“Yes,” said Ursula. “That is so.”
“And, because of your planet’s specific circumstances, you blithely went ahead shouting your existence to neighboring stars, without the slightest thought you might be endangering your existence.”
“Yes.”
“But we, who have a history of disastrous first contacts even among our own people, and who have a space program and recognize that others might, too, do understand that attracting attention to ourselves on the galactic stage might in fact bring on unwanted, indeed dangerous, visitors.”
“Objection!” said Hannah, rising to her feet. “Your honor, opposing counsel is arguing his case!”
“Yes,” Judge Weisman said. “He certainly is—and very effectively, too, I might add. Court is recessed until nine o’clock tomorrow morning.”
Emily and Hannah had gone for dinner at a sushi place near the courthouse. “You know,” Hannah said in a derisive tone, “if Sudeyko is right, it could already be over for Ursula’s people. Remember she said they sent their Reticulum to eleven other star systems besides ours? If, say, the beings at 20 Leonis Minoris—just a dozen light-years from them—were his dastardly berserkers, even if their battleships could only manage a third of the speed of light, they’d have had time to show up and annihilate Ursula’s world.”
“You’re sure he’s wrong, aren’t you?” Emily said.
“No,” said Hannah, “I’m not. You can’t prove a negative; you can’t prove hostile aliens don’t exist. But, thanks to you and your team, we now know for sure that peaceful ones do exist.”
The closing arguments went pretty much as Emily expected them to. Hannah Plaxton extolled the virtues of altruistically sharing our art and culture, our science and our spiritual writings, not just with the people of 47 Ursae Majoris, who, after all, had already reached out to us, but also with as many other likely star systems as possible.
And Piotr Sudeyko reiterated his belief that no such actions should be taken without a broad international consensus—even though, as a historian, he doubtless knew that such a thing likely would be impossible to attain.
Judge Weisman gave instructions to the jurors and sent them off to deliberate; their verdict, whatever it might be, would further fuel debate. In that sense, by bringing the matter to wider attention, Sudeyko and the moratorium crowd had already won.
People filed out of the courtroom, but Emily stayed behind. The staff had shut off the giant monitor standing next to the witness dock, but Emily touched the control that turned it back on and Ursula appeared on the screen. Emily regarded the avatar, and the avatar regarded her. At last, Ursula said, “May I be of assistance?”
“Perhaps,” said Emily. “Suppose instead of us composing a reply, suppose we were to ask you to do it. If we gave you access to a powerful radio telescope or messaging laser, what message would you send back to your people about us?”
Ursula’s limbs moved precisely as Emily’s team had programmed them to, mimicking what the neural nets had divined to be gestures of thoughtful reflection. And then the little round mouth irised opened and closed. “I’d tell them we made a mistake.”
Emily was surprised by how sad that made her feel. “You wouldn’t have sent the Reticulum, if you had it to do over?”
Ursula’s inside arm twirled. “No, no, no. That’s not the mistake. The mistake was not realizing that travel between worlds is possible. I would propose to my people that some of them should come here in person.”
“And do you think they would actually do that? Come here? Come to visit humanity?”
“I have no idea,” Ursula said. And then she raised all three arms. “But I know how I’d vote.”