Stargods by Ian Douglas (best summer books TXT) 📕

“The life-giver dies when the young organisms eat their way out.”

“They give us death.”

“And this is a good thing?”

The Nungie hesitated.

Truitt pushed ahead. “You want this to happen? How do you feel about that?”

The Nungiirtok’s lower jaw unfolded suddenly, but he didn’t attack the transparency this time. He stood there, the hingedappendage folding and unfolding rapidly. Flaps in the hide beneath the eyestalks pulsed open and shut rapidly as it breathed.

“Cognitive dissonance,” Truitt explained.

“If you say so.”

“Mavtok is actually being forced to think about some of his opinions and is finding that much of what he always took for grantedjust doesn’t make sense, at least in this new context. He’s finding himself trapped between new information and belief setsthat have always kept him safe.”

“Kept him safe? How?”

“The opinions and beliefs, the religions and superstitions, that ‘cultural baggage’ I mentioned—we use all of that as a kindof protective wall. It keeps the good guys—us and people like us—safe inside, while it keeps out the scary, threatening guys—anyonewith ideas different from ours, you see?”

“You put it that way, it’s a wonder any of us can ever change our minds . . . about anything.”

“The trick is that people who feel good about themselves are a lot more likely to be open-minded, to accept new ideas.”

“Dr. Truitt is correct,” another voice said in Gray’s mind.

“Hey, Konstantin. You’ve been listening in?”

“Of course. Our prisoners may offer our best hope for resolving the war between Humankind and the Nungiirtok.”

“I thought the war was resolved,” Gray pointed out.

“We have negotiated a peace with the Sh’daar,” Konstantin replied, “but individual Sh’daar Collective species remain hostile.These twenty-three Nungiirtok were still at war with humans on Osiris, so far as they were concerned. After decades of warfare, most other species within the Collective do not trust us. Their views of how thingswork are at such direct odds with ours, true understanding may not be possible. They and we have become polarized, diametricallyopposed and unthinkingly hostile.”

Gray thought about the anti-alien xenophobe groups back on Earth and had to agree. At this point, some humans would never change their minds about friendship with other species. Hell, Earth was filled with mutually hostile and polarizing groups right now, and every one had its own pet enemy, its own ideological target. Where once nations had hated one another, now it was small and splintered social groups at one another’s throats. Earth was teetering at the brink of anarchy as never before.

So what was the answer—flattering them all until they agreed to get along? Somehow, Gray didn’t think that it was that simple.

“The situation on Earth is extremely dangerous,” Konstantin continued. Damn, had it been reading his mind again? “That remainsa different problem. But for the Nungiirtok, we may be able to combine Dr. Truitt’s psychological approach with some technology.”

“What technology?”

“The Nungiirtok, like most humans, possess in-head hardware, combining memory-enhancement, virtual reality, math coprocessors,and communication. The system is quite different from human technology, but we already have an electronic bridge—our translationprogram. I created it with an eye to providing a kind of back door into Nungiirtok neural implant technology.”

“That,” Gray said, “is downright scary.”

“Scary or not, the technology will allow me to create an electronic virus, one that carries certain memes.”

“Like you did a few years ago against the Pan-Europeans.”

“Something like that. In that instance, the meme we spread was one of revulsion against war and an irresponsible leadershipdrunk with power. In this case . . .”

“What? What are you going to do?”

“We will let them see reality.”

Gray’s eyebrows shifted higher. “So here we are changing Nungie culture to something we approve of. Pretty arrogant.”

“As with the Pan-Europeans,” Konstantin said, “this is a case where reality, our view of reality, is a matter of survival.”

Chapter Eighteen

25 April, 2429

Command Bunker

New White House

Washington, D.C., USNA

1501 hours, EST

President Walker glowered at the holographic images around him. Thirty-seven world leaders had come on-line at Walker’s request,at his demand, and their projections filled the command bunker’s main briefing area. Thirty-seven nations out of over two hundred in theworld today. It was a miserable showing. Walker thought about the long campaign to create a single, one-world government,and how many times the effort had failed. Humans, it seemed, were simply too fractious, too territorial, too xenophobic tounite.

Humankind, he thought, was paying the price now.

“We will never surrender to these invading monsters!” the leader of South India said, and several of the other images around her agreed.

The voice of Jamyang Kyab, the leader of Tibet, gently mocked her. “South India, of course, has the absolute right to commit national suicide,” he said. “But perhaps the rest of us should be free to make up our own minds?”

This, Walker thought, was getting them nowhere. The second Nungiirtok rock had missed the synchorbital ring, but fallen intothe Atlantic Ocean just north of the equator. At this moment, hundred-meter tsunamis were sweeping toward the African andSouth American coasts; in a few hours, the wave would hit the Verrazzano-Narrows Dam south of Manhattan, and it was entirelypossible that the reclamation efforts there would be swept away.

Contact had already been lost with the Republic of Cape Verde. Senegal, The Gambia, and Guinea-Bissau would be next, probablywithin the next ten minutes, while northern Brazil would not be far behind.

As the argument on the conference room floor continued, Walker opened private channels with three of the leaders present:Pan-Europe, the Russian Federation, the Chinese Hegemony. He could see their faces within the open windows in his mind.

“Gentlemen and madam,” he said. “We four have ships actually involved in the fight right now. I think it’s obvious that thedecision rests with us.”

Renee Kurtz, the current president of the Pan-European Union, nodded. “It’s as you say, Mr. President,” she said. “If we donot surrender, there will be nothing left.”

“Perhaps the forces you have on the alien planetoids will yet prevail,” Chairman Zhao Zhanshu said. “We should give them theirchance.”

“Easy for you to say, Mr. Chairman,” Kurtz replied. “You’re on the other side of the planet! You don’t have giant tsunamisrolling