“I’m not a Homeworlder, Dr. Tidwell,” Miller kept repeating. “I’m as excited about the Diaspora as anyone—I even subscribe to the Ur journal, Frontier. All I’ve done in my paper is analyze some of the issues in macroeconomic terms. And I think I’ve demonstrated that this is, in fact, a one-sided transaction, building and outfitting these starships. In fact, I think that it’s time to revive the notion of the altruistic act.”
“On whose part?”
“On the part of the entire species,” said Miller. “I’ve heard Sasaki claiming that Allied has paid its own way on this. But that balance sheet is missing a lot of entries. If Sasaki wants to amortize the cost of the Project against the entire future of the colonial units, that’s fine. But what about the knowledge that these ships carry? What about the technical expertise required to build them? That’s an unvalued transaction. The cumulative cost of that intellectual capital is by far the single largest cost item on the ledger.”
“Come now,” Tidwell said dismissively, “that ‘capital’ can be spent a thousand times over and never exhausted. It goes on Memphis’s ledger as a gift of great value and no cost. Every bit of knowledge that went into its conception and construction remains available to this community—perhaps even more available, considering the effort which we’ve put into collecting and organizing it. You’re grandstanding, sir, with meaningless hypotheticals.”
“I understand your defensiveness,” Miller said. “I can’t say it often enough—I’m with you, not against you. But where does intellectual capital come from? It’s the product of an even more precious emotional capital. And emotional capital can be spent, because one of the multipliers is time. Is spent, every day, as we choose what to do with our opportunities. With our lives.”
“You are inventing realities again.”
“Are you familiar with CFS, Mr. Tidwell?”
“CFS?”
“Chronic Fatigue Syndrome,” said Miller. “It’s a useful one-organism model for bioeconomics. CFS victims are achievers, ambitious, inventive. And then they reach a point where they can’t keep the pace they’ve set for themselves. They’re weary. They sleep too much. They’re always sick, little nagging draining kinds of illnesses. The ambition vanishes. In short, they just don’t care anymore. It happens to individuals. It happens to communities. It happens to civilizations. I think it’s happening to us.”
“This is not economics,” said Tidwell. “This is political metaphysics. And you are aiding the Homeworlders, whether you consider yourself one or not.”
“Do you expect me to stop talking about this? We have a right to know what’s coming. I think that Jeremiah is right about the price we’re paying, about the decline to follow. But I think that he’s wrong to try to stop the Diaspora. Because the decline will come anyway. The capital is spent.”
“We have survived the worst of our problems,” said Tidwell. “The human race has a long and fascinating future ahead of it.”
“Yes,” Miller said. “But not on Earth. For us, this is the end of the race. This is the finish line, coming up on us now.”
Point: the afternoon briefing from the Memphis mission planners.
It was not as though there was anyone in the Building 2 auditorium who didn’t know where Memphis was headed. Sasaki’s predecessor had announced the Tau Ceti system as the provisional choice for prime rendezvous eleven years ago, and Sasaki had reconfirmed the choice three years later, long before staff and community selection had begun. The Tau Ceti of New Moon Over Barridan and other popular fictions was well ingrained in the public mind.
But Training was fond of bringing the staff together, 300 people in a 270-seat hall, for this conference or that presentation, a seminar here, a briefing there. Never longer than a fast ninety minutes, the gatherings figured in Training’s “unitary identity” strategy, a product of the best available sociometric and sociodynamic models. And an update briefing on the latest information on “T.C.,” as Anglish slang rendered it, was as good an excuse as any.
The briefing was brisk and well organized. The lecturer, a polished presenter, recalled the relevant astronomical history, with the big Publook imager above him providing three-dimensional visuals. Listening idly as he watched the pioneers watching the show, Tidwell absorbed some details to which he hadn’t attended during any previous exposure.
One of the nearest naked-eye stars, Tau Ceti had apparently been singled out early as a prime candidate for, in order, terrestrial planets, intelligent life, and Diaspora colonization. The first question was settled last, with the Hawking Space Telescope finally confirming seven planets in orbit around the G-class yellow star shortly after it went into operation in 2028.
An optimist could have taken a bet on the question of intelligent life more than a century ago, as the star had been a target of Frank Drake’s unsuccessful OZMA, the first radio-based SETI search. Every extrasolar study since had yielded the same negative result. And that included the ongoing Allied-sponsored studies employing the big scopes on Einstein, the new U.N. research station in polar orbit around the Sun.
Nowhere in the sky had they found the handiwork of intelligent life. Nowhere but on Earth had they found the signature of biological systems, past or present. Life, it seemed, was precious and rare, and the universe a lonelier place than many had once believed. Every indirect evidence, every reasoned analysis, said that Memphis might find a Venus, a Jupiter, if they were lucky a Mars or Titan, but no lush garden worlds, no alien Earth.
“We’ll go to Tau Ceti with a pocketful of options,” said the lecturer, “and write our own story as we go. If we find an interesting planet with an unfriendly climate, we might establish a research colony of a few hundred volunteers and then continue on. If the parameters are marginal, we could found a terraforming colony of up to a thousand inhabitants before leaving.
“And if they’re downright agreeable, we’ll likely all go down, keeping Memphis in orbit as a lifeboat for a few dozen years until a new generation comes along to carry on where we left off. Because you can be sure that some of them will inherit our wanderlust, and you can be just as sure they’ll think we’re as stuffy and settled as some of us consider our parents.” Laughter rippled through the room, self-knowing. “And they’ll have us as proof that it can be done. Won’t that be a moment to remember, when the first colony sends out its own colony ship?”
The question was answered by a swell of appreciative applause. Waiting it out, the lecturer smiled, nodded acknowledgment, and gave the thumb-in-fist salute. In a heart’s breath, the applause doubled, and scattered members of the audience came to their feet.
“I want to leave you with the best new picture of Tau Ceti, which we received from Einstein just this morning,” the lecturer continued as the applause faded. Above him, the Publook offered a dramatic image of a ghostly yellow star matted with the shadowy disk of one of its orbiting worlds.
“The best so far,” he said, as the applause picked up again, at first scattered, growing as he continued into an almost tribal drumming of hands. “But there’ll be better, and they’ll come from us. No one will know Tau Ceti better than we will.
“I’m glad for the pictures Starwatch feeds us. It’s amazing what additive digitizers and enhancers can do with a few photons captured ten light-years from their origin.”