The Ophiuchi Hotline

The screen showed an Earth-like planet over William's shoulder. "We must have evolved on a planet much like your own. In the natural course of things, we were pushed off the planet, as you have been. We have watched this process happen thousands of times, and it changes very little from race to race." On the screen, thousands of ships fled the planet and traveled to various moons and asteroids in the system.

"In time, races like ours and yours begin to wonder if they can recapture their home world. They begin to take steps in that direction. Before too long the gas giant beings put a stop to these experiments. As before, they have no trouble doing so." Lilo watched as indefinite shapes swam up from the blue planet to swarm over the others. It was clear what was happening, with no need for narration.

"This is what happened to us. Already evicted from our home world, we were attacked in our places of refuge. As in the original invasion, only a few of us survived by escaping to the nearer stars. This is a fate you face in a short time.

"You are all aware of the increased importance of a group calling itself the Free Earth Party. Your race has quietly accepted its exile for many centuries now. The time has come for dissenting voices to be raised. It is unlikely that anything could be done to suppress them. We can point out to you—and we formally do so now—that the leader of the Free Earthers, Tweed, has been engaged in experiments at Jupiter and in close-Earth orbit which by now have certainly drawn the attention of the Invaders to the humans living in the Eight Worlds. These experiments were misguided, but Tweed is not a monster. We can sympathize with his desire to reassert human domination of the home world. We can only observe that the attempts are futile.

"If it were not Tweed, it would have been someone else. If you succeed in stopping Tweed, there will be others to take his place. We know from experience that when the time for an idea has arrived, there is no use trying to suppress it. Some among you will refuse to believe our warnings and you will go your own way. You will continue to test yourselves against the Invaders. In time, you will be ready to try an invasion of your own. It will fail, and those of you who remain in the Eight Worlds will be a

"Some of you will escape. Interstellar travel is already in your reach; there just has never been sufficient economic pressure to force you to obtain it. But some of you will believe us, and get away in time. I wish I could tell you that the story ends happily at that point."

Again the picture changed. And changed again. Star after star flicked onto the screen in stylized representation. Many had gas giant planets, and were removed from consideration. Others contained oxygen-breathing races living on airless worlds, as humans were doing now. Only a few had livable worlds with no second-level forms in the oceans, and almost all of those were already inhabited.

"The galaxy is a crowded place," William went on. "Our race discovered this quickly. The search for a place to live is a long and hard one. Some species never manage to find a niche. They become extinct. Others fragment, never able to maintain contact among their far-flung branches. Gradually, they mutate. New races are born in interstellar space. There is a process of evolution going on between the stars more fierce than that which gave birth to your race on your hospitable world, and all the competing species are intelligent. Where interests conflict, no quarter is given. War is too simple a term to describe it. Species can change, combine, absorb one another.

"We call ourselves the Traders. In one sense, we have no single home planet, though there must have been an original race which first evolved our life-style. As we exist now, we are an amalgam of many races which have achieved an equilibrium enabling us to survive."

The Hotline station appeared, turning slowly. A red beam of light emerged from it, and passed near a yellow star.

"The Traders are an organization set up to provide ousted races with the knowledge they will need to survive. We broadcast information, as we have done to you. Over the centuries we have taught you how to manipulate your own genetic structure. For you own reasons, you have not seen fit to change yourselves. You have ignored the bulk of the information we have sent you, information largely concerned with alternatives you face in the alteration of your human DNA. This is an unusual situation; few races we have encountered hesitate to change themselves when the need arises. For some reason, your race has adopted an attitude so powerfully biased against racial change that you ca

"You can no longer afford that quirk. You will have to cease defining your race by something as arbitrary as a genetic code, and make the great leap to establishing a racial awareness that will hold together in spite of the physical differences you will be introducing among yourselves. And you must define your race more successfully than you have done so far. Today, you could not tell us what it is that makes one a human being.

"What you see before you," William spread his hands and looked down at his body, "would qualify as a human by the standards you now employ. This body is genetically human. But I am only a temporary resident in it, in the same way that many individuals among you now live in cloned bodies, and will live in other bodies in your lifetimes."

The scene shifted again. Lilo felt a sense of expectancy and was not sure why. She saw the Grand Concourse in King City, Luna, a place she had visited many times. People walked in front of the camera, going about their business.

"Here comes the stinger," Javelin whispered. "Hold onto your credit meter and your gold fillings." Her nostrils dilated and her eyes were bright. She smelled a deal coming up, and it was all she needed to make her happy.

"We call ourselves the Traders. You know what it is we give; you have been getting it for centuries. No one thought to ask us if we wanted anything in return. We do, and what it is is both very simple and rather difficult to explain.

"What we want is your culture."

23

How could I tell of my ten years on what used to be the Eastern seaboard of the United States of America?

What made me so sure I was on the American continent was for a long time a source of considerable bewilderment. For several days after the death of Makel I wandered in a more or less dazed condition. It seems as though it took nearly a month before I dared to ask any of the questions that would continue to puzzle me for ten years. They can be summed up as What happened?

One moment I had been falling through Jupiter's atmosphere, and the next, I was in the surf of the Atlantic Ocean. And I knew it was the Atlantic.

But that wasn't quite right. One event didn't follow the other; rather, they merged into each other. I'm sure I recall sitting under the bushes, shivering, before I was in the water. I recall crawling out of the water before I remembered being in it.

The whole experience was so subjective that I doubted from the first I would ever get any good answers by thinking about it. But it didn't stop me thinking. The conclusions I came to were so tenuous they might be worthless, and yet I felt good about them in the same way that I had no doubts about where I was.

I had fallen into an Invader—or a Jovian, if it makes any difference. For reasons of its own, the Invader had moved me. Perhaps I was told something in those scrambled seconds, minutes, hours, or centuries during which the transition took place. Or perhaps some level of my mind had been able to see how and to where I was moved.