Copyright © 2010 by Jonathan E. Feinstein
Third time’s the charm? Well, maybe.
I’ve said elsewhere that when I first wrote Agree to Disagree I did not plan it as the start of a series. It was a single story and what I thought would be my only attempt at a first contact story. First contact stories, in case you are not acquainted with the phrase, are a subgenre of science fiction dealing with the initial meetings of humans with aliens.
And such stories have been done to death. They were once very popular and often appeared in the pulp magazines and paperback shelves, but like any other fashion, they eventually became passé. For a first contact story to get published by a conventional publisher it has to be something very special. Agree to Disagree, like all my stories, was self-published. However, while I had not intended to write a sequel, I got requests for one anyway. I’m not sure which my most popular story has been, but Agree to Disagree might be it.
So I wrote By the Light of the Silvery Moons and gave the series a name: The Terralano Venture. The second book also contained a first contact incident but in essence was still dealing with the initial contact between Humans and Lano and the consequences there of, so when I decided to write a third story I thought it was only proper to continue along in that vein, so while the heroes of the story encounter another new sort of people, this is also the continuation of the story of how the Humans and Lano became a united people, the Terralano.
I think this concludes the trilogy. Well, it’s the third book so if it is not the conclusion, then the series is not a trilogy, is it? What I mean is I think I have finished telling the story of the foundation of the Terralendir. There may be future stories written about the Terralano, although I have no plans for them at this time, but they will probably be a part of new series.
So here it is; Book three of The Terralano Venture: There Goes the Neighborhood.
Jonathan E. Feinstein
Westport, Massachusetts
January 1, 2010
“It’s not looking good,” Serafyma Ivanoff shook her head. “Three gas giants and a collection of carbonaceous chondrites. I suppose there must be some metal in this system somewhere. The spectrum of the star indicates there is, but I would have to say there’s not enough to make it worth anyone’s while.”
“No solid planets?” Captain Eesai Di Sonea inquired. They were meeting privately in the captain’s cabin, sitting around Eesai’s desk so they could easily look at each other eye-to-eye. Her ship, the Meriwether I, had been the first human-owned ship to make contact with an alien race; her own race, as a matter of fact. Eesai was not human; she was Lano. She was slightly taller than average for a La, five feet, two inches. She had healthy amber skin and blond hair, which she currently wore at shoulder length, and her slightly pointed ears poked through that hair, by just a bit. Most Lano hair was brown, but some few had a lucky the coincidence of recessive genes that resulted in blond and Eesai was one of them. Another rare recessive mix resulted in black but that hair color, when natural was mostly restricted to the aristocracy.
“None at all, Skipper,” Serafyma replied, shaking her head once again. In contrast Serafyma stood several inches taller, had curly light red hair and pale skin and, while now barely in her thirties, could still captivate every man in a spaceport bar, if she were in the mood. “There are one or two bodies we might call planetoids, but no habitable worlds.”
The meeting of Terrans and Lano had caused quite a stir some years earlier on the human and Lano worlds, but mutual acceptance had been forged between the two governments. After some further social difficulties, many of the people on the major worlds now referred to themselves not as Terran or Lano, but as Terralano.
“Blind!” Eesai swore mildly in Lano. “A blinding worthless system, then.”
“Not entirely worthless,” Serafyma disagreed. “I mean we may as well fill out the claims papers because you never know, but…”
“And how many such claims ever pay off?” Eesai asked her pointedly. “Will any of the three systems we’ve visited this trip ever pay off, do you think?”
“Well, I wouldn’t want to hold my breath while waiting,” Serafyma admitted, “and I would hardly call the system worthless, but no, we found nothing in any of the systems that we couldn’t find nearly everywhere. It will be a long time before anyone needs to come this far out of their way to mine these rocks.”
“Not even a chance of Chondy gems?” Eesai asked without much hope. Chondies were a naturally occurring crystal that had become quite fashionable to wear throughout the Terran and Lano worlds, but they were rare and seemed to be more common to the galactic east – the other end of known space from where they were now.
“We would have detected some by now,” Serafyma admitted. “Oh there may be some floating around here, in fact I am sure there must be, but not in any quantity that would be worth the effort of seeking them out. Since we started dealing with the Carono, Chondy prices have dropped as they became more common.”
The Carono were another space-faring species of people, and coincidentally one which Serafyma and Eesai had been involved with when first contact had been made. The Carono were a silica-based life form, with bones of metal and blood that used a mix of mercury and gallium in the same way human blood used plasma. They made their way through space in large stone ships that looked as if they had been melted down to slag and reshaped by an imaginative toddler by hand. Each of these “slagships,” as they had come to be called, were unique. The Carono did not use molds and built their ships by a standard of beauty the Terralano had to admit they did not understand. Neither human nor La could call a slagship beautiful, but the knowledgeable admitted they were efficient and well suited to their tasks.
It had been eight years since contact with the Carona, and since that time Eesai had been on several successful exploratory ventures, making her and her fellow share holders of Meriwether, Inc. fairly prosperous as spacers went. Eesai had married Alano Ki Matchi, her one-time captain in the Treloian Space Navy ship Inillien in a Terran-style ceremony. By Lano terms they would not be married until they had a child, but neither cared to wait for that blessed event especially since they each captained their own ships.
Eesai had been granted the captaincy of Meriwether I, by Lewis Clark Anspach, the CEO of Meriwether, Inc. Eesai’s adopted sister, Susan Ho of Hawaii was now captain, appropriately, of the Meriwether II. Alano, a wealthy and aristocratic La among his own people had bought a major share of Meriwether Inc. as well and now captained his own exploratory ship, the Salinien, so they only saw each other between trips, but so far had been careful to arrange their off-time together.
“Almost time to turn back for Earth,” Eesai almost growled,” but I’ll be blinded if I can’t make this trip at least pay for itself.”
“Not every trip makes a profit, Eesai,” Serafyma told her.
“My trips always have,” Eesai retorted.
“We’ve been lucky,” Serafyma countered. “I can’t tell how many times I went out with Clark and came back with less than we started. Most companies are lucky to make a profit once every three trips, you know.”
“What about the odd signals Lilla told us were coming from this system?” Eesai asked. Lilla Di Lasai was Serafyma’s adopted Lano sister. They had bonded shortly after the first Terralano meeting and had become the first of several such Terran-Lano pairings. They had since been practically inseparable, serving on the same ship, vacationing together and even going only on double dates.
“I think you’ll need to ask Lilla about that,” Serafyma commented. “I’m your chemist. Lilla’s the comm. officer.”
Eesai nodded and reached for the ship’s video intercom. “Lilla?” she called.
“Here, Skipper,” Lilla responded instantly. Easai asked her question and Lilla replied, “The signal tends to come and go a lot, but I’ve been triangulating on it whenever I can. It appears to be coming from beyond this system. As best I can tell it’s coming from that emission nebula a few light years from here.”
“Or maybe beyond that?” Eesai asked.
“I doubt that, Skipper,” Lilla denied. “Not after all the readings I have taken. Of course it is not all that unusual for a nebula to emit radio waves.”
“But you said these seemed to have an intelligent pattern to them?” Eesai prompted.
“I thought they had an irregular and non-repeating pattern similar to speech as opposed to just more interstellar static,” Lilla admitted. “I still think that, in fact. For all I know that nebula is just talking to itself.”
“Well, maybe we should try to join in the conversation,” Eesai decided.
“Eesai,” Serafyma cut in, “Are you sure that’s a good idea? At normal ship speeds the dust and gas can be abrasive.”
“I wasn’t planning to actually enter the nebula,” Eesai admitted, “Just stand off it a way and take some readings. Is it a diffuse nebula or does it have a fairly well defined edge?”
“It’s well defined,” Lilla reported. “I think we can get within one million miles or so without problems.”
“Okay,” Eesai nodded. “Ring Erich down in engineering and have his boys and girls stoke up the engines. I’d like to take a closer look at this nebula and maybe get some decent recordings of those mysterious signals of yours. Who knows, they might be of scientific interest to someone at least.”
A few ship-days later the nebula filled the entire sky in front of the ship but, “I’m having more trouble finding that signal from this range,” Lilla reported from her customary station. “It was easier to pick up a few light years away.”
“It might be a directional signal,” Eesai suggested. “If it’s as intelligent as you think it might be beamed somewhere specific.”
“Or it could be sweeping the sky,” Lilla commented, “and from here we’re hardly ever in the way of the signal. But it’s not necessarily intelligent. I just said it sounded a little like speech. There are natural ways to form a directed energy transmission. Pulsars and black holes do it all the time.”
“Do you think there’s something like that in that nebula, Lilla?” Serafyma asked from nearby.
“It’s a possibility,” Lilla admitted. “The mass of the nebula is confusing our mass sensors, but I can tell there are several large masses in there somewhere. Oh wait the signal is getting stronger now.” She flipped a switch and an odd keening sound filled the bridge of Meriwether I. Within that keening there did, indeed, seem to be a collection of syllables, but before they could hear very many of them, the lights and controls suddenly went dead and the ship became dark and almost silent.
“Blind!” Eesai swore. “What the heck just happened?”
It was fifteen minutes before Erich Schwarzwald made his way up the axial stairway to the bridge to report. “Skipper,” he began as he entered with a chemical-based glow stick in his hand. “It appears all electrical systems are down. Only our thaliripic generator is still working.” Lano technology was based on something the humans thought of as magic, but which the Lano called thalirip. Meriwether had been the first human ship equipped with a hybrid of both Human and Lano drive systems, making her one of the fastest commercial ships in the sky. “My crew is working on adapting the thaliripic generator to the life support systems.”
Just then the lights in the bridge came on and the soft sound of circulating air could be heard once more. “Looks like they managed that,” Eesai replied dryly. “Well done. Any idea of what happened?”
“Not yet, Skipper,” Erich replied. “We briefly had a massive surge and then suddenly it was like we were a puddle and someone dropped a giant sponge on us. All our power just drained out of us.”
Erich and his engineers continued to work on the problem but two days later they were certain. Meriwether I was dead in space.
Ralani Di Lasai, stood on the tarmac looking up at the looming tower that was Meriwether II. She took a deep breath, held it a moment and then exhaled slowly. The young Lano woman had been a thin and gangly teenager once, but eight years had done much to mature her. Now she stood five feet tall and exhibited the lithe muscle tone of one who ate well, but worked out on a regular basis as well. The Treloian Space Navy had, in fact, wanted to use her on recruitment posters, but that was not to Ralani’s taste. She had already experienced fame in her short life and as flattering as it had been, she found she was just as comfortable when every stranger in the room did not recognize her from the video casts.
She nervously straightened out her uniform’s kilt and she considered her next step. This had all seemed like such a simple thing when she had first hatched the plan. If she were to be honest with herself, the hard part was over, but she was not being completely honest with herself and all her careful plotting and planning could fall apart at a single spoken word.
