“Is a herringbone sky the same as a mackerel sky?”
“I don’t know.”
They punch around on their wristpads trying to find out.
Into a building as big as a biome. The Terrans themselves don’t actually spend much time outside, Freya thinks. Maybe they too are terrified. Maybe the proper response to standing on the side of a planet, in the open air of its atmosphere, very near to the local star, is always terror. Maybe everything humans ever did or planned to do was designed to dodge that terror. Maybe their plan to go to the stars was just one more expression of that terror. As she is still clutched over that terror, which continues to collapse her stomach whenever she is so close to being outdoors, this idea makes a lot of sense to her.
Then she is back in a building, moving through room after hallway after room, talking to stranger after stranger, there are so many of them. Some have devices they aim at her as they shout questions, she ignores these and tries to focus on faces that look nice, that will make eye contact with her rather than look at their devices.
They sit in a room that is some kind of waiting room, with tables covered with food and drink. They are soon to make a public appearance of some kind.
Word comes through their wristpads, from their Chinese hosts, that four more of their group back in Beijing have died, causes of death unknown. Among the four is Delwin.
Before she fully understands what Aram and Badim and the others are saying about this, and about the meeting’s purpose, all mixing up in her now, she is led up onstage before a crowd and a bank of cameras. There are a dozen people on stage, a moderator is asking questions, Badim and Aram flank her, along with Hester and Tao, and they sit and listen to what she slowly gathers is a discussion of the latest starship proposals.
She leans against Badim to whisper in his ear. “More starships?”
He nods, keeping his eyes on the speakers.
The current plan, with prototypes being built in the asteroid belt, is to send out many small starships carrying hibernating passengers, who will sleep while the ships make their way out to all the hundred closest stars that have been identified to have Earthlike planets in their habitable zone, not just Earth twins but Earth analogs. These stars range from 27 to 300 light-years away. Probes have already passed through several of these systems, or will in the near future, and are sending back their data, and everything looks very promising.
The people describing this plan get up one at a time from a bank of chairs on the other side of the speaker’s podium, go to the podium, and tell their part of the story, with big images on a screen behind them always changing, after which they then sit back down. They are all men, all Caucasian, most bearded, all wearing jackets. One speaker among them introduces the others, and he then stands to the side and listens to their presentations, quizzically, his head tilted to one side, tugging at his beard, a small smile playing under his mustache. He nods at everything the others say, as if he has already thought their thought and now approves its articulation. He is very satisfied with the way this event is going. He stands after another speaker has finished, says to the crowd, “You see, we’ll keep trying until it works. It’s a kind of evolutionary pressure. We’ve known for a long time that Earth is humanity’s cradle, but you’re not supposed to stay in your cradle forever.” He is obviously very pleased with the cleverness of this aphorism.
He invites Aram to speak, the curious smirk twisting his face as he makes a magnanimous gesture: he is allowing Aram to speak.
Aram stands at the podium, looks around at the audience.
“No starship voyage will work,” he says abruptly. “This is an idea some of you have, which ignores the biological realities of the situation. We from Tau Ceti know this better than anyone. There are ecological, biological, sociological, and psychological problems that can never be solved to make this idea work. The physical problems of propulsion have captured your fancy, and perhaps these problems can be solved, but they are the easy ones. The biological problems cannot be solved. And no matter how much you want to ignore them, they will exist for the people you send out inside these vehicles.
“The bottom line is the biomes you can propel at the speeds needed to cross such great distances are too small to hold viable ecologies. The distances between here and any truly habitable planets are too great. And the differences between other planets and Earth are too great. Other planets are either alive or dead. Living planets are alive with their own indigenous life, and dead planets can’t be terraformed quickly enough for the colonizing population to survive the time in enclosure. Only a true Earth twin not yet occupied by life would allow this plan to work, and these may exist somewhere, the galaxy after all is big, but they are too far away from us. Viable planets, if they exist, are simply too—far—away.”
Aram pauses for a moment to collect himself. Then he waves a hand and says more calmly, “That’s why you aren’t hearing from anyone out there. That’s why the great silence persists. There are many other living intelligences out there, no doubt, but they can’t leave their home planets any more than we can, because life is a planetary expression, and can only survive on its home planet.”
“But why do you say that?” the moderator interrupts to ask, head cocked to the side. “You’re arguing a general law from your own particular case. That’s a logical error. There are really no physical impediments to moving out into the cosmos. So eventually it will happen, because we are going to keep trying. It’s an evolutionary urge, a biological imperative, something like reproduction itself. Possibly it may resemble something like a dandelion or a thistle releasing its seeds to the winds, so that most of the seeds will float away and die. But a certain percentage will take hold and grow. Even if it’s only one percent, that’s success! And that’s how it will be with us—”
Freya finds herself standing up, and briefly she has to attend to her balance, to keep from falling on her face in front of them all. Then she is striding across the stage, then she strikes the moderator in the face and down he goes, she falls on him and smashes through his raised arms with both fists, trying to get another good blow in, pummeling furiously, shouting something in a painful roar, she doesn’t even know what she’s trying to say, doesn’t know she’s roaring. She catches him hard right on the nose, yes! And then Badim has her by one arm and Aram by the other, and others are there too, holding her, shouting, and she can’t struggle too much without hurting Badim, who is shouting, “Freya, quit it! Freya, stop! Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop!”
Uproar, bedlam, Badim wrapping her, not letting go, they are escorting her off the stage, she staggering, Aram ahead of them, one person standing in a doorway as if to block them, and Aram removing him by rushing at the man and shouting ferociously in the man’s face, which causes the man to leap to the side; the sight of this shocks Freya, lagging so far behind the moment she is still wishing she could get one more good blow in, hit the smirk itself, kill that idiot smirk, but it’s bizarre to see Aram shout like that. She twists in Badim’s grasp and shouts something back at the meeting room, but again she doesn’t know what she’s saying, it’s just something bursting out of her, like a scream.
After that they’re in trouble, she’s in trouble. Their group locks her in with them and claims diplomatic immunity, whatever that is in this case, no one can be sure, but it appears that it buys them some time, the authorities are a little unsure how to proceed, unsure enough for arguments to be made. Apparently the man she assaulted does not wish to press charges, is assuring everyone he understands post-traumatic stress disorder, and besides only slipped and fell. But in cases of assault and battery the wishes of the victim are not the main consideration, they are told, so diplomatic immunity may be their best defense, that or just the sheer uncertainty of their legal status at any time. They are aliens or something, Freya is too upset to follow the arguing. Anyway, for now no one is allowed into their rooms. Discussions go on out in the hallways outside.