“There’s going to be a hell of a learning curve on that one,” Wilson said, after a minute.
“You are correct,” Schmidt said. “Be glad you don’t have to be the teacher.”
III.
I need to see you, Colonel Abel Rigney sent to Colonel Liz Egan, CDF liaison to the secretary of state. He was heading toward her suite of offices in the Phoenix Station.
I’m a little busy at the moment, Egan sent back.
It’s important, Rigney sent.
What I’m doing right now is also important, Egan returned.
This is more importanter, Rigney sent.
Well, when you put it that way, Egan replied.
Rigney smiled. I’ll be at your office in two minutes, he sent.
I’m not there, Egan returned. Go to the State Department conference complex. I’m in Theater Seven.
What are you doing there? Rigney sent.
Scaring the children, Egan replied.
Three minutes later, Rigney slipped into the back of Theater Seven. The room was darkened and filled with midlevel members of the Colonial Union diplomatic corps. Rigney took a seat at one of the higher rows in the room and looked across at the faces of the people there. They appeared rather grim. Down on the floor of the theater stood Colonel Egan, a three-dimensional display, currently unlit, behind her.
I’m here, Rigney sent to Egan.
Then you can see I’m working, she replied. Shut up and give me a minute.
What Egan was doing was listening to one of the midlevel diplomats drone on in the vaguely condescending way that midlevel diplomats will do when presented with someone they assume is below their station. Rigney, who knew that in her past life Egan had been the CEO of a rather substantial media empire, settled in to enjoy the show.
“I’m not disagreeing that the new reality of our situation is challenging,” the diplomat was saying. “But I’m not entirely convinced that the situation is as insoluble as your assessment suggests.”
“Is that so, Mr. DiNovo,” Egan said.
“I think so, yes,” the diplomat named DiNovo said. “The human race has always been outnumbered out here. But we’ve managed to keep our place in the scheme of things. Small, albeit important details have changed here, but the fundamental issues are largely the same.”
“Are they,” Egan said. The display behind her flashed on, picturing a slowly rotating star field that Rigney recognized as the local interstellar neighborhood. A series of stars flashed blue. “To recap, here we are. All the star systems which have human planets in them. The Colonial Union. And here are all the star systems with other intelligent, star-faring races in them.” The star field turned red as a couple thousand stars switched colors to show their allegiance.
“This is no different than what we’ve always had to work with,” the diplomat named DiNovo said.
“Wrong,” Egan said. “This star chart is misleading, and you, Mr. DiNovo, appear not to realize that. All that red up there used to represent hundreds of individual races, all of whom, like the human race, had to battle or negotiate with any other race they encountered. Some races were stronger than others, but none of them had any substantial strength or tactical advantage over most of the others. There were too many civilizations too close to parity for any one of them to gain a long-term lead in the power struggle.
“That worked for us because we had one advantage other races didn’t,” Egan said. Behind her, one blue star system, somewhat isolated from the main arc of human systems, glowed more brightly. “We had Earth, which supplied the Colonial Union with two critical things: colonists, with which we could rapidly populate the planets we claimed, and soldiers, which we could use to defend those planets and secure additional worlds. Earth supplied the Colonial Union more of each than it would have been politically feasible to provide itself from its own worlds. This allowed the Colonial Union both a strategic and tactical advantage and allowed humanity to come close to upending the existing political order in our region of space.”
“Advantages we can still exploit,” DiNovo began.
“Wrong again,” Egan said. “Because now two critical things have changed. First, there’s the Conclave.” Two-thirds of the formerly red stars turned yellow. “The Conclave, formed out of four hundred alien races which formerly fought among themselves, but now acting as a single political entity, able to enforce its policies by sheer mass. The Conclave will not allow unaffiliated races to engage in further colonization, but it does not stop those races from raiding each other for resources and security purposes