The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 25 (Mammoth Books) (88 page)

The humans would never hear of the millions who had died so the survivors could live through a limitless series of active and dormant periods. They would learn the cost when they counted their own dead.

But what would happen if their visitors received a message warning them of the dangers? Would it have any effect? Would they ignore it and stumble into the same wilderness their predecessors had entered?

For Mansita Jano, the mere possibility Revutev Mavarka might send such a message proved they should stop “chattering” and defend themselves.

“We have no idea what such a warning message might do,” Mansita Jano said. “Its very existence would create an unpredictable situation that could generate endless debate – endless turbulence! – within our own society. By now the humans have received the first messages informing them of our existence. By now, every little group like these Betzino-Resdell adventurers could have launched a visitor in our direction. How will we treat them when we know they’re emissaries from a society that has been warned?”

“I started working on that issue as soon as I finished viewing the recording,” Varosa Uman said. “I advised the Integrators I want to form a study committee and they’ve given me the names of ten candidates.”

“And when they’ve finished their studies, they’ll give you the only conclusion anyone can give you. We’ll have fifty visitors orbiting the planet and we’ll still be staring at the sky arguing about a list loaded with bad choices.”

The Integrators never used a visual representation when they communicated with their creators. They were machines. You must never forget they were only machines. Varosa Uman usually turned toward her biggest window and looked out at the sea when she talked to them.

“I think you chose me because of my position on the Adventurer personality scale,” Varosa Uman said. “You felt I would understand an Adventurer better than someone with a personality closer to the mean. Is that a reasonable speculation?”

“You were chosen according to the established criteria for your assignment.”

“And I can’t look at the criteria because you’ve blocked access.”

“That is one of the rules in the procedure for overseeing visitations. Access to that information is blocked until the visitation crisis has been resolved.”

“Are you obeying the original rules? Or have they been modified here and there over the last three thousand years?”

“There have been no modifications.”

“So why can’t I just talk to someone who remembers what the original rules were?”

“You are advised not to do that. We would have to replace you. You will do a more effective job if you operate without that knowledge.”

“Twelve percent of the population have Adventurer personality structures. They’re a sizable minority. They tend to be popular and influential. I can’t ignore their feelings. Does my own personality structure help me balance all the relevant factors?”

“It could. We are only machines, Overseer. We can assign numerical weights to emotions. We cannot feel the emotions ourselves.”

Varosa Uman stood up. A high, almost invisible dot had folded its wings against its side and turned into a lethal fury plummeting toward the waves. She adjusted her eyes to ten power and watched hard talons drive into a sea animal that had wandered into the wrong area.

“I’m going to let the study committee do its work. But I have to conclude Mansita Jano is correct. We can’t let Revutev Mavarka send a warning message. I can feel the tensions he’s creating just by threatening to do it. But we can’t just arrest him. And we can’t just isolate him, either. The Adventurer community might be small but it could become dangerously angry if we took that kind of action against one of the most popular figures in the community while he’s still doing things most Adventurers consider harmless rule-bending.”

“Have you developed an alternative?”

“The best solution would be a victory for the Trans Cultural visitation. Arranged so it looked like they won on their own.”

She turned away from the ocean. “I’ll need two people with expertise in war fighting tactics. I think two should be the right number. I’ll need a survey of all the military planning resources you can give me.”

The Integrators had been the primary solution to the conflicts created by the cornucopia contained in the Message. The Integrators managed the technology that produced all the wonders the Message offered. Every individual on the planet could receive all the goods and services a properly modified serene could desire merely by asking, without any of the effort previous generations had categorized as “work”.

But who would select the people who would oversee the Integrators? Why the Integrators, of course. The Integrators selected the Overseers. And obeyed the orders of the people they had appointed.

The system worked. It had worked for three thousand years. Could it last forever? Could anything last forever?

The winged toad that made the contact had a larger wingspan and a brighter set of feathers than the creature that had approached Betzino-Resdell. Trans Cultural greeted it with its standard rebuff.

“I can only establish contacts with entities that represent significant concentrations of intellectual and governmental authority.”

“This is an extra-channel contact – an unofficial contact by a party associated with the entity who has already established communications. Does your programming allow for that kind of contact?”

Trans Cultural paused for 3.6 seconds while it searched its files and evaluated the terms it had been given.

“How do I know you are associated with that entity?”

“I can’t offer you any proof. You must evaluate my proposal on its merits. I can provide you with aid that could give you a decisive victory in your conflict with Betzino-Resdell.”

“Please wait . . . Why are you offering to do this?”

“Your conflict is creating disruptions in certain balances in our society. I can’t describe the balances at present. But we share your concern about contacts between unrepresentative entities.”

“Please continue.”

Varosa Uman’s instructions to Mansita Jano had been a flawless example of the kind of carefully balanced constraints that always exasperated her when somebody dropped them on her. Do this without doing that. Do that without doing this.

Betzino-Resdell had to be neutralized. Revutev Mavarka’s link to the humans had to be severed. But Mansita Jano must arrange things so the second visitor collapsed before Revutev Mavarka realized it was happening – before Revutev Mavarka had time to do something foolish. And it should all happen, of course, without any visible help from anyone officially responsible for the response to the Visitation.

“We could have avoided all this,” Mansita Jano had said, “if the Message had been transmitted the day after Revutev Mavarka approached the second visitor. I presume everyone involved in all this extended decision-making realizes that.”

