Jacintha was sitting at a long wooden table inside the snowbark pavilion. She looked completely relaxed as three Skins stood guard a discreet distance away.
"You have a magnetic sense, and you're a clone," she said as Simon walked up to her. "How fascinating. Life on Earth is obviously a little more complex than we thought."
He indicated the bench on the other side of the table. "May I?"
"Please."
"Did you hear all that?"
"Loud and clear, thank you."
"Whatever viewpoint you have, the outcome is not good. My clone sibling is ... unwell."
"I think crazy is the word I'd use."
"He's traumatized, and still in a considerable amount of pain, which is affecting his judgment. He was inside Josep's blast radius."
"Is that supposed to make me feel guilty?"
"I'm illustrating cause and effect."
"You invaded our planet. This is the result."
"I refuse to shoulder the entire blame. Your actions have consequences, too. Neither of us has emerged from this confrontation with much credit."
"No," Jacintha admitted with reluctance. "But we do have a starship. And the alien will be returned home."
"I hope that its society is well armed. My clone sibling will not stop until he has obtained their nanonic technology."
"The dragons don't need armaments. And any threats he makes against them will be completely ineffectual."
"Dragons?" Simon recalled the elaborate carvings he'd glimpsed on the A-frames.
"Our name for them," she said.
"I see. Well, just knowing where these dragons live will give him a dangerous victory. If he doesn't obtain nanonics on this flight, he will return there. Are you so certain that humans will never obtain the information? If not by force, then by trade or diplomacy. After all, the dragon allowed you to have it." He could see the uncertainty creep into her mind. "If that possibility exists, you have to help me."
"Help you do what?"
"Help me to ensure it isn't my clone sibling who acquires it first."
"No."
"Why not?"
"I believe that nanonic systems should be introduced to the human race, but only on an equal-access basis. That's one of the main reasons we've been so cautious. If you or your clone snatches it first, it would be misapplied. You know it would."
"Anything that is used in a way you don't personally agree with is by definition misapplied. That's why human culture evolved the way it did, so that the majority can influence future development. Everyone has a voice—a small one, admittedly, but a voice nonetheless. Or do you mistrust the entire human race?"
"Please don't try to twist this. You personally, Zantiu-Braun as a whole, would misapply the technology. You would treat it as a monopoly to increase your own wealth and influence, and very likely your military strength as well."
"Of course we'll apply it to our advantage. But you don't know what our goals are. I should say my goals, for I in all my hundreds of individual selves am the one who originally formulated our policy and ensure that it's carried out."
"All right, I'm curious, what goals? To invade and conquer more planets?"
"No. Asset realization is not sustainable in the long term, or even the medium term. Today's starflights are the ignominious end to a noble dream that is slowly winding down to its natural conclusion."
"The noble idea being?"
"Giving you what you have. A clean start on a fresh world. It's a desire that's hardwired into many humans. It comes from our impetuosity and curiosity, the wanderlust gene. But it also has roots in the dissatisfaction with the society in which we live. How much easier it is to move and start anew than to rectify the institutional, even constitutional, mistakes of a monolithic social system. Between them, those motivators were enough to launch the first wave of colonies. It was always going to be financially nonviable; the compression drive technology just isn't capable of supporting the dream. But still we went ahead. There are a lot of successes, worlds like Ducain, Amethi and Larone: all independent and prosperous stakeholder democracies. We even have a host of semisuccesses like Thallspring, in debt on Earth but fully self-sustaining. Personally, I actually rate Santa Chico a considerable success—albeit in its own unique fashion."
"If we're a success, then stop holding us back. Let us develop freely. Use that power and influence you have to stop the asset-realization missions."
"I know our invasion dominates your thinking, and I'm sorry. But the necessary changes have to be made at a more fundamental level. We have to elevate the whole human race in order to be free of the restrictions they impose."
"Elevate them?"
"Yes. Earth with its seven billion population is the wealthiest human world. After all, with that many people working in an industrial society, it couldn't be anything else. But it also has the greatest level of poverty. There are some city districts where the inhabitants are in their twentieth generation of penury. They simply never get out, unlike your ancestors, who were smart and determined enough to get here. Schools and the datapool offer huge opportunities to learn, to enable them to work their way out of the slums and integrate themselves with the primary economy. And they never do. For every one that gets out, ten stay behind and have families, usually large ones. Drug addiction is rife, crime impoverishes them further; they suffer bad housing, bad parenting, bad social care, decaying infrastructure, casual violence. It just goes on and on."
"I do understand the principles of the poverty cycle."
"You should; it's beginning to happen here. I've seen the secondary economy starting to creep in. You have an emergent underclass. At the moment they're only slightly adrift from mainstream life on Thallspring. Soon, in another few generations, the divide will be unbridgeable. Thallspring will be a replica of Earth."
"No, it won't."
"Ah." He smiled. "Yes. You believe the dragon technology will help bring your world together and allow you to build something new and decent."
"Yes," Jacintha said. "If it's introduced gently, the kind of changes we envisage will be massively beneficial."
"How remarkable. And enviable. With that kind of outlook I could offer you a seat on our Board. I—we—also want to see societal change, not further pointless expansion that forever repeats past mistakes. But for that change to be total, it has to come from the heart of human society: Earth. We've been attempting that for over a century now. The poor, the underclass, have got to be eliminated. And I'm not speaking from pure altruism. I'm actually being quite selfish. They prey on our compassion; they absorb billions in welfare payments simply so they can eat and be housed; they use up still more billions in medical care, for inevitably they are the sector of society that is the most disease-prone and in general bad health. It is they who cause today's dreams and visions to fail. If we didn't have them to take care of, our starships would still be venturing out farther into the galaxy and founding colonies. We would have the time and resources to explore new forms of living. All of us, not just you and Santa Chico."