Normalizing the relationship

<8/5/2095 5:55:00 AM>Day four, monday

The next day, when we walked into our assignment room… I not only wore a robe this time but took it off right away as pretty much all the other girls were doing.  The training had pretty much inured me to being naked, at least around these other girls.  I got there a little earlier too, and had time to really look at that board that made up all of one wall.  “What is that?” I asked the girl in front of me in line.

“Rankings, I think,” the girl in front of me said.  “Look at it.  You can see the names, and what must be rankings.”

I looked and saw what she meant.  Listed on it were dozens of last names, hundreds really, with several scores after them.  “What do you think the scores are?” I asked her.

“I dunno, except the front one seems to be what ranks you on the board.”

I looked down then, and she was right.  The names were all in descending order by their first score.  The highest name had 978 and then…

Suddenly the door, which had just closed on someone, beeped and flashed red… then immediately opened again.  Jane was standing there, looking nervous.

“Oh, my dear!” June said from across the room, “Congratulations!”

It took me, and the other girls, several seconds to translate ‘congratulations’ and then we all gathered round her, echoing June’s excitement.  Jane just glowed.  “Oh, Grant will be so thrilled!” she said.  “He was so hoping.  He said…” then she blushed, and I gathered that what he said was not for public consumption.  “But,” she added after a moment, “Why did it turn red and all?”

“Because you can’t do sims now that you are pregnant, or nursing,” June said.  “You will have to learn with me and the others.  Oh, what wonderful news,” she said, pulling Jane out of line and allowing the rest of us to continue.  I was a trifle disappointed when the door didn’t flash for me.  I hadn’t known that that meant I wasn’t pregnant and, well, I was sure Andrew would be thrilled, too, if I was.  He often talked about kids some, after.

I had only been exercising for a few minutes when I was surprised to find myself, today, not only extremely well dressed, in the sense of clothes that covered me rather completely, but standing with a bunch of other girls in front of an instructor again.  Standing in bare metal room.

Good afternoon,” she said.  “Today is going to be one of our harder sessions.  I hope that you all are doing well with your partners, because you are going to need all of the comforting you can get, tonight.”

My heart started beating fast.  Here I was a cull, assigned to go who knows where, assigned to sleep with some guy I didn’t know and didn’t even really like, and she was worried that she was going to give me bad news? How bad could it be?

“I’m afraid that you have been lied to pretty much all of your life.”

She paused there, as if letting that settle.  But, who lied to us? Almost before I could frame the question my world disappeared…

I appeared among the stars, literally.  I gave a small shriek.  None of my other sims had started anything like this.  I was floating, apparently in deep space, in my uniform.  At least I wasn’t naked, that probably would have been too much.

“All of your life,” a deep voice began, as I rotated among the stars and started moving toward a planet which I eventually recognized as New Sparta, “You have been told things about our war with the Bn.  Most of these have been untrue, and all of them have been misleading.  Today you will be told the truth.  This truth is something you can never share with anyone back on your home planet, but which all of us in the fleet understand, as do your planetary leaders.”

My heart started racing, why had we been lied to? What part of what I understood was a lie?

“You may have heard about the planet of New Sparta.  What you may not know is that New Sparta is not its name.  The local inhabitants, who speak a very difficult language, call it something closer to ‘Haven’.  It got its new name, which no one from the planet uses amongst themselves, in the beginning of the war.”

“New Sparta^[1] was settled by a group fleeing, and fearing, persecution.  When they settled their planet they made the vow that they would stand there, and never be driven off.  Thus, while colonizing their planet, they simultaneously set up a series of military defenses to their planet.  These defenses were to serve them in good stead.  If any planet except New Sparta had been the first for the aliens to attack, the Creator only knows what would have been the result for our history.  Certainly none of us would be here, and many if not most of us would be dead.”

“The Bnentarri sent a colonizing ship to New Sparta.  When it arrived in local space it destroyed a communication beacon and defense that New Sparta had set up precisely for the purpose of drawing an enemy’s attention.  Given their evidently hostile intentions the rulers of New Sparta had no hesitation in ordering the destruction of the alien ship which, given their large number of stealthed missile stations, they accomplished easily.  As you perhaps know, the Bnentarri almost never use stealth, so, well, they are very easily destroyed by stealthed missiles.”

“New Sparta was not content with merely destroying this incursion, however, but immediately began arming for any future conflicts.  At the time the only thing known about the Bnentarri was the result of various autopsies of flash frozen corpses, so they assumed, as would be logical, that the Bnentarri operated as we  did and the other aliens, on their initial ship not reporting back, would immediately send a larger and better armed fleet to destroy New Sparta.”

