The Odyssey and the Iliad (Kinsella Universe Book 7) Read online

“I told you; I can read minds. I saw the destruction of Gandalf in your mind; I saw the destruction of Grayhome. We have very little in common with humanity -- but if there are aliens out there who are capable of doing that to you, they won’t hesitate to do it to us as well. And in your mind is the intelligence estimate that they have been tracing the Federation’s astrography for decades. We don’t have frequent contact with the Federation, but we do have some. We think we’ve taken reasonable precautions so that one of our ships can’t be followed -- but that was before we knew we were betting everyone on that belief.

  “As soon as you arrive, others will see what I’ve seen. The faction that wants to cut off contact will be discredited, and there will be a lively discussion about what we should do.”

  “And you are a fighter pilot, genetically enhanced to better be able to perform your duties.”

  “Captain -- Colonel -- Grimes. Please, don’t spar with me. I am human to the extent that I can forget myself and make a mistake. My enemies would see me up on treason charges a heartbeat later. I cannot help what you deduce from what you hear, but not all of what you hear will be the truth.

  “I’m not going to tell you where we are based, our capabilities, or anything like that.”

  She paused, and laughed. “On the other hand every telepath in our species has heard me rail against the death ordered for my sister. She is to be lured to a meeting and shot dead without warning. My sister’s modifications make mine seem trivial... even if she can’t read minds.”

  “You’ve given me a lot to think about.”

  “You’ve given me nightmares that will haunt my dreams for all eternity.

  “One last thing, Captain Grimes. Your ancestors tried mine in absentia and sentenced them to death. They sentenced anyone who, within thirty years, didn’t avail themselves of a pardon where they would be required to speak completely about what happened.

  “What happened was simple: your ancestors and mine disagreed on goals and methods. My ancestors made a fundamental mistake that we didn’t recognize until decades later when we finally made contact again. My ancestors hadn’t explained the justification for their actions. They thought that people would be smart enough to understand that they’d uncovered something fundamental -- like the proverbial ‘Get out of Jail Free’ card.

  “They found that they could accurately detect the human soul. They knew what was sentient and to what degree. For decades after contact was reestablished, they simply couldn’t conceive that your ancestors could believe that they could harm a soul.

  “They were hyper-careful of souls; overnight a lot of formerly agnostic or atheistic scientists became devout in their religion. It wasn’t the religion of your ancestors, it was more astute. But always there was that fundamental gap in your understanding; they never tried to correct it, feeling that if they did, they’d reveal their existence and then the hunt for them would increase a thousand-fold.

  “Imagine our surprise a century later when our existence was a non-issue. No one cared anymore. My ancestors had poisoned the genetic modification pool beyond all hope of redemption -- and then the field had been pushed out of memory -- all that remained was a very distinct loathing to ‘play God.’

  “That mystified my ancestors. They were aware that what they were doing wasn’t playing God. Yes, they could bring a soul into existence -- but they didn’t create it. They had no control over a soul or its nature. Do you care if a company that makes cardboard boxes houses HD sets one day, dishwashers the next, and shuttle parts the next? Of course not! The container isn’t significant -- it’s the contents! We didn’t create the contents, we created the container!”

  “That still is repugnant,” Trevor told her. “What business is it of yours to change the shape of the container, as you put it?” Trevor had listened carefully to what Makaa -- Senior Pilot Officer Makaa -- had to say. How did you fool a telepath to keep her talking? His best guess was to say something offensive.

  “Shape? You have no trouble making containers of various shapes and sizes to fit your needs. Yes, my ancestors experimented with the shape of containers. None of those odd shapes contained souls. Later we created modified beings such as myself, keeping to the same basic pattern as our race has always had.”

  “I have to honestly say I think that’s disgusting -- not you, but the ‘experimental shapes.’”

