Roanoke
As usual, when his alarm began to chirp softly and the overhead light faded on, Nathan was already awake.
Getting to sleep is never a problem anymore. Staying asleep is the challenge. Too many of my mistakes are still with me.
He fumbled for a moment before he found the off button for the alarm. Then he covered his face with both hands for a moment, taking inventory of the morning’s aches and pains.
Tap-tap-tap, came a sound at the door of his tiny cubicle. “Good morning, Mr. Walker,” came a muffled voice from outside, deep, with a London accent. “You up yet?”
“I’m moving, Theo,” Nathan called. “Give me a minute.”
Carefully, he rolled to one side and swung his feet out of the bunk. Long and painful experience told him to take his time. In many ways, 0.38 G was a blessing for an old man, but it didn’t always interact well with what remained of his sense of balance. It was never safe to go too quickly from prone to standing.
One step to the tiny refresher, to splash some stale-smelling water on his face and run damp fingers over his sparse hair. He peered at his gray-hued visage in the mirror and decided two days’ stubble wasn’t enough to bother with. The jumpsuit he had slept in was starting to carry enough sour old-man smell to be noticeable, but it still wasn’t time for laundry.
What I wouldn’t give for a long hot shower, Nathan thought. Clean clothes. A bed big enough to stretch out in. A top-notch steak dinner, with a glass of fine Shiraz.
Never again, most likely.
As he turned to the door, he reflexively glanced at the display above:
05 Mithuna 231 – Sol 3051 – 0634 Local Time
Why in God’s name did I agree to using that stupid calendar? He shook his head in annoyance, as he did every morning. Can’t even remember what the date is back Earthside. August? September? Could it even be October?
The door opened on the hab module’s cramped common space. Theo Morgan stood there, concern on his dark, handsome face. “You okay, Mr. Walker?” he repeated. “Need a hand?”
“No.” Nathan stood straight, twinges and pops in his spine as his vertebrae finally decided to align properly. “I’m good. The joints just don’t flex as well as they did when I was your age.”
The two of them left the hab module, making their way through the social center and toward the heart of the outpost. Theo nodded politely to other colonists as they passed, speaking to one or two. Most of the others ignored Nathan, turning their faces away if they had to. None spoke to him. He returned the favor, cultivating an expression of being lost in thought.
One of the pleasant exceptions soon made an appearance. As Nathan and Theo passed the infirmary, a petite, dark-haired woman emerged, her face drawn with fatigue, carrying a bundle on her left shoulder. The bundle wriggled and made small sounds. “Sofia,” Nathan greeted her. A warm smile spread across his face, despite a habit of reserve.
Sofia Bianchi stopped, a little flustered. “Mr. Walker,” she said. “How are you this morning?”
“Old and grumpy, as usual. How are you and little Alessandro?”
She turned the bundle in her arms, letting Nathan see her baby. “I’m fine, aside from not enough sleep. Sandro is getting enough to eat. Dr. Kruger thinks he might be growing a little faster than usual, but she can find no sign of abnormality.”
“He looks fine, Sofia,” said Theo, compassion in his voice.
“Are you getting all the help you need?” Nathan asked, bending close to look closely at the baby’s face and give him a fingertip to grasp. Dark eyes peered back at him, barely focusing.
“Everyone has been kind, Mr. Walker. Please don’t worry about me.” A note of stress crept into Sofia’s voice, one Nathan recognized.
She doesn’t want me trying to assert myself, he knew. Not even for her sake, or her son’s. None of my friends, few as they are, want me to make waves.
“You need anything, you be sure to let me know,” he told her firmly. “We might not have expected this little guy, but he’s important.”
“I know.” Sofia hugged her son close. The baby fussed a little. “We should go.”
Nathan nodded and stepped back, letting Sofia slip around and past him, hurrying in the direction of the hab modules.
“You shouldn’t worry, Mr. Walker,” said Theo. “Dr. Hawkins has Sofia and Alessandro high on the priority schedule. The least we can do for Markos.”
Nathan nodded, remembering Markos Nikolaidis: a tall, capable engineer who had been with the first wave of colonists. He had done more than most to build Mars Base Alpha out of pre-fab components and local resources. He lay outside now, under six feet of cold Martian soil and a crude plastic marker, dead not long before his son was born. One of six colonists who had died since the establishment of the outpost.
Since Nathan, at the height of his power and arrogance, had sent them all here.
How long before I’m lying out there? What are the odds Marko’s son will ever get a chance to grow up?
Just then Ella Kruger emerged from the infirmary, a tall blonde in a rumpled lab coat, coming to see who was lingering in the corridor. Her usual frown deepened when she saw Nathan. “Come to harass my patient, Mr. Walker? Or do you require my attention?”
“Come on, Doc,” Theo objected. “Mr. Walker wasn’t harassing Sofia. He cares about her, and the little guy, just as much as the rest of us do.”
“Yes, of course.” Kruger’s German accent became more pronounced with frustration. “A baby born on Mars. Very important! Vindication for the great man’s vision of the human conquest of space. Well, look around you. How is that conquest going?”
“I’m not here to run through the old argument again, Doctor.” Nathan sighed deeply, burying old aggravation once more. “What’s important now is we solve the problems of the day, so Alessandro has a chance to grow up.”
Kruger’s lips compressed into a thin line. “So he can bury the rest of us?”
Nathan felt a spike of anger, and bit down hard on a hot rebuke.
“Come into my office, Mr. Walker. You too, Theo. I have something to show you.”
The three of them crowded into the infirmary’s tiny office, where Kruger sat down at her terminal and called up a document. Nathan blinked at the fine text, supplemented with graphics that vaguely resembled market trendlines. “Condensed version, please.”
“There aren’t enough of us.”
“Not enough for long-term genetic viability?” Nathan asked. “We already knew that.”
“No, that’s not the issue, not really.” Kruger’s voice became flat and didactic, her accent fading, as she took refuge in dry statistics. “A small population can avoid dangerous inbreeding for several generations, if they are aware of the problem and take steps. What concerns me is the social dynamic. Eighteen men and fourteen women, none of us below the age of twenty-five when we came here. Half of the women are past safe child-bearing age, given the facilities here. Who is Alessandro going to have his children with, if he does grow to manhood?”
“You’re saying we should be having more babies?”
“Many more, if the next generation is to have anything approaching a healthy society.” Kruger lowered her voice. “You understand the problem. This outpost was not designed for children. Dr. Hawkins tells me we are having trouble with basic maintenance, to say nothing of new manufacturing and construction. How do we muster the effort needed to bear and raise children as well?”
Nathan nodded. “The original plan was to expand the outpost considerably by this time. Plenty of room for families.”
“Well, the original plan is out the airlock,” Kruger said, with some heat. “Unless the supply ships begin coming from Earth again . . .”
“No sign of them. Given how bad things are back home, it may be years before we see another flight. If there ever is another flight.”
“Hey, at least Alessandro is safe here for the moment,” said Theo, ever the peacemaker. “How many of us would have been dead by now, if we were all still stuck on Earth?”
“That is a reasonable point.” The doctor sighed, running her fingers through her close-cropped hair in weary frustration. “Mr. Walker, I should not tell you even this much, but we have at least one other pregnancy in progress here.”
Nathan nodded soberly. “All the more reason for us to keep trying, one sol at a time.”
