Lissa paused and looked around the gathering. “But some cultures would perish,” she continued. “If the weeders exist, then they’ve seen many tragedies. But imagine how terrible it would be to use up a whole galaxy for resources and have only one culture to show for it. That would be the greater tragedy. Imagine how such a dominant culture might feel when it looked back and understood what it had done. However rich it would be in knowledge and spirit, it would know that an infinity of riches had also been lost, never to be regained.”
Max glanced at Lucinda’s parents and saw their unease. They knew this was important, but their immediate worry had to be about Emil.
“Everything we know about the growth of science and technology,” Lissa continued with great emphasis, “suggests massive exponential growth that leads to explosive cultural transformations and expansion beyond a single planet. Many worlds probably destroy themselves before they can look beyond their solar systems, but it takes only one success to spread through a galaxy. If that happens at the right time, that one civilization would not even have to destroy any existing cultures, only worlds where life might one day develop.”
Lissa smiled. “Some of you might quite naturally resent the idea of being judged by alien others, or having them make decisions about our lives. But they wouldn’t see it that way at all. No life can think only of itself for long. The weeders and nurturers would have seen countless forms of sunlife coming up, growing into self-awareness and tragedy at the same time. Many would weed themselves, with no one lifting a finger to destroy them. Meanwhile, the nurturers would strive to help civilizations grow up in less cruel ways. Contacting them directly would not be the way to do it, since that would alter the very individuality that is developing—which is all that any civilization really prizes in any other. So, by slowing the emergence of cultures, the nurturers would preserve a galaxy’s resources, and by isolating a culture preserve its individuality. Yes, some cultures would die.”
Max felt both challenged and awed by her words.
“But who could these weeders and nurturers be?” Jake asked.
“They are probably a very old culture,” Lissa replied. “Having achieved everything that younger species strive for, this is probably the only interesting thing left for them to do. Of course, we can’t be certain yet that all this is true, or that the weeders and nurturers even exist.” She was silent for a few moments, then began to pace back and forth before the assembly. She was graceful, Max noticed, her steps sure. She was, he realized, the most intriguing person he had ever met.
“But consider,” she continued, facing the gathering, “what it means for you to be here inside the Sun. There are many ways to put together the clues and evidence we’ve gathered, but we must also include the possibility that clues have been
given
to us, and that we were meant to be having this very kind of discussion, in which we try to think about how galactic cultures might regard us. It may be that our Galaxy has always been safe from being overrun, because most cultures perish through nuclear wars and technological disasters, rather than from outright weeding. Perhaps ours is a young galaxy, in which the weeder-nurturers seek to prevent what has happened in older ones. As you know, in the years when your habitat was returning from Centauri, we received what seemed to be a radio warning from the Cometary Halo, or the Oort Cloud, as it is better known. I was part of the expedition that found the transmitter, which might have been placed there by the nurturers, or by another civilization seeking to warn us about the dangers of cometary infall. Later that same year we detected a whole network of tachyon communications crossing the galaxy, with some of them passing through our sun. That was what first made me suspicious. The existence of this station makes sense of that observation. I think we’ll find that stars are used to channel and amplify tachyon links, and that they also power physical bridges.” She gazed out at the gathering. “They’re talking to each other out there!” she said, gesturing with both arms.
A chill went through Max as he wondered what terrible things the aliens might be saying about humanity, especially if the aliens were like the whale-thing that had menaced Lucinda and him on the terrace world.
“It was fortunate that we were contacted by radio,” Lissa continued, “since it’s a means we knew before our discovery of tachyons. Someone wanted to make sure that we would receive and understand the warning about cometary bombardment, and perhaps wanted to do so anonymously, using a backward technology. The signals were a display diagram, showing us where the transmitter was located. You can’t get simpler than that. They thought we were worth warning, too far along to let perish, as they might have let happen with Earth’s dinosaurs. Or perhaps the transmitter was just a routine buoy, of the kind used to mark ocean reefs to warn ships. But one thing is inescapable—any kind of message received by one culture from another has a shaping effect on the recipient culture, even if
nothing
in the message is understood, even if it’s only a nonsense message proving that the other culture exists, or once existed. The sending culture had to know that we would never look outward in the same way again.”
