Future Shock, page 14
Ethan silently thanked Rachel for her research. “Coventry,” he said. There were better worlds out there, including several that were strikingly close to Earth, but Coventry wasn’t a bad choice. “It would suffice for us, without putting too many noses out of joint.”
The ambassadors exchanged glances. Coventry was human-compatible, technically, but the atmosphere was barely breathable, and the planet was prone to storms that put Mars’s giant hurricanes to shame. There had been proposals to terraform the planet, or turn it into a dumping ground for criminals ... proposals that, in the future, had been enacted. It had taken centuries for Coventry to grow into a properly civilised world, after the Federation had provided a great deal of support, and then its future had been cut short by the Killers. There was definitely something to be said for asking for Coventry, rather than a more habitable world. If nothing else, they could rewrite the planet’s tragic history.
And they have to be wondering if there’s something there they should know about, he mused, as the silence grew longer. What other advantages does our future knowledge give us?
“We will discuss the issue,” Mbonambi said, when it was clear there’d be no immediate consensus. “Assuming we agreed, you’re prepared to help update our fleet and technical base in return?”
“Of course.” Ethan nodded. “It is in everyone’s interests to get your tech base updated as quickly as possible. Not just because of the Diyang, but because of the Killers too.”
He kept his face carefully blank. These men didn’t know it, but Federation-grade technology would reduce the need for politicians and eliminate the need for rationing, money, and even employment. Who knew what millions of prospective inventors or artists would produce, if they were freed of the need to work for a living? Who knew how far the human race would go, if they could talk freely and share ideas without censorship and other tools of tyranny poisoning the well and undermining freedom, leaving a legacy of bitterness, resentment, and hatred in its wake? How many would live for centuries with modern medical technology? How many would mature into truly civilised beings when they were freed of the shackles of the past?
And how many locals will be shocked at what we’ve become?
The question echoed in his mind. His people had been free. Do as thou wilt, as long as no non-consenting person is hurt had been the law of the land. What would the locals make of everything from simple changes – skin colour, hair, gender – to weird and wonderful marriages and families of all shapes and sizes? Simple nuclear families had co-existed with extensive line marriages involving dozens of people ... hell, there were even families that had cloned themselves repeatedly, something even the Federation considered a little perverse. And that was without even considering the religious angle. Was a reincarnated person the same as the original or not? The Federation had settled the question centuries ago. The locals hadn’t even considered the problem. They’d have to do so now.
“Then we will take a break and reconvene shortly,” Mbonambi said. “I trust that meets with your approval?”
“Of course.” Ethan reached into his pocket and produced a datachip, carefully fabricated from samples Anderson had loaned him. “This is an outline of our proposals and a list of quick updates we can offer you.”
He passed the datachip to Mbonambi, then leaned forward. “We do need to come up with some kind of arrangement as quickly as possible,” he added. “If nothing else, the physical refugees on my ships do need to stretch their legs.”
“We also have to deal with the alien ships,” Wentworth said. “And the POWs.”
“They need to be treated in line with the laws of war,” Ethan said, sharply. The locals had lost much of their regard for the laws of war, when they’d been used to hobble one side and give every advantage to the other. Their resentment was understandable, forgivable. Their actions were not. “Given time, they will be returned to their homeworld and spread the word.”
Wentworth spoke quickly. “If the Diyang return to the system, will you stand with us?”
“Yes.” Ethan had no intention of doing otherwise. “We also need to prepare to go on the offensive as quickly as possible, to hammer the fact of their defeat in as hard as we can.”
Ambassador Singh snorted. “Why don’t you just bombard their planets into surrender?”
Ethan felt a hot flash of irritation. “First, we have a very limited supply of missiles,” he said, choosing not to point out that most star systems had an endless supply of asteroids that could be turned into makeshift projectiles. If Singh didn’t know it, Ethan saw no reason to enlighten him. “Second, it would be genocide. You’re talking about practically exterminating an entire species of intelligent life. Even if we restrict the bombardment to cause as few casualties as possible, they’d still be numbered in the millions. No. I won’t go along with genocide.”
His words hung in the air.
Wentworth broke the silence. “And if you had the chance to exterminate the Killers before they posed a threat, would you take it?”
Ethan gritted his teeth. The Federation had never needed to consider genocide a viable tactic. It had never been in a war where only one species could survive, where it needed to kill or be killed. Only the Killer War had come close to it ... not that it mattered. The Federation had never been able to locate their homeworld, let alone destroy it. Other wars had ended with peace treaties or blockades... there had simply been no need to sentence an entire race to death. They certainly had never been pushed to the point where they forgot their values and committed a crime against sentient life ...
But would he push a button and wipe out the Killers, if he could?
“It is not a question I have ever had to face,” he said, stiffly. The Federation had had more options than the United States of 2308, let alone the rest of the Great Powers. “And we are not facing it here. We beat the Diyang in the original timeline, and we will beat them here. There is no need to destroy them, and there never will be.”
“I think we should recess now,” Mbonambi said. “The discussion has become heated.”
