Hancock streamed smoke while she stared at the glowing butt she held on the desktop. “They suggested a hypothetical case to me. Imagine you’re right, that Emissary has in fact returned, but she was bearing something terrible.”
“A plague? A swami of vampires? For Pete’s sake, Aurie! And Paul’s, Matt’s, Mark’s, Luke’s, and Jack’s.”
“It could simply be bad news. We’ve taken a lot of things for granted.
For instance, that every civilization technologically advanced beyond us must be peaceful, else they couldn’t have lasted. Which is a logical non sequitur, actually. Suppose Emissary discovered a conquering race of interstellar Huns.”
“If nothing else, I doubt the Others would sit still for that. However, supposing it, why, I’d want to alert my species so we could ready our defenses.”
Hancock gave Brodersen a pale smile. “That was my own offhand example. I admit it’s not very plausible.”
“Then feed me one that is.”
She winced. “All right. Since you mentioned the Others-~-suppose there are none.”
“Huh? Somebody built the T machines and lets us use them.”
“Robots. When the first explorers reached the machine in the Solar System, the thing that spoke to them did not hide that it was only a robot.
We’ve built up our whole concept of the Others from nothing more than what it said. Which is awfully little, Dan, if you stop to think. Suppose Emissary has brought back proof that we’re wrong. That the Others are extinct. Or never existed. Or are basically evil. Or whatever you can imagine. You’re a born heretic. You don’t find any of this unthinkable, do you?”
“N-no. I do find it extremely unlikely. But supposing it for the sake of argument, what then?”
“You could keep your sanity. But you’re an exceptional sort. Could humankind as a whole?”
“What’re you getting at?”
Once more Hancock raised her tormented head to confront him. “You like to read history,” she said, “and as an entrepreneur, you’re a kind of practical politician. Must I spell out for you what it would mean, the shattering of our image of the Others?”
Brodersen’s pipe had died. He resurrected it. “Maybe you must.”
“Well, look, man.” (He was oddly moved by the Americanism. They shared that background, though she came from the Midwest. And belle was born in Pennsylvania, he remembered. Where are you now, belle?) “When they found out Side 12
Anderson, Poul – Avatar, The
what that strange object was, an actual T machine, and heard what the robot had to tell them, it may have been the greatest shock the human race has ever undergone-the whole human race. You had to take Jesus or Buddha on faith, and the faith spread slowly. But here, overnight, was direct proof that beings exist superior to us. Not merely in science and technology -no, what the Voice said indicated they were beyond us in their own selves. Angels, gods, whatever name you care to give. And seemingly benign but indifferent. We were told how to get from Sol to Phoebus and back; we were free to settle Demeter if we chose; the rest was left to us, including how to go onward from here.”
“Yeah, sure,” he encouraged her.
“Probably that was a large part of the shock: the indifference. Suddenly humans realized for a fact that they aren’t anything special in the universe.
But at the same time, there is something to aspire to. No wonder a million cults, theories, self assertions, outright lunacies sprang up. No wonder that after a while, Earth exploded.”
“M-m-m, I wouldn’t blame the Troubles entirely on the revelation,”
Brodersen said. “The balance that’d been reached earlier was almighty precarious. If anything, I think the idea of the Others helped keep everybody from running amuck-helped keep the real planet killer weapons from seeing over-much use-so Earth is still habitable.”
“As you like,” Hancock replied. “The point is, that idea has made a tremendous difference, maybe more than any traditional religion ever did.”
She braced herself to go on: “Okay. Suppose the Emissary expedition learned it’s a false idea. As I suggested, maybe the Others are dead, or moved elsewhere, or less than we think, or worse than we think. Let that news out with no forewarning, let hysterical commentators knock the foundations loose from under hundreds of millions of people, and what happens? The Union isn’t firmly enough grounded that it can survive worldwide mania. And next time around, the planet-killers might well get unleashed.