that time the message of the goddess might have reached this world, or even if Celine and Andarko might have left their touch upon it.

“I don’t understand,” Melgil suddenly said.

Moodri nodded. “How true. None of us understands the slightest iota of the universe around us.”

But Melgil waved his sleeves at Moodri. “I am speaking literally, Moodri, not spiritually.” To Vondmac he said, “If this world has been known to the ships so long, and if it does have intelligent tool users upon it, then why is it not in the service of the ships?”

Vondmac raised her empty hands to Ionia. “Why not, indeed? It is a very good question, and I have no answers for you.”

Moodri didn’t believe that for a second. “Come, come, scientist,” he said. “We have a simple set of starting conditions here. A suitable theory to account for them should not be too difficult to formulate.”

Vondmac gestured to Moodri. “I bow to your greater knowledge, scientist.”

Moodri sighed again. More than a century in captivity, and Vondmac still knew how to play games. He decided he should admire her resilience and not be annoyed by her stubborness.

“Very well,” Moodri began. “We set out the following conditions. So far, all other worlds that have an indigenous race of intelligent tool users are in service to the ships.”

“All other worlds
of which we have knowledge,”
Vondmac qualified.

“Surely, that is a given,” Moodri said. “If we know a world to have indigenous intelligent tool users, then it follows that we have knowledge of that world.”

But Vondmac raised a finger. “Not if you—”

“Colleagues!”
Melgil said loudly.

Moodri and Vondmac turned to look at him. The podlings stirred, disturbed by Melgil’s sudden outburst.

“This is not a classroom, nor is it the hidden council,” Melgil said testily. “Perhaps we should dispense with the debating tactics and get to the hearts of the matter.”

Moodri and Vondmac regarded each other’s eyes for long moments until both understood that a truce was in order.

“I shall begin again,” Moodri said. “So far, of all the worlds
of which we have knowledge,
we have noted that each world with indigenous, intelligent tool users is in service to the ships. The third planet of this world is home to such tool users, yet it is not in service. Therefore our pattern of knowledge has been broken, and we need to add new conditions to our initial statement.”

There was a lengthy pause, finally broken by Melgil. “And what might those new conditions be, Moodri?”

Certain that Vondmac would not interrupt, Moodri continued.

“One, the electromagnetic emissions from the planet are the result of heretofore unknown natural phenomena, and the planet is not inhabited by intelligent creatures.”

“Unlikely,” Vondmac said.

“Conceded,” Moodri agreed. “Two, the planet is like Korullus V.”

Melgil nodded to indicate it was a reasonable assumption to him. Korullus V was a planet once inhabited by a species of intelligent tool users, and which was now inhabited only by the species’ intelligent tools. The world had become little more than a landscape of mechanical contrivances similar to the ship’s maintenance hull crawlers, moving from place to place, occasionally doing battle so that the loser’s spare parts could be incorporated into the winner’s configuration. The planet radiated powerful deep-space microwave beacons as if the mechanical thinking devices on the planet sought their creators and enticed them to return home, apparently with no knowledge that it was the thinking devices that had caused the creators to become extinct in the first place.

“Perhaps,” Vondmac said thoughtfully. “But the devices of Korullus V are powered by fusion and conversion technologies. The atmospheric scans of the third planet indicate a great deal of biomass combustion is providing that world’s energy needs. That type of energy production is not generally found to be concurrent with the advanced mechanical technologies that give rise to self-motivated machines capable of reproduction on a planetary scale.”

Moodri accepted that. “Just a thought,” he said.

“Have you no others?” Melgil asked.

“Two,” Moodri said, though he did not wish to state either.

“Two should do it,” Vondmac said, to let him know that she had already arrived at the conclusions he had.

“The third possible explanation for what we see is that the last time this ship—or any of its fleet—executed a course correction around this sun, the third planet was
not
radiating in the microwave frequencies.”

Melgil’s face wrinkled up in thought. “But did we ourselves not pass by this star just less than a century ago?”

“A great deal can happen in a century,” Moodri said.

Melgil rocked back in his chair and waved his good hand, dismissing the theory. “If you’re suggesting that the third planet’s intelligent species developed radio technology in the precise span of time elapsed between our last passage of its star and this passage, you’re ready for the vats, my friend.”

Vondmac snickered. “The level of coincidence is extreme,” she said.

