“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.”
“Why not?” asked Grant. “Apart from the airships and steam engines, that is. Like I said, that kind of technological determinism doesn’t convince me.”
Horrocks looked from one to the other, nonplussed. “All right,” he said. “Let’s put it a different way. We need to be sure they do understand all that before we do anything that might set them at each others’ throats if they don’t. In our own interests, we need to be sure they are not going to come out and attack us in a few decades. I know we could improvise some kind of weapons against them — something like meteor defences, I guess — but we haven’t fought a war for thousands of years and if I’m right and you’re wrong, they’re about to become really good at it. Just like our ancestors were before they went to the Moon.”
Atomic drained her cup. “Putting it that way, maybe you’re right. So what do you propose that we do about it?”
This was the crux. Horrocks nerved himself. “Something you once suggested yourself. Hold back on colonization until we’re sure the aliens can handle it.”
Atomic looked regretful, and Grant thoughtful.
“I did hint at that myself once,” Atomic said. “Read my hate mail sometime.”
“Have a good look at what intraspecies war was like — sometime.”
“I don’t need to or want to. I already have the general idea, thank you.”
Horrocks closed his eyes for a moment. “Perhaps you need more than the general idea,” he said. “I know I did. But even based on the general idea, as you say, do you really think the annoyance and frustration of our ship generation weighs much in the balance?”
“It’s not so much that,” said Atomic. “It’s that the annoyance and frustration, as you put it, might be quite enough to produce a war all by itself. A war amongst ourselves.”
Horrocks was startled at how shocked he felt. He wanted to tell her to wash out her mouth. Not, on reflection, the most tactful thing to tell her.
“That may be putting it a little too strongly,” he said at last.
“Is it?” said Atomic. “The founder generation, yes, they’re our geneparents and careparents and we love them and they love us. But we know very well what they bred us and raised us for. To go out, to conquer the system, while they carry on their doubtless fascinating little intrigues and affairs and deals in this lovely habitat that feels to us like a hot room with too many people in it. We need vacuum on the other side of our faceplates to feel we’re breathing fresh air. And the thing is, that’s exactly what we were bred and raised to feel! If the founders try to stop us, they’re asking for trouble.”
“I know that!” cried Horrocks. People turned and stared. He lowered his voice. “The founders know that too. What we’re — what I’m asking you, is whether you can see a way around that, some way to maybe channel all that energy and urge to explore into something other than…” His voice trailed off in the face of their set, sceptical smiles.
“I can tell you this,” said Atomic. “And you can tell my caremother and her clique and anybody else you care to: if we don’t get out, our energy and urges are going to be channelled into something they won’t like,”
Grant nodded. “You said it, Atomic.”
Atomic stood up. “I think we’re finished here.” Horrocks watched them leave.
The Engineer’s Dream was known as a deep hang, a disreputable venue near the axis of the forward cone, popular with habitat trainers, microlight pilots, maintenance coordinators, and other low-responsibility crew members. Horrocks drifted through the hatch into its hazy air and narrow-spectrum artificial light and toed off for the drinks wall, where he broke off a bulb, crooked his elbow through a loop, and turned to survey the scene. Time of day wasn’t an issue here, the entire circadian rhythm being based on on-shift or off-shift, but the place was in one of its phases where only a score or so of people were in. Good: he wanted that sense of drinking at the wrong hour.
He exchanged nods with a few people hanging in the central mesh, none of whom he fancied talking to, and then noticed Genome Console at the far end on her own. Focused on an inhaler, she didn’t see him so he pinged her. She turned, saw him, waved and rolled to place her feet on the wall. One swift thrust brought her over. A neat somersault docked her in the same loop as himself. She wore something like an opaque black sphere with holes for wrists, ankles and neck, but a sphere that had crinkled and shrunk inward to cling here and there, mostly there. Her fair hair floated wild. “Well, hello,” she said. “Where have you been? The gang all thought you’d gone flatfoot.”
“It was just for a few days,” said Horrocks.
“A few days at a time,” she said. “You’ve been going down there for weeks.”
“Doing business with passengers.”
“I don’t believe that for a minute. Fancy a sniff?” She waved her inhaler. Horrocks checked the cartridge: red clouds and a lightning-flash, an obscure brand name.
“No thanks.” Horrocks swigged a squirt. “But you’re right. I got caught up in something.”
“Ah!” said Genome, her eyes bright from her sniff. “You and that flatfoot girl.” She tilted her head back, sighting him along her nose. “She’s trouble.”