New Earth (18 page)

Is it? Jordan wondered silently.

Adri’s office turned out to be a spacious, sunlit, airy room on the top floor of the building, with long windows that looked out on the city’s stone buildings and busy streets.
Not a vehicle in sight, Jordan noticed. Pedestrian traffic only. And genetically engineered animals.

Like the building’s corridors, the walls of the office were covered with graceful swirling abstracts. There was no desk, no sign of hierarchy; merely comfortable-looking furniture scattered about the room.

Adri was seated on a long, curving couch when they entered the room. He rose gracefully
to his feet and went toward Jordan, arms extended in greeting. In his floor-length robe he seemed to be gliding across the smoothly tiled floor.

“My friend Jordan,” he said, in his thin, whispery voice. “It’s good to see you again.”

“It’s good to see you, too, Adri,” said Jordan.

“I’m glad that Aditi was able to remove a potentially life-threatening virus from your body,” Adri said as he pointed
Jordan toward the couch where he’d been sitting.

Jordan turned to Aditi. “How in the world did you—”

Before she could answer Adri said, “The readouts of your medical examination were transmitted to me here automatically. I hope you don’t mind.”

“No, I suppose not.” Jordan looked around the room but he saw no display screens, no communications equipment of any kind.

Gently taking Jordan’s arm
with one hand, Adri pointed toward the ceiling with the other. “Holographic projectors,” he explained. “All the hardware is out of sight.”

Jordan allowed the alien to lead him to the couch. He sat on it, and Aditi sat beside him. Adri crooked a finger at a plush armchair and it rolled across the floor to him. He sat in it, facing Jordan.

Suddenly a medical diagnostic console appeared before
Jordan’s startled eyes, beeping softly, its screens showing glowing curved lines.

“A hologram,” Adri said, with a nonchalant shrug.

“I see,” said Jordan.

Just as suddenly, the hologram winked out.

“Your people are comfortable in their base camp?” Adri asked.

With a nod, Jordan replied, “Reasonably so. I’m sorry that they seem so…” he searched for a word, “so apprehensive about you. Suspicious.”

“That’s quite natural, I suppose.”

Aditi said, “It’s one of those survival traits that has become countersurvival.”

“Perhaps so,” Jordan granted. “But you must admit, all this is a lot to swallow.”

“Yes, I suppose it is,” Adri said. “What can I do to make the situation better?”

“You can start by telling me more about yourselves. Aditi tells me you’ve existed for millions of years.”

“Our civilization
has, yes. Our culture.”

“And you’ve never developed space flight?”

Adri glanced at Aditi, then said, “We live on this planet. We have no need of space flight.”

“Yet you’ve apparently been studying Earth for some time.”

“Many of your centuries.”

“From here, on the ground.”

“We have optical and radio telescopes. We’ve listened to your radio and watched your television broadcasts. We’ve tapped
into your digital webs. We’ve mapped and measured your planet. You exist in a very rich solar system: it’s filled with planets of astounding variety. And moons, asteroids, comets. No wonder you went into space. We have nothing here but our one lonely world.”

“But if you have telescopes of such sensitivity, why didn’t you try to contact us? Why didn’t you tell us you’re here?”

“Fear,” said Adri,
quite flatly.

“Fear?”

“Your people are still decidedly aggressive. And xenophobic. You still have racial tensions among your own kind. The sudden announcement of an equally intelligent species would create severe problems for you.”

“So you waited for us to find you.”

“Yes, we did.”

Jordan shook his head. “That must have taken enormous patience. How long have you known of our existence?”

“We observed your cities and the pollution you poured into your atmosphere. We heard your earliest radio transmissions.”

“And all that time you waited.”

Aditi said, “We waited in hope that you would find us and reach out to us.”

“Which you have done,” said Adri. “And we have welcomed you.”

“Yes,” said Jordan. “The question now is, where do we go from here?”

MOTIVATIONS

Without an instant’s hesitation, Adri replied, “Why, we try to help one another, of course.”

“Help? In what way?”

Aditi said, “We can offer you medical technology that is far advanced over your own.”

“And the energy shields,” Adri added.

“Yes, they would both be welcomed. But what can we offer you?”

