A young Maori woman stood on the veranda with a young baby in her arms. Alongside her stood a much older, darker woman.
Sue got out of the car, strode over to the woman, grabbed the baby out of her arms and started to make a fuss about the child as though it were hers. Which – a fact Dick was soon to learn from his brother – was correct.
There were a couple of other really odd-looking, extremely tall people who also appeared on the veranda as the car rolled up, but disappeared back inside. Maybe they were expecting someone else and weren’t interested in them.
“Hi, Myfair and Leaf!” Trev called to their retreating backs. “Grumpy, ungrateful shits,” he muttered under his breath when they failed to acknowledge him.
Then a uniformed policewoman, followed by a man who looked like her superior, rounded the side of the homestead.
“We’re looking for Bruce Harwood,” Dick informed them. “He’s expecting us,” he added.
The presence of the police was perplexing. If Bruce was not in any kind of trouble, why were they here? Were the cops here to look after him and provide some form of security? Shelly had been quite unhelpful when he probed her about what was going on. She might have loosened up remarkably behind closed doors, but there were some parts of her life remaining firmly under wraps. Despite apparently falling head over heels in lust with him in a very short time, she had retained enough restraint and kept decidedly quiet when he had tried to pump her for information.
“We called ahead and he’s expecting us,” Dick repeated helpfully.
“Do we happen to know where Mr Harwood is and when he can be expected?” Wisneski asked.
“And you are?”
“Colonel Wisneski, USAF.”
“Ah yes, colonel, my name is Detective Moore. We spoke on the phone,” he added helpfully. “Mr Harwood senior left for town a while ago to collect his wife who stayed with her sister last night. Mr Harwood junior went out to the back of the property to inspect some livestock and, yes, he did inform us you were expected. He’s up there.” Detective Moore pointed at a white speck that was resolving itself as a ute as it came steadily closer.
Detective Moore was unsure what to make of the latest group of visitors who were swelling the oddly assorted population of the old homestead. There was not much room for them anywhere, although he had scouted out the old shearers’ quarters and they were liveable after a bit of a spring clean.
He had been briefed overnight to liaise with and support Colonel Wisneski in his dealings with Bruce Harwood, though what Harwood was involved in had yet to be made clear to him. His superiors had been extremely keen to help the Americans out in a show of support for the war on terror, though they hadn’t dug too deeply into what was involved and asked too many questions. In their haste to be agreeable, there had also been some corner cutting which might come back to haunt them. Which, as he had reflected on earlier, meant he would be hung out to dry if everything turned to custard. He sensed Wisneski was in the same position, a scapegoat in the making. He had expected to see Trev Todd after various snippets had been sent to him overnight and it was no real surprise his brother had turned up as well. Sue Harwood tagging along was a surprise – nowhere in his briefing material had it been mentioned there was a Mrs Harwood, but on reflection the fact a baby had turned up from somewhere should have cued him in.
The member of the growing group that really confused him was Dr Shelly Shaw.
“I am the Special Assistant to the President’s Science Adviser,” she responded tersely when he asked what her role was.
“So what is the Special Assistant to the President’s Science Adviser doing here?” he asked. “And by the way, which president is that?”
He was not impressed with her response which was, “I am not at liberty to say.”
“But what is it you do?” Moore persisted.
“I’m a cosmologist,” she explained, which was not at all helpful as Detective Moore had no idea what a cosmologist was.
Moore sighed at the heavens. Hopefully, someone – and that someone looked increasingly like Bruce Harwood – could bring some sense to the situation and he could go back to chasing white-collar criminals, something he was quite good at.
Twenty-six
“I’m not convinced simply using the open end of a wormhole to hoover up people indiscriminately is a very practical idea,” Bruce said to the Transcendent. “I mean it all sounds OK in theory but I don’t think it’s going to work in practice – the world has moved on since the last time you did this. People will notice, half the world population already thinks they are about to be invaded by aliens and this will only add to the hysteria. And then,” he continued with his production and management hat on, “Have you thought about quality control?”
I don’t see how this concerns us? the transcendent replied.
“Well, how are you going to make sure you select the right kind of people?” Bruce persisted.
We have a mechanism for that; all they have to do is walk through a scanner.
As he drove down the track towards the house, carrying on a conversation with the Transcendent, a news item on the radio playing in the background highlighted the problems caused by vast numbers of refugees heading to Europe, many in unseaworthy boats. Europe was the destination of choice for hundreds of thousands of economic refugees every year, causing all kinds of headaches for the host countries, as the refugees looked to escape the violence and sectarianism in their own countries and to seek new economic opportunities. Especially now with the ongoing civil war in Syria and the rise of ISIS.
