The Ophiuchi Hotline (26 page)

But it worked. For many years Tweed had been sending equipment to make the base less dependent on supplies brought in by ship. The most hazardous part of his operation had always been sending ships to Jupiter, and the fewer he sent, the better he felt about it. One by one, the needs of Poseidon were taken over by small, mostly hand-operated, fabricating machines. The energy was there, more than the machines could ever use. Raw materials could be mined or transmuted by the limitless power. There were machines for making light tubes, integrated circuits, and pumps. The machines which had built the base were still there, and could be used to clear rubble or dig new tunnels. There was equipment to make new parts for things that wore out.

In three years we were a stable ecology, if not yet much of a community. The days of oxygen rationing were just a memory, and the inhabited base was actually larger than it had been in fifteen years. The population had grown by twenty children, and four more were on the way. I could hold up my head and be a respected member of society now that I was Chief Hydroponicist and Grand Panjandrum of Mutagenic Foodstuffs. Every time I developed a new plant that was better than the things we had been eating for three years, my prestige rose a little higher.

By the time five years had passed, things were settled down. We had an old-style school with the students outnumbering the teachers. It turned out to be not so bad, after all.

We were all surprised at how much time and effort it

took to keep things running. Our world would not have allowed us survival if we hadn’t maintained it constantly. That’s true of all human societies since the Invasion, but it’s usually behind the scenes, unnoticed. Only three percent of the population of Luna, for instance, is directly involved in an environmental industry. On Poseidon, we all were, and we often held two or even three jobs. Most of us were farmers in addition to our other functions. We worked ten-hour days.

The catch was that while we were a technological society, we lacked a lot of the base that should support it. We employed computers to map the gene changes on the plants we mutated to grow in the changed conditions, and then we cultivated those plants with shovels and hoes. The automated cybernetic and judgmental machines so common in Lunar society—the devices that do so much of the actual physical work—were in short supply. We didn’t have the sophisticated industry needed to build such machines, or to provide replacement parts for our best computers when they broke down. We were reduced to the IC chip, the incandescent light bulb, helium-chilled superconductors, and other of the more basic, long-established technologies. It wasn’t exactly the Neolithic Age, but sometimes it felt like it.

And after nine years, we were moving at half the speed of light.

First contact.

Lilo had considered everything, or thought she had, from beings of pure energy to the standard monstrous lifeforms that were a fixture of cheap adventure fiction. She had considered the possibility that the Ophiuchites might be humanlike, bipedal, bilaterally symmetrical. It was an efficient design for some purposes. It had occurred to her that they might be literally beyond her understanding, more related to Invaders than to humans.

What she found was a stretch of corridor that might have been the one she had played in as a child. At the end was a conference room with a carpet and a long, wooden table with a dozen chairs.

“Would you say it’s about one gee?” Javelin said, as they entered the room. Lilo was startled to hear her voice; the room absorbed all echoes.

“Yes, about that.” She glanced at Javelin. She had never seemed smaller than she did now, standing on two feet in a gravity field. She barely reached to Lilo’s waist.

“Why do you think that is?” Javelin went on. “This place rotates for artificial gravity, wouldn’t you think? Yet we’re at the hub. It should be weightless.”

“It follows that they have gravity control,” Vaffa said.

“Yes, but then why do they need the rotation? If they can give us one gee here, why can’t they do it at the rim?”

“Maybe it’s expensive,” Cathay said. “Maybe it’s a gesture of friendship.”

“Let’s don’t draw too many conclusions,” Lilo said. “We’ve got to be on guard against that.”

“Keep an open mind,” Vaffa said.

Lilo knew they were all whistling in the dark. They were standing at one end of the room, hesitant to go any further unless invited. The voice, after its startling intrusion on
Cavorite
’s radio, had told them where to enter the Hotline base, and to go to the end of the corridor. After that, there had been nothing.

Now the door at the other end of the room opened and people started coming in. They seemed to be quite ordinary men and women, dressed in a style that was perhaps two centuries out of date. They were attractive people, the sort Lilo might have run into in any public corridor in Luna.

“Please, please, have seats,” said one man. “Pull up a chair. We’re not formal around here.”

None of the four could think of any reply, so they all sat down. When the Ophiuchites were seated, every chair was filled. The man who had spoken was at one end of the table, and now he got to his feet. He put both hands on the table and looked at them. His brow furrowed slightly.

“We knew you’d be nervous,” he said. “I don’t know what we can do about that. We’ve tried to keep the surroundings familiar, but it will probably be a while before you feel comfortable.”

He looked at each of them in turn, and favored each with a smile.

There was something odd about that smile. It seemed warm enough, but Lilo got the feeling there was nothing beneath it. It tried to be an expression of friendship, as the earlier frown had tried to show concern. She glanced at Cathay and Javelin to see if she was the only one who saw that.

“It
is
awkward,” the man went on. “Your species has only limited experience with this situation. Mine has been through it thousands of times. We know much about your species-type, and about your race specifically. You’re apprehensive about this meeting, you have many questions, and this all seems very strange to you.”

He paused again, and looked this time at the double line of his companions seated at the table. They were all nodding, and now a few uttered polite assents. They sought eye contact with the four humans, a familiarity Lilo did not feel ready for. She felt disoriented. For all she could tell, these people might be the board of directors of some large company, gathered to discuss business.

“First we should introduce ourselves. I’m the spokesman for the contact team, and my name is William.” Each of them stood and gave a name, and none of them convinced Lilo. All the names were archaic, common names from Old Earth. When they were finished, Javelin stood and introduced herself and the others did the same.