  The woman laughed sadly. “You’ve explored thousands of planets now. DNA life is everywhere. God, sir, does an infinitely greater amount of experimentation every day than we will in our entire existence. Captain Grimes, the revulsion you feel -- and I don’t -- is the same emotion engendered when we think of someone who turns cannibal. It’s a socialized emotion -- drilled into our existence from the very earliest that we are aware... even if most people never recognize what’s happening.

  “You were taught by a thousand comments, jokes, observations overheard or explained directly to you. It is why your ancestors were so revolted by Tinkerbells, and not by the flying organisms of hundreds of planets. It’s okay for the universe to create such things, but heaven forfend that man should! The human race would still be back in the caves if we applied that yardstick to most things.”

  She looked at Lieutenant Kim, standing quietly, her eyes bright. “This woman understands; you are beginning to understand Captain. Hundreds of years ago, my ancestors fled out of fear. Honestly, tell me that looking back, you think they would have been treated rationally?”

  “Probably not,” Trevor admitted.

  “My ancestors should have left an explanation,” the fighter pilot told him. “They screwed up. They thought they would be wasting their time. Your ancestors screwed up because their minds were already made up.

  “You are going to cause a firestorm in our society. The pictures you carry with you are going to rip off the shroud that covers our previous mistakes and bring us face to face with them. If they have explored you, they may well have been led here. We will be forced to either cut ourselves off from you or join you. Even now, there may be alien ships coming after us.

  “The existing rift in the fabric of our society is going to be maximized. Those who want to cut our ties with humanity, no matter how many benefits we’ve gained over the years from your much larger base for research, are going to be emboldened. There are some, like myself, who find their methods repugnant. There is no reason to kill those we left behind -- to call them ‘tainted beyond all redemption’ is hardly fair. I could tell you if my sister is to be trusted the moment she walked into a room with me. I can tell if anyone can be trusted with anything the moment we are in the same room. I have no idea why those people want those who stayed behind dead -- but they hide behind thought scramblers from such as myself.

  “We have defenses; we could deal quite well with a small attack like Grayhome faced. We would be annihilated if they come after us like they did Gandalf. The argument is going to be that your Federation can’t offer us any substantive assistance -- even if they had a mind to. That contact now, if the aliens haven’t learned where we are, would surely doom us.

  “Except of course, here you are. Your habitat is significantly larger than anything we fly. We could, if we put our minds to it, create such vessels quickly enough. But there is the little matter of the means by which you arrived. That makes this a matter of critical importance to us. Our current government is insane; killing the hundred or so of us who stayed behind is stupid, wicked and evil. Killing fifteen thousand people who fate deposited on our doorstep, most of them children, isn’t something our people are going to be able to contemplate lightly.

  “You represent a significant increase in the stakes. I have no idea what is going to happen, although I have a significant concern. Out of sight is out of mind. We have fixed site detectors that can pick up ships on fan at the distance of light years -- it’s how we knew you were here after all.

  “Only a few dozen people in the Union know of your existence. If you ceased to exist, it would be the stuff of rumo
r or supposition. I can’t tell you what to do, but if this habitat were to arrive in the system you are heading towards, you would be neither out of sight nor out of mind.”

  “And if we simply vanish?”

  “If you successfully transition to High Fan, you would face the fact that like you believe the aliens can, we’d simply track you on High Fan and be there when you arrived. It should be obvious that you are within range of our sensors even now.

  “I can’t promise you that the Wing Commander is not going to bring back orders to destroy you -- it would certainly solve a great many of the Union’s more immediate problems. I’ll repeat what the Wing Commander told you: we have nothing that could tow a vehicle of this size. We’ve never needed anything like it. While we could repair your fans, you would still face the same risks, would you not? The Union won’t permit the problem to fester for nearly two decades -- and I can’t imagine you being that patient.”

  “I need to talk to my people,” Trevor told her.

  “You have time,” she agreed. “It’s nearly seven days each way. By all means, talk.

  “Again, I’m not here to dictate to you, but I would strongly advise that you include me with your officer’s call. I will know what goes on whether or not I’m in the room or not -- but it will speed answering questions, as there are virtually certain to be questions.”