It struck Bruce this was the solution to the Transcendent’s requirements. They could empty all the refugee camps in one swoop and kill two birds with one stone. This would be great for the planet in more ways than one, and the process could be expanded to include people from slums and low-income areas worldwide. It might also assuage Bruce’s growing concern he had thrown in his lot with the Transcendents without stopping to consider the morality of this process too closely. In some ways he wasn’t sure he had much of a choice, although that wasn’t a very strong argument. Maybe this was a way to ease his conscience.
The reality was many of those people, in their desperate search for a better safer life, were simply swapping the economic or physical tyranny in their own countries for the tyranny of racial discrimination and poverty in their new homes because they lacked the skills and education to compete in these societies. In the longer term this would lead to greater misery and the radicalisation of many of their children. Maybe if poverty was not a factor, most of them would not end up that way, he mused. But they’re all fucken nutters anyway, he decided.
“There’s an opportunity here to do the right thing and solve at least some of the world’s problems,” Bruce suggested to the Transcendent.
This would not only solve the problem for the host nations dealing with tides of desperate people making risky trips to the West but provide a genuinely better life for the migrants. Even if it was on another world with no way of going home. Bruce was a little concerned about how this would go down with these people along with the discovery the various religions they so fervently followed were based on the wisdom of ancestors the Skidians had deemed unsuitable for their requirements on one of their previous expeditions to Earth. Probably not very well, he decided.
There was another moral issue here Bruce was still grappling with. Given the proven track record of the Skidians in maintaining a healthy population, was it the right thing to do to assist them in repopulating Skid? Furthermore, was it the right thing to do to move entire populations of people with different sets of values and plonk them down together on Skid. It was all very well to expect them to be grateful; however, Bruce was sure that in practice their reactions could be very different and might dissolve into conflict.
It wouldn’t be like that, the Transcendent insisted.
“And you believe them?” Cop asked. The dog had been annoying him with his own non-stop commentary abo
ut how useless he was, and how useless the Skidians were, interspersed by demands for more food.
“Shut up dog. Or I will shut you up permanently if you don’t behave.”
Cop quickly shut his thoughts down. But this failed to stop the other two dogs who kept yapping away happily on the back of the ute.
Bruce had to turn the radio off when the Transcendent started up again. He had insufficient mental bandwidth to concentrate on driving, listen to the radio and deal with the conversation in his head at the same time.
The Transcendent started banging away again about the importance of quickly starting the process of getting more bodies. Bruce was a little troubled by this sudden need for haste. He suspected the Transcendent was more interested in returning to its life as a Transcendent and leaving the details of a mortal life behind, than making sure they got the selection process right to lay the foundations of a functioning society on Skid. Bruce thought there was a lot of merit in the idea of taking things carefully and not drawing any more attention to the repopulation idea than was necessary.
While there were wild stories circulating in some parts of the media about aliens landing, and the conspiracy theorists were having a field day, there was little proof of aliens being offered, other than a few poorly focused photos and the garbled testimony of unfortunate interview subjects who would be prime candidates for idiot-of-the-week segments on comedy shows.
There was little hard evidence that could not be explained away by some carefully crafted rational fact-based commentary which proved Earth had not been invaded by aliens. It would not stop the localised panic; it would not stop the conspiracy theories dreamed up by the lunatic fringe who had no idea what was really going on and fed off the whiff of intrigue. For most people the noise would soon die away once the story stopped trending on Facebook and the Twittersphere. The mainstream media was already more concerned with the imminent default on its national debt by Greece and the jockeying for attention in the US presidential race.
It would be easy to explain away Myfair’s ship landing at the Portland Air Force Base as some futuristic super-secret air force stealth plane. It had been done before, more than once. After all, the alien invasion theories related to Area 51 did not die away when it was revealed years later the sightings were not UFOs at all but test flights by the U2 spy planes and increasingly sophisticated weather balloons.
Sure, there was an asteroid headed into an orbit around Earth and nobody was quite sure how it had come to be there, but having an asteroid sneak up on the planet was nothing new. There would be a rational explanation, and even if it looked as though it had sprouted a whole lot of industrial modules nobody was going to get close enough in a long time to check the structures, more likely natural features, out. Apart from a few inconclusive photos there was no hard evidence. A probe was on its way already but it would never get close enough to detect anything of value. The Transcendent had already decided it would suffer a glitch which would prevent any images being sent back to Earth until the Transcendent’s own task was complete and the structures on the asteroid dismantled. It wouldn’t be the first time a probe failed to respond, and by the time another mission was mounted the upload process would be complete.
There had been reports of alien activity and patrol ships from all over the world, in fact, places Myfair had never even flown over, let alone landed. But nothing definitive. Nothing that could not be plausibly denied and those who knew the truth – or thought they did – had very good reasons for keeping quiet.
The conspiracy theorists could never be contained – they all had an agenda because whether they knew it or not there was always an element of truth or another secret to hide.