She took another deep breath and then, exhibiting a level of confidence she did not feel, she strode purposefully up the ramp to the main hatch of Meriwether II. There were a pair of human guards at the top of the ramp, standard procedure in almost any port, but Ralani did not recognize either of them. She was fairly certain neither of them had been here the last time Meriwether II had been on Treloi.
“Hello, boys!” Relani greeted them cheerfully. “Ensign Ralani Di Lasai to see Captain Susan Ho. Please tell me she’s in today.”
“The Skipper’s in, Ensign,” one of the men replied. “Do you have an appointment?”
“Hmm,” Ralani considered. “I suppose I should have called ahead, but no, I don’t. Captain Ho knows me, though. We’ve met socially.”
“Please wait,” the man requested. Ralani nodded and the man turned and picked up an odd-looking handset that covered most of his face before he started talking. Ralani had never actually seen one, but she recognized it as a Terran “hushphone.” The user could talk or even scream into it without being over heard. “Very good, Ensign,” the man told her a few minutes later. “Captain Ho will meet you in her cabin. She says you know where that is?”
“Take the lift to one floor shy of the bridge,” Ralani replied. “Then turn right and knock on the first door.” The man nodded and allowed her to pass. Well, that’s the easy part, she thought to herself as she entered the elevator. She nervously fumbled with her uniform once more as the cab lifted up toward the top of the ship and checked herself in a small mirror.
Not a hair out of place, but she wished Lano women wore makeup like Terrans did. It would give her something to do. But Lano women did not need makeup. So long as they were healthy, their skin was flawless until shortly before they died of old age. Their eyelashes were long enough to suit anyone and the coloring around their eyes even looked like they had been skillfully and perfectly shaded. There was a recent fashion among teenaged girls for using Terran lipstick, but Ralani saw that as a fad for children now that she was in her twenties. Her only bow to Terran colorings was the light red tint of her hair, artificially produced to match that of her sister, Serafyma’s natural color.
Her hair color had earned her some tense moments during basic training of the Space Navy where uniformity was a virtue, but the petty officers soon realized that no matter what else they might do to mold the young La into a perfect space sailor, hair color was not going to be a part of that. Ralani was adept at reading the Rules and Regulations and there was nothing that stipulated hair color in them. That was probably because nearly ninety-five percent of all Lano had the same brown hair color and until contact with the Terrans no one had dye with which to color their hair. The only requirement was that her hair be kept clean, relatively short and neatly trimmed. She, in fact, wore it in what humans called a “page boy” which was the most common Navy approved style for women and if her hair color was one that never naturally occurred, there was no regulation against it. By the time she was ready for officer candidate training, several others in her class had started tinting their hair as well.
Finally, the elevator reached the desired floor and Ralani stepped out and turned right to walk clockwise around the axial shaft. “Come in, Ralani,” the voice of Captain Susan Ho welcomed her before she even quite reached the hatchway into the captain’s cabin. “Oh, my! Don’t you look magnificent in your uniform?” she added as Ralani entered. Sitting with Sue, were Jerry Isaacs and his wife Lani Di Ressia, the first ever truly Terralano married couple. Next to them sat another familiar Lano woman, Gessai Di Ressia and a Lano girl who Ralani knew was eight years old, Tricia Di Isaacs.
“Cute as a button,” Ralani chuckled helping herself to a nearby seat. “Hi, Jerry, Lani!”
“I think you lose one or two adorability points for being aware of that,” Jerry laughed along with her.
“That’s what Madame Malana keeps telling me,” Ralani admitted with a crooked grin “Gessai and speaking of cute as a button, hi, Tricia, remember me?”
Young Tricia tried to hide shyly behind her mother’s leg, but after a moment smiled back at Ralani.
“Is Malana on Treloi at the moment?” Jerry asked.
“No,” Ralani shook her head. “She lifted for Terra almost a month and a half ago.”
“I’m surprised we didn’t see her before we left,” Sue remarked. “Malana always makes a point of at least saying, ‘Hello,’ when we’re on the same planet.
“She told me she was touring several planets along the way,” Ralani reported. “It seems there are still quite a few worlds that aren’t aware they are part of the Terralendir so she’s showing the flag along the way.”
“Well, until our politicians actually sign that treaty they’ve been working on,” Jerry replied, “the only Terralendir we have is the one in our hearts and minds.”
“It’s only a matter of time,” Ralani replied. “Most of the Trelendir is ready to sign, I think.”
“So long as Tauko’s party stays in power here on Treloi,” Lani spoke up. “They have been in charge longer than the last several administrations combined, you know.”
“I lived through them,” Ralani pointed out, “even if I was in grade school at the time, but the administration before first contact held control of the government for two generations before that.”
“So to what do I owe the honor of your visit, Ralani,” Sue asked.
Ralani took a deep breath, got to her feet and saluted Sue crisply. “Ensign Ralani Di Lasai reporting for duty, ma’am,” Ralani replied.
“What?” Sue asked in astonishment, echoed only slightly out of synchronization by Jerry and Lani.
“Well, if you’ll have me on board your ship,” Ralani modified.
“This is not a military ship, Ralani,” Lani told her. “Unlike Lano ships, some Terran ships, like Meriwether are privately owned.”
“And even if this were a military ship,” Sue added, “it would not be a Lano ship.”
“Oh this is legal,” Ralani insisted. “I went over the Rules and Regs quite thoroughly.”
“You’re, what? Twenty-one?” Jerry asked, “and already a space lawyer.”
“Kind of have to be, Jerry,” Ralani told him seriously. “The one thing they taught me in basic is that a space sailor lives and dies by the regs.”
“In what way is this by the regs?” Lani challenged her.
“Simple,” Ralani started to relax, although she stayed standing at attention. “By the laws of the Trelendir any ship captained by a La is technically a Lano ship and a Lano sailor or officer may request assignment to such a ship.”
“Last I checked,” Sue pointed out, “my legs were too long and my ears were the wrong shape to be a La, and don’t tell me that my relationship with Eesai technically makes me Lano, because I know for a fact it does not.”
“No, ma’am,” Ralani agreed, “You’re right about that. You’re Terran or as most Lano call you, Terrano and Meriwether II is most definitely not a Lano ship by any stretch of the regulations, especially not since Presiding General Tauko modified the laws of the Trelendir in any case. Before that I could have argued that you’re here and…”
“Yes, I’ve heard that song before,” Sue told her testily. “I got drafted under that law.”
“You came out of it with a commodore’s pension,” Jerry pointed out. “It could have been worse.”
“Yeah, I could have had my mind blasted out by a well-meaning Caro,” Sue replied, “or three of them, since they work in triads most of the time. That was extreme hazard pay and we earned every penny of it.”
“What’s a penny?” Ralani asked curiously.
“Never mind that,” Sue told her, “I want to know what rule you’re twisting to your own purpose that makes you think you can serve out your commission on my ship.”
“Not my whole commission,” Ralani replied. “I just need a lift.”
“Come again?” Sue asked.
“I have been assigned to serve aboard Meriwether I,” Ralani explained.
“Are they letting green ensigns cut their own orders these days?” Lani asked suspiciously.
“No, ma’am,” Ralani shook her head, “I had to argue long and hard before a tribunal of flag-rank officers in order to get this posting.”
“This I have to hear,” Lani muttered.
“Well, I was reading through the regs back at the beginning of basic,” Ralani started to explain.
“Hold it,” Sue stopped her. ”Sit down and have a cup of tea or coffee and tell us without doing it all as though you were still on the parade ground.”
“Aye aye, ma’am,” Ralani replied and gave Sue another salute before sitting.
“And cut out that ma’am stuff and all the salutes,” Sue instructed her. “This is not a military ship. Got it?”
“Yes, Skipper,” Ralani replied.
“Uh uh!” Sue stopped her. “Only crew uses that title and you are not crew, at least not yet.”
“Yes, m…” Ralani stopped herself, looking flustered for the first time since she had boarded the spaceship. “Yes, Sue?” she concluded somewhat less certainly. Sue nodded while Jerry served Ralani a cup of tea. “Thank you,” she told him before turning back to face Sue.
“Anyway I read and memorized the regulations,” Ralani continued after a sip. “I wasn’t looking for any special privileges or tricks to get away with, you understand. All recruits are required to memorize them. We get tested before being allowed to graduate. In my case I got tested at the end of basic and then again before I was given my commission. Officers really have to have them down.”
“Did you?” Jerry asked his wife.
“I barely cracked that book once I was out of basic,” Lani smiled, “and not all that much while in for that matter. The tests are not all that hard and you only need to get sixty percent to pass. Besides, even in basic I was already being trained in engineering. They were more concerned that I would understand the thaliripi that kept a ship in one piece than in much beyond not getting into fights while on leave.”
“The part that got me thinking about this,” Ralani told them, “was right near the beginning, in the chapter with all the definitions. The definition of a Lano ship is one which is captained by a Lano officer.”
“Well, then you’re out of luck,” Sue told her. “Eesai resigned her commission. She is a La, but she is no longer an officer.”
“One of the admirals on my review board said that,” Ralani nodded happily. “I pointed out that following the initial contact with the Carono, Eesai Di Sonea was elevated to the rank of commodore, the lowest of the flag ranks. Flag rank officers cannot resign their commissions, they retire instead. The same applies to you, Sue. Technically you are a retired commodore of the Treloian Space Navy.”
“But I am not a La,” Sue pointed out once again.
“Nobody’s perfect,” Ralani laughed, “and that has nothing to do with this. Regardless of your species you were drafted into and served in the Navy with distinction. I really think the definition was miswritten and that a Lano ship ought to be one which is commanded by an officer of a recognized military within the Trelendir. I pointed that out too, but also admitted that what ought to be and what was were not the same. Besides, no offense, Sue, but I do not want to serve on Meriwether II. Not for any longer than I have to.”
“Why not?” Sue asked quietly.
“Because my sisters are on Captain Eesai’s ship,” Ralani explained.
“Do you mean you played fast and loose with the regs just to get a chance to serve on the same ship your sisters work on?” Lani asked. “You could have been in big trouble merely for making the request.”
“But it worked!” Ralani laughed again. She reached into her shoulder bag and pulled out a thick envelope “Look. See? These are my orders.” She handed them to Sue. “Okay, I admit I really never expected it to work. But I figured my request would at worst raise an eyebrow or two and get me an unofficial reprimand.”
“Or an official one,” Lani told her seriously. “That would have stayed on your record for the entirety of your service, you know.”
“Two years then,” Ralani replied, shrugging. “After that I’m back in University working on an advanced degree in Thalirip.”
“A black mark on your military record would have made that difficult,” Lani argued. “A scholarship would have been nearly impossible and it might have affected your ability to even be accepted.”
“I don’t need a scholarship,” Ralani replied. “Between Madame Malana and Clark Anspach, I am covered financially, and Clark has even offered me a contract for after graduation.”
“But you still would have had trouble getting into a degree program,” Lani told her.
