The Long Mars

44

As she prepared for the “hearing” with Mac and Valienté, Maggie had time to wonder why it was her who happened to be in this particular hot seat in the first place.

Admiral Davidson must have been under intense pressure, from the White House on down, to have authorized the loading of covert weapons of mass destruction on to ships that were supposed to be Lewis-and-Clark explorer vessels in the first place, and then more so to mandate the deployment of a nuke against Happy Landings, a civilian settlement within the US Aegis. But Maggie had known Davidson a long time. And he’d proved in the Valhalla rebellion back in ’40, for example, that his instincts were not to fire first. Maybe handing this poisoned chalice to Maggie was Davidson’s way of ensuring that it never got spilled.

But all that was irrelevant, Maggie thought now. However she had ended up with this responsibility, she was on the spot. And as had been pressed on her since the moment she got the command of the Benjamin Franklin, let alone the Armstrong, as a Navy twain Captain she had the autonomy to act as she saw fit, whatever the circumstances. Cutler was right. Hers was the choice to make, not Davidson’s or anybody else’s, no matter how she had got here.

Before she knew it, it was time.

Almost exactly twenty-four hours after that meeting with Mac and Ed Cutler, Joshua Valienté was shown into Maggie’s sea cabin by Ensign Snowy, Maggie’s beagle crewman. Mac was already here, in full uniform for once, with a tablet full of notes on the desk before him, looking as grumpy as hell. He stood when Joshua entered, and he acknowledged Snowy curtly.

Before he left, the beagle leaned forward and sniffed Joshua’s face. Maggie knew by now that this was close to a beagle’s way of shaking hands, toned down in some physical details for human society.

“Joss-shua. How is-ss you-hrr back?”

“Not even a scar.”

“And the hh-and?”

Joshua flexed his artificial fingers. “Better than the original. No hard feelings.”

“Good to hav-vve ss-seen you again, Joss-shua.”

“You too, Krypto.”

After Snowy left, Joshua sat down, and Maggie ran through a quick round of introductions. An orderly pushed in a trolley laden with water, coffee, soft drinks. Maggie herself got up to pour the drinks, water for Mac and herself, but Joshua asked for coffee—that was an authentic detail, she’d never known a pioneer type turn down the chance of good coffee.

Joshua Valienté wore patched jeans, a practical-looking jacket over a denim shirt, and an Indiana Jones hat he hung on the back of his chair. He looked the part, a Long Earth pioneer, and Maggie wondered if he’d dressed down for the occasion to make the point. Probably not, she tentatively decided. This was the authentic Valienté. But he looked as uncomfortable as did Mac, in his own way.

Once they were set with their drinks, Maggie locked the door.

“OK, gentlemen, this is it. Bathroom is through the other door, over there. Otherwise nobody comes in or out until we’ve—sorry, I’ve—made a decision here. It’s entirely up to us. We are being recorded, however, for the court-martial that’s probably coming my way later.”

Joshua looked surprised.

“That’s life in the military, Mr Valienté.”

“Call me Joshua.”

“Thank you. But you two are both in the clear. I took some advice on that, my XO did some legal research, and I logged his recommendations and my interpretation. You’re simply advisers. Including you, Mac.”

Mac shrugged. “I’m probably going to quit the service anyhow after this.”

“Sure you are. And you, Joshua—thank you for coming in. I appreciate you putting yourself through this; you didn’t have to. By the way, I didn’t know you’d met Snowy.”

“He saved my life once. Or at least spared it. I guess that counts as the basis of a friendship.” Joshua grinned. “Cats and dogs, eh, Captain?”

She glanced at Mac, who was paying no attention. Maggie concluded Joshua knew nothing of the role Mac had played in the subsequent calamity to befall the beagles. “You said it, Joshua.”

“Look, Captain, I don’t fully understand why you chose me for this—what do we call it, a hearing?”

“You could call it that,” Mac growled. “A group of people are on trial for their lives. Or a whole new species faces extermination. Depending on how you look at it.”

“So why me?”

Maggie thought back over what Shi-mi had advised her, what she knew of this man Valienté. “Because you too have been an outsider, back in the early days of stepping. You were different. You know how that feels. And because, despite all that, you have proved yourself to be a decent human being, with sound instincts. Your public record shows it. Also, records from Pearl show that you befriended one of these Next.” She glanced at her own notes. “Paul Spencer Wagoner? So you’re in a position to understand the issues.”

