A warning: Fiasco is absolutely not modern mass-market science fiction. This is a work of an entirely different intellectual level, and it demands effort from the reader. As with the other Stanislaw Lem works I've reviewed here, the reader has to chew over this story, the reader has to work.
If you need the pages to turn by themselves, I do not recommend this book. But if you like to linger and think while you read, this book will repay you massively.
Like with Lem's novel Solaris, the story focuses on first contact with an alien species. But this isn't some Star Trek episode solved in one hour of TV time, once Picard discovers the aliens speak by metaphor. This novel's first contact does not go well. At all. It turns into a disaster, a fiasco in ways far worse--and far stranger--than either side could ever have imagined.
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We've already seen how Lem writes with extraordinary thematic density, and in Fiasco we see discussions of identity and what makes us who we are; we see how our inherent solipsism makes communication difficult, if not outright impossible; we see how violence inevitably results when communication fails. We also see subtle references to the 20th century Cold War and the game-theory interactions between two insane yet coldly logical governments. Finally, we are also privileged to see nuanced characters grapple with failure and rage--and yet still hope, and still perform their missions.
One last thought. It's a sheer joy to read a novel where the very conversations between the characters are on an elevated enough intellectual level that the dialogue teaches the reader. The contrast from most modern sci-fi couldn't be more stark. While John Scalzi's and Andy Weir's characters speak like teenage girls with "like" as the most frequent word, Lem's characters have high-level discussions of logic, ethics and theology. The reader gets to listen in to highly intelligent characters working out various theories of mind and other fundamental epistemological problems as they attempt to interact with a wildly different form of intelligence. We get to hear them talk through the logic and game theory involved as they try (and mostly fail) to choose the right path. The reader gets a philosophy textbook's worth of instruction from the dialog. What a pleasure!
[Readers, what follows are chapter-by-chapter notes on the plot. This is merely to help me order my thinking and better remember what I read. There are spoilers below, so feel free to stop reading right here.]
Notes:
Chapter 1: Birnam WoodTransport pilot Angus Parvis makes an emergency landing at a station on Saturn's moon Titan, only to find he was sent there under a misunderstanding. Before he knows it, Angus finds himself willingly volunteering for an extremely risky rescue mission to assist other machine operators who had gone missing on Titan's geologically active surface. The reader learns here about the operation of the gigantic Digla "strider machines" as well as the vitrifax, a cryogenic system that can preserve a human body for resurrection later.
En route, Parvis thinks he's not alone in the cabin of his strider; then he thinks he sees another machine moving about on the moon's surface; it turns out he was chasing a mirage of himself.
The Birnam Wood region of Titan is a region of solidified geysers of gasses and chemicals, forest-like, incredibly dangerous, with the structures constantly collapsing and reforming. The odds of him finding the survivors here are practically nil, but miraculously he finds another crashed strider machine like his own. Suddenly, his own strider is caught in an avalanche, his machine badly damaged and trapped. He enters the vitrifax, freezing himself.
Chapter 2: The Council
The reader meets Dr. Gerbert, in his study on the explorer ship Eurydice, running a hologram of a dinner party where a storyteller recounts a story about Eye of Mazumac, a tale of 16th century Spaniards navigating a dangerous mountain range with unusual geologic features that can amplify sound and light. [This story turns out to be a metaphor for the novel's exploration mission itself, although the reader can't know this at the time. Actually the reading experience right now more or less involves the reader wondering either 1) "is this the actual story?" or 2) "if this is a side-story, it must be somehow metaphorically important or else the author wouldn't extend it for several pages, right?"] Finally, Gerbert is joined by another man, Victor Davis, who shuts off the hologram and teases him for amusing himself with cock and-bull-stories. They have a discussion about a third member of the crew, a priest named Arago, who objects to the biological experiments the two men are running tests on some frozen bodies the crew had taken on board. "...at best we can restore only one--at the cost of the others.... Resurrection is no evil. The evil lies in the fact that out of two men fit for reanimation we can bring only one back to life." Gerbert meets with Father Arago, who asks him what is the criteria for the selection of the survivor. They can't even identify the bodies.
Now a technical discussion of the ship Eurydice, its design and specifications, how it was used to strip the atmosphere and then much of the energy from Titan in order to be built and powered; the reader deduces now that this scene is taking place far into the future from the prior chapter with Angus Parvis. We also learn that the ship has left Titan and has been traveling under continuous acceleration for a full year.
