Grail - Elizabeth Bear [16]
“Barbarians,” Captain Amanda agreed. “It may be impossible to relate to them without conflict.”
“Barbarians is a loaded term,” Danilaw said, “and one I’d prefer to avoid. They’re premodern humans.”
Captain Amanda shook her head, the sharp edge of her glossy black bob moving against the brown skin of her neck. She disagreed, but not strongly enough that she would countermand Danilaw’s command. He watched as she drew a breath and re-aimed the conversation, feeling lucky in the egolessness of this unexpected addition to his team. If she really believed he was misguided, he thought she would intervene more strongly. For now, she’d registered her opinion and was content to trust his judgment.
Instead of arguing, she began providing historical context. “They left Earth, among other reasons, to avoid rightminding. There’s no telling what they are like, after all this time, or what their society has become.”
Danilaw nodded. “At this point, depending on how fast they’ve been moving, we can assume they have undergone at least a few centuries of social development. They were radical Christians, and we’re a millennium out of practice in dealing with people who are locked into anomalous temporal lobe feedback. We just don’t know how to handle the faithful anymore. They may be pacifists or militant, religious or atheistic. Or both, or all four, in Mendelian combinations. At this point, if any significant number have survived for any length of time, they probably no longer represent a homogenous society.
“Worse, approximately one percent of unrightminded humans are psychopaths, and a considerably larger proportion—perhaps as much as thirty percent—are sophipaths, leading to entire societies devoted to upholding untenable ideologies. The pathological brain is no more wired to accept evidence contradictory to its dogma than a flutterby is wired to understand that the image of the rival it attacks in a mirror is its own reflection. The more argument erupts, the more people grow wedded to defending their sophistries, and those who attempt to guide a resolution through compromise are seen as traitors to both groups.”
Gain tapped her fingers on the thick table edge. Her mouth worked. “You make it sound like they are a bunch of sociopaths.”
Captain Amanda shook her head, but Danilaw thought it was more in elaboration than contradiction. “Sociopathy is a relatively minor element. Basically, unrightminded humans are almost incapable of rational thought. If you think of them as small children, without impulse control, any understanding of the subjectivity of emotion, or the ability to compromise, you will not be far wrong. And the crew and passengers of the Kleptocracy-era sublight ships were the worst of the lot—delusional to the point of sacrificing entire ecologies on the altar of faith.”
Danilaw placed his hands on the table’s heavy surface, attracting the attention of Captain Amanda and his cabinet without the need to interrupt. “We might be dealing with a generation ship packed to the portholes with inbred religious fanatics. We might be dealing with an already extant war incoming.”
He had thought the implications of war would silence them for a minute, and the breath-held sigh that orbited the room confirmed his conjecture. It felt … curious to raise such a specter from the past. He might as well threaten them with pogroms or a genocide. Mass enslavement. Mutilations. Withheld medical care, exposure on ice floes, or a child sex trade. The bubonic plague or leprosy.
Yet antique horrors seemed somehow appropriate to a discussion of the antique hulk bearing down upon them. Danilaw could see the effect on each of the cabinet members: Administrator Jesse lowering his chin to his hands to stare moodily into the data displays embedded in the thick crystal tabletop; Administrator Gain rubbing the bridge of her nose with the last two fingers on her right hand, the thumb and the other two splayed across the olive skin of her temple and