The Year's Best Science Fiction, Volume 29

A RESPONSE FROM EST17 by Tom Purdom

The Betzino-Resdell Exploration Community received its first message from Trans Cultural 5.23 seconds after it settled into orbit around the planet designated Extra-Solar Terranoid 17.

“I am the official representative of the Trans-Cultural Institute for Multi-Disciplinary and Extra-Disciplinary Interstellar Exploration and Study,” Trans Cultural radioed. “I represent a consortium of seventy-three political entities and two hundred and seventy-three academic, research, and cultural institutions located in every region of the Earth. You are hereby requested to refrain from direct contact with the surface of Extra-Solar Terranoid 17. My own contact devices have already initiated exploration of the planet. You will be granted access to my findings.”

The eighteen programs included in the Betzino-Resdell Community were called “alters”—as in “alter-ego” or “alternate personality”—but they were not self-aware. They were merely complicated, incredibly dense arrangements of circuits and switches, like every machine intelligence the human species had ever created. But they had been sponsored by seven different sets of shareholders and they had been shaped by the goals and personalities of their sponsors. They spent the first 7.62 seconds after their arrival testing the three copies of each program stored in their files so they could determine which copies had survived the journey in the best shape and should be activated. Then they turned their attention to the message from Trans Cultural.

Betzino and Resdell had been the primary sponsors of the expedition. Their electronic simulations controlled 60 of the 95 votes distributed among the community. Their vote to reject the demand settled the matter. But the other five concurred. The only no vote came from the group of alters tasked to study non-human sexuality. One member of that group cast one vote each way.

22.48 seconds after its arrival, the Betzino-Resdell Exploration Community initiated its exploration routine. The programs housed in Trans Cultural noted that Betzino-Resdell had failed to comply with their orders. Trans Cultural activated its dominance routine and the routine initiated activity. The first human artifacts to reach EST17 entered the first stages of the social phenomenon their creators called “microwar.”

The Betzino-Resdell Exploration Community had been crammed into a container a little larger than a soccer ball. A microwave beam mounted on the Moon had pushed it out of the solar system. Trans Cultural left the solar system five years later but it had wealthier backers who could finance a bigger boost applied to a bigger sail. It covered the distance in 1,893, 912 hours—a little over two hundred and sixteen Earth years—and reached EST17 six years before Betzino-Resdell. It had already established a base on the planet and begun exploration.

Betzino-Resdell peered at the surface through lenses that were half the size of a human eye but it had been equipped with state-of-the-art enhancement programs. EST17 was an inhabited planet. Its residents seemed to be concentrated in 236 well-defined cities. The rest of the planet looked like an undisturbed panorama of natural landscapes, distributed over four major landmasses.

The original human version of the Resdell alter was an astronomer who had been interested in the search for extraterrestrial life ever since he had watched his first documentary when he had been six years old. Anthony Resdell was a pleasant, likeable guy whose best-known professional achievement was a popular video series that had made him moderately rich. His alter immediately noted that EST17 seemed to violate a dictum laid down by an aristocratic twentieth century space visionary. Any extraterrestrial civilizations the human race encountered would be thousands of years ahead of us or millennia behind, Sir Arthur had opined. The odds they would be anywhere near us were so small we could assume the advanced civilizations would think we were savages.

The cities Betzino-Resdell could observe looked remarkably like the better-run cities on Earth. The satellites that ringed the planet resembled the satellites that orbited Earth. Samples of their electronic emissions recorded a similar range of frequencies and intensities.

The Betzino alter riffled through all the speculations on technological development stored in the library and distributed them to its colleagues—a process that ate up 13.3 seconds. The catalog contained several thousand entries—most of them extracted from works of fiction—but it could be grouped into a manageable list of categories:

• Technologies so advanced less enlightened space explorers couldn’t detect them.

• Hedonism.

• Deliberate limitation.

• A planet that lacked a key resource.

• Anti-technology cultural biases.

• And so on…

“We must match each piece of new data with each of those possibilities,” Resdell said. “We have encountered a significant anomaly.”

Betzino concurred. Two members of the community disagreed. The proposal became operational.

Trans Cultural seemed to be concentrating on a site on the largest southern continent, in a heavily wooded area fifty kilometers from a large coastal city. Betzino-Resdell selected a site on a northern continent, in a mountainous area near a city located on the western shore of a long lake. Three tiny needles drifted out of a hatch and began a slow descent through the planet’s thick atmosphere. Two needles made it to the ground. Machines that could have been mistaken for viruses oozed through the soil and collected useful atoms. Little viruses became bigger viruses, larger machines began to sprout appendages, and the routines stored in the needles proceeded through the first stages of the process that had spread human structures through the solar system.

It was a long, slow business. Three local years after Arrival, the largest active machines resembled hyper-mobile insects. Semi-organic flying creatures took to the air in year twelve. In year eighteen, a slab of rock became a functioning antenna and the Betzino-Resdell orbiter established communications with its ground base.

In year twenty-two, the first fully equipped airborne exploration devices initiated a systematic reconnaissance of the territory within one hundred kilometers of the base.

In year twenty-nine, a long range, semi-organic airborne device encountered a long range, semi-organic airborne device controlled by Trans Cultural. The Trans Cultural device attempted to capture the Betzino-Resdell device intact and the Betzino-Resdell device responded, after a brief chase, by erasing all the information in its memory cells, including the location of the Betzino-Resdell base. The microwar had entered the skirmish stage.

In year thirty-six, a native flying creature that resembled a feathered terrestrial toad approached a Betzino-Resdell device that resembled a small flying predator common in the area around the base. The airborne toad settled on a branch overlooking the eastern shore of the lake and turned its head toward the faux predator.

“I would like to talk to you,” the toad said in perfectly enunciated twenty-second century Italian. “This is an unofficial, private contact. It would be best if you kept your outward reactions to a minimum.”