“I doubt it,” Ralani replied, “or rather I doubt I was ever in serious danger of an official reprimand. You forget I’m just a green ensign, wet behind the ears as the Terrano say. I’m expected to try something like that. Even my commandant admitted that the worst I would have gotten was a mild slap on the wrists and as it happens, he thought it was a good idea to station me on what really is a Terrano ship, so he helped me frame the arguments in my request.”
“You got lucky,” Lani told her.
“Well if he had not been pro-Terralano, I might never have dared to make the request,” Ralani admitted. “But he was and helped me make the request. I’ll need to send written reports of my experiences, countersigned by my captain, but that’s not so bad, is it?”
“Young lady,” Sue told her sternly. “This is not a cruise ship and much as I like you I’m not offering to give you a free ride. Not when your government ought to be paying your way.”
“They are,” Ralani confirmed. “The regs say I may request working passage from any ship headed in the right general direction and there they do not differentiate between Terrano and Lano. Heh! I could request passage on a Carono slagship, but I doubt I would survive the experience.”
“Working passage, you say?” Jerry asked.
“Of course,” Talani nodded. “It’s like Sue said, this is not a cruise ship and while the Treloian government may be paying my way, they fully expect me to work. If I did request to fly on a cruise ship, I could probably expect to work as a stewardess, or maybe part of the cleaning crew. Trust me, working on Meriwether II will be a lot more pleasant than that, no matter what sort of work you put me to.”
“Very well,” Sue relented. “You have had classes in astrogation? Good. You will work as an assistant navigator with Mister Sondheim and will also work in communications with Mister Rowntree depending on the shift. This is a commercial venture and we all have to wear more than one hat.”
“That suits me just fine, Skipper,” Ralani replied happily. “I half expected to be put on full-time galley duty.”
“You’ll get some time in the galley too,” Jerry promised her. “We all do from time to time. Meriwether can’t afford a full-time kitchen crew, well we can these days, but old habits die hard and we do our own catering. It’s a hold-over from the days when we never knew if we’d be able to afford to get back to Earth. Come to think of it, we were pretty close to that point, the trip we first met Alano and his Inillien.”
“Really?” Ralani asked.
“Pretty close,” Jerry admitted. “Our engines were in tough shape, badly in need of a total overhaul. By all rights we should have had the job done before leaving Sol System, but that’s an expensive job and you never know if a trip is going to make a profit. The engines held up, although Erich was keeping them together with duct tape, bubblegum and bailing wire. Our original plan was to find something to help pay for the trip and put down on a colony planet with a shipyard and have the work done there. It would have been cheaper and getting clearance to lift when the job was done might have been easier as well.
“The problem was, we were having yet another dry trip,” Jerry went on. “We wanted to keep going, but we were running out of food. Air and water is not a problem, as you know. We can recycle both for up to four years so long as life support is working and there was nothing wrong with those systems.”
“Why didn’t you just buy some more food and go right back out again?” Ralani asked.
“Because each time we lift from a spaceport we have to pass an inspection,” Jerry replied. “Now maybe we would have passed and maybe not. We were not too sure. If we passed, so much the better, but if we didn’t we would have been grounded because none of the nearest colonies had shipyards capable of the job. Trust me, The Bleachers is no world to have to walk home from. We may have been able to pay off the inspector to look the other way. That sort of thing happens often enough on some colonies, but we had never been out that way and didn’t know who could be bribed and who couldn’t. Guess wrong and you have to wait five to ten years before you can walk home. So we were on our last system before being forced back to Earth when we picked up Inillien’s distress signal.”
“Not that we realized it was a distress signal,” Sue added. “Lano broadcasts work on the telepathic band. What we picked up was a sub-band carrying signal. It was strange and unlike anything we had ever heard so we went to investigate.”
“That’s not the way Lilla tells it,” Ralani commented.
“I hate to admit it,” Lani told her, “but Inillien was in worse shape. Our engines were completely dead and needed to be reinitialized.”
“I thought that could only be done from a shipyard,” Ralani replied.
“Normally, yes,” Lani nodded, “but Erich Schwarzwald is one of the most talented engineers I have ever met and together we figured out a way to not only reactivate Inillien’s engines, but to build the prototype of what is gradually becoming the new standard drive for space travel.”
“And we never got so much as a penny in royalties for that,” Jerry added.
“I prefer to think of the bonuses that come from our initial claim on meeting the Lano as sufficient to cover any such royalties,” Sue told him.
“That’s coming to an end soon,” Jerry pointed out. “That deal will be up in just under a year from now.”
“It still represents more money than any of us ever imagined,” Sue argued. “Enough of that, however. Ralani, we’ll be lifting in about twelve hours. If you’re coming with us, you’d better go home and pack a space bag and get settled in before launch.”
“Oh, I’m all packed,” Ralani told her. “I left my bag in a spaceport locker.”
“So you were certain you’d be leaving with us?” Sue asked archly.
“If not Meriwether, then some other ship,” Ralani replied. “It’s my job to find my way to my posting, after all. I could get in trouble if I just sat around Treloi waiting for my ship to come in.”
“Reasonable,” Sue nodded. “Well, get your bag and Jerry here will assign you to a cabin and give you an access code for the ship’s computer. Once you’re unpacked I want you to read up on the proper handling of Carono gems. We’re taking a load back to Earth and they take a special touch while they’re hot.”
“They’re hot?” Ralani asked, surprised.
“They will be when we load them on board,” Jerry told her. “There’s a slagship in orbit and we need to rendezvous.”
The Carono slagship in question turned out to be the same one which Meriwether II had met some years earlier. As this was their third meeting, the Carono insisted on several ceremonies to celebrate the occasion. Ralani remembered reading that third occasions were more significant to the Carono than firsts and she correctly implied that for this particular ship and crew, this meeting was as significant as their first contact had been for the crew of Meriwether.
Sue and the First Captain exchanged gifts in the space between their two ships once again just as they had at the end of their first meeting, only this time each gave a short speech remarking how this sealed their friendship and alliance. While that was going on, another Caro floated in its spacesuit next to Ralani. “You are the sibling of my friend, Lilla?” the Caro asked telepathically. Ralani had heard that the Carono telepathic broadcasts were capable of destroying a Lano mind, but this Caro’s mind-voice was as gentle as a feather and without so much as a trace of the telepathic smells that were a vital part of Carono communications when talking to each other. From what she had been taught, it meant the Caro had a lot of experience in communicating with Lano.
“My name is Ralani Di Lasai,” Ralani replied politely.
“Threadnizz mine is,” Threadnizz replied.”I am First Communicator for our ship. I had hoped that Lilla would be here at this time.”
“She and Sera normally work on Meriwether I,” Ralani replied. “They should be on Terra now, I think.”
“Ah,” Threadnizz seemed to sigh. “Would you honor me by accepting this in her place?” Threadnizz held out a colorful stone object in one of her five hands that were also legs. The Carono were vaguely shaped like a fat starfish, although in their space suits they appeared more discus-like. Any of their five limbs could be used as hands or legs and they often switched off between them when moving, finding it easier to simply stop using one triad of legs and using a different combination in order to change direction. “Don’t worry, I have allowed it to cool sufficiently.”
After having to help load on the hot gemstones into Meriwether’s hold, Ralani appreciated that. The Carono stones had nearly been too hot for the protective clothing she had been wearing, but it had also been necessary to spread them out so they would cool down as evenly as possible. Ralani accepted the object and looked at it. It turned out to be a gemstone sculpture of a female La. Ralani was impressed. Carono gems were nearly as hard as diamonds and in fact the junk stones from the Carono were used as abrasives, cheaper than diamond dust and the gem-quality stones were far more colorful. This one was striped with layers of reds, oranges and yellows. Then Ralani took another look and realized, “This is Lilla?”
“Yes,” Threadnizz agreed. “I have been working on it for a few years since we met.”
“She’ll love it,” Ralani assured the Caro. “I’ll see that she gets it the moment we meet.”
“No,” Threadnizz stopped her. “It is for you. You keep it.”
“But I have nothing to exchange,” Ralani protested, “and you meant it for Lilla.”
“Exchange is just a custom,” Threadnizz replied with what felt like a telepathic shrug. “It is the giving that counts.”
“Wait here,” Ralani told her, suddenly thinking of something she could give to the Carono communicator. Ralani rushed back into Meriwether and without bothering to open her suit, rushed down to her cabin and picked up a fist-sized rock she had left sitting on the bed stand. She carefully placed the colorful statue of her sister in its place and then rushed back to the airlock.
“Whoa!” Sue stepped out of the airlock stopped her. The others were just coming back on board. “A little late to the party, aren’t you?”
“I need to give this to Threadnizz,” Ralani explained through the still-closed visor on her spacesuit. “I didn’t know I would be expected to have a gift too.”
“Very well,” Sue relented as Jerry and Lani cycled through the lock, “but we’re breaking orbit in fifteen minutes and I expect you out of your suit and at the Comm. before that.”
“Aye aye, ma’am!” Ralani started to salute.
“What?” Sue asked with mock sternness.
“Righto, Skipper!” Ralani corrected herself and rushed into the lock. She got briefly entangled with Charley Rowntree, the chief communications officer on the other side of the airlock, and let go of the stone she had been carrying, but one of the other ship’s officers caught it for her and handed it back. She thanked him or her, uncertain just who it had been, and hastily jetted over to where Threadnizz had continued to wait.
“Here,” Ralani presented the stone. “I know it doesn’t look like much, but it comes from the garden of my parents’ home. It had been my intention to always have a piece of home with me, but I think now I’d like you to have it. Even if you can never actually visit, you’ll have this as a welcome to my home.”
“I shall treasure it always,” Threadnizz assured her. “Thank you Ralani, sister of Lilla and of Serafyma,” the Caro added belatedly. “May we meet again many threes of times.”
A few minutes later, Ralani was back inside Meriwether II and fumbling with her spacesuit. Tommy Holtz, who normally held the dog watch on the bridge, helped her and shooed her off to the bridge. “I’ll stow the suit for you this time,” he promised. “Skipper wants you topside soonest.”
“Topside?” Ralani asked, thinking she would have to go back outside the ship.
“On the bridge, rookie,” he told her.
“Ralani,” she corrected him automatically.
“A rookie is someone without previous experience,” Tommy retorted. “Bridge, now!”
“Aye aye, sir!” Ralani replied and hurried to the elevator. She reached the door to the stairway first and decided to use that instead. She was out of breath before she finally reached the bridge and sat down in the assistant’s chair next to Mister Rowntree.
“Try not to cut it so fine next time,” Charley advised her. “In communications we’re expected to speak clearly and without all that huffing and puffing.”
“Yes, sir,” Ralani replied, realizing she was impressing no one today.
“No problem,” Charley relented, “but if you can manage to catch your breath, I’ll let you ask for clearance to leave orbit.”