The crew has a general meeting to debate what to do: Dr. Gerbert, the head physician, explains that the bodies were given over to them with no information on their condition, that reanimating them would be like resurrecting a desiccated mummy because the vitrefaction equipment used in that era was too primitive; of the victims only two are possible candidates for resurrection, but they must choose between the two because, as one of the medical crew say it, "there are only enough vital organs for one person. Only one person can be put together, of these two. Abominable, but true." Interesting discussion here of brain chemistry, the recreation of neurons, and the problem that they won't even know if the person resurrected will be at all like who they were some 100 years ago because they will be built of "parts." The flight commander summarily makes a decision to reduce the ship's acceleration to buy time for the doctors to perform the resurrection.
Now the reader learns that this "resurrection problem" facing the crew stems from yet another snafu [a neat parallelism to the snafu that led to Parvis' emergency landing--and later death--in Chapter 1] as we learn along with Dr. Gerbert as he rereads the holofile on the case about the discovery of the seven striders and the bodies in them: initially the idea was to ship the bodies to Earth, but then this decision was changed to convey them to the Eurydice because it had the latest reanimation equipment. Also on the additional snafus that led to the lack of identification info on the bodies. Victor Davis and Dr. Gerbert examine the bodies and choose one; they agree to keep their decision secret.
Chapter 3: The Survivor
Interesting chapter here written from the perspective of the "resurrected" survivor as he gains consciousness and various aspects of his awareness, as the scientists talk to him, as he dreams, as he reasons about where he is and wonders what happened to him, etc. Interesting. The scientists then set him up with a computerized teacher, the Mnemon, to help him remember. He asks it why he can't remember his own identity and the machine can't really answer. He deletes all his conversations with the machine in frustration.
Then a discussion of the Earth's program to search for extraterrestrial intelligence and its failures; discussions of the anthropic fallacy, the assumption that there would exist some commonality of thought between human civilization and other intelligences in the universe. [This is a very important theme to Lem apparently, as both this book and Solaris address it.]
The survivor, who only knows his name begins with a P, thus he can deduce that from the survivors gathered up he must be either Parvis or Pirkx [Pirkx is actually a character featured in another of Stanislaw Lems works, Tales of Pirkx the Pilot, Pirkx also was one of the missing crew that Parvis was en route to rescue when he also died]. He begins learning about SETI and various theories of and about alien civilizations; here is where author Lem discusses the "window of contact" idea: "This was the interval of time in which Intelligent Beings had already reached a high level of applied science, but had not yet undertaken to change the natural intelligence given them--what would correspond to the human brain." After this window the idea here was that technological advancement, once it reaches a certain level it accelerates exponentially, and once an alien civilization can use its tech on itself, it quickly evolves to a point where communication with human civilization (in its current state) would be inconceivable. As the author, or rather his translator, writes: From the resinous torch to the oil lamp, 16,000 years passed; from that lamp to the laser, it was a hundred years." Thus the window is a literal blip in time. The implication here is that even though the universe may have many intelligence civilizations, likely none will be in their "window" for us to contact them. [It's a fascinating--albeit kind of optimism-wrecking--view!]
The "survivor" retires to his cabin to read a book that Dr. Gerbert gave him, about a jungle excursion by a European in Africa to explore enormous ant mounds. The passage he reads, an extended one [thus again, likely a metaphor for the book itself, much like the extended story in Chapter 2], ends with the scientist obtaining a perfect sphere from inside the largest of the ant mounds; he takes the sphere back with him to Europe but finds it attracts all sorts of insects; he agrees to show it to someone listening to his story but as he opens his safe, the sphere is no longer there.
Chapter 4: SETI
The survivor [the reader learns in this chapter that he has chosen the name "Mark" for now--later in the book he will change it again] starts learning his way around the shop, he is uneasy and a bit suspicious of the friendliness of the crew. He enters Lauger's lab, the head physicist, and is welcomed into a discussion between Lauger and Father Arago on extraterrestrial intelligence and the window of contact concept. "You can't hold conversations at intervals of many centuries." They discuss the planet Quinta and the indications of modernity there, but also whether it is a good idea or not to contact them. Note also that in the year it takes to travel there three hundred years of time will pass on the planet, thus, paradoxically, they will most likely arrive at quite a different society from the society they left to visit. Lauger tells Mark that he should get on the list to be chosen for the mission to make contact with the planet: Lauger tells Mark that he knows about what happened to him on Titan, thus is clear that Mark is a hard man capable of doing his duty. He also warns him that there are a lot of things he will have to learn before the "contact" portion of the mission begins, about a year from now.
