Omega

epilogue

ONE OF THE aspects of Korbikkan life that particularly fascinated and baffled xenologists was the apparent lack of warfare in a history now known to be ten thousand years long. Even stranger to human eyes was the fact that the Korbs showed no inclination to expand away from their tiny isthmus. It was true that the land to the north was sealed off by jungle and desert, and to the south by an unforgiving mountain range. But this was an intelligent species that never got above the equator, that showed no interest in spreading out through the island groups east and west of their homeland.

It’s a curiosity of history that they launched a major exploration mission at the very moment that humans arrived. But it was only a coincidence. They have attempted similar voyages on other occasions. Several have returned from the direction in which they set out. To our knowledge, none has ever circled the globe. And none was ever followed up by a serious attempt at colonization.

Also puzzling was the Korbs’ freewheeling treatment of sex. This was a society whose standards shocked most human observers, themselves from a society that thought sex a private matter and, at least officially, subscribed to monogamy.

Also difficult to explain was the lack of technology. The Korbs thought of chariots as bending the landscape. Yet they predated the Sumerians by millennia.

It now appears that all of these anomalies, the lack of organized warfare, the failure to expand, the open sex, the lack of technology, derive from a single factor: Korb women are capable of closing off their fallopian tubes. They have no unwanted children and no surprises.

Because living conditions on the isthmus are reasonably comfortable—fruit, vegetables, game, and fish can be had quite easily—there has never been pressure to produce large families. The population on the isthmus appears to have remained relatively stable for millennia. This fact has rendered intertribal competition pointless. It has also prevented technological development. Civilizations do not advance without population pressures.

BEST ESTIMATES ARE that fewer than 20 percent of the total population of the Intigo were lost during the encounter with the omega. When the far side of Korbikkan was examined, where the omega had vented its fury, analysts concluded that, had it struck the Intigo directly, the destruction of property and the loss of life would have been nearly total.

Food, blankets, and other supplies sent forward by the Academy arrived at the critical moment. They were landed by night in remote sites, and distributed by Judy Sternberg and her linguists. The recipients were told that the supplies were donated by the Korbikkan Relief Association, which was true enough, and it seemed to satisfy the natives’ curiosity.

In recognition of their efforts, Sternberg’s likeness has been enshrined in the Museum Humana in Berlin, and a Shironi Kulp plaza will be opened next year in Pentagon Park.

The real coordinator behind the bulk of the contributions was, of course, Dr. Alva Emerson, who tried unsuccessfully to deflect the credit by awarding a medal to Priscilla Hutchins. Hutchins accepted, but it may have meant more to her when Dr. Alva took her aside and confessed that, whatever impression she might have had originally, she had concluded Hutchins to be “rather a decent human being after all.”

Tor drew up a formal certificate, citing the phrase. Although the certificate is confined to her bedroom, she owns no document of which she is more proud.

The round-the-world mission, stranded on the eastern continent, needed almost a year to build new ships. But they completed the task and, as of this writing, are on their way back to the Intigo.

Marge, Digger, Kellie, and Julie Carson received formal recognition for their accomplishments not only from the Academy, but from the media at large. Jack Markover was posthumously awarded the Legion of Honor from the French government, and David Collingdale received the President’s Medal.

On the anniversary of the omega strike, a memorial ceremony was held on the Academy grounds at Arlington to honor the memory of Collingdale and Markover. Markover’s brother James and Collingdale’s former fiancée, Mary Clank, were brought in for the event, and they helped dedicate the new Korbikkan wing to their memory.

AFTER THE MARKOVER-COLLINGDALE ceremony, Digger asked Hutch whether the Academy was now ready to put some serious effort into doing research on the omegas, so that, as he put it, “what we went through at Lookout won’t happen again.”

“I think we’ve learned, Digger,” she said. “I surely hope so.”

HUTCH’S NOTION THAT the tewk events were actually an effort to create a kind of cosmic symphony has not been generally accepted, although it’s difficult to explain in any other way the visual results if one happens to be seated at the proper place above the Orion Arm.

Whatever the official view, however, a synthetic hedgehog is on its way to the local cloud, and by the time this is published, will have, one hopes, already ignited it and disposed of the thing. Hutchins is pushing for mass production of hedgehogs, which she would like to see used wherever possible to explode the omegas. To get rid of them. And, she added recently in an interview with UNN: “To ruin the show for the idiots who sent them. To point out that there are women and children here.”

There are even some who are arguing that, since we know where the omega engineers live, we should send them more pointed sentiments.

Avery Whitlock’s Notebooks

But I wonder what we would have done had they been barbarians. Or looked like insects.