Federations

Octa would never be Alpha, anyway. There’s something in Alpha’s eyes that’s never been repeated—something bright and determined; excited; happy.

It makes sense, I guess. She’s the only one of the Yemennis who chose to go.

• • •

Everybody sent ships. Everybody. We’d never heard of half the planets that showed up. You wonder how amazing the message must be, to get them all up off their asses.

Dorado was in place right away (that whole planet is kiss-asses), which is why they were already on iteration 200 when we got there. Doradoan machines have to pop out a new one every twenty years. (My ancestors did better work on our machines; they generate a perfect Yemenni every fifty years on the dot—except for poor Hex. There’s always one dud.) Dorado spends their time trying to scrounge up faster tech or better blueprints, and we give our information away, because those were the rules in the message, but they just take—they haven’t given us anything since their dictionary.

WX-16 from Sextans-A sent their royal house: an expendable younger son and his wife and a collection of nobles, to keep the bloodline active until the messenger arrived. We don’t deal with them—they think it’s coarse to clone.

NGC 2808 (we can’t pronounce it, and sometimes it’s better not to try) came out of Canis Major and surprised everyone, since we didn’t even think there was life out there. They’ve only been around a few years; Hepta never met them. Their delegate is in stasis. Whenever that poor sucker wakes up he’s going to have some unimpressed ambassadors waiting to meet him. They should never have come with only one.

Xpelhi, who booked it all the way from Cygnus, keep to themselves; their atmosphere is too heavy for people with spines. They look like jellyfish, no mouths, and it took us a hundred and ten years to figure out their language; the dictionary they sent us was just an anatomical sketch. Hepta cracked it because of something Tetra-Yemenni had recorded about the webs of their veins shifting when they were upset. The Xpelhi think we’re a bunch of idiots for taking so long. Which is fine; I think they’re a bunch of mouthless creeps. It evens out.

Neptune sent a think-tank themselves, like they were a real planet and not an Earth colony. They’ve never said how they keep things going on that tiny ship, if it’s cloning or bio-reproduction or what; every generation they elect someone for the job, and I guess whenever Carthage shows up they’ll put forward the elected person and hope for the best. Brave bunch, Neptune. Better them than us.

Centauri was the smartest planet. They sent an AI. You know the AI isn’t sitting up nights worrying itself into early expiration. It’s not bothered by a damn thing.

• • •

Octa makes rounds to all the ships. She’s the only one of them who does it, and it works. Canis Major sent us help once, when we had the ventilation problem on the storage levels. She didn’t ask for help; they’re not obligated to share anything but information. But when she came back, an engineer was with her.

“Trust me, I know everything about refrigeration,” he said, and after the computer had translated the joke everybody laughed and shook his hand.

Octa stood beside him like a mother until they had taken him into the tunnels, and then she tucked her helmet under her arm like she was satisfied.

“They’re good people,” she said to the shuttle pilot, who was making a face. “With no ambassador to keep them going, they must feel so alone. Give them a chance to do good.”

“I’ve got the scan ready,” I said. (I scan her every time she comes back from somewhere else. It’s a precaution. You never know what’s going on outside your own ship.)

“Let’s be quick, then,” she said, already walking down the corridor. “I have to make some notes, and then I need to talk to Centauri.”

(Centauri’s AI is Octa’s favorite ship; she’s there far more often than she needs to be. “Easier to come to decisions when it’s just a matter of facts,” she said.)

Octa did a lot of planning, early on, like she had a special purpose beyond what Alpha had promised—like time was short.

Of all the copies, she was the only one who ever seemed to worry that her clock was ticking down.

• • •

All the Yemennis have been different, which is unavoidable. Even though each one has all the aggregated information of previous iterations without the emotional hangover, it can get messy, like Hepta and Dorado 214. Human error in every copy. It’s the reason her machines all have parameters instead of specs; some things you never can tell. (Poor Hex.)

It’s hard on them, of course—after fifty years it all starts to fall apart no matter what you do, and you have to shut one down and start again—but it’s the best way we have to give her a lifetime of knowledge in a few minutes, and we don’t want Carthage to come when we’re unprepared.

I don’t know what’s in the memories, what they show her each time she wakes. That’s for government guys; techs mind their own business.

• • •