Bill materialized an Adirondack chair—a little anachronistic in my VR, but whatever—and sat down. He sat in silence for a few milliseconds before replying. “Jacques, it’s very likely that Gamma will get hit first. That’s a full planetary ecology, but at least Claude hasn’t found any sentient life. And if the Others head that way, you’ll be able to help. Meanwhile, you need to start working the system and concentrate on building a bunch of Oliver’s dreadnaughts.”
I looked at him and shook my head. “No. Well, yes, but also no. I’ll build dreadnaughts, and I’ll be ready to help Claude, but I’m also going to try to build a couple of colony ships, using Riker’s design. With the experience he’s gained, I should be able to complete them in half the time. If the Others come a’knocking, I want to get some Pav off-planet. I’m not going to sit by while an entire race gets blown away.”
Bill stared at me, frowning, for several milliseconds. Then a smile slowly formed. “I can’t decide if you’re brilliant or a moron. I’ll think about it. It’s definitely a noble idea, Jacques, but maybe not doable. I think we’re due for a moot. Maybe we should run it through the group consciousness.”
I shrugged. The group could talk all they wanted. I knew what I had to do. Bill nodded to me and vanished.
*
Regardless of whether I went with Bill’s plan or mine, the first step was the same. Find resources, build autofactory. This system was metal-heavy, so I didn’t anticipate any kind of problem.
I turned to Guppy, who was waiting at parade rest, as usual. Funny, even several generations and versions away from Heaven-1, Guppy really hadn’t changed. Same fish-headed, deadpan, taciturn sidekick. But he got the job done.
“Guppy, we need autofactories, and soon. Send out everything we have to look for locations. Top priority, and don’t be subtle.”
Guppy nodded and went into command fugue. The ship shuddered as a cloud of scouts and drones took off in all directions. I was glad we were past the days when I’d have to personally fly the system with SUDDAR ranging in all directions. The improvements to SUDDAR and to the AMIs meant that even that part of the process could be delegated.
The order hadn’t included the planetary exploration scouts, as those would be useless for that task. And they were already planetside, anyway. I began to draw out a plan for concerted and organized accrual of information about the Pav.
*
The Pav looked for all the world like giant meerkats. They stood six feet tall or so when upright. They could walk bipedally, but for any kind of distance, they went down on all fours. I was having a little trouble getting used to the sight. Apparently, I’m a bipedalism bigot. Who knew?
The Pav wore clothing, but seemingly less for protection or modesty than for decoration and pockets, except in very cold climates. They were organized into countries or states, and seemed to use forms of government very similar to what humanity had come up with. Even their societies looked familiar. About the only real difference was the almost complete absence of monogamy. Pav seemed to organize into families of up to eight adults, generally evenly divided between genders. This created a somewhat different standard design for residences, but otherwise didn’t seem to have a large effect on society as a whole.
I picked one of the countries that resembled early America, selected one of the larger cities, and settled in for some dedicated research.
The absence of electronic media made for a bit of an inconvenience. However, I did find several bookstores. I managed to sneak in a couple of roamers, late in the evening. They took up positions in the shadows of the rafters and waited for closing time.
Then they started going through books. There wasn’t anything like a children’s section, but there were books for beginning readers, with illustrated alphabets. It took two nights to go through the entire contents of the stores.
Because a significant portion of the population was still illiterate, there were clubs set up where a Pav would read aloud from a book, while patrons ate or drank. Seemed like a very civilized idea to me. I stationed drones in the shadows of every reading club I could find, and made a point of scanning the books that were read at my earliest opportunity.
Within a month, I had a working vocabulary of the language of this country. The inhabitants, who called themselves Zjentfen, spoke a language that they called Tinozj.
Meanwhile, the mining scouts found more than enough resources to get going. As expected, this was a rich system. As with many star systems, an asteroid belt sat to the inside of the first Jovian, and the pickings were beyond easy. I set the printers to producing more printers first. I think we’d all learned a lesson from Bob—early reproduction of printers paid off in the long term.
I would wait for the Bob-moot, and hope that they’d have good suggestions for manufacturing allocations. But if their suggestions didn’t include colony ships to get some Pav off-planet, well, they could go jump.
64. Moot
Bill
March 2207
Epsilon Eridani
The airhorn’s blast brought the usual expressions of appreciation. I couldn’t bring myself to grin at the antics, though. This was going to be a tough meeting. The looks on everyone’s faces showed that they understood this.
“Okay, guys. Let’s summarize. The Others have kicked Mario out of GL 54 and they’re busily stripping the resources. They’ve launched another expedition heading for NN 4285. I’ve expressed concern that Gamma and Delta Pavonis are going to be next. And oh, look, there’s a habitable planet in one system and a civilization in the other.”
I looked at the sea of faces. Everyone was totally focused on my words. “Oliver in Alpha Centauri has come up with a latest and greatest battle-wagon design. He’s too far away to help Jacques and Claude, though, unless the Others hold off a lot longer than I really expect. Jacques is prepared to send reinforcements for Claude if it comes to that.”
“Or the other way around, if necessary.”
I looked for the owner of that comment. It was Jacques. I raised my eyebrow at him in an invitation to continue.
“Delta’s farther away from GL 877, so from that point of view, Gamma is a more likely target. Except that Delta has way higher metallicity, as can be seen plainly in the spectral lines. Maybe the Others will skip the closer system for the better system. They already bypassed Gamma once.”
I closed my eyes for a moment. An undercurrent of muttering passed through the room.
“It’s a point, Jacques. We won’t know until they move. We have full coverage around GL 877 now, so we can see any departures.” I motioned to Garfield, who was standing to one side of the podium. “Garfield will give us a rundown on weapons capability.”
Garfield stepped forward and gave an aborted wave to the crowd. He wasn’t in the mood, either.