“Really?” Ralani asked interestedly and noticed she had suddenly stopped gasping for breath.
“Go ahead,” Chaley waved her to the comm. board.
Ralani reached for a headset, slipped it on and flipped the switches that would activate it. The Lano equivalent, the sort she had been trained on, would have been activated by a quick thalu, or what Terrano called spells, but Ralani had no trouble adapting to the Terran system of physical switches.
“Uh,” Ralani began and then stopped herself. That was definitely not the way to do it. She tried again, “Treloi Control, this Meriwether II requesting clearance to break orbit and set course for Terra.”
“Clearance granted, Meriwether II,” came the instant response, “effective in four minutes and thirty seconds from the mark.” He paused and then said, “Mark. Galaxy ho, Meriwether.”
“Huh?” Ralani asked.
“Isn’t that what they say on Terrano ships?” the voice of Treloi control inquired in response.
“That it is, Control,” Charley cut in. “See you on the next trip.” He turned to Ralani and explained, “It’s a long story but we started it about eight years ago when taking off to meet the Carono. Some of our officers were reminiscing about childhood entertainments and that just sort of slipped out during the lift off. When Control asked for an explanation we told them it was a Terran thing. That is how traditions are born.”
“By accident?” Ralani asked.
“More often than by intention, I think,” Charley told her. “Okay, our part is probably done. Just keep monitoring in case we get corrections from Control. Once we are out of Treloi system we can stand down, but that will be hours yet.”
“Aren’t we supposed to be on four hour-long watches?” Ralani asked.
“Well, I’ll stay here for another hour yet,” Charley told her, “just to make sure nothing comes up you can’t handle. Traffic is a bit heavy around Treloi. After that I’ll let you finish the shift and I’ll be back to relieve you come dinner time.”
The next few hours passed uneventfully, with Ralani hailing or accepting hails from passing ships until they were well enough away from Treloi to engage the modified Matsuya-Tron interstellar drive. By Ralani’s second shift she was already helping out in Navigation and she only needed to keep her headset on during duty hours because Sue insisted on it. It never actually got used until they reached Sol System.
Ralani became increasingly excited as they approached Sol System. “I’ve always wanted to see Terra for myself,” she told Sue one watch.
Sue knew it was a slight exaggeration. Eight years earlier Ralani had been one of thousands or more of disaffected Lano teenagers whose own news media had dubbed the Apathetes. Like her fellows, Ralani had embraced apathy in an attempt to deal with the rest of the world. Sue understood that, at least partially; if you truly did not care, nothing could harm you emotionally. The problem was that nothing could warm you emotionally either and in spite of herself, Ralani had been charmed by her adopted sister, Serafyma Ivanoff.
Sue smiled at the thought. Sera was perhaps the clumsiest person she had ever had to serve with. There was not a crewmember aboard the original Meriwether I who had not been at least badly bruised by attempting to work with the beautiful and intelligent klutz from Kiev. Jerry had more than once referred to her as a disaster in a jumpsuit, and yet it was Sera’s gentle acceptance of Ralani as she was that drew the teen out. Serafyma had never gotten the credit she deserved, Sue felt.
Ralani, due to her accidental appearance before the Council of Generals on Treloi had become the poster child for the pro-Terralano movement and a media sensation overnight, and once she had eschewed the dubious comfort of apathy, Ralani found herself in constant demand. Sue was amazed the attention had not gone to the teenager’s head, but Ralani had not been looking for celebrity status and shook that off as firmly as she had the trappings of apathy. Now, eight years later, Ralani was an adult and on her first mission to the stars and when you got right to it, it was all due to Serafyma.
“There are pictures of Terra on the Vid back home,” Ralani went on, “but it’s like looking at a magazine, you know? I want to see it for myself, Can we see it from here?”
“From just outside Saturnian orbit?” Sue countered. “From here it’s a pale blue dot and so close to the sun that it gets lost in the glare.”
“How long do we need to sit here?” Ralani asked. “We’ve been in a parking orbit for nearly six Terrano hours. Is that normal?”
“Well, traffic around Earth is even heavier than in Treloian space,” Sue explained, “but I’ve never been left out here quite this long either. We should have been given clearance to approach Luna by now.”
“It’s too bad we don’t have Malana on board this trip,” Jerry added, stepping on to the bridge. “We never have to wait when the Trelendir ambassador is with us. Sue, we’ve gotten spoiled, you know. Malana has been with us the last four times we approached Earth. Tell me, is James Twoblackrocks still in charge of customs on Luna?”
“So far as I know he is,” Sue replied.
“I think that’s our answer,” Jerry commented.
“What is?” Ralani asked.
“The guy in charge of customs doesn’t like Clark very much,” Jerry explained. “The reason for that goes way back and it isn’t worth going into just now. The fact of the matter is that he gives Clark, and by extension, any ships belonging to Meriwether, Inc. a hard time. Usually it’s just a long wait on Luna until he can’t find any other cargos to inspect first, but after slipping passed him four times in a row because we were sheltered by Malana’s diplomatic immunity, I’m sure he’s paying us back now. Don’t worry; he can’t keep this up much longer without having to justify it to his boss. There are regulations even he cannot ignore.”
“And when we get to Earth,” Sue added, “I’ll take you sailing if you want.”
“What if Captain Eesai is in port?” Ralani asked.
“Then I’ll take you both sailing,” Sue replied. “Eesai’s been in my peapod before. That reminds me, can you swim?”
“Of course,” Ralani nodded. “Why shouldn’t I?”
“Eesai grew up in a desert,” Jerry explained. “Until she joined the Navy , the largest expanse of open water she had ever seen was in a pitcher on her family dinner table.”
“No, I’ve been swimming as long as I can remember,” Ralani replied. “Oop! Transmission, coming in. Roger that, Luna. Understood. Meriwether II out. We’re cleared for Luna orbit. Is that good?”
“Baby steps,” Jerry laughed. “We should have been cleared to land by now, but at least we’ll be able to see Earth.”
As Jerry had predicted, the chief cause of their hold up turned out to be James Twoblackrocks, who as chief of customs, had placed Meriwether II at the end of the queue waiting for inbound inspections, and then moved them back several more times as other ships arrived. “Sorry, can’t help it,” James told them smugly. “Perishables must be handled before non-perishables and all you have is a shipload of gemstones. They’re not going anywhere.”
“Especially at this rate,” Sue growled after Charley had broken contact with James’ office.
“I really ought to be checking in with my Thalirip master, don’t you think?” Ralani asked.
“What?” Sue asked in response. “Who?”
“Madame Malana, of course,” Ralani chuckled. “She did tell me to call her if I made it to Sol System.”
“We really shouldn’t bother her over Twoblackrocks’ petty mindedness,” Sue told her seriously.
“I wasn’t planning to mention that, actually,” Ralani replied. “Well, not in any way that mentioned him or his department by name. Just going to tell her we’re here and that I hope to see her again soon.”
“Clever,” Jerry laughed, “and if the welcome mat just happens to get put out for us afterwards, well it wasn’t like we were asking for favors. Sue, we may as well give it a shot. James out there is never going to like us in any case and, maybe if we show him we cannot be pushed around, he’ll think twice about doing it again next time.”
“Or maybe next time he’ll block our access from the phones to Earth,” Sue retorted.
“He can’t do that,” Jerry pointed out. “Why else are there phones on this side of customs if they are not to be used. And if he tried holding us in orbit, well, I understand that is what ship-to-shore is all about, now, isn’t it?”
“Very well,” Sue sighed. “I can’t say I enjoy sitting here and twiddling my thumbs all day either. I just hope I have a chance to keep him waiting for hours some day. Go ahead, Ralani, pop down to one of the phones and give Malana a call.”
“Oh, I can do that from here,” Ralani told her. “I requested a comm. link for the ship over an hour ago. Luna IT told me it was hardly worth the bother, but if I wanted it, it was all part of the service.”
“You planned this?” Sue asked.
“Not so much planned,” Ralani shrugged, “as prepared for the worst case scenario.”
“She’s been hanging around you too long,” Sue accused Jerry.
“Always nice to have an honors student on board,” Jerry chuckled.
“Perhaps, but I think this one is majoring in Detention,” Sue remarked sourly. “Go ahead, kid, make the call, but you and I are going to have to have a chat about knowing when not to take chances.”
Ralani, however, was already busy setting up the connection. A few minutes later a middle aged Lano woman appeared in the screen. Ralani had not really expected to have a direct line to Ambassador Malana Di Masai, but she always enjoyed talking to Helani Bi Terralano, Malana’s personal assistant. “Hi, Helani,” the younger La greeted her enthusiastically.
“Ralani, is that you?” Helani responded. “You look so grown up in your uniform.”
“Thanks,” Ralani grinned, “Sue says I don’t have to wear it on board, but uniforms were all I packed.”
“We shall just have to take you shopping then at our earliest convenience,” Helani decided. “When did you graduate?”
“Oh,” Ralani replied with her head tilted slightly to the side, “the same day we lifted from Treloi.”
“Weren’t you entitled to time off before your first assignment, dear?” Helani asked.
“Time off?” Ralani retorted. “Who needs it when they can serve on one of the Meriwethers? I worked my way here on Meriwether II, but I’ve been assigned to Eesai’s ship.”
“Now however did you manage that?” Helani asked. Ralani told the same story she had on Treloi. “Marvelous!” Helani applauded. “Malana is going to laugh herself silly over that, you know. So when can we expect to see you?”
“As soon as we get clear of customs, plus however long it takes to get to Earth from Luna,” Ralani replied. “I imagine we’ll be along soon. We’ve been waiting here four or five hours already, so the inspector ought to be along soon, right?”
“Four or five hours?” Helani asked. “That sounds a little excessive, but maybe it is different in this system.”
“I suppose,” Ralani agreed casually. “I mean there have been three ships that landed since we got here and they’ve been cleared.”
“What?” Helani asked. “You just let me make a few calls, dear.”
“Oh there’s no need for that,” Ralani assured her. “We’ll be fine. I mean how much longer can it possibly take?”
“I intend to find that out, dear,” Helani told her. They chatted for a few more minutes before breaking contact.
“That should take care of that,” Ralani told Sue and Jerry.
“Remind me to add a long discussion about manipulating your friends to that chat we are going to have,” Sue told her, “but if it gets us off this rock I won’t put you in the brig this time.”
When James Twoblackrocks arrived ten minutes later he was even less amused than Sue was. “That was a dirty trick, Captain Ho,” he growled at her.
“I am sure I do not know to what you are referring, Officer,” Sue replied stiffly.
“The hell you don’t,” he retorted, “Calling that old elf to pull a few strings. There was no call for that.”
“I made no such call,” Sue insisted, “and if you are referring to Madame Malana, I guarantee that no one on this ship spoke to her.”
“Yeah, right,” James Twoblackrocks scowled at her. “Let’s get this over with. What have you got to declare?”
