True, these achievements are still woefully unfinished. They leave lots to do, in working toward a just and mature civilization. But they are clear signs of progress and overall good will by a majority of our species.
Despite all the self-critical news reports and flamboyantly exaggerated “action” stories you may watch, please be assured that most human beings are calm people who treat strangers well. Many millions of us would be thrilled to meet you, taking every effort to make honest visitors welcome.
71.
And so it becomes explicit.
She is talking to us now.
Challenging, even taunting us, charging us to explain our long silence. Provoking us with an implicit accusation of cowardice.
Already I sense a ferment of mental activity from Seeker and the others. The old debate renews, in full fury.
And this precocious little maker has only just begun to goad us!
Lurker Challenge Number Two
If you’ve monitored our TV, radio, and Internet-and the reason you haven’t answered is that you see us as competitors, please reconsider.
In our long, slow struggle toward decent civilization, humans have slowly learned that competition and cooperation aren’t inherent opposites, but twins, both in nature and advanced societies.
Under terms that are fair, and with goodwill, even those who begin suspicious of each other can discover ways to interact toward mutual benefit. Use the Web to look up the “positive-sum game” where “win-win” solutions bring success to all sides.
Surely there are ways that humanity-and other Earth species-can join the cosmos without injuring your legitimate aims. Remember, most stable species and cultures seem to benefit from a little competition, now and then! So please answer. Let’s talk about it.
72.
Evolution is a bitch. Nearly all the time.
Only… on rare occasions… evolution gets to change her mind.
A reminder of that fact nearly plowed into Gerald, darting from a side corridor. Barely avoiding collision, the small figure windmilled, legs flying in the weird way that one “fell” in a centrifugal gravity wheel, tumbling toward the floor at a slant. Gerald’s hand shot out, grabbing a fistful of wildly braided hair, eliciting a shriek.
“Hey now, Ika. What’s your hurry?”
The girl was short-barely into adolescence-but hardly petite. Stocky and strong, when her hand clenched Gerald’s arm he had a sense that she could snap it. Ika made that point by squeezing, in a playful way that hurt just a bit.
“Cap’n Gerry!” Her pale legs whirled around red-striped shorts, twisting to meet the floor on agile tiptoes. Gerald released her braid, though the child kept her vicelike grip on his arm for a second longer, as her face passed his-somehow looking cute and pixielike, despite almost masculine ridges over hooded eyes. Her voice was deeper than one expected, with an echoing resonance that seemed not quite human.
“Be gentle, oh kind sir,” she said, playfully. “Don’t you know I’m a whole lot older ’n you?”
It was a running joke, and not just between the two of them. Members of the revived species Homo neanderthalensis insisted on being called the “Old Race,” for reasons that had little support in biology or fact.
Well, just so long as they don’t start demanding reparations for a genocide that happened 27,000 years ago. I wasn’t around, so I’m not paying.
“And where’re you rushing in such an all-fired hurry, child?” he asked, phrasing it deliberately as an elderly person (which he was) addressing a mere ten-year-old (though Neanders aged differently).
“We’re on a cobbly hunt!” Ika announced, proudly defiant, taking a step backward and planting both fists on her hips.
“On a… did you say we?”
She nodded toward the nearby side corridor where Gerald now spotted another figure, hanging back in shadows. Lanky and a bit stooped, with close-shaven hair and a nervous expression.
“Oh. Hello, Hiram. How are you today?”
Every autie was unique. Still, you followed some general rules when one of them grew agitated, as Hiram appeared to be right now. Eyes wide and darting, the gangly young man edged slowly outward, flashing quick looks near but never quite upon Ika’s face, or Gerald’s.
“So, Hiram. Why aren’t you two watching the new telescope unfold? It’s half the reason this ship came out here, all this way past Mars.”
Keep the conversation concrete but impersonal. Radiate calm friendliness. And thank the Great Spirit that our ship quotas are still small. Just two Neanders, two autistics, and five metal-people for this voyage.
What next? Will they demand we start taking along dolphins and apes? Gene-mod people with wings and foot-hands? It’s not a sapient civilization-it’s a menagerie!
Or else… another metaphor occurred to Gerald… an ark.
Unlike some auties, Hiram’s goggle-eyed, painfully thin face bore no resemblance to the Neanderthal girl, nearby.
“Were you and Ika… fighting?”
Ika laughed, a rich, bell-like sound that always made Gerald think of snowy forest canyons.
“We was just playing, Hiram!”
“But you-”
“Tell you what. If you promise to believe me, an’ relax, I’ll pay a bribe in our next imVRsive game.”
The wide eyes narrowed. “What bribe?”
“Three mastodon tusks.”
The young autie smirked, calculatingly.
“Three green ones. Four meters and twelve centimeters long. Starting almost straight at the base with a gradually shortening curvature culminating with a radius of one meter at the tip and with an inward thirty degree per meter corkscrew. One of them left-handed and two of them right-handed.”
“What? No deal!” Ika cried out. “Who cares if you relax or not, you space-traveling oddball. Just hold yer breath for all I care and go into a hissy fit!”
No. No, please don’t. Gerald almost stepped forward to intervene. Hiram was a useful member of the crew-no one else had his startling knack at quick-decrypting the holocrystal fragments that ibn Battuta kept scooping up from nearby space. Only at a price. He retained much of the old-style emotional frailty that had thwarted his branch of humanity for thousands of years. Experts on Earth were still figuring out how to get the best of both worlds, unleashing savant skills without the accompanying baggage of disabilities.
But Gerald shouldn’t have worried. Ika’s folk had a talent for relating to auties-who must have appeared more often in tribes of Ice Age Europe. Instead of quailing back from Ika’s outburst, Hiram grinned.
“Okay. Orange ones, then. Want to show the cap’n what’s not a cobbly?”
Gerald blinked at the sudden topic change.
Not… a… cobbly. Then he recalled. Oh, yeah. The mythological nonentities that both Neanders and auties claim to believe in.
“I dunno. Homosaps can be awfully close-minded.” Ika tilted her head, looking archly at Gerald-then brightened suddenly. “On the other hand, he is Cap’n Gerry…”
It seemed in character, even expected of him, to emit a sigh over childish time-wasting. Though, in all honesty, he could spare a few minutes.
“Will you two please get on with it?”