Delta Pavonis (17 page)

Interviewer: And how is old knowledge preserved?

Native: One finds books here and there. They are nearly indestructible. The ancients were ignorant of the Great Cycle. They were unaware that it is unnecessary to record history, since all that has happened will happen again and again through infinity.

Voiceover: A search has been instituted for these books.

Interviewer: We have encountered other humans similar to ourselves, but never a culture so utterly homogeneous as yours. Nor one that had turned its back on high technology.

Native: Once we were much like you, full of vain desires and aspirations. There were many different types of people, as I can see is still true of you. When we discovered the Way, we learned that there is no need for these devices. The only correct use for technology is to produce fertilizer and agricultural machinery, so that there may be more people to follow the Way. Once we reached for the stars, but there is nothing to be learned out there. We look inward now.

Interviewer: What became of the other types of human beings on this planet?

Native: When the Way was discovered, it was decided that all this diversity was unnecessary, that it led to unjustified conflict. Genetic knowledge was used to create a single, stable type, so that all the world would be in harmony. At the same time, we were reduced in size, so that individuals would consume less. That way there could be more people.

Voiceover: This has been confirmed. Ancestral Abbatans were more than twice the size of these, and were of diverse racial types.

Interviewer: What became of artistic creativity? We've come across no cultures devoid of it before.

Native: These things are vanities. They serve no useful purpose and they set people apart from one another. One who seeks to create something new deceives himself and others. From what the ancients say of the aesthetic sensibility, it was not shared by all, and of what merit is anything which cannot be universal? Thus we have dispensed with such triviality.

The scene faded. "It is difficult to believe," the voiceover continued, "that we could cross the void and discover other human beings who have achieved a high level of technology, even space travel, and find them boring. And yet this is the case. A day's study of these people will put you to sleep. They are the most complacent, self-satisfied lotus-eaters imaginable, devoid of creativity, curiosity or ambition. Their sole aspiration is to achieve nothing at all, and they have been successful at this for millennia. All their ideals and goals are negative: no war, no conflict, no surprises. The standard of living planetwide is abysmal, but they consider that fine as long as there is no real starvation or want. Population is static: as many people as the planet can support without famine or resorting to a level of technology any higher than the late nineteenth or early twentieth century on Earth. They have no disease, apparently part of their genetic standardization, and their medical practice is adequate to deal with the occasional injury."

"And yet," said another voice, "it was not always so. In the more remote parts of this planet, we have found ruins of ancient cultures." The scene became one of carved stone walls upon which human warriors battled monsters, armies clashed with sword and spear. In a desert, the stumplike remains of temples were still surrounded by a forest of statues, mutilated but with enough remaining to hint of their once great beauty. In a snowy waste, a broad mosaic floor had been uncovered, its colors still dazzling. The beautiful figures were enigmatic, but the ritual poses suggested a complicated mythology in which battle and blood played a great part.

"These are the remains of pre-technological cultures, bronze and iron ages most likely. By their spacefaring period, it seems the Abbatans were no longer building so massively, nor with such enduring materials. Nearly every structure we've found is richly decorated with immense skill and imagination. They must have been an extremely bloody-minded people, but that has never been a bar to great art. On the contrary, it seems to be one of the sadder aspects of human history that ages of great art are also ages of great aggression and brutality."

Now they were looking down on a string of islands, apparently uninhabited but with many flat, geometrically regular areas. "This was a space launch facility," said a third voice. "Analysis of blast effect still detectable in the substrata reveals that they reached the stage of chemical-propulsion heavy lifters. There is no sign of development past that stage. They seem to have ceased space ventures abruptly."

Now they saw a distinguished-looking man in what appeared to be a library. A label identified him as Prof. Lars-Erik Engstrom. "This is the final report of our findings before we transmit our summary. We have located and translated some of the surviving texts and the tale they tell is depressing. Paradoxically, these people achieved just what many Earth historical theorists used to claim was an ideal progression of events. Their industrial revolution was followed by a period of booming population growth and huge, worldwide wars. But, unlike Earth, they achieved world peace and population control before they reached a technological level allowing space travel. Thus, space was never militarized; it was explored for purely scientific purposes.

"The religio-ethical system the Abbatans call the Way arose at the same time that the planet was being demilitarized. It began in the more backward areas of the planet, but was quickly adopted by the intelligentsia of the more advanced regions. Its doctrine of passivity and standardization appealed to the war-weary populace, but it was inimical to space exploration; to all technological progress, for that matter. All wealth not expended on giving a maximum population a minimal standard of living was deemed immoral. Space ventures were abandoned in less than a century. The new science of genetics was used to reduce the population to a single genetic type that would be immune from disease and birth defect, and with a standard level of intelligence. There would be no more subnormal intelligence, but there would be no more geniuses, either. Such extraordinary individuals upset harmony.

"Art was abandoned at the same time. Painting and sculpture, music and drama, all these things were vain frivolities, distracting people from their contemplation of the Way. It was deemed better to do nothing at all than to do anything that might upset the balance of harmony.

"We do not intend to stay here. This planet already has as much population as it can support, and the inhabitants have not the slightest interest in anything we can manufacture. We will study here for a few more months, while we replenish our resources from the other planets and asteroids in the system. Then we shall choose a new star system for our destination. This has been a disappointment, but now that we know of the abundance of Earth-type planets in this part of the galaxy, we can be fairly sure of finding something better. One thing we have discovered here: there is a previously undreamed-of method for humanity to commit cultural suicide.

"We shall notify you when we have settled on a new destination. At the moment, we favor Beta Hydri, to join the expedition already headed there. This is the 82 Eridani expedition, signing off."

