With the aid of the mind-link I learned to interpret some of the meanings of the shifting body colours, but I couldn’t quite grasp the finer nuances. I think this was mainly because they often seemed to use the skin patterns to send a slightly different message, as a kind of ironic counterpoint to their mental communication; that seemed to be the basis of much of their humour. They also showed amusement by a quick flash of colour – it was their visual version of smiling or laughing, their faces being too stiff to show subtleties of expression. Even if I had understood perfectly, I could not have joined in; the pattern changes were much faster and more intricate than anything I could manage.
I turned to an issue which had been intriguing me. ‘I know that you have a world-wide democracy, but exactly how does your political system work?’
‘Our society is organised into local groups of approximately one hundred people, who meet from time to time to discuss any issues of concern. They choose one representative who attends occasional district meetings, again of about a hundred. In turn, each district group sends one member to a regional assembly of about a hundred people. As you may have guessed by now, each regional assembly sends a representative to the Planetary Assembly, which also has about a hundred members. If you multiply those figures out, you will see that they come to our population of one hundred million. Our society and economy are very stable, with few political decisions required, so the Planetary Assembly normally only meets once a year for a few days, but we have been meeting rather more often since your accident.’
I thought about their system for a moment. ‘It sounds impressively simple. I can see that it has the advantages of keeping everyone involved in decision-making, plus ensuring that the representatives at the Planetary Council remain closely tied to their regional, district and local roots, rather than allowing them to become isolated. In a world without mind-linking, though, the small numbers of key individuals involved might make it more open to abuse. And even in a virus-transformed human Earth, I couldn’t see our political organisations liking the idea; political parties would be unlikely to form in such a system.’
‘That is true, we have no use for political parties as such. Of course, what you might call “issue blocs” can form if any major questions arise, and these can result in clear-cut divisions of opinion where a compromise solution is not feasible; for instance, over the decision to contact you. That caused intense debate before a clear majority emerged.’
‘What were the main arguments?’
‘The newly-found ability to communicate with parallel worlds threw up a major issue for us. Those against contact argued that it would cause huge disruption to human society and we had no moral right to interfere in this way – they were highly critical of the rash scientists who were responsible for your accident. Those in favour felt that having caused your transformation, we had a moral duty to explain our actions to you, but the far more important argument, which eventually won the day, was that your civilisation would self-destruct like all of the others if we stood back and did nothing.’
‘I expect that you had a similar debate over releasing the virus I asked for?’
‘Not so much; having taken the major decision to make our existence known to humanity and observed the disagreements this caused in your society, we realised that only mind-linking would enable you to take the action you need to save yourselves. You would stand no chance of reaching agreement without it.’
‘True enough. It’s going to be hard enough to achieve even with it.’
The Convenor then started quizzing me about human democracy; she had learned to read English and, she informed me, spent much time scanning human internet sites.
‘I have noticed that in the USA many of the constituencies have their boundaries carefully drawn around population groups with a particular political leaning, so that it is almost impossible for them to change party in an election. How can that be described as a democratic system of government?’
‘Good question. Of course, that kind of thing isn’t allowed in the UK – it’s called gerrymandering after the man who invented the tactic.’
‘Ah yes, there are also certain things which intrigue me about the “first past the post” system used in the UK, and I’d like to test my understanding of it. It seems to me that this can produce some very odd results, and it depends a lot on the distribution of support for each party. If one party can concentrate all of its membership in fifty-one percent of the constituencies, but distributed so that they have slightly more votes in each than any of the other parties, then they could win the election outright with less than twenty percent of the vote, could they not?’
I did some quick mental calculations. ‘I suppose that’s theoretically possible, depending on the number of other parties.’
‘On the other hand,’ she pressed on, ‘a party could have forty-nine percent of the vote, but if there are only two parties, and their votes are exactly evenly spread across all constituencies, the one with the slightly smaller number wouldn’t get any seats at all?’
‘Well, yes, that’s also theoretically possible. Those extremes wouldn’t happen in practice, though.’
‘Of course not. Why, I believe that a recent British government managed to win a substantial overall majority in Parliament with as much as thirty-five percent of the vote – which, given the poor turnout of only just over sixty percent, meant that they obtained absolute control of your government with the support of less than twenty-two percent of the electorate. Is that right?’
‘Err, yes, that does sound about right.’
‘Don’t you think it’s possible that these anomalies account for the lack of interest in politics which leads to so few people voting?’
‘Among other things, quite possibly.’
‘Other things?’
‘Well, politicians are not exactly the most highly regarded people in our society. They have a well-earned reputation for untrustworthiness. Still, the advent of mind-linking – and especially remote linking by radio – is likely to have a major impact on their behaviour and therefore, in time, the way they are perceived.’
‘Hmm. So tell me about the alternatives to “first past the post”. I understand “proportional representation” and “alternative votes”, but would like to gain a better understanding of “single transferable votes.”’
It transpired that her understanding of the arcane complexities of STV systems was far better than my own, so I turned the conversation to other matters.
‘I’m intrigued by the differences which caused saurians to develop on some versions of Earth and humans on others. Have you been able to track down the point of departure, when the worlds diverged?’
‘Oh yes, that was the subject of a major research effort as soon as we discovered the first human world. We managed to track it back to a natural disaster about a hundred million years ago. It was an asteroid strike – which in your world narrowly missed Earth, probably as a result of some almost infinitesimal orbital perturbation far away. It wasn’t as big as some that have struck both our Earths, but it was at a critical time and place to affect evolution. It changed conditions in such a way that our distant ancestors were driven close to extinction. A predator species developed, not unlike ourselves and almost as intelligent, but bigger, faster and fiercer, and we were their favourite prey. We were under constant pressure to improvise, innovate and cooperate to make up for our physical disadvantages, and that drove us towards developing ever higher intelligence and speech. It also accounts for the evolution of our marsupial characteristics – no huge movement-limiting pregnancies like humans, no eggs in a fixed place to defend, and a safe place to stuff young kids while sprinting for safety. And our homes have lots of exits – we have a racial urge to be able to leave, fast, if an enemy comes into a building. In fact, we didn’t establish any permanent settlements for a long time because we had no means of defending them. Eventually we used technology to obtain an edge over our predators, and then we constructed some fortress homes in more mountainous areas. We don’t use those any more, though – they are too inconvenient.’