“The mother came to me yesterday. She asked about the possibility of terminating her pregnancy.”
Nathan sat still, a chill in his bones. “What did you tell her?”
“Now that goes beyond what doctor-patient confidentiality would allow. Just bear this in mind, Mr. Walker, as you glibly tell people to keep up hope.”
He sat in silence for a long moment, then shook his head and rose to his feet. “Come on, Theo,” he said wearily. “I need to report to Hawkins.”
#
Mission Control was dark and quiet, full of empty stations, a space designed for more people than had ever come to work in it. When Nathan and Theo arrived, William Hawkins sat alone in the center seat, his face illuminated more by an arc of computer monitors than by the Martian daylight creeping through smudged windows.
The two of them stopped on the upper tier of the circular module, looking down into the well where the outpost was managed. “Dr. Hawkins?” Theo ventured.
Hawkins slowly glanced up.
Nathan flinched inwardly, remembering the fiery, determined man he had once selected to be the expedition’s Chief Scientist. Now Hawkins was still on the right side of fifty, but he seemed older than Nathan himself. He had lost close to twenty kilos of mass. His hair had gone thin and silver. His eyes, once cobalt blue, had faded to a watery grey, peering out at the world above heavy pouches. Nathan wondered how well the man slept. If he slept at all.
You pushed me off my throne, Nathan thought and did not say. Now you’re discovering how heavy the crown really is.
“What is he doing here?” Hawkins asked, his voice weary and flat.
“Nathan’s here for his stint at the radio,” said Theo.
“What’s the point?” Hawkins leaned back in his chair, until it hit the limit of its recline with a dull thump. “Today’s the fourteenth of September, back home.”
Well, that answers the question of the date.
“The optimum date for Mars arrival in the current transfer orbit was two weeks ago,” said the scientist. “No supplies, no people, no word. That’s two missed launch windows. No one is coming. No one back home gives a damn. They have too much else on their plates.”
“We don’t know that,” said Nathan. “We have to keep trying.”
Hawkins snorted in derision. “Nathan, face it. Your money, your corporate empire, they’re all gone. They won’t buy you, or any of us, a single thing we can use. What good are you to us?”
“Planning to put me out the airlock, Bill?” Nathan asked mildly.
Hawkins took a deep breath, ran both hands over his face, and then leaned forward abruptly to turn his attention back to the monitors. “No. My apologies, Nathan.”
Nathan nodded, understanding.
Hawkins went back to what he had been doing, some administrative or logistical task. Trying to find a way for them all to survive, one more sol at a time. He ignored Nathan and Theo while they worked their way around the upper tier to Nathan’s usual workstation.
“You going to be okay?” asked Theo, as Nathan sat down and logged into the network.
“I’m fine, Theo, thank you. I’ll drop you a text when I’m done with today’s news.”
“You bet.” Theo patted Nathan on the shoulder and left him alone.
Nathan opened the communications logs and got to work. It took him less than two minutes to verify the Interplanetary Internet was still silent, the routers in Mars orbit responding but no traffic at all coming from Earth. Nathan sent his daily messages regardless: emails and more exotic packets, addressed to certain individuals and institutions, locked with his personal keys. In theory, several people should have been standing ready to receive those messages. People able to grant him access to the better part of a trillion dollars, stored in a variety of financial institutions and (he hoped) durable investments around the world.
Safely hidden away just before I fled one step ahead of President Reynolds and his death squads. Maybe hidden away a little too well. Or perhaps all my money is just up in smoke.
Nathan had sent the same messages every sol, ever since he arrived on Mars, to no avail. It had gotten to be a habit, although even he had stopped believing it would work. It was like playing the lottery. The odds were against you, but they dropped to zero if you didn’t buy a ticket. Since this ticket only cost a few moments of effort per sol, it seemed worthwhile.
Once the Internet had been disposed of, Nathan turned to the radio traffic.
The outpost maintained a dish antenna, set to track Earth whenever the homeworld was at a wide enough separation from the Sun. AM and FM transmissions never got far past Earth’s atmosphere, but shortwave radio had a better chance of making the interplanetary leap. Even in the chaos of the middle Twenty-First, a few powerful shortwave stations remained online, blasting various flavors of propaganda out across the world. Radio France Internationale, BBC World, the Voice of America, China Radio International, even the Vatican, all could be picked up at Mars Base Alpha. At least in scraps and tatters.
After the scientist’s coup deprived Nathan of any meaningful role in running the outpost, he had decided to start experimenting with the radio. He spent weeks dredging up old coding skills. Eventually he cobbled together software to record what the shortwave heard, clean out some of the noise, translate and transcribe everything into English text. By the end of his first half-year on Mars, Nathan had a window into everything going on back home.
At times, he wished he had never bothered. The world was going to hell in a handbasket, and no mistake. Chaotic weather, pandemic diseases, famine, economic collapse, war. Every possible catastrophe was under way, stacked three deep in some places.
Western Europe still held out, as did Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. China loudly claimed to be stable, although Nathan suspected that was a half-truth at best. The United States was barely hanging on; a lot of Americans were shooting at one another, and the rest were having trouble finding three meals a day while they dodged the bullets. South America and Africa were awash in misery. Then there was South Asia, where a billion corpses still lay unburied after the nuclear weapons had flown and the plagues had followed.
Some weird things were going on, back home. Radio France Internationale had come through clearly at one point, discussing a viral disease that didn’t kill anyone, but sterilized almost every man and woman who caught it. Over the last two years, birth rates had fallen almost to zero all over the world. That news had sent Dr. Kruger into a panic, looking for the bug among the colonists. Fortunately, she had found no sign. Given little Alessandro and the other pregnancy the doctor had mentioned, Nathan suspected whatever virus it was hadn’t made the crossing to Mars.
If a new supply mission did arrive, I wonder if it would be safe for us to let anyone in the door. No wonder half the religious nuts on Earth are convinced it’s the end of days.
Nathan opened the files for last night’s take. To get clear reception, Earth had to be above the horizon at night, so the Sun wouldn’t drown out the transmissions. That currently meant about a three-hour period every Martian morning. Plenty of time to get page after page of intercept.
Interview with prominent French politician. Gossip about the new styles from London Fashion Week. Latest round of peace talks in the United States, going nowhere as usual. Yet another financial scandal in Beijing . . .
He frowned, staring at the next item. Then the one after that, and the one after that.
“What the hell?”
He didn’t realize he had spoken aloud, until he heard a stir of movement elsewhere in the control center. Hawkins rose from his seat, stretching to ease stiff muscles and joints. “What’s the matter, Nathan?”
Nathan kept scanning down the file, glancing at sources and timestamps as he went. “Something damned odd is going on.”
Hawkins walked over to stand at Nathan’s shoulder. “What do you expect? The whole planet has gone mad.”
“Not like this.” Nathan scrolled back up in the file. “Here, the timestamps are all UTC. About 0730, Radio France mentions a report of lights in the sky. A few minutes later, they mention landings in West Africa. About 0800, BBC World takes a moment to laugh about disjointed reports of monsters from Kenya and Tanzania. Then, right here, they both get a lot more serious. Now they’re talking about fighting and invaders.”
“Another war breaking out?” Hawkins sat down at the next station. “Copy your files over to me.”
Nathan plied his mouse and keyboard while he kept reading. “If this is a war, it’s a big one. Hostile forces spotted in the countryside in France and Spain, more moving in on Dakar and Lagos – good God!”
