War and Space Read online

The alien president received the message he had been dreading. He addressed the emergency session of the Planetary Council:

  “The Human ship is already back, leading a mighty fleet of interstellar battleships. Our scientists can’t even understand how it has come back so quickly. Our radio message to Homeworld hasn’t even had time to reach the High Council yet. We’re on our own.”

  On of the delegates asked:

  “Do you think they intend to destroy our planet?”

  “No, definitely not! If they intended that we would already be dead. We would have been hit by a giant rock travelling at relativistic speed. They probably intend to enslave us.”

  “Is slavery to the Humans preferable to death?”

  “Yes, of course it is. We must surrender. We have no choice, but perhaps we can do it on reasonable terms.

  “I’ll go out on the contact ship. The weapons have all been removed. It’s pointless trying to fight, but we can negotiate. I’ll take two of our experts with me. Do I have the approval of the council to do whatever is necessary to avoid annihilation?”

  On the Highway to Heaven, the Council of Peace was observing the contact ship leaving orbit round the fourth planet. They were discussing the Captain’s decision to not take evasive action. Jack explained:

  “Coming in while taking evasive action would be a sign we are expecting to be attacked. The natural next assumption would be that our ship is armed and is going to attack.”

  Ali asked:

  ‘”Do you think they’ll fire on us again?”

  “If I’ve read the situation correctly they will not and we will soon be receiving a message. Remember, if we do receive the message that our appearance caused at least one alien to panic. Their appearance is likely to be totally repugnant to us. I hope all the members of this council are sufficiently flexible to quickly get used to whatever appears on the screen. We’ll have to deal with the problem of how people on Earth will react to the appearance of the Aliens later.”

  They waited with increasing tension. Although the new coating made the ship almost invulnerable to the weapon that had nearly destroyed them before, the aliens could use something different. If their adversary was Human, the presence of the mighty fleet at their back would make them hesitate to use force, but the psychology of the aliens was unknown.

  A carrier signal started:

  Sam announced:

  “Message coming through on screen number one.”

  They stared at the Alien President.

  Mujib said:

  “Look at his totally repugnant eyes. Can you imagine eyes of that colour?”

  Angus said:

  “And see its horrible hair.”

  Tanya added

  “And the appalling colour of its skin.”

  Humour is one very Human reaction to stress. They had been expecting some sort of monster.

  The Alien had dark blue or violet eyes, the same colour as Mujib’s, red hair like Angus and dark brown skin like Tanya. This was an unusual combination of characteristics for a being to have, but the picture of the alien president exuded dignity. On him the unusual colour scheme looked right. Ali said:

  “He’s Human. He could walk along the street in an Earth city and only a few people would even notice anything different about him.

  “We know about the odd fashions that sweep our planet from time to time and red hair on a dark skinned person wouldn’t excite any comment; dyeing hair is easy and common. Even the unusual eye colour could be caused by the coloured contact lenses that are sometimes popular. With the coloured lenses, violet is the most popular colour.”

  The president had a slightly more dome shaped head than the Earth Humans as well as a smaller face and some different features, but his basic appearance was Human.

  Ali continued:

  “He’s Homo sapiens, but not sapiens.”

  Jack asked:

  “What did you say?”

  “The aliens are Homo sapiens, but not Homo sapiens sapiens. That is they are of the same species as us, but a different sub species. All Humans that we were familiar with before are of the same subspecies; Homo sapiens sapiens although some taxonomists have proposed that Behn’s people should be classed in a different sub species. I disagree with them about this.”

  Surrender

  The alien now started speaking; he had a pleasant voice which was noticeable higher in pitch than the great majority of male Earthmen. Albert the Wise Ape smiled; the Wise Apes like their Bonobo ancestors had higher voices than either Humans or Chimpanzees. The president and a large number of others of his people had been learning English from the contact message for several years, and could speak it well:

  “I am president of our planetary system. I have come to negotiate terms.”

  There were still several light seconds between the two ships. They were both decelerating to meet at zero relative velocity, so there was a delay before he received Ali’s reply:

  “Terms for what?”

  The president answered:

  “The terms of our surrender.”

  Ali was not entirely surprised about this misunderstanding of their motives. After all, they had a powerful fleet behind them. Ali answered:

  “We do not want your surrender; we only desire your friendship. The mighty fleet at our back is completely unarmed, and was just to encourage you to talk rather than fire on us. We have been searching for extraterrestrial intelligence for hundreds of years, starting even before we could leave our own planet. Now this interstellar exploration ship and its sister ships scour the universe looking for intelligent races. All Human space ships are unarmed.

