“I can’t,” said Rashtrakuta harshly. “No one can. But in the meantime, we need your help.”
“Why? What can I do?”
“I think we need you to help save the human race.”
An awful cawing sound escaped Hunter’s twisted mouth. “Me? You want me to help you save the human race?” The terrible sound repeated itself. “I can’t even save myself.”
Hunter sank back into his bed, exhausted by his outburst.
Rashtrakuta ignored his words. He began to read Hunter the transcripts of the long-distance debriefing that Lubchek had been undergoing for the last two weeks as the Titan Explorer III returned to Earth with as much speed as possible.
Hunter closed his eye, turned his head away, and tried to ignore the soft flow of words.
Caroline, he cried despairingly to himself, O Caroline, why aren’t you here?
Thirty-four days after First Contact, Royce Hunter attended a teleconference with the five most powerful people on Earth: the President of the United States, the Prime Minister of China, and the two men and one woman who comprised the Council Members of the Executive Committee of the Conservancy. Everyone except Hunter was in a Conservancy room overlooking Lake Geneva. Hunter was still in the hospital at Nellis Space Base in central Nevada. A black patch covered what had once been his left eye. None of the others could keep their eyes on the disfigured face after the initial seconds of shock.
“They’ll be here in seventy-eight days,” said Hunter, turning his one eye to the image of the Councilmember from the European Protectorate, “and that’s all there is to it.”
“Yes, but I still don’t see why you attach such great importance to—”
“Councilman Tournet, four lunar months was the most time that Major Lubchek could get for us. The Trajendi were very insistent. To put it bluntly, the major’s meeting with the Trajendi was not a negotiation.” Hunter’s eye swept the five faces. “You have all seen the transcripts. The Trajendi didn’t ask if they could open diplomatic relations with us. They merely informed us that they would shortly be presenting their credentials. And told us when and where they would be arriving. Luckily, Major Lubchek was able to get us a little extra time.”
“We are all well aware of that, Mr.
Hunter,” said Prime Minister Lii. “We have, in fact, been thinking of very little else for the last five weeks.”
“So I imagine. I myself have been thinking of nothing else. The first and most obvious conclusion I came to was that the Trajendi were very astute in how they carried out this first contact. It was obviously carefully planned.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Isn’t it evident? It was carried out in a way that: A) would not cause a panic; B) could not be misinterpreted; and C) could not be ignored.” “Still, that’s no reason to be so stridently insistent on addressing the five of us together,” growled Councilman Gupta of the Indian Confederation. “Do you really think you can frighten us any more than we already are?”
“We’ll just have to see, won’t we?” Hunter’s bleak eye moved on to President Clayborn. “The next thing that strikes me about the transcripts is the quick wits displayed by Major Lubchek in getting the Trajendi to agree to this long a delay in coming to Earth. I am most impressed by his behavior. I only wish he could have gotten us four years instead of four months.”
The Councilwoman who represented the Pan African Independencies, Katerina Moguiba, tapped her stylus irritably. “Mr. Hunter, I certainly understand the need for sufficient time to arrange the protocol for their visit, but don’t you think four years would be a bit excessive?”
“Madam Moguiba,” said Hunter, not troubling to keep his tone from sounding as if he were talking to a backward child, “protocol and public relations are of no importance in this matter. My—our—only concern must now be prevention of the subjugation of the human race.”
“Subjugation of the human race? By one spaceship? By bug-eyed monsters? Death rays? The War Of The Worlds? Surely you can’t be serious, Mr. Hunter!”
“They certainly sound peaceful enough to me,” said Councilman Tournet. “If you boil down everything they discussed with Major Lubchek, what it comes to is that they want to discuss what they—and we—call the normal aspects of contact between peoples: immigration control; diplomatic immunity; import and export duties; landing areas for ships; quarantine procedures; contractual frameworks; a medium of exchange; proscribed substances; et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. They sound exactly like three businessmen going from Brussels to Ecuador and trying to develop new markets. What could you possibly find frightening there except for the simple fact that they have come to us from the stars in a machine that is obviously faster than light?”
Hunter sighed and turned his head in the direction of Councilwoman Moguiba. “Tell me, Madam Councilwoman, what happened when the white man came to Africa?”
“That’s a completely different situation. We… Earthans, I suppose you should now call us, are highly civiliz—”
“I’m sure your African ancestors thought that they were highly civilized. Just as I’m sure the Incas thought they were civilized. And the American Plains Indians thought they were civilized. The Chinese and the Japanese, of course, knew that they were civilized and that the European intruders were long-nosed barbarians. And what good did it do any of them? They were all of them confronted by cultures which were more technologically advanced; more scientifically advanced; more governmentally, economically, and socially advanced. More advanced in information systems; more advanced in communications systems; more advanced in the sense of a more widely diverse philosophical and cultural pool. And, in a real sense, just plain smarter.”
Councilwoman Moguiba exchanged angry looks with Prime Minister Lii of China and Councilman Gupta. “This is an encredibly bigoted and racist attitude, Mr. Hunter, and one that has been completely—”
“Europeans could conceive of steamships and electricity and calculus. The people they confronted could not. Europeans could conceive of different political and cultural systems. The native peoples they subjugated could not. Europeans had vast libraries; they had trained specialists whose life’s work was studying small, arcane areas of abstract learning and making the results of that study socially useful. The peoples they conquered had none of those things. In the case of the American Plains Indians, they didn’t even have a written language. For several centuries it was simply no contest.” Hunter’s voice was cold and flat. “And this relatively small band of Europeans conquered the world. Call the facts racist and bigoted if you like: it doesn’t change them.”
The President of the United States rapped a knuckle against the table. “There is, I hope, some point to your harangue?”
“Yes, Mr. President, I’m just about there. Organically, the Asians and the Africans and the Amerinds had essentially the same physical brain to work with as the Europeans. The Europeans’ advantages were cultural and technological.”
Hunter’s deformed body shifted restlessly on the bed, his blotchy face thrust forward. “These aliens, however, the Trajendi, not only have the same advantages over us that the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europeans had over the native peoples with whom they came into contact; they have something else as well.”
“Something else?” snapped Councilman Tournet. “What else, Mr. Hunter?”
“Isn’t it clear from Major Lubchek’s debriefing? No, Rashtrakuta told me it wasn’t, at least not to the people who really counted. That’s why he pulled me away from—”