Omega

The cities were attractive. They were spacious and symmetrical, the streets laid out in a pattern that suggested a degree of pla

Markover’s people had commented on a general style of design that had approximated classical Greek. They were right. Whatever one might say about the clownishness of these creatures, they knew how to lay out a city, and how to build.

The center of activity in the cities was usually near the waterfront area. But he saw parks and wide avenues and clusters of impressive structures everywhere. Bridges crossed streams and gulleys and even, in a couple of places, broad rivers. Roads and walkways were laid out with geometric precision.

Buildings that must have been private homes spread into the countryside, thi

LIBRARY ENTRY

The notion that a primitive race, or species, is best served by our keeping away from it, is an absurdity. Do we refrain from assisting remote tribes in South America or Africa or central Asia when they are in need? Do we argue that they are best left to starve on their own when we have wheat and vegetables to spare? To die by the tens of thousands from a plague when we have the cure ready to hand?

Consider our own blighted history. How much misery might we have avoided had some benevolent outsider stepped in, say, to prevent the collapse of the Hellenic states? To offer some agricultural advice? To prevent the rise to power of Caligula? To suggest that maybe the Crusades weren’t a good idea, and to show us how to throw some light into the Dark Ages? We might have neglected to create the Inquisition, or missed a few wars. Or neglected to keep slavery with us into the present day.

The standard argument is that a culture must find its own way. That it ca

The cultures pointed to as examples of this principle are inevitably tribal. They are primitive societies, who, despite the claims made for their conquerors, are usually imposed on by well-meaning advocates of one kind or another, or are driven off by force. One thinks, for example, of the Native Americans. Or the various peoples of Micronesia.

However one may choose to interpret terrestrial experience, it is clear to all that the Goompahs are an advanced race. It is true that their technology is at about the level of imperial Rome, but it is a gross error to equate civilization with technology. They are, for the most part, peaceful. They have writing, they have the arts, they appear to have an ethical code which, at the very least, equals our own. A case can be made that the only area in which we excel is in the production of electrical power.

There is in fact no reason to believe that a direct intervention on behalf of the Goompahs would not be of immense benefit to them. Especially now, when they face a lethal danger of which they are not even aware. To stand by, and permit the massive destruction of these entities in the name of a misbegotten and wrongheaded policy, would be damnable.

The Council has the means to act. Let it do so. If it continues to dither, the North American Union should take it upon itself to do something while there is yet time.

— The New York Times

Wednesday, April 23, 2234

chapter 16

On board the Hawksbill, in hyperflight.

Saturday, April 26.

JULIE, MARGE, AND Whitlock had become friends. The women called him Whit, and they talked endlessly about omegas and cosmology, elephants and physicists, Goompahs and God. The days raced by, and Julie began to realize she had never been on a more enjoyable journey. It was almost as though her entire life had been spent preparing for this epochal flight.

Whit consistently delivered odd perspectives. He argued that the best form of government was an aristocracy, that a republic was safest, and that a democracy was most interesting. Mobs are unpredictable, he said. You just never know about them. He pointed out that during the Golden Age, the worst neighbor in the Hellespont had been Athens. On the major knee-bending religious faiths, he wondered whether a God subtle enough to have invented quantum mechanics would really be interested in having people deliver rote prayers and swing incense pots in His direction.

Marge had been reserved at first, had seemed always buried with work. But gradually she’d loosened up. Now the three of them plotted how to save the Goompahs, and make sure that the Academy was funded afterward so that it could learn to deal decisively with the omegas.

Julie wanted to see an expedition put together to track the things to their source. There’d been plans for years to do just that. The old Project Scythe, for one. And then Redlight. And finally, in its early stages, Weatherman. But it was expensive, the target was thought to be near the core, thirty thousand light-years away, and the resources were simply not there.

“We’ll only get one chance to beat these things,” Whit said, referring to the omegas. “The time spans are so great that people get used to having them around. Like hurricanes or earthquakes. And eventually we’ll try to learn to live with them. So if we don’t succeed on the first attempt, the window will close and it won’t get done.”

“But why does it have to be us?” Julie asked. “Why not somebody six centuries from now?”

“Because we’re the ones who lived through the shock of discovery. For everybody else, it’ll be old stuff. Which means people will still be sitting in London and Peoria complaining about why the government didn’t do something when the cloud shows up to shut them down.”

Although he lived in a society of renewable marriages and, in many places, multiple spouses, Whit was a romantic. At least, that was the impression Julie had gotten after reading Love and Black Holes, his best-known collection of commentaries on the human condition. True love came along only once in a lifetime, Whit maintained. Lose her, or him, and it was over. Everything after that was a rerun. Julie assumed that Whit, who wasn’t married, had suffered just such a loss and never recovered. She was careful not to ask about it, but she wondered who it had been, and what had happened. And, eventually, if the woman had any idea what she’d let get away.

Whitlock was tall, with a lined face, one of those faces that had been lived in. He had white hair, and exuded dignity. The rejuvenation treatments had come along too late to do him much good, but he didn’t seem to mind. He told her he’d lived the life he wanted and had no regrets. (That was clearly a falsehood, but a brave one.) He was on board because Hutch liked him and liked his work. There’d been a battle about his coming, apparently. Whit wasn’t a serious scientist, in the view of many, and consequently was not on the same level as others who would have liked the last seat on the mission. Julie had heard that Hutchins had taken some heat for giving it to him.

He asked Julie whether a lightbender would be made available to him when they got to Lookout because he wanted to go down to the surface and actually see the Goompahs. He was even working with some of the people on the al-Jahani, trying to familiarize himself with their language, but he confessed he wasn’t having much luck picking it up. “Too old,” he said.

He had turned out to be a dear. He did not assume a superior attitude, as she’d expected when she first saw his name on the manifest. He was already taking notes, not on what was happening on the Hawksbill, but on his own reaction to learning that an intelligent species was at risk. At Julie’s request, he’d shown her some of his work, and had even gotten into the habit of asking for her comments. She doubted he really needed her editorial input, but it was a nice gesture, and she had quickly learned he wanted her to tell him what she really thought. “Doesn’t do any good to have you just pat me on the head and say the work is great,” he’d said. “I need to know how you really react, whether it makes sense. If I’m going to make a fool of myself, I’d prefer to keep the fact in the ship’s company rather than spread it around the world.”

He had a habit of referring to humans as smart monkeys. They were basically decent, he told her one evening in the common room when they were talking about the long bloodbath that human history had been. “But their great deficiency is that they’re too easily programmed. Get them when they’re reasonably young, say five or six, and you can make them believe almost anything. Not only that, but once it’s done, the majority of them will fight to the death to maintain the illusion. That’s why you get Nazis, racists, homophobes, fanatics of all types.”

Marge Conway’s assignment was to assume the cloud would arrive over the isthmus precisely on schedule, and to find a way to hide the cities. She would do so by generating rain clouds. If a blizzard had concealed a city on Moonlight, there was no reason to think storm clouds wouldn’t have the same effect on Lookout.

If the mission to shoo the cloud away succeeded, her job would become u

Marge admitted that she’d gotten the appointment not because she was particularly well thought of in her field, but because of her co

“We have one major advantage,” Marge commented. “Nobody expects us to get the job done.”

“Hutch does,” said Julie.

Marge didn’t think so. “Hutch puts on a good show. She knows that Moonlight might have been an anomaly. She’s seen the clouds in action, and I doubt she thinks anything can turn them aside.”

“Then why are we being sent out?”

“You want the truth?” said Whit.