“In addition to arming they immediately sent out dozens of scouts in an attempt to find the origin of these invaders; a task they accomplished in spades.  Ship after ship came back with reports of whole planets settled by the Bnentarri.  The confusing thing, of course, was that these planets, for the most part, seemed to have little or no technology.”

“Simultaneous with these actions, New Sparta contacted several nearby planets, planets that shared certain of their cultural assumptions.  Planets, in a word, that they felt they could trust.  These formed the ‘joint’ space council and decided on several rather draconian rules.  At first they thought of only imposing these rules upon their own planets but, as the true nature of the threat became more and more apparent, they changed their mind and made their rules obligatory on all other planets in the local sector.”

In telling this story I am greatly abbreviating.  For one thing, the whole time that the voice had been talking I had been floating around in space: watching the New Sparta attack and defense, zipping along with various scouts, and even shuttle and landing parties.  Now the perspective changed to a kind of three dimensional map.

“They discovered, in the first place, that the aliens had already settled an enormous area of the galaxy.” The map suddenly lit up with a swath of red, vaguely circular.  “Our local group of colonies was threatened with almost immediate destruction.”

“Or so they thought.  While they debated and decided, the scientists they had studying the issue came up with some amazing conclusions about the alien life cycle, conclusions that were at the same time reassuring and incredibly worrying.

Suddenly the scene shifted and I was standing on a beach.  “The enemy,” the voice said, “are amphibians.  They mate in the water, and live a great deal of time in the water.  The females, ” it said, as an enemy female pulled her swollen body out of the water, “come on to the land to lay their eggs.”

I watched, fascinated, as the female, indeed, laid her eggs… dozens of slightly pink, slightly yellow eggs; as large as my head and with very soft shells.  She laid them, dozens of them, buried them in the sand, and then crawled back into the water, seemingly exhausted.

“These eggs hatch, six months later, and then go back into the water.  For the females, that is about it.  For the most part they shall live out their whole lives in the sea, lake, or river only coming ashore to lay eggs.”

“The males have a different life pattern.  The males, once they reach a certain age, not quite what we would call adolescence, they come ashore and live there.  At first they go rather deep ashore, perhaps even ten twelve miles ashore, and they are what we would call ‘feral’.  They live completely off the land, they cooperate with each other rarely if at all. We call this the ‘Juvy’ stage”

“After a while, and this we have slightly more nailed down, we think it is five years more or less, they begin their ‘pack’ stage.  Each of these stages, by the way, is driven by an actual change in their brains.  Unlike humans Bnentarri actually grow new brain material.  Some scientists literally call each new set of material a new brain.  With this change the Bnentarri males began hunting in packs.

You must not confuse this behavior,” he said, while I watched a group of seven small aliens chasing down a deer like animal, “with what we are accustomed to seeing in our animals and humans.  It is not ‘herd’ behavior.  The aliens do not ‘care for’ each other the way we are used to and expect.  It is much, much more of a mutual advantage situation.  A Bnentarri that is injured or killed with be immediately attacked and eaten by it’s fellows.  The pack serves as a way for each member to get more to eat than they would otherwise.

This stage lasts about ten years.  At the end of that time they enter what we are calling the ‘worker’ phase, and move back closer to water.  Much closer.  Workers and other ‘adult’s almost never live more than three miles from deep water: a major river, lake, or ocean: somewhere where females live.  All during this phase they can mate, and do mate.  There seems to be no competition, no sort of pairing off.  An individual male will just go off into the water several times a year, for a week or so, presumably to mate.  It is unknown whether they only mate with one or multiple females during this time.

During the ‘worker’ stage a new adult almost always works for another, more mature, adult; thus the name.  there doesn’t seem to be any kind of obligation, it is very much a mutual benefit thing.  A worker working in the fields will be fed from the mature adults stock of grain, for example.

Their linguistic capabilities are a mystery.  It seems that they actually have an instinctive ability to speak, which develops during their juvie stage, and then comes out fully during the pack and adult phases.

Workers have almost no scientific ability.  They can use technology when it is explained to them, but they can invent nothing.  All of this changes during the next phase, which we call the ‘genius’ phase.  After substantial brain growth the ‘worker’ becomes a pocket Einstein.  We estimate that they have at least a ten percent advantage over us in IQ… and all of this is focused on technology.