Sue handed him the manifest and he scanned it briefly before signing off. “You usually at least look at the cargo first,” Sue pointed out.
“What difference does it make?” he replied. “Your friend put it all under her diplomatic packet.”
“Really?” Sue asked, mildly amused, “If that’s the case you didn’t have the right to even ask your questions.”
“I meant she threatened to put it in her packet,” the customs official corrected himself. “Now get that rusting hulk of yours away from my station.”
“Gladly,” Sue nodded. “See you next trip.”
“Oh, I hope not.”
“They’re not back yet?” Ralani asked after Meriwether II had finally landed at Port Wallaby. “But according to the last letter I got from Lilla they should have been here weeks ago.”
“This isn’t really all that unusual,” Jerry assured her. “Being exploration ships we cannot expect to find what we want on a set schedule. Fuel is the most expensive part of an expedition so we usually stock up on supplies for twice the length of a planned mission just in case we end up on a dry run. We can stay out a bit longer and maybe make the trip worthwhile.”
“That makes sense, I guess,” Ralani nodded. Someone stepped into the ship’s day room just then. “Hi, Admiral Anspach,” Ralani greeted him.
“Hi, Ralani,” Clark returned the greeting. “I don’t use that title on Earth though.”
“Why not?” Ralani asked curiously.
“I think of it as just an honorary title,” Clark explained. “Sort of like being a Kentucky colonel.”
“Have it your way, sir,” Ralani responded, “but there was nothing honorary about the title. As an admiral you could have continued to serve on the Council of Generals for the remainder of your term and then run for reelection if you chose.”
“But I did not so choose,” Clark replied, “nor did Alano.”
“I know, sir,” Ralani nodded. “I never understood that either.”
“It’s not all that hard to understand,” Clark told her. “Alano has always been a man of action. When he was promoted to commodore following first contact, he found himself no longer in command of a starship but in command of a desk.”
“A commodore commands a fleet of ships, sir,” Ralani corrected him politely.
“But he commands them from behind a desk,” Clark maintained. “The days in which a commodore or admiral went to war aboard his flagship boldly putting himself on the line are long gone. A modern fleet leader might inspect the ships in his fleet but he issues orders to his captains and then sends them out. Alano is a lot like me and he wanted to command a ship again, so after our brief stint in the Council, he retired and used some of his money to buy into Meriwether, Inc. and we used that money to buy a new ship, the Salinien.”
“The explorer,” Ralani translated. “Appropriate.”
“I thought so too, although I had hoped it might be Meriwether III,” Clark chuckled. “It was Alano’s choice to make though.”
“Why not buy yet another ship?” Ralani asked. “That could be Meriwether III.”
“It’s not in the budget,” Clark replied. “Ships are expensive and according to my accountant, a three ship exploration fleet is all we can afford at this time. Besides I never had to offer Eesai command. Someone has to command the fleet. My sister is happy to handle the financial and political side of the company and Alano, my only other partner, is commanding a ship, so I get the desk job. I do go out once a year, though. I got into this business for the exploration, so I do get out from behind the desk every so often. You can do that in a private company, but Alano could not while still holding an active naval commission.”
“When is Meriwether I due back?” Ralani asked suddenly.
“About a month ago, really,” Clark admitted, “but like I heard Jerry say, it’s not too unusual for a ship to stay out longer than expected, although it is a first time for Eesai.”
“She was a Treloian officer,” Ralani pointed out. “Punctuality is drilled into us.”
“That could be it,” Clark nodded, “but I think we can give her a little more time before we start to worry.”
Ralani made the most of the next two weeks, staying alternately with Sue in Hawaii, Jerry and Lani in their Vermont home and then finally to the estate of Louise Anspach in Bolivia where Meriwether, Inc. had a private space port. Ralani went back to Australia to help move the ship to Bolivia once it had been unloaded.
Louise was delighted to meet Ralani at last, “Your sister told me all about you,” Louise informed her. “You really are quite a remarkable young lady.”
“I’m trying to be a normal one these days,” Ralani admitted. “The celebrity was fun at first, but until it died down I really didn’t have any more friends my own age. Fortunately by the time I got to college, most Lano had forgotten who I was and those who remembered didn’t recognize me. The only time it got in the way was when I went into town sometimes.”
“Oh come on,” Lousie laughed. “There must have been some parts that you liked.”
“I liked being able to meet and get to know people like Madame Malana and her son the PeeGee,” Ralani admitted, “but it did not take long to despise the cameras that followed me everywhere I went, hoping I’d do something newsworthy again. It took them two years to get the hint that I was just a kid and didn’t plan to run for PeeGee myself or find some other cause to campaign for. They just did not understand that once the Pro-Terralano movement achieved its goals, I didn’t have to parade from city to city making speeches all the time.”
“They did not achieve everything they wanted,” Louise pointed out. “There is still no single Terralano ruling body.”
“Why should there be?” Ralani countered. “The Trelendir may follow the lead of Treloi, but each world rules itself.”
“But with essentially the same laws,” Louise argued, “and a host of agreements to bind them all together like the extradition of criminals and the ability of one world to expect military aide from all the others should it be needed. And there have been attempts to secede from the Trelendir from what I have read. The world of Cereloi comes to mind. Their rebellion was not all that long ago and most of the Lano who work for Meriwether, Inc. were somewhat caught up in that.”
“I don’t know very much about that,” Ralani admitted. “I was just a kid when it happened and Lilla did not join Inillien’s crew until afterward. I should probably ask Eesai or Alano about it sometime, though. Have we heard anything from either of them?”
“I just had a call,” Louise replied. “Salinien should be landing here in an hour. Dear Alano was utterly amazed at how quickly he was processed through at Luna.”
“That may be my fault,” Ralani grinned and told her the story.
“That’s quite likely then,” Louise laughed. “Well, I shall not cry if our ships get preferential treatment for a change. On Eesai’s last trip in, Meriwether I was left waiting at Luna over half a day. I have tried filing complaints, but the Customs Service does not have a lot of oversight at least when it comes to scheduling and Clark made an enemy of the man in charge up there years ago.”
“Ah, yes,” Ralani laughed. “So I’ve been told. Um… several times, now.”
Alano Ki Matchi still had his aristocratic black hair, but now there were traces of silver in it as well. Standing five and a half feet tall, Ralani found him an impressive figure even if she had begun to grow used to the much taller humans she had been associating with. But while the retired admiral greeted Ralani warmly, she could tell he was a worried man.
“Eesai wouldn’t stay out this long past her scheduled return,” Alano insisted to Clark after dinner that evening.
“It’s only been six weeks,” Clark countered. “You know as well as I that you cannot schedule a discovery.”
“No, but you can schedule a set amount of time to go searching in,” Alano argued. “I know her better than you do, Clark.”
“I should hope so,” Clark laughed. “You married her after all.”
“In a Terran ceremony,” Alano admitted with a fond grin. “We may be the first Lano couple married in the eyes of Terra, but not the Trelendir.”
“Welcome to the Terralendir,” Clark grinned back at him. “I imagine you two are just the first of many. In time others may well decide to express their love in the Terran way and it would not surprise me if the Lano custom of having a wedding ceremony following the birth of one’s first child caught on here as well. It might not replace a traditional wedding, but could well seem like a confirmation of the union. We’ll just have to wait and see.”
“On that, yes,” Alano nodded. “But I cannot just sit here when I don’t know where Eesai went. I tell you she would never have stayed out this long. She especially promised to be here on my return so we could spend some time together.”
“And precious little you have had since you got married. Is that how Lano couples behave? Get married and then live separate lives?” Clark asked.
“Not hardly,” Alano shook his head. It was not a Lano expression, but it seemed to be one all the Lano members of Meriwether, Inc. had picked up fast enough. “But we knew we’d be on our own ships for a while at least. That’s why keeping our schedules synchronized is so important.”
“Then I guess I’ll just have to put out a tracer,” Clark offered.
“A tracer?” Alano asked.
“Sure,” Clark nodded. “How else are we going to know where to go looking for her? Space is a fairly big place you know.”
“I thought she might have left a flight plan,” Alano commented.
“She did,” Clark nodded. “But those things usually changed the moment one lifts off. But in case you didn’t know it, every Terran ship is required to carry a radio beacon set to a certain frequency.”
“I seem to remember that,” Alano nodded. “At the time I thought it was a pretty good idea rather than waiting until you’re actually in trouble to put out a call.”
“Oh, it’s not a distress beacon,” Clark denied. “There’s another mechanism for that built into our ships’ radios. You really should know that. Your master’s license comes up for renewal soon, doesn’t it?”
“Another two years,” Alano shrugged. “It was renewed three years ago, but none of the questions were about distress beacons.”
“It’s only one question if at all, but sometimes that one can make the difference,” Clark warned him. “It pays to keep up on all the regs.”
“Just like in the Navy,” Alano nodded.
“Just so,” Clark agreed. “Anyway this beacon is just there to let others know your position. We have a series of navigation buoy satellites in all inhabited systems and in most uninhabited ones between here and the most distant colonies. As a ship passes through a system, it automatically transmits its identification and bearing to all buoys within range and continues to do so until out of range. Normally, that data is stored for a year and then dumped and no one ever goes looking for it, but Customs has been known to use it in tracking smugglers and we can use it to track Eesai’s ship.”
“But if she is doing her job, she won’t be in a system that has any such buoys,” Alano pointed out.
“No, but we will know where she was last seen and which way she was headed,” Clark told him. “It will take a few days to get what we need. The database is huge and every request is reviewed by the Astrogation Board, so I’d better get the process started first thing in the morning. Besides, unless we care to wait another month or more, all we’ll know is which way she was going when she left Sol System or maybe the one after that. The data all gets relayed to Earth eventually, but it won’t all be here yet. We can trace her ship faster if we follow the reports back ourselves.”
Alano, however was not the only one who wanted to go looking for Eesai. “She’s my sister,” Sue argued while they were waiting for the results of the tracer. “You cannot expect me to sit around Earth quietly while you go out looking for her.”
“And she is my wife,” Alano reminded Sue. “The same applies. It’s funny, though. Biologically you aren’t really Eesai’s sister just as I am not really her husband by Lano tradition.”
“Like that makes a difference?” Sue asked challengingly.
“Not really, no,” Alano smiled, “but one of us has to be the one to go.”
“Actually,” Clark interrupted them as he walked into the room. It was the main living room in Louise’s home with a large picture window that looked down from the mountain and over the city of La Paz. “I’m sending out both ships.”
“Both?” Sue asked. “Can we afford that?”
“Can’t afford not to,” Clark replied. “First of all, two ships can search faster than one and they can verify another’s findings as well. Sue, you’ve never been on a Search and Rescue op before, have you?”
“Not really,” she admitted, “but I can see how if we find multiple possible targets we can investigate more rapidly.”
