Federation World (4 page)

INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE IRRESPONSIBLE AND UNDESIRABLE ELEMENT ARE SIMPLE. THEY WILL NOT CAUSE PHYSICAL OR MENTAL HARM TO NON-CITIZENS REMAINING PERMANENTLY OR TEMPORARILY ON EARTH. THIS INSTRUCTION WILL BE ENFORCED NON-VIOLENTLY UNTIL THE POST-EXODUS SITUATION STABILIZES ITSELF. NON-CITIZENS, DEPENDING ON THEIR ABILITIES AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PROFILES, WILL RECEIVE MORE COMPLEX INSTRUCTIONS. INSTRUCTIONS TO RESPONSIBLE NON-CITIZENS WILL NOT BE ENFORCED.

Earth would not be a pleasant place, Martin thought, but it would not be actively unpleasant if the responsible non-Citizens did as they were told. And the examiner seemed to be suggesting that they would do as they were told willingly because they would realize that it was for their own good. Whereas on the new world...

He said, "I can't quite believe... Is there something you're not telling me about the new planet?"

IS FEAR OF ULTIMATE BOREDOM THE PRINCIPAL REASON FOR YOUR INABILITY TO ACCEPT .THE NEW LIFE WE ARE OFFERING YOU?

"I-I suppose so."

SENSOR CORROBORATES. CANDIDATE IS UNSUITABLE FOR CITIZENSHIP. PASS EITHER SIDE AND GO THROUGH THE DOOR FACING YOU.

HE stumbled as he went through the door. There was a sudden feeling of vertigo, and he instinctively put out his arms to keep his balance. It was a small room for the number of people in it, and for a moment he wondered if he was in a descending elevator.

"You'll gel used to it in a moment," said the woman he had met earlier. Her face was pale, as if she had recently received some kind of shock, but her smile was reassuring and sympathetic. Apart from her there were six other people in the room, three women and three men of different ages and nationalities, and some of them smiled as well. They were all standing in front of the window, but they moved aside to let Martin see the view.

At first glance the stretch of harshly-lit, stony, and obviously airless ground made him think that he was on the moon-the low gravity would have explained his difficulty in keeping balance. But it was not the moon, he saw as soon as he raised his eyes above the horizon.

The sky blazed with stars-singly, in clusters, and in great, swirling, jeweled eddies-and so dense was the star field that it was difficult to find even a tiny part of the sky which was completely dark. Except, that was, in one area high overhead where there hung an enormous, black, featureless shape which looked at least twenty times larger than the disk of the full moon seen from Earth.

It was the shape of the Federation symbol.

Martin became aware slowly that his pulse was hammering loudly in his ears, and that he had been looking at the sky with such an intensity of wonder that he had forgotten to breathe. He took a ragged breath and said, "Is-is it some kind of black hole?"

NEGATIVE.

Because the room was tit only by that glorious starlight, he had not noticed the examiner until the word appeared white on a black screen. There was no sensor plate on top, and this examiner, Martin thought, was not fooling around with colored screens and subtle psychological pressures. He knew that his questions here would be answered simply and directly.

Unless they were forestalled...

THIS IS THE FEDERATION WORLD.

... or he began to see the answers for himself.

IT IS A HOLLOW BODY FABRICATED FROM MATERIAL WHICH COMPRISED THE PLANETS OF THIS AND MANY OTHER STAR SYSTEMS. IT CONTAINS THE INTELLIGENT BEINGS OF NEARLY TWO HUNDRED DIFFERENT SPECIES WHO ARE THE CITIZENS OF THE FEDERATION OF GALACTIC SENTIENTS. THIS WORLD, WHICH AMONG EARTH SCIENTISTS WOULD BE CALLED A MODIFIED DYSON SPHERE, ENCLOSES THE SYSTEM'S SUN AND USES ITS OUTPUT FOR LIGHT. HEAT. AND POWER FOR ITS SOIL SYNTHESIZERS, ATMOSPHERE PRODUCTION AND WEATHER CONTROL MACHINERY, GENERAL FABRICATION, AND FOOD SUPPLY

THE DIAMETER OF THE FEDERATION WORLD IS IN EXCESS OF TWO HUNDRED AND EIGHTY MILLION MILES AND IT HAS A USABLE SURFACE AREA, INCLUDING THE CONICAL EXTENSIONS AT THE POLES, OF NEARLY TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY QUADRILLION SQUARE MILES, OR WELL OVER ONE BILLION TIMES THE SURFACE AREA OF EARTH.

THE PROJECTED FUTURE POPULATIONS OF ALL THE PRESENT MEMBERS OF THE FEDERATION, TOGETHER WITH THOSE OF THE HUNDREDS OF AS YET UNDISCOVERED INTELLIGENT SPECIES WHO HAVE NOT YET BEEN INVITED TO JOIN. WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO FULLY POPULATE THIS WORLD.