They need this advantage because, for the most part, each ‘genius’ needs to start from scratch.  There seems to be almost no use of history, books, or even verbal records.  The individual genius organizes his workers to produce food and the like, and, because of his genius, can do so much more effectively than a worker alone or a pack of them.  Thus the mutual benefit.

The other thing you need to know about these geniuses is that they do not die of old age.  They can be killed certainly, there is nothing superhuman about them.  But their cells seem to have no natural way of killing the organism. No ‘aging’ as we know it. Older geniuses just keep growing, learning, and inventing.

After a while each genius gets a hankering to colonize.  This seems to be instinctive.  At first this is limited to the planet they are on.  When that begins to fill up, which happens rather quickly, the genius, well, they invent space travel.  We’ve seen it happen three different times on three different planets that we were observing, and they literally invent space travel from the ground up.

So, this is what they learned about the Bnentarri.  That, plus the fact that they have an incredibly high birth rate, means that, well, their ability to settle is fantastic, but very erratic.  One of our scientists compares it to radioactive decay.  You can never tell when an individual planet will suddenly pop out a genius and his ship, or fleet.  Some of them, although they have no concrete evidence yet, postulate the formation of a ‘super genius’, a stage more advanced than genius.

Even among the New Spartans, who are our most warlike of cultures, there were some who spoke of peace. However experiment after experiment showed that this was impossible. They seem to have some kind of physiological drive to not murder each other except when driven to it; but none toward humans. The lower classes simply can’t cooperate with us at all. The genius class, on the other hand, can do so… as long as it is in their particular interest. As soon as that stops, however, they slaughter us cheerfully. Luckily most of these experiments involved simulations, so very few humans lost their lives in figuring this out.

When this was all thoroughly studied New Spartans came up with our current plan, which involves the following elements:

Firstly, it was necessary to increase everyone’s birth rate; especially that of the various planets that weren’t part of the original coalition.  The first few planets already had a culture of birth that averaged seven children per woman.  They still call their women ‘wives’ when they partner, and they are very much organized around large, extended, families.  The other planets tended to have a lower birth rate, closer to four children per woman.

Secondly, we needed to build ourselves a space fleet capable, for the most part, of defeating enemy incursions.  People were needed for this fleet, obviously, as well as equipment.

Thirdly, we need to settle planets outside of the enemy influence.  This is largely what the planets that lay on the far side of the enemy are doing.

Fourthly, and this affects New Texas, planets on the enemy side are responsible for settling enemy planets.  These planets have no real defenses, and there are huge swaths of each planet that the aliens, the adults at least, don’t settle, can’t settle, really.

Fifthly, we are engaged in culling.” My thoughts raced when he said this, completely misunderstanding his point.  “Each of our colonies on an alien planet is responsible for keeping down the local population of geniuses.  We settle the planet and the colonists support soldiers and fleet who, at the first sign of change among the aliens, attack and wipe out the new genius.”

Before I go on to the history of New Texas in this, do you have any questions?” a different voice asked, a girl’s voice.

“Yes,” I asked, “what about the women? The alien females?”

“Ah, they are more of a mystery.  They go through the same phases the males do, at least that is what our few autopsies have shown, but as they never leave the water our studies have been more limited as to how they associate. After all, following one of them around in the water with some kind of probe has been rather difficult. And they seem to die in captivity, we think, again, instinctively.

Some of our scientists are afraid that what they do is communicate.  That they are what does pass for history and books and the like among the aliens.  It would help describe some of the meteoric rise of technology.”

“So, they’re not just breeders?”

“We know almost nothing about them, but that certainly doesn’t seem what they are.”

I thought some more.  “But how did we get involved, then? All you have shown is those few planets.  How did New Texas get involved?”

“I’ve seen the films,” I continued, “But they always gloss over that part.  I remember councilor Perry coming forward and saying ‘we have decided to join’, but history always seems to skip over the part right before that.”

“Yes,” the girl said, “and for a good reason.  That’s the second part of our orientation…”

“The Space Council,” the deep voice began again, “ran projections as to the possible future.  At their decisive meeting, this is the projection that was shown to them by their scientists.”

The three dimensional map came up again, and I watched as it showed one of those projections like they use for the weather.  The bottom of the screen showed a little slider moving across.  One year passed while the surface of the red bubbled, and, here and there, burst, engulfing new planets all around the circle.  At three years the first bubble burst toward human space, but was easily defeated.  Five years, ten, all were similar.  But by now the red had taken over several planets around human space.  More and more time passed and, at the end of twenty years, human space was almost completely surrounded, and was being constantly attacked.