  Trevor grimaced and wondered how one went about building a thought scrambler. She laughed. “That’s classified Captain Grimes -- but I assure you, it’s not a tinfoil hat.” She turned serious. “I am a product of very thorough training, Captain. Like you, it is against my personal honor to lie. There are things I’m not going to tell you, but if I tell you the sky is blue, you can assume it is.”

  “Trust but verify,” he replied.

  Makaa chuckled.

  He led the two women to the bridge and announced an officer’s call. He refused to answer any questions until everyone was assembled.

  Then Trevor summed up the situation, including the abilities of Makaa, the fighter pilot. “Senior Pilot Officer Makaa has made the point that we are likely to have questions. Since we have questions, it seems like a waste of time to avoid her presence.”

  The red-haired partner of Lieutenant Kim stood up. “And you expect us to believe that -- this person -- can read our minds?”

  The fighter pilot could be cruel, he learned then. “Yum, yum, honey!” she said.

  The red-haired spitfire turned bright red and sat down, not speaking again.

  At the end of the meeting Commander Robinson stood. “As I see it, we have no choice, Captain Grimes.”

  He sighed. “Not really. I have one more assignment for you as a group. Go back to your compartments and think about what you’ve heard. Email me with any comments or suggestions that you think will be useful. At the back of your mind, think about a piece of music to play when we drop from High Fan in the system ahead of us. You have five days; general comments for right now.”

  Later Robin rubbed his neck and he breathed a sigh of relief as the tension in knotted muscles relaxed. “Where did you put her?” Robin asked afterwards.

  “I’ve learned that it’s tough to deal with a telepath. I was thinking of putting her in a storeroom; she suggested the brig. I told her I wouldn’t lock it, but she cheerfully said I should -- that way I’d be sure she wasn’t wandering around poking into things that she shouldn’t. She laughed when she said that, though.”

  “So, tomorrow, we roll all the dice.”

  “0900,” he agreed. “I’ll make a preliminary announcement an hour in advance; there’s no need to give people too much time to dwell on the risks.”

  “I wasn’t looking forward to eighteen years without birth control, Commander Robinson not withstanding.”

  The first thing in the morning he went to see Senior Pilot Officer Makaa. “Have you told any of the others what we are going to do?”

  “Yes,” she said simply. “One of the other pilots is a telepath and knows. That pilot agrees with me; the images scare the pee out of anyone who sees them.”

  “You’re even concealing the other pilot’s gender.”

  “Of course. There is only the smallest temptation in your mind to take precipitate action. But it is there as a contingency. An unlikely one, but a contingency.”

  “It has to be.”

  “I understand planning purposes,” Makaa agreed with him. “Captain Grimes, a favor. When you arrive where you are going, you are unlikely to be imprisoned. If you are, it is a very bad sign. I believe it will be virtually impossible, but like you, I consider contingencies.”

  “What is this favor?”

  “Go outside and walk down one of the streets of one of our cities -- even the villages. The most remarkable thing you’ll see is the proximate reason for our being here, for what all has happened since this all started, so very long ago on Earth, before Kinsella came along to upset so very many apple carts.”

  She looked at him for a moment. “The other pilot isn’t going to tell the others; we’ll both be in trouble after this, as we can’t very well claim that you surprised us. I am, however, a big girl and will stand or fall on my own. So will the other pilot.

  “There was a person among you who would have been able to resolve all the issues, I’m sure of it. The worst mistake our ancestors made was forging a link to that resource -- and then not using it out of fear.

  “One last thing, something to think about, as you so graciously ask your people to do.

  “The Wing Commander lied about us. It’s true that there was a general reluctance to have their own children in particular experimented upon among our ancestors. Some did, but most didn’t. However, the keys were there to remove an enormous legacy of inherited diseases and conditions -- probably only about half of which had been characterized by then.

