Kyle exhaled. “You spent all this time listening to me go on about my troubles with Becky.”
Stone shrugged again. “I thought you were guilty.”
Kyle’s voice took on a sharp edge. “I told you I wasn’t.”
“I know, I know. But if you were guilty, well, then you were a worse bastard than me, see? You’re an okay guy, Kyle—I figured if a guy like you could do something that bad, well, then maybe it excused what I did a bit. Just something that sometimes happens, you know?”
“Christ, Stone.”
“I know. But I won’t ever do it again.”
“Recidivism—”
“No. No, I’m different now. I don’t know what it is, but I’ve changed. Something in me has changed.” Stone reached into his pocket, pulled out his SmartCash card. “Look, I’m sure you don’t want to see me anymore. I’m glad it worked out between you and your daughter. Really, I am.” He rose to his feet.
“No,” said Kyle. “Stay.”
Stone hesitated for a few moments. “You sure?”
Kyle nodded. “I’m sure.”
On Tuesday morning, Heather was struggling up the steps to Mullin Hall, her arms full of books she wanted to have handy at Kyle’s lab for tomorrow’s press conference. The humidity was mercifully low today, and the sky overhead was a pristine cerulean bowl.
Just in front of her was a familiar-looking broad back wearing a Varsity Blues jacket with the name “Kolmex” emblazoned on it—the same dumb lug who had let the door to Sid Smith slam in Heather and Paul’s faces two weeks ago.
She thought about calling out to him, but to her astonishment, when he reached the door, he stopped, looked around to see if anyone was coming, caught sight of Heather, opened the door and held it for her.
“Thank you,” she said as she passed the fellow.
He smiled at her. “My pleasure. Have a nice day.”
The funny thing, Heather thought, was he sounded like he really meant it.
41
We Are Not Alone.
It was the title of the book that had first raised public awareness about the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. The book, by Walter Sullivan, former science editor of The New York Times, was published in 1964.
Back then, it had been a bold assertion, based on theory and conjecture but no actual evidence—there was not a scintilla of proof that we really weren’t alone in the universe.
Humanity went about its business much as it always had. The Vietnam War continued, as did apartheid. Rates of murder and other violent crimes continued to rise.
We Are Not Alone.
The slogan was revived again for the release of Steven Spielberg’s film Close Encounters of the Third Kind in 1977. The public freely embraced the idea of life in the universe, but still there was no real evidence, and humanity continued along as it always had. The Gulf War happened, and so did the massacre in Tiananmen Square.
We Are Not Alone.
The words received new currency in 1996 when the first compelling evidence of life off Earth was unveiled: a meteorite from Mars that had conked no one on the head in the Antarctic. Extraterrestrial life was now more than just the stuff of dreams. Nonetheless, humanity behaved as usual. Terrorists blew up buildings and airplanes; “ethnic cleansings” continued unabated.
We Are Not Alone.
The New York Times, bringing it full circle, used that headline in 144-point type on the front page of the July 25, 2007, edition—the day the first public announcement of the receipt of radio signals from Alpha Centauri was made. We knew for a fact that life—intelligent life—existed elsewhere. And yet, humanity’s ways did not change. The Colombian War happened, and on July 4, 2009, the Klan massacred two thousand African Americans across four states in a single night.
But then, just over ten years after the signals were first received, a different thought echoed through the fourspace overmind and percolated down into the threespace realm of its individual extensions.
I Am Not Alone.
And things did change.
“Journalists are often accused of reporting only bad news,” said Greg McGregor, anchoring the Newsworld telecast from Calgary on Tuesday evening.
Kyle and Heather sat on their living-room couch, his arm around her shoulders, watching.
“Well,” continued McGregor, “if you saw our newscast from the top this evening, you’ll have noted that today we had nothing but good news to report. Tensions have eased in the Middle East—as recently as a week ago, U.S. secretary of state Bolland was predicting another outbreak of war there, but today, for the second day in a row, the cease-fire remains unbroken.
“Here in Canada, a new Angus Reid instant opinion poll shows that eighty-seven percent of Québecois want to remain part of Canada—a twenty-four-percent increase over the response to the same question just one month ago.
“There have been no murders reported in Canada for the past twenty-four hours. No rapes, either. Statistics from the United States and the European Community seem similar.
“In eighteen years on the job, this reporter has never seen such a run of really nice news. It’s been a pleasure being able to share it all with you.” He tipped his head, as he did each night, and gave his standard sign-off: “And another day passes into history. Good night, Canada.”
The ending theme music began to play. Kyle picked up the remote and clicked the TV off.
“It is nice, isn’t it?” said Kyle, leaning back in the couch. “You know, I’ve noticed it myself. People giving up seats on the subway, helping others, and just being polite. It must be something in the air.”
Heather shook her head. “No, it’s not something in the air—it’s something in space.”
“Pardon?” said Kyle.
“Don’t you see? Something completely new has happened. The overmind knows that it’s not alone. I told you: contact has been made between the human overmind and the overmind of Alpha Centauri. And the human overmind is experiencing something it’s never experienced before.”