“Understanding,” said Adri.

Jordan felt puzzled. “Understanding?”

Adri nodded.
“Yours is a large, aggressive species. How many people are there on Earth now?”

“Something like twenty billion. The recent spate of flooding has apparently killed a good many, of course, but the latest census figures I remember put the total in the twenty billion range.”

“Twenty billion,” Adri murmured.

“We are only a few thousand,” said Aditi.

“Thousand?”

“Yes,” Adri said. “Our numbers are
very small. Frankly, we’ve been afraid of you. You could swallow us up in one gulp.”

“That’s why you haven’t contacted us,” Jordan realized.

“Your history is filled with the unfortunate consequences of contact between one group of people and another. The Neanderthals, for example. The Native Americans.”

Jordan suddenly understood Paul Longyear’s hard-eyed suspicions.

“So you waited until we
reached out to you.”

“It seemed the best course of action for us,” Adri said. “Now that we have made contact, our future is in your hands.”

“Yet you could have remained hidden,” Jordan said. “You shielded your city from our ship’s sensors. We had no idea you were here.”

“If we had stayed hidden, what would have happened?” Adri asked. “You would have landed and started to explore this planet.
Sooner or later you would have stumbled upon us.”

“And destroyed us,” Aditi said glumly.

“No! Why would we do that? How could we do it?”

Smiling gently, Adri said, “Friend Jordan, not every human being is as civilized as you. Twenty billion of you! How many would come here, to this world? How quickly would they turn it into a replica of the disaster they have created on their own home world?”

“We would be wiped out,” Aditi repeated.

Jordan said nothing for a moment, his thoughts spinning. Then, “And now that we’ve found you, that danger exists.”

“It does indeed,” said Adri.

“What are you going to do about it?” Aditi asked.

Her face was unutterably sad, Jordan saw. As if I’ve just condemned her entire race to extinction.

“What can I do about it?” he wondered aloud.

Adri said,
“That is one of the problems that face us.”

“One of the problems? There are others?”

“Oh, yes. But let us deal with this first problem first.”

“You are a test case for us,” Aditi said. “If we can make you understand, then perhaps there is a chance that contact between our two peoples can be beneficial.”

“And if not?”

Adri sighed heavily. “You are slightly more than eight light-years from
Earth. Your transmissions of information back to your home world will take eight-some years to reach their destination.”

Jordan nodded.

Looking slightly guilty, Adri said, “Your messages to Earth are not getting through. I’m afraid we’ve blocked your transmissions.”

“Blocked them? How?”

“It’s only temporarily, until we decide whether we should proceed with you.”

“And if you decide not to
proceed?”

“Then your messages back to Earth will be permanently blocked. Earth will decide that your mission somehow met with disaster.”

“They’ll think we’re all dead,” Jordan realized.

“You will not be allowed to return,” said Adri. “You will have to stay here.”

“With us,” Aditi said.

Jordan sat there for long, silent moments, trying to digest it all. If we don’t measure up to Adri’s standards
we won’t be allowed to return to Earth. The people back home will think we’ve been killed.

Yet he found himself thinking, Well, would that be so terrible? He looked at Aditi’s young, lovely face: so earnest, so caring. And he thought, Earth’s a madhouse, filled with self-seeking egoists who’ve wrecked the planet. What do I owe them? They killed my wife. They did nothing while the global climate
spiraled out of control. Why not stay here and live with these people? With Aditi.

At last he rose from the couch. Aditi stood up beside him.

“I’ll have to talk this over with the others. They’ve got to know what’s at stake.”

Adri slowly, stiffly got to his feet. “By all means. Tell them that we would be happy to have them stay here and join us.”

Jordan smiled bleakly. “You would be happy,
I can believe that. But they won’t be.”

REACTIONS

“They’d force us to stay here?” Thornberry’s beefy face twisted into an angry scowl.

“We’re their prisoners!” Meek wailed.

Jordan had returned to the base camp and called a meeting of the entire team. Aditi had wanted to accompany him, but Jordan decided that it would be better for her to remain in the city.