The Appointee received her first briefing three days after the Integrators roused her from dormancy. They had roused her nineteen years before she was supposed to begin her next active period but she had suppressed her curiosity and concentrated on the sensual pleasures recommended for the first days after activation. She and her husband always enjoyed the heightened sexual arousal that followed a fifty year slumber. Normally they would have stretched it over several more days.

The name posted on the hatch of her dormancy unit was Varosa Uman Deun Malinvo.… Her husband’s officially recognized appellation was Budsiti Hisalito Sudili Hadbitad.… The ellipses referred to the hundreds of names they had added to their own—the names of all the known ancestors who had perished before the Abolition of Death. He called her Varo. She called him Budsi in public, Siti in private.

They were both bipeds with the same general anatomical layout as an unmodified human, with blocky, heavily boned bodies that had been shaped by the higher gravity of their native world. Their most distinctive features, to human eyes, would have been their massive hands and the mat of soft, intricately colored feathers that crowned their heads and surrounded their faces. As Betzino-Resdell had already noted, the accidents of evolution had favored feathers over fur on EST17.

The briefing took place in a secure underground room equipped with a viewing stage that was bigger than most apartments. A direct, real time image of the current First Principal Overseer appeared on the stage while Varosa Uman was still settling into a viewing chair.

“You’ve been aroused ahead of schedule because we have a visitation,” the First Principal said. “The Integrators responded to the latest development by advising us they want you to oversee our response. You will be replacing Mansita Jano, who has been the Situation Overseer since the first detection. He’s conducted a flawless response, in my opinion. You won’t find a better guide.”

A male with bright yellow facial feathers materialized beside the First Principal. Varosa Uman ordered a quick scan on her personal information system and confirmed that she was replacing one of the twenty leading experts on the history of visitations—a scholar with significant practical experience. Mansita Jano Santisi Jinmano.… had served on the committee that had worked on the last visitation. He had been a scholar-observer during the visitation twelve hundred years before that.

“It will be an honor to work with you, Mansita Jano.”

She could have said more. Mansita Jano’s expertise dwarfed her own knowledge of visitations. But the Integrators had picked her. She couldn’t let him think he could dominate her thinking.

He couldn’t be happy with the change. He knew he was better qualified. She would be harrying Siti with exasperated tirades if the Integrators had done something like that to her. But Mansita Jano was looking at her with polite interest, as if their relative positions had no emotional significance. And she would have donned the same mask, if their positions had been reversed.

A panoramic spacescape replaced the two figures. A line traced the path of an incoming visitation device—a standard minimum-mass object attached to a standard oversize light sail. It was a typical visitation rig and it behaved in a typical fashion. It spent twelve years slowing down and settling into its permanent orbit. It launched a subsidiary device at the third moon of the fourth planet and the subsidiary started working on an installation that would probably develop into a communications relay, in the same way the last two visitations had established relays on the same moon. It released three microweight orbit-to-surface devices (the last visitation had released two) and the survivors advanced to the next step in a typical visitation program.

All over the galaxy intelligent species reached a certain level and developed similar interstellar technologies. Each species thought it had reached a pinnacle. Each species saw its achievements as a triumph of intelligence and heroic effort.

The story became more interesting when the second visitation entered the system. Varosa Uman watched the two devices set up independent bases. She observed the first attack. Maps noted the locations of other incidents. The first visitor seemed to be the aggressor in every engagement.

The two orbiters definitely came from the same source. Their species had obviously generated at least two social entities that could launch interstellar probes. That happened now and then—everything had happened now and then—but this was the first time Varosa Uman’s species had dealt with a divided visitation. Was that why the Integrators had roused her?

It was a logical thought but she knew it was irrelevant as soon as she saw the encounter between the second visitor and a device that had obviously been created by a member of her own species.

“The unauthorized contacts have been initiated by an Adventurer with an all too familiar name,” the First Principal said. “Revutev Mavarka Verenka Turetva.… Mansita Jano was preparing to take action when the Integrators advised us they were putting you in charge of our response to the visitation.”

“I have received a cease-operations command from my organic predecessor,” the Resdell alter said. “This will be my last message. Do not anticipate a revival.”

The Betzino alter mimicked the thought processes of a woman who possessed a formidable intellect. Edna Betzino had been a theoretical physicist, a psychiatrist, and an investigatory sociologist specializing in military and semi-military organizations. In her spare time, she had become a widely respected cellist who was a devoted student of Bach and his twenty-second century successors. She had launched her own interstellar probe because she had never developed an institutional affiliation that would offer her proper backing.

The Betzino alter riffled through its databanks—as Betzino herself would have—and determined that Anthony Resdell lived in a governmental unit that had become a “single-leader state.” Messages from Earth had to cross eighteen light years so the information in the data banks was, of course, eighteen earth years out of date. The cease-operations command would remain in effect until the Resdell alter received a countermand from Anthony Resdell.

The ninety-five votes had now been reduced to sixty-five. Their creators had neglected to include a routine that adjusted the percentages so Betzino still controlled thirty votes. She would need the support of one minor member every time the community made a decision.

Three of the minor members wanted to continue discussions with the inhabitant who had made contact. Two objected, on the grounds the inhabitant was obviously an unofficial private individual.

“We have no information regarding his relations with their political entities,” the spokesman for the sex research community argued. “He could bias them against us when we try to make a proper contact.”

Their mobile device had exchanged language programs with the inhabitant’s contact device. The data indicated the inhabitant’s primary language had a structure and vocabulary that resembled the structure and vocabulary of the languages technologically advanced human societies had developed.

Betzino voted to maintain the contact. Switches tripped in response and the contact and language programs remained active.

There was a standard response to visitations. It was called the Message. Varosa Uman’s species had transmitted it twice and received it once.

Mansita Jano had initiated Message preparation as soon as he had been given responsibility for the visitation. He would have initiated contact with one of the visitors and proceeded to the final stages if Revutev Mavarka hadn’t started “bungling around.”