“I’m not sure I feel like any kind of human being, sitting here in judgement like this.”

Mac grinned, a cold, humourless expression. “You want to switch seats?”

Maggie said, “The decision will be mine, not yours, Mac. The responsibility is all mine.”

Joshua nodded, though still clearly unhappy. “I didn’t do any research. I wouldn’t know where to start, what to look up.”

“That’s fine,” Maggie said. “Go with your heart. Well. Here we are. I have no fixed agenda in mind, no format, no time limit. Mac, you want to go first?”

“Sure.” Mac glanced at his tablet one last time, then spread his hands on the table. “To begin with, let’s be clear what we’re talking about here. We’d be taking a Hiroshima-scale nuclear weapon—more powerful than the one that took out Madison, by the way, Joshua, and I know you saw the consequences of that—and setting said nuke off, without warning, in the middle of this township. Of course it has to be without warning if we’re to catch ’em all. I might note there will be the usual knock-on collateral consequences. Last weather forecast I saw for the region from the ship’s meteorologists said the fallout plume would head south-east of here. Other communities will be harmed—many of them having had nothing to do with this business of the Next, as far as we know. That’s the nature of the operation. But Happy Landings itself would be obliterated, along with every living creature in the area aside from the cockroaches—human, Next, troll, whatever.”

Maggie nodded. “The military objective is to eliminate what’s considered to be the source of this new phenomenon, the Next.”

“Correct,” Mac said. “So now we agree what the cost of fulfilling that objective will be, let me give you the single most compelling reason why we should do this now. Because we can.

“We may not get another chance like this. We suspect there are other Next centres and we’re busy tracking them down, but we’re pretty confident from the genetics that this place has been the primary source so far. This surely won’t kill all the Next, but it will be a massive blow, and would give us time to hunt down and eliminate the rest at our leisure. But if we hesitate—” He studied Maggie. “Right now they’re super-smart, but they’re numerically few, and weak, physically, economically. They don’t have any super-weapons or whatnot—in that regard they are no stronger than we are, for now. But that may not last.

“I’ve seen the linguistics results, the cognitive tests. Our laughable attempts to measure the IQs of these creatures. They are smarter than us. Qualitatively. As we are smarter than the chimps. Just as a chimp can’t imagine the nature of the airplane flying over his tree top, or even less the global technological civilization of which it’s a part, so we won’t be able to understand, even imagine what the Next will do, say, or produce. Any more than a Neanderthal could have imagined that nuclear weapon down on the ground there in Happy Landings. We should strike now while we still can—while they can’t stop us.”

Maggie said, “I can imagine that kind of line being rehearsed in the war rooms. We should rise up and hit them the way the Native Americans should have hammered the Conquistadors when they got off their sailing ships.”

Mac smiled grimly. “Or, a better analogy in this particular case, those Neanderthals I mentioned should have picked up their big ugly clubs and smashed in the flat faces of the first Homo sapiens who came wandering into Europe.”

Joshua said, “Am I allowed to speak here?”

“Whenever you like,” Maggie said. “No rules.”

“In both those cases you referred to, that kind of resistance would only have bought time against the invaders. More Europeans would have followed Columbus and Cortés and Pizarro.”

“True,” Mac said. “But we can use that time. We ain’t superhuman geniuses like these Next, but we ain’t patsies either. We’re not as weak as the Indians, or the Neanderthals. And we outnumber them hugely. With more time we can organize, keep hunting, run them down. Their DNA is distinctive, remember; you can’t hide that. And there are billions of us, only a handful of them.” He looked uncomfortable. “Also many of them were chipped, in detention in Hawaii. That would help.”

Maggie said, “But, Mac, you’re arguing for murder. Cold-blooded, calculated murder. Can you justify that?”

