Contact - Carl Sagan [83]
"I recognize that Academician Baruda has raised an important and sensitive issue," Sukhavati began, "and it would be foolish to dismiss the Trojan Horse possibility carelessly. Given most of recent history, this is a natural idea, and I'm surprised it took so long to be raised. However, I would like to caution against such fears. It is unlikely in the extreme that the beings on a planet of the star Vega are exactly at our level of technological advance. Even on our planet, cultures do not evolve in lockstep. Some start earlier, others later. I recognize that some cultures can catch up at least technologically. When there were high civilizations in India, China, Iraq, and Egypt, there were, at best, iron age nomads in Europe and Russia, and stone age cultures in America.
"But the differences in the technologies will be much greater in the present circumstances. The extraterrestrials are likely to be far ahead of us, certainly more than a few hundred years farther along-perhaps thousands of years ahead of us, or even millions. Now, I ask you to compare that with the pace of human technological advancement in the last century.
"I grew up in a tiny village in South India. In my grandmother's time the treadle sewing machine was a technological wonder. What would beings who are thousands of years ahead of us be capable of? Or millions? As a philosopher in our part of the world once said: The artifacts of a sufficiently advanced extraterrestrial civilization would be indistinguishable from magic.'
"We can pose no threat to them whatever. They have nothing to fear from us, and that will be true for a very long time. This is no confrontation between Greeks and Trojans, who were evenly matched. This is no science fiction movie where beings from different planets fight with similar weapons. If they wish to destroy us, they can certainly do so with or without our coopera-"
"But at what cost?" someone interrupted from the floor. "Don't you see? That's the point. Baruda is saying our television broadcasts to space are their notice that it's time to destroy us, and the Message is the means. Punitive expeditions are dear. The Message is cheap."
Ellie could not make out who had shouted out this intervention. It seemed to be someone in the British delegation. His remarks had not been amplified by the audio system, because again the speaker had not been recognized by the Chair. But the acoustics in the conference hall were sufficiently good that he could be heard perfectly well. Der Heer, in the Chair, tried to keep order. Abukhirnov leaned over and whispered something to an aide.
"You think there is a danger in building the machine," Sukhavati replied. "I think there is a danger in not building the machine. I would be ashamed of our planet if we turned our back on the future. Your ancestors"-she shook a finger at her interlocutor-"were not so timid when they first set sail for India or America."
This meeting was getting to be full of surprises, Ellie thought, although she doubted whether Clive or Raleigh were the best role models for present decision making. Perhaps Sukhavati was only tweaking the British for past colonial offenses. She waited for the green speaker's light on her console to illuminate, indicating that her microphone was activated.
"Mr. Chairman." She found herself in this formal and public posture addressing der Heer, whom she had hardly seen in the last few days. They had arranged to spend tomorrow afternoon together during a break in the meeting, and she felt some anxiety about what they would say. Oops, wrong thought, she thought.
"Mr. Chairman, I believe we can shed some light on these two questions-the Trojan