  “If you will honour us with a visit we would like to welcome you and your advisors on our ship.”

  While they waited for the rendezvous to be completed, Jack asked Ali:

  “What did you mean that they are a different subspecies of Human? The only other subspecies I know of is Homo sapiens neanderthalis. These people don’t look the slightest bit like Neanderthals.”

  “No, they’re definitely not Neanderthals. The shape of the head and some of the facial features suggest that they’re a development of Homo sapiens idaltu.

  “This was the direct ancestor of Homo sapiens sapiens and not in the Neanderthal evolutionary line at all. Modern Homo sapiens sapiens has a very small percentage of Neanderthal genes and an even smaller percentage of Denisovan genes. Many biologists consider that the Neanderthals were a separate species of the genus Homo, but I prefer the sub specific designation. However, we’re much more closely related to these people than to the Neanderthals.”

  A small shuttle craft came out of the alien contact ship. It reached the open air lock of the highway to Heaven and locked on, using shields clearly superior to those of the Earthmen. The president and his two advisors went into the airlock and the outer door closed.

  The inner door of the airlock opened and the three aliens were able to step into the adjacent small room. Only Ali and Jack were in the room. There was not room for a lot of people.

  Ali had said that their visitors could walk along the street in an Earth city without attracting much attention. He had been fooled by the lack of anything to give scale in the images they had seen. Ali was six feet two inches tall and often had to look down a little to meet people’s eyes. Jack was a very short man. At five feet one he was the second shortest male member of the crew. He was used to looking up to meet other people’s eyes. When the president walked in he naturally looked up. Then he continued to look further up and then even further up. The president was over eight feet tall!

  His two female advisors were only a little over seven feet.

  The president seemed much less surprised at the height difference than Ali and Jack. He extended his hand as an invitation to shake hands. This gesture was not used by his people, but it was one of the many things he had learned from the original contact message. Ali and Jack shook hands with the preside
nt and both his advisors.

  Ali said:

  “Please come through to our large conference room to meet the rest of our ship’s Council of Peace.”

  Ali introduced the others in turn and they shook hands. The Humans had to reach up, but the shortest male crew member, Albert the Wise Ape, was only four feet ten inches tall. He jumped up onto the conference table and shook hands at a more convenient level.

  There was some suppressed amusement at Albert’s improvisation.

  While Ali was doing the introductions, Jack quietly gave some orders on a communicator:

  “Get the three biggest chairs on the ship. Bring them to the large conference room, then get or make three other big chairs and put them for our guests in the refreshment room.”

  The ship was decelerating at eighty five percent of Earth’s gravity to give it a pseudo gravity to match that of the fourth planet of the system.

  The president presented his advisors:

  “This is Mydepa, our chief astrophysicist and one of the most respected scientists in our system. She gave our planetary council much good advice about our future relations with your species.

  “And this is Patrat. She is the foremost historian of our system and our chief expert about the earlier encounters between our two species.”

  Jack was not the only one to perceive the potential problem of the chair size for their large guests. The large conference room was mainly used by the Council of Peace as Jack had renamed the steering committee. The members of the committee were of widely different sizes and several members of the committee had their own chairs.

  Albert and Jack were both very small and had higher chairs to bring them up to the same level as the others when they were sitting down. Mujib was just short of seven feet tall and heavily built. He had a chair to suit his size. He courteously held his own chair so that Mydepa could sit down. This courtesy was not one she was familiar with, but she appreciated it in the spirit it was intended. She was only two inches taller than Mujib and the chair was a comfortable fit for her. Until the large chairs Jack had ordered were brought in, the President, Patrat and Mujib had to make do with smaller ones. When Mydepa understood that Mujib had given her his own chair she was even more appreciative of his gesture.

  The first serious conference between the two human races started:

  Ali said:

  “You mentioned earlier historical encounters between our two peoples. We have no knowledge of earlier meetings, can you tell us more?”

  The president referred them to Patrat who said:

  “Yes, I’m not surprised you know nothing about us. We deliberately destroyed all traces on Earth of our presence on Earth and the things we did.”

  “You and we are descended from common ancestors, but while we have always been peaceful, your mutant line reverted to a savage way of life typical of our common ancestors, killing each other in wars and even eating your enemies in some distorted idea of getting their strength.