To his credit, Mac kept up his momentum. “Maggie—it’s not murder. Not if you buy the argument that this is a separate species, that these Next aren’t human at all. It may be cruel if I shoot down a horse, but it isn’t murder, because the horse isn’t a member of my species. All our laws and customs reinforce that view. Throughout history—hell, throughout prehistory probably—we have put human interests before the interests of the animal. We killed the leopard that chased us across the African savannah, we wiped out the wolves that preyed on our children in the forests of Europe. We still inflict extinction if we need to. Viruses, bacteria—”

“The Next are in a different category from viruses,” Joshua said sharply. “And we don’t always eliminate, just because we can. We protected the trolls.” He glanced at Maggie. “You were involved in that campaign, Captain. Hell, the example of you bringing trolls into your crew—”

Mac shook his head. “The trolls are protected as if they are human, in US law anyhow. They aren’t regarded as fully human, or even equivalent to human. Anyhow the practicalities are different. A troll has never been proved to harm a human save by accident, or under provocation of some kind. It’s always been a human’s fault. The trolls pose no threat. The Next, so it’s feared, may one day pose not just a threat to individual humans, but an existential threat, a threat to us all, just as Cutler says. They may drive us to extinction altogether.”

Joshua said, “That’s an extreme position. Even if they were hostile to us, why should it go so far?”

“Fair question,” Mac said. “But the genetic, linguistic, cognitive evidence all points to one thing—that this is indeed a different species, emerging in the midst of our worlds. And because of that there’s going to be conflict between us—that’s inevitable. A conflict that must, must, end in the elimination of one side or the other. And I’ll tell you why.

“The Next aren’t human. But the most damning argument I have against them is actually how close to human they are. They may be smarter than us, but they’re the same physical shape, they eat the same food, they will need to live in the same climates. This is a Darwinian conflict, between two species competing for the same ecological niche. And Darwin himself knew what that meant.” He flipped over his tablet. “I read all this stuff in med school, back in a different age… Never thought it would apply to me. Chapter 3, On the Origin of Species, 1859: ‘As species of the same genus have usually, though by no means invariably, some similarity in habits and constitution, and always in structure, the struggle will generally be more severe between species of the same genus, when they come into competition with each other, than between species of distinct genera.’ ” He put down the tablet. “Darwin knew. He could have predicted this. It won’t be war. It won’t be civilized. It will be much more primitive than that. It will be biological. It’s a conflict we can’t afford to lose, Maggie. Only one of us can survive—us or them—and if we lose, we lose everything. And the only way we can win is for you to act now.”

Joshua said with some heat, “We aren’t talking about biology here, but about conscious beings. Even if they could destroy us, there’s not a shred of evidence that they ever would.”

“Actually there is,” Mac said.

“What evidence?”

“The very fact that we’re willing to sit here debating whether to wipe out an evidently sentient, human-like species. We’re setting a kind of precedent just by talking like this, don’t you see? And if we can conceive of such an act, why not them in the future?”

“Ridiculous,” Joshua said. “That’s the kind of thinking that could have turned the Cold War hot and killed us all off decades before Step Day. Nuke the other guy just in case he ever gets the ability to nuke you.”

“Actually, no,” Maggie intervened. “The thinking isn’t as crude as that, Joshua. Over the last few decades mankind has got better at dealing with existential threats—which are usually low likelihood but with extreme consequences. We didn’t see Yellowstone coming particularly well. But we are planning to push rogue asteroids away, for instance—well, we were before Yellowstone anyhow. I’d say the basic philosophy is that you should act on such threats, ideally with public consent, investing resources at a level you somehow judge to be proportionate to the likelihood of the event and the severity of the outcome.”

“And in this case,” Mac said heavily, “we’re weighing the risk of annihilation by these Next—or indeed a range of lesser horrors, such as slavery at their hands—against the cost of a single nuclear weapon, and some kind of campaign of rooting-out and extermination to follow. That, and the deaths of an unknown number of innocents. Regular humans, I mean to say. Although I suppose the Next children are innocent too.” He looked at Maggie, and Joshua. “I think that’s all I have to say.”

For a while there was silence in the sea cabin. Then Maggie said, “Shit, Mac. You put up a good fight. Joshua, please tell me he’s wrong.”

Joshua looked at Mac. He said, “Well, I can’t tell you about Darwin. Never knew the guy. Or Columbus, or Cortés, or the Neanderthals. I don’t have any great theories. All I can tell you is about the people I know.

“I guess the first Next I got to know properly, in retrospect, was a kid called Paul Spencer Wagoner. As you know, you have it in your files. I met him here, in fact, in Happy Landings. He was five years old. Now, all these years later, I’ve brought him back here. He’s down there on the ground, sitting on your damn bomb. Nineteen years old…”

He spoke about what he’d seen of the growing-up of Paul Spencer Wagoner. The parents who grew uncomfortable in a turbulent Happy Landings. How the emotional stresses caused by the very nature of Next children had shattered the family. How a lost little boy had found sanctuary in the Home where Joshua himself had been brought up. How the traumatized young man he’d become, as institutionalized as any life prisoner, was yet full of life, leadership, compassion when among his own.