  “People eagerly availed themselves of the opportunity. By then we knew that half of the human genome had no function. It was simply billions and billions of leftover coding mistakes. People would eliminate a condition, then their chromosomes would twist and combine unexpectedly -- and previously dormant combinations would make themselves felt.

  “The answer seemed simple -- our ancestors got rid of all that junk.

  “Now, just a few hundred years later, we’ve found that we can’t control recombination as well as we thought... and there isn’t sufficient variation in the remaining genes to do an adequate job of keeping things straight. The Wing Commander’s comment that we are doing just fine so far as the genome is concerned is pure BS. You have fifteen thousand copies of the unmodified genome. In our society right now, an unmodified human genome is priceless.

  “At current prices, one of your passengers could sell some sperm or an egg -- and be independently wealthy. They will never be able to hide the approach of a ‘possibly hostile’ vessel to the system. I have a song suggestion to play as you come off High Fan -- Elvis Presley’s Jailhouse Rock.”

  “Pressley? I’ve heard of him, who hasn’t? But Presley?”

  “Out here popular recordings withered on the vine for a very long time. When they first started to come back, a lot of the groups that formed were derivative. Presley was one of the favorites, as he has remained the top favorite.”

  “Was it hard, this far out?”

  “Yes and no. Hard, meaning were we ever in danger of extinction? Not only no, but there was never any real concern. But there was a lot of work to do, and people focused on that. For a couple of generations ‘frivolity’ was frowned on.” She grinned. “We’re much better now.”

  She waved towards the bridge. “Now you need to go to your bridge.”

  “You should clear the habitat.”

  “Aside from the fact that it would be a clear violation of my orders, resulting in penalties no matter what happens, it would hurt you. If I was here the whole time, every telepath in the system will know what I know about a second later. Yes, it will take them longer to process things, but that contact will bring a
ny hostile acts to a screeching halt.”

  “We owe you so much...”

  “No you don’t. You said it to the Wing Commander’s face. We would part company with the human race for even contemplating this. We could, barely, justify it in regards to less than a hundred people most of us have never seen... but not thousands, not hanging in our sky.

  “I am not stupid. My ancestors owe thousands of generations of the human race for their existence. Yes, many of them have moved beyond their ancestors, but there is nothing in human philosophy, morals or culture to be ashamed of. You made mistakes. Who among us, as children, didn’t make mistakes? Species grow and mature, just as their members do.”

  Trevor went and made his short announcement. It was a tough thing -- to warn people that in an hour they could very well be dead. And even tougher telling the pilot a half hour in advance of the scheduled time to proceed.

  A voice spoke in his head. “I told you at the outset that I was a two-way telepath. I’ve never met a person who could understand a concept so quickly -- and then bury it below the conscious level.

  “You, Captain Grimes, are the reason we can’t abandon contact with the rest of the human race. That people like you exist -- who don’t in our society -- is reason enough.”

  “What will I see that is so remarkable on a city street that it founded your culture?”

  “Again, sir, you have an amazing ability to ignore this or that. I will never lie to you -- but I can say things that aren’t true the way you think. Trees, Captain. Trees. And that’s all you will ever learn until you see -- and understand for yourself. I’ve never met an unmodified ur-human before, and now I have. I pray to the soul-creator that you can bring us together.”

  The habitat went to High Fan. Nothing blew up; the fans ran like they should. Of course, now he had more than fourteen thousand people who were nauseated to deal with. God is never about good deeds or good intentions.

  He spoke to the passengers and crew shortly afterwards. “We are on a course for an inhabited system. I left off the term ‘human-‘ before the word inhabited. Hundreds of years ago, a group of people were discovered on Earth who had worked to discover the genetic secrets of DNA life. For those of you interested, you’ll find the records under the label ‘Otto Koop.’ Look the records up; you are probably going to be dealing with these people for the rest of your lives. They have no current plans to allow us to return to Federation space, and a change of opinion isn’t likely.”