A long discussion here of slowing time by flying near a black hole near the planet to enable contact with the Quintan planet at a certain stage of their technological development. The mission sounds like a one in a million shot, and if even the slightest temporal thing goes wrong "the expedition would be a fiasco."
Mark ends up being one of the men selected for the mission.
Chapter 5: Beta Harpyiae
The mission launch happens; discussion here of how the crew of the scout ship, the Hermes, will be put into an embryonic type of stasis so their bodies will survive the acceleration and deceleration required on the journey. Once the ship launches, its crew in stasis, the Eurydice's crew detects strange, large-scale electromagnetic emissions from the planet, leaving their scientists debating about what was going on. The Eurydice sends a message advising about these emissions to the Hermes, to be read when the crew is awakened.
[Also in this chapter is an intriguing discussion about what a society does once it becomes sufficiently technologically advanced to leave the "window," a discussion that reminds this reader of some of the disturbing ideas in Cixin Lui's The Dark Forest.]
Mark, the survivor, at this point has chosen a last name, Tempe; it is the alley in which Orpheus first met Eurydice. Tempe is assigned the position of second copilot of the Hermes.
Chapter 6: Quinta
The Hermes camouflages itself some distance from the Quintan planet and the passengers are revived; the crew then learns about the mysterious EM emissions from the planet.
Chapter 7: Hunting
The Hermes crew discovers an artificial moth-like object in space, as well as a turtle-shaped object; both are brought on board and taken apart, giving rise to a debate whether the tech is mechanico- biological, what the implications are for this civilization, could the Quintans have skipped nuclear fission, etc. The captain, recognizing that the crew was becoming too cautious in these debates, orders a course set for the planet.
Chapter 8: The Moon
Speculation on the large water/ice ring around the planet: is it some major planetary engineering project that was only partially completed? And the Hermes crew discovers still more strange curiosities: the planet is transmitting enormous amounts of radio white noise, and it has over a million satellites in all kinds of orbits.
The Hermes, sitting in hiding near the planet, sends probes to the planet's moon, finding major engineering work, but everything appears as if it were suddenly abandoned.
The captain decides to bring the Hermes out into the open in an effort to talk to the Quintan civilization.
Chapter 9: An Annunciation
It's clear that this civilization has had fully developed astronomy for many years; they might have been trying to escape the nearby black hole by first trying to escape to their nearby Moon; but then perhaps there was some sort of schism during the escape operation which led to massive violence, which halted the entire operation. The captain asks each of the crew to offer their assessment of the situation and recommendations on what they would do in his place. [The captain is an interesting character, and it's worth filing away some of the techniques he uses both to manage his crew, but also to ask them to independently share their thinking; it helps the captain make better decisions as well as uncover things he hadn't thought about.]
Pretty much all the crew supports continuing to attempt to make contact. The captain decides to broadcast greetings and "credentials" to the Quintans, via an orbiter sent around their sun. The planet does not answer, only silence.
All of their assumptions and suppositions seem to be false. The planet indicated civilization in some ways, but yet there was no evidence of any civilizational bustle: no cities, no air traffic, no road traffic. The planet has a massive ice ring around it but there was no evidence of any of the huge machinery that must have been used to hurl the planet's ocean waters into space, etc. The whole mystery here begins to mess with the crew's heads.
The crew sends an unmanned probe/emissary to land on the planet, and it is immediately attacked by four satellites. The probe responds by destroying the satellites. [This begins a long string of misunderstandings and miscommunications throughout the story.]
"Even a woman wouldn't get in the last word, with a computer." The resurrected pilot Mark Tempe, discussing an unexplained situation with the Hermes' onboard computer, lets drop this beautifully sexist quote. [He is a pilot after all!]
