“You suggest that both events listed by Janes share a commonality, ser?” That was Scholar Amyla Sucharil, one of three exchange students from the worlds of the Middle Kingdom.
“Not only the events cited by Janes, but those cited by Yamato and Alharif.”
“Isn’t it communications? They all deal with communications, ser,” suggested Leanore.
Young Ariel might have been tentative, but at least she was thinking, unlike most of the others. “Exactly! Both the events cited by Janes were the result of misunderstanding and misapplications of the use and function of communications, if in different societal aspects. If you apply the same tests to the examples of Yamato and Alharif, you’ll find a similar pattern.” I smiled, not that I wanted to, because it was likely to be a long afternoon. “History illustrates a pattern in communications. In low-tech civilizations, only immediate personal communications can be conveyed with any speed, and those are often without detail. As more detail is required, communications slow. As technology improves, there is always a trade-off between speed and detail, because improving technology results in greater societal and infrastructural complexity, which requires greater detail. Until the development of fullband comm and nanoprocessing, this trade-off existed to a greater or lesser degree. For the past millennium or so, however, the limitation on communications has not been the technology. What has it been?” I surveyed the faces, some beginning to show apprehension as they realized that they did not know the answer, and that I might indeed call upon them.
“Would it be understanding, ser?” ventured Sucharil.
“Precisely! Just because you have the information, and even a hundred near-instantaneous analyses, doesn’t mean that you truly know what to do with it, particularly when the analyses may be conflicting, depending on the background assumptions and the weight of the evidence. This was particularly true in the case of the Conflagration, because of the cultural imperatives of both the Covenanters and the Alliance. Even today, any analyses dealing with the interaction of those cultures are problematical.”
“Ser? Why does it matter that much?” That was from Emory David. “The Comity has a thousand world members, and the Covenanters have less than two hundred. There can’t be more than seventy Alliance worlds.”
“What is the first rule of interstellar warfare?” I replied.
“No planet can be effectively defended against a determined attack… ser…” replied Scholar David.
“And what are the beliefs behind a jihad?”
Finally, comprehension began to illuminate a few faces.
“You mean, ser, tjat they don’t care because they’ll go to paradise?”
“Or Heaven, if they’re Covenanters doing the Will of the Divine, and seeking to ensure that we do not recover the Morning Star,” I replied dryly.
“But… that’s a myth without foundation…”
I could not ascertain the source of that incredulous murmur.
“Not to true believers, it is not. Not even in this so-called enlightened and rational times, and certainly not upon the Worlds of the Covenant. The Morning Star, or the Spear of Iblis, the Hammer of Lucifer, whatever the specific term, is a symbol of forbidden knowledge, knowledge that is considered only the province of Iblis, Satan, or their demon children. If there is one aspect of all true-believer religions that remains constant across time and history, it is that certain aspects of technology or science are forbidden by the deity because use of that knowledge usurps the powers and privileges of the deity. Such theocracies will therefore commit great violence over issues or scientific practices that would appear common to many of you.” I inhaled slowly, for a pause. “With regard to this, even if the Comity is more secular in outlook, once the theocracies have used force against our interests, such actions require force in response, or the perception of weakness will cost even more in the long run. We lost the populations of ten worlds. The Covenanters lost thirty and the Alliance nearly forty. It has taken close to ten centuries for them to recover, half that for us, except that a dead world remains that for longer than we or any other humans will be around to recolonize. A hundred worlds scoured… would you like it to happen again, on Ulster, or Lyr? Or perhaps Culain or Liaden?” I paused. “Or perhaps the Covenanters are somewhat sensitive to the power of position, in which case, what happens to be the other leading secular polity? The one with whom they share the closest stellar congruencies?”
“The… Middle Kingdom?”
“Correct. Now… my skepticism is almost without limbi, but most recently the First Advocate of the Middle Kingdom died in circumstances resembling assassination—right after he had delivered a series of addresses severely critical of the theocratic expansionism of the worlds of the Covenant. What might happen if the Middle Kingdom were reputed to obtain some forbidden knowledge, something resembling the Spear of Iblis? To borrow an ancient metaphor, how long before the sabres began to rattle? Again… just over, if you win, information?”
There was silence in the room, although I could hear someone murmur, “It couldn’t happen again…” I refrained from suggesting all too many people, particularly politicians, had said those words, or some variation, over hundreds of centuries, generally to everyone’s regret.
“Now… I’d like each of you to take a moment to reflect I would like each of you to come up with an example from history where information and how it was handled was critical in determining the fate of something—an army, a fleet, a nation, a world.” I held up a hand to forestall the objections. “I know. Once you’re away from Gregory, you can netlink and get a reply, ordered by whatever parameters you suggest The point of this exercise is to develop your judgment so that when you do that in the future, you will have a greater understanding of what that information actually means.”
This time the majority of expressions were those of resignation. I supposed that was an improvement. If they thought what I was requiring was difficult, they hadn’t even considered what was going to be required in the later stages of applied manual mathematics. I’d learned, years earlier, that if I leaned on the students hard in the opening classes, the classes got easier and more rewarding toward the end. Unfortunately, doing so, and maintaining a cheerful demeanor in the process, was arduous in the first weeks of the semester.
I didn’t quite breathe a sigh of relief when fourth period was over and I left the classroom, walking down the ramp to the main level. There were times I could feel my hands tightening, wanting to throttle certain students. The best ones cared for knowledge as a tool, and the worst only sought a degree with marks that would guarantee entry into some multi or another or into the Comity bureaucracy, which was worse, from what I’d seen, than that of academia. I could not help but wish, at times, that I were back teaching in the days prior to the Disapora on Old Earth, where everything had been broadband and without the direct face-to-face student contact that reminded me all too often of how little most of them cared for knowledge itself.
But… that time on Old Earth had been before the discovery of the subtle but far-reaching effects of broadcast energies, even at extraordinarily low power, on neonatal and prematuration mental development The Comity had banned wide-scale public and private broadcast of information and power, and relied on monoptic distribution systems, unlike the more conservative governments, such as the Covenanters and Sunnite Alliance, for whom cost-benefit analyses included individuals with environmentally damaged attention spans. I couldn’t help but snort to myself. My students had short enough attention spans without additional technological assistance in shortening them further. The continent of Gregory, as many other continents on Comity worlds, had even more stringent requirements than the baseline regulations in force throughout the entire Comity of Worlds.