  “I apologise if what I’m saying offends you. I’m talking about ancient history.”

  Ali answered:

  “No, we’re not offended. Unfortunately we’re only too aware of our people’s propensity for extreme violence and illogical behaviour. Things like you mentioned persisted until only three hundred Earth years ago. Even recently this committee had a major battle to convince The People of the Solar System to send a peace fleet to contact you, not a war fleet.”

  Mydepa, the astrophysicist interrupted:

  “I don’t understand. The Solar System is a hundred light years away. How could you contact the Earth in the few years you’ve been away?”

  Ali dropped a bombshell:

  “We can bypass the speed of light. We were on Earth six months ago.”

  Mydepa objected very strongly, actually raising her voice a little:

  “That’s impossible! Nothing can travel faster than light!”

  Sam agreed:

  “Yes, that’s what we believed. It was only when in my universe we detected the faster than light jumps of this ship that we began to doubt our theory that the speed of light is the absolute speed limit of the universe. We desperately needed that technology and the only way we could get it was for me to switch universes. In my universe they now have this technology.

  “However, we were both correct; while in one universe it is impossible to travel faster than light. This ship does it by ‘fooling’ the universe that the ship in not in it, but the high mass of the ship prevents it from going to any other universe. We reappear at our pre-calculated point.”

  Mydepa looked as if she were about to explode at the apparent nonsense Sam was talking, but the president intervened:

  “I can see that there will have to be a lot of exchange of information, but we should also remember that we are speaking a language that we only learned from a message. Misunderstandings, especially about technical things, are likely and we need to accept this.”

  Mydepa persisted:

  “But Ali said that he was on Earth six months ago.”

  The President raised his hand in a gesture to stop her:

  “You can talk to Ali and Sam later, now Patrat is explaining some very important ancient history. It is vitally important that the Earth Humans understand and can see why there was the unauthorized attack on this vessel.”

  Patrat continued:

  “At first the violence was confined to other groups of your type of Human, but soon they were attacking and killing our people. Your humans were only armed with weapons like spears. Our humans had an increasingly high technology, but no weapons. Your humans would steal our technology and subvert it into making weapons. Our Humans were forced to design weapons to defend themselves. Soon we would have become as bad as you. All of your type of Humans were rounded up and taken across the ocean to another continent. This was over 150,000 Earth years ago.

  “For a while things were all right and our Humans progressed in peace and harmony reaching out to the other planets of the Solar system. The trouble was that some of your humans still remembered some of the things they had learned from us. They developed it and were able to cross the ocean and started bothering us again. At first we simply took them back home, but sometimes they landed and caused serious problems before we caught them. When they stole the technology that enabled them to build flying machines, the problem became much worse.

  “150,000 years ago we built five giant colony ships and our entire species left the Earth. These colony ships are spherical like this ship, but are approximately 10 times the diameter.”

  The Earth Humans all understood that if the colony ships were ten times the diameter of the Highway to Heaven, they had a thousand times the volume. The colony ships were enormous. Ali asked a question:

  “You said that the ships are ten times the diameter of this ship. Excuse me for querying the tense of your statement. Do you mean that they are still in existence?”

  “Yes, they still exist. They have been refitted and updated many times, but they are still used for colonising more systems.

  “A bit over 30,000 years ago a decision was made to go back and investigate what was happening on the Earth. A number of our scientists believed that your type of Human would now be extinct. Two of the colony ships set out on the long journey back.

  “When they arrived they found that your type of Humans had several technologically advanced ‘civilizations’ based on the remains of what we had left behind. They were having savage wars and inventing worse and worse weapons. They were using deadly gasses and even diseases.

  “The expedition was about to leave the Earth Humans to their fate when a group was discovered on an island in the Southern Hemisphere of Earth, just south of the smallest land mass. These Humans didn’t make war. We believed that they would soon be wiped out by the northern hemisphere civilisations.

  “Normally we would not interfere, but many of the scientists had been amongst these gentle
people. To leave them to be exterminated was totally against our instincts. The scientists built them a vessel out of a dwarf planet of the Solar system and transported them to another system safely away from the rest of the Humans. On the way, some subtle genetic modification was done so that they would retain their gentle disposition and be happy in perpetuity. We arranged some false history that was put into the computers we had given them. This was done so that later generations would know nothing about us.

