Fire with Fire(123)

“And who are those two?”

“Visser accepted the first chair on the delegation. Durniak is joining us as her advisor and second chair.

“The rest of the team are all leaders in their respective fields. Bernard Hwang was tapped to be our expert in life sciences. Lemuel Wasserman—yes, the nephew of the inventor of the Wasserman drive—will be our engineering and physics analyst. And Sanjay Thandla is going to be our expert in IT, data management, and robotics.”

“What?” Opal sounded distressed. “No assistants? Who’ll go get our coffee?”

“We will. No assistants. That was the decision made by the commission, since the Dornaani restricted us to a ten-person delegation.” Downing leaned back. “Questions?”

I’ve got to ask. “Richard, why did the Dornaani contact us now?”

“They didn’t say. But I have a hypothesis: convenience. The Dornaani indicated that we will not be the only first-time participants at this convocation.” He frowned. “What troubles me is that the Dornaani also indicated that they make first contact soon after a species has achieved interstellar travel capabilities. I think it odd that they have two new races standing for membership during a single gathering.”

Caine nodded. “I agree. Very odd.”

Opal was looking back and forth between them. “Okay, I give up; what’s odd about having one meeting instead of two separate ones?”

“If Caine and I are thinking similarly, that is not what we find suspicious, Major. Rather, it’s the fact that two separate species would be attaining interstellar capability at almost exactly the same time.”

“Okay, I see your point: the odds are really against that kind of timing. But then how do the ruins on Dee Pee Three make any sense? If that civilization fell twenty thousand years ago, it doesn’t seem plausible that four or five brand-new interstellar species could have risen up since then.”

Caine shrugged. “Maybe they didn’t.”

“What?”

“Maybe the first bunch of exosapients didn’t all die out—in which case today’s exosapients would have some overlap with the ones who were running things about twenty thousand years ago.”

Downing nodded sharply. “Caine is absolutely right. Indeed, without such an exosapient collective constraining the colonizing activities of its members since then, new species would have no chance to develop independently, either on their homeworld or beyond.”

Trevor snapped his fingers. “Sure. Otherwise, all the green worlds we’ve colonized in the last eight years would have already been filled with the other exosapients. Unless we are way the hell out in some interstellar backwater, why would they have left all that nice green real estate alone, unless it had been set aside for us?”

Opal nodded. “Like property held in trust for when we ‘come of age.’”

Caine shrugged. “That’s the theory. And that’s all it is: a theory. But it does account for what we know of this area’s past, and what we see in its present.” And it could be that our rapid push outward also triggered this invitation: maybe we’re about to cross over some neighbor’s property line. Maybe we already have . . .

“We may be walking into a very complicated situation,” Elena said quietly.

Downing sighed. “Exactly. But as long as different powers exist, so too will rival interests, and therefore, many of the basic rules of foreign relations and realpolitik should continue to apply.”

“And when do we get to learn if that hypothesis is accurate, Uncle Richard?”

“We are due to arrive at preset coordinates—ten AU above the ecliptic out near Saturn’s orbit—in sixteen days. That means we need to depart tomorrow.”

MENTOR

Opal was the first to break the stunned silence. “So we’ve got only two weeks to prepare?”

“The convocation will be very simple, and very brief. We have not even been given any advance guidelines.”

“I’m not talking about guidelines. I’m talking about being ready for—” Opal stopped, at a loss for words.

“For facing the unknown, the outré?” supplied Downing.

“Yeah. Something like that.”

Downing shrugged. “The Dornaani indicated that we don’t need to actually meet—or even see—any of the exosapients except them. Also, the other races are sending cross-species liaisons who have become experts in several of our languages and cultures in anticipation of this event.” Downing looked around the table. “Besides, all of you, and the other members of the delegation, tested low—very low—on the xenophobia index.”