Mansita Jano believed Revutev Mavarka should be arrested before he could cause any more trouble. “We have documentary evidence Revutev Mavarka has committed a serious crime,” Mansita Jano said. “I think we can also assume the first visitor has a higher status than the visitor he’s been attempting to charm. The first visitor rebuffed his overtures. We have translated a communication in which it ordered the second visitor to cease operations.”

There was nothing sinister about the Message. It was, in fact, the greatest gift an intelligent species could receive. It contained all the knowledge twenty-three technological civilizations had accumulated, translated into the major languages employed by the recipient. With the information contained in the Message, any species that had developed interstellar probes could cure all its diseases, quadruple its intelligence, bestow millennia of life on all its members, reshape the life-forms on its planet, tap energy sources that would maintain its civilization until the end of the universe, and generally treat itself to the kind of society it had been dreaming about since it first decided it didn’t have to endure all the death and suffering the universe inflicted on it.

And that was the problem. No society could absorb that much change in one gulp. Varosa Uman’s species had endured a millennium of chaos after it had received its version of the Message.

It was an elegant defense. The Message satisfied the consciences of the species who employed it and it permanently eliminated the threat posed by visitors who might have hostile intentions. Interstellar war might seem improbable but it wasn’t impossible. A small probe could slip into a planetary system unannounced, establish a base on an obscure body, and construct equipment that could launch a flotilla of genocidal rocks at an unsuspecting world.

Varosa Uman’s people had never sent another visitor to the stars. As far as they could tell, all the species that had received the Message had settled into the same quiet isolation—if they survived their own version of the Great Turbulence.

“The Message can be considered a kind of conditioning,” a post-Turbulence committee had concluded. “The chaos it creates implants a permanent aversion to interstellar contact.”

Revutev Mavarka was an Adventurer—a member of a minority group that constituted approximately twelve percent of the population. Varosa Uman’s species had emerged from the Turbulence by forcing far-reaching modifications on the neurochemical reactions that shaped their emotional responses. They had included a controlled number of thrill-seekers and novelty chasers in their population mix because they had understood that a world populated by tranquil, relentlessly socialized serenes had relinquished some of its capacity to adapt. No society could foresee all the twists and traps the future could hold.

Most Adventurers satisfied their special emotional needs with physical challenges and sexual escapades. Revutev Mavarka seemed to be captivated by less benign outlets. His fiftieth awake had been marked by his attempt to disrupt the weather program that controlled the rainfall over the Fashlev mountain range. The First Principal Overseer had added twelve years to his next dormancy period and the Integrators had approved the penalty.

In his seventy-third awake, Revutev Mavarka had designed a small, hyperactive carnivore that had transferred a toxin through the food chain and transformed the habitués of a staid island resort into a population of temporary risk addicts. In his eighty-first, he had decided his happiness depended upon the companionship of a prominent fashion despot and kidnapped her after she had won a legal restraint on his attentions. The poisoning had added twenty-two years to his next dormancy, the kidnapping twenty-eight.

Varosa Uman and her husband liked cool winds and rugged landscapes. They liked to sit on high balconies, hands touching, and watch winged creatures circle over gray northern seas.

“It’s Revutev Mavarka,” Varosa Uman said. “He’s made an unauthorized contact with a visitation.”

“And the Integrators think you can give them some special insight?”

“They’ve placed me in charge of the entire response. I’m replacing Mansita Jano.”

Siti called up Mansita Jano’s data and scanned through it. “He’s a specialist,” Siti said. “It’s a big responsibility but I think I agree with the Integrators.”

“You may belong to a very small minority. They gave me a scrupulously polite briefing.”

“They don’t know you quite as well as I do.”

“Mansita Jano was getting ready to arrest Revutev Mavarka. And offer the Message.”

“And you think the situation is a bit more complicated…”

“There are two visitors. One of them is acting like it represents a planetary authority. The other one—the visitor Revutev Mavarka contacted—looks like it may have more in common with him. I have to see how much support Revutev Mavarka has. I can’t ignore that. You have to think about their emotional reactions when you’re dealing with the Adventurer community. I have to weigh their feelings and I have to think about the responses we could provoke in the visitors—both visitors. We aren’t the first people to confront two visitors but it still increases the complexities—the unknowns.”

“And Revutev Mavarka has piled more complexities on top of that. And the Integrators understandably decided we’d be better off with someone like you pondering the conflicts.”

The contact had told the Betzino-Resdell community they should call him Donald. So far they had mostly traded language programs. They could exchange comments on the weather in three hundred and seven different languages.

The alters that were interested in non-human sexuality lobbied for permission to swap data on sexual practices. There were six alters in the group and they represented the six leading scholars associated with the North Pacific Center for the Analysis of Multi-Gender Sexuality. The exploration units they controlled had observed the activities of eight local life-forms. All eight seemed to have developed the same unimaginative two-sex pattern life had evolved on Earth. Their forays into the cities had given them a general picture of the inhabitant’s physiology but it had left them with a number of unresolved issues.

Topic: Does your species consist of two sexes?

Betzino-Resdell: Yes.

Donald: Yes.

Topic: Are there any obvious physical differences between the sexes?

BR: Yes.

Donald: Yes

Topic: What are they?

BR: Our males are larger, bigger boned on average. Generally more muscular.

Donald: Males more colorful, more varied facial feathers.

Topic: Do you form permanent mating bonds?

BR: Yes.

Donald: Yes.

Topic: Do any members of your species engage in other patterns?

BR: Yes.

Donald: Yes.

Topic: How common are these other patterns?

BR: In many societies, very high percentages engage in other patterns.

Donald: Why do you wish to know?

The visitation committee was receiving a full recording of every exchange between Revutev Mavarka and the visitation device that called itself Betzino-Resdell. Revutev Mavarka was, of course, fully aware that he was being observed. So far he had avoided any exchanges that could produce accusations he had transmitted potentially dangerous information.

“It must be frustrating,” Varosa Uman said. “He must have a million subjects he’d like to discuss.”

“We just need one slip,” Mansita Jano said. “Give us one slip and he’ll be lucky if fifty members of his own class stand by him.”

