Xenocide

“All my fears are gone now. You are a perfect daughter, my Qing-jao. You already serve the gods well. And now, with your oath, I can be sure you'll continue forever. This will cause great rejoicing in the house in heaven where your mother dwells.”

Will it? In heaven they know my weakness. You, Father, you only see that I have not yet failed the gods; Mother must know how close I've come so many times, how filthy I am whenever the gods look upon me.

But he seemed so full of joy that she dared not show him how much she dreaded the day when she would prove her unworthiness for all to see. So she embraced him.

Still, she couldn't help asking him, “Father, do you really think Mother heard me make that oath?”

“I hope so,” said Han Fei-tzu. “If she didn't, the gods will surely save the echo of it and put it in a seashell and let her listen to it whenever she puts it to her ear.”

This sort of fanciful storytelling was a game they had played together as children. Qing-jao set aside her dread and quickly came up with an answer. “No, the gods will save the touch of our embrace and weave it into a shawl, which she can wear around her shoulders when winter comes to heaven.” She was relieved, anyway, that Father had not said yes. He only hoped that Mother had heard the oath she made. Perhaps she hadn't– band so she wouldn't be so disappointed when her daughter failed.

Father kissed her, then stood up. “Now you are ready to hear your task,” he said.

He took her by the hand and led her to his table. She stood beside him when he sat on his chair; she was not much taller, standing, than he was sitting down. Probably she had not yet reached her adult height, but she hoped she wouldn't grow much more. She didn't want to become one of those large, hulking women who carried heavy burdens in the fields. Better to be a mouse than a hog, that's what Mu-pao had told her years ago.

Father brought a starmap up into the display. She recognized the area immediately. It centered on the Lusitania star system, though the scale was too small for individual planets to be visible. “Lusitania is in the center,” she said.

Father nodded. He typed a few more commands. “Now watch this,” he said. “Not the display, my fingers. This, plus your voice identification, is the password that will allow you to access the information you'll need.”

She watched him type: 4Gang. She recognized the reference at once. Her mother's ancestor-of-the-heart had been Jiang-qing, the widow of the first Communist Emperor, Mao Ze-dong. When Jiang-qing and her allies were driven from power, the Conspiracy of Cowards vilified them under the name “Gang of Four.” Qing-jao's mother had been a true daughter-of-the-heart to that great martyred woman of the past. And now Qing-jao would be able to do further honor to her mother's ancestor-of-the-heart every time she typed the access code. It was a gracious thing for her father to arrange.

In the display there appeared many green dots. She quickly counted, almost without thinking: there were nineteen of them, clustered at some distance from Lusitania, but surrounding it in most directions.

“Is that the Lusitania Fleet?”

“Those were their positions five months ago.” He typed again. The green dots all disappeared. “And those are their positions today.”

She looked for them. She couldn't find a green dot anywhere. Yet Father clearly expected her to see something. “Are they already at Lusitania?”

“The ships are where you see them,” said Father. “Five months ago the fleet disappeared.”

“Where did it go?”

“No one knows.”

“Was it a mutiny?”

“No one knows.”

“The whole fleet?”

“Every ship.”

“When you say they disappeared, what do you mean?”

Father glanced at her with a smile. "Well done, Qing-jao. You've asked the right question. No one saw them– they were all in deep space. So they didn't physically disappear. As far as we know, they may be moving along, still on course. They only disappeared in the sense that we lost all contact with them. "

“The ansibles?”

“Silent. All within the same three-minute period. No transmissions were interrupted. One would end, and then the next one– never came.”

"Every ship's co

“Well, it could be, Qing-jao. If you can imagine an event so cataclysmic– it could be that Lusitania's star became a supernova. It would be decades before we saw the flash even on the closest worlds. The trouble is that it would be the most unlikely supernova in history. Not impossible, but unlikely.”

“And there would have been some advance indications. Some changes in the star's condition. Didn't the ships' instruments detect something?”

“No. That's why we don't think it was any known astronomical phenomenon. Scientists can't think of anything to explain it. So we've tried investigating it as sabotage. We've searched for penetrations of the ansible computers. We've raked over all the perso

“Even though no messages are being sent, are the ansibles still co

“What do you think?”

Qing-jao blushed. “Of course they would be, even if an M.D. Device had been used against the fleet, because the ansibles are linked by fragments of subatomic particles. They'd still be there even if the whole starship were blown to dust.”

“Don't be embarrassed, Qing-jao. The wise are not wise because they make no mistakes. They are wise because they correct their mistakes as soon as they recognize them.”

However, Qing-jao was blushing now for another reason. The hot blood was pounding in her head because it had only now dawned on her what Father's assignment for her was going to be. But that was impossible. He couldn't give to her a task that thousands of wiser, older people had already failed at.

“Father,” she whispered. “What is my task?” She still hoped that it was some minor problem involved with the disappearance of the fleet. But she knew that her hope was in vain even before he spoke.

“You must discover every possible explanation for the disappearance of the fleet,” he said, “and calculate the likelihood of each one. Starways Congress must be able to tell how this happened and how to make sure it will never happen again.”

“But Father,” said Qing-jao, “I'm only sixteen. Aren't there many others who are wiser than I am?”

“Perhaps they're all too wise to attept the task,” he said. “But you are young enough not to fancy yourself wise. You're young enough to think of impossible things and discover why they might be possible. Above all, gods speak to you with extraordinary clarity, my brilliant child, my Gloriously Bright.”

That was what she was afraid of– that Father expected her to succeed because of the favor of the gods. He didn't understand how unworthy the gods found her, how little they liked her.

And there was another problem. “What if I succeed? What if I find out where the Lusitania Fleet is, and restore communications? Wouldn't it then be my fault if the fleet destroyed Lusitania?”

“It's good that your first thought is compassion for the people of Lusitania. I assure you that Starways Congress has promised not to use the M.D. Device unless it proves absolutely unavoidable, and that is so unlikely that I can't believe it would happen. Even if it did, though, it's Congress that must decide. As my ancestor-of-the-heart said, 'Though the wise man's punishments may be light, this is not due to his compassion; though his penalties may be severe, this is not because he is cruel; he simply follows the custom appropriate to the time. Circumstances change according to the age, and ways of dealing with them change with the circumstances.' You may be sure that Starways Congress will deal with Lusitania, not according to kindness or cruelty, but according to what is necessary for the good of all humanity. That is why we serve the rulers: because they serve the people, who serve the ancestors, who serve the gods.”