174: CONTACT

“I don’t like it,” Celti tells me later. “Trading that tech gives her actions legitimacy. We could have a civil war on our hands.”

“Over a couple of unsanctioned unethical science experiments?” I’ve been an unwilling test subject enough times that I barely remember feeling the level of outrage in Celti’s voice. “Everyone who’s heard of what she did to me so far has reacted like she’s been going around acidifying fishponds. I don’t think you have to worry about some mass uprising of people deciding that doing evil science behind the government’s back is a good thing actually.”

“There were thirteen members of her little group. Thirteen! Eleven of them are volunteers for her immortality experiment, which is incredibly dangerous in its own right since we don’t even know what those changes are going to do to your crew yet, let alone people like us. Either way, things won’t go well. Either secret underground science is going to dramatically increase all of our lifespans, which would be great if incredibly politically unstable or, far more likely, thirteen entire people are going to die rapidly from a new genetic illness as a result of this manipulation. And that’s not even getting into the fact that thirteen people were willing to abduct you for a secret science experiment. How many other people will back them, if we go public on what happened and legitimise it by managing to sell it for this AI? If that mane people could keep it a secret for so long, then there must be a lot of public sentiment in that direction.”

I take a moment to recalibrate my thinking and try to think of thirteen people as being a large group of people and a big problem. “Surely you have crime and disagreement and soforth normally?”

“Not on a scale anything like this. The arrival of your ship did something to the people here. We haven’t been this disorganised or had this much conflict since the Famine.”

“I don’t think your people are being changed by anything. I think their opportunities are. I assume you and Hive always had differing opinions that lead to the different sides you took when we showed up with plants, right? It just never would’ve been relevant until you had plants. Similarly, Dr Kim and her compatriots never had any unethical mad science to do until now.”

“Hmm. That’s worse, I think.”

I shrug. “People are people. Back them into corners and you get conflict.”

“And you’ve brought us a lot of that.”

I glance over to the outskirts of town, where a few small rises block our view of patches of dandelions struggling to terraform the planet. “It’ll be worth it.”

“I hope so.”

But as I walk away, I can’t help but reconsider the tech trade. There’s a lot of holes in the plan to trade Dr Kim’s tech for an AI. The first is, quite obviously, we don’t know how Antarctica will react to our presence. There’s no way they’ll be happy about Hylara keeping our presence from them to acquire crops behind their back; I can’t begin to predict the politics wrapped up in there. Pragmatism will win in the end, I’m sure, but that raises its own pragmatic concerns – notably, we don’t know if we actually have anything to trade. Dr Kim seemed confident that Antarctica doesn’t have the synnerve tech in my skull, but Hylara’s communication with Antarctica is very limited, and somebody developed these synnerves on Earth over a century ago. It’s entirely possible that the tech is widespread there. It’s entirely possible that it was developed and abandoned because it has some horrible side effect that we don’t know. It’s possible that modern Earth system culture simply isn’t interested in being able to interface the brain with robotics, either for cultural reasons or because it doesn’t solve any tech problems that they haven’t already solved. Even if the tech is wanted, a trial where one subject was able to interface with one robotic eye is… weak. The tech’s not ready to trade. And the genetic engineering tech is far, far less ready to trade. It would be better if we can convince Antarctica that giving us the AI is in their best interest. It would be better if we can avoid having to trade the tech at all. Leave it in Hylaran hands, let it go through proper committees and maybe more ethical testing with proper resources, let the next generation trade it for nitrogen supplies or something. They’re going to need nitrogen.

If we can find some other way to convince them…

My feet have lead me to the radio tower, even though I don’t have any reason to be there. I turn back towards the settlement, but as I do, my eye catches something; a huge metal structure, way down the hill, close enough to he settlement to be within supply range but distant enough that the force of launches won’t break anything. The Hypati launcher, aimed at, I assume, one of the planet’s ice caps. At the top of the next hill, I think I can see a hint of green dandelion sprouts, although at that distance I know I have to be fooling myself. Human eyes, and bionic eyes for that matter, have limits.

I glance up at the cloudy sky, between us and the Courageous.

I glance at the radio tower. At the settlement. I can make out the door of our dome from here, where I can still see where the ridiculous impromptu decontamination area had once been affixed to the front, a feeble attempt at quarantine. I think about the proper decontamination room leading to the medical area of the ship underground, and about the knowledge that the Hylarans must have lost (or at least neglected to learn from Mama), to not question the existence of such a room but still need to have its function explained by use when we got here.

