"I didn't mention this at the time, because I wanted to reflect and be sure," Calazar said, rising to set out the dishes from the tray, as befitted the host. "Some time ago, I had a visit from Gregg Caldwell."
Now it was all taking another unexpected turn. "Vic Hunt's superior," Eesyan said, more to give himself a moment to adjust again.
"Yes. The man who was one of the driving forces that turned Terrans' energies away from violence and destructiveness, and instead hurled them out across the Solar System; who directed the investigations that led to their rediscovery of their past and the rescue of the Shapieron, and kept his head after they eventually made contact with ourselves, when many others on both sides were yielding to fears and suspicions that would have led us to a very different situation today." Showm flinched slightly, but Eesyan didn't think Calazar had intended it personally. Calazar handed Eesyan a goblet mixed in the way he knew from experience was to Eesyan's taste. "The kessaya are very good." He gestured toward the tray.
"Maybe in a moment… Thank you."
Calazar went on, "A person not only of rare vision, but also with the even rarer gift of being able to turn visions into reality. Who dares to dream, and can make dreams come true. Well, Caldwell came to me with a dream… Are you sure you won't try the kessaya?"
Eesyan had a fleeting urge to throw them at him. He shook his head.
"Terrans like him epitomize all that's positive about their race: the dynamism; the restless energy; the refusal to give in even when the cause is hopeless, and yet win. Look at what can happen in just a few decades when they turn their aggressiveness upon constructive ends."
Such thoughts weren't exactly new to Eesyan. He had discussed them on many occasions, with Showm among others. "Truly extraordinary," he agreed. They had come across nothing else like it in all the worlds they had reached.
"And we Ganymeans embody another set of qualities that are every bit as laudable," Calazar said. "You put them succinctly yourself just a few minutes ago: caution and thoroughness; commitment to excellence in all things; dignifying of the moral over the material. We've seen what each of these combinations has achieved on its own. But can you imagine, Porthik, what they might be capable of together?"
Eesyan looked at Showm, who was watching him intently. She seemed to be brimming with things to say of her own, but just at this instant not wanting to interrupt Calazar's stride. Eesyan wondered if he was missing a point somewhere. "Yes, I hear what you're saying," he said, turning back to Calazar. "But isn't that what we have? The Jevlenese menace has been uncovered and neutralized. Earth is showing signs that it might have mended its ways finally. They seem to be absorbing our science and adapting to our technology…"
Calazar waved a hand and shook his head rapidly. "That isn't what I meant. What we have is Earth with all its scars and bruises and blemishes, and us on the other side of a divide that began opening tens of thousand of years ago, struggling to get to know each other again like adult siblings that were separated in childhood. I'm talking about the potential that existed with the human race as it existed then, before they were forced back to animal survivalism, and then had their recovery sabotaged; when no gulf existed. Where might Thuriens and a race like that be today, do you think? Still striving to trace the origins of the codes that direct life, to discover what agency devised them and for what purpose? Or would we long ago have become fully alive and conscious beings, knowing ourselves and our role in the multiplicity of realities that we are even now just beginning to glimpse?"
Eesyan had a sudden, jolting premonition of where this might be going. He licked his lips and glanced at Showm again. She nodded as if reading his thoughts. "And it was the lead we got from Terrans that put us on the right track, even now," she reminded him.
Calazar became expansive. "I'm not talking about sending probes and prying eyes, and sitting back here like gawkers at some awful Terran movie, passively watching the Lunarians marching toward their fate. I'm talking about going there, to the time before the war ever happened, and doing something to change it!"
Eesyan reached for one of the kessaya and unwrapped it shakily. Just for the moment, his mental faculties seemed to have seized up.
"Think of it, Porthik!" Showm urged. "The full, true potential of humans and Thuriens in combination, that should have been realized-just as the potential for Minerva should have been realized. A whole new reality that was meant to exist. It still can. We can create it!"
For a brief moment the sweet, smooth taste of the candy distracted Eesyan from the turmoil of his thoughts. Minutes ago, Calazar and Showm had agreed that the current program had gone beyond the bounds set by prudence and needed tighter control. Yet what they were proposing instead exceeded it in boldness and audacity on a scale that took his breath away. Objections poured into his mind reflexively.
They wouldn't be "creating" anything; the physics of quantum reality said that everything that could possibly exist did exist… But no. He checked himself. That was according to the old way of assuming things, arrived at from a literal interpretation of the mathematical formalism. Danchekker had produced some good reasons for supposing that the intervention of consciousness was able to change that, making some futures by no means automatic. Rebellious Terran thinking again. It had started a furious debate among the Thurien philosophers. Perhaps it was possible to bring about whole new futures through an effort of volition, that otherwise wouldn't have existed. At their present stage of knowledge, there were no grounds to exclude it.
"It's… it's…" Eesyan gestured weakly and looked from one to another. "Do you realize the immensity of what you're saying?… We've just agreed that even the present project is in drastic need of complete overhaul. What we're talking about here is on a totally different scale of-"
"We've agreed that we need to stop what we're doing and get back to a program of sound, professionally managed research and solid engineering," Calazar cut in. "Perfect. That means we can begin from the basics, observing all the right principles."
Eesyan extended his hands pleadingly. "It's not just a question of technicalities. You're talking about sending people… Thuriens, Terrans, both; I don't know… not just robots. The whole underlying philosophy changes. They'd need autonomy to be able to adapt to whatever local conditions they encounter-to provide for their own safety, or even survival. So they'd have to go in some kind of ship. But they wouldn't even be able to move around. Ships draw on the h-grid for power. There was no h-grid at Minerva fifty thousand years ago."
Showm seemed to have been expecting it. "You're forgetting one ship that doesn't need the h-grid," she said. Eesyan looked at her blankly, his mind in too much of a whirl to make the connection. "The Shapieron. Right now, at Jevlen. An old Ganymean starship with independent onboard drives, everything self-contained."
"But even if we did what you say… the totality of the Multiverse is so vast. They would be so few. Could it make any difference that matters?"
"What are you saying, Eesyan?" Showm chided. "That sounds like some kind of petty profit-and-loss accounting that you would expect from Earth. Do you not feed a hungry child because you cannot feed all of them? Do you let a sick person die because there are other sick people in the world that you can't help? Our very concept of civilization lies the principle of caring, compassion, and love being extended outward from the primitive family to embrace a progressively wider community: town and village, then nation, planet, until today we feel kinship across many worlds. Isn't this the next step that whatever power brought all this into being is calling us to? Imagine, a community of universes that were isolated, just as the stars were once isolated. Where it will lead, or what will one day come out of it, nobody can say. We will be true pioneers and discoverers again. That is why we have no choice."