Several planets in the rear of our area were taken, then more, and more, till, by the time the slider reached forty years, most of human space had been taken.  The planets of the council still held out, but were now taking attacks almost every year.  Not from the newly taken planets, which obviously hadn’t reached that maturity yet, but because they were now the closest ‘unoccupied’ planet to dozens of ‘mature’ planets.  Finally, after one hundred years, the first SC planet was taken, and it was two hundred years before the last one, New Sparta itself, fell.

“This simulation led the SC to make the rather draconian solution they decide upon.  Although they declared that the reasons for their decisions were purely pragmatic, most observers note that many of the decisions forced their neighbors into line with some of their most important cultural values.  All of the planets, for example, outlawed the murder of children in the womb while many of their neighbors, including New Texas, allowed it under some circumstances.”

“What?” I said, and the lady came back and spent several minutes trying to convince us that this had ever happened on our planet.  In the end I wasn’t convinced, but told her to go ahead with the rest of the film.

“The decision was also made to approach the various planets… carefully.  It was well known that the proposed solution would be considered radical, totalitarian, immoral… and resentment would delay the entire implementation.  So they made a rather stealthy approach.  In the midst of a diplomatic visit during some New Texas celebration, then called the NT leaders into a secret meeting:

“We can’t do that!” Councilman Perry was saying.  “I refuse to even think about it!” He sat down on the nearest couch with a thud.

A New Spartan that I didn’t know was sitting across from him and, at this, he leaned forward.  “Well, before you make that decision there are three things you need to know.  The first is what we’ve just shown you.  Our best scientists project absolutely no hope for the human race, let alone our colonies, if we do not take dramatic action, and soon.”

“But what can we do?”

“Our plan is not easy, but we believe it will work.  Watch.”

Councilman Perry and the other councilors watched the map.  This time the bubbling red was not the only movement on the screen.  After a few years there was a blue flash on the screen and a red planet went purple.  Then, year after year, various other planets, on the far side, turned blue.  Then another planet went purple, and another…

I, and the councilmen, watched fascinated as, over the next hundred years, dozens of planets turned purple, and other dozens turned blue.  The ‘boiling’ affect near the human planets settled down dramatically.  A hundred years after that and the entire core of the alien sphere was purple, and the human sphere was approaching their size.  There were many purple planets in the human sphere, human planets settled by the aliens, but most of them were blue.

“Well, that’s all very good, but we still can’t…” Councilor Perry began, and the New Spartan held up his hand.

The other two reasons are these.  If you don’t agree to our terms you will not leave this ship.  We will pass on to your planet that news that you perished, horribly, in a shuttle accident, complete with pictures.  No autopsies, since the shuttle will burn up in the atmosphere.

“You, you can’t…” Perry spluttered.

“The third reason is that, if all of your planetary leaders continue recalcitrant, well, we do have the only space navy in the area.  There are other options.”

Councilor Perry went white, and it was left to councilor Dewhurst to lean forward and say, “What do you want us to do?”

“First of all, this meeting never happened.  You are going to decide, on your own, that New Texas is going to join the council.  You will make loud, public, speeches about all of the sacrifices that will be necessary.  We will help you with films and the like, showing the evil aliens.”

“Listen,” he said.  “We have no desire at all to rule your planet.  We are busy enough with the war, with protecting the entire human race from destruction or oblivion.  We have worked out your quota of recruits, you just make sure you meet it.  Invent some story, and stick to it.  Sell it.”

It must have been some story, I thought to myself.  All my life I had grown up knowing that New Texas was an eager member of the council, boasting along with the rest of our people at how patriotic we were, at how we were all making the necessary sacrifices to insure the survival of the human race.  There was even some sotte voce comments about how we always exceeded our quota of recruits, at how few pure culls we needed.  Our local papers all had at least one page, and usually several, dedicated solely to reports from our soldiers, colonists, and ship handlers… promotions, battles, deaths, births.  And it was all a lie? Well, I thought, not really a lie anymore.  Everyone I knew did believe that we should contribute.  If nothing else, we all had dozens of brothers, sisters, cousins, etc.  who were fighting on the front line or living in some colony.

“So, we will continue to rule here?” Councilor Perry asked, sitting up.

“Absolutely.  And one of you will even be given a seat on the Space Council.  Once you are fully integrated, that is; and you have sent your quota of recruits or culls.”