And I start to put together a plan that even I have to admit is somewhat ludicrous. It won’t get us an AI. But it might get us something else that we desperately need.

I rush back to find Celti.

“Don’t trade anything with them,” I say between pants (a loose breathing mask can only help so much when rushing in a low pressure, low oxygen environment) when Celti answers the door to his dome. “Not yet. Keep that one in your back pocket for now.”

“Hello again, Aspen, I’m fine, how are you.”

“Yeah, yeah, how are you I’m fine, hi. Anyway, we all know that trading will work better if we do it in a few years, more time for research, more time to see if it’s even something they want. More time to make it an official thing backed by the Leadership, do some ethical work for a few years to make everything socially smoother or whatever… all that. The important thing is. Don’t say anything to Antarctica yet.” I stop for a few seconds to catch my breath. The curious faces of the rest of Celti’s set peek at me through the doorway. “If we handle our information carefully enough, I think we might be able to trick them into building us a launch facility.”

The faces stare.

“What do you mean, a launch facility?” Hive asks. “You can’t mean – ?”

“Yeah. Something to launch shuttles safely up to the Courageous. Or more safely than just flinging them with the existing Hypati launcher, anyway. It’s a long shot, both diplomatically and mechanically, but if we can pull it off…”

“Then we have two-way resource shuttling between the ship and the planet,” Celti says. “That would be… I mean, depending on the fuel type, launches could be prohibitively expensive, but still, if gives us a lot of options. If we can trade with Antarctica for goods and tech for the ship…”

“It really increases our chances of getting the ship in good enough condition for its mission, doesn’t it?”

“Okay.” Celti grabs an air tank and comes outside with me. “Let’s find somewhere private, where you can talk me through it.”

And that’s how, after another week of discussions, troubleshooting, and careful editing, two letters were carefully written on synthetic Hylaran paper with synthetic Hylaran ink and set in the Vault to be sent to Mars with a shipment of fashionable Venusian shoes and gloves. (They don’t let me open the crates and inspect the shoes and gloves, which pains my little sociologist heart, but we can’t have everything.)

Hylara to Antarctica Command

This is Captain Adin Klees of the ujps Courageous. We have reached Hylara and require assistance.

We reached the planet behind schedule as, shortly after our first radio transmission, we suddenly lost engine power and breathable atmosphere. Pulling into orbit on backup and attitude power alone was time consuming, but we have achieved stable orbit. I am on the ground now with a small ground crew, but many of our crew needed replacing and many are suffering post-chronostasis health conditions. The Hylarans do not seem to have any experience in treating these conditions and are vigilant about the possibility of pathogens no matter how much we explain that these conditions are not the result of anything infectious. They have refused any supply shipments from the Courageous, for fear of pathogens. The Courageous crew are currently in the process of deciding whether to persist with this contact or whether to set up independently some distance away and trade with the Hylarans once our farms are set up and they are more acclimatised to our presence. Would appreciate guidance on this, and also medical supplies for us ground crew, as we’re trapped here with the Hylarans, trying to convince them that accepting supplies for an algal food production system won’t kill them with some deadly Earth parasite.

Klees out

GK Rault,

Hi there. So we have an issue. I’m sorry we didn’t send notice earlier but it’s been a very busy week.

Turns out the Courageous is NOT dead; they pulled into orbit and didn’t notify us until they were here. They wanted to send a ground crew down and we put them in quarantine right away, which is good because a lot of them do seem to be very sick. We’ve been very clear that we don’t want their infected goods but they keep trying to get us to accept supply drops; I’m worried that they might be trying to wipe us out to claim the Vault.

What should we do? If we kill the ground crew, I’m worried they’ll send more, or just kill us from orbit. We’ve sent the radio code to the ship again but it doesn’t seem to be doing anything.

Have they finished building your new office yet? I can’t wait to see photos!

Regards,

Tana

“Do you think it’ll work?” Captain Klees asks as we seal the letters in envelopes. “We’re asking them to believe that you’re quite stupid. What with refusing supplies and not contacting them right away.”

“Oh, that’s no problem at all,” Celti shrugs. “They already believe we’re very stupid.”

“We have nothing to lose if it doesn’t work,” I say, “except their goodwill, and honestly, fuck that. We’ve given them a threat and there’s an easy, if expensive, solution to it. When they reply, we’ll know if they’ve taken the bait.”

“If they have any compassion for people in distress at all, they won’t,” Captain Klees says. “Which, given their track record, means it’s basically a certainty.”

And so the letters are sent.

And there’s nothing to do but wait.