“What?”
“Foreign troops landing in London.”
“Absurd,” said Hawkins, but he scanned the file too. “Nathan, is this some kind of prank?”
“Look at the audit logs if you doubt me. This is all straight from the overnight radio take. If this is a prank, both Radio France and the BBC are in on it.” Then Nathan found something that stopped him cold. “Bill, scroll down. Look at the China Radio International items, from about 0915 to the end of the intercept.”
Hawkins stared at the file. “That has to be a garble. Or a mistranslation.”
“How’s your Mandarin?”
“Rusty. Go ahead, call up the audio files.”
Nathan worked at his keyboard. Soon, a rush of excited Chinese poured from speakers. He heard some noise, and the transmission dropped out once or twice, but most of it was clear.
“All citizens are to remain in their homes . . .” Hawkins paused, listening intently. “The People’s Liberation Army is being mobilized . . . threat to the homeland . . . the enemy appears to be . . .”
“Well?” Nathan inquired after the other man had fallen silent.
“Not a mistranslation. Wài xīng rén. Alien. Extraterrestrial in origin.”
The two of them stared at one another for a long moment. “Still think this is a prank?” Nathan asked.
Hawkins snorted. “My current hypothesis is a case of mass psychosis. At least it isn’t your prank, which was my first thought.”
“How do you know?”
“I know perfectly well you don’t speak anything but English fluently. You’ve always relied on translators, or on translation software. You couldn’t have generated the original files to put this together, not within the constraints placed on your network access.”
“I suppose it’s good to know there’s a bottom to your opinion of me,” Nathan said, but he smiled to take the sting out of it.
Hawkins ran through the transcript once more in silence. Then he shook his head and turned to Nathan. “There’s not enough here to know for sure what’s going on. We need to wait until tomorrow morning’s take, and hope they’ve come to their senses. Agreed?”
“You don’t think this might be exactly what it appears to be?”
“Come on, Nathan,” said Hawkins, exasperated. “You know the facts as well as I do, I’ve heard you give speeches on the subject often enough. Plenty of planets out there, some of them life-bearing, but we’ve never seen the first sign of a high-technology civilization. The best current estimate says the nearest one can’t be any closer to us than sixty or seventy parsecs, and it might be a lot further away than that. We know no way for any civilization to cross such a distance at all, much less to send an invasion force.”
“The Alcubierre drive,” Nathan suggested.
“Purely theoretical unless you have the mass-energy equivalent of a few Jupiters to throw around. If you do, why use it to fly starships when you could remodel your home star system as you like instead?” Hawkins gestured at the screen, where the transcript waited for more attention. “Then there’s the question of what our hypothetical civilization could want that would reward them for coming here and taking it away from us. There is no possible resource they couldn’t find in plenty a lot closer to home.”
Nathan shrugged, conceding the point. “All right. How do you explain this?”
“I don’t. Not yet. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and this doesn’t rise to that level. The simplest explanation is that they’ve gone even more insane down there. Which doesn’t change our situation in the slightest.”
“Or someone is pulling an Orson Welles.”
“I suppose.” Hawkins scoffed. “An outbreak of bad science fiction might almost be a relief, compared to some of what’s happened lately.”
“I suppose you want me to keep my mouth shut about this.”
Hawkins nodded. “Let’s keep it between the two of us for now. I don’t want the others distracted, until we know more.”
“Okay.” Nathan stored the day’s intercept away under his personal key, and logged out of his station. “Would it be too weird for me to admit I almost hope this does turn out to be what it sounds like?”
For the first time in many sols, Hawkins smiled, a tired thing but real. “It would be kind of neat. Although I suspect we wouldn’t enjoy the surprise for long.”
#
Theo came to escort Nathan to his other job, in the greenhouse module.
Hydroponics was one of the few departments that had grown since the colony’s foundation, as the need for a long-term food supply became painfully clear. One could smell the greenhouse from some distance down the corridor, a scent of freshness, of green growing things. Most of the colonists made excuses to come visit every day or two, careful never to disturb the plants in their racks and trays, not wanting to be deprived of the privilege.
Jack Carter was king of the greenhouse, a botanist and soil chemist. Carter’s presence in the colony was at least partly due to his name. When Nathan was making final selections for the first wave, he had been unable to pass over John Carter, especially when the bearer of such a name was at the very top of his profession. Carter was a burly white American with an active sense of humor, fond of beer and role-playing games. He had once been an outspoken partisan in the American cultural wars, but he had demonstrated the ability to set politics aside for his work, and he got along well with the other colonists.
Theo and Nathan entered the greenhouse, passing beneath a hand-crafted sign: Mark Watney Memorial Garden. Carter’s little joke. The man himself saw them come in, greeting them with a wave and a shout.
“Nathan!” he called. “Feel like doing inventory?”
“I feel like lying down for the rest of the day, but I suppose I can count heads of lettuce instead.”
“Good man.” Carter handed Nathan a tablet. “I’ll work racks 1 through 30, you start with 31 and move on down that side. Take pictures. Hawkins wants a projection by the end of today.”
Nathan got busy, systematically examining each plant in the active racks, taking notes, snapping pictures that Carter’s computer would turn into an inventory of edible calories and nutrients. Now and then he reached into a rack to adjust a plant’s stance, or to test the mass and texture of its edible parts. It was an easy job, but it required careful attention to detail.
I need the distraction. God. Aliens landing on Earth. Sounds like an invasion in considerable force, too, striking across whole continents.
We didn’t hear anything from America. I suppose I’m not surprised. Voice of America has been off the air most of the time since Black Friday. Or perhaps the aliens plan to take that bite later. For decades now, we Americans have done our best to make ourselves irrelevant. I can’t imagine what’s left of the United States will pose much of a threat to any hypothetical invaders.
Nathan paused at the end of a rack of iceberg lettuce, straightening to ease the pain in his back. Then he stood still, a new thought coming to him.
If there are aliens, do they know we’re here?
The thought carried a freight of horror. For a moment, he thought of thirty-three humans, abandoned on Mars, now the last remnant of unconquered humanity. Perhaps the last remnant of living humanity, assuming sufficient malevolence on the part of the aliens. A cold knot formed in his gut, and he felt his heartbeat racing.
No. That’s absurd. Isn’t it?
“You okay, Nathan?” Carter called from across the bay. “You look a little peaked.”
“Yeah, Jack, no problem. Just resting a bit.” Nathan shook himself a little and lifted his tablet. “I’ll think about going to see Dr. Kruger when we’re done here.”
Carter snorted, but his look of concern had lightened. “You must feel like crap, if you’re going to visit the Iron Lady of your own free will.”
Nathan chuckled and got back to work.
An hour went by. Nathan was finally able to put his worries aside and think only of the plants he was helping to care for. Once he was done with the hydroponics racks, he walked down the soil beds, where Carter experimented with turning Martian regolith and organic matter into fertile agricultural soil. With decent results, Nathan had to admit. The colony might have died long since, had the botanist not been adept at his job.
Finally, he met with Carter by the botanist’s workstation, close to an outer wall of the greenhouse. “All done, Jack.”
“Cool. Let me run the inventory . . .”
Nathan waited while Carter’s computers massaged images and numbers. He peered out the thick glass windows, watching the barren Martian plain outside. One of the rovers crossed the terrain in the middle distance, most likely carrying men out to do maintenance on the power plant.
