I had been vaguely annoyed at having my evening interfered with, and further by being sworn to secrecy by someone like Hubertstein. I hadn't had anything like that done to me before.
As we entered the hall annoyance gave way to curiosity. Not just because of the caliber of those present. With modern communications, any sort of large face-to-face meeting like this was rare. And there was something in the body language of some of those already gathered: Grotius, who called us to order, and Mayor Larsen, who took the podium.
I had met the mayor socially a few times. I had even heard her speak formally before. But never like this. She opened new buildings and presided at civic banquets. She was another mouthpiece for the Nineteen Families. Her speeches were as a rule long on sonorous bromides and short on content. She normally began by working through the titles of the more or less distinguished ones present. This time she did not.
“We have had a warning from Sol system about hostile aliens in space. They have been attacking Sol ships.”
There was a long moment of echoing silence.
“It seems the aliens have no interest in negotiation or communication. They have some kind of gravity control that gives them acceleration and maneuverability which no conventional ship can match. They have matched velocities with ships travelling at .8 lightspeed.”
There was a brief hubbub of exclamations. She waited for it to subside before continuing to state the obvious.
“Of course, this message is more than four years old.”
The hall was on a column, high above nearly all of the city lights, and had a plexidome for a roof. The designers wanted to make the most of Wunderland's sky. Sol was there, easy to pick out as part of a constellation in the new Wunderland zodiac, the Tigripard, made principally from the great “W” of Cassiopeia.
Both Alpha Centauri B and Wunderland's prime moon had set, so that the sky above us was as dark as it ever got. There was the white point I knew was Sol, and Earth was somewhere hanging in that blackness. A blackness that was suddenly strange. Somebody spoke.
“What are these aliens like?”
“Something like big cats. We have pictures.”
The mayor clicked a switch and a holo appeared.
“This was sent back by a colony ship called the Angel's Pencil. It encountered one of them—one of their smaller scout ships, Earth now thinks, and got lucky with a drive mounted in tandem with a big com-laser. It escaped and destroyed the alien ship.” She clicked through other holos. “These pictures have come a long way. They've deteriorated a bit, but you get the general idea. This is the wreckage of the alien.”
She paused. There was a thick, heavy silence as the pictures stood there. Not shock, not horror, I think, not then. We were simply finding ourselves, too suddenly, in the presence of something too large and strange to understand.
“What does a whole ship look like?” That was von Thetoff.
Grotius answered. “We've got that.” The holo changed and flowed into a red near-ovoid thing. “But I guess that if you see something coming at you at .8 light and making inertialess turns, you won't have to ask.”
There was another dead silence in the hall. Whatever we had been expecting, it was nothing like this. Then a score of voices began to rise. The mayor held up her hand.
Another figure stood. I didn't know him, but he looked like a Herrenmann gone physically somewhat to seed and certainly to low-gravity fat. (That was one thing about Wunderland that irked us then: with workouts we could be the handsomest people in the universe but in later life without frequent sessions at the gym most of us tended to become either elongated stick figures or balloons. No world was perfect, some of us thought.)
“Do Tiamat and the Serpent Swarm know of this?”
“They will have got the messages as we did.”
“Have you contacted them?”
“Not yet. Why?”
“Might it not be a good idea. This is surely going to mean some… special executive action.”
“That is the purpose of tonight's meeting.” said the mayor. “To decide what action.” She looked us up and down and there was something curiously hesitant in her manner.
To decide what action! They don't know what they're doing! I realized suddenly, looking from one blank and bewildered face to another. They're making it up as they go along. A sudden, unexpected moment of panic for me, and then a reflection that was somehow calming: Well, the situation is pretty unprecedented. And then I thought suddenly and quite certainly: She's lying. They're all lying. And I remembered my thought of the previous evening of how busy the spaceport had become.
I suppose I'm at the making of history, I decided a few moments later. This could be a late night. The next question, when it came, seemed almost bizarrely irrelevant:
“What do they call them?” Instead of telling the questioner not to waste everyone's time, the mayor answered seriously.
“The aliens? 'Dinofelids' was one idea, but apparently there's already a Dinofelis among Earth's fossils. Not something one would have wanted to meet, by all accounts. The Angel's Pencil crew officially named them Pseudofelis sapiens, and the Earth term now seems to be Pseudofelis sapiens ferox. Bit of a mouthful. However, computers have translated some of their script, and it seems they call themselves”—she had difficulty in pronouncing it—“Kzin.”
Another man on his feet now amid the flurry of whisperings. Without knowing his name I recognized him as a politician. One of van Roberts's allies in the Progressive Democratic Party who had weakened the grip of the Herrenmanner on city politics and were moving to weaken it in the countryside.
“You say this will mean special executive action. What exactly does that mean? More power for you and your friends?”
“It's obvious we'll have to do a number of things. It may mean radical measures. Obviously government must have appropriate powers to deal with an emergency! We are looking at questions of military security.”
“Military!” Another hubbub. It was a bizarre word.
Van Roberts was on his feet: “This is all very convenient for you. What do we know of the bona-fides of this message?”
“You know what interstellar communication costs. Who do you think would send it but the authorities?”
“You mean the precious ARM! Since when have they been friends of democracy? And how do we know the message is real at all?”
Quite obviously people did not want to believe in such a message. There were sudden shouts from all over the halclass="underline" “Yes! how do we know it's real!” I saw some Herrenmanner joining in. Somebody should be taking this in hand, I thought. And then I thought: Who is there to take it in hand? Us. Only us. I think it was easier for us than it would have been for Flatlanders to take it in, but a lot of us were stunned, all the same.
“Excuse me!” That was van Roberts again. He pointed to a date at the corner of one picture. “These are more than four years old. Much more.”
“They were taken light-years from Earth. Then, apparently, they were dead-filed for years. It was thought they were some sort of hoax. About the time it was decided that they weren't, other ships began disappearing. Closer to Earth.”
“And if these aliens are real,” someone was saying, “when can we expect them here?”
There was a moment's silence. It was, I thought, one of those stupid and meaningless questions somebody had to ask. The mayor replied:
“Well, obviously, they could be here… now.”