“Culls?” Dewhurst said, and I listened to them as they, between them, worked out the entire system of recruits, culls, exemptions that I knew so well.  The New Spartan leader, or any of his team, would repeat, over and over again, the same thing,

“In the end, we don’t care how you do it, as long as you meet the quota.  Now, if you want an exemption from this area, that is fine, as long as you…”

#

Suddenly I was standing back in the grey room again, and the woman began speaking.  “I need to remind you, again, that this story can never go back to the planet.  New Texas is an upstanding member of the council, and fomenting rebellion is treason.  However, we do wish to let you know that, in the end, the goal is to defeat the enemy and save the human race.  Several times individuals have come up with ideas, including changes in basic agreements, which have resulted in great benefit.  One of the most spectacular was the invention of the Pathfinders, which came about when a boy from Newtonia, upon first learning of the plan, sent his leaders a proposal for a new branch of the service…

“Your government has been lying to you for your whole lives.  And to a certain extent we, in the fleet, have colluded in the lies.  You see, all of your life you have been led to believe that you might volunteer, or be culled, in order to fight The Enemy… in order that the human race might, one day, achieve victory in our war.”

I could see other heads nodding, as mine did.  Was that all fake? Was there no enemy? Were all of those videos from the front just fake? Why did I have to sleep with this guy then? Why were we here?

“There is no enemy?” one of the girls shouted out and, even though  I had just thought the same thing myself, I heard how stupid that sounded.  What had that video been about if there was no enemy?

“Oh, there is an enemy,” the girl said.  “An implacable, deadly enemy, one that has killed thousands upon thousands of our people.”

“But you said they lied,” another girl said.

“They lied… about victory.”

“We… we aren’t winning?” I gasped out, along with several others.

“We can’t win,” she said, and the room became very still.  “But do not despair, that doesn’t mean we will lose.”

Now I was confused, and, looking around, saw I wasn’t the only one.  She saw it too, and said, “Listen, let me explain it all, and then you can ask questions…”

“You see, they are nothing at all like us in the way they cooperate.  We have had people studying them for years now, and we still don’t understand them.  But they don’t seem to have any hierarchy at all, no group consciousness.  Each new member of the community finds a place where they work, and they are ‘paid’ for their work by someone that has been there before.  But they don’t seem, to us anyway, to have any ‘bosses.  But somehow they make things work.”

“So this makes going to war with them rather… bizarre.  If you shoot one of them, well, the others will shoot back because that is what they do… they hunt humans and any other higher animal.  But they won’t get upset, they won’t get organized, they won’t start forming troops and organizing armies.”

“It’s the same in space… well, I need to tell you why they go to space.  You see, once they get to a certain level of civilization, they just start building spaceships.  And then the females leave the water, and join the males on the ships, which go off… to wherever.”

“So each spaceship is kind of an independent colony.  So when we meet up with it, the spaceship itself will fight, but none of them will fight together.”

“Well, then, if they won’t fight together, why can’t we beat them?” one of the girls asked.

“Do the math!” the instructor said, almost shouting.  “Once we leave here next week we can expect to be about a year to get to the front lines.  During that time many of you can hope to give birth to one child.  Over that period the average enemy female might give birth twice! And to dozens of young each time.”

“But most of them die, don’t they?”

“Yes.  Indeed, when the population starts to get too much, they start fighting and even eating each other.  But that doesn’t matter.  The point is that they breed like crazy and then, when they reach a certain saturation and level of technology, they start colonizing like crazy.  Our soldiers are doing a wonderful job.  There have been almost no successful landings on any of our planets.  But we are settling planets at a rate of ten per year…”

“Ten per year!” The girl standing next to me said, “That’s fantastic!”

“Yes, and we hope to settle fifteen this year, and you all will be part of that.  But the enemy, we think they will settle one hundred.”

“One hundred?” the room got silent again.  “So are doing all this just to lose?”

“Not to lose, just not to win.  You remember what I said about the way they live, how they live near water? Well, we don’t have to.  So we can settle planets where the Enemy live.  We do settle planets where the Enemy live.  Indeed, that is where we are going… to an Enemy sector.  New Texas is right on the frontier.”

There was silence after that, until the instructor said, “We’ve picked weapons practice for the rest of today, we thought it was appropriate.”

om got silent again. “So are doing all this just to lose?”

“Not to lose, just not to win. You remember what I said about the way they live, how they live near water? Well, we don’t have to. So we can settle planets where the Enemy live. We do settle planets where the Enemy live. Indeed, that is where we are going… to an Enemy sector. New Texas is right on the frontier.”

There was silence after that, until the instructor said, “We’ve picked weapons practice for the rest of today, we thought it was appropriate.”