After a while, Carter picked up his tablet. “Some pleasant news for a change.”
“The sweet potatoes are doing well,” Nathan observed. “We’re going to get a rich crop. The tomatoes too.”
Carter nodded, paging through files. “Thank God for the tomatoes. Tough little bastards. Back on Earth, you could plant tomatoes once and get volunteers for years. Not the same in hydroponics, of course, but they do grow well.”
“How does the inventory look?”
“Not bad. We won’t starve yet, and we’ll still have some variety.” Carter shook his head. “I’m a little worried about the potatoes. They haven’t been as robust for the past Mars-year or so, and I can’t figure out why.”
“Something in the soil?”
“Shouldn’t be. The soil is the same as we’ve been making all along. Organics from composting, some nitrates added, and we for damn sure convert the peroxide and wash all the perchlorates out up front.” Carter shrugged. “I’ll keep looking. Not an emergency yet.”
“I’ll think about it too. I don’t know much about soil chemistry, but I’ve picked up a few bits and pieces from you over the past few years.”
Carter came out of his abstracted mood and gave Nathan a sharp glance. “Huh. A moment of humility, from the man who once bought his own space program?”
“The last few years have been an education,” Nathan said. “That’s the problem with being the richest man on Earth. Nobody says no to you, and before long you start thinking of yourself as just a little lower than God. Then you drop yourself on Mars at an age when most people would have retired, get cut off from every penny of your money, and what happens next? I tried bossing the rest of you around, but even I could tell it wasn’t going to work. Better this way. I can still be useful.”
“Quite a come-down.”
“Not really.” Nathan smiled. “Think of the economic principle of comparative advantage. Sure, I’m not all that good at a lot of the things that need to be done around here, but I can at least do some of the grunt work. That leaves experts like you more time to do what you do best, and as a result we all survive a while longer.”
“So that’s the secret,” Carter said, chuckling. “Some of us wondered why you never complained much about Hawkins and his coup after you arrived. Just accepted the assignments we gave you and got to work. Odd for a man who was frequently an arrogant ass back on Earth.”
“Sure, I was angry, but I’ve never believed in whining about brute facts. It helped me to think of it as just another business transaction. Besides, it turns out I like working in the greenhouse.”
“We all like eating, too . . . What the hell?”
Carter’s attention turned away, toward the main door at the west end of the greenhouse module. Nathan could hear running feet and raised voices.
A shadow fell across the greenhouse, something blocking the distant Sun. Nathan glanced upward, peering through the thick glass to see what had done it.
For an instant, his heart leaped. An Ares lander! They sent a supply mission from Earth after all . . .
Then he knew. The object hovering in the Martian sky was no stainless-steel rocket, no product of human technology at all. It floated, a flattened wedge suspended motionless in the sky, no rocket exhaust, no visible means of support at all, silent and intimidating.
#
Unlike a few hours before, Mission Control was full of people when Nathan and Carter arrived. Hawkins was sitting at his workstation, swapping from one external camera to another, while excited colonists clustered around him. Theo was there, and Dr. Kruger. Nathan also saw Robert Johnston and Carlos Ramirez, two of the engineers who most often did external repair and maintenance. Both still wore most of their pressure suits, only the helmets missing; they must have rushed in from outside.
“Hard to estimate the thing’s size,” Ramirez was saying. “Bob and I tried to triangulate. Best guess, it’s hovering about half a kilometer up, which would make it about a hundred meters across. About the size of a Voyager stack on the pad, but none of our rockets ever looked like that.”
“Something so massive, hovering?” Theo wondered. “How?”
Hawkins noticed the new arrivals in the room. He swiveled in his chair and caught Nathan’s gaze. For an instant, Nathan knew exactly what the other man was thinking.
Then every active audio speaker in Mission Control coughed into life at the same moment. A smooth baritone voice rolled out, absurdly ordinary, speaking clear English with a strong Received Pronunciation accent. Two sentences, no more.
“This is the Hegemony. Prepare to receive our emissaries.”
Everyone was silent for a moment, absorbing the message, and then a clamor of voices broke out.
Theo threw himself into a seat, working furiously with keyboard and mouse.
Hawkins rose from his chair, holding both hands up to ask for quiet. It took him a minute to get it. “Everyone, please stay calm. This isn’t as much of a surprise as you might think.”
“What do you mean?” Carter demanded.
“Mr. Walker and I noticed something in the morning shortwave intercept from Earth,” said Hawkins. “Fragmentary reports of some new element, landing in places stretching from Western Europe to Africa to East Asia. At least the Chinese were identifying the intruders as extraterrestrial in origin.”
Dead silence, broken only by the sounds of Theo tapping at his keyboard.
“Nonsense,” spat Kruger after a moment. “Walker claimed to find something this absurd, and you believed him?”
“I understand your skepticism, Doctor. I’m satisfied Mr. Walker didn’t fabricate what he found. As far as we could tell, this was no more than another element in the planetary psychosis down there. We agreed to keep these reports a secret until we could learn more. But now . . .”
“Now, we may have some better evidence,” said Nathan.
“They’re in the network!” Theo cried. “Something has leveraged itself into root access on every system in Mission Control. It looks like every system in the base.”
“What are they doing with it?” Hawkins asked.
“Not much, other than to send us some audio. They haven’t altered or erased any files that I can find. They’re just sitting there.”
“Can you push them out? Block them at the firewalls?”
Theo shrugged. “Tell me how they got in, and I’ll tell you how to get rid of them.”
“I might have something,” Nathan offered reluctantly, knowing what the reaction would be like.
Hawkins snapped his head around to stare at Nathan, suspicious once again. “Explain.”
Nathan sighed, shaking his head, and decided to bite the bullet. “I have command override codes, built into the base network. I might be able to use them to regain control.”
Hawkins stared. He wasn’t the only one.
Then came the last sound anyone expected: a peal of laughter. Jack Carter, cackling with glee. “Oh. Oh, my. I always suspected you had an ace tucked up your sleeve, Nathan.”
“Why didn’t you ever use it before?” Hawkins demanded.
“Because you were right, damn you!” Nathan shouted, raising his voice for the first time in years. A knot of old frustration tightened in the back of his throat, rendering his voice raw and rough. “You were right about me; you were right about the mistakes I made. I sat in the corner office and did the visionary thing, playing God while the rest of you accomplished miracles, while the world teetered on the edge of a cliff. Then when things finally went bad back home, I got in the last rocket out and came here. Only to find I didn’t have the skills I needed to keep us all alive. Sure, I could have seized control of the working systems, blackmailed you until you agreed to put me back in charge. It might have been good for my ego for a while, but in the long run it would just have been a complicated form of suicide. Better to let it go and hope you could do a better job.”
Hawkins was silent, staring back at Nathan for a long moment, deciding whether trust was a possibility. Then he nodded sharply. “Try it.”
Kruger made a sound of wordless protest.
Nathan found the nearest workstation, logged in, and pulled up a shell interface. Slowly, carefully, he typed in a single command with a long alphanumeric string attached.
Here’s hoping my memory still works.
Finished. Enter.
Nothing. Nothing. Nothing . . .
Every audio speaker in Mission Control came back to life.
“We have deactivated your override code, Mr. Walker.”
Nathan sagged in his chair, one hand coming up to cover his eyes. Helpless. Useless.