“Right,” Clark nodded. “More ships cover a search pattern more efficiently. If we had a third ship, I’d employ her here as well. We’ve been doing very well the last few years, so we can afford three dry runs if it comes to that. We could even afford to lose a ship if we absolutely had to, but we cannot afford to lose her crew and that holds whether it is Eesai’s crew or one of yours. We can replace ships with money, but no amount will replace one of our own, so both ships are going and I’m going with you as well. I’ll travel on Salinien and captain her pinnace once we start searching. Jerry can handle your pinnace, Sue. There are time-worn ways of running a search pattern and this is not my first time at this particular rodeo.”
Meriwether II and Salinien lifted from the Anspach space port one at a time and did not rendezvous until just before using Jupiter as a gravity sling. The large planet fascinated Ralani, “It’s huger than anything in Treloi system,” she explained when she caught Jerry chuckling at her wide-eyed fascination as they sat in the day room. Ralani had taken an instant liking to Terran coffee which was hideously expensive on Treloi, but on a drink-all-you-like basis in the ship’s galley.
“It looks even larger since we’re scooting inside his rings for this maneuver,” Jerry explained. “It’s a bit closer than I feel comfortable with, practically skimming through that methane soup we call an atmosphere, but while Jupe is big, he’s only the biggest planet in the system. There are hundreds of known Super-Jovian worlds out there that make him look like a toy in comparison.”
“But not in a system with an inhabitable planet,” Ralani disagreed. “Jupiter is the largest planet in any known inhabitable system. Any idea why that should be?”
“Scientists are divided on that,” Jerry told her. “Some think that Super-Jovians accumulate too many of the essential elements and chemicals of life in a system for any mere nearby ball of rock to have a chance of supporting life. Others think it has something to do with unknown long-term tidal effects either on the other worlds or even on the sun involved if the big planet is too close. I personally think it’s coincidence and that we will eventually find an inhabitable world in a system with a Super-Jovian. Having been an explorer, I’ve been in plenty of systems with large planets. It never seemed to effect the distribution of materials in the rest of the system and tide is such a minor effect, unless two fair-size bodies are in orbit around each other, that I tend to doubt that explanation as well.”
“So why are we headed for New Beijing?” Ralani asked. “We know that was a fly-by only. Meriwether I didn’t actually stop there, did she?”
”That is true,” Jerry agreed, “but we have not heard where she went next. Each report comes down the line eventually, but New Beijing is the planet furthest out that we’ve heard from so far. By the time we get there, we hope to learn where she went next.”
“Can’t we tell that from the system exit trajectory?” Ralani asked.
“We could guess,” Jerry nodded, “but we wouldn’t know if Eesai chose to change course after leaving. She may have, you know. Someone on board might have spotted something new or unusual. When that happens all plans tend to get put on hold.”
“And if we get there and that’s the last report?” Ralani pressed.
“We’ll take our best shot,” Jerry smiled and paused to take a sip of his coffee. “Judging from their exit trajectory, I would guess they intended to skim past Putinmir.”
“Funny name,” Ralani opined.
“Does it mean something in Lano?” Jerry asked.
“No, it just sounds funny,” Ralani grinned. “Like baby talk.”
“The world was originally settled by Russians,” Jerry explained. “I doubt any of them thought it was baby talk. It doesn’t matter and I suspect Eesai chose to fly by there as well, but which way did she go next?”
“She was supposed to be headed due west, I mean galactic west, wasn’t she?” Ralani asked. “Why not just fly straight rather than taking all these zigs and zags?”
“Safety,” Jerry replied. “Ships’ engines have been known to break down from time to time. Our ships are in the best of condition these days. We can afford to keep them that way, but that was not always the case, and let’s not forget why we even met Inilien in the first place. Lani tells me that so far as anyone could tell she had been in perfect running order until just before the approach to Cereloi, By rights, Lani didn’t want to lift until the ship had been fully repaired, but there were extenuating circumstances.”
“What sort?” Ralani asked.
“Malana was given the choice of getting off the planet in a hurry and being ridden out on a rail,” Jerry explained. “I’ve heard it said that she rewrote the book on diplomacy, but I’m pretty sure the chapter covering what she did on Cereloi got trimmed out by her editor.”
“What did she do?” Ralani asked.
“Well you can get the details from her next time you meet,” Jerry chuckled, “but what you have to realize is that Cereloi had been a rebel planet from the Trelendir not too long before. The rebellion was put down, of course, but that left the loyalist government at odds with most of the planetary population, so the Trelendir, or more specifically, the Council of Generals on Treloi, sent Malana in to help reconcile the differences. She did it by giving them a common enemy; herself. By the time Alano and his ship got there she was evidently just a few steps ahead of the mob carrying the pitchforks and torches.”
“Carrying what?” Ralani asked.
“I’ll show you a movie or two next time you have a break,” Jerry promised. “What I mean is she had angered both sides so much that even she realized it would be best for her to get off planet as quickly as possible, so Alano got his order to lift as soon as Inilien had been restocked. Lani did her best to repair whatever was wrong with the engines, but she had neither the time nor the materials to do the job to her satisfaction. So when Inilien finally lifted she went along well for a while and then the engines just shut down in the middle of what became known as Rendezvous System.”
“I heard about breaking down from Lilla,” Ralani nodded, “but I hadn’t heard it was Malana’s fault.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t go blaming Malana,” Jerry told her. “Inilien was having trouble before Malana ever stepped on board and even Lani admits there was no way anyone could have known the engines were going to fail. My point, however, is that had they broken down in an inhabited system, they could have simply called for help. Instead they were stranded and could have ended up as merely one of those mysterious disappearances in space.”
“But they did send out a call for help and you found them,” Ralani pointed out.
“Ralani, sending out that distress call was a desperation move,” Jerry told her. “The chance of another Lano vessel hearing it was slim and at the time the entire Trelendir thought the Lano were the only sentient species in the galaxy, so putting out a call for help in the hopes some alien race might hear it would not have won Alano any awards.”
“I suppose not,” Ralani agreed. Just then a bell rang. “I’m on again. Assistant Nav.”
“You sound bored,” Jerry observed as he reached for her coffee cup. “Here, I’ll get that for you.”
“Thanks,” Ralani replied. “No, not bored, but the four hours on, four hours off schedule is starting to get to me.”
“How many shifts per ship’s day are you pulling?” Jerry asked.
“I just said,” Ralani replied. “Four on, four off – all day and every day.”
“What? Who gave you that schedule?” Jerry asked.
“That’s not usual?”
“Not hardly,” Jerry shook his head. “Four on and off is typical but only two shifts per day for watch officers.”
“Lani is almost always on duty,” Ralani pointed out. “You seem to be too.”
“Senior officers are always on call,” Jerry replied. “Lani often takes catnaps in the engine room and I always have something to do in my office when I’m not on watch. We both have eight hour sleep shifts, though, and will meet for an hour or two here and there as our schedules permit. Why else do you think we spend so much time together when we’re on Earth or Treloi?”
“Well, I still need to report on the bridge and in a minute I’ll be late,” Ralani told him.
“Uh uh!” Jerry stopped her. “You’re going to bed. That’s an order, kid. Now scoot!”
“But, Jerry!” Ralani protested.
“Bed,” Jerry told her. “Now!”
Ralani nodded and left the day room quietly, but a moment later Jerry heard the stairwell door open and caught the unmistakable sounds of someone hurrying upwards.
“Kids!” he muttered to himself. He took half a step to a comm. port, hit a small red button and called, “Bridge, Isaacs here.”
“What’s going on, Jerry?” Sue asked over the in-ship intercom.
“Sue, did you realize the kid’s been pulling three shifts a day?” Jerry asked.
“Three?” Sue echoed. “I thought it was just a coincidence Ralani always seemed to be on when I was.”
“Evidently not,” Jerry replied. “Maybe you should order her to bed this shift.”
“I think I will and after that we need to review her schedule,” Sue agreed.
“Jerry told on me, didn’t he?” Ralani asked a few minutes later when Sue told her to take the shift off.
“Jerry reported an error just as he should have, Ralani,” Sue explained. “He tells me you’ve been working too hard.”
“Aren’t I supposed to be working hard?” Ralani asked.
“You’re not supposed to be slacking off,” Sue retorted, “but you also are not supposed to be working yourself to death. What I want to know is how you’ve been pulling emergency shifts without anyone noticing.”
Ralani shrugged before attempting an explanation, “You told me to switch off between nav. and communications. I’m usually on the bridge during my navigation shifts but at the auxiliary comm. desk for the other.”
“Hmff,” Sue grunted. “Well, keep in mind the only time we would expect you to do four and four around the clock is during an emergency. From here on in I want you to do your first shift at the comm. here on the bridge – by now you ought to know enough to operate the equipment without supervision.” Ralani nodded happily. “And then after a shift off you’ll assist the pilot. Then you get twelve hours off. Now get yourself to your cabin before you fall asleep on your feet.”
“But my next shift would be in almost sixteen hours,” Ralani protested.
“Luck of the draw,” Sue replied. “Now git!”
Charley Rowntree waited until Ralani had left the bridge and told Sue, “In fairness to the kid, Sue, I thought you had assigned her those shifts intentionally.”
“Why would I do that?” Sue asked.
“I thought that you were trying to give her a taste of having to work through her fatigue,” Charlie replied. “Doctors have to pull impossible shifts during their internships too, you know.”
“No,” Sue shook her head. “I suppose it is good to know you can push yourself when you must, but I was more concerned that she get some experience of working on a ship.”
“She got that, I think,” Charlie chuckled, “and you’re right that she can handle the communications on her own. I think she was ready for that after the first week out from Treloi. Guess I’ll rework the duty roster and spread the shifts out.”
As Jerry had expected Eesai had taken the Meriwether I from New Beijing to Putinmir and from there on to the colony world of Fairhaven. As a report from beyond there had not arrived on New Beijing, Clark, flying with Alano on Salinien, ordered that both ships fly directly to Fairhaven’s system.
“We don’t have an exit trajectory from Fairhaven yet,” Clark explained by radio. “New Beijing received the automatic report from the buoy that marked Eesai’s entry to the system, but not her exit.”
“Do you think she’s stranded on or near Fairhaven, Clark?” Sue asked.
“I doubt that,” Clark replied a moment later. “She would have had whatever repairs she needed done on Fairhaven or if they weren’t up to it, she would have sent a message back to Earth.”
“There is that,” Sue agreed, “although no captain likes to call for help and Eesai is no exception.”
“I wouldn’t have hired her if I thought she was,” Clark chuckled. “No, I think it more a matter of colonial inefficiency. Those buoy reports are mostly sent automatically. They not only transmit their records to the nearest inhabited world, but tack a copy onto the database of every passing ship, so most such reports come down the line on their own. But there aren’t any colonies beyond Fairhaven in this direction; that’s why spacers often call it the Great Desert. No one has found any inhabitable worlds for a thousand light years to the west of there.”
“We’re not that far galactic west, are we?” Sue asked.