“Astonishment, yes. You said that.”
“No, no, no. Not astonishment; not anymore. It’s experiencing something else, something entirely new to it.” Heather looked at her husband. “Empathy! Until now, our overmind had been utterly incapable of empathy; there simply was no one else for it to identify with, no one else whose situation, feelings, or desires it could come to understand. Since the dawn of consciousness, it has existed in absolute isolation. But now it’s touching and being touched by another overmind, and suddenly it understands something other than selfishness. And since the overmind understands that, all of us—all the extensions of that mind—suddenly understand it, too, in a deeper, more fundamental way than we’ve ever understood it before.”
Kyle considered. “Empathy, eh?” He drew his mouth into a frown. “Cheetah kept asking about things that demonstrated man’s inhumanity to man. He said it seemed to be a test—and wanted to know who was administering the test. I guess the answer was that we were—we, the human collective, trying to understand, trying to make sense of it all.”
“But we couldn’t,” said Heather. “We were incapable of true, sustained empathy. But now that we’re in contact with another overmind, we understand what it means to acknowledge and accept the other. What man could rape a woman if he really put himself in her place? The fundamental of war has always been dehumanizing the enemy, seeing him as a soulless animal. But who could go to war knowing that the other guy is a parent, a spouse, a child? Knowing that he or she is simply trying to get through life, just like you are? Empathy!”
“Hmm,” said Kyle. “I guess Greg McGregor is going to be reporting news like that every night from now on. Oh, there’ll still be hurricanes and floods—but there will also be more people pitching in to help out whenever something like that happens.” He paused, considering. “Do you suppose this is first contact for the Centaurs, too? Alpha Centauri is the closest star to the sun, but the reverse is also true—there’s no b
right star closer to Alpha C than Sol. Surely we’re their first contact, too.”
“Maybe,” said Heather. “Or maybe the Centaurs aren’t native to Alpha Centauri. Maybe they’re from somewhere else, and have made it only as far as Alpha Centauri in their expansion. Maybe there already was life on a planet of Alpha Centauri, and the two races have already made friends. There could be a galactic overmind forming, expanding outward from whatever world first acquired space flight.”
Kyle thought about this. “Darn clever, these Centaurs,” he said.
“How do you mean?”
“They get us to be empathetic as a race before they arrive in the flesh.” He paused. “Unless, of course, they’re coming to take us over and want to soften us up first.”
Heather shook her head. She had been there when the contact had been made; she knew. “No, it can’t be that. First, of course, anybody who has interstellar flight could surely wipe this planet clean of life from orbit without ever worrying about whether we’d been ‘softened up’ or not. And second, now that the two overminds are in contact, real communication will doubtless ensue—and we both know that there are no secrets in psychospace.”
Kyle nodded.
Heather looked at him, then: “We should get to bed. Tomorrow’s a big day, with the press conference and all.”
“Things are going to change,” said Kyle. “The world . . .”
Heather smiled as she reflected on the peace she’d made with her own past, on the peace Kyle had made with his, and on all the wonders that they’d seen. “The world,” she said, “will be a better place.” But then her smile grew mischievous. “Still,” she said, a twinkle in her eye, “let’s take full advantage of our last night of real privacy.” She took Kyle’s hand and led him upstairs.
Epilogue
Two Years Later: September 12, 2019
The spaceship had been detected four months ago. Until then, its fusion exhaust had been lost in the glare of Alpha Centauri, now some 4.3 light-years behind it. The exhaust was pointed directly at Earth: the ship was braking, tail-first. It had apparently accelerated away from Alpha Centauri for six years and had now been decelerating for another six.
And today, at long last, it would reach its destination.
It was sad, in a way; it was now fifty years since Neil Armstrong first set foot upon the Moon, but Earth had no crewed spaceships that could go even that far anymore—even the knowledge that there was life elsewhere hadn’t revitalized the space program. Although the Ptolemy probe in the outer solar system had managed to send back a few grainy shots of the alien ship, humanity’s first clear look at it would be when it arrived at Earth.
No one was quite sure what would happen next. Would the aliens take up orbit around the planet? Or would they land somewhere—and if so, where? Were there indeed any aliens on board, or was the ship just an automated scout?
At last the ship did enter orbit around Earth. It was a fragile-looking affair, almost a kilometer long—clearly meant only for space travel. All six of the United States’s space shuttles had been launched before the arrival, one a day for the last six days. And two Japanese shuttles, plus three European ones and one from Iran had gone up as well; more human beings were now in orbit around Earth than ever before.
The alien ship was in low-Earth orbit—a good thing, too; most of the shuttles couldn’t manage much more. Everyone waited for the big ship to deploy some sort of landing craft, but it never did. Radio messages were exchanged—for the very first time, human beings sent a reply to the Centaurs. The sad truth was that Earth had about twice the surface gravity of the Centaur homeworld. Although the beings aboard the starship—there were 217 individuals on it—had come forty-one trillion kilometers, the last two hundred represented a gulf they could never cross.
