I have all the time you want to give me, I thought, and let that just sit there, between us.
And then Ocampo started talking. Talking about humanity, and about the Colonial Union. He gave me a brief history of the Colonial Union, and about how its first encounters with intelligent alien species—all of which went badly for the Colonial Union, and almost destroyed the young political system—permanently marked it as aggressive and warlike and paranoid.
He talked about the decision to sequester away the planet Earth, to intentionally slow its political and technological progress in order to make it essentially a farm for colonists and soldiers, and how that gave the Colonial Union the raw human resources it needed to become a power among intelligent species far more quickly than any of the other species expected, or could deal with.
He explained how the Conclave, the union of hundreds of intelligent species, was formed in part because of the Colonial Union—how its leader, General Tarsem Gau, realized that more than any other species or government, the Colonial Union had a template that would eventually lead to domination of the local space—and to the genocide, intentional or otherwise, of other intelligent species. That creating the Conclave was the only solution: that the Colonial Union would either be absorbed into the Conclave as one voice among many, or counteracted because the Conclave would be too large for the Colonial Union to take on.
He explained how this was a great idea in theory—but in reality the Colonial Union had nearly destroyed the Conclave once, and only General Gau’s personal decision to spare the Colonial Union kept all the species of the Conclave from falling on it like a train bearing down on a rodent on its track. He explained that once Gau was gone, the Colonial Union was a target—and all of humanity with it.
And he explained—only generally, only in vague terms—how he, a few trusted allies, and a few alien races who were presumed to be enemies of humanity but were in fact merely enemies of the Colonial Union thought there was a way to save humans as a species even if the Colonial Union should fall. And by “should” it was understood what was meant was “would,” and that, in fact, the Colonial Union wouldn’t so much fall as be pushed, and in a particular direction.
All of this Ocampo expounded, with himself in the role as a reluctant catalyst or fulcrum for history, someone who wished it were not necessary to give the Colonial Union that push, but one who, recognizing it was necessary, nevertheless stood up—regretfully, yes; heroically, perhaps?—to administer the push, in the service of the species.
In short: what an asshole.
Which is not what I said.
Which is not what I even came close to allowing myself to think at the time.
What I said and what I was thinking during all this were variations of one simple phrase, that phrase being do go on.
I wanted him to talk, and talk, and then talk some more.
Not because he was the first human I had spoken to since that day on the Chandler. I didn’t like him that much, although of course I didn’t want him to know that.
I wanted him to think I was interested and curious in what he had to say, and thought as well of him as I could under the circumstances.
I wanted him to think I thought his thoughts were golden. Pure nuggets of humble wisdom. Do go on.
I wanted him to think this because while he was talking to me, he was connected to the Chandler. His PDA, more specifically, was connected to the Chandler.
And while he was talking to me, I was going through and copying into the Chandler’s storage every single file he had on his PDA.
Because here was my problem: No matter what sort of free run I had with the Chandler’s system, I was trapped there.
I couldn’t get into the system that Control used to connect to the Chandler. Someone would notice that the Chandler was trying to address the system. They could log every request. And they would eventually figure out who was doing that. And then I would be screwed.
Besides that, whatever system there was would be entirely alien. I had suspected and Ocampo unwittingly confirmed that wherever we were, it was someplace controlled and run by the Rraey. I knew nothing about Rraey computing systems, or their design, or their programming languages. There was likely to be a computing shell of some sort in which human-designed operating systems could run, and some software that could port documents created on either side to the other.
But full access to the system? That wasn’t going to happen. I didn’t have the time or resources to get up to speed if it did, and I would be found out and probably tortured and then maybe killed if I tried.