“Not quite,” Clark admitted. “There are several good mining colonies beyond Fairhaven, but they’re all in artificial habitats. Strictly speaking, the desert begins beyond those. I figure that there hasn’t been enough traffic coming in for an automatic record to be sent yet and the Fairhaven bureaucracy is probably as glacially slow as any other so they are probably waiting until the first of the year or some other date to roll around before sending their reports along.”
“Wait a minute,” Sue cut in. “Did you send Eesai into the desert or was that her idea?”
“We discussed it together and decided it might be worth an expedition,” Clark explained. “So far as I know, no one has sent a serious mission into the desert in the last century. No one ever found much of value out there and eventually no explorers wanted to take the financial risk of a second look. We don’t know how far the region without inhabitable worlds extends. That is probably why they attached the word ‘Great’ in front of ‘Desert.’ Anyway since then we have invented better ways to detect monopoles and discovered Chondy gems and a whole lot of other improvements, not to mention the new drives that can make a journey of a thousand light years an easy thing, so we decided to try some initial poking around in the desert. If she found something of value, great and if not, maybe next trip we would see if we could find the other side of the Great Desert.”
“I suppose there are still quite a few systems that were overlooked inside the desert as well,” Sue admitted. “Okay so the idea was not as crazy as I thought. On to Fairhaven system then.”
Fairhaven had originally been founded by colonists from Ontario, although over its first century people arrived from nearly every English speaking nation on Earth and not a few other colony worlds as well. On arrival in the system, Clark called down to the planet for the records of Meriwether I’s whereabouts and learned that his request for a tracer had never arrived here. Because ship locations were classified as personal data he would have to land on the planet and present identification as an owner of the vessel before it would be released to him.
“I could just fly down in the pinnace,” Clark told both Sue and Alano, “but it’s probably going to take a couple days or so to cut through the red tape. We may as well both land and enjoy the sights such as they might be.”
From the excitement in the voice of Fairhaven control, Jerry guessed, “I’ll bet they’ve never had two ships landing here at the same time.”
“You’re probably right. I looked Fairhaven up,” Ralani offered. “Their space port only has three landing pads for commercial vehicles of our size or larger.”
“Then I think we can let Alano touch down a few minutes ahead of us,” Sue decided. “I wouldn’t want to get the wrong coordinates if that controller forgets which ship we are. Watch which pad Salinien sets down on and if we get told to set down there as well, pick one of the other two.”
It turned out the caution was not necessary and soon both ships were down and with their engines shut down to stand-by mode. “Control,” Ralani called, once they had contact with the pad, “we report positive contact. Meriwether II has landed. Request weather report, please.”
“Weather?” Control asked, seemingly startled.
“We’re in an open area, Control,” Ralani explained, remembering her basic training exercises. “Will we need to set high wind stays?”
“Oh, uh,” Control hemmed for a moment, “negative, Meriwether, we have fair weather forecast for the next five days. Have a nice stay.”
“Thank you, Control,” Ralani replied. “Meriwether II out.” She turned to see everyone on the bridge grinning at her. “What?” she asked, a little embarrassed.
“Control can usually be counted on to let us know if high wind precautions are needed on our part,” Charlie informed her.
“Never mind that,” Sue cut in. “What Ralani did was by the book, and she was not wrong. Ralani, dear, it’s just that there are differences between what we learn in school and how it is once you’re out in the real world. As Charlie said, we never have to request a forecast on landing even if the manual instructs us to do so.”
“I didn’t know that,” Ralani admitted.
“Why should you have?” Jerry asked. “This was your first landing at Communications, wasn’t it? I imagine while you were in training everything had to be precisely as it was in your manual, right?”
“Uh huh,” Ralani nodded.
“Well, in practice even the military ships don’t request a forecast every time they touch down, although it doesn’t hurt to ask and had we spotted a storm from orbit it would have been essential to ask, especially on a colony world as removed from the mainstream as this one is. Like Sue said, you were not wrong to request it; it’s just that some of us old spacers have learned to relax a bit. And sometimes that gets us in trouble as well.”
“Besides,” Sue added, “if that pause meant what I think it did, it didn’t hurt Control to have to actually look up the forecast. He should have had it a bit faster than he did. Well, it sounds like we’ve arrived in time for some nice weather. Jerry, please set up an in-port duty roster – skeleton crew only. If you can get enough volunteers, everyone else can go play tourist. No, Ralani, I won’t let you volunteer. You’ve worked enough. Take some time off for a change. Even sailors on naval ships get leave time.”
The main hatch on Salinien was already open as Meriwether II made her approach and Clark decided to step out and watch the landing even though the next pad was three hundred yards away. He took a deep breath as the hatch opened and asked, “What is that delightful smell?”
“The local vegetation, sir,” Garano Ki Batchi informed him. Garona was one of several former crewmen from Inilien who had followed Alano to the Salinien. While in the military, Garano had been primarily a security man and for a La he was both tall and strong. However, since leaving the Treloian Navy, Garano had been studying engineering and, on hearing that Alano had a ship once again, had secured a berth as Engineer’s mate. “It is reputed to have a scent that is a cross between pine and cedar. I wouldn’t know that, but I agree that it smells nice here.”
“Yep,” Clark nodded. “I’d say that pine and cedar is as accurate as one can get about this aroma. I’ve smelled a lot worse, but in a few minutes we probably won’t notice it at all. Did you say it was the local vegetation that produces it? Most colony worlds have Earth life everywhere they can.”
“The local flora is very resistant to foreign invasions, I have read,” Garano admitted. “Terran plants have trouble competing. Farming here must be an excruciatingly hard occupation.”
“I wonder how Treloian plants would fair,” Clark mused as Meriwether II completed her landing. He nodded toward Salinien’s sister ship and commented, “Nicely done that. Not even so much as a trace of sideslip. I wonder if Sue did the landing herself or let her pilot do the job. Garano, please let the captain know I’m going over to Meriwether and ask him to meet me there at his convenience.”
“Yes, sir.”
Port Fair’s officials were slow to respond to the new arrivals, giving Clark and his captains time to confer. “I think all three of us should go into town to request the records,” Clark told them in the privacy of Sue’s office. “This is an official corporate investigation and I want it to look as serious as it is.”
“I don’t blame you,” Alano agreed. “This port already impresses me as being fairly lax. They should have been out to meet us with their inbound paperwork as we touched down.”
“Well, this is a fairly isolated world, Alano,” Sue pointed out. “I imagine time moves at its own pace out here. Leave the rush and bustle of civilization to the big planets. The folks out here are probably less concerned with hurrying through their day.”
“They still ought to respect our time though,” Alano pointed out a little stiffly. “We are not here as tourists.”
“Not primarily,” Clark admitted, “although I’d like to look around a bit. If we conduct more expeditions out this way, Fairhaven would be in an ideal location to be used as a jump-off base.”
“Not if they can’t handle arrivals and departure in an expedient manner,” Sue told him.
“That can be worked on,” Clark waved the consideration aside. “Once they get to know us, it might be different. Or perhaps we could purchase a license to build a private port with our own facilities. I’ll check into that while waiting for the reports on Eesai’s ship.”
“Captain Ho?” Jerry’s voice could be heard through the intercom.
The formality puzzled Sue briefly, but she instinctively responded in kind, “Yes, Doctor Isaacs?”
“Port Fair Authority waits on your arrival at the airlock, ma’am” Jerry informed her. “They are also interested in meeting with Captain Alano Ki Matchi.”
“Send them up, please, Doctor,” Sue replied.
There was a brief pause. “That is apparently contrary to the local law, Captain. Port entry is conducted through the airlock.”
“Very well, Doctor,” Sue sighed. “We’re on our way. Clark, are you sure you still want to set up a company office here? Sounds like they might be sticklers for almost everything.”
“I’ve never heard of a port official insisting on not entering a ship before,” Clark noted. “I suppose there must have been trouble sometime in the past with an overzealous inspector or something. Jerry did imply, I think, that this only applied until our entry has been officially processed. At least I think that’s what he was implying.”
“I’m more concerned by his sudden grasp of formality,” Alano commented as they headed for the lift. “Jerry is the sort to make jokes about his own funeral, and I’ve heard him make fun of officials to their faces on Earth.”
“Jerry knows when to reign himself in,” Sue replied as the lift doors closed. The elevator only dropped one floor before stopping where Ralani, decked out in her formal space-black uniform, stepped in to join them. “A little over-dressed, aren’t you?” she asked the young La. The pleats in her uniform kilt looked sharp enough to cut and if that dress uniform had ever been worn before it was only during Ralani’s graduation ceremony the day before she joined Meriwether II. Once on Earth Helani Bi Terralano had made good on her promise of a shopping trip and since then Ralani had worn only Earthly civilian clothing even while onboard.
“Jerry told me to put this on,” Ralani replied.
“Did he now?” Clark mused.
“Is that significant?” Alano asked.
“Could be,” Clark nodded. “Sounds like he’s trying to match officiousness in kind and expects Ralani to play the adjutant.”
“I can do that,” Ralani assured them.
The door opened at the hatch level and Ralani took a few running steps to get ahead of the others. “Sir!” she reported to Jerry with a crisp salute. “Admirals Anspach and Alano and Commodore Ho are here now.” The three appeared just as Ralani finished getting that announced.
“Well, there you are gentlemen,” Jerry told the waiting officials. “Everyone is here now.”
There were three port officials, all in formal white uniforms, and standing stiffly as though “at attention” was their customary posture. There was no official uniform onboard Meriwether, Inc. ships, although Alano’s choice of shirt and kilt looked suspiciously like his old captain’s togs except that the kilt had been emblazoned with a Hawaiian floral print. The rest tended to wear plain and functional khaki trousers and whatever shirt or blouse suited their mood. In contrast, the appearance of Ralani in her Navy uniform caused her to stand out and the uniformed group from Fairhaven tended to look at her rather than the others.
“Gentlemen,” Clark began, “May I help you?”
“We have forms for the captains to sign,” one of the men told them, holding out several sheets of paper.
“No desk out here,” Jerry observed, “Ensign, do you think you could scare up a clip board or two?”
“Aye aye, sir!” Ralani replied with a salute. She turned and hurried back into the ship.
“This should just take a few minutes, gentlemen,” Jerry assured them.
“The, uh, young lady?” The customs official asked uncertainly.
“Ensign Ralani Di Lasai has been assigned to serve aboard one of our ships,” Clark explained. “The one we’re here trying to find out about, in fact.”
“Ensign,” the man repeated. “Then she is in the Navy?”
“The Treloian Space Navy,” Jerry informed him. “We do jobs for them from time to time.”
“Treloian?”
“You have heard of the Lano?” Jerry did not quite ask. “Sentient non-human species. We first met them almost ten years ago.”
“We’ve heard something about that,” the man admitted. “We’re a bit isolated out here. She isn’t human?”
“Neither am I,” Alano pointed out his ears.
“You don’t look all that different,” one of the other men opined.