“What level of coincidence?” Moodri asked. “The ship has known of this star for ten thousand years. If intelligence has grown on one of its planets, is it coincidence that it should do so in the ten thousand years of the ship’s existence? Think, of all the life we have seen and know of in this galaxy. Intelligence must have arisen millions of years ago in thousands of places. The goddess willing, it will arise again and again millions of years hence in thousands more. To ask why it is that in our passage in one ship of a fleet of perhaps thousands, over a span of years that might very well approach a million, one small planet should achieve a pinnacle of technological development
now,
is like asking how it came to be that any one of us was born where and when we were. Goddess! There are so many stars, so many planets, so much life”—Moodri dropped his voice to an angry whisper, so unlike him—“and so many ships that what we see is something that was inevitably to happen at some time. The only coincidence is that we are the individuals who are here to see it. And that is not coincidence, colleagues, that is fate.”

One podling snuffled. Other than that, there was silence in the isolation room. Until Vondmac said, “Conceded.”

Melgil cleared his throat. “And what of the fourth possibility?” he asked Moodri. “You said you had
two
more, did you not? So another possibility remains.”

Moodri adjusted the prayer beads at his neck. “It is not a pleasant prospect, old friend.”

Melgil’s face clouded.

“If there is intelligence on this planet, intelligence that is not in service to the ships, then perhaps the reason is that . . . the ships are in service to this planet.”

Moodri felt his spots pucker at their edges at even the thought of what he dared suggest.

Melgil reacted the same way and brought a hand to his scalp, rubbing his spots to relax them. He flexed his feet up and down as well, trying to relieve the pain of tension that must have cut through them.

“Are you
serious?”
the old
binnaum
whispered. “That this could be the world of Those Who Made the Ships?”

A podling who was too attuned to the emotional state of those around him began to cry at the sudden increase in anxiety that filled the room. Moodri got up and went to the child to comfort him. The hem of his robes brushed lightly against the textured metal of the floor. “A possibility only,” he said as he lifted the babe. “A condition that might account for matters as we view them.” He whispered to the podling, filling it with his love, for even here, even now, the goddess provided.

Melgil’s eyes blazed with horror. “We must . . . we must tell the others,” he said breathlessly.

But Vondmac raised a hand to calm him. “The power of science is such that those who have shared in the examination of the initial conditions will have arrived at the same range of possible conclusions,” she said. “Most of the hidden council will know what we face by the end of shift.”

“What we face?” Melgil said. “What we face? We face nothing! There can be no decision to be made this time.” He stood up and hugged his withered arm tightly to his chest as he paced through the room. “We have already said that we will not inflict ourselves upon any world’s indigenous culture, especially if our presence might then bring other ships to reclaim us and endanger the inhabitants of that new world.” He stopped and wheeled to stare at Moodri, who softly cooed to the podling snuggled safely in his arms. “And to attempt to land on a world that is the home of Those Who Made the Ships . . . that’s insane! Utter madness! Every last one of us will be recycled like . . . like that!” He made a frictive click with his tongue where a human would have snapped fingers.

Moodri said nothing, simply rubbed his knuckles against the tiny temples of the child. “We thank Ionia for this day,” he whispered to the child, “and each day ever after.”

“Have you nothing more to say?” Melgil asked.

“No,” Moodri said simply.

“What more could he say?” Vondmac asked. She rose stiffly from her chair and walked uncertainly over to Melgil. At her age, the many sudden shifts from the artificial gravity field of the ship to the work camps of other worlds had caught up with her more quickly than it had the others. Quantum compression was what the Elders who once were physicists called it. “What Moodri has stated is supposition based on facts—possibilities to be examined until we can divine which is more likely or that all must be discarded for yet another, newer theory. His reasoning is solid, his explanations succinct. Until new data are available from the bridge, further pontificating is unproductive.”

“But . . . but the decision we must make, the hidden council must vote and . . .” Melgil looked at Moodri. There was apprehension in his face. Everyone knew what the cost of that decision would be, especially for Moodri.

But Vondmac gently put her hand on Melgil’s withered arm. “We don’t know enough to vote yet. On the one side we have Moodri’s four theories. On the other we have the certainty of Terminus. For now our course of action is clear and indisputable.”

Terminus.
Melgil trembled at the word as he had at the thought of meeting Those Who Made the Ships.

Terminus.
A port at which this ship had never called, but a port each Tencton knew. The stories of its horror were as old as the alien names for this vessel, as dark as the hell of Tencton legend.

Terminus.
A vast and artificial world system of linked and orbiting toroids larger than any planet. It was there that the ships were repaired and their machines exchanged. Where cargo was off-loaded, processed, and sent on its way to other sectors of the galaxy, to other worlds, perhaps even other dimensions and times. For the stories said that all manner of ships docked at Terminus eventually, including some that made what the Tenctonese rode now look like a pleasure cruiser.