With the formalities over, William sat down and all the Ophiuchites visibly relaxed. There was a murmur of conversation. It almost escaped Lilo’s attention because it was so commonplace, but when she strained to hear individual remarks she realized there were none. It was a literal murmur; as artificial as canned laughter. A show was being put on for their benefit. They were participating in some kind of living theater.

“You can consider yourselves our guests for as long as you want to stay. Would you like anything to eat? No? Very well, but don’t be shy about asking, as we have a long presentation. I hope you don’t mind. We’ve found that if we begin with a question-and-answer session it takes a long time just to get to the point where you can ask meaningful questions. And I’m sure you don’t want to sit through a dry lecture. So we’ve put together this little piece of film that should fill you in on the background that led up to this historic contact. Alicia, would you get the lights, please?”

Someone was setting up what looked like a film projector. A screen lowered from the ceiling, and as the lights went down, the machine began to clatter. Titles appeared on the screen, accompanied by swelling background music.

Hierarchies

Produced by the Hotline First Contact Committee

The film opened with a shot of scattered stars and galaxies. The voice of the narrator was the perfect choice, Lilo thought. It was the Stand Computer Voice, the SVC that all humans heard every day of their lives. The controlled, soothing modulations had a good effect on all of them. They were able to relax a little for the first time.

“Greeting to the people of the Sol system, formerly the Race of Earth, from your nearest neighbors among the peoples of the galaxy. For many hundreds of years our two races have been in contact through the communication device you call the Ophiuchi Hotline. Now the time is drawing near when great decisions must be made, great steps taken, when things must be told to you which before now you had only guessed at.

“The universe is a far stranger place than you have heretofore imagined. This will come as no surprise to those who have considered the questions of philosophy which have been posed since your race came down from the trees. We would not have you think we are about to answer those questions; we are much alike in many ways, and for us, as for you, many things seem destined to remain mysteries. But there are things we have learned which you should know, as you are approaching a turning point that will determine your survival or failure as a race.

“We have called this broadcast
Hierarchies.
As you have already been shown in the most convincing terms possible, your race is not destined to be a dominant one in the galaxy. Your planet has been taken from you by beings greater than yourselves. They had no trouble
doing so; it was as inevitable as the law of gravity that they should have none. You live now in the airless places, the too-hot and too-cold deserts of your planetary system. Some among you pray for liberation. Others are beginning to try and do something about it.

“You will not be liberated. We would return your planet to you if we could, but it is beyond our power. Your struggles to reclaim the Earth on your own will come to nothing.

“Having made these statements, we must now tell you why this is so. A good place to start would be for us to tell you something about ourselves.”

The film lasted about an hour. Lilo let her eyelids droop, slouched in the comfortable chair, allowing information to wash over her just as it was meant to. The production values of the film were very good, very much like a commercial spot with quick cuts and finicky attention to detail.

They were told about the Ophiuchites in outline form, with animated sequences that never showed a living being. It failed to surprise Javelin, as she later told Lilo, since in the four hundred years of operation of the Line there had never been a scrap of information about the people who were sending it.

According to them, they were a race without a home planet. They were not natives of 70 Ophiuchi, or any other star they could name.

Javelin leaned over and whispered in Lilo’s ear, “I wonder. I think they’re covering up.”

“Could be.”

They claimed to have been around a very long time—their exact origins, as they expressed it in the film, “lost in the mists of history.” They had records going back seven million years, and in that time there had been no changes in their society.

The film recapped what humans had speculated about Invaders, confirming most of it.

“The beings you know as Invaders are members of what can be called a stratum of intelligence. There are
many races in the galaxy similar to them, including a race native to the solar planet Jupiter. These races evolve only on the gas giant planets. They are not tool-using, as we understand the term, but rather are able to manipulate the world around them through methods which are beyond our powers of comprehension. It might be helpful to think of them as telekinetic; they are not, but many of the things they do are similar to what we might do if such a power existed.

“To the Invaders, time is a dimension of substance. How this affects their perception of life we can only guess, and it does us little good to do so. But this fact puts them as far beyond our reach as we would be above the inhabitants of a hypothetical two-dimensional world.”

The film went on to confirm what Lilo had been told about dolphins many years ago, that they were the second level of intelligence. Vaffa snorted, and Lilo glanced at her, wondering how she was taking all this. It was believed by the Free Earthers that aquatic mammals were merely animals, that the tales of Invaders coming to Earth to free them were nothing more than folklore.

“Tool-using species, those which evolve on land and in an atmosphere which permits combustion, are the third level of intelligence. We share this level with you, but it should be pointed out that there can be levels within levels. You are not our equals, and may never be. We can talk to you about certain matters, but there are things which you are not ready to understand, and things which we are not ready to reveal. Because now we come to the point of the message, to an explanation of what we are doing here and why we have been communicating with you these many years.”

For the first time, a face appeared on the screen. It was a standardized face, handsome but unmemorable, and it took a second for Lilo to realize it was “William.” He performed another smile, as unconvincing as the ones Lilo had seen in person.

“As we said earlier, we are a race that has lost contact with its roots. It might be hard for you to understand
how that could happen. We can only surmise as to the exact details.”

The screen showed an Earth-like planet over William’s shoulder. “We must have evolved on a planet much like your own. In the natural course of things, we were pushed off the planet, as you have been. We have watched this process happen thousands of times, and it changes very little from race to race.” On the screen, thousands of ships fled the planet and traveled to various moons and asteroids in the system.

“In time, races like ours and yours begin to wonder if they can recapture their home world. They begin to take steps in that direction. Before too long the gas giant beings put a stop to these experiments. As before, they have no trouble doing so.” Lilo watched as indefinite shapes swam up from the blue planet to swarm over the others. It was clear what was happening, with no need for narration.