by Jerry Oltion
"Just a few more seconds," the French radio operator said. "They are loading the wounded."
"Ten," Tippet said. "Nine. Eight." He counted on down to zero, then the thrust let off.
"Are your people away?" he asked.
"Oui! Yes. Merci, merci! You have—how did you do that?"
Before Tippet could reply, Judy said, "Answer me a question first. What were you guys trying to do down there?"
"Who is this?"
"Judy Gallagher." She felt a small shot of smug satisfaction at the knowledge that they would know who she was, too. "That didn't look like any exploration party. What were you trying to do, set up a military base?"
"No! We—" The radio went silent, save for Tippet's continuing conversation with the tree, then a few seconds later the Frenchman said, "We attempt to start the colony." Had he been checking the official story, or just checking to see how much of the truth he could tell?
She would probably never know. She said, "That's a damned strange way to set up a colony. And you're a long ways from home, too. Alpha Centauri s a hell of a lot closer."
"We did not want to be close. We wanted someplace our enemies would not find until well after the holocaust."
A shiver ran up Judy's spine, and it had nothing to do with the air temperature. "Holocaust?" she asked. "What holocaust?"
"The one that will surely engulf the Earth before the week is finished," the Frenchman replied. 43
"Wait a minute," Judy said. "We've only been gone for two days, and it wasn't looking that bad when we left. What the hell have you people been doing?"
"Fleeing for our lives," the Frenchman replied. "Since Monsieur Meisner gave everyone the hyperdrive, we have all been waiting for bombs to appear over our cities. Until now, the threat of—how do you say—of mutual assured destruction has prevented war, but once our enemies build colonies elsewhere, mutual destruction is assured no more."
"So you're rushing to build a colony of your own," Judy said.
"Yes."
"Thereby triggering the very war you're trying to avoid."
"It doesn't work that way," Allen said, his voice filled with the same disdain he'd shown Carl Reinhardt back on board the shuttle. "As soon as people see that there's room enough for everybody—"
"They will strike first to prevent their enemies from establishing a presence outside their control." That was Tippet.
"They—the United States wouldn't," Allen said.
"Of course they would," the Frenchman replied.
"It is the logical thing to do," Tippet said. "Once your enemies escape your grasp, you have no more influence over their actions. Their beliefs and their way of life will spread unchecked. If you truly consider them enemies, then the most logical course of action would be to eradicate them before they can escape."
"But . . . but . . ." Judy felt him quiver beside her in the sleeping bag. "That's insane!"
"Perhaps," Tippet said. "But it is the most logical course of action for beings who cannot subvert their enemies as we do."
"Jesus H. Christ!" Allen shouted. "What the fuck is wrong with everyone? Nobody has to fight anybody ever again! That was the whole point of this whole goddamned thing." He pounded the side of the tank with his fist. "The logical thing to do is to spread out until we're not in each other's faces anymore. There's more than enough room! People should be dancing in the streets, but everyone who even hears about the hyperdrive seems hell-bent on making the absolute worst of it at every turn." Judy put her arms around him, as much for her own protection as to comfort him. In the dark, he couldn't see where he was swinging his fists.
The Frenchman said, "We understand reality. The frottement—the friction—between nations is not always about land. It is often the idea. How do you say—the culture." Judy muttered, "Yeah, right. We're going to snuff ourselves because I say tomato and you say what? Pommes frites?"
The Frenchman laughed softly. "Pommes frites are what you call French fries," he said. "And you serve them in your despicable fast-food restaurants as an insult to our national cuisine. To a chef, that is cause enough to go to war."
"All right, bad example," she admitted, "but still. We're not going to wipe out the planet to keep food snobs from getting a toehold somewhere else, and you're not going to bomb us because we eat fried potatoes, are you?" She slid out of the sleeping bag and began feeling around for her clothes. It didn't look like she would be sleeping again for a while.
The accented radio voice said, "Perhaps not. Who knows what madness lies at the root of our own government, much less someone else's? But we have been ordered to carry at least one egg out of the nest just in case. We were supposed to establish our colony far enough away that we would not be found, but we obviously didn't go far enough. We will not be so conservative on our next attempt."
"You're not going to try it again, are you?" Judy asked.
"We are. And this time we will go across the galaxy. Let you American spies try to find us then!"
"We're not spies, and we don't give a flying f—"
"Thank you for your assistance," he said. "We must now recover our landing party, and then we will go. Adieu."
"Wait a minute!" Allen said. "You can't just run away. If you're right about what's going to happen back home, then we've got to do something to stop it."
The Frenchman laughed again. "So humorous that you would say this, no? Is not running away just what you had hoped everyone would do? Eh bien, you have opened the gates of hell; now there is nothing else to be done."
"We've got to try," Allen said. "Damn it, we can't let the whole planet go up in flames!" Tippet said, "He has stopped transmitting. The submarine has shifted position to recover one of its landing craft."
"Hail them again," Allen said.
A few seconds passed. "They do not respond," Tippet said. "Not even on the original frequency." The warbling background had never wavered, though. While Judy pulled on her pants, she asked,
"What are you telling the tree, anyway?"