Earth’s international space station had grown over the years, but there was no way for the starship to dock with it; the aliens were going to have to space-walk over. They moved their ship until the gap between it and the closest point on the station was about five hundred meters.
Every camera aboard the station and the flotilla of shuttles was trained on the alien ship, and every television set down on the planet was watching the drama unfold; for once, all of humanity was tuned into the same program.
The alien space suits gave no hint of what the creatures within might look like; they were perfectly spherical white bubbles, with robotic arms extending from them, and a mirrored-over viewing strip that ran horizontally just above the sphere’s equator. Five of the aliens left the mothership and were propelled by jets of compressed gas across the gulf toward an open cargo bay on the space station.
There was a possibility that the aliens might not remove their suits even after they reached the station—gravity might not be the only thing that differed between the two worlds. Indeed, it was possible that the aliens had a taboo against showing their physical form to others—that had been suggested more than once when their original radio messages failed to contain any apparent representation of their appearance.
The first of the spheres came into the cargo bay. Its occupant used its jets to dampen most of its forward movement, but it still had to reach out with one multijointed mechanical hand to stop itself against the far bulkhead. Soon the other four spheres were safely motionless inside, too. They floated quietly, evidently waiting. The cargo door began to close behind them, very, very slowly—no threat, no trap; if the aliens wanted to leave, they could easily jet out of the bay before the door finished shutting.
But the spheres did not move, although one of them rotated around to watch the door coming down.
Once the bay was sealed, air was pumped in. The aliens had to have done spectroscopic studies of Earth’s atmosphere as they approached it; they must know that the gases entering the chamber now were the same as those that made up the planet’s air, rather than some attempt to poison them with deadly fumes.
The scientists aboard the station had reasoned that if the alien world had a lower gravity, it probably also had a lower atmospheric pressure. They stopped adding air at about seventy kilopascals.
The aliens seemed to find all this suitable. The robotic arms on one of the spheres folded back on themselves so that they could touch the sphere’s surface. The sphere split in two at its equator, and the hands, which were anchored to the bottom half, lifted away the top part.
Inside was a Centaur.
The actual Centaur looked nothing like its namesake from human mythology. It was jet-black in color, insectile in construction, with giant green eyes and great iridescent wings that unfolded as soon as the being had drifted out of its space suit.
It was absolutely gorgeous.
Soon the other four egglike suits cracked open, disgorging their occupants. Exoskeleton color ranged from solid black through silver, and eye color varied from green through purple through cyan. The unfolding of the wings was apparently the Centaur equivalent of a stretch—no sooner had they been deployed than the beings folded them up again.
A door opened in the cargo bay, and the designated choice for first contact drifted into the room. And who better for that than the person who had first figured out what the Centauri radio signals were meant to convey? Who better than the person who had first detected the presence not just of humanity’s overmind, but of the Centaur overmind as well? Who better than the individual who had mediated the first contact between the overminds, preventing the human one from panicking?
All five aliens turned to look at Heather Davis. She held out her hands, palms up, and smiled at the extraterrestrials. The Centaur who had first opened its suit unfolded its wings again, and with a couple of gentle beats, set itself moving toward her. A backward movement of the wings brought it to a stop about a meter from Heather. She reached out an arm toward the alien, and the alien unfurled a long, thin limb toward her. The limb looked fragile; Heather did nothing more than let it tap against the palm of her hand.
A dozen years ago, the Centaurs had reached
out with their radio messages.
Two years ago, their overmind had made contact with the human overmind. Perhaps that had been the more important event, but still, there was something wonderful and poignant and real about the actual touching of hands.
“Welcome to Earth,” said Heather. “I think you’re going to find it a very nice place.”
The alien, who couldn’t yet understand English, nonetheless tipped its angular head, as if in acknowledgment.
There were uncountable other humans plugged into Heather’s mind, enjoying it all from her perspective. And, no doubt, all that the aliens were seeing was propagating back through their overmind, across the light-years to Alpha Centauri, where it would be experienced by everyone there.
Doubtless humans would soon be trying to do the Necker transformation into a Centaur’s mind—indeed, some of those riding within Heather might be trying it right now.
She wondered if it would work.
But then again, it didn’t really matter.
Even without that capability, Heather was sure that her species, which at last now deserved its name of humanity, was going to have no trouble seeing the other person’s point of view.
About the Author
Robert J. Sawyer is Canada’s only native-born full-time science-fiction writer. He is the author of nine previous novels, including The Terminal Experiment, which won the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America’s Nebula Award for Best Novel of the Year, and Starplex, which was a Nebula and Hugo Award finalist.
Rob’s books are published in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Japan, Poland, Russia, and Spain. He has won an Arthur Ellis Award from the Crime Writers of Canada, five Aurora Awards (Canada’s top honor in SF), five Best Novel HOMer Awards voted on by the 30,000 members of the SF&F Literature Forums on CompuServe, the Seiun Award (Japan’s principal SF award), Le Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire (France’s top honor in SF), and the Premio UPC de Ciencia Ficción, Spain’s top SF award, and the world’s largest cash prize for SF writing (which was awarded to Rob for a portion of this novel, Factoring Humanity).