“And the visitor will have the information contained in the slip…”

Mansita Jano’s facial feathers stirred—an ancient response that made his face look bigger and more threatening. “Then why not silence him before he does it, Overseer? Do you really think he can keep this up indefinitely without saying something catastrophic?”

“I’ve been thinking a dangerous thought,” Varosa Uman said.

“I’m not surprised,” Siti said.

“Every intelligent species that has sent visitors to an inhabited world has apparently lived through the same horrible experience we did. Some of them may not have survived it. If our experience is typical, everybody who receives the Message responds in the same way when they receive a visitation after they’ve gone through their version of the Turbulence. The Message is a great teacher. It teaches us that contact with other civilizations is a dangerous disruption.”

Two large winged predators were swooping over the water just below the level of their balcony. The dark red plumage on their wings created a satisfying contrast with the grey of the sea and the sky

“I’m thinking it might be useful if someone looked at an alternative response,” Varosa Uman said.

Siti ran his fingers across the back of her hand. They had been married for eighty-two complete cycles—twenty-four hundred years of full consciousness. He knew when to speak and when to mutely remind her he was there.

“Suppose someone tried a different role,” Varosa Uman said. “Suppose we offered to guide these visitors through all the adaptations they’re going to confront. Step by step.”

“As an older, more experienced species.”

“Which we are. In this area, at least.”

“We would have to maintain contact,” Siti said. “They would be influencing us, too.”

“And threatening us with more turbulence. I’d be creating a disruption the moment I mentioned the idea to Mansita Jano.”

“Have you mentioned your intellectual deviation to the Integrators?”

“They gave me one of their standard routines. They pointed out the dangers, I asked them for a decision, and they told me they were only machines, I’m the Situation Overseer.”

“And they picked you because their routines balanced all the relevant factors—see attached list—and decided you were the best available candidate.”

“I think it’s pretty obvious I got the job because I’m more sympathetic to the Adventurer viewpoint than most of the candidates who had the minimum expertise they were looking for.”

“You’re certainly more sympathetic than Mansita Jano. As I remember it, your major response to Revutev Mavarka’s last misadventure was a daily outburst of highly visible amusement.”

Siti had been convinced he wanted to establish a permanent bond before they had finished their first active period together. She had resisted the idea until they were halfway through their next awake but she had known she would form a bond with someone sooner or later. They were both people with a fundamental tendency to drift into permanent bonds and they had reinforced that tendency, soon after they made the commitment, with a personality adjustment that eliminated disruptive urges.

Siti found Revutev Mavarka almost incomprehensible. A man who kidnapped a woman just to satisfy a transient desire? And created a turmoil that affected hundreds of people?

Twenty years from now she won’t mean a thing to him, Siti had said. And he knows it.

“He’s impulsive,” Varosa Uman said. “I can’t let myself forget he’s impulsive. Unpredictably.”

Trans Cultural had asked all the required questions and looked at all the proffered bona fides. The emissary called Varosa Uman Deun Malinvo… satisfied all the criteria that indicated said emissary represented a legitimate governmental authority.

“Is it correct to assume you represent the dominant governmental unit on your planet?” Trans Cultural asked.

“I represent the only governmental unit on my planet.”

Varosa Uman had established a direct link with the base Trans Cultural had created in the Gildeen Wilderness. She had clothed herself in the feather and platinum finery high officials had worn at the height of the Third TaraTin Empire and she was transmitting a full, detailed image. Trans Cultural was still limiting itself to voice-only.

“Thank you for offering that information,” Trans Cultural said.

“Are you supposed to limit your contacts to governmental representatives?”

“I am authorized to initiate conversations with any entity as representative as the consortium I represent.”

“Can you give us any information on the other visitor currently operating on our world?”

“The Betzino-Resdell Exploration Community primarily represents two private individuals. The rest of its membership comprises two other individuals and three minor organizations.”

“Can you give me any information on its members?”

“I’m afraid I’m not authorized to dispense that information at present.”

“The presence of another visitor from your society seems to indicate you do not have a single entity that can speak for your entire civilization. Is that correct?”

“I represent the dominant consensus on our world. My consortium represents all the major political, intellectual, and cultural organizations on our world. I am authorized to furnish a complete list on request.”

Betzino-Resdell had created an antenna by shaping a large rock slab into a shallow dish and covering it with a thin metal veneer. The orbiter passed over the antenna once every 75.6 minutes and exchanged transmissions.

“You should create an alternate transmission route,” Revutev Mavarka said. “I’ve been observing your skirmishes with the other visitor. You should be prepared to continue communications with your orbiter if they manage to invade your base and destroy your antenna.”

“Do you think that’s a significant possibility?”

“I believe you should be prepared. That’s my best advice.”

“He’s preparing a betrayal,” Mansita Jano said. “He’s telling us he’s prepared to send them information about the Message if we attempt to arrest him.”

Varosa Uman reset the recording and watched it again. She received recordings of every interchange between Revutev Mavarka and the second visitor but Mansita Jano had brought this to her attention as soon as it had been intercepted.

Mansita Jano had raised the possibility of a “warning message” in their first meetings. The Message itself contained some hints that it had thrown whole civilizations into turmoil but most of the evidence had been edited out of the historical sections. The history of their own species painted an accurate picture up to their receipt of the Message.

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.”

“He’s savoring the possibility,” Varosa Uman told her husband.

“Like one of those people who contemplate suicide? And finish their awake still thinking about it?”

“I have to assume he could do it.”

“It seems to me it would be the equivalent of suicide. Given the outrage most people would feel.”

“We would have to give him the worst punishment the public mood demands—whatever it takes to restore calm.”

“You’re protecting him from his own impulses, love. You shouldn’t forget that. You aren’t just protecting us. You’re protecting him.”