Chapter 10: The Attack
One of the satellite attackers is found and brought aboard the ship. There is a lurking schism among the crew: some of them want to make a show of strength in response to the attack on their probe, others do not. The team theorizes on many levels about what to do, what has happened, what should happen, what the response of the planet's civilization might be. [The crew here can't communicate with the planet at all, but they certainly are communicating with each other--extensively. It's ironic.]
More theories: that the planet is experiencing a "cryptowar": a non-classical, non-Clausewitzian conflict on the planet, making any extraterrestrial contact inherently dangerous and unstable; also another theory that the planet is simply isolationist or xenophobic.
Tempe reads a book on SETI, attempting to better understand the various situations and first contact scenarios that might happen with an alien civilization. He finds many of the conclusions to be deeply pessimistic. He falls asleep and wakes as the Hermes comes under attack. At the same moment, the captain is literally flipping a coin [!] to decide between contact or retreat. Ironically the coin toss called for retreat, but then the attack happens; the captain feels relief now that retreat is no longer an option.
Chapter 11: Show of Strength
It turns out the Hermes was swarmed by something, but whatever swarmed the ship used an unknown technology. Then the ship passes through a gaseous cloud, and the gas molecules attach to the ship and begin corroding it. The crew debates: are these accidents? Was this some sort of gaseous "mine" floating in space? Is it some kind of residue from a prior conflict? The crew then theorizes that the Quintan planet experienced an incredibly large-scale global war that eventually became conducted by autonomous weapons run by machine intelligence--a conflict that had run out of control to gigantic scale. What could possibly be the chances of first contact in such circumstances?
"Since we don't want a battle and retreat is out of the question, we should drop this delicate poking and prodding and show a little backbone instead." They decide to break up the planet's moon in a way that won't affect the planet, but will show enough force to warrant a response.
Chapter 12: Paroxysm
The reader gets treated to various "hard sci-fi" ideas here, including the perceived slowness and unrealness of the "cavitational sundering" of a moon. Catastrophically, Quintan rockets interfere in the moon-sundering operation, causing an "eccentric sundering" which results in a hundred trillion tons of rock to fall toward the planet in a range of trajectories. Thus the planet is exposed to a "selenoclasm." "Thus did the show of strength go awry and conclude in cataclysm."
Chapter 13: A Cosmic Eschatology
The moon explosion causes a tremendous tidal wave that washes all over the continents, leaving gigantic inland seas in its wake; in the meantime the crew scan the planet; the captain privately believes that the population is mostly dead, with perhaps just a few "people" remaining, while the planet remains defended by non-biological automata. In other words, this civilization has been replaced by military machines. Scans of the planet reveal calcium in quantities that might indicate millions of entombed bodies, possibly due to the accidental moon collapse. "Because of excess virtue the forces of hell prevail."
The humans find themselves willing to force contact at any price now. The captain then replays for the staff a recording of a conversation he has with the onboard computer working out the game theory of contact with Quinta. The computer also works out various explanations and scenarios involving the strange ice ring around the planet, including implications that somehow it is a product of political discord on the planet.
The humans find themselves willing to force contact at any price now. The captain then replays for the staff a recording of a conversation he has with the onboard computer working out the game theory of contact with Quinta. The computer also works out various explanations and scenarios involving the strange ice ring around the planet, including implications that somehow it is a product of political discord on the planet.
The captain tells the crew he has made a decision to break up the ice ring, sending it crashing to the planet; it will be both genocide and an attempt to save the Quintans from themselves. [!!!] [How the captain could think that he knows this, and how a man who otherwise appears to be a capable leader could commit such an act of obvious solipsism and arrogance, is one of many dark mysteries of this novel.]. The ship's priest, Arago persuades him otherwise, saying there is yet another way to communicate with the surface using a solaser. The priest then walks through a theological discussion of how the church conceived worlds where there had been no redemption, which meant everyone there was damned; and this led to all sorts of theological speculations that turned the Christian credo into a caricature. The crew continues to debate on what to do.
Chapter 14: Cartoons
Work begins on the solaser; the idea here would be to send an understandable message to the people of the planet, not the warring leaders. [We'll soon see how this is yet another laughably solipsistic idea: the beings on this planet are nothing like the humans can even conceive.] The idea then grew into telling a story via images beamed onto the cloudy sky. Cartoons, essentially! They give the onboard computer the job of creating a myth, an origin story to be broadcast on to the cloud cover all around the planet.
