Factoring Humanity (34 page)

But—

But—

I can’t do this,
he thought.
I can’t.

He turned around and headed back up the curving hallway.

Kyle finished dictating his report and headed over to The Water Hole; he’d arranged to meet Stone Bentley there, with Stone coming directly from a meeting he’d had at the Royal Ontario Museum.

“You look in a good mood,” said Stone as Kyle sat down opposite him.

Kyle grinned. “I feel better than I have for ages. My daughter has realized she was wrong.”

Stone lifted his eyebrows. “That’s wonderful!”

“Isn’t it, though? It’ll be my birthday in a few weeks—I couldn’t ask for a better present.”

A server arrived.

“A glass of red wine,” said Kyle. Stone already had a mug of beer in front of him.

The server scurried away.

“I want to thank you, Stone,” said Kyle. “I don’t know if I could have gotten through this without you.” Stone said nothing, so Kyle went on. “Sometimes it’s not easy being a man—people tend to assume we’re guilty, I guess. Anyway, your support meant a lot to me. Knowing that you’d gone through something a bit similar, and survived it, gave me—I don’t know, I guess ‘hope’ is the right word.”

The server reappeared, depositing Kyle’s wineglass. Kyle nodded thanks at the young woman, then lifted his drink. “To us—a pair of survivors.”

After a moment, Stone lifted his beer and allowed Kyle to clink his glass against the mug. But Stone did not take a sip. He lowered his mug back to the tabletop and looked off in the distance.

“I did it,” he said softly.

Kyle wasn’t following. “Sorry?”

Stone looked at Kyle. “I did it . . . that girl, five years ago. I did harass her.” He held Kyle’s gaze for a few seconds, apparently searching for a reaction, then looked back down at the tablecloth.

“But the student recanted,” said Kyle.

Stone made an almost imperceptible nod. “She knew she’d lost the fight and she was getting the cold shoulder from a lot of other male faculty members. She thought it would help.” He did take a gulp of his beer now. “She transferred to York.” He shrugged a little. “Fresh start.”

Kyle didn’t know what to say. He looked around the bar for a time.

“I didn’t—” said Stone. “I know this doesn’t excuse it, but I was going through a bad time. Denise and I were getting a divorce. I—” He stopped. “It was a stupid thing to do.”

Kyle exhaled. “You spent all this time listening to me go on about my troubles with Becky.”

Stone shrugged again. “I thought you were guilty.”

Kyle’s voice took on a sharp edge. “I told you I wasn’t.”

“I know, I know. But if you
were
guilty, well, then you were a worse bastard than me, see? You’re an okay guy, Kyle—I figured if a guy like you could do something that bad, well, then maybe it excused what I did a bit. Just something that sometimes happens, you know?”

“Christ, Stone.”

“I know. But I won’t ever do it again.”

“Recidivism—”

“No. No, I’m different now. I don’t know what it is, but I’ve changed. Something in me has changed.” Stone reached into his pocket, pulled out his SmartCash card. “Look, I’m sure you don’t want to see me anymore. I’m glad it worked out between you and your daughter. Really, I am.” He rose to his feet.

“No,” said Kyle. “Stay.”

Stone hesitated for a few moments. “You sure?”

Kyle nodded. “I’m sure.”

On Tuesday morning, Heather was struggling up the steps to Mullin Hall, her arms full of books she wanted to have handy at Kyle’s lab for tomorrow’s press conference. The humidity was mercifully low today, and the sky overhead was a pristine cerulean bowl.

Just in front of her was a familiar-looking broad back wearing a Varsity Blues jacket with the name “Kolmex” emblazoned on it—the same dumb lug who had let the door to Sid Smith slam in Heather and Paul’s faces two weeks ago.

She thought about calling out to him, but to her astonishment, when he reached the door, he stopped, looked around to see if anyone was coming, caught sight of Heather, opened the door and held it for her.

“Thank you,” she said as she passed the fellow.

He smiled at her. “My pleasure. Have a nice day.”

