The Ophiuchi Hotline

22

First contact.

Lilo had considered everything, or thought she had, from beings of pure energy to the standard monstrous lifeforms that were a fixture of cheap adventure fiction. She had considered the possibility that the Ophiuchites might be humanlike, bipedal, bilaterally symmetrical. It was an efficient design for some purposes. It had occurred to her that they might be literally beyond her understanding, more related to Invaders than to humans.

What she found was a stretch of corridor that might have been the one she had played in as a child. At the end was a conference room with a carpet and a long, wooden table with a dozen chairs.

"Would you say it's about one gee?" Javelin said, as they entered the room. Lilo was startled to hear her voice; the room absorbed all echoes.

"Yes, about that." She glanced at Javelin. She had never seemed smaller than she did now, standing on two feet in a gravity field. She barely reached to Lilo's waist.

"Why do you think that is?" Javelin went on. "This place rotates for artificial gravity, wouldn't you think? Yet we're at the hub. It should be weightless."

"It follows that they have gravity control," Vaffa said.

"Yes, but then why do they need the rotation? If they can give us one gee here, why can't they do it at the rim?"

"Maybe it's expensive," Cathay said. "Maybe it's a gesture of friendship."

"Let's don't draw too many conclusions," Lilo said. "We've got to be on guard against that."

"Keep an open mind," Vaffa said.

Lilo knew they were all whistling in the dark. They were standing at one end of the room, hesitant to go any further unless invited. The voice, after its startling intrusion on Cavorite's radio, had told them where to enter the Hotline base, and to go to the end of the corridor. After that, there had been nothing.

Now the door at the other end of the room opened and people started coming in. They seemed to be quite ordinary men and women, dressed in a style that was perhaps two centuries out of date. They were attractive people, the sort Lilo might have run into in any public corridor in Luna.

"Please, please, have seats," said one man. "Pull up a chair. We're not formal around here."

None of the four could think of any reply, so they all sat down. When the Ophiuchites were seated, every chair was filled. The man who had spoken was at one end of the table, and now he got to his feet. He put both hands on the table and looked at them. His brow furrowed slightly.

"We knew you'd be nervous," he said. "I don't know what we can do about that. We've tried to keep the surroundings familiar, but it will probably be a while before you feel comfortable."

He looked at each of them in turn, and favored each with a smile.

There was something odd about that smile. It seemed warm enough, but Lilo got the feeling there was nothing beneath it. It tried to be an expression of friendship, as the earlier frown had tried to show concern. She glanced at Cathay and Javelin to see if she was the only one who saw that.

"It is awkward," the man went on. "Your species has only limited experience with this situation. Mine has been through it thousands of times. We know much about your species-type, and about your race specifically. You're apprehensive about this meeting, you have many questions, and this all seems very strange to you."

He paused again, and looked this time at the double line of his companions seated at the table. They were all nodding, and now a few uttered polite assents. They sought eye contact with the four humans, a familiarity Lilo did not feel ready for. She felt disoriented. For all she could tell, these people might be the board of directors of some large company, gathered to discuss business.

"First we should introduce ourselves. I'm the spokesman for the contact team, and my name is William." Each of them stood and gave a name, and none of them convinced Lilo. All the names were archaic, common names from Old Earth. When they were finished, Javelin stood and introduced herself and the others did the same.

With the formalities over, William sat down and all the Ophiuchites visibly relaxed. There was a murmur of conversation. It almost escaped Lilo's attention because it was so commonplace, but when she strained to hear individual remarks she realized there were none. It was a literal murmur; as artificial as canned laughter. A show was being put on for their benefit. They were participating in some kind of living theater.

"You can consider yourselves our guests for as long as you want to stay. Would you like anything to eat? No? Very well, but don't be shy about asking, as we have a long presentation. I hope you don't mind. We've found that if we begin with a question-and-answer session it takes a long time just to get to the point where you can ask meaningful questions. And I'm sure you don't want to sit through a dry lecture. So we've put together this little piece of film that should fill you in on the background that led up to this historic contact. Alicia, would you get the lights, please?"

Someone was setting up what looked like a film projector. A screen lowered from the ceiling, and as the lights went down, the machine began to clatter. Titles appeared on the screen, accompanied by swelling background music.