“The Message will be transmitted to the Trans Cultural device as soon as Betzino-Resdell is neutralized.”

“You’ve made a firm decision? There are no unstated qualifications?”

“The Message will be transmitted as soon as Betzino-Resdell is neutralized. My primary concern is the unpredictability of the humans. We don’t know how they’ll respond to an overt attack on one of their emissaries – even an emissary that appears to be as poorly connected as the Betzino-Resdell jumble.”

“If I were in your position, Overseer, I would have Revutev Mavarka arrested right now. I will do my best. But he’s just as unpredictable as our visitors. He isn’t just a charming rogue. He isn’t offering us a little harmless flirtation with our vestigial appetites for Adventure.”

It was the most explicit expression of his feelings Mansita Jano had thrown at her. If I were in your position . . . as I should be . . . if the Integrators hadn’t intervened . . . if you could keep your own weaknesses under control . . . But who could blame him? She had just told him he was supposed to tiptoe through a maze of conflicting demands. Created by someone who seemed to be ruled by her own internal conflicts.

They were meeting face to face, under maximum sealed-room security. She could have placed her hand on the side of his face, like a Halna of the Tara Tin Empire offering a strikejav, a gesture of support. But that would obviously be a blunder.

“I know it’s a difficult assignment, Mansita Jano. I would do it myself, if I could. But I can’t. So I’m asking for help from the best person available. Everything we know about Revutev Mavarka indicates he won’t do anything until he feels desperate. He knows he’ll be committing an irrevocable act. Get the job done while he’s still hesitating and he’ll probably feel relieved.”

The Message had to be sent. The humans were obviously just as divided and unpredictable as every other species that had ever launched machines at the stars. They were probably even more unpredictable. Their planet apparently had a large moon they could use as an easy launch site. Its gravitational field appeared to be weaker, too. A species that could spread through its own planetary system had to be more divided than a species that had confined itself to one planet.

Mansita Jano could have handed Trans Cultural the exact location of the Betzino-Resdell base but that would have been too obvious. Instead, Trans Cultural’s scouts were gently herded in the right direction over the course of a year. Predators pursued them. Winds and storms blew them off the courses set by their search patterns.

Betzino-Resdell had located its base in the middle levels of a mountain range, next to a waterfall that supplied it with 80.5 percent of its energy. A deep, raging stream defended one side of the base and a broad, equally deep ditch protected the other borders. A high tangle of toxic thicket covered the ground behind the ditch.

Trans Cultural set up three bases of its own and started producing an army. It was obviously planning a swarm attack – the kind of unimaginative strategy machines tended to adapt. Revutev Mavarka evaluated the situation and decided Betzino-Resdell could handle the onslaught, with a little advice from a friendly organic imagination.

“You can’t stop the buildup,” Revutev Mavarka said, “but you can slow it down with well-planned harassment raids.”

Betzino consulted with her colleagues. They had all started working on projects that had interested them. The Institute for Spiritual Research was particularly reluctant to divert resources from its research. “Donald” had made some remarks that set it looking for evidence the resident population still engaged in religious rituals.

The alter that called itself Ivan represented an individual who could best be described as a serial hobbyist. The original organic Ivan had spent decades exploring military topics and the alter had inherited an impulse to apply that knowledge. Betzino-Resdell voted to devote 50.7 percent of its resources to defense.

Revutev Mavarka had decided religion was a safe topic. He could discuss all the religious beliefs his species had developed before the Turbulence without telling Betzino-Resdell anything about his current society.

The Betzino-Resdell subunits had obviously adopted the same policy. The subunit that called itself the Institute for Spiritual Research led him through an overview of the different beliefs the humans had developed and he responded with a similar overview he had selected from the hundreds of possibilities stored in the libraries.

Revutev Mavarka had experimented with religion during two of his awakes – most of a full lifespan by the standards of most pre-Turbulence societies. He had spent eleven years in complete isolation from all social contact, to see if isolation would grant him the insights the Halfen Reclusives claimed to have achieved.

He could see similar patterns in the religions both species had invented. Religious leaders on both worlds seemed to agree that insight and virtue could only be achieved through some form of deprivation.

As for those who sought excitement and the tang of novelty – they were obviously a threat to every worthy who tried to stay on the True Road.

The religious studies were only a diversion – a modest attempt to achieve some insight into the minds that had created the two visitors. The emotion that colored every second of Revutev Mavarka’s life was his sense of impending doom.

He had already composed the Warning he would transmit to Betzino-Resdell. He could blip it at any time, with a three-word, two-number instruction to his communications system.

The moment he sent it – the instant he committed that irrevocable act – he would become the biggest traitor in the history of his species.

How many centuries would he spend in dormancy? Would they ever let him wake? Would he still be lying there when his world died in the explosion that transformed every mundane yellow star into a bloated red monster?

Every meal he ate – every woman he caressed – every view he contemplated – could be his last.

“You’ve acquired an aura, Reva,” his closest female confidante said.

“Is it attractive? I’d hate to think I was surrounded by something repulsive.”

“It has its appeal. Has one of your quests actually managed to affect something deeper than a yen for a temporary stimulus?”

“I think I’ve begun to understand those people who claim it doesn’t matter whether you live fifty years or a million. You’re still just a flicker in the life of the universe.”