It was all a matter of arithmetic. Trans Cultural was obviously building up a force that could overwhelm Betzino-Resdell’s defenses. At some point, it would command a horde that could cross the ditch and gnaw its way through the toxic hedge by sheer weight of numbers. Betzino-Resdell could delay that day by raiding Trans Cultural’s breeding camps and building up the defensive force gathered behind the hedge. But sooner or later Trans Cultural’s superior resources would overcome Betzino-Resdell’s best efforts.

The military hobbyist in the Betzino-Resdell community had worked the numbers. “They will achieve victory level in 8.7 terrestrial years,” Ivan advised his colleagues. “Plus or minus .3 terrestrial years. We can extend that by 2.7 terrestrial years if we increase our defensive allocation to 60 percent of our resources.”

Betzino voted to continue the current level and the other members of the community concurred. Their sponsors in the solar system would continue to receive reports on the researches and explorations that interested them.

Revutev Mavarka inspected their plan and ran it through two of the military planning routines he found in the libraries. 8.7 terrestrial years equaled six of his own world’s orbits. He could postpone his doom a little longer.

“We are going to plant a few concealed devices at promising locations,” Betzino-Resdell told him. “They will attempt to establish new bases after this one is destroyed. Our calculations indicate Trans Cultural can destroy any base it locates before the base can achieve a secure position but the calculation includes variables with wide ranges. It could be altered by unpredictable possibilities. We will reestablish contact with you if the variables and unpredictable possibilities work in our favor and we establish a new defensible base.”

“I’ll be looking forward to hearing from you,” Revutev Mavarka said.

They were only machines. They couldn’t fool themselves into thinking an impossible plan was certain to succeed.

The weather fell into predictable patterns all over the planet. The serenes had arranged it that way. Citizens who liked warm weather could live in cities where the weather stayed within a range they found comfortable and pleasant. Citizens who enjoyed the passage of the seasons could settle where the seasons rotated across the land in a rhythm that was so regular it never varied by more than three days.

But no system could achieve perfect, planet-wide predictability. There were places where three or four weather patterns adjoined and minor fluctuations could create sudden shifts. Revutev Mavarka lived, by choice, in a city located in an area noted for its tendency to lurch between extremes.

Sudden big snowfalls were one of his favorite lurches. One day you might be sitting in an outdoor cafe, dressed in light clothes, surrounded by people whose feathers glowed in the sunlight. The next you could be trudging through knee high snow, plodding toward a place where those same feathers would respond to the mellower light of an oversize fireplace.

He had just settled into a table only a few steps from such a fireplace when his communication system jerked his attention away from the snowing song he and six of his friends had started singing.

“You have a priority message. Your observers are tracking a Category One movement.”

His hands clutched the edge of the table. He lowered his head and shifted his system to subvocalization mode. The woman on the other side of the table caught his eye and he tried to look like he was receiving a message that might lead to a cozier kind of pleasure.

Category One was a mass movement toward the Betzino-Resdell base—a swarm attack.

How many observers are seeing it?

“Seven.”

How many criteria does the observation satisfy?

“All.”

His clothes started warming up as soon as he stepped outside. He crunched across the snow bathed in the familiar, comforting sense that he was wrapped in a warm cocoon surrounded by a bleak landscape. It had only been three and a half years since Trans Cultural had started building up its forces. How could they attack now? With a third of the forces they needed?

Has Betzino-Resdell been warned? Are they preparing a defense?

“Yes.”

He activated his stage and gave it instructions while he was walking back to his apartment. By the time he settled into his viewing chair, the stage was showing him an aerial view, with most of the vegetation deleted. The trees still supported their foliage in the area where the base was located.

The display had colored Trans Cultural’s forces white for easy identification. Betzino-Resdell’s defenders had been anointed with a shimmering copper. The white markers were flowing toward the base in three clearly defined streams. They were all converging, dumbly and obviously, on one side of the ditch. A bar at the top of the display estimated the streams contained four to six thousand animals. Trans Cultural was attacking with a force that exactly matched his estimates of their strength—a force that couldn’t possibly make its way through the defenses Betzino-Resdell had developed.

There could only be one explanation. Somebody had to be helping it.

“Position. Betzino-Resdell orbiter. Insert.”

A diagram popped onto the display. Trans Cultural had launched its attack just after the orbiter had passed over the base.

The antenna built into the rock face couldn’t be maneuvered. The base could only communicate with the orbiter when the orbiter was almost directly overhead. Trans Cultural—and its unannounced allies—had timed the attack so he couldn’t send his warning message until the orbiter completed another passage around the planet.

He could transmit it now, of course. Betzino-Resdell could store the warning and relay it when the orbiter made its next pass. But the whole situation would change the moment he gave the order. The police would seal off his apartment before he could take three steps toward the door.

Up until now he had been engaging in the kind of borderline activity most Adventurers played with. The record would show he had limited his contacts with Betzino-Resdell to harmless exchanges. He could even argue he had accumulated useful information about the visitors and their divisions.

“Have you considered isolating him?” Mansita Jano said. “It might be a sensible precaution, given the tension he’s under.”

Varosa Uman had been eating a long afternoon meal with Siti. She had been thinking, idly, of the small, easy pleasures that might follow. And found herself sitting in front of a stage crowded with a view of the battle and headshots of Mansita Jano and her most reliable aides.

She could cut Revutev Mavarka’s electronic links any time she wanted to. But it would be an overt act. Some people would even feel it was more drastic than physical restraint.

“He’s an emotional, unstable personality confronted with a powerful challenge,” Mansita Jano said. “He could send a warning message at any time. If they manage to relay it to the backup system they’ve set up, before you can stop them.…”

“He knows what we’ll do to him if he sends a warning,” Varosa Uman said. “He has every reason to think Trans Cultural has made a blunder and the attack is going to fail.”

“He’s an emotional, unpredictable personality, Overseer. I apologize for sounding like a recording, but there are some realities that can’t be overemphasized.”

Siti had positioned himself on her right, out of range of the camera. She glanced at him and he put down his bowl and crossed his wrists in front of his face, as if he was shielding himself from a blow.