The words, diagrams, and sharply detailed pictures flashed onto the screen, describing the Federation World, its topography, atmospheres, temperature and weather control machinery, and the light neutralizer fields which provided night and day for those species which needed them. It rotated ponderously and with seeming slowness, furnishing maximum gravity in the equatorial areas for those Citizens who had come from high-gee planets, and a diminishing artificial gravity approaching the poles where the surface was stepped and terraced so that the centrifugal force would be at right angles to the ground.

Citizens wishing to make contact with those of another species used ultralong-range aircraft or intra-plane-tary spaceships. Such contacts were encouraged, but only if they did not involve the risk of individual or species invasion of privacy. So touchy were some of the cultures that the stratosphere of the entire Federation World had been rendered opaque so that Citizens would not be able to watch each other through telescopes by looking upward and across their hollow superplanet.

The vast structure was a superthin eggshell of metal which was ultra-hard and fantastically dense, and the soils and atmospheres covering its inner surface were synthetic and produced when population additions required them. Where the atmospheres of adjoining species were mutually toxic, one-hundred-mile-high walls, transparent in the higher altitudes so as not to interfere with the sunlight, separated the two areas. These were similar to the walls which encircled the five-hundred-mile entry ports, positioned at the points of the conical polar extensions, to keep the atmosphere from being lost into extraplanetary space.

In the gravity-free polar areas were the great, thou-sand-mile-square tracts of bare metal on which were built the atmosphere and soil synthesizers, the matter transmitter units, searchship building and maintenance docks, and the power sources for the long-range projectors which could turn aside or destroy any astronomical body large enough to endanger the giant sphere by collision.

All at once the awful immensity of the Federation World, the incredibly high level of knowledge which had created and maintained it, and the inutterable pettiness of his suspicions made Martin want to run away and hide
 
himself. He felt like an aboriginal grasshut dweller suddenly confronted with a block of skyscraper offices and
 
Rush-hour traffic.

"You are inviting us to join you," he said numbly, "and you built that!"

WE DID NOT BUILD THE FEDERATION WORLD; NOR WOULD WE BE CAPABLE OF DOING SO IN THE FORESEEABLE FUTURE. PLEASE TURN AROUND AND REGARD ME.

He turned quickly. The others, no doubt because they had already had this experience, turned more slowly. The wall on his right had become transparent, or maybe it was a wall-sized television screen showing a creature, lying or perhaps standing surrounded by a complex control desk. It was vaguely crablike, with too many legs; and appendages; the body was covered by warty excrescences and fleshy, frondlike growths. The single eye was wide and bulging, like a transparent sausage with two independently moving pupils. He had seen a pictoral representation of one of these beings in the reception area of the induction center, but this entity bore about as much resemblance to the picture as a real animal did to a cute cartoon treatment by Disney.

NO DOUBT YOU FIND ME AS VISUALLY REPULSIVE -AS I DO YOU.
 
THE FEELING DIMINISHES AFTER REPEATED CONTACT BUT TO ANSWER THE QUESTION YOU WERE ABOUT TO ASK. THE FED-WORLD WAS THE ULTIMATE PROJECT, IN PURELY PHYSICAL TERMS, OF AN INCREDIBLY ANCIENT RACE WHICH NO LONGER DWELLS ALTHOUGH THEY STILL MAKE NON-PHYSICAL CONTACT EVERY FEW CENTURIES IN WE NEED ASSISTANCE OR ADVICE. THE PROBABILITY IS THAT THEY HAVE EVOLVED TO A STAGE WHERE PHYSICAL
  
EXISTENCE IS NO LONGER A REQUIREMENT. THEY ARE THE BUILDERS.

MY RACE, WHICH WAS THEN AND STILL REMAINS THE MOST HIGHLY ADVANCED OF THOSE ENCOUNTERED IN THE GALAXY, WAS AMONG THE FIRST TO BE INVITED TO JOIN THE FEDERATION WORLD. WE ALSO HAD OUR SHARE OF RESTLESS AND IMPATIENT ENTITIES WHO WERE NOT SURE THAT THE SAFE. PROTECTED, AND INFINITELY SPACIOUS FEDERATION WORLD WAS FOR THEM. THESE PEOPLE WERE SELECTED AND TRAINED BY THE BUILDERS TO DO THE RELATIVELY MENIAL TASKS. ON EARTH YOU WOULD CALL US ERRAND BOYS, ODD-JOB MEN, SERVANTS. WE WERE TAUGHT HOW TO USE AND MAINTAIN THIS WORLD'S EQUIPMENT. OTHER SPECIES COMMUNICATION AND ASSESSMENT TECHNIQUES, AND THE CONSTRUCTION AND OPERATION OF HYPERSHIPS FOR THE CONTINUING SEARCH PROGRAM.