“Prepare to receive our emissaries. They will arrive at the south airlocks in five minutes.”
#
Nathan had to admit, Hawkins shook off his stunned surprise and acted decisively. He left Theo in Mission Control to talk to the rest of the colonists, reassuring them, keeping everyone out of the way. He deputized Carter, Johnston, Kruger, and Ramirez to accompany him and meet the visitors at the airlock. Nathan was forgotten, but he rose from his seat and followed along regardless.
Outside, as Theo reported, the visitors’ ship drifted down to a gentle landing two hundred meters away from the outpost. A minute or so later, a small vehicle emerged through an open hatch, carrying three figures across the plain. Theo claimed the figures all looked humanoid, as best he could see them.
Five humans clustered in the ready room, watching the inner hatch of the main airlock. Nathan hung back, lingering in the shadow of the corridor, not wanting to call any attention to himself that might earn him summary banishment.
“Any way we can keep them out?” Ramirez wondered.
Carter scoffed. “Come on, man. You saw what they did to the computer systems. That was them being polite.”
The airlock panel flashed green: cycle complete. The hatch rolled open.
Three figures stood in the airlock, wearing silver-and-black pressure suits with round helmets and mirrored visors. After a moment, they emerged from the airlock and stood where they could watch all the humans.
At first Nathan couldn’t find anything alien about them. Their pressure suits were sleek and sophisticated, but not so exotic a film studio’s prop manager couldn’t have designed them. The first visitor stood about human-tall, slender, its proportions a little strange, but it had two legs, a torso, two arms, a head, all in the expected places. The other two, hanging back for a moment, were noticeably shorter, a little more robust . . . and they had four arms each.
Two different species?
Nathan thought fast, seeing implications in the simple fact.
We know worlds with intelligent, tool-using life on them must be rare. Until today, we’ve never seen any evidence for even one other than our own, despite all the thousands of exoplanets we’ve found. Now we may be seeing two different species at once. How many more might be waiting in the wings?
Just how extensive a society is implied by this one ship and these three . . . people?
The tall visitor carried nothing, but the other two held identical devices in their upper left hands, and something in their body language suggested careful alertness.
Well, I’ve seen that before. Bodyguards. I bet those are weapons.
The tall one’s helmet disengaged from its suit with a quiet hiss, folding back to reveal its head. Nathan heard a few gasps of surprise from the other humans in the compartment.
The face was vaguely human-like: golden eyes with vertical-slit pupils, nose and mouth that projected forward into a short muzzle, heavy lower jaw. The head bulged upward and backward, forming a prominent cranium that suggested plenty of brain mass. The whole was covered with very golden-brown fur, which grew into a longer ruff around the back of its head. Nathan was reminded of a big cat, although he decided the resemblance wasn’t all that close. He caught a trace of scent from the creature, sharp and metallic.
“Good afternoon,” it said, in the same clear Received Pronunciation accent. The creature’s mouth did not move, which Nathan found disturbing for a moment.
It must be using a speech synthesizer. A very good one.
“Good afternoon,” Hawkins answered, trying to maintain his dignity. “Welcome to Mars Base Alpha. You speak English?”
“Of course,” said the stranger. “We have been studying your culture for quite some time, Dr. Hawkins. More than thirty years, by your reckoning.”
For the first time in years, Nathan found himself sympathizing with William Hawkins. The Chief Scientist had clearly exhausted his capacity for surprise.
“You have me at a disadvantage . . .” Hawkins stumbled, not sure what honorific to apply. “How should we address you?”
“My name is Rojas na-Meeren raj-Vashenti,” said the alien, a hint of exotic phenomes breaking through its English. “Rojas is my use-name. I hold a rank which is roughly equivalent to that of Lieutenant in one of your military institutions. You may address me as Lieutenant Rojas. As a minor point, my species does not exhibit two distinct genders. You may use the pronouns it or they when referring to one of us.”
Hawkins glanced at the shorter, many-armed aliens. “What about these others?”
“They may be introduced to you later,” said Rojas. “For now, it is my duty to negotiate with you.”
Nathan felt his attention sharpen. Negotiate?
Hawkins shook his head warily. “Lieutenant Rojas, none of the humans here possess any authority to negotiate with your people. You must be aware this is only a very small outpost. We are subject to the authority of the United States government.”
The alien’s face did not change. Nathan wondered if it even had facial expression. Although he saw slight movements of its mane, which might signal emotion. “That is not the case,” it said.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” muttered Ramirez.
Hawkins made a sharp one-handed gesture, demanding quiet. “Please explain, Lieutenant Rojas.”
“I represent an interstellar polity whose name would translate into your language as the Hegemony,” said Rojas, its artificial voice cool and even, utterly lacking in emotional weight. “As of a few hours ago, the Hegemony has initiated the process of annexing this star system. Only my ship was sent to negotiate with the humans on this planet. Many thousands of ships, some of them much larger, are engaged in securing Earth. The nation-state you call the United States is not in any position to exercise authority over you. Soon it will no longer exist at all.”
“It’s a damned invasion,” growled Carter, balling his fists and looking like he wanted to assault Rojas.
The shorter aliens, still faceless in their helmets, turned to focus on Carter. The devices in their hands shifted, ever so slightly.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” said Nathan, before he could think better of the idea.
Hawkins glanced over his shoulder, scowling at Nathan’s unexpected presence, but he said nothing. The interruption distracted Carter, too, so that was progress.
“Alien invasions are nothing but bad science fiction,” said Nathan. “If you represent an interstellar civilization, you won’t find anything here you couldn’t find a million other places closer to home. Why come all this way and go to all the effort to conquer us?”
“A question of motives.” Rojas held up a gloved hand. “I am not authorized to discuss motives with you. The Hegemony is a fact. I am here to help you decide how you will adapt to this fact.”
“I’ll show you how humans adapt, you motherless . . .” Carter took a step forward.
One of the shorter aliens moved, just enough to aim the device in its hand in Carter’s general direction. There was no sound, no evidence of a projectile or beam. Yet Carter stopped cold, as if he had forgotten what he was about to do. His legs gave way and he slumped to the floor, falling slowly in the Martian gravity.
Nathan saw others ready to leap into action. “Stop!” he barked. “Hold still!”
For a moment, the old habits of obedience still worked. Hawkins and the others aborted their instinctive movement, standing to stare at the aliens.
“Your colleague is uninjured,” said Rojas, still showing no readable emotion. “He will awaken shortly. May I suggest you take him to your infirmary, where he can recover in safety?”
Hawkins turned to the others, issued commands in a low voice. Johnston and Ramirez bent to pick Carter up and carry him away. Then Hawkins turned away from the aliens to glare at Nathan. “Mr. Walker, must I remind you, you have no authority here?”
“Granted.” Nathan held Hawkins’s stare. “On the other hand, the situation has changed. Some of my skills might be relevant after all.”
Hawkins nodded. “We’re faced with an unprecedented challenge. One that wants to negotiate.”
“I may be of use, Bill.”
“You cannot be considering this,” Kruger muttered.
Hawkins lifted a hand for patience. “Nathan, I am not going to simply turn this matter over to you. You don’t get to be an autocrat again.”
“Fine.” Nathan took a deep breath, letting tension and old bitterness roll out with it. “I built up the biggest fortune on Earth, and then I lost it, net effect zero. Now it looks like even at my best, I was nothing more than a big frog in a very tiny pond. A certain perspective comes with knowing that. Let’s be partners here, Bill. The next few minutes may be the most important thing either of us has ever done.”