“But is there any danger from cometary infall?” Linda ten Eyck asked.
“Not that we could find,” Lissa replied. “After we found the radio buoy, we took our ship-habitat out into the Oort Cloud for a two-year survey. We charted the velocities of thousands of bodies whenever we could, and found nothing large enough to slow up bodies in their orbits to fall sunward. Of course, the Halo is large, and can be disturbed anywhere in the vast sphere it forms around the solar system. It takes only a small change in a body’s orbital velocity to send it into the inner solar system. Our survey is still incomplete. The danger may well exist.”
“Yeah,” Jake said. “Or they’re just taking a break, until the nurturers figure out what to do with us. I don’t like this idea that some other culture knows what’s best for us, or that it feels justified in deciding we shouldn’t exist at all!”
Max realized that he felt the same way, and was glad that Jake had spoken up.
“You’re right,” Lissa answered, “but that may be just the way things are. And it may be that they do know what’s best for us in some things.”
“So where do we stand right now?” Jake demanded. “You’re not even sure if any of this is true.”
“Good question. Let’s see if we can tie it all together. Everything that’s happened since we discovered the signals from the stars seems to me to have been a way of getting us to think about our place in the Galaxy, and how we will survive the weeding process, whether it’s intended or natural. We’re past the era when we might have destroyed ourselves in a war or through ecological disaster, so it’s possible that we’re only being nurtured now. I don’t think any civilization out there is longing to meet us, but they don’t mind us overhearing what they’re saying to each other, even though we don’t understand them. We’ll have to work at that, and I think they want us to. I’m certain we were meant to find this station, and to discover the link with Centauri, but I also suspect that we’re supposed to have large doubts about what may be going on. Doubts protect us from being overly influenced by the weeders or nurturers. Our future remains an open possibility.” Lissa looked at Max and Lucinda. “The passages you discovered and explored may be a learning maze, a labyrinth that is already teaching us to look beyond the more strenuous forms of interstellar travel. We’ve done it the hard way, by accelerating a habitat to relativistic speeds with enormous expenditures of energy—but now we know for sure that better ways exist, and that will spur our technical development. And one day we’ll meet the Others, in the maze perhaps.”
“I might have already seen them,” Max said, “just for a moment, but I can’t be sure.”
“Did you see signs of intelligent life on the worlds you visited?” Lissa asked.
“No,” Max said, “but there was life.”
Jake asked, “What else are we
supposed
to learn about this station?”
“Perhaps they want us to learn to operate some of the systems here,” Lissa answered. “Max and Lucinda did that when they explored the portal connections. There may be other things we can learn to do.”
Max’s curiosity raced, and he tried to imagine what else might be possible. For a moment Lissa seemed to look at him with keen interest, as if he might not be aware of how much he knew.
“It seems to me,” she continued, “that the weeders and nurturers could not depend on the timing of natural disasters in the galaxy. For example, the nurturers might have to protect a promising species from natural disasters once in a while. A suncore station has enough energy to do a number of things. It could easily power a destructive beam to prevent comets and asteroids from striking planets, but such a beam could also sterilize planets to slow down the emergence of intelligent life. It could stop an intelligent species that turned out to be psychotic. One other thing. Stars aren’t always stable. A station like this could adjust a star’s energy output if something went wrong and a species was about to be destroyed. Or it could increase or decrease solar output and wipe out life.”
Max noticed that his mother looked appalled. “Can any of this really be true?” she asked. Murmurs of disapproval filled the chamber.
“We’re speculating about the details,” Lissa replied, “but I think the larger picture is true, or something very much like it. I’m only following out some of the implications of what we’ve learned, not just recently from Max and Lucinda, but over the years since the signals were received. Let me put it this way: three decades of data are consistent with what is now happening, and few of us at the Institute are surprised. We can’t wish away all the supertechnology around us.”
