“The reason why not is that people act irrationally if they think they’re being hunted by something with a brain,” Jane said. “Just like you’re acting now.”
Gutierrez glared at Jane. “I don’t appreciate the suggestion that I’m acting irrationally,” he said.
“Then don’t act irrationally,” Jane said, “because there will be consequences. Remember that you’re under the State Secrecy Act, Gutierrez.” Gutierrez subsided, clearly not satisfied.
“Look,” I said. “If these things are intelligent, then among other things I think we have some responsibilities to them, primarily not wiping them out over what might have been a misunderstanding. And if they are intelligent, then maybe we can find a way to let them know they’d be best off avoiding us.” I motioned for the spearhead; Trujillo handed it over. “They’re using these, for Christ’s sake”—waving the spear—“even with the dumb guns we have to use here, we could probably wipe them out a hundred times over. But I’d like to try not doing that if we can manage it.”
“Let me try to put it a different way,” Trujillo said to Hiram Yoder. “You’re asking us to withhold critical information from our people. I—and I think Paulo here as well—worry that holding back that information makes our people less safe, because our people don’t know the full scope of what they’re dealing with. Look where we are now. We’re all stuffed into a cargo container wrapped in cloaking fabric to keep us hidden, and that’s because our government withheld critical information from us. The Colonial government played us for fools, and that’s why we live like we do now. No offense.”
“None taken,” Yoder said.
“My point is, our government screwed us with secrets,” Trujillo said. “Why would we want to do the same to our people?”
“I don’t want to keep this a secret forever,” I said. “But right now we lack information on whether these people are a genuine threat, and I’d like to be able to get it without people going a little crazy out of fear of Roanoke Neanderthals wandering in the brush.”
“You’re assuming people will go a little crazy,” Trujillo said.
“I’d be happy to be proven wrong,” I said. “But for now let’s err on the side of caution.”
“Inasmuch as we don’t have a choice in the matter, let’s err indeed,” Trujillo said.
“Christ,” Jane said. I noted an unusual tone in her voice: exasperation. “Trujillo, Gutierrez, use your goddamn heads. We didn’t have to tell you any of this. Marta didn’t know what she was looking at when she found Loong; the only one of you who saw it for himself was Yoder, and only because he saw it here. If we hadn’t told you everything right now, you’d never have known. I could have cleaned this all up and not one of you would be the wiser. But we didn’t want that; we knew we had to tell all of you. We’ve trusted you enough to share something we didn’t have to share. Trust us that we need time before you tell the colonists. It’s not too much to ask.”
“Everything I’m telling you is protected by the State Secrecy Act,” I said.
“We have a state?” Jerry Bennett asked.
“Jerry,” I said.
“Sorry,” Jerry said. “What’s up?”
I told Jerry about the creatures and an update about the Council meeting the night before. “That’s pretty wild,” Jerry said. “What do you want me to do?”
“Go through the files we were given about this planet,” I said. “Tell me if you see anything there that gives any indication that the Colonial Union knew anything about these guys. I mean anything.”
“There’s nothing on them directly,” Bennett said. “I know that much. I read the files as I was printing them out for you.”
“I’m not looking for direct references. I mean anything in the files that suggests these guys were here,” I said.
“You think the CU edited out the fact this planet has an intelligent species on it?” Bennett asked. “Why would they do that?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It wouldn’t make any sense. But sending us to a whole different planet than the one we were supposed to be on and then cutting us off entirely doesn’t make any sense either, does it?”
“Brother, you have a point there,” Bennett said, and thought for a moment. “How deep do you want me to go?” he asked.
“As deep as you can,” I said. “Why?”
Bennett grabbed a PDA from his bench and pulled up a file. “The Colonial Union uses a standard file format for all its documents,” he said. “Text, images, audio, they all get poured into the same sort of file. One of the things you can do with the file format is get it to track editing changes. You write a draft of something, you send it to the boss, she makes changes, and the document comes back to you and you can see where and how your boss made the changes. It tracks however many changes get made—stores the deleted material in metadata. You don’t see it unless you turn on version tracking.”