Identity Theft and other stories (collection)

If nepotism drives you as a species, if protecting those who are most closely related to you is paramount, if forming allegiances based on familial lines is at the core of your society, then how can you ever be trusted in relationships with beings that are alien to you? Yes, it seemed all life, at least in this neighborhood of the galaxy, was based on DNA, and therefore was quite possibly related in its distant, distant past. But, then again, all creatures on any given world also share a common ancestor. And yet—

And yet these benighted souls of the third planet still chose genetic favoritism; indeed, they were so convinced of its righteousness, convinced that it was the proper order of things, that they didn’t even attempt to disguise it by giving a false answer. Those poor creatures, prisoners of their own biology …

Curling-Sixth-Finger was already on the intercom, calling down to the propulsion room, telling Fist-Held-Sideways to engage the fusion motors. Palm-Up-Middle-Fingers-Splayed felt an invisible hand pressing down upon him, driving him to the floor, as the great engines came to life. As he and Curling-Sixth-Finger settled to deck plates, Palm-Up-Middle-Fingers-Splayed looked up at her.

“I’ve got no choice,” she signed. “A species driven by selfish genes is too dangerous to be allowed to live.”

Palm-Up-Middle-Fingers-Splayed slowly, sadly spread his fingers in agreement. The Ineluctable would dive down into the plane of the solar system, into the cometary belt just past the orbit of the eighth planet, and it would launch a series of comets on trajectories that would send them sailing in for eventual rendezvous with the third planet.

Oh, it would take time—thousands of years—before the impacts. But eventually they would strike, and two skyswoopers would be felled with a single rock: the galaxy would have one less selfish species to worry about, and, with most of its native life wiped out, there would be room—a whole new world!—to move billions and billions of members of to.

Palm-Up-Middle-Fingers-Splayed was glad that Fist-Held-Sideways and the other females were no longer in estrus. He didn’t feel like making love, didn’t feel like making babies.

Not now. Not right now.

But, of course, he would want to do that again the next time the females came into heat. He, too, he reflected, was a prisoner of biology— and for one brief moment, that shared reality made him feel a bond with the aliens that now, sadly, he would never meet.

The Right’s Tough

For some reason, I get asked to write stories for anthologies that are completely contrary to my own personal philosophy and politics: I’m in Future War, but I’m a pacifist; I’m in the Libertarian anthology Free Space, but I’m a Canadian-style socialist; and, with this piece, I appeared in Visions of Liberty, an anthology from Baen Books about how the world would be a better place without governments of any kind.

I finished this story in 2001, ironically on US income-tax day—April 15. The book was to have been published in 2002, but then the September 11 attacks occurred—and suddenly having no government didn’t seem quite so palatable an idea. The anthology was held off until July 2004, meaning— again ironically—that it hit the stands in the heat of one of the ugliest presidential elections in US history.

* * *

“The funny thing about this place,” said Hauptmann, pointing at the White House as he and Chin walked west on the Mall, “is that the food is actually good.”

“What’s funny about that?” asked Chin.

“Well, it’s a tourist attraction, right? A historic site. People come from all over the world to see where the American government was headquartered, back when there were governments. The guys who own it now could serve absolute crap, charge exorbitant prices, and the place would still be packed. But the food really is great. Besides, tomorrow the crowds will arrive; we might as well eat here while we can.”

Chin nodded. “All right,” he said. “Let’s give it a try.”

* * *

The room Hauptmann and Chin were seated in had been the State Dining Room. Its oak-paneled walls sported framed portraits of all sixty-one men and seven women who had served as presidents before the office had been abolished.