The funny thing, Heather thought, was he sounded like he really meant it.

41

We Are Not Alone.

It was the title of the book that had first raised public awareness about the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. The book, by Walter Sullivan, former science editor of
The New York Times,
was published in 1964.

Back then, it had been a bold assertion, based on theory and conjecture but no actual evidence—there was not a scintilla of proof that we really weren’t alone in the universe.

Humanity went about its business much as it always had. The Vietnam War continued, as did apartheid. Rates of murder and other violent crimes continued to rise.

We Are Not Alone.

The slogan was revived again for the release of Steven Spielberg’s film
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
in 1977. The public freely embraced the idea of life in the universe, but still there was no real evidence, and humanity continued along as it always had. The Gulf War happened, and so did the massacre in Tiananmen Square.

We Are Not Alone.

The words received new currency in 1996 when the first compelling evidence of life off Earth was unveiled: a meteorite from Mars that had conked no one on the head in the Antarctic. Extraterrestrial life was now more than just the stuff of dreams. Nonetheless, humanity behaved as usual. Terrorists blew up buildings and airplanes; “ethnic cleansings” continued unabated.

We Are Not Alone.

The New York Times,
bringing it full circle, used that headline in 144-point type on the front page of the July 25, 2007, edition—the day the first public announcement of the receipt of radio signals from Alpha Centauri was made. We knew for a fact that life—intelligent life—existed elsewhere. And yet, humanity’s ways did not change. The Colombian War happened, and on July 4, 2009, the Klan massacred two thousand African Americans across four states in a single night.

But then, just over ten years after the signals were first received, a different thought echoed through the fourspace overmind and percolated down into the threespace realm of its individual extensions.

I
Am Not Alone.

And things
did
change.

“Journalists are often accused of reporting only bad news,” said Greg McGregor, anchoring the Newsworld telecast from Calgary on Tuesday evening.

Kyle and Heather sat on their living-room couch, his arm around her shoulders, watching.

“Well,” continued McGregor, “if you saw our newscast from the top this evening, you’ll have noted that today we had nothing but good news to report. Tensions have eased in the Middle East—as recently as a week ago, U.S. secretary of state Bolland was predicting another outbreak of war there, but today, for the second day in a row, the cease-fire remains unbroken.

“Here in Canada, a new Angus Reid instant opinion poll shows that eighty-seven percent of Québecois want to remain part of Canada—a twenty-four-percent increase over the response to the same question just one month ago.

“There have been no murders reported in Canada for the past twenty-four hours. No rapes, either. Statistics from the United States and the European Community seem similar.

“In eighteen years on the job, this reporter has never seen such a run of really
nice
news. It’s been a pleasure being able to share it all with you.” He tipped his head, as he did each night, and gave his standard sign-off: “And another day passes into history. Good night, Canada.”

The ending theme music began to play. Kyle picked up the remote and clicked the TV off.

“It
is
nice, isn’t it?” said Kyle, leaning back in the couch. “You know, I’ve noticed it myself. People giving up seats on the subway, helping others, and just being polite. It must be something in the air.”

Heather shook her head. “No, it’s not something in the air—it’s something in
space.”

“Pardon?” said Kyle.

“Don’t you see? Something completely new has happened. The overmind knows that it’s not alone. I told you: contact has been made between the human overmind and the overmind of Alpha Centauri. And the human overmind is experiencing something it’s never experienced before.”

“Astonishment, yes. You said that.”

“No, no, no. Not astonishment; not anymore. It’s experiencing something else, something entirely new to it.” Heather looked at her husband. “Empathy! Until now, our overmind had been utterly incapable of empathy; there simply was no one else for it to identify with, no one else whose situation, feelings, or desires it could come to understand. Since the dawn of consciousness, it has existed in absolute isolation. But now it’s touching and being touched by another overmind, and suddenly it understands something other than selfishness. And since the overmind understands that, all of us—all the extensions of that mind—suddenly understand it, too, in a deeper, more fundamental way than we’ve ever understood it before.”

