Read Online The Trojan Horse by Christopher Nuttall - Free Book Online

poisoning your environment.  We will show you models that will illustrate the true danger of the situation you are facing.  Total environmental collapse may well be possible within decades.  You have even failed to produce defences in case of a natural disaster from space; there are asteroids orbiting near your world that may eventually intersect with your planet, slamming into it with a force that would shake your world. 
     
    “Put bluntly, your race is isolated on a single vulnerable world.  You have been risking extinction for centuries...and not just through natural disasters or your polluting of your own environment.  You pose a very real threat to yourselves.
     
    “By the time most races reach your level of technology, they have developed governing systems that span most of their homeworld’s surface.  They develop political systems that allow them to concentrate their efforts on reaching into space and ensuring their own survival.  You have chosen to fragment your world into many disparate countries, each one scrabbling with its neighbours; the rich choosing to exploit the poor, the strong choosing to oppress the weak.  You fight wars over religion, over skin colour; in over half of your countries, you allow your females to be brutalised by an oppressive male patriarchy that weakens their ability to contribute to the whole.  Your governments have shown a sickening hypocrisy in allowing short-term national gains at the expense of long-term planetary development.  Your global system has been trending towards disaster – an event that would shatter the foundations of your world – for the last four decades.  Our models predict disaster within the next ten years, an upheaval of such power that it would dramatically reduce your population and destroy your governments.”
     
    The Ambassador seemed to pause for a long moment.  He was lecturing the Assembly, not debating with them, yet no one seemed inclined to object.  Toby suspected that he understood; the alien, isolated from global politics, might be seen as a neutral observer rather than someone pushing a view for their own purposes.  Or perhaps they were reluctant to risk the alien’s ire.  If half of the speculated benefits from joining the Federation happened to materialise, angering the aliens could result in the benefits to their countries being lost – permanently.
     
    “There are those among us who wonder if your race is...sick,” the Ambassador said.  “Not seventy of your years ago, one of your nation-states attempted to exterminate millions of humans because of their religion, or ethnic origin, or merely because they wanted living space.  The survivals of that terrible period have gone on to oppress others, who in turn have chosen to oppress themselves rather than learning to live with their fellow humans.  Your race has produced some of the most evil regimes in the galaxy and yet many of your worst acts come from absent-mindedness rather than outright evil.  There are even some amongst us who have considered establishing a permanent blockade of your world, fearful that you carry a mental disease that would spread into the galaxy.  You are xenophobic to a degree we find alarming and almost unbelievable.  How will you act if unleashed upon the universe?
     
    “And if left to your own devices, you will cripple yourselves – perhaps even destroy yourselves – within decades.
     
    “The Galactic Federation has made the decision to try to help you.  We will provide you with technologies that you lack – technologies you could have developed for yourselves, had you chosen to spend the effort you spent on developing weapons on developing ways to improve your lives instead.  We will assist you in escaping the bottleneck that threatens your race; we will guide you towards a point where you will be mature enough to enter the Galactic Federation without posing a threat to your cousins among the stars.  Over the next few weeks and