Asimov's SF, April/May 2011

by Dell Magazine Authors

  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 rifled 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 rifled 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 databanks was, of course, eighteen earthyears 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 inhabitants’ 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.