For a moment, Hawkins seemed ready to reject the overture, but then he relaxed. “We work together. Anything we come up with goes to the whole colony for a vote. We both abide by the outcome.”
“Done.” Nathan stepped forward to stand by Hawkins, but he decided not to offer a handshake.
Better not to make a gesture you know will be rejected.
The two of them turned back to the aliens, who still stood patiently by the airlock hatch. The shorter aliens still had an attitude of faceless watchfulness, but at least they no longer aimed their weapons at anyone.
“Lieutenant Rojas,” said Hawkins, “I wish to introduce another one of my colleagues . . .”
“Nathan Walker,” said Rojas, interrupting. The alien nodded slightly in Nathan’s direction, a minimal gesture of respect. “We are aware of the history of your outpost.”
“You’ve been listening to our radio transmissions?” Hawkins wondered.
“We have had full access to your global Internet for many years.”
Despite the tension, Nathan chuckled. “No doubt my fault,” he said. “Satellite Internet service, all over the planet. We must have had some freeloaders.”
“Our access is older than that. Although, yes, your organization’s satellite constellations have been useful.” The fur of Rojas’s mane stood erect, and its eyes slid halfway closed. A facial expression, subtle but real, that Nathan felt tempted to tag as ironic humor. For the first time, he found himself thinking of Rojas as a person and not as an alien abstraction.
Although I should not make any assumptions about what its expression means.
“We have no secrets,” said Nathan.
“It would be wise for you to assume so.”
“All right.” Nathan rubbed thoughtfully at his chin. “We’re being conquered, we humans. What kind of relationship can we expect with your civilization?”
“A subordinate one, although it need not be an unpleasant experience for most of you. The Hegemony has no interest in treating humans as a resource to be exploited.”
Hawkins shot Nathan a quick glance, a trace of gloating in his eyes. Nathan caught it, but ignored it, focusing his attention on the alien.
“There will be a transition period,” Rojas continued, “after which most humans are likely to find their lives safer, healthier, and more materially prosperous than before. The Hegemony will establish a protectorate over all humans, under which a wide range of civil and political rights will be impartially secured.”
“I see,” said Nathan. “What about economic rights? Property rights?”
Rojas nodded in human fashion. “The Hegemony will establish a praxis – what you might consider an ethic or a code of laws – treating matters of ownership and property in a new way. Once the annexation is complete, the Hegemony will own this entire star system and the bulk of its resources, and it will manage those resources in accordance with the praxis, to the impartial benefit of all humans. Individual humans will be considered to own themselves, their immediate possessions, and the value their activities produce when applied to physical reality. Humans will be free to work, or not, and will not be deprived of a viable standard of living regardless of their decision.”
“Mein Gott, the aliens are a pack of Marxists,” muttered Kruger, shaking her head in wonder.
“That’s more apt than you might imagine,” said Nathan, thinking back to college lessons in the history of economics. “Marx was one of the first to think seriously about what a post-scarcity society might look like.”
Kruger stared at him. “You’re taking this calmly, for someone who used to rant about socialism all the time.”
“My entire objective was to create a post-scarcity society for everyone to live in,” said Nathan steadily. “My opposition was to politicians and bureaucrats who wanted to take what I had built and fritter it away, leaving humanity no better off than before.”
“What you built?” Kruger demanded. “Say rather, what other men and women built for you, while you piled up money for yourself!”
Nathan raised a hand to calm the discussion. “Fair enough. What we built, we humans together. None of which is relevant anymore if this ET civilization has already solved the problems we face.”
“Long experience shows that a praxis, such as the Hegemony seeks to impose, works best once technology advances far enough,” said Rojas. “Immature civilizations almost never attain such a praxis on their own. They must be aided, or they do not survive. As your civilization, even now, is on the brink of collapse.”
“So there’s the motive for this conquest,” Nathan said, allowing bitterness to creep into his voice. “You’re imposing an ideology on us.”
Rojas gave Nathan a sharp stare, and its resemblance to a big predatory animal sharpened. “Again, the Hegemony’s motives are not subject to discussion.”
Nathan nodded, acknowledging the clear warning. “Okay. We’re all going to be transformed into good citizens of your Hegemony, no matter how we feel about it.”
The alien’s mane shifted, another unreadable expression. “Not quite correct. The Hegemony values the free will and self-determination of sentient beings. We expect some humans may be unwilling or unable to make the transition to the praxis. We hope such dissidents will be few. They will be permitted to live in as much freedom as possible, although they will be prevented from harming those who accept citizenship.”
“It doesn’t sound like there’s much for us to negotiate over. Why are you here, Lieutenant Rojas?”
“Because my superiors have ruled that the humans of this outpost, in particular, have a free-will choice to make.”
#
Three sols went by.
Nathan continued to pull down the shortwave traffic from Earth every morning. Lieutenant Rojas was forthcoming about what was happening back home, providing video of the progress of the annexation. Still, Nathan and the other humans wanted a scrap of independent news.
The Hegemony was having little trouble dealing with Earth’s defenses, such as they were. Firearms failed to do damage, then ceased to fire at all, then shattered into useless scrap. Invisible weapons destroyed missiles and bombs far short of their targets. China deployed tactical nuclear devices, which failed to detonate. After the first few minutes of every engagement, soldiers fell asleep by the battalion, to awaken disarmed under the watchful eye of alien troops. Civilian partisans fared no better, guerilla tactics nearly useless against an enemy who anticipated every move.
The campaign sounded relatively bloodless. A civilization with a million-year advantage in technology didn’t even need to injure its foes to defeat them.
Lieutenant Rojas and their people mingled with careful courtesy among the Martian colonists: talking, answering questions, projecting reassurance. It turned out four species were represented among the ship’s crew. Rojas itself was sarvasha, member of a highly civilized species of carnivores who had been flying starships for two hundred thousand years. Its usual escorts were azuri, ape-like beings with too many arms and too many eyes, who turned out to have congenial personalities and broad senses of humor. Illari were tall and willowy, surprisingly human-like and even beautiful, like elongated Greek statues come to life. Ei were the strangest ones, sessile beings who needed little mobility carts to travel about, but who proved to be superb engineers and technicians.
Lieutenant Rojas claimed there were over a dozen species in the Hegemony . . . and none of those humans had met were in charge. All had been annexed by the Hegemony in the distant past, at the direction of a mysterious people called the khedai. All remained khedai clients, although some were more fully independent than others. The sarvasha were among the oldest members, trusted partners who did much of the Hegemony’s business. The azuri were the youngest aside from humanity, brash newcomers who had only been citizens for a mere thirty thousand years.
Nathan felt at once excited and oppressed by the sheer scope of the Hegemony. He thought back to the science-fictional dreams he had grown up with, ancient space empires and gleaming utopias. Once, he had hoped to lay the cornerstone for such a future, a human future. Now he was forced to think of himself as a small child, playing with pebbles and mud in the forecourt of a vast cathedral, blissfully unaware of the work of older and more skilled hands. Privately, late in the night, he felt tempted to give in to the bitterness of a wasted life.