The lights came back up and Dierdre resumed her talk. "Just when you thought we'd seen everything, huh? It can't be said that what the Abbatans have chosen is worse than nuclear annihilation, but it sure as hell isn't much better. This is Dierdre Jamail signing off, and hoping the next expedition to check in brings us something a little less depressing." The red ball winked out.

She finished her wine, ordered another along with a large beaker of Steinhager and lime. Carrying both, acknowledging waves and invitations to tables, she left the bar and walked uphill toward the largest building in the lab complex, a little apart from the others. She found Sieglinde in the big lab, seated at her console and looking haggard, the way she did most of the time these days. If people still smoked like in the old holos, Dierdre thought, she'd have a big tray in front of her, piled high with butts. She looked up wanly when Dierdre plunked the beaker down in front of her.

"Good morning, Dee." she took the beaker, sat back and sipped. "That's good, even if it is a little early to be drinking."

"It's evening, Doc. Late."

"Oh. I lose track of time these days."

"It figures, since you spend days at a time in this lab. What's the problem, Doc? Why be so obsessive about this thing?" She waved an arm at the banks of instruments and power plants.

"Because I can't figure out how they did it! Look at this stuff! Great, massive power plants, all the facilities of my energy transmitter at my disposal and I still can't reliably transport matter for even a short distance. And yet they did it with minimal instrumentation, things so simple that I can't figure out how they did it!"

"They had a whole culture, Doc, and who knows how many eons of time to work out all the bugs. I've known people to get frustrated because they can't get a job or finish a project or be a media star, but you're the only person I know who gets all wrought up because she can't be God."

"Even I'm not that ambitious. I just want to figure out something somebody else did, and they can't be that much smarter than I am."

"They just had more time. Hell, Doc, it's beginning to look like you may just be able to ask them. Did Matthias tell you about what's headed this way?"

"I've heard. I was going to look at the data later. I'm not ready to jump to any conclusions yet."

"Keep saying that, Doc, I need to hear it."

Sieglinde's eyebrows went up. "You mean you're afraid?"

"My God, yes! We've found humans, but they're experiments of the aliens, and maybe so were we. We've yet to encounter any real aliens, and these are unimaginably powerful. And we've been messing around in their laboratory. I feel like Goldilocks and now the three bears are coming back."

The first crop of bananas had been harvested at the ag station, and for days they had all been eating them like monkeys. Food programs had been scoured for new banana recipes. The novelty was beginning to pall, but they weren't quite tired of them yet.

"What I want to know," Fumiyo said, forking up a last bit of fried banana, "is how they spotted this alien vessel, if that's what it really is." She was managing a large bio lab on the mainland these days, but managed to visit at least once a month. "If it's taking them that long to get here, they must be a good-sized fraction of a light year away. I didn't think we had anything that could detect a ship-sized object at such a distance." She paused to think. "It is ship-sized, isn't it?"

"About the size of Avalon," Pflug said.

"That's a relief," Fumiyo said. "If it was big enough for us to see the damned thing, I was going to steal a ship and head for Sol."

"How'd they do it, Matt?" Dierdre asked, "I asked the doc but she just grunted and said she didn't have time to explain."

Pflug sipped at an experimental wine made from a native berry, soon to be marketed as Dino Red. "It was one of her devices, as you might've guessed. A development of the defense field she invented to protect us from particle collisions at high speeds." The field had made interstellar travel practical. At near-light speed, a solid particle massing a single gram packed the explosive power of two kilotons of TNT. The Kornfeld field would repel any particle approaching the ship. The faster the approach and the nearer the object got, the stronger was the repulsive power of the defense field.

"I still don't get it," Forrest said, picking up a beaker. A computer had dredged up an ancient African formula for making banana beer. He sipped, winced and pushed the beaker away. "Force field physics isn't my favored study." He punched in an order for conventional, grain-based beer.

Pflug grew expansive, glad to have a subject he could lecture on. They still made fun of his clothes. "It's like this: so long as the mass of the approaching particle is negligible relative to the mass of the asteroid ship, the field works perfectly. All but an infinitesimal proportion of interstellar objects are microscopic. But, if we ran into a rock with a mass comparable to that of the ship, the ship would receive a severe jolt since repelling the rock means that the rock will be repelling the ship with equal force. Newton's third law of motion works perfectly in space: action and reaction. At speeds like that, you don't want any kind of jolt. That's where the detection system comes in."

"How does it work," Dierdre pressed, motivated by her own irrational fears, "and how does it tie in with spotting this alien ship?"

"It's an adaptation of the same principle that makes the repeller field work. It monitors the wave-pattern of matter through indeterminate n-dimensional space, same as the defense field. N-dimensional detection is instantaneous, limited only by the operating speed of your recording instruments.

"Take one reading, you spot the approaching object. Another reading taken an instant later gives velocity and direction of approach. The ship can then make minute course alterations to miss the rock. At those speeds and distances, it takes only the slightest alteration of course to miss a whole planet, if you just have enough warning."

"And that's what detected the alien?" Dierdre asked.

"Right. As soon as Sieglinde learned of the transporters, she had the particle detectors on all the ships set to scan the approaches to this planet and had them monitored constantly."

"But suppose," Dierdre said, betraying her nervousness, "the aliens traveled by some technology unknown to us? The transporters certainly came as a surprise."

"Then," Pflug said, "we'd have been in a fix, with no way to protect ourselves or even prepare. However, you have to go with what you have, and in this case it was enough to give us a little warning."

"So how far was the alien ship?" Fumiyo queried.

"Half a light year away, which was at the limit of our detector. For all we know, it started this way years ago. As it's been decelerating from quasi-luminal velocity at about one gee, it will arrive about one year from first sighting. Sieglinde thinks it probably started on its way about the time Dee first used the transporter. She probably triggered some sort of superluminal alarm system."