“A lot has happened since we left,” Joe said. “The manner of our return seems to have taken things a few steps farther.”
“I don’t like this much,” Rosalie continued. “Was Earth’s biosphere slowed up in the past so that we got a chance to develop intelligence while other species, say birds or reptiles, didn’t?”
“I doubt very much,” Lissa answered, “that the nurturers were that specific. I think it’s intelligence they value, whatever form it takes. They want it to grow out of its violent survivalist period, and look beyond tribalism, nationalism, speciesism, and the like.”
Max heard Jake curse softly. “So we’re being tested,” he said in a shaky voice that betrayed his worry about Emil. “And if we fail, they’ll hit us with rocks, or warm up the Sun, or just cook us to death with directed sunbeams. Who do they think they are?”
“They know who they are,” Lissa replied. “I’m not so sure we know who we are. Some of us think we’re angels. A lot of history suggests that we’re devils. To a large degree, we’re the first aliens we have to meet and get to know.”
“We haven’t had a war in over a century,” Rosalie said.
“A century of peace is a good try,” Lissa replied, “but it may be too soon to tell. The only accurate view we have of ourselves comes from our incomplete sciences, but it’s inevitable that one day we’ll see ourselves as others see us and may not like what we see. We should remember, when that time comes, that we haven’t always liked ourselves either, which is a hopeful sign. Most of our literature and art shows that we are very ambivalent about ourselves, which is why so many books and paintings have been censored in the past. We have a lot of history to be ashamed of—the twentieth century, for example, may never be equaled for sheer destruction—and I’m not referring just to its wars and millions dead. To heat and cool cities and generate electricity, and to have the luxury of riding around in private vehicles, the people of that century nearly destroyed the ecosphere. On a more hopeful note, I think it’s fair to say that humankind is capable of becoming more than it has been in the past, because we have shown great improvement. We must remember that.”
“What if it’s not enough for our judges?” Jake asked bitterly. “What if they’ve decided that we’re going to fail? It happened on Earth. Entire societies disappeared because they couldn’t keep up.”
Linda stood up. “So what’s next for us here and now? What if this station pulled us in blindly? What if this whole system is no longer in use, and is operating automatically?”
Lissa said, “We’ll have to find out.” She took a deep breath and looked around at the gathering. “I will have to leave you now. Captain Calder feels that we should make an exit run to make sure it works. Then we’ll come back and decide what is to be done.”
“But what if you can’t get back in?” the navigator demanded.
“We have to risk it,” Lissa replied softly. A murmur passed through the chamber. People stood up and cried out in protest. “It would be unfair,” Lissa shouted back, “to take any of you with us now. We could take only a few. You’re safe enough for now.”
There was another outcry. The navigator raised her hands for silence. “I don’t like it either, but it’s best.” The gathering quieted slowly. A few people seemed about to argue, but thought better of it.
“We’ll be back as soon as we can,” Lissa added, “maybe within a week.” Max noticed that she was looking at him as she spoke, and then she motioned to him.
He got up and went over to her. “We’ll talk when I come back,” she said before he could speak. “Don’t worry, I will be back, no matter what it takes.”
Max nodded and turned away.
“Come on,” Rosalie said, putting her arm around his shoulders, “we’ve got to get you home for some rest.” Lucinda stood between her parents, looking lost as she gazed at him.
“We’ve got to go see if the passage to Centauri is open,” Max said to the navigator.
“The kids need rest,” Jake said, ignoring him.
Max wanted to object, but suddenly felt very tired. The bed in his room was waiting, in the house where he had grown up, in the habitat that was still a prisoner at the center of the Sun. He was trapped with the world he had feared losing so much. Lissa might never come back. We could be here forever, he thought, imagining aliens peering in through the brightness to study their catch of human specimens.