WE FOUND THAT IN EVERY SPECIES SO FAR INVITED TO JOIN THE FEDERATION THERE WERE INVARIABLY A SMALL NUMBER WHO, INTELLECTUALLY OR EMOTIONALLY. COULD NOT ACCEPT THE INVITATION. THESE ENTITIES, THE NON-CITIZENS. CONTINUE TO JOIN US AND ASSIST IN PERFORMING THE TASKS SET BY THE BUILDERS.

One of the being's appendages rose ponderously to indicate the dense, shining star field and the pointed, ovoid silhouette that was the great, single world of the Federation of Galactic Sentients, and it went on, OUR PRINCIPAL TASK IS TO SEEK OUT THE INTELLIGENT RACES OF THE GALAXY AND BRING THEM INTO THE SECURITY AND FREEDOM OF THE WORLD THAT THE BUILDERS HAVE PROVIDED FOR THEM, BEFORE THEY PERISH IN THEIR OWN PLANETARY EFFLUVIA OR SOME OTHER CATASTROPHE BEFALLS THEM.

AFTER SUITABLE TRAINING, YOUR TASKS WILL INCLUDE ASSISTING US WITH SEARCHSHIP OPERATIONS AND CANDIDATE ASSESSMENT, WORK WHICH, CONSIDERING YOUR PRESENT STAGE OF DEVELOPMENT, WILL TAX YOUR ABILITIES TO THE FULL. TO AID YOU THERE ARE THE FACILITIES OF THE FEDERATION MEDICAL ESTABLISHMENTS WHICH WILL EXTEND YOUR LIFE SPAN AND PHYSICAL CAPABILITIES SO THAT YOUR LENGTHY TRAINING CAN BE PUT TO EFFECTIVE USE. IF AT ANY TIME YOUR WORK AS A NON-CITIZEN BECOMES TOO ONEROUS. YOU WILL BE GRANTED FEDERATION CITIZENSHIP AS A RIGHT.

LIFE IN THE FEDERATION WORLD IS MORE LEISURELY. ITS PURPOSE WAS AND IS TO BRING TOGETHER ALL THE INTELLIGENT RACES OF THE GALAXY AND LET THEM INTERMINGLE AND GROW SO THAT, IN THE FAR FUTURE, THE PURPOSE OF THE BUILDERS WILL COME TO FRUITION. THIS PURPOSE IS PRESENTLY INCOMPREHENSIBLE TO US, BUT WE HAVE BEEN TOLD THAT THE COMBINED INTELLIGENCE AND POTENTIAL OF THESE FUTURE FEDERATION CITIZENS WILL FAR SURPASS ANYTHING ACHIEVABLE BY EVEN THE BUILDERS. IT WILL BE A SLOW, NATURAL PROCESS, HOWEVER, KEPT FREE OF ANY KIND OF FORCE OR COERCION.

IN THE MEANTIME WE SHALL BE BUSY SEEKING OUT AND ADDING RACES TO THE FEDERATION, ENSURING ITS SAFETY FROM NATURAL THREATS FROM WITHOUT AND THE POISON OF UNDESIRABLES FROM WITHIN. YOUR LIFE FROM NOW ON WILL BE VERY BUSY, PERHAPS EXACTING. BUT NOT LONELY AS THE SERVANTS AND PROTECTORS OF THE FEDERATION, YOU WILL .COOPERATE CLOSELY WITH AND LEARN TO UNDERSTAND ENTITIES OF MANY DIFFERENT SPECIES. LONG BEFORE THE CITIZENS ARE READY TO DO SO. BECAUSE WE HAVE A VERY IMPORTANT QUALITY IN COMMON - THE QUALITY WHICH OUR SYSTEM OF EXAMINERS WAS PRIMARILY DESIGNED TO UNCOVER.

For a few moments the screen remained blank, and ' Martin looked quickly at the other people in the room. The woman he had met earlier smiled faintly and said, "They do say that it is better to start a job at the bottom ..." The others seemed to be looking somewhere deep within themselves and were silent.

He returned his attention to the monstrous, crablike being. Was it his imagination or was there really a glint of amusement in that great, bulging sausage of an eye as once more the non-Citizen's words were projected onto the screen.

CONGRATULATIONS. YOU HAVE BEEN EXAMINED AND HAVE BEEN FOUND UNSUITABLE FOR CITIZENSHIP IN THE FEDERATION OF GALACTIC SENTIENTS. PREPARE YOURSELVES FOR IMMEDIATE TRANSFER TO THE EARTH-HUMAN PRELIMINARY TRAINING SCHOOL ON FOMALHAUT THREE.

BY the time they had reached the final stages of their training on Fomalhaut Three they were eleven Earth-years older and, thanks to the advanced medical science available, they looked and felt at least that much younger. Several times Martin had asked by how much their life spans had been extended, but that was one of the questions which their supervisor refused to answer, saying that if they did not complete their training to its satisfaction they were likely to end their lives prematurely in some stupid and avoidable accident, so that giving them information regarding their probable life expectancies would serve no useful purpose.