Rojas steadfastly refused to explain khedai motives, but after a few conversations, Nathan thought he could begin to guess. All the visitors admitted their own peoples’ admission to the Hegemony had come under similar circumstances. None had managed to build a long-lived, stable civilization on their own. All had been on the verge of self-inflicted disaster, even of extinction, just before the Hegemony arrived. Rather like humans.
Nathan came to suspect that annexation might be another name for rescue mission.
#
“This is the choice we’re being asked to make,” said Hawkins.
All the humans gathered in the mess hall, the only space in the outpost that could accommodate everyone in something like comfort. Hawkins stood on a small stage, a great glass window behind him, the desolate plain of Arcadia Planitia stretching out behind him in the morning sunlight. None of the aliens were present, wanting to let humans make this decision as freely as they could.
“The Hegemony is willing to take us back to Earth. We can be home within a few days. We’ve been promised there will be no danger. The fighting is likely to be over before long in any case. Once the Hegemony starts building the new cities that Lieutenant Rojas has described, we’ll all be able to live in comfort and safety. We won’t need to work if we don’t want to, although as scientists and technicians we’ll be able to find decent jobs. If we’re willing to learn the new technologies.”
Nathan glanced around the room. Everyone sat sober and quiet, the shock and high emotions of the first day gone. Rojas and his crew had done well as ambassadors for their people.
“The other choice is for us to stay here.”
Dead silence among the colonists, broken only by the sound of little Alessandro fussing. Sofia gave her son a breast to quiet him.
“We’ll still have to live under the praxis, there’s no escaping it. You’ve heard what that means. We’ll be under Hegemony supervision, just as we would be on Earth.”
Nathan glanced at the younger colonists, clustered in a corner, a few of them in pairs. One of the constraints imposed by the praxis would weigh most heavily on young men and women, who might be thinking about starting a family. To his surprise, he found no sign of defiance. One man sat holding his partner’s hand, both looking thoughtful.
I suppose none of us were likely to have big families in the first place. The freedom to have as many kids as you want isn’t worth much if you know they’re not likely to survive.
“On the other hand, if we stay, the Hegemony has promised us . . . limited support, is how Lieutenant Rojas describes it. Limited by their standards, which may be remarkably generous by ours. That will include access to their technology: smart automation, nanotech manufacturing, materials science, fusion power, control of gravity, advanced medicine. We’ll be permitted to continue our mission, even expand it. Build new habitats, better ones, with room for more people. We’ll need the room, because the Hegemony will help us recruit from Earth once things are more stable. We’ll be able to expand our operations across the planet. Start thinking about the long-term project: turning Mars into a habitable world, a second home for humanity.
“You’ve all seen the prospectus Lieutenant Rojas and their people put together for us. What the praxis requires of us, what level of support we can expect if we go home, what we can expect if we stay here. I’ll open the floor for discussion now.”
Hawkins sat down and looked around expectantly.
Ella Kruger stood. “I’m not certain I understand, Dr. Hawkins. Is this decision to be made on an all-or-nothing basis? Are we all to go home, or all to stay on Mars?”
“Impossible,” muttered Ramirez. “We have no way to all agree.”
“Exactly my concern,” said Kruger. “No matter how the vote goes, those in the minority will feel betrayed and resentful. We will not be able to survive here under those conditions. Better for us all to return to Earth.”
Hawkins shook his head. “No, Doctor, that’s not how this is going to work. Lieutenant Rojas assures me anyone who votes to go back to Earth will be taken home, regardless of the outcome. The question is whether enough of us are willing to stay on Mars. We need at least a minimum crew, to keep the outpost running and start working with our new friends to expand it. If not enough of us vote to stay, we will be forced to shut the outpost down in an orderly manner and all go home on a Hegemony ship.”
“All so someone else can come back and pick up where we left off?” Carter scoffed. “To hell with that!”
Nathan frowned, disturbed by Carter’s question, although he wasn’t sure yet why.
“How many need to stay?” asked Theo.
Hawkins took a deep breath. “It depends on who they are, but no more than ten can go back to Earth if the rest of us are to continue the mission. More than that, and we have no way to continue. We were already short on critical skills before the aliens arrived.”
Theo shook his head, looking frustrated. “All due respect, Dr. Hawkins, but that’s a load of shite. These ETs possess technology a million years in advance of us. They don’t need any of us to keep this place open.”
“True,” said Hawkins. “The point is, the aliens are not interested in Mars. It’s of no use to them. They are offering us an opportunity to continue our mission, to maintain this as a human place. If we decide otherwise, they would be just as pleased to take us back to Earth.”
“Hah!” barked Carter. “That’s the first thing I’ve heard today that makes sense. God is not willing to do everything,” he quoted, “and thus take away our free will and that share of glory that belongs to us.”
Nathan nodded to himself.
Carter has hidden depths . . . and now I know what’s bothering me about all this.
He watched and listened as the debate meandered. Soon he decided they weren’t going to reach any clear agreement. Some point that could be decided by cool reason, marshaling of evidence, by instrument readings and experimental results, that might have been resolvable. The matter at hand was one of aspirations, desires, visions. Not subject to reason.
“A chance to go back to Earth?” Johnston mused. “Instead of existing in this rat warren for the rest of our lives? That’s an easy one.”
“Sounds like we’ll get the opportunity to make it much better than a rat warren,” said Carter. “Wouldn’t you like to do some of the things we all planned before we left Earth? I’d like to make a real home out of this place. See some green things growing outside, before I die.”
“But what is the point?” Kruger demanded, somewhat plaintively. “Does anything we do matter anymore? If these extraterrestrials are to be believed, they have already done everything worthwhile, long ago.”
Nathan thought about that, compared it to the understanding beginning to emerge in the back of his mind. He decided to act. He rose from his seat, raising a hand to be recognized.
Hawkins frowned. “Nathan, do you have something to add?”
“I might.”
Nathan looked around the room, as he had done many times back on Earth, weighing the support and the skepticism he could find in human faces.
“As I understand it, under the praxis there aren’t going to be any more billionaires. No more CEOs, no more hungry capitalists, no more private interests so huge that no one can tell them no. No more corrupt human bureaucrats or politicians either, thank God. We’re all going to be equals under the Hegemony, and let’s hope they do a better job ruling the world than we ever did. So, this is just me, Nathan Walker, telling you what I think. Run with it or ignore it, as you please.”
Nathan stepped out into the center of the hall, where everyone could see him.
“Look, I understand why anyone might think staying on Mars isn’t worth it. Once, I had a lot of my own ego invested in being the first to do things. First private institution to reach space. First to put humans back on the Moon. First to get to Mars. Too much ego, to be honest. Now we find out any accomplishment we value, the aliens beat us to it a million years ago. To them, we’re just little kids who shouldn’t be allowed out of the playpen without supervision. It stings. Believe me, I know it stings.”
“Get to the point,” Ramirez called.
“I’ve been talking to the visitors,” Nathan told them. “They told me something interesting. Do you know how long it was, after the Hegemony annexed the azuri, before they were allowed to build any colonies off their homeworld?”
Silence, and frowning faces. They didn’t know and didn’t understand why it was important.
“Two thousand years. Mind you, when the Hegemony came for them, the azuri were about as advanced as we are now. Advanced enough to explore their star system with robot probes, advanced enough to land a few short-term manned expeditions on their moon. Advanced enough to throw nukes at each other. The Hegemony came and annexed them, and it was two thousand years before they were allowed back out into space.
