Aditi said, “We can offer you medical technology that is far advanced over your own.”
“And the energy shields,” Adri added.
“Yes, they would both be welcomed. But what can we offer you?”
“Understanding,” said Adri.
Jordan felt puzzled. “Understanding?”
Adri nodded. “Yours is a large, aggressive species. How many people are there on Earth now?”
“Something like twenty billion. The recent spate of flooding has apparently killed a good many, of course, but the latest census figures I remember put the total in the twenty billion range.”
“Twenty billion,” Adri murmured.
“We are only a few thousand,” said Aditi.
“Thousand?”
“Yes,” Adri said. “Our numbers are very small. Frankly, we’ve been afraid of you. You could swallow us up in one gulp.”
“That’s why you haven’t contacted us,” Jordan realized.
“Your history is filled with the unfortunate consequences of contact between one group of people and another. The Neanderthals, for example. The Native Americans.”
Jordan suddenly understood Paul Longyear’s hard-eyed suspicions.
“So you waited until we reached out to you.”
“It seemed the best course of action for us,” Adri said. “Now that we have made contact, our future is in your hands.”
“Yet you could have remained hidden,” Jordan said. “You shielded your city from our ship’s sensors. We had no idea you were here.”
“If we had stayed hidden, what would have happened?” Adri asked. “You would have landed and started to explore this planet. Sooner or later you would have stumbled upon us.”
“And destroyed us,” Aditi said glumly.
“No! Why would we do that? How could we do it?”
Smiling gently, Adri said, “Friend Jordan, not every human being is as civilized as you. Twenty billion of you! How many would come here, to this world? How quickly would they turn it into a replica of the disaster they have created on their own home world?”
“We would be wiped out,” Aditi repeated.
Jordan said nothing for a moment, his thoughts spinning. Then, “And now that we’ve found you, that danger exists.”
“It does indeed,” said Adri.
“What are you going to do about it?” Aditi asked.
Her face was unutterably sad, Jordan saw. As if I’ve just condemned her entire race to extinction.
“What can I do about it?” he wondered aloud.
Adri said, “That is one of the problems that face us.”
“One of the problems? There are others?”
“Oh, yes. But let us deal with this first problem first.”
“You are a test case for us,” Aditi said. “If we can make you understand, then perhaps there is a chance that contact between our two peoples can be beneficial.”
“And if not?”
Adri sighed heavily. “You are slightly more than eight light-years from Earth. Your transmissions of information back to your home world will take eight-some years to reach their destination.”
Jordan nodded.
Looking slightly guilty, Adri said, “Your messages to Earth are not getting through. I’m afraid we’ve blocked your transmissions.”
“Blocked them? How?”
“It’s only temporarily, until we decide whether we should proceed with you.”
“And if you decide not to proceed?”
“Then your messages back to Earth will be permanently blocked. Earth will decide that your mission somehow met with disaster.”
“They’ll think we’re all dead,” Jordan realized.
“You will not be allowed to return,” said Adri. “You will have to stay here.”
“With us,” Aditi said.
Jordan sat there for long, silent moments, trying to digest it all. If we don’t measure up to Adri’s standards we won’t be allowed to return to Earth. The people back home will think we’ve been killed.
Yet he found himself thinking, Well, would that be so terrible? He looked at Aditi’s young, lovely face: so earnest, so caring. And he thought, Earth’s a madhouse, filled with self-seeking egoists who’ve wrecked the planet. What do I owe them? They killed my wife. They did nothing while the global climate spiraled out of control. Why not stay here and live with these people? With Aditi.
At last he rose from the couch. Aditi stood up beside him.
“I’ll have to talk this over with the others. They’ve got to know what’s at stake.”
Adri slowly, stiffly got to his feet. “By all means. Tell them that we would be happy to have them stay here and join us.”
Jordan smiled bleakly. “You would be happy, I can believe that. But they won’t be.”
Reactions
“They’d force us to stay here?” Thornberry’s beefy face twisted into an angry scowl.
“We’re their prisoners!” Meek wailed.
Jordan had returned to the base camp and called a meeting of the entire team. Aditi had wanted to accompany him, but Jordan decided that it would be better for her to remain in the city.
Now they sat around the long table in the dining area, looking just as angry and fearful as Jordan had expected. At the foot of the table a display screen showed Geoff Hazzard, Trish Wanamaker, and Demetrios Zadar, still aboard the orbiting ship. Hazzard looked grim, hostile. Trish and the astronomer seemed puzzled, confronted with a problem they had never expected.
Standing at the head of the table, Jordan spread both arms to quiet them down. “You can understand how afraid of us they are,” he said.
“They’re afraid of us?” Meek said, incredulous. “Hah!”
Longyear shook his head doggedly. “I say we go back aboard Gaia and drag our tails out of here.”
“Would they try to stop us?” Elyse wondered.
Thornberry said, “If they could deactivate my two rovers, I imagine they could conk out our rocketplane.”
Looking more alarmed than ever, Meek said, “You mean they could keep us here against our will?”
“I suppose that’s better than killing us,” Brandon said with a sardonic grin.
“I knew it!” Meek shouted. “I knew it. We’re all going to be murdered in our beds.”
“Don’t be an ass,” Brandon snapped.
“Now look here, young man—”
“Stop it!” Jordan commanded. “Settle down and stop bickering, both of you. This is exactly the kind of reaction that Adri fears from us: emotion instead of rationality.”
Brandon smiled crookedly at his brother. “All right, Jordy. What’s the rational approach to this?”
Before Jordan could reply, de Falla said, “The first thing to do is to see if the ship’s systems will work.”
“Everything’s working so far,” said Hazzard, from the display screen. “’Course, we haven’t had to fire up the fusion drive.”
“Could you check out the propulsion system without lighting it off?” Longyear asked.
“Sure. That’s what I’ll do.”
“Fine,” Jordan said. “That’s a reasonable first step. But it doesn’t get to the heart of our problem.”
“Which is?” Brandon prompted.
“How do we convince Adri and his people that Earth is not a threat to them?”
That silenced them. Even Meek looked thoughtful. But the silence lasted only a moment.
Thornberry said, “Seems to me our real problem is how do we counter their ability to knock out our vehicles. If we learn how to do that, we’ll be able to leave whenever we want to.”
Jordan nodded. “A good point. And there’s only one way to learn that: by working with Adri’s people. By letting them show us their capabilities, teach us their technology.”
Elyse objected, “Do you think they’d be naïve enough to tell us anything useful?”