Viola, proponent of the machine intelligence theory, dis-agrees. It’s not possible that they could have evolved in such a way. Your speech, our speech, we learned to encode it first, turning sensory impressions into numerical data that can be read in and of itself – from zeroes and ones to more complex codes. There is no suggestion that this data is encoding anything other than these images, and it’s using old human conventions even for that. You’re suggesting they leapt to being able to transmit their primary mode of communication without any sign of an intermediate stage that we might be able to detect and decode.
Portia understands the argument: after all, the only reason Humans and Portiids can understand each other at all is just such a simplified notation, which can then be built on to reconstruct the meaning. Without such an artificial encoding between them, the patter of spider feet and the vibrations of an anthropoid larynx could never have bridged the gap. And Viola is right, those alien signals are pure visual data. The idea that an emergent intelligence could develop a technology like that without intermediate building blocks is beyond credibility.
But then we are dealing with the alien, she thinks. Perhaps they just did. And if they blow us up we’ll never know.
She adds her voice to Helena’s, saying: We must send them something, even if it is just to show we’re not stupid.
Zaine says something that Portia’s working pannier translates as: Send theirs back to them.
Terrible idea, Helena counters swiftly. If they are threatening us, we don’t want to escalate.
Send them a picture of us, Portia throws in. When that gets everyone’s attention she clarifies: An image of one of us, an image of one of the Humans. Or even just a human image in the abstract. They are using technology that is at least human-derived, after all. It should mean something to them.
Everyone has an opinion on that, and Bianca asserts command to filter through the stamping and shuffling. Portia already knows her motion will pass, though: the hubbub is just the usual ‘yes-but-I-want-to-make-this-my-idea’ that she is more than used to from groups of the ambitious amongst her own people.
Send an image of Helena, Portia submits, and that seems as good a solution as any. Bianca confirms the idea and Kern starts to transmit on the visual channel, throwing in a grab-bag of blues, yellows and pinks in the hope that these really are calming colours.
The result is dramatic. The profusion of angry-seeming colours fades instantly, leaving only simple, more repetitive patterns of what Portia guesses are neutral shades.
They’re telling us to wait, maybe? Fabian puts in timidly.
My spies suggest there is a great deal of communication between the alien vessels, Kern puts in.
Calculate some alternative trajectories for us, just in case, Bianca orders.
Indeed, the ship confirms. I can’t intercept much of the communication, but it is ninety-nine per cent visual . . . ninety-seven . . . ninety-two . . . The technical channels are experiencing a large upsurge.
I don’t like this being a countdown, Fabian puts in.
Bianca starts to reply, If you don’t have anything useful to contribute— and then everything goes wrong all at once. The alien ships are launching dozens of smaller vessels, as tiny and fleet as the originals were huge and lumbering, and they unleash their weapons almost at the same time.
PAST 2
LAND OF MILK AND HONEY
1.
There was a hole in the ice that, owing to the rampant volcanism Senkovi had set off along every faultline on Damascus, was still not frozen over when they came to look. Below, miles deep, the new batch of aquatic remotes found the wreck of the Aegean’s shuttle. Han and the others, having abandoned ship at Senkovi’s insistence, had not acquired a stable orbit when the virus hit their systems. Now they were cold corpses in a half-crushed dead spaceship beneath the ocean.
Baltiel expected Senkovi to shrug it off, given the man’s focus on his work and his pets. Instead, he fell into a black depression. He had played fast and loose with the rules, as he had always been wont to do, and this time it had killed people.
‘It saved your life,’ Baltiel pointed out. ‘It saved the ship. Saved all of us.’ The Aegean, post-reboot, was in perfect working order. As per Senkovi’s pre-disaster plan, the octopuses had no access to its wider systems any more, only limited virtual playgrounds to be tested in. The whole audacious, ridiculous plan of his had worked out in every particular, save that he had failed to adjust for the destructive stupidity of the rest of humanity.
‘You couldn’t have known,’ Baltiel tried patiently, calling through the closed door of Senkovi’s room because the man wasn’t accepting electronic queries from the ship, and Baltiel’s implant was still being re-engineered after the virus had shut it down. Only Senkovi’s internal comms had survived, and he had set them to bounce back any traffic.
There were precisely five human beings this side of Earth’s solar system, to Baltiel’s certain knowledge. He could not go on with twenty per cent of his crew out of commission, no matter how much he sympathized. True, the terraforming processes were running themselves for now, but that wouldn’t last, and the entire Nod end of the operation needed salvaging. Most of the work could be done by automatics, guided sporadically by whoever’s turn it was to wake from cold sleep, but the set-up needed all hands, and especially Senkovi’s brain.
‘Lante has some medication for you,’ he tried. ‘It’ll make you feel better.’
Senkovi didn’t want medication. Probably he didn’t want to feel better. The shame and blame were jealous, unwilling to admit any chemical interlopers into his mental state. Baltiel could override the door lock and get Lortisse to drag Senkovi down to medical, but he didn’t want to be that kind of commander, and a resentful, mutinous Senkovi would be considerably more problematic than a sullen one.
So he had one card to play, not one he was proud of, but he’d read through the man’s psych evaluations and Lante agreed with him.
‘I’m going to jettison the octopodes,’ he told the door.
There was a pause, but he heard Senkovi moving around, and then abruptly there the man was, unshaven, red-eyed and haggard.
‘Why would you do that?’ Senkovi asked him.
Because nobody else has any love for the damned things but you, was the true answer, but would not represent good Senkovi-management. ‘I wouldn’t, of course,’ he lied. ‘But they need you, and we need you. The human race needs you, Disra.’
For a moment Senkovi just stared at him, and Baltiel thought he would retreat back inside and close the door. Then he twitched, and the twitch kept going until his whole body was shaking, and without warning he was crying, Baltiel holding him like a child, Senkovi’s salt tears staining the thermoregulatory fabric of his shirt.
When they broke apart, Senkovi gave a shuddering sigh. ‘Nobody needs anybody,’ he got out, in stark contradiction to what had just happened. ‘But I’ll try.’