"I'm trying to explain what's happening in terms it can understand, but that is proving difficult. It uses echolocation rather than optical vision, so it has no concept of space other than as a place that can't be seen. It knows nothing of stars, or of vacuum—other than the few minutes of exposure it got. It knows that we're inside an enclosed space now, but it doesn't understand why it has no weight. And so on."
"Did you tell it about the French landing party?"
"I tried. It's having a difficult time comprehending why a tree would deliberately kill another, and why it would set the dead one on fire."
"It thinks the French are trees?"
"It thinks anything that moves is either a tree, a bush, or ground cover." Not exactly a cosmopolitan worldview, but then Judy had met plenty of people who weren't much better. Including the ones back on Earth who were itching to blow away everyone who didn't think the way they did.
"So, Allen, what are we going to do now?" she asked.
He let out a long sigh, "I don't know. Go back home and try to talk some sense into people, I guess."
She fished around in her beanbag until she found a sweater and pulled it on over her shirt. "I don't think talking to them is going to do any good. I think Tippet's right; we're dealing with the devil's logic here. The only way we can stop them from blowing everything up is to change the equation."
"How can we do that?"
She tried to think of a way, but no bright ideas lit up the darkness. "You don't have any more surprise inventions up your sleeve, do you?" "Nothing that would help here."
"Tippet? How about you?"
"We have many inventions that may come as a surprise to you, but none of them seem likely to divert your entire species from their chosen course." He paused, then added, "The tree says, 'Sometimes it's better to leap into the fire.' "
" What?"
"They seem to think of everything in terms of fire. It's their biggest enemy. If I understand correctly, a tree's usual insti
nct is to run from fire, but if the flames are too close to escape, a brave tree will run toward them instead, leaving a gap that might save the others."
"Huh," Judy said. Altruism as a way of life. That sounded admirable, but how could it apply to the situation on Earth? Should she and Allen go home so they could go up in smoke along with everyone else? That didn't make any sense. The tree obviously didn't understand the circumstances. Neither did Judy. She didn't have Allen's blind faith that hyperdrive would solve all the world's problems, but neither had she expected this reaction to it. Tippet's endorsement of the logic notwithstanding, it didn't seem logical to her.
She tried to imagine anyone she would want to kill rather than allow them to spread out into the galaxy. People who talked on cell phones in movies? Racists? How about religious fundamentalists? If ever there was a plague on humanity that shouldn't be allowed to continue, they were it. But Judy couldn't imagine nuking even the militant Islamic nations just to prevent them from spreading their beliefs to the stars. For one thing, they wouldn't last a generation if their populations could escape their oppressive rulers, but even if they did manage to persist, that was their business. Allen had been dressing in the dark as well. She heard him clonk into the hyperdrive and stifle a curse; then he said, "How about we give everybody something else to worry about?" It took her a moment to shift gears. "Like what?" she asked.
"Like a big honking asteroid aimed right at the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Make every nation on Earth use up all their bombs busting it apart."
"Wouldn't they just hyperdrive it away?"
"Oh." He sighed. "Yeah, they would. Duh."
"Good thought, though. Give them a bigger threat than each other." She listened to Tippet still communicating with the tree, and felt a shiver of paranoia. What if they were plotting to wipe out these upstart humans while they had the chance?
What if they were?
Her heart started to pound. What if they were? Would Earth be any worse off than it already was?
It might be. It wasn't absolutely certain that humanity would do itself in. But for the French to retrofit a submarine for space and send it out to start a colony on such short notice, they had to believe there wasn't much time left.
Time was all people needed. Once enough of them got away, what did it matter who blew up the Earth? Judy cringed at the thought, but she was trying to look at it logically. Humanity as a whole only needed Earth for another week or so; after that, they wouldn't have all their eggs in one basket anymore. And paradoxically enough, a war with Tippet's people would probably give humanity the week it needed. Tippet had to know that. All he and the rest of the hive mind needed to do was sit tight, and the human problem would take care of itself. Since they didn't have the hyperdrive technology to mount an invasion, and probably couldn't build it soon enough to matter, it was a moot point, except for one detail: the French were poised to make their escape right now. One submarine full of colonists was probably too small a group to make a successful go of it on their own, but they might manage it. If Tippet really wanted to wipe out humanity, he wouldn't let the French leave here alive. She took a deep breath. "How, um, how are the French doing?"
"They're recovering the last of their landing craft," Tippet replied. "I'm still trying to get them to respond, but they continue to ignore my broadcasts."
"Keep trying," she said. "Tell them it's an emergency." Allen said, "What emergency? Other than the obvious one, I mean."
"I think maybe I know a way to stop it, but . . ."
"But what?"
"I need to know something only the French could know."
"What?"
Anything, Judy thought. She just needed to know that they were still alive. Tippet could have already blown their submarine to smithereens as soon as he realized it would be to his advantage. She didn't think he'd done that, but she had to be sure.
"I'll know it when I hear it."
