Spring 2007 (20 page)

“Ah.” Misha takes a mouthful. “Well, we have so far
avoided nuclear annihilation and invasion by the forces of reactionary terror
during the Great Patriotic War, but only by the skin of our teeth. Now,
doctrine has it that any alien species advanced enough to travel in space is
almost certain to have discovered socialism, if not true communism, no? And
that the enemies of socialism wish to destroy socialism, and take its resources
for themselves. But what we’ve seen here is evidence of a different sort. This
was America. It follows that somewhere nearby there is a continent that was
home to another Soviet Union–two thousand years ago. But this America has
been wiped out, and our elder Soviet brethren are not in evidence and they have
not colonized this other-America–what can this mean?”

Gagarin’s brow wrinkled. “They’re dead too? I mean, that
the alternate-Americans wiped them out in an act of colonialist imperialist
aggression but did not survive their treachery,” he adds hastily.

Misha’s lips quirk in something approaching a grin:
“Better work on getting your terminology right first time before you see
Brezhnev, comrade,” he says. “Yes, you are correct on the facts, but there are
matters of
interpretation
to consider. No colonial exploitation has
occurred. So either the perpetrators were also wiped out, or perhaps…well, it
opens up several very dangerous avenues of thought. Because if New Soviet Man
isn’t home hereabouts, it implies that something happened to them, doesn’t it?
Where are all the true Communists? If it turns out that they ran into hostile
aliens, then…well, theory says that aliens should be good brother socialists.
Theory and ten rubles will buy you a bottle of vodka on this one. Something is
badly wrong with our understanding of the direction of history.”

“I suppose there’s no question that there’s something we
don’t know about,” Gagarin adds in the ensuing silence, almost as an
afterthought.

“Yes. And that’s a fig-leaf of uncertainty we can hide
behind, I hope.” Misha puts his glass down and stretches his arms behind his
head, fingers interlaced until his knuckles crackle. “Before we left, our
agents reported signals picked up in America from–damn, I should not be
telling you this without authorization. Pretend I said nothing.” His frown
returns.

“You sound as if you’re having dismal thoughts,” Gagarin
prods.

“I
am
having dismal thoughts, comrade
colonel-general, very dismal thoughts indeed. We have been behaving as if this
world we occupy is merely a new geopolitical game board, have we not? Secure in
the knowledge that brother socialists from beyond the stars brought us here to
save us from the folly of the imperialist aggressors, or that anyone else we
meet will be either barbarians or good communists, we have fallen into the
pattern of an earlier age–expanding in all directions, recognizing no
limits, assuming our manifest destiny. But what if there are limits? Not a
barbed wire fence or a line in the sand, but something more subtle. Why does
history demand success of us? What we know is the right way for humans on a
human world, with an industrial society, to live. But this is not a human
world. And what if it’s a world we’re not destined to succeed? Or what if the
very circumstances which gave rise to Marxism are themselves transient, in the
broader scale? What if there is a–you’ll pardon me–a materialist
God? We know this is our own far future we are living in.
Why
would any
power vast enough to build this disk bring us here?”

Gagarin shakes his head. “There are no limits, my
friend,” he says, a trifle condescendingly: “If there were, do you think we
would have gotten this far?”

Misha thumps his desk angrily. “Why do you think they
put us somewhere where your precious rockets don’t work?” he demands. “Get up
on high, one push of rocket exhaust and you could be halfway to anywhere! But
down here we have to slog through the atmosphere. We can’t get away! Does that
sound like a gift from one friend to another?”

“The way you are thinking sounds paranoid to me,”
Gagarin insists. “I’m not saying you’re wrong, mind you: only–could you
be overwrought? Finding those bombed cities affected us all, I think.”

