They were told about the Ophiuchites in outline form, with animated sequences that never showed a living being. It failed to surprise Javelin, as she later told Lilo, since in the four hundred years of operation of the Line there had never been a scrap of information about the people who were sending it.
According to them, they were a race without a home planet. They were not natives of 70 Ophiuchi, or any other star they could name.
Javelin leaned over and whispered in Lilo's ear, "I wonder. I think they're covering up."
"Could be."
They claimed to have been around a very long time—their exact origins, as they expressed it in the film, "lost in the mists of history." They had records going back seven million years, and in that time there had been no changes in their society.
The film recapped what humans had speculated about Invaders, confirming most of it.
"The beings you know as Invaders are members of what can be called a stratum of intelligence. There are many races in the galaxy similar to them, including a race native to the solar planet Jupiter. These races evolve only on the gas giant planets. They are not tool-using, as we understand the term, but rather are able to manipulate the world around them through methods which are beyond our powers of comprehension. It might be helpful to think of them as telekinetic; they are not, but many of the things they do are similar to what we might do if such a power existed.
"To the Invaders, time is a dimension of substance. How this affects their perception of life we can only guess, and it does us little good to do so. But this fact puts them as far beyond our reach as we would be above the inhabitants of a hypothetical two-dimensional world."
The film went on to confirm what Lilo had been told about dolphins many years ago, that they were the second level of intelligence. Vaffa snorted, and Lilo glanced at her, wondering how she was taking all this. It was believed by the Free Earthers that aquatic mammals were merely animals, that the tales of Invaders coming to Earth to free them were nothing more than folklore.
"Tool-using species, those which evolve on land and in an atmosphere which permits combustion, are the third level of intelligence. We share this level with you, but it should be pointed out that there can be levels within levels. You are not our equals, and may never be. We can talk to you about certain matters, but there are things which you are not ready to understand, and things which we are not ready to reveal. Because now we come to the point of the message, to an explanation of what we are doing here and why we have been communicating with you these many years."
For the first time, a face appeared on the screen. It was a standardized face, handsome but unmemorable, and it took a second for Lilo to realize it was "William." He performed another smile, as unconvincing as the ones Lilo had seen in person.
"As we said earlier, we are a race that has lost contact with its roots. It might be hard for you to understand how that could happen. We can only surmise as to the exact details."
The screen showed an Earth-like planet over William's shoulder. "We must have evolved on a planet much like your own. In the natural course of things, we were pushed off the planet, as you have been. We have watched this process happen thousands of times, and it changes very little from race to race." On the screen, thousands of ships fled the planet and traveled to various moons and asteroids in the system.
"In time, races like ours and yours begin to wonder if they can recapture their home world. They begin to take steps in that direction. Before too long the gas giant beings put a stop to these experiments. As before, they have no trouble doing so." Lilo watched as indefinite shapes swam up from the blue planet to swarm over the others. It was clear what was happening, with no need for narration.
"This is what happened to us. Already evicted from our home world, we were attacked in our places of refuge. As in the original invasion, only a few of us survived by escaping to the nearer stars. This is a fate you face in a short time.
"You are all aware of the increased importance of a group calling itself the Free Earth Party. Your race has quietly accepted its exile for many centuries now. The time has come for dissenting voices to be raised. It is unlikely that anything could be done to suppress them. We can point out to you—and we formally do so now—that the leader of the Free Earthers, Tweed, has been engaged in experiments at Jupiter and in close-Earth orbit which by now have certainly drawn the attention of the Invaders to the humans living in the Eight Worlds. These experiments were misguided, but Tweed is not a monster. We can sympathize with his desire to reassert human domination of the home world. We can only observe that the attempts are futile.
"If it were not Tweed, it would have been someone else. If you succeed in stopping Tweed, there will be others to take his place. We know from experience that when the time for an idea has arrived, there is no use trying to suppress it. Some among you will refuse to believe our warnings and you will go your own way. You will continue to test yourselves against the Invaders. In time, you will be ready to try an invasion of your own. It will fail, and those of you who remain in the Eight Worlds will be annihilated.
"Some of you will escape. Interstellar travel is already in your reach; there just has never been sufficient economic pressure to force you to obtain it. But some of you will believe us, and get away in time. I wish I could tell you that the story ends happily at that point."
Again the picture changed. And changed again. Star after star flicked onto the screen in stylized representation. Many had gas giant planets, and were removed from consideration. Others contained oxygen-breathing races living on airless worlds, as humans were doing now. Only a few had livable worlds with no second-level forms in the oceans, and almost all of those were already inhabited.
"The galaxy is a crowded place," William went on. "Our race discovered this quickly. The search for a place to live is a long and hard one. Some species never manage to find a niche. They become extinct. Others fragment, never able to maintain contact among their far-flung branches. Gradually, they mutate. New races are born in interstellar space. There is a process of evolution going on between the stars more fierce than that which gave birth to your race on your hospitable world, and all the competing species are intelligent. Where interests conflict, no quarter is given. War is too simple a term to describe it. Species can change, combine, absorb one another.
"We call ourselves the Traders. In one sense, we have no single home planet, though there must have been an original race which first evolved our life-style. As we exist now, we are an amalgam of many races which have achieved an equilibrium enabling us to survive."
The Hotline station appeared, turning slowly. A red beam of light emerged from it, and passed near a yellow star.
"The Traders are an organization set up to provide ousted races with the knowledge they will need to survive. We broadcast information, as we have done to you. Over the centuries we have taught you how to manipulate your own genetic structure. For you own reasons, you have not seen fit to change yourselves. You have ignored the bulk of the information we have sent you, information largely concerned with alternatives you face in the alteration of your human DNA. This is an unusual situation; few races we have encountered hesitate to change themselves when the need arises. For some reason, your race has adopted an attitude so powerfully biased against racial change that you cannot even understand the information we send you concerning yourselves.
"You can no longer afford that quirk. You will have to cease defining your race by something as arbitrary as a genetic code, and make the great leap to establishing a racial awareness that will hold together in spite of the physical differences you will be introducing among yourselves. And you must define your race more successfully than you have done so far. Today, you could not tell us what it is that makes one a human being.