Mansita Jano had placed his advice on the record. If his arrangement with Trans Cultural failed—whatever the arrangement was—he would be shielded.

“This attack cannot succeed,” Betzino-Resdell said. “We have repeated our analyses. This attack can only succeed if it contains some element we are not aware of.”

“I’ve come to the same conclusion,” Revutev Mavarka said.

“We are proceeding with our defensive plan. We have made no modifications. We would like more information, if you have any.”

A tactical diagram floated over the image of the advancing hordes. Most of Betzino-Resdell’s defensive forces would mass behind the toxic hedge, in the area the attackers seemed to be threatening. A small mobile reserve would position itself in the center of the base.

“I suggest you concentrate your mobile reserve around the antenna.”

“Why do you advise that?”

“I believe the antenna is their primary objective. They will try to destroy your connection with your orbiter if they break through the hedge.”

“Why will they make the antenna their primary objective? Our plans assume their primary objectives will be our energy transmission network and our primary processing units.”

“Can you defend yourself if you lose contact with your orbiter?”

“Yes.”

Betzino-Resdell had paused before it had answered. It had been a brief pause—an almost undetectable flicker, by the standards of organic personalities—but his brain had learned to recognize the minute signals a machine threw out.

He had been assuming Betzino-Resdell’s operations were still controlled by the orbiter. He had assumed the unit on the ground transmitted information and received instructions when the orbiter passed over. That might have been true in the beginning. By now, Betzino-Resdell could have transmitted complete copies of itself to the ground. The ground copies could be the primaries. The copies on the orbiter could be the backups.

“Are you assuming you can keep operating on the ground if you stop this attack and they destroy the antenna? And build a new antenna in the future?”

“.… Yes.”

“What if that doesn’t work out? Isn’t there some possibility your rival could gain strength and destroy your new antenna before you can finish it?”

“Why are you emphasizing the antenna? Do you have some information we don’t have?”

I have an important message I want to transmit to your home planet. The future of your entire species could depend on it.

“I was thinking about the individuals who sent you. Your explorations won’t be of much value to them if you can’t communicate with your orbiter.”

“Our first priority is the survival of our surface capability. Our simulations indicate we can survive indefinitely and could eventually reestablish contact with our orbiter. Do you have information that indicates we should reassess our priorities?”

Revutev Mavarka tipped back his head. His hands pressed against the thick, deliberately ragged feathers that adorned the sides of his face. He was communicating with the visitor through a voice-only link, as always. He didn’t have to hide his emotions behind the bland mask the serenes offered the world.

“I’ve given you the best advice I can give you at present. I recommend that you place a higher priority on the antenna.”

“He’s still struggling with his conflicts,” Varosa Uman said. “He could have given them a stronger argument.”

She had turned to Siti again. She could still hear the exhortations she was receiving from her aides but she had switched off her own vocal feed.

“Mansita Jano would probably say he’s watching two personalities struggle with their internal conflicts,” Siti said.

Varosa Uman’s display had adapted the same color scheme Revutev Mavarka was watching. The white markers had reached the long slope in front of the ditch. The three columns were converging into a single mass. Winged creatures were fighting over the space above their backs.

“It looks like they’re starting their final assault,” Siti said. “Do you have any idea what kind of fearsome warriors your white markers represent?”

“They seem to be a horde of small four-legged animals native to the visitor’s planet. They breed very fast. And they have sharp teeth and claws.”

“They’re going to bite their way through the hedge? With one of them dying every time they take a bite?”

“That seems to be the plan.”

Revutev Mavarka stepped up to the display and waved his hand over the area covered by the white markers.

“Calculation. Estimate number of organisms designated by white marking.”

A number floated over the display. The horde racing up the slope contained, at most, six thousand four hundred animals.

The three columns had merged into a single dense mass. He could see the entire assault force. The estimate had to be correct.

He activated his connection to Betzino-Resdell. “I have an estimate of six thousand four hundred for the assault force. Does that match your estimate?”

“Yes.”

“Your calculations still indicate the attack will fail?”

“Four thousand will die biting their way through the hedge. The rest will be overwhelmed by our defensive force.”

Machines were only machines. Imagination required conscious, self-aware minds. Adventurous self-aware minds. But they were talking about a straightforward calculation. Trans Cultural had to know its attack couldn’t succeed.

“Can you think of any reason why Trans Cultural has launched this attack at this time?” Revutev Mavarka said. “Is there some factor you haven’t told me about?”

“We have examined all the relevant factors stored in our libraries. We have only detected one anomaly. They are advancing on a wider front than our simulations recommend. Do you know of any reason why they would do that?”

“How much wider is it?”

“Over one third.”

“Do they have a military routine comparable to yours?”

“We have made no assumptions about the nature of their military routine.”

Revutev Mavarka stared at the display. Would the attackers be easier to defeat if they were spread out? Would they be more vulnerable if they were compacted into a tight mass? There must be some optimum combination of width and density. Could he be certain Betzino-Resdell’s military routine had made the right calculation?

How much secret help had Trans Cultural received?

“One member of our community still wants to know why you think we should place a higher priority on the antenna,” Betzino-Resdell said. “She insists that we ask you again.”

The first white markers had leaped into the ditch. Paws were churning under the water. Betzino-Resdell’s defenders were spreading out behind the hedge, to cover the extra width of the assault.

Transmit this message to your home planet at once. The Message you will receive from our civilization is a dangerous trap. It contains the combined knowledge of twenty-three civilizations, translated into the languages you have given us. It will give you untold wealth, life without death, an eternity of comfort and ease. But that is only the promise. It will throw your entire civilization into turmoil when you try to absorb its gifts. You may never recover. The elimination of death is particularly dangerous. The Message is not a friendly act. We are sending it to you for the same reason it was sent to us. To protect ourselves. To defend ourselves against the disruption you will cause if we remain in contact.

It was a deliberately short preliminary alarm. They would have the whole text in their storage banks half an eyeblink after he subvocalized the code that would activate transmission. A longer follow-up, with visual details of the Turbulence, would take two more blinks.