Allen snorted. "Quit with the theatrics and tell us already." Judy hesitated. What could she tell him that wouldn't give away her questions about Tippet?
The French radio operator saved her the trouble. "What do you want now?" he asked. At least it was someone with a French accent. Could Tippet fake that? Easily.
"Are you ready to make your hyperspace jump?" Judy asked.
There was a moment's pause. "Why do you ask?"
"Before you go, I have one last question for you."
Again the pause. "What question?"
"I can't tell you until you're ready to go."
Pause, then: "What silliness is this? You waste our time." Was he checking with his superiors on everything? Or—no. It was speed-of-light lag. The submarine was a light-second or two distant. That was reassuring. But not reassuring enough. Tippet could fake that, too.
"No, it's important. Believe me. Tell me when you're ready to jump, and then I'll ask my question." Tippet said, "You do not trust us."
She was sweating despite the cold. Zero-gee had never bothered her before, but now she felt as if she were falling headfirst into oblivion. "I trust you," she said. "But the fate of my whole planet is at stake here. I have to know for sure."
"Know what?" Allen asked. She could practically hear his frown. Tippet answered for her. "That the French will be allowed to leave unharmed."
"The what? Who's worried about—"
The accented voice said, "Very well, we are ready to leave, but we will not tell you where we are going."
"I don't want to know that," Judy said.
"Then what do you want to know?"
"I want you to answer me just before you push the button. Within the second, okay?"
"Oui, oui, d'accord. What is this burning question?"
"Are you ready?"
"Yes! Ask it and we go!"
She swallowed. The fate of the world hinged on the stupidest things. But it was the best question she could think of. She took a breath, then said, "What—what's the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?"
The Frenchman was silent for a moment, then he laughed. "African, or European?" The radio hissed with static for a second, then went quiet. Judy sighed in relief.
"What the hell was that?" Allen asked. " 'Airspeed velocity' is redundant. And what did he mean,
'African or European'? It didn't make any sense."
"You haven't seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail?" she asked incredulously.
"No."
"Nor have I," Tippet said. "But that was what you were counting on, wasn't it?"
"That's right," she admitted. "And now I know that the French actually got away alive. So now I know we can trust you at least that much."
"Ah," Tippet said. "Now I understand. Your spaceship is damaged, so you need a ride home, but you wanted to know if we could be trusted with both the secret of hyperdrive and the location of your home planet."
"Almost right," Judy said. "I needed to know if I could ask an even bigger favor once we get there."
"What favor?" She could definitely hear the frown in Tippet's voice. No help for it. In for a penny, in for a pound. "Oh, nothing much," she said. "Just declare war on humanity."
44
The silence stretched out for long seconds. Even the twitter of communication with the tree had stopped. Then Tippet said, "That is a very big favor."
"It's the only thing that'll keep them from killing one another."
"No."
"No, it won't work, or no, you won't do it?"
"Just . . . no. No. We left our homeworld to explore. We don't have the authority to make war. We don't have the desire to. We don't have the capability, either, so the question is academic. Think of something else."
Allen said, "Wait a minute. It could work."
"I just said 'No,' " Tippet reminded him. "I decline, dismiss, deny, refuse, reject, spurn, and veto Judy's request."
"But—"
"No."
"Just listen a—"
"No."
"—minute. You don't have to actual
ly fight a war. Just declare one. Rattle your saber until the U.N. pisses their pants. Once they band together to—"
"No! Your fake war could easily become real. What if one of your people finds our homeworld?"
"Oh."
Oh indeed. Judy hadn't thought of that angle. It was one thing to ask a single starship crew to risk themselves to save a planet, but it was another thing entirely to ask them td risk their whole race.
"So fake it," Allen said. "You can send a video signal just as easily as audio, can't you? Make up some slime-dripping, tentacled monster and let him send an ultimatum to Earth. Do it from out past Mars, so by the time the signal gets there, we can be hiding in the asteroid belt." Tippet didn't say "No" again. He didn't say anything at all for a few seconds, then he finally asked,
"Nobody would take such a threat seriously, would they?"
Allen laughed. "They would if we dropped a couple of boulders into the Great Lakes and the Mediterranean and the Australian outback. Wouldn't kill anybody, but it'd sure get their attention."
"And the purpose of all this would be to allow more of your people to escape your homeworld before their governments go to war with each other. Would these governments not see through the deception?"
Judy said, "Not if we threaten to hunt down and eliminate all the colonies, too. Of course that would just strengthen people's resolve to get away, but that's exactly what we want." Tippet didn't speak for nearly a minute. Not to Judy and Allen, anyway. The walkie-talkie began twittering to the tree again, and the hive mind was no doubt busy arguing the question as well. Finally he said, "The tree says 'Herd them apart before the flames engulf them all.' " Judy wondered how much of the situation it understood. Enough to give the right answer, at least.
"What do you say?" she asked Tippet.
"We say maybe. We will take you home—provided we can even move our ship at all with your hyperdrive engine— and when we get there, we will decide whether or not to participate in this scheme of yours. Beyond that, we promise nothing."