Tempe has a strange feeling of uneasiness: he goes to explore parts of the ship that he hasn't really explored before. Also note the musings here on the ship's computer, DEUS, and its complicated role in assessing the crew's psychiatric state; on how DEUS is paradoxically both subordinate and superior to the crew, both tool and overseer.
Tempe realizes that he's experiencing despair, and he goes to talk to Dr. Gerbert, who was expecting him, since based on Tempe's behavior the DEUS computer had already indicated to the doctor some of the psychological challenges Tempe had been struggling with. They have a discussion about the pointlessness of forcing contact with the planet: "We're beating our heads against a wall. We may break through it--but then what? What can we talk about with them? What can they have to say to us?"
Suddenly the ship jerks, and the DEUS computer tells the crew, "Man your stations. Quinta has answered. Man your stations. Quinta has answered."
The planet had sent a message: "WE GUARANTEE YOUR SAFETY ON OUR NEUTRAL TERRITORY... WE AWAIT WE WELCOME YOU." The crew not only assumes that it's a trap, but they are confused to see what they consider such a primitive and obvious trap [Again, this is solipsism: even though they are making an attempt at perspective-taking, it is still solipsism. It really is humanity's prison.] The captain then instructs the crew to feed the DEUS computer the "Chapter 19" program: this is a reference to Genesis 19 and the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. They believe they have been lied to by the Quintans. Thus the crew builds a replica of the landing ship to act as "bait" to draw out the expected violent response from the Quintans.
Chapter 15: Sodom and Gomorrah
The crew's plan is to land the copy ship, test the Quintans' reaction to it, and then respond, if necessary, with massive destruction to the planet's surface. Tempe also notes the rage-filled behavior of the first pilot, Harrach, who is acting increasingly vengeful towards the Quintan civilization.
The "bait" copy ship lands and is immediately destroyed by the Quintans. The captain asks for input from the crew. The priest argues that deception lay behind this plan, that we know we can badly bloody this planet, and that we should not thirst for vengeance. The captain nevertheless decides to begin the attack, and they begin lasering the ice ring around the planet, causing literal mountains of ice to collapse onto the planet's surface. They expect a counter-attack but none comes.
The humans send an ultimatum: either respond and receive our envoy, or we will initiate the destruction of the planet and sweep away your atmosphere. [This entire portion of the book is fascinating, albeit very dark: it as if the humans are consumed with rage because they're not being listened to, they're not being responsded to, the crew is behaving like a Cluster B girlfriend who goes absolutely batshit crazy if you ignore her. It's kind of horrifying to see my entire species portrayed in this way, but yet it feels accurate, it feels "true."]
Chapter 16: The Quintans
Interesting device at the beginning of this chapter where the author shows a pilot getting into the capsule to go to the planet's surface, but it's not clear who it is: either it's the first pilot Harrach or the second pilot Tempe [it turns out to be Tempe]. There has been four days of negotiations with the planet. Regarding the mission to land on the planet as a sort of forced envoy, Tempe "did not count on any great success--and was himself surprised at his calm."
Nakamura, the Japanese crewman, who in the prior chapter demonstrated tremendous presence, humility and "awakeness" in a conversation with Tempe, has a private conversation with him before his landing mission, recommending that he stay as humble as possible, and that he have "the readiness to admit that everything--and I mean everything--you will see may be completely other than it seems." [Holy cow is this going to be true, both for Tempe and for the reader...]
Tempe arrives on the planet's surface, within view of the fake decoy ship. "There was not a living soul in any direction." The plan from the humans here is a sort of "dead man's switch" where if Tempe failed to check in with the Hermes every two hours, the humans would begin a strike to destroy the planet.
Tempe goes over to the decoy ship to examine how it was destroyed: the Quintans simply fired a projectile at it, but didn't appear to explore the inside of the ship at all. He releases a small swarm of synthetic insects with microsensors to explore the inside of the ship, and he finds slow-acting viruses with unknown latency. Tempe realizes that he is intended to leave the planet alive in order to carry a plague on board the Hermes. "He found himself in a situation whose structure was typical of the algebra of conflicts. A player made a model of his opponent, a model that included the opponent's model of the situation, then responded to that with a model of a model of a model, and so on, ad infinitum. In such a game there were no longer any clear, reliable facts. Very tricky, he thought--devilish."