The initiation code consisted of two short numbers and three unrelated words from three different extinct languages—a combination he couldn’t possibly confuse with anything else he might utter.

Would they believe it? Would the people who received it on the human world dismiss it because it came from a vehicle that had been assembled by a group of individuals who were probably just as marginal and unrepresentative as the eccentric who sent the warning?

Some of them might dismiss it. Some of them might believe it. Did it matter? Something unpredictable would be added to the situation—something the Integrators and Varosa Uman would have to face knowing they were taking risks and struggling with unknowns no matter what they did.

The animals in the front line of the assault force had reached the hedge. White markers covered a section of the ditch from side to side. Teeth were biting into poisoned stems.

The hedge wavered. The section in front of the assault force shook as if it had been pummeled by a sudden wind. A wall of dust rose into the air.

Varosa Uman would have given Mansita Jano an immediate burst of praise if she could have admitted she knew he was responsible. She had understood what he’d done as soon as she realized the hedge was sinking into the ground.

There would be no evidence they had helped Trans Cultural. Some individuals might suspect it but the official story would be believable enough. Trans Cultural had somehow managed to undermine the ground under the hedge. An explosion had collapsed the mine at the best possible time and the defenders were being taken by surprise.

The assault force still had to cross the ruins of the hedge but they had apparently prepared a tactic. The front rank died and the next rank clambered over them. Line by line, body by body, the animals extended a carpet over the gap. Most of them would make it across. Betzino-Resdell’s defenders would be outnumbered.

Trans Cultural couldn’t have dug the mine. They didn’t have the resources to dig the mine while they were preparing the attack. Revutev Mavarka could prove it. But would anyone believe him?

The first white markers had crossed the ditch. The front ranks were ripping at each other with teeth and claws. Flyers struggled in the dust above the collapse.

White markers began to penetrate the copper masses. The mobile reserve retreated toward the installations that housed Betzino-Resdell’s primary processing units.

A white column emerged from the hedge on the right end of the line—the end closest to the antenna. It turned toward the antenna and started gathering speed.

“Defend the antenna. You must defend the antenna.”

“What are you hiding from us? You must give us more information. What is happening? Trans Cultural couldn’t have dug that mine. They didn’t have the resources.”

Revutev Mavarka stared at the white markers scurrying toward the antenna. Could Betzino-Resdell’s mobile reserve get there in time if they responded to his pleas? Would it make any difference?

The antenna was doomed. The best defense they could put up would buy him, at best, a finite, slightly longer interval of indecision.

Two numbers.

Three words.

Blip.

“You must destroy the antenna,” Mansita Jano said. “He’s given you all the excuse you need.”

Varosa Uman had already given the order. She had placed a missile on standby when Trans Cultural had launched its attack. Revutev Mavarka had committed the unforgivable act. She could take any action she deemed necessary.

The missile rose out of an installation she had planted on an island in the lake. Police advanced on Revutev Mavarka’s apartment. The image on his display stage disappeared. Jammers and switches cut every link that connected him to the outside world.

Three of the Betzino-Resdell programs voted to transmit Donald’s message at once. Ivan argued for transmission on impeccable military grounds. Donald had told them they should defend the antenna. He had obviously given them the message because he believed the antenna was about to be destroyed. They must assume, therefore, that the antenna was about to be destroyed. They could evaluate the message later.

Betzino raised objections. Could they trust Donald? Did they have enough information?

They argued for 11.7 seconds. At 11.8 seconds they transmitted the message to their backup transmission route. At 11.9 seconds, Varosa Uman’s missile shattered the surface of the antenna and melted most of the metal veneer.

Varosa Uman had been searching for the alternate transmission route ever since Revutev Mavarka had told Betzino-Resdell it should create it. It couldn’t be hidden forever. It had to include a second antenna and the antenna had to be located along the track the orbiter traced across the surface of the planet.

But it wouldn’t expose itself until it was activated. It could lie dormant until the moment it transmitted. It could store a small amount of energy and expend it in a single pulse.

“Neutralize their orbiter,” Mansita Jano said. “Isolate it.”

Varosa Uman checked the track of the Betzino-Resdell orbiter. It had completed over half its orbit.

“And what happens when we give Trans Cultural the Message?” Varosa Uman asked. “After we’ve committed an overtly hostile act?”

“You’ve already committed an overtly hostile act. Trans Cultural knows my emissary had some kind of covert official support. Why are you hesitating, Overseer? What is your problem?”

Machines might be unimaginative but they were thorough. Ivan had designed the backup transmission route and he had built in all the redundancy he could squeeze out of the resources his colleagues had given him. Three high speed, low visibility airborne devices set off in three different directions as soon as they received the final message from the base. One stopped twelve kilometers from its starting point and relayed the message to a transmitter built into the highest tree on a small rise. The transmitter had been sucking energy from the tree’s biochemistry for three years. It responded by concentrating all that accumulated energy into a single blip that shot toward a transmitter stored in a winged scavenger that circled over a grassy upland.

Varosa Uman’s surveillance routine had noted the flying scavenger and stored it in a file that included several hundred items of interest. It picked up the blip as soon as the scavenger relayed it and narrowed the area in which its patrols were working their search patterns. A flyer that resembled a terrestrial owl suicide-bombed the hidden antenna half a second before the blip reached it.

The other two high speed airborne devices veered toward the northern and southern edges of the orbiter’s track. Relays emitted their once-in-a-lifetime blasts and settled into permanent quiet.

The antenna located along the northern edge of the track succumbed to a double suicide by two slightly faster updates of the owlish suicider. The third antenna picked up the orbiter as the little ball raced over a dense forest. It fulfilled its destiny twenty seconds before a prepositioned missile splashed a corrosive liquid over the electronic veneer the antenna had spread across an abandoned nest.

Revutev Mavarka went into dormancy as if he was going to his death. He said goodbye to his closest friends. He crammed his detention quarters with images of his favorite scenes and events. He even managed to arrange a special meal and consume it with deliberate pleasure before they emptied out his stomach.