Ethan nodded and stood. The ambassadors would be reporting back to their own governments, he was sure, as well as copying the datachip and reading his proposals. There was no way to know what they’d make of them, although the local governments would probably be quietly pleased to have the disruptive newcomers exiled to Coventry. A few light-years between them and Earth would limit their effect on local society. Perhaps.
He kept the thought to himself as he was escorted back to his suite. There would be another dinner tonight, and another the following day ... he scanned the room with his terminal as soon as he entered, then relaxed – slightly – as the scan confirmed the chamber wasn’t bugged. Unless they were using something so primitive the scan couldn’t detect it ...
Rachel materialised on the bed. “I heard everything,” she said. “It’s not going to be easy to get them to agree to anything, even our modest proposals.”
“Not in a hurry,” Ethan agreed. He didn’t want to think about the problem, or what they’d have to do if the locals refused to work with them. He keyed the terminal, opening a link to Dauntless. “Captain Bukharin?”
Yulia’s image shimmered into existence. “Commodore,” she said. “How did the meeting go?”
“It was rather difficult to handle,” Ethan admitted. “You forwarded the recordings to the fleet?”
“Yes, sir,” Yulia said. “The fleet itself is still holding station near Titan, as per their request. There is apparently little to report, apart from the refugees growing restless.”
Ethan rubbed his forehead. The refugees would definitely want to stretch their legs, and they’d have little reason to understand why Earth wasn’t safe. He’d scanned the news reports – and encrypted government channels – and it was clear Earth was very far from safe. Even the civilised countries were dangerously unsafe, with crime on the rise no matter how harshly the governments cracked down. He shuddered at the numbers, the reports of crimes unimaginably rare in his time yet all too common here. Rape and paedophilia were almost unknown in his world ... he felt sick just thinking about it. How had the Federation grown out of such a cesspit? It seemed impossible ...
“We’ll see what we can do,” he said. America was a big place. So was Europe and Russia and China ... there had to be some areas that were relatively safe. Right now, he wouldn’t have sworn to anything. “Did word leak out?”
“Not as far as we can tell,” Yulia said. “The only mentions of our presence are in heavily-encrypted channels. They don’t seem to have realised we can read their messages. The media hasn’t reported on the battle, let alone anything else. It looks as if the governments have decided to pretend we don’t exist, at least until we come to an agreement about how to proceed.”
“Ouch.” Ethan wasn’t surprised, but he was disappointed. Government secrecy inevitably led to mistrust, suspicion, and an unshakable belief the government was covering up the grim fact that things were far worse than they seemed. The chaos that had followed the end of the Diyang War was clear proof that nothing stayed buried forever, and when it burst into the light, it erased faith in government. “We’ll wait until we come to an agreement, then proceed from there.”
“Yes, sir,” Yulia said. “Do you require any support?”
I’d like a diplomat, Ethan thought, although he suspected a lion tamer would be a better choice. But we don’t have either ...
“No,” he said, finally. “Maintain your position and keep the overwatch. If I need you, I’ll call.”
Yulia nodded. “Good luck, sir,” she said. “Dauntless out.”
Rachel balanced herself on the bed as Yulia’s image vanished. “At this rate, it may be some time before we come to an agreement,” she said. “Do you think they’ll agree?”
“I think they have little choice,” Ethan said. “They need us as much as we need them.”
“Perhaps more so,” Rachel said. “But it won’t be easy.”
“I know,” Ethan said. There were too many complications already on the list – and the list seemed to grow longer with every passing day. “Did you turn up anything new in the history records?”
“Been data-mining for days,” Rachel said. “There’s just so much data ...”
She shrugged. “There’s a great deal of factoids they probably need to know,” she added. “People who do well in the war, people who do badly ... criminals who haven’t yet been uncovered or haven’t yet committed their crimes. But should we tell them?”
“Good question,” Ethan said. He had no qualms about reporting known criminals. Arresting people for pre-crime, on the other hand, went against the grain. “I guess we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
He sat on the bed, then leaned back. “I need a rest,” he said. “Let me know when they come back for me.”
“Of course.” Rachel smiled at him. “Good night.”
Chapter Fifteen: UN Compound, 2308
“And you think we can work with these people?” Ambassador Wentworth glowered at Hamish. “They’re keeping their cards very close to their chest.”
Hamish kept his face impassive, even though he was massively outranked by Admiral Garland and the Ambassador. He wasn’t even sure why he was in the room. The last few days had been an endless series of interrogations, medical checks and a bunch of tests with no discernible purpose, leaving him to suspect there were people in Washington who didn’t believe a word of his story despite a hyper-advanced destroyer holding position in orbit and sensor records from Grant and Titan Base. He found it hard to understand how anyone could be sceptical, with so much hard evidence in his favour, but he supposed he wouldn’t be very trusting of such a story either. If he hadn’t seen the proof ...
No one would go to so much trouble for a trick, he thought, tiredly. It was possible to deepfake anything, these days, but the simple fact they’d hopped from Titan to Earth in a handful of seconds should have silenced the doubters. But they just don’t want to believe.