The Transcendents were here to exploit the planet, but not in a way most people would expect. They had no desire to destroy the Earth or even strip it of its resources. Neither did they have any overt altruistic motives. Notwithstanding an unintended consequence could be a blessing in disguise if it did anything to reduce poverty without exporting the concepts of Jihad or Crusade to Skid.
The Transcendent was also struggling to comprehend how the inhabitants of planet Earth still governed themselves as a series of independent states. There was no way the Transcendents were going to share anything exclusively with any state and provide them with any kind of advantage.
Surely by now, the Transcendent began, the people of your planet must realise the whole concept of nation states is a huge impediment to progress? And until everyone has the basic essentials of a decent life, real technological progress on your planet is going to be arrested.
“Do you think you have any right to criticise us when you’ve reached a position where you’ve transcended but are still not confident enough to go the whole hog and give up your requirement for spare bodies as backups? Besides, haven’t you heard of the theories behind the free market, capitalism and socialism?”
We had similar economic models, the Transcendent replied, after Bruce gave his interpretation of these ideologies. However, once we collectively worked out how to satisfy everyone’s material and emotional needs, and developed the means to provide for the delivery of these states, all our old notions of government and economic theory simply collapsed. The whole concept of nationalism and nation states was replaced by a single, global government looking after the interests of all Skidians that rapidly emerged and evolved. In the beginning, communities coalesced around the old ethnic, regional, tribal or religious groups. But before long even those broke up and ceased to really matter much beyond being an interesting historical fact and a way to organise sporting rivalries.
“Yeah, but you had a much higher level of technology.”
We didn’t in the beginning. It was just a concept, an idea that resonated with Skidians across the planet. At that point we were organised along national lines, much like you are today, with rich and poor states and regional areas. We collectively decided this was not the right way to go about governing ourselves. Once you have eliminated the need to exploit other people in order for you to enjoy the basics of life, once you have agreed religion should play no part in government, then your population is much more satisfied with their lot.
“Anyway, we’re getting off the track here.” Bruce was not going to win an argument with a super being with untold computing power at its disposal. “I still think there’s got to be a better way to get sufficient people to repopulate Skid. The last time you were here, the Roman Empire was at the peak of its powers, and look what happened to them.”
Yes, we are a little disappointed with the Romans, and this is largely why we are not keen on seeding any further technology. We planted some simple technological concepts, for your Greek, Roman and British Empires, and a few others through the centuries, but they always seemed to go through some dark age or crisis and then collapse just as they seemed about to fulfil their promise.
Bruce was getting increasingly frustrated with the Transcendent’s inability to concentrate on the issue at hand without going off on some kind of philosophical tangent all the time. “None of this helps solve our immediate challenges.”
We don’t have a problem, we can and will do anything we like. What happens in the aftermath of the selection process is not our concern.
“But it is mine, and you need me to facilitate the process somehow.”
Well there is that, the Transcendent conceded. We need you to be part of the process – there is a lot we don’t understand about you and your planet. Machines, no matter how sophisticated, can’t interpret all the nuances we need to understand.
“So let’s not go off half-cocked here, then. It’s not just about providing you with a lot of nice new warm bodies. It’s also about the correct bodies. Am I right?”
Yes, to some extent. The Transcendent agreed after a moment’s thought. Maybe there is a better way, it finally admitted.
It struck Bruce then as powerful as the Transcendents were in the technology they had at their fingertips, as powerful as this Transc
endent was as the representative of a powerful civilisation, it hadn’t really been chosen for its project management capability or practical common sense. The transcendent reminded Bruce of a certain kind of politician. All theory, one who had never done a decent day’s work in his entire life put in charge of a major government programme because of his political credentials or pedigree rather than his ability – the kind of dead hand on the tiller who struggled to make things happen in the real world.
Bruce thought back to the first time the Transcendent revealed itself to him. It wanted, no needed, his help. Not because he was the best qualified or most experienced project manager going around but because they, or it, needed someone to help operationalise the process of hoovering up enough bodies.
“How many bodies do you really need?” he asked.
Less than 10 million. Many of our people have no intention of ever inhabiting a flesh-and-blood body ever again.
“So why did you have hundreds of millions of people on Skid then?”
We’re great believers in multiple redundancy.
A statement Bruce was not so sure he believed. He actually wondered if the Transcendent had forgotten how to count. For better or worse, it looked like he was the man charged with coming up with the best solution for Skid and the planet Earth because this Transcendent wasn’t going to.
It was not just enough to facilitate the hoovering up of fertile bodies for the Skidians to store on the hoof back on their planet. This process had to be undertaken the right way. Doing it the wrong way in the past had led to many unintended consequences, not least the development of religion, creation myths and the consequent destructive religion-based conflicts that occurred on the planet to this day. The genesis of all these interactions could be traced back to previous indiscriminate and clumsy interventions on the Skidians’ part.
The Lifeboat Page 39
