Learning the World

“New stars!” Atomic laughed.

“Yes indeed,” said Horrocks. “And your diamond habitat would shine like—” Like your eyes, he almost said.

“Like an asteroid with a high albedo,” said Atomic.

“Yes.”

She walked so fast that the green shift didn’t ripple, like it had on her caremother: it shook. Horrocks thought he could see every bone and curve of her small energetic body inside it if he looked long enough. He almost tripped.

“Sorry,” he said. “Could you slow down a bit?”

She slackened her pace.

“I’ve been thinking about that too,” she said. “But perhaps the idea of other intelligent life isn’t as strange to them as it is to us. Not as alien, you might say. After all they’ll have seen the Civil Worlds for mille

“Not really,” said Horrocks. “Some grainy shots of scenery, sometimes with bat people flitting across it, then back to someone talking to camera. The heuristics think he’s talking numbers, and they’ve got some consistent results, but the rest of what’s said is as obscure as ever. The other source, fu

“Here we are,” said Atomic, stopping outside a cafe with a big front window and yellow interior walls. She lifted her hem to go up the step and Horrocks opened the door for her, almost falling through it in the process. The cafe was about half full of ship generation kids, talking loud. Horrocks blinked to a particular perceptual mode and saw the air was as filled with data-interchange streams as it was with food smells. The data streams were almost all between handheld or head-worn machines rather than heads. He closed his eyes and opened them, back to normal sight. Atomic turned at once to the table by the window, where a young ship-generation man sat drinking coffee. He stood up and smiled at Atomic, stuck out a hand to Horrocks.

“Grant Cornforth Dialectical.” Chunky muscles, firm grip, a wavy straggle of beard, wary eyes.

“Horrocks Mathematical.”

“The micro-gee trainer?”

“The same.” Horrocks turned to Atomic. “What’ll you have?”

“My treat,” she said.

“Thanks. Black coffee and whatever you recommend.”

She went to the counter and Horrocks sat down.

“So,” said Grant, “what brings you among us flat-footers?”

“Getting flat feet,” said Horrocks. He rubbed his calf muscles.

Grant laughed. “But really.”

“Delivering a personal message to Atomic,” he said.

Grant glanced down at his cup. “Do you want me to leave?”

“No, no, not at all!” said Horrocks. “Please.” He waved a hand at the rest of the clientele. “I’d have everyone around the table if I could.”

“But you can’t?” said Grant.

Horrocks tightened his lips for a moment and nodded. “Call it semiprivate. You’re her friend, you’re definitely welcome.”

“I see.” Grant didn’t sound happy.

Atomic returned with two mugs and two plates with meat pasties. Horrocks tasted. “Very good,” he said. He’d forgotten how hungry he was.

Grant leaned over and took a chunk of Atomic’s pasty. “Horrocks says he’s here to deliver a message to you.”

“I’m not surprised,” said Atomic. “I bet it’s from my rocking caremother, yes?”

Horrocks put down his mug so that it didn’t splash. “Yes,” he said. “In a ma

“Well, what is it? That you and I are destined to be soulmates?”

“What?”

“Oh, I know her,” said Atomic. “She’s an incorrigible genetic speculator. When she sent me her used dress, I knew a boy couldn’t be far behind.”

Horrocks didn’t know where to look. He thought her very forward. It must be the city life. Only a few months ago she’d thought him uncouth for mentioning her genetic parentage, and now she talked like this! At least she hadn’t said “a used boy.” He ate another bite or two with a dry mouth, sipped coffee.

“It’s nothing like that!” he said. “Well, I can’t be sure of her intentions, but—”

“She sent you on some quite different pretext? That’s her way.” She stretched across the table to brush a crumb from Grant’s lip.

“No,” said Horrocks. “This isn’t a pretext. This is really important.”

“So spit it out”

“All right,” he said. “The aliens, the bat people, are at a stage of development very similar to that of our ancestors in the age of world wars. Internal-combustion engines, radio, the begi

“Yes, and?”

“Some of the founder generation think the aliens too may be on the brink of an era of war.”

Atomic stared at him. Grant rapped a finger hard on the table.

“Speculation,” he said. “And wooden-headed technological determinist speculation, at that. We know nothing of the aliens’ social relationships, apart from the apparent slavery — which incidentally is far more widespread than at the same stage in human development, which rather undercuts your suggestion. They could be a single world empire, or a federation of anarchies, or a happy global cooperative commonwealth for that matter. We just don’t know.”

“What about the slaves?” asked Atomic. “Don’t they count?”

“We don’t even know they are slaves,” said Grant. “They could be beasts — very similar animals to the dominant species but without speech or self-awareness.”

“Hah!” said Atomic.

“Excuse me,” said Horrocks. “That’s beside the point.”

“And the point is?” said Grant.

“The point is, if these bat folk are going into their own twentieth century, their whatever-it-was century BG, then we can expect trouble down there. And out here.”

“Oh, come on,” said Atomic. “You don’t seriously expect them to come swarming up on — what? rockets? — brandishing nuclear explosives? Or building particle-beam projectors in their deserts?”

“Yes,” said Horrocks. “That’s exactly what we — what I — do expect, in a few decades, if they don’t blast each other back to barbarism first!”

“Oh, right,” said Atomic. “In a few decades, huh? By that time we could be trading partners. It’s not like we don’t have plenty to offer them.”

“I’m afraid that’s still missing the point,” said Horrocks. “For people in that stage, control is everything. Each power centre would use whatever they gained from trading with us to get one up on rival powers, and at the same time they’d see our colonization as an invasion of their space.”

“How can they believe that the planets of this system are theirs? They haven’t even landed probes on them!”

“Look at it this way,” said Horrocks. “If an immensely more powerful species or clade or whatever set up shop in some unclaimed part of the system, wouldn’t we feel a little uneasy?”

“It happens in the Civil Worlds,” said Atomic.

“Yes, but this is not among the Civil Worlds. This is what comes before the Civil Worlds. This is life on the primary. War, conquest, grabbing territory because if you don’t somebody else will—”

“They’re flyers,” said Atomic. “Maybe they don’t have the same territoriality as we do.”

“Birds are territorial,” said Grant.

Atomic glared at him for moment. “Point,” she conceded.

“Besides,” Horrocks went on, “the whole issue of controlling airspace, and by extension outer space, might be stronger with them, it’d be just about instinctual…”

“You’re forgetting something,” said Atomic. “Law of association. Extended markets. Division of labour. Mutual benefit.”

“You’re the one who thinks they have slaves,” said Horrocks. “But whether they have or not, I very much doubt that the bat people have learned the law of association.”