The Lord Pilot whistled. "Stars above, how did they manage to make that mistake -"
Then the Lord Pilot stopped abruptly.
"Alderson's Coupling Constant," Akon echoed. "That's the... coupling between Alderson interactions and the..."
"Between Alderson interactions and the nuclear strong force," the Lord Pilot said. He was beginning to smile, rather grimly. "It was a free parameter in the standard model, and so had to be established experimentally. But because the interaction is so incredibly... weak... they had to build an enormous Alderson generator to find the value. The size of a very small moon, just to give us that one number.
Definitely not something you could check at home. That's the story in the physics textbooks, my lords, my lady."
The Master of Fandom frowned. "You're saying... the physicists faked the result in order to... fund a huge project...?" He looked puzzled.
"No," the Lord Pilot said. "Not for the love of power. Engineer, the Babyeater value should be testable using our own ship's Alderson drive, if the coupling constant is that strong. This you have done?"
The Ship's Engineer nodded. "The Babyeater value is correct, my lord."
The Ship's Engineer was pale. The Lord Pilot was clenching his jaw into a sardonic grin.
"Please explain," Akon said. "Is the universe going to end in another billion years, or something?
Because if so, the issue can wait -"
"My lord," the Ship's Confessor said, "suppose the laws of physics in our universe had been such that the ancient Greeks could invent the equivalent of nuclear weapons from materials just lying around.
Imagine the laws of physics had permitted a way to destroy whole countries with no more difficulty than mixing gunpowder. History would have looked quite different, would it not?"
Akon nodded, puzzled. "Well, yes," Akon said. "It would have been shorter."
"Aren't we lucky that physics didn't happen to turn out that way, my lord? That in our own time, the laws of physics don't permit cheap, irresistable superweapons?"
Akon furrowed his brow -
"But my lord," said the Ship's Confessor, "do we really know what we think we know? What different evidence would we see, if things were otherwise? After all - if you happened to be a physicist, and you happened to notice an easy way to wreak enormous destruction using off-the-shelf hardware - would
you run out and tell you?"
"No," Akon said. A sinking feeling was dawning in the pit of his stomach. "You would try to conceal the discovery, and create a cover story that discouraged anyone else from looking there."
The Lord Pilot emitted a bark that was half laughter, and half something much darker. "It was perfect.
I'm a Lord Pilot and I never suspected until now."
"So?" Akon said. "What is it, actually?"
"Um," the Ship's Engineer said. "Well... basically... to skip over the technical details..."
The Ship's Engineer drew a breath.
"Any ship with a medium-sized Alderson drive can make a star go supernova."
Silence.
"Which might seem like bad news in general," the Lord Pilot said, "but from our perspective, right here, right now, it's just what we need. A mere nova wouldn't do it. But blowing up the whole star - "
He gave that bitter bark of laughter, again. "No star, no starlines. We can make the main star of this system go supernova - not the white dwarf, the companion. And then the Superhappies won't be able to get to us. That is, they won't be able to get to the human starline network. We will be dead. If you care about tiny irrelevant details like that." The Lord Pilot looked around the Conference Table. " Do you care? The correct answer is no, by the way."
"I care," the Lady Sensory said softly. "I care a whole lot. But..." She folded her hands atop the table and bowed her head.
There were nods from around the Table.
The Lord Pilot looked at the Ship's Engineer. "How long will it take for you to modify the ship's Alderson Drive -"
"It's done," said the Ship's Engineer. "But... we should, um, wait until the Superhappies are gone, so they don't detect us doing it."
The Lord Pilot nodded. "Sounds like a plan. Well, that's a relief. And here I thought the whole human race was doomed, instead of just us." He looked inquiringly at Akon. "My lord?"
Akon rested his head in his hands, suddenly feeling more weary than he had ever felt in his life. From across the table, the Confessor watched him - or so it seemed; the hood was turned in his direction, at any rate.
I told you so, the Confessor did not say.
"There is a certain problem with your plan," Akon said.
"Such as?" the Lord Pilot said.
"You've forgotten something," Akon said. "Something terribly important. Something you once swore you would protect."
Puzzled faces looked at him.
"If you say something bloody ridiculous like 'the safety of the ship' -" said the Lord Pilot.
The Lady Sensory gasped. "Oh, no," she murmured. "Oh, no. The Babyeater children."
The Lord Pilot looked like he had been punched in the stomach. The grim smiles that had begun to
spread around the table were replaced with horror.
"Yes," Akon said. He looked away from the Conference Table. He didn't want to see the reactions.
"The Superhappies wouldn't be able to get to us. And they couldn't get to the Babyeaters either.
Neither could we. So the Babyeaters would go on eating their own children indefinitely. And the
children would go on dying over days in their parents' stomachs. Indefinitely. Is the human race worth that?"
Akon looked back at the Table, just once. The Xenopsychologist looked sick, tears were running down the Master's face, and the Lord Pilot looked like he were being slowly torn in half. The Lord
Programmer looked abstracted, the Lady Sensory was covering her face with her hands. (And the
Confessor's face still lay in shadow, beneath the silver hood.)
Akon closed his eyes. "The Superhappies will transform us into something not human," Akon said.
"No, let's be frank. Something less than human. But not all that much less than human. We'll still have art, and stories, and love. I've gone entire hours without being in pain, and on the whole, it wasn't that bad an experience -" The words were sticking in his throat, along with a terrible fear. "Well.
Anyway. If remaining whole is that important to us - we have the option. It's just a question of whether we're willing to pay the price. Sacrifice the Babyeater children -"
They're a lot like human children, really.
"- to save humanity."
Someone in the darkness was screaming, a thin choked wail that sounded like nothing Akon had ever
heard or wanted to hear. Akon thought it might be the Lord Pilot, or the Master of Fandom, or maybe the Ship's Engineer. He didn't open his eyes to find out.
There was a chime.
"In-c-c-coming c-call from the Super Happy," the Lady Sensory spit out the words like acid, "ship, my lord."
Akon opened his eyes, and felt, somehow, that he was still in darkness.
"Receive," Akon said.
The Lady 3rd Kiritsugu appeared before him. Her eyes widened once, as she took in his appearance, but she said nothing.
That's right, my lady, I don't look super happy.
"Humankind, we must have your answer," she said simply.
The Lord Administrator pinched the bridge of his nose, and rubbed his eyes. Absurd, that one human being should have to answer a question like that. He wanted to foist off the decision on a committee, a majority vote of the ship, a market - something that wouldn't demand that anyone accept full