  “After that we went back to the Earth. The civilizations had wiped each other out and there were very few Humans left alive. The million people on the colony ships went and very systematically destroyed all traces of the high technology that they had stolen from us and used to produce weapons of mass destruction that had made the Humans nearly extinct. We knew that another ice age was coming. Our people thought that the Humans were more likely to survive the ice age without the deadly things they had made.

  “It was the assessment of the expedition scientists that Humans were unlikely ever to be able to develop the technology to get into space, but if they did the only way they could survive was to become peaceful. As a precaution against Humans in the future this system was designated as the closest one to Earth that would ever be settled.

  “Our young children are told stories about how terrible Earth Humans are. Normal adults can put these ideas away and make their own judgements. We have very few weapons. The contact ship had weapons intended only for self defence, but the armaments officer used them to try to destroy your ship. The captain destroyed the missile once it was far enough away from our ship to do no harm.

  “The Armaments officer was immediately suspended and later dismissed. Since then he has had a nervous breakdown and is now under the care of our doctors. All the weapons were removed from the contact ship and have been destroyed.”

  Ali said:

  “You’ve given us a huge amount to think about. I know that a meal has been prepared. Will you do us the honour of eating with us in our refreshment room?”

  Jack led the way and their guests went to join the ship’s crew in the main cafeteria.

  Mikhail, Ali and Tiha hung back a little. Tiha asked Mikhail the Psychologist:

  “Are they telling the truth?”

  “Yes, in the sense that they are not lying outright. However, many things have been left out, over simplified or glossed over. I have to say that the presentation was very incomplete, but how could it be otherwise, trying to compress 150,000 years of history into a short speech?”

  Tiha asked something else:

  “Did you notice Mujib?”

  “Yes, he’s strongly attracted to Mydepa. I didn’t see any clear reciprocal attraction. He’ll need to be careful. We know nothing about their courting customs. He could easily cause offence.”

  Ali said:

  “Yes, I’ll talk to him.”

  They joined the others in the canteen. Mujib had managed to sit next to Mydepa. He was suggesting nice things for her to try.

  Andy and Sarah Jones were on the ship. Two of their children, Jack and Sam, were on board so they had invited themselves along. They had supervised the meal and had given much thought to one aspect of the food. Should they serve meat, or should it be a completely vegetarian meal? In the end they had decided not to include any meat. They believed that if meat were served to a race whose members never eat meat it might cause offence while vegetable food was unlikely to.

  When the meeting resumed, the president said:

  “We would like to thank you for the delicious meal. We were very worried about one aspect of eating with Humans. We never eat meat although we recognise that it is natural to many animals and do not interfere with animal predators. Historically I know that Humans used to eat meat. Have you as a race given up the practice of eating animals completely?”

  This was a definite question and an answer was necessary. Only the truth would do. Captain Jack answered:

  “Many Humans do eat meat. My father was the one who chose the menu for the meal. He has not eaten meat or fish for over 200 years. However, most meals on this ship include meat for those people who eat it.”

  The three aliens looked sick. The president said:

  “Please excuse our reaction. Although we accept that some animals need to eat meat, it will take us a while to accept that a sentient being that is capable of surviving without meat should choose to eat animals.”

  Ali added:

  “When I was five years old, my parents and I were effectively slaves. We were fed a totally inadequate diet and I used to eat whatever I could get, including Earthworms and grubs from the soil. When I was seven, billions of people were dying of starvation. I was in a refugee camp where three quarters of the refugees died of starvation. There I used sneak out of the camp at night to hunt and eat whatever I could catch. Now, although I don’t eat meat in space I do eat it on Earth.”

  The president said:

  “Your experiences are totally foreign to what any of our people have endured. We accept that in cases of necessity people have to eat what they can get. We also know that Humans of both our types are naturally omnivores. Although on our planets you would be expected to follow our customs in not eating animals, and we appreciate your delicacy in refraining from eating meat in our presence, this point should not prevent friendship between our two species.”

  Ali said:

  “Thank you for your understanding and tolerance. Also thank you Patrat for your presentation earlier. Of course we recognise that you were condensing thousands of years of history and could not cover everything. Perhaps in this session we could have a brief question and answer period?”

  The president agreed:

  “Yes, that sounds like a good idea. We have questions we would like to ask you just as you must have ones for us. However, Mujib has offered to show Mydepa the mathematics behind your faster than light travel. She’s still very sceptical.”

