Analog SFF, September 2006 by Dell Magazine Authors

Author:Dell Magazine Authors
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science Fiction
Publisher: Dell Magazines
Published: 2010-12-15T07:07:35.301000+00:00

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A NEW ORDER OF THINGS: CONCLUSION

by Edward M. Lerner

Major catastrophes leave indelible marks on those they touch, but the form of those marks ... depends.

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Illustrated by John Allemand

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Synopsis

For a century and a half, a growing interstellar community has maintained radio contact. A vigorous commerce in intellectual property has accelerated the technical progress of all its members. Travel between the stars seems impossible, but InterstellarNet thrives using an elegant alternative: artificially intelligent surrogates who act as local representatives for distant societies. Quarantine procedures strictly govern the delivery and operational environment of each alien agent, protecting agents and their host networks from subversion by the other.

A radio message shatters this comfortable status quo. The signal comes from a habitat-sized decelerating interstellar vessel, its unannounced trip from Barnard's Star now ninety-nine percent complete. Citing damage en route and low supplies, the starship Victorious goes to Jupiter rather than Earth. The starship's crew are whippet-thin, iridescent-scaled, bipedal carnivores who call themselves Hunters. Humans refer to them as K'vithians, after their home world of K'vith, or, informally, as Snakes (because Barnard's Star lies in the constellation Ophiuchus, the Serpent Holder).

Not only humans are surprised by Victorious’ short-notice arrival. Pashwah, the AI trade agent on Earth for the Hunters, is also taken unawares. So are her internal sub-agents, the representatives of the Great Clans. Pashwah rejects unauthenticated demands from the starship for Great Clan InterstellarNet credits with which to buy supplies, but does transmit to Victorious a translator and human-affairs advisor: a partial copy of herself named Pashwah-qith.

Ambassador Hong-yee Chung heads the United Planets response team, assembled on Callisto. His technical support team includes theoretical physicist Eva Gutierrez, xeno-sociologistKeizo Matsunaga, and Interstellar Commerce Union executive and systems engineer (and long-time claustrophobe) Arthur Walsh.

Most humans have forgotten, or at least forgiven, a half-century-earlier inter-species crisis. Art is not among them. The “Snake Subterfuge” involved a trapdoor hidden in licensed Snake biocomputer technology, potentially compromising most human infrastructure. That crisis ended when Pashwah was convinced that one corporation's extortion plans must not destroy overall inter-species relations. The biocomputer vulnerability has long been removed.

Antimatter is extremely dangerous stuff. The United Planets antimatter production facility—built to stockpile fuel for a nascent interstellar-drive research project—remains top secret, undisclosed, and hidden on Jupiter's distant moon Himalia. Unbeknownst to the UP, patient data mining over decades has revealed Himalia base's secret to both Pashwah and T'bck Fwa, the AI trade agent on Earth for the intelligent species native to Alpha Centauri A.

There is a conspiracy at hand, and it involves T'bck Fwa's patrons: the Unity. Twenty years earlier, the Unity's prototype starship, then named Harmony, was boarded and captured on its final approach to Barnard's Star. Harmony's rightful crew awoke from suspended animation into K'vithian captivity. Members of the Unity, whom humans call the Centaurs, are herbivorous, green-furred, land octopi.

K'choi Gwu, Harmony's ka, or leader by consensus, surreptitiously sabotages the shipboard environmental systems. She knows that only a fresh supply of home-world biochemicals can avert eco-collapse.

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