“They could be telling us everything, right now,” Wentworth continued. “And instead ...”
He shrugged. Hamish had the feeling he was getting some heat from his political masters, instructions to secure an alliance with the future folk even at the expense of the rest of the world. The other ambassadors would have gotten the same orders, he was sure, allowing Boswell all the time he needed to play them against each other ... if, of course, he was the sort of person who would. Hamish was fairly sure Boswell wasn’t. A man who had grown up in America or Britain wouldn’t understand the political structure of the Roman Empire or Imperial China and might not take it too seriously, particularly if he held the technical advantage. Hamish remembered the Opium Wars and shuddered. The future folk were far more advanced, relatively speaking, than the British had been over Imperial China. It had ended very badly for everyone involved.
Wentworth turned to face him. “Why are they like this?”
Hamish glanced at Garland, who nodded. “They’re from a very different society,” Hamish said, quietly. “They’re not interested in playing games so much as they’re trying to save what remains of their civilisation. They’re certainly not interested in taking sides on our petty political disputes. To them, the issues have already been settled.”
“And if we found ourselves in 1860, with the United States marching towards Civil War, would we not take a side?” Garland didn’t seem to have any patience for the Lost Cause and those who claimed the Confederate States had been noble rebels against the tyranny of Washington and an overpowered federal government. “On one side, slavery; on the other, freedom. Not making a choice would be making a choice.”
Hamish frowned, inwardly. “I think we should be very careful about discussing such matters, sir,” he cautioned. “They might draw entirely the wrong conclusion.”
“Really.” Garland gave him a sharp look. “Explain.”
“The United States of 1860 was not free by our standards, let alone theirs,” Hamish pointed out. “Women didn’t have the right to vote, sir, and free labour wasn’t often that much freer than the slaves. Censorship was rife and corruption was common and ...”
He shook his head. “We would side against the Confederate States because the Confederates were the evil side, by any reasonable standard. The North had its weaknesses, of course it did, but when it came to sheer mind-numbing levels of pure evil, the CSA had it beat. Their flaws are not any sort of moral equivalence to the slave power. But the future folk might think we are the evil side. From their point of view, they might even be right.”
Wentworth glowered at him. “They’d be wrong.”
Hamish shrugged. The United States had gone through era after era of political unrest, avoiding several potential civil wars by the skin of its teeth. The expansion into space had proved an escape valve, allowing countless people to flee to the moon or asteroid settlements while the corporate oligarchs tightened their grip back home. He loved his country, really he did, but there were times when he wondered if it would survive the next few decades. The government and democracy seemed more and more like a sham with every passing year. Perhaps Mary Chesnut and her peers had felt the same way, before the Civil War. The only way to breathe free, now, was to leave the world, perhaps even the solar system. He intended to do so himself when the war was over, and the time came to retire.
“Compared to us, China is a fascist nightmare,” Wentworth snapped. Hamish wasn’t sure who he was trying to convince. “And Russia and Europe aren’t far behind.”
“I’m not sure they’d care, sir,” Hamish said.
Wentworth ignored him, pacing the chamber like a caged tiger. “This reincarnation process ... do you know what kind of shit that is going to unleash? Their rejuvenation technology ... what is that going to do?”
Hamish considered it. The United States wasn’t a world leader in medical technology, not any longer. The toxic combination of religious activists who saw genetic engineering as immoral and liberals who thought the fruits of such research should be shared to all, free of charge, had crippled research into advanced medical technology. It hadn’t stopped research being carried out outside the country, naturally, and it was an open secret that countless wealthy Americans slipped overseas to have treatments denied to their poorer peers. It was astonishing how many wealthy men were young and virile ...
“Think about it,” Wentworth said. “Daddy Warbucks is an old man. His children are waiting for him to die so they can inherit his money. But now Daddy Warbucks will never die, and his children will never inherit. What’s that going to do to us? Or what if a court rules that the reincarnated Daddy Warbucks is not the same as the original, yet a biological heir and thus entitled to a share of the estate? Or maybe not even that ... do you have any idea how many legal issues there are around clones? This is going to be a political nightmare!”
Hamish met his eyes. “They said it would take years to set up the technology to resurrect anyone.”
Garland smiled. “Perhaps we should be grateful,” he said. “They don’t seem to have a proper diplomat in their crew, but I’d bet they have a few thousand waiting in their datacores.”
“Yes, sir,” Hamish said, blandly. “We should move ahead with signing the agreement before they do resurrect a diplomat.”
He hid his amusement. He wasn’t sure how much use a proper future diplomat would be. Half the problems of the Chaos Years in Europe had been caused by politicians and diplomats who hadn’t quite realised that Europe no longer ruled the world, but its military power was a shadow of its former self, and their fighting men couldn’t back up the politicians when they let their mouths get them into trouble. A future diplomat might not believe the Federation had been reduced to a handful of starships, trapped in a very hostile era. It was easy to imagine such a man getting Boswell into very real trouble. Why not? As advanced as they were, the future folk were still human.