Misha glances out of his airliner-sized porthole: “I
fear there’s more to it than that. We’re not unique, comrade; we’ve been here
before. And we all died. We’re a fucking duplicate, Yuri Alexeyevich, there’s a
larger context to all this. And I’m scared by what the politburo will decide to
do when they see the evidence. Or what the Americans will do…”

Chapter Thirteen:
Last
Supper

Returning to Manhattan is a comfort of sorts for Gregor,
after the exposed plazas and paranoid open vistas of the capital. Unfortunately
he won’t be here for long–he is, after all, on an assignment from
Brundle–but he’ll take what comfort he can from the deep stone canyons,
the teeming millions scurrying purposefully about at ground level. The Big
Apple is a hive of activity, as always, teeming purposeful trails of
information leading the busy workers about their tasks. Gregor’s nostrils flare
as he stands on the sidewalk on Lexington and East 100th. There’s an Italian
restaurant Brundle recommended when he gave Gregor his briefing papers. “Their
spaghetti al’ polpette is to die for,” Brundle told him. That’s probably true,
but what’s inarguable is that it’s only a couple of blocks away from the
offices of the Exobiology Annex to Cornell’s New York Campus, where Sagan is
head of department.

Gregor opens the door and glances around. A waiter makes
eye contact. “Table for one?”

“Two. I’m meeting–ah.” Gregor sees Sagan sitting
in a booth at the back of the restaurant and waves hesitantly. “He’s already
here.”

Gregor nods and smiles at Sagan as he sits down opposite
the professor. The waiter drifts over and hands him a menu. “Have you ordered?”

“I just got here.” Sagan smiles guardedly. “I’m not sure
why you wanted this meeting, Mr., uh, Samsa, isn’t it?” Clearly he thinks he gets
the joke–a typical mistake for a brilliant man to make.

Gregor allows his lower lip to twitch. “Believe me, I’d
rather it wasn’t necessary,” he says, entirely truthfully. “But the climate in
DC isn’t really conducive to clear thought or long-range planning–I mean,
we operate under constraints established by the political process. We’re given
questions to answer, we’re not encouraged to come up with new questions. So
what I’d like to do is just have an open-ended informal chat about anything
that you think is worth considering. About our situation, I mean. In case you
can open up any avenues we ought to be investigating that aren’t on the map
right now.”

Sagan leans forward. “That’s all very well,” he says
agreeably, “but I’m a bit puzzled by the policy process itself. We haven’t yet
made contact with any nonhuman sapients. I thought your committee was supposed
to be assessing our policy options for when contact finally occurs. It sounds
to me as if you’re telling me that we already have a policy, and you’re looking
to find out if it’s actually a viable one. Is that right?”

Gregor stares at him. “I can neither confirm nor deny
that,” he says evenly. Which is the truth. “But if you want to take some guesses
I can either discuss things or clam up when you get too close,” he adds, the
muscles around his eyes crinkling conspiratorially.

“Aha.” Sagan grins back at him boyishly. “I get it.” His
smile vanishes abruptly. “Let me guess. The policy is predicated on MAD, isn’t
it?”

Gregor shrugs then glances sideways, warningly: the
waiter is approaching. “I’ll have a glass of the house red,” he says, sending
the fellow away as fast as possible. “Deterrence presupposes communication,
don’t you think?” Gregor asks.

“True.” Sagan picks up his bread knife and
absent-mindedly twirls it between finger and thumb. “But it’s how the
idiots–excuse me, our elected leaders–treat threats, and I can’t
see them responding to tool-using non-humans as anything else.” He stares at
Gregor. “Let me see if I’ve got this right. Your committee pulled me in because
there has, in fact, been a contact between humans and non-human
intelligences–or at least some sign that there are NHIs out there. The
existing policy for dealing with it was drafted some time in the sixties under
the influence of the hangover left by the Cuban war, and it basically makes the
conservative
assumption that any aliens are green-skinned Soviets and
the only language they talk is nuclear annihilation. This policy is now seen to
be every bit as bankrupt as it sounds but nobody knows what to replace it with
because there’s no data on the NHIs. Am I right?”

“I can neither confirm nor deny that,” says Gregor.

Sagan sighs. “Okay, play it your way.” He closes his
menu. “Ready to order?”

“I believe so.” Gregor looks at him. “The spaghetti al’
polpette is really good here,” he adds.

“Really?” Sagan smiles. “Then I’ll try it.”

