Contact - Carl Sagan [156]
"If the Nazis had taken over the world, our world, and then developed interstellar spaceflight, wouldn't you have stepped in?"
"You'd be surprised how rarely something like that happens. In the long run, the aggressive civilizations destroy themselves, almost always. It's their nature. They can't help it. In such a case, our job would be to leave them alone. To make sure that no one bothers them. To let them work out their destiny."
"Then why didn't you leave us alone? I'm not complaining, mind you. I'm only curious as to how the Office of the Galactic Census works. The first thing you picked up from us was that Hitler broadcast. Why did you make contact?"
"The picture, of course, was alarming. We could tell you were in deep trouble. But the music told us something else. The Beethoven told us there was hope. Marginal cases are our specialty. We thought you could use a little help. Really, we can offer only a little. You understand. There are certain limitations imposed by causality."
He had crouched down, running his hands through the water, and was now drying them on his pants.
"Last night, we looked inside you. All five of you. There's a lot in there: feelings, memories, instincts, learned behavior, insights, madness, dreams, loves. Love is very important. You're an interesting mix."
"All that in one night's work?" She was taunting him a little.
"We had to hurry. We have a pretty tight schedule."
"Why, is something about to…"
"No, it's just that if we don't engineer a consistent causality, it'll work itself out on its own. Then it's almost always worse." She had no idea what he meant. " `Engineer a consistent causality.' My dad never used to talk like that."
"Certainly he did. Don't you remember how he spoke to you? He was a well-read man, and from when you were a little girl he…I…talked to you as an equal. Don't you remember?"
She remembered. She remembered. She thought of her mother in the nursing home.
"What a nice pendant," he said, with just that air of fatherly reserve she had always imagined he would have cultivated had he lived to see her adolescence. "Who gave it to you?"
"Oh this," she said, fingering the medallion. "Actually it's from somebody I don't know very well. He tested my faith…He…But you must know all this already." Again the grin.
"I want to know what you think of us," she said shortly, "what you really think."
He did not hesitate for a moment. "All right. I think it's amazing that you've done as well as you have. You've got hardly any theory of social organization, astonishingly backward economic systems, no grasp of the machinery of historical prediction, and very little knowledge about yourselves. Considering how fast your world is changing, it's amazing you haven't blown yourselves to bits by now.
That's why we don't want to write you off just yet. You humans have a certain talent for adaptability- at least in the short term."
"That's the issue, isn't it?"
"That's one issue. You can see that, after a while, the civilizations with only short-tem perspectives just aren't around. They work out their destinies also."
She wanted to ask him how he honestly felt about humans. Curiosity? Compassion? No feelings whatever, just all in a day's work? In his heart of hearts-or whatever equivalent internal organs he possessed-did he think of her as she thought of…an ant? But she could not bring herself to raise the question. She was too much afraid of the answer.
From the intonation of his voice, from the nuances of his speech, she tried to gain some glimpse of who it was here disguised as her father. She had an enormous amount of direct experience with human beings; the Stationmasters had less than a day's. Could she not discern something of their true nature beneath this amiable and informative facade? But she couldn't. In the content of his speech he was, of course, not her father, nor did he pretend to be. But in every other respect he was uncannily close to Theodore F. Arroway, 1924-1960, vendor of hardware, loving husband and father. If not for a continuous effort of will,