The only omission was a final statement to the public. A private message from Varosa Uman had curtailed his deliberations in that area. Don’t waste your time, the Situation Overseer had said, and he had accepted her advice with the melancholy resignation of someone who knew his conscious life had to be measured in heartbeats, not centuries.

Four armed guards escorted him to his dormancy unit. A last pulse of fear broke through his self-control when he felt the injector touch his bare shoulder.

The top of the unit swung back. Varosa Uman looked down at him. Technicians were removing the attachments that connected him to the support system.

“Please forgive our haste,” Varosa Uman said. “There will be no permanent damage.”

There were no windows in the room. The only decoration was a street level cityscape that filled the wall directly in front of him. He was still lying on the medical cart that had trundled him through a maze of corridors and elevator rides but Varosa Uman’s aides had raised his upper body and maneuvered him into a bulky amber wrapper before they filed out of the room.

“You’re still managing the Visitation, Overseer?”

“The Integrators won’t budge,” Varosa Uman said. “The Principals keep putting limits on my powers but they can’t get rid of me.”

He had been dormant for one hundred and three years. He had asked her as soon as he realized he was coming out of dormancy and she had handed him the information while they were working the wrapper around the tubes and wires that connected him to the cart.

“I’ve spent much of the last ten years trying to convince the Overseers they should let me wake you,” Varosa Uman said. “I got you out of there as soon as they gave me permission.”

“Before they changed their mind?”

A table with a flagon and a plate of food disks sat beside the cart. He reached for a disk and she waited while he put it in his mouth and savored his first chew.

“You want something from me,” he said.

“The two visitors still have bases on the third moon of Widial—complete with backup copies of all their subunits. I want to contact them with an offer. We will try to guide their species through the Turbulence—try to help them find responses that will reduce the havoc. It’s an idea I had earlier. I had a study group explore it. But I fell back into the pattern we’ve all locked into our reactions.”

The men strolling through the cityscape were wearing tall hats and carrying long poles—a fashion that had no relation to anything Revutev Mavarka had encountered in any of the millennia he had lived through.

One hundred and three years.…

“There are things we can tell them,” Varosa Uman said. “We can end the cycle of attack and isolation every civilization in our section of the galaxy seems to be trapped in.”

“You’re raising an obvious question, Overseer.”

“I want you to join me when I approach the visitors. I need support from the Adventurer community.”

“And you think they’ll fall in behind me?”

“Some of them will. Some of them hate you just as much as most serenes hate you. But you’re a hero to forty percent of them. And the data indicate most of the rest should be recruitable.”

He raised his arms as if he was orating in front of an audience. Tubes dangled from his wrists.

“Serenes and Adventurers will join together in a grand alliance! And present the humans with a united species!”

“I couldn’t offer the humans a united front if every Adventurer on the planet joined us. We aren’t a united species anymore. We stopped being a united species when you sent your warning.”

“You said you still had the support of the Integrators.”

“There’s been a revolt against the Integrators. Mansita Jano refused to accept their decision to keep me in charge of the Visitation.”

“We’re at war? We’re going through another Turbulence?”

“No one has died. Yet. Hundreds of people have been forced into dormancy on both sides. Some cities are completely controlled by Mansita Jano’s supporters. We have a serious rift in our society—so serious it could throw us into another Turbulence if we don’t do something before more visitors arrive from the human system. If we make the offer and the humans accept—I think most people will fall in behind the idea.”

“But you feel you need the support of the Adventurer community?”

“Yes.”

The men in the cityscape tapped their poles when they stopped to talk. The ribbons dangling from the ends of the poles complemented the color of their facial feathers.

“That’s a risk in itself, Overseer. Why would the serenes join forces with a mob of irresponsible risk takers? Why would anyone follow me? Everything they had ended when I sent my warning.”

“You’re underestimating yourself. You’re a potent figure. I’ll lose some serenes but the projections all indicate I’ll get most of the Adventurer community in exchange. You may look like an irresponsible innovator to most serenes but most of your own people see you as an innovator who was willing to set a third of the galaxy on a new course.”

“And what do you see, Varosa Uman?”

“I see an irresponsible interloper who may have opened up a new possibility. And placed our entire species in peril.”

“And if I don’t help you pursue your great enterprise I’ll be shoved into a box.”

“I want your willing cooperation. I want you to rally your community behind the biggest adventure our species has ever undertaken—the ultimate proof that we need people with your personality structure.”

“You want to turn an irritating escapader into a prophet?”

“Yes.”

“Speech writers? Advisers? Presentation specialists?”

“You’ll get the best we have. I’ve got a communications facility in the next room. I’d like you to sit through a catch up review. Then we’ll send a simultaneous transmission to both visitors.”

“You’re moving very fast. Are you afraid someone will stop you?”

“I want to present our entire population—opponents and supporters—with an accomplished act. Just like you did.”

“They could turn on you just like they turned on me. The revolt against the Integrators could intensify. The humans may reject your offer.”

“We’ve examined the possibilities. We can sit here and let things happen or we can take the best choice in a bad list and try to make it work.”

“You’re still acting like a gambler. Are you sure they didn’t make a mistake when they classified you?”

“You take risks because you like it. I take risks because I have to.”

“But you’re willing to do it. You don’t automatically reach for the standard course.”

“Will you help me, Revutev Mavarka? Will you stand beside me in one of the boldest moments in the history of intelligence?”

“In the history of intelligence, Overseer?”

“That’s what it is, isn’t it? We’ll be disrupting a chain of self-isolating intelligent species—a chain that’s been creeping across our section of the galaxy for hundreds of millennia.”

He picked up another food disk. It was dull stuff—almost tasteless—but it supplemented the nutrients from the cart with material that would activate his digestive path. It was, when you thought about it, exactly the kind of food the more extreme serenes would want to encounter when they came out of dormancy.

“Since you put it that way.…”