Now they sat around the long table in the dining area, looking just as
angry and fearful as Jordan had expected. At the foot of the table a display screen showed Geoff Hazzard, Trish Wanamaker, and Demetrios Zadar, still aboard the orbiting ship. Hazzard looked grim, hostile. Trish and the astronomer seemed puzzled, confronted with a problem they had never expected.

Standing at the head of the table, Jordan spread both arms to quiet them down. “You can understand
how afraid of us they are,” he said.

“They’re afraid of us?” Meek said, incredulous. “Hah!”

Longyear shook his head doggedly. “I say we go back aboard
Gaia
and drag our tails out of here.”

“Would they try to stop us?” Elyse wondered.

Thornberry said, “If they could deactivate my two rovers, I imagine they could conk out our rocketplane.”

Looking more alarmed than ever, Meek said, “You mean
they could keep us here against our will?”

“I suppose that’s better than killing us,” Brandon said with a sardonic grin.

“I knew it!” Meek shouted. “I knew it. We’re all going to be murdered in our beds.”

“Don’t be an ass,” Brandon snapped.

“Now look here, young man—”

“Stop it!” Jordan commanded. “Settle down and stop bickering, both of you. This is exactly the kind of reaction that Adri
fears from us: emotion instead of rationality.”

Brandon smiled crookedly at his brother. “All right, Jordy. What’s the rational approach to this?”

Before Jordan could reply, de Falla said, “The first thing to do is to see if the ship’s systems will work.”

“Everything’s working so far,” said Hazzard, from the display screen. “’Course, we haven’t had to fire up the fusion drive.”

“Could you
check out the propulsion system without lighting it off?” Longyear asked.

“Sure. That’s what I’ll do.”

“Fine,” Jordan said. “That’s a reasonable first step. But it doesn’t get to the heart of our problem.”

“Which is?” Brandon prompted.

“How do we convince Adri and his people that Earth is not a threat to them?”

That silenced them. Even Meek looked thoughtful. But the silence lasted only a
moment.

Thornberry said, “Seems to me our real problem is how do we counter their ability to knock out our vehicles. If we learn how to do that, we’ll be able to leave whenever we want to.”

Jordan nodded. “A good point. And there’s only one way to learn that: by working with Adri’s people. By letting them show us their capabilities, teach us their technology.”

Elyse objected, “Do you think
they’d be naïve enough to tell us anything useful?”

“Perhaps not,” Jordan admitted. “But for the present, I think our best course of action—perhaps our
only
course of action—is to play along with them, show them we harbor no enmity toward them, show them that we’re eager to learn from them.”

“And we can offer to teach them our technology,” Brandon added. “After all, they don’t have space flight.”

“They don’t seem to have any transportation vehicles at all,” Jordan said.

“That’s very odd,” said Thornberry. “If they don’t have vehicles of their own, how do they know enough to deactivate ours?”

Longyear piped up. “I’d like to find out how their DNA matches ours. Was there some contact between us and them in the past?”

“But they don’t have space flight,” said Dr. Yamaguchi. “How could there
have been any contact?”

“There must have been,” Longyear insisted. “You can’t get identical DNA without contact of some kind. Maybe both our races come from some third species.”

“An interstellar pollinator?” Brandon scoffed. “Like Arrhenius’s panspermia theory? Get real, Paul.”

Longyear frowned.

“Be that as it may,” said Jordan, trying to maintain control of the meeting, “we have an agenda
of goals to reach for.”

“We do?” asked Meek.

“Yes, we do,” Jordan replied. Pointing to Hazzard, “Geoff, you check out the ship’s propulsion system. We might decide to leave here right away.”

Hazzard nodded.

“I’ve got to return to the city and tell Adri that we’ve decided to work with him and his people. Who’s willing to join me?”

“Not I,” Meek snapped. “I’m not going to set foot in their
city, not willingly.”

“I’ll go,” said Brandon. “And I’ll ask Adri to put me in touch with whatever passes for a geologist among his folks.”

“I’ll go, too,” Elyse said.

Jordan felt mildly surprised. He surmised that she wanted to be close to Brandon, but he had to ask, “What can an astrophysicist accomplish—”

Before he could finish the sentence Elyse said, “You mentioned that they have advanced
telescopes. I would like to see them, study them. This could be an unprecedented chance to study a white dwarf up close.”