Tempe explores the zone around his ship, and enters a gigantic hangar-type building, which has a greeting set out for him. He then realizes, to his horror, that the building was an inside-out replica of the Hermes ship, expanded 100-fold. "They copied it with either mindless precision--or with subtle mockery." He gets a biosensor from a shuttle and follows the sensor some distance away, picking up signals of some sort of slow metabolism, equivalent to the order of whales or elephants.
He strays too far from his ship, following after the biosensor signals, and he discovers enormous bulges on the surface, taller than he is, that look like misshapen loaves of bread. He points the biosensor at them, and the biosensor needle goes to maximum. The planet is covered in essentially large, naked, defenseless warts that have a texture like loaves of bread inside. He continues exploring, but then he realizes that he missed the scheduled time to communicate back with the Hermes, and the ship was scheduled to destroy the planet if he were ever out of contact. The Hermes opens fire.
"In a wide radius a thermal blast swept the entire upland slope free of mist and clouds. As far as the eye could see, the slope is covered with throngs of naked, defenseless warts, and as the towering spider web and the antennas, breaking, fell upon him and flames, he realized that he had seen the Quintans."
Vocab:
[I'm sure I've mentioned this before on this site but one measure of the value of a book is the sheer number of new words and expressions it teaches you! As you can see, this one buried me wonderfully.]
Foehn Effect: a weather phenomenon where warm, dry winds blow down the leeward (downwind) side of a mountain, creating a distinct contrast with cooler, wetter conditions on the windward side.
Chalcolite: an older name for the radioactive mineral torbernite: a bright green, hydrated copper uranium phosphate, often found with uranium ores, noted for its distinct crystal structure and radioactivity.
Spinels: a hard glassy mineral occurring as octahedral crystals of variable color, consisting chiefly of magnesium and aluminum oxides.
Plagioclase: a form of feldspar consisting of aluminosilicates of sodium and/or calcium, typically white, and common in igneous rocks.
Anhydride: the compound obtained by removing the elements of water from a particular acid. ["sulfur trioxide is the anhydride of sulfuric acid"]
collimation: to render parallel to a certain line or direction; refers to all the optical elements in an instrument being on their designed optical axis; also refers to the process of adjusting an optical instrument so that all its elements are on that designed axis (in line and parallel).
Libration: In lunar astronomy, libration is the cyclic variation in the apparent position of the Moon that is perceived by observers on the Earth.
Agnosia: inability to interpret sensations and hence to recognize things, typically as a result of brain damage.
Myrmecologist: the branch of entomology that deals with ants.
Melioristic: the belief or philosophy that the world, or human condition, can and should be made better through effort.
Diadochokinesia: the normal ability to perform quick, alternating muscle movements, like rapidly tapping fingers, opening/closing fists, or saying "puh-tuh-kuh" syllables quickly, demonstrating smooth transitions between opposing actions (flexion/extension, pronation/supination).
Aphelion: the point in the orbit of a planet, asteroid, or comet at which it is furthest from the sun.
Trapezium: Irregular quadrilateral with no parallel sides.
Sidereal: relating to the distant stars (i.e. the constellations of fixed stars, not the sun or planets).
Nondiscursive: not using or relying on language, words, or sequential reasoning (discourse); it refers to understanding, communication, or experience that is direct, intuitive, emotional, visual, or holistic, conveyed through things like art, music, gestures, symbols, or immediate perception, rather than step-by-step explanation.
Janissaries: members of the Turkish infantry forming the Sultan's guard between the 14th and 19th centuries.
Cavitation: the formation of an empty space within a solid object or body; also the formation of bubbles in a liquid, typically by the movement of a propeller through it.
Selenoclasm: the catastrophic event of a moon falling onto its planet, causing substantial damage.
Pluvial: of or relating to rain; characterized by abundant rain; resulting from the action of rain.
Ama et fac quod vis: a Latin phrase from St. Augustine, meaning "Love, and do what you will" (or "Love and do as you wish"). Thought of as a profound ethical directive: if you truly love God and your neighbor (as Christ commands), your desires and actions will naturally align with what is good and righteous.
In dubio pro reo: "When in doubt, rule for the accused"
Tres faciunt collegium: "Three makes company"
Nemo me impune lacessit: "No one provokes me with impunity" or "No one attacks me without consequence"