  Mikhail said:

  “The mathematics are very complicated and without familiarity with our systems of higher mathematics he will have trouble convincing her in one session. In fact the only way of totally convincing her is for her to accompany us on a journey. I look forward to the opportunity of convincing her.

  “On the Earth, even the small minority of people capable of understanding the mathematics did not believe it was referring to a real phenomenon until we actually jumped through space.”

  Mujib and Mydepa went off together.

  Mikhail asked the first question:

  “Mr. President, excuse me for asking this question so early on, but in your culture when a man and a woman want to have children, how do they meet? I’m not talking about the act of mating, but more about your family structure.”

  The president smiled and responded:

  “Yes, I understand why you are asking the question. Like you, I observed the unmistakable mutual attraction between Mujib and Mydepa. She’s a mature woman over two hundred Earth years old, and is not married. Our marriages are monogamous, but not always for life although this is considered the ideal.

  “Mydepa can make up her own mind whether she wants to get to know Mujib better. If they did end up getting married I would give their union my own wholehearted approval. Many of our people might feel repulsed at the idea, but that’s their affair.

  “In the short time we have been meeting my opinion of your type of Human has risen sharply. I was greatly impressed by Jack’s honesty in telling us about your eating animals.”

  Jack said:

  “Thank you. Now I would like to introduce another member of our crew.”

  Jack introduced Behn to their guests. They stared at him for a few seconds. Patrat said:

  “You are from the race we transported to safety on another planet?”

  Behn said:

  “Yes. Thank you for what your ancestors did for my people.”

  Patrat asked the Earth Huma
ns:

  “Did the others of Behn’s race left behind get wiped out?”

  Pete answered:

  “Yes, in the sense that there are no pure members of the race left, but a number of Humans, including myself, are proud to be their descendants.”

  Ali asked:

  “What is the natural lifespan of your people?”

  The president answered:

  “About a thousand Earth years without regeneration, but we can regenerate as many times as we want to. I’ve not regenerated yet and I’m four hundred and fifty three years old. Patrat has had regenerations and is over five thousand. Mydepa is two hundred and seven.

  “What is your life span?”

  Ali answered:

  “About eighty years. We can also regenerate as many times as we like and most of the members of this council are over eighty. The Wise Apes have a slightly longer life span than Earth Humans, but they also artificially extend this.

  Have your people been modified genetically?”

  Patrat replied:

  “Yes, there were some genetic modifications a long time ago. The things we modified were limited, but did include extending our natural life span although even before our modifications the life span of our people was much longer than that of yours. Nowadays we are very sparing with our modifications.”

  The president asked Albert:

  “What species are you?”

  Albert answered proudly, using his communication computer:

  “I am a Wise Ape, Pan sapiens.”

  The various sessions continued for several days. The president made use of the ship’s communication equipment and was able to persuade his planetary council to allow a party of Earthmen to visit the planet.

  The Earthmen were surprised to find that the total population of the three inhabited planets was only five hundred thousand. The capital planet of the system was the fourth planet which had three hundred thousand people. These were all confined to one small continent. The rest of the planet was totally wild, covered with plants and animals originally brought from the Earth. Some of the plants had been modified, including changing the Chlorophyll a little to make it more efficient with light from the star of the system. The star was slightly redder than the Sun.

  Although no people lived on the other continents, visits were allowed. There were huge areas of wilderness that the people of the planets often went to. The largest continent was bigger than the Eurasian land mass of the Earth. Parts of this were semi desert.

  Mujib and Mydepa were now very much a couple. They went around together a lot. There was private speculation among both types of Human about whether or not they had made love, but since this was considered a private matter in both cultures, no one asked them.

  The people of the planet quickly accepted the friendship although there had been some odd looks at first. There was the same love for a romantic story as on Earth and Mydepa and Mujib were accepted as a couple.

  The people of the planet were more variable in some respects than Earth Humans. Here was the same range of hair, eye and skin colour although some of the people of the planet had skin or hair with more blue in than any Earth race. The numbers of digits on their hands were more variable than on Earth with over half of them having an extra finger on each hand. Their facial features were also as variable as the Humans on Earth. Ali mentioned to Mikhail:

  “They told us that the total population of his star system is only about five hundred thousand. This seems much too small to maintain such a variety of genotypes.

  Ali and other biologists had done comparisons of the DNA of the two types of Human and had confirmed Ali’s first assessment that the two types of Human were sub species, not separate species.