Kyle considered. “Empathy, eh?” He drew his mouth into a frown. “Cheetah kept asking about things that demonstrated man’s inhumanity to man. He said it seemed to be a test—and wanted to know who was administering the test. I guess the answer was that
we
were—we, the human collective, trying to understand, trying to make sense of it all.”

“But we
couldn’t,”
said Heather. “We were incapable of true, sustained empathy. But now that we’re in contact with another overmind, we understand what it means to acknowledge and accept the other. What man could rape a woman if he really put himself in her place? The fundamental of war has always been dehumanizing the enemy, seeing him as a soulless animal. But who could go to war knowing that the other guy is a parent, a spouse, a child? Knowing that he or she is simply trying to get through life, just like you are?
Empathy!”

“Hmm,” said Kyle. “I guess Greg McGregor is going to be reporting news like that every night from now on. Oh, there’ll still be hurricanes and floods—but there will also be more people pitching in to help out whenever something like that happens.” He paused, considering. “Do you suppose this is first contact for the Centaurs, too? Alpha Centauri is the closest star to the sun, but the reverse is also true—there’s no bright star closer to Alpha C than Sol. Surely we’re their first contact, too.”

“Maybe,” said Heather. “Or maybe the Centaurs aren’t native to Alpha Centauri. Maybe they’re from somewhere else, and have made it only as far as Alpha Centauri in their expansion. Maybe there already was life on a planet of Alpha Centauri, and the two races have already made friends. There could be a galactic overmind forming, expanding outward from whatever world first acquired space flight.”

Kyle thought about this. “Darn clever, these Centaurs,” he said.

“How do you mean?”

“They get us to be empathetic as a race before they arrive in the flesh.” He paused. “Unless, of course, they’re coming to take us over and want to soften us up first.”

Heather shook her head. She had been there when the contact had been made; she
knew.
“No, it can’t be that. First, of course, anybody who has interstellar flight could surely wipe this planet clean of life from orbit without ever worrying about whether we’d been ‘softened up’ or not. And second, now that the two overminds are in contact, real communication will doubtless ensue—and we both know that there are no secrets in psychospace.”

Kyle nodded.

Heather looked at him, then: “We should get to bed. Tomorrow’s a big day, with the press conference and all.”

“Things are going to change,” said Kyle. “The world . . .”

Heather smiled as she reflected on the peace she’d made with her own past, on the peace Kyle had made with his, and on all the wonders that they’d seen. “The world,” she said, “will be a better place.” But then her smile grew mischievous. “Still,” she said, a twinkle in her eye, “let’s take full advantage of our last night of real privacy.” She took Kyle’s hand and led him upstairs.

Epilogue

Two Years Later: September 12, 2019

The spaceship had been detected four months ago. Until then, its fusion exhaust had been lost in the glare of Alpha Centauri, now some 4.3 light-years behind it. The exhaust was pointed directly at Earth: the ship was braking, tail-first. It had apparently accelerated away from Alpha Centauri for six years and had now been decelerating for another six.

And today, at long last, it would reach its destination.

It was sad, in a way; it was now fifty years since Neil Armstrong first set foot upon the Moon, but Earth had no crewed spaceships that could go even that far anymore—even the knowledge that there was life elsewhere hadn’t revitalized the space program. Although the
Ptolemy
probe in the outer solar system had managed to send back a few grainy shots of the alien ship, humanity’s first clear look at it would be when it arrived at Earth.

No one was quite sure what would happen next. Would the aliens take up orbit around the planet? Or would they land somewhere—and if so, where? Were there indeed any aliens on board, or was the ship just an automated scout?

At last the ship did enter orbit around Earth. It was a fragile-looking affair, almost a kilometer long—clearly meant only for space travel. All six of the United States’s space shuttles had been launched before the arrival, one a day for the last six days. And two Japanese shuttles, plus three European ones and one from Iran had gone up as well; more human beings were now in orbit around Earth than ever before.