“The others were the same. The ei didn’t have a space program at all when they were annexed, and it was close to five thousand years before they got to fly on Hegemony ships. The illari were faster, but it still took them centuries. Lieutenant Rojas couldn’t tell me how long it was for his people, it was too long ago, but he said it’s typical for a new client species to be kept at home for a while.”
Hawkins cocked his head, a thoughtful expression on his face. “Yet they’re offering to let us keep Mars, before they even finish securing Earth.”
“Right.”
“Why are they treating us differently?”
Nathan shrugged. “No idea. You know how they respond to any question of motives.”
“Come on, Mr. Walker,” said Theo, a generous smile on his face. “You must have a guess.”
“I might.” Nathan looked around, drawing out the suspense for a moment. “I think this is an experiment.”
Quiet around the room, while everyone considered the idea.
“Think about it. Why did the Hegemony come here at all? They can’t need to strip our natural resources. They don’t seem to want to enslave us. They say they don’t plan to import a lot of colonists to crowd us out. That doesn’t sound like any colonial empire we humans ever built.” Nathan looked around the room, saw he had most of their attention. “I think they’re here to recruit us. They want us, of our own free will, to become solid citizens of their empire. Not to become bad copies of the khedai, or the sarvasha, or any of the others. They want us to bring something worthwhile to the table. Something of our own.”
Carter was nodding slowly, a light in his eyes.
“So, this decision we’re being asked to make, it’s not just about whether we here stay on Mars or go back to Earth. I suspect a lot more is riding on it. It’s a test, to judge whether humanity is ready, by their standards, to emerge from the cradle. If we all go home now, if we give up this foothold, how long will it be before our descendants get to try again?”
“This is the same arrogant colonialist propaganda Mr. Walker always offers,” said Kruger bitterly. “Mankind’s manifest destiny in space! Heroic white men traveling to the planets to rebuild America!”
“No,” said Nathan. “Even if that was the plan once, the Hegemony changes everything. The human destiny isn’t fixed. I suppose it never was.”
“I think Nathan is on to something,” said Carter, “and there’s one more thing I think we all need to remember. Whatever you may think of Nathan, whatever you may think about how things have gone since we came here, every man and woman in this room knows we wanted to come. For every one of us who made the trip, thousands more applied. We all fought damn hard for our places. We all believed in the mission once. Maybe now we can believe in it again.”
A ripple of voices in the room, as people turned to their neighbors for more private discussion.
“Do you have anything more for us?” Hawkins asked. When Nathan looked, he was surprised to see a hint of moisture in the other man’s tired eyes.
“No, that’s all.” Nathan glanced around the room. “I had better step out, so the rest of you can speak without constraint. I’ll abide by the vote, whatever the result.”
“You don’t need to leave, Nathan.”
Nathan glanced at Kruger, and he also saw a few other faces showing the bitterness of the long, desperate years. He shook his head in silence and left the mess hall.
#
Night-time on Mars. The hydroponics bay was dimly illuminated, nothing but Carter’s workstation and the safety lights on the floor still lit. Nathan sat in Carter’s usual chair, enjoying the scents of the garden, staring through the glass roof overhead to watch the stars. Somewhere nearby, Rojas wandered up and down the racks. It was examining the plants, a process that involved a careful analysis of odors as well as sight and touch.
Suddenly the sarvasha perked up, turning to stare back toward the mess hall.
Nathan turned to see Hawkins approaching, walking slowly between the rows, reaching out to touch some of the plants as he passed. “What’s the word, Bill?”
“The vote is in,” said the scientist, a note of eagerness in his voice Nathan hadn’t heard in a long time.
Rojas stood still, like a leonine statue in the dim light.
“Well, don’t keep me in suspense,” said Nathan. “What was the decision?”
“We’re going to stay here and make a go of it.” Hawkins smiled. “I took the liberty of casting your vote, Nathan, on the assumption you would vote to stay.”
Nathan shook his head. “I wish you hadn’t done that.”
“Don’t worry, it didn’t affect the result. It wasn’t even close. Twenty-nine to four.”
Nathan sat still for a long moment, concentrating on the taste of the air. Somewhere deep inside, a knot of old bitterness relaxed. “I suppose Ella Kruger was one of the four.”
“Oddly enough, no.” Hawkins chuckled. “She may have come to hate Mars, and she’s still not too fond of you, but she couldn’t bear the thought of abandoning the rest of us.”
“I’ll take it.”
Hawkins turned to Rojas, where the sarvasha stood a short distance away. “Lieutenant, my determination is that this outpost will remain open with an adequate human crew. I formally request logistical and technological assistance from the Hegemony, as agreed.”
“It will be done,” said Rojas, sounding much stranger than usual. Nathan realized, with a start, that it had stopped using its voice synthesizer and was speaking English naturally. Its mouth must have been poorly adapted to the language.
“Thank you.”
“No thanks needed.” Rojas looked around, the fur of its mane shifting in response to some obscure emotion. “You may consider this statement insincere. It is not meant so. What your people have accomplished here, it is remarkable.”
“It must seem a small thing,” Hawkins said, “compared to the Hegemony.”
“Small, yes. Size is not all that matters. What you did despite disadvantage, this is what we see.” Rojas narrowed its eyes, its mane standing up straight behind its head. “All our peoples began so. Some did not begin so well.”
“Thank you.”
“Someday, of course, you will need to abandon this place. Perhaps we can move the structures so they may be preserved.”
Nathan and Hawkins stared. “What do you mean, Lieutenant?” Nathan asked.
Rojas peered at them, and the movement of its mane suggested – what? Surprise? Puzzlement? “It seemed strange to us, your selection of this specific place for your outpost,” it said at last.
“It was a safe landing zone,” said Nathan. “Solid ground, flat, with few exposed rocks. Close to thick deposits of water ice under the surface.”
Rojas made a rumbling sound. “Understood. At a low elevation.”
“So?”
“If all goes well, this planet may have oceans one day.”
“Ah.” Hawkins nodded, smiling broadly. “You are saying this site may eventually be under a few kilometers of water.”
Nathan caught the scientist’s eye, a smile of his own taking shape as a new future opened out in front of him. “Well. We all need something to look forward to.”
Author’s Note
There’s a space-operatic setting I’ve been building in the back of my head for quite a few years now. I usually call it the “Human Destiny” setting, because it’s functioning as an extended personal meditation on what role, if any, human beings might have in the larger universe.
The Human Destiny stories do eventually find human characters out in the galaxy, traveling and exploring, citizens in a Star Trek-like interstellar community. Yet that community is anything but human-centered. Instead, we participate as clients of a far older, more sophisticated civilization, one which came to rescue us just as our long record of folly was about to overwhelm us.
It’s a setting that doesn’t allow much room for human bigotry and small-mindedness, in which the issues are far larger and on a much longer timescale than those we’re accustomed to dealing with. It’s also a setting in which the intrepid explorers are not assumed to be White and American, where indeed all manner of people who blithely assumed their own superiority in the 20th and 21st centuries find themselves poorly suited for the real situation among the stars.
“Roanoke” is the second story I’ve written around the arrival of the Hegemony, a tale of the first day in which we human beings become aware that our actions are playing out on a much larger stage than we expected. Everyone in this story is fictional, although the astute reader will probably notice echoes of real people and real enterprises.
“Roanoke” © 2023 by John Alleyn (Jon F. Zeigler). All rights reserved.