Hierarchies

Produced by the Hotline First Contact Committee

The film opened with a shot of scattered stars and galaxies. The voice of the narrator was the perfect choice, Lilo thought. It was the Stand Computer Voice, the SVC that all humans heard every day of their lives. The controlled, soothing modulations had a good effect on all of them. They were able to relax a little for the first time.

"Greeting to the people of the Sol system, formerly the Race of Earth, from your nearest neighbors among the peoples of the galaxy. For many hundreds of years our two races have been in contact through the communication device you call the Ophiuchi Hotline. Now the time is drawing near when great decisions must be made, great steps taken, when things must be told to you which before now you had only guessed at.

"The universe is a far stranger place than you have heretofore imagined. This will come as no surprise to those who have considered the questions of philosophy which have been posed since your race came down from the trees. We would not have you think we are about to answer those questions; we are much alike in many ways, and for us, as for you, many things seem destined to remain mysteries. But there are things we have learned which you should know, as you are approaching a turning point that will determine your survival or failure as a race.

"We have called this broadcast Hierarchies. As you have already been shown in the most convincing terms possible, your race is not destined to be a dominant one in the galaxy. Your planet has been taken from you by beings greater than yourselves. They had no trouble doing so; it was as inevitable as the law of gravity that they should have none. You live now in the airless places, the too-hot and too-cold deserts of your planetary system. Some among you pray for liberation. Others are beginning to try and do something about it.

"You will not be liberated. We would return your planet to you if we could, but it is beyond our power. Your struggles to reclaim the Earth on your own will come to nothing.

"Having made these statements, we must now tell you why this is so. A good place to start would be for us to tell you something about ourselves."

The film lasted about an hour. Lilo let her eyelids droop, slouched in the comfortable chair, allowing information to wash over her just as it was meant to. The production values of the film were very good, very much like a commercial spot with quick cuts and finicky attention to detail.

They were told about the Ophiuchites in outline form, with animated sequences that never showed a living being. It failed to surprise Javelin, as she later told Lilo, since in the four hundred years of operation of the Line there had never been a scrap of information about the people who were sending it.

According to them, they were a race without a home planet. They were not natives of 70 Ophiuchi, or any other star they could name.

Javelin leaned over and whispered in Lilo's ear, "I wonder. I think they're covering up."

"Could be."

They claimed to have been around a very long time—their exact origins, as they expressed it in the film, "lost in the mists of history." They had records going back seven million years, and in that time there had been no changes in their society.

The film recapped what humans had speculated about Invaders, confirming most of it.

"The beings you know as Invaders are members of what can be called a stratum of intelligence. There are many races in the galaxy similar to them, including a race native to the solar planet Jupiter. These races evolve only on the gas giant planets. They are not tool-using, as we understand the term, but rather are able to manipulate the world around them through methods which are beyond our powers of comprehension. It might be helpful to think of them as telekinetic; they are not, but many of the things they do are similar to what we might do if such a power existed.

"To the Invaders, time is a dimension of substance. How this affects their perception of life we can only guess, and it does us little good to do so. But this fact puts them as far beyond our reach as we would be above the inhabitants of a hypothetical two-dimensional world."

The film went on to confirm what Lilo had been told about dolphins many years ago, that they were the second level of intelligence. Vaffa snorted, and Lilo glanced at her, wondering how she was taking all this. It was believed by the Free Earthers that aquatic mammals were merely animals, that the tales of Invaders coming to Earth to free them were nothing more than folklore.

"Tool-using species, those which evolve on land and in an atmosphere which permits combustion, are the third level of intelligence. We share this level with you, but it should be pointed out that there can be levels within levels. You are not our equals, and may never be. We can talk to you about certain matters, but there are things which you are not ready to understand, and things which we are not ready to reveal. Because now we come to the point of the message, to an explanation of what we are doing here and why we have been communicating with you these many years."

For the first time, a face appeared on the screen. It was a standardized face, handsome but unmemorable, and it took a second for Lilo to realize it was "William." He performed another smile, as unconvincing as the ones Lilo had seen in person.

"As we said earlier, we are a race that has lost contact with its roots. It might be hard for you to understand how that could happen. We can only surmise as to the exact details."

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 annihilated.

"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 cannot even understand the information we send you concerning yourselves.

"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."