“These are our children,” he said sternly. “All of ours. So they’re brighter than us. So what? Would a father kill his son just because the son is smarter than him? You can’t eliminate difference, just because you fear it.” He glanced at Maggie. “I can tell that you wouldn’t, Captain. Not with trolls and a beagle in your crew, for God’s sake.”

Not to mention a robot cat, Maggie thought.

“I mean—tell me why you brought these non-humans on board.”

Maggie thought about that. “To make a point against the small-minded and the naysayers, I guess. And…” She remembered what Snowy had said as they had puzzled over a nation of sentient crab-like creatures, a very long way from home: Your thought, my thought-tt, always at mer-hhrcy of blood, of body. Need other blood, other bodies, to p-hhrove thought. My blood not you-hhrs. My thought not you-hhrs… “For diversity,” she said. “A different point of view. Not necessarily better, or worse. How else are we going to see the world properly, save through the eyes of others?”

“That’s it,” Joshua said. “The Next represent something new, however challenging we might find them. Diversity. What is life for if not to embrace that? And—well, they are of us. I’ve no more to say, Captain. I hope that’s enough.”

“Thank you, Joshua.” She thought she could feel the decision coalescing in her head. Best to be sure. “How about a closing statement? One more line from each of you. Mac?”

Mac closed his eyes and sat back. “You know, my own worst fear isn’t slavery, or even extinction. It’s that we’ll come to worship them. Like gods. How does the commandment have it? ‘Thou shalt have no other gods before me.’ Exodus, chapter 20, verse 3. We have a biological, moral, even a religious mandate to do this, Maggie.”

She nodded. “Joshua?”

“I guess my final point is a practical one. You can’t get them all, here today. Doctor, you say you can hunt the rest down. I doubt it. They’re too smart. They’ll find ways to evade us we haven’t even thought of. You won’t kill them all. But they’ll remember you tried.”

And Maggie felt a chill, deep in her soul.

Mac sighed, as if all the tension had gone out of him. “So is that it? Are we done? You want we should leave you alone for a while?”

She smiled. “No need.” She tapped the screen built into her desk. “Nathan?”

“Yes, Captain?”

She hesitated one more second, reconsidering her choice. Then she said to Joshua and Mac, “The logic is clear to me. Morally and strategically it would be wrong to attempt this extirpation. Even if it worked, which it might not. We can’t save ourselves by eliminating the new. We just have to learn to get along with them—and hope they forgive us.”

“Captain?”

“Sorry, Nathan. Go down there with Captain Cutler, and get that damn bomb out of the ground. I’ll disarm it from up here, right now. Take care of it personally, son.”

“Yes, Captain.”

With a grimace, she fetched Cutler’s briefcase from the floor and opened it up. “Mac, while I do this, why don’t you pour a drink? You know where the glasses are. Joshua, will you join us?”

Mac stood. “Getting to be a habit, Maggie.”

“Just pour the damn drinks, you old quack.”

But as he did so, she saw the downturn of his mouth, the tension in his neck, the emptiness in his eyes. He had lost the argument, though he had done his damnedest to win it. And she thought she knew how he was feeling now. What if he’d won? How could he have lived with that? What had she done to him—at what cost to her old friend had she won this day?

She met Joshua’s gaze. There was understanding in his expression. Understanding, and sympathy—for her, and Mac.

Shi-mi emerged, out of nowhere. Maggie hadn’t known she was in the room. She leapt on to Joshua’s lap, and he welcomed her with a stroke. “Hello, little girl.”

Shi-mi hissed at Mac, and Mac hissed back.

Then Mac pushed back his chair, stood up, and made for the door. “I reckon I’ll go and torment Ed Cutler a little. Maybe I could borrow your prosthetic hand, Joshua. Hey, Ed! Mein Führer—I can walk!”

“I’ll tell you one thing,” Joshua said to Maggie, when he’d gone. “This won’t mean much to you, but my headache has gone away. Maybe it means we made the right choice, here today. What do you think, Shi-mi?”

The cat just purred, and pushed her head into his artificial hand for a more vigorous stroke.