They order, and Gregor waits for the waiter to depart
before he continues. “Suppose there’s an alien race out there. More than one.
You know about the multiple copies of Earth. The uninhabited ones. We’ve been
here before. Now let’s see…suppose the aliens aren’t like us. Some of them are
recognizable, tribal primates who use tools made out of metal, sea-dwelling
ensemble entities who communicate by ultrasound. But others–most of
them–are social insects who use amazingly advanced biological engineering
to grow what they need. There’s some evidence that they’ve colonized some of
the empty Earths. They’re aggressive and territorial and they’re so different
that…well, for one thing we think they don’t actually have conscious minds
except when they need them. They control their own genetic code and build
living organisms tailored to whatever tasks they want carrying out. There’s no
evidence that they want to talk to us, and some evidence that they may have
emptied some of those empty Earths of their human population. And because of
their, um, decentralized ecosystem and biological engineering, conventional
policy solutions won’t work. The military ones, I mean.”

Gregor watches Sagan’s face intently as he describes the
scenario. There is a slight cooling of the exobiologist’s cheeks as his
peripheral arteries contract with shock: his pupils dilate and his respiration
rate increases. Sour pheromones begin to diffuse from his sweat ducts and
organs in Gregor’s nasal sinuses respond to them.

“You’re kidding?” Sagan half-asks. He sounds
disappointed about something.

“I wish I was.” Gregor generates a faint smile and
exhales breath laden with oxytocin and other peptide messengers fine-tuned to
human metabolism. In the kitchen, the temporary chef who is standing in for the
regular one–off sick, due to a bout of food poisoning–will be
preparing Sagan’s dish. Humans are creatures of habit: once his meal arrives
the astronomer will eat it, taking solace in good food. (Such a shame about the
chef.) “They’re not like us. SETI assumes that NHIs are conscious and welcome
communication with humans and, in fact, that humans aren’t atypical. But let’s
suppose that humans
are
atypical. The human species has only been around
for about a third of a million years, and has only been making metal tools and
building settlements for ten thousand. What if the default for sapient species
is measured in the millions of years? And they develop strong defense
mechanisms to prevent other species moving into their territory?”

“That’s incredibly depressing,” Sagan admits after a
minute’s contemplation. “I’m not sure I believe it without seeing some more evidence.
That’s why we wanted to use the Arecibo dish to send a message, you know. The
other disks are far enough away that we’re safe, whatever they send back: they
can’t possibly throw missiles at us, not with a surface escape velocity of
twenty thousand miles per second, and if they send unpleasant messages we can
stick our fingers in our ears.”

The waiter arrives, and slides his entree in front of
Sagan.

“Why do you say that?” asks Gregor.

“Well, for one thing, it doesn’t explain the disk. We
couldn’t make anything like it–I suppose I was hoping we’d have some idea
of who did? But from what you’re telling me, insect hives with advanced
biotechnology…that doesn’t sound plausible.”

“We have some information on that.” Gregor smiles
reassuringly. “For the time being, the important thing to recognize is that the
species who are on the disk are roughly equivalent to ourselves in
technological and scientific understanding. Give or take a couple of hundred
years.”

“Oh.” Sagan perks up a bit.

“Yes,” Gregor continues. “We have some
information–I can’t describe our sources–but anyway. You’ve seen
the changes to the structure of the galaxy we remember. How would you
characterize that?”

“Hmm.” Sagan is busy with a mouthful of delicious
tetrodotoxin-laced meatballs. “It’s clearly a Kardashev type-III civilization,
harnessing the energy of an entire galaxy. What else?”

Gregor smiles. “Ah, those Russians, obsessed with coal
and steel production! This is the information age, Dr. Sagan. What would the
informational resources of a galaxy look like, if they were put to use? And to
what use would an unimaginably advanced civilization put them?”

Sagan looks blank for a moment, his fork pausing halfway
to his mouth, laden with a deadly promise. “I don’t see–ah!” He smiles,
finishes his forkful, and nods. “Do I take it that we’re living in a nature
reserve? Or perhaps an archaeology experiment?”