“The amber skin color ought to be noticeably different,” Sue pointed out.
“And I’m tall for my people,” Alano added.
“There are quite a few physiological differences,” Jerry commented, “but we were lucky to meet folks so like ourselves first time out.”
“I didn’t even notice until the rest of you started in,” the third customs man admitted. “I was too busy trying to place her uniform.”
I found the clipboards,” Ralani announced as she returned with two of the objects.
The paperwork was signed quickly and the officer in charge asked, “Do you have anything to declare?”
“Our holds are empty,” Clark replied. “We’re on search and rescue. You are welcome to look for yourselves.”
“Not this time,” the officer decided after a long pause. “Enjoy your stay.”
“Sue, Alano,” Clark told them after the Customs men had left, “I smell a trap. Make sure no one on either ship sells so much as their pencil shavings on this world.”
“Huh?” Alano asked.
“Normally standard procedure on any world we stop in on,” Jerry picked up the explanation. “Most crewmen and women will have a few trinkets, rare goods, or exciting chemicals to sell in case a chance to engage in private enterprise crops up. This world looks to be fraught with such possibilities and our boys and girls are going to be sorely tempted to try and supplement their paychecks.”
“Normally I don’t care what they do along those lines,” Clark added, “so long as they are not breaking any laws. On most worlds they either are not or they are doing something so minor that even if they try selling to a cop he isn’t likely to do more than consider the price. Here, however, we’ve been asked to declare if we were importing anything. We answered honestly that we are not. Our holds are empty; Meriwether, Inc. has nothing to sell on Fairhaven. The crew is something else. Like Jerry said, most of them have something to sell should there be a buyer. Warn your people that we’re being watched this time. No sales of any sort.”
“Oh, come on, Jerry,” Ralani insisted. “It will be fun.”
“It’s a hundred miles away,” Jerry pointed out. “That’s a long way to go for a county fair.”
“Country fair,” she corrected him.
“Same thing,” Jerry maintained.
“It does sound like fun, Jerry,” Lani decided. “We can rent a flyer in town and be there in under an hour.”
As soon as Alano and Sue were finished warning their crews about the dangers of private enterprise, the three of them had rushed into town in order to get the data they were looking for. They went to the office of the Clerk of the Colony, arriving an hour before closing. “May I help you?” the Assistant Clerk inquired. Clark explained why they were there. “I’d love to help you,” the clerk told him, “and we probably do have the information you’re looking for, but I can’t release it to you.”
The Clerk’s office was in an almost rustic collection of buildings that housed the colonial government. None of them were more than two stories tall and they were all made of wood except for a large, brick-covered auditorium-sized hall where the Governors and the people’s representatives met. The building they were in reminded Clark forcefully of a hundred small town halls anywhere on Earth.
“Why not?” Clark demanded softly.
“Well, since you did not bring a notarized copy of your tracer request, the matter will have to be decided by the Colonial Board of Governors,” the clerk explained. “It’s a matter of releasing private information you see.”
“Private information concerning a ship I own,” Clark pointed out.
“I’m sure it will just be a matter of course,” the clerk admitted, “but it is as much as my job is worth to release that data.”
“Can you at least tell me if it exists?” Clark asked.
“Hmm, I probably should not,” the clerk considered, “but I suppose it would do no harm to tell you that much.” He checked his workstation and after a minute looked up and reported. “Yes we do have exit data from Meriwether I.”
“Good,” Clark nodded, “then I guess it’s worth sticking around a while longer.. When can we get a hearing?”
“On Monday,” The clerk replied.
“What day is it today?” Clark asked in return. It was a fair question. Before the Matsuya-Tron drive became widely used for interstellar travel, it was almost impossible to synchronize the clocks on any two worlds. Close approximations had been generally within two weeks of Greenwich Mean Time on Earth. Once people could avoid travelling at speeds that approached significant fractions of the speed of light, it had become possible to readjust one’s calendar and clocks, so that even though most people measured their days by local standards, there was a standard Terran Time by which official communications could be dated. However, most worlds had not bothered to adjust their calendars and many had created entirely new ones. Just because Fairhaven had a Monday in its week, there was no guarantee the day just before it was Sunday. Further, there was no way Clark could be expected to know for a certainty what day it was today.
“Friday,” the clerk informed him, and then added, “they will next meet in three days, after the weekend.”
“Look,” Sue cut in, “isn’t there another way?” The clerk glared at her and she hastily added, “I meant another honest way to get that information. This is an emergency. What if we got a court order, for example?”
“Oh, yes,” the clerk nodded, “I could comply with a court order as well, but where are you going to find a judge before Monday morning? It’s late Friday afternoon and everything closes for the weekend. It’s the law.”
“What?” Alano asked in spite of himself.
“Blue laws,” Clark explained after thanking the clerk. He indicated they might as well leave and only continued his explanation once they were outside the building. “You find them most frequently out here on the periphery on worlds like this that are a bit old-fashioned and isolated from the mainstream. My guess is that the original settlers were trying to get back to however they envisioned the “good old days.” In this case it meant spending time with family on the weekends, probably going to church, picnic, doing the crossword puzzle or whatever.
“Any way you slice it, however,” Clark shrugged, “we aren’t likely to get what we need until after their weekend. We may as well get back to the spaceport before they start rolling up the sidewalks.”
“You mean every business will be closed?” Alano asked.
“Most of them,” Clark replied. “I imagine the bars will be open. Never saw a world like this one that was not fully stocked with places to get drunk, unless the predominant religion forbade alcohol, of course. Even then there is always some to be found if you know where to look. They won’t have anything Lano can drink safely, though. From our reception this afternoon, I doubt anyone on this planet really believe you and your people exist. Odds are the story of alien spacemen was only covered by the local tabloids; the sort you find in the supermarket checkout lines.
“No doubt there will also be restaurants and theaters that are open as well,” Clark continued. “But the factories will be closed and the offices and whatnot. Anything that might help us learn what we want to know will be shut tighter than a drum.”
While Clark and his captains were striking out at the Clerk’s office, Ralani had also breezed into town, just to have a look around. She was a natural tourist and used a camera to take pictures of just anything that caught her eye, from one of the strange local flowers and trees to the rustic wooden buildings and the asphalt-paved streets. She was particularly entranced by what Jerry later explained was a fire hydrant. So when she found a flyer describing the country fair in the town of Briscow, she just knew she had to see it for herself.
Under gentle assault from both Ralani and his wife, Jerry surrendered quickly and the next morning rented a simple flying car and arrived in Briscow not long after the fair had opened. The affair reminded Ralani of similar celebrations back home. She had grown up in a small town that was essentially a bedroom community of Pansilli, the capital city of Treloi, although, historically, the sleepy little town had once been the capital of the united Trelendir. She had grown up with the notion of small town festivals to celebrate the spring, summer or the harvest season and the notion of seeing the human version of one fascinated her.
“So, see anything that stands out?” Jerry asked Ralani.
“All of it,” Ralani laughed. “The rides are different and I’ll bet the festival food is as well…”
“Better let me test some of that food before you try eating it,” Jerry advised. “There are a lot of things humans find delicious that will give you a case of the purple polka dots.”
“And vice-versa,” Lani added. “Don’t worry, we have a testing kit with us. Anything that catches your eye that we can’t eat, Jerry will.”
“Hey, there’s no guarantee that I’ll find it appetizing even if it is technically edible,” Jerry protested.
“If you don’t like it, dear,” Lani told him practically, “we can always toss it out.”
“Hmm, which first?” Ralani mused. “Rides or food?”
“Do me a favor and try the rides on an empty stomach,” Jerry advised. “Some of those things are designed to make you dizzy. They might also make you sick.”
“Nonsense!” Ralani laughed happily. “It takes more than a little revolving and rotating to make me queasy.”
“Have it your way then,” Jerry shrugged. However, Ralani took his advice and rode her fill of the rides before settling down to a meal of various festival foods. The cotton candy proved to be as innocuous as she predicted in spite of Jerry’s cautionary, “You don’t know what they used for food coloring.”
She and Lani also had no trouble consuming a local variant of a sausage on a bun, although it had no nutritional value for them and they had to avoid using the local mustard as it was slightly alcoholic. Lano drank alcohol, but theirs was methanol-based, and had no ethanol in it. Ralani had to reluctantly avoid the fried dough as well when it turned out Lano metabolism would react badly with the oil it was fried in, but ice cream was a confection that both species could enjoy regardless of the available toppings.
Eventually Ralani gravitated toward the bandstand to listen to the local music. It was there that a crowd of children discovered her and started asking curious questions. They found Ralani as fascinating as she found them and they chatted for over an hour asking questions back and forth. It turned out that Clark’s prediction that the Lano were unheard of on Fairhaven was an exaggeration. The children all recognized Ralani for what she was and so did some of the older people.
Out of the corners of her eyes, Ralani caught a few dark glances her way but while it bothered her, she was too busy laughing with the children for it to really sink in. Soon as she chatted with the kids, she forgot the hostile looks entirely and when a young local man who seemed to be her age invited her to dance, she accepted delightedly.
“Hi,” he told her with a broad smile, “I’m Zeke.”
“My name’s Ralani,” she replied. “I’m afraid I don’t know any of your local dances.”
“Don’t worry,” Zeke assured her. “This one is free style anyway. Do whatever feels right.”
The music was loud and had a rapid tempo. As Ralani looked around she saw Zeke was correct. The other dancers were not following any formal pattern, just gyrating or jumping up and down or side to side as they felt like doing. There were dances like that on Treloi although Ralani had not much practice at them either. During most of her high school years, Ralani’s apathetic ways had caused her to avoid school festivals of all sorts. Dancing was not what Apathetes did. As she thought back, she realized that Apathetes did not really do anything and instantly regretted that lost time during which she had not really been alive. While it was obvious, it was not a thought she had before and she resolved to try to explain it to other Apathetes on her return to Treloi one day.
The fast music ended and something much slower and with a different rhythm began. “It’s a waltz,” Zeke explained. “Want to give it a try?”
“Why not?” Ralani chuckled and looked around. She spotted Jerry and Lani dancing not too far away and tried to emulate the same position with Zeke that Lani had taken with Jerry. She did not quite get it right, but Zeke quickly corrected her and led her through the basic steps. “I feel so clumsy,” Ralani laughed nervously as she allowed the young man to hold her.
“You’re doing fine,” Zeke assured her. “Really.”
“But this is nothing like dancing back home, even though I didn’t do a lot of that either,” Ralani explained.
“Why not?” Zeke asked interestedly and listened as Ralani explained about the Apathete culture among some of the teenagers on Treloi and other worlds of the Trelendir.
“It was stupid really,” Ralani admitted. “I think Apathetes are just trying to avoid being hurt, by affecting to not care, but in retrospect I think I missed out on all the fun until I met my new sister.”
“Met your new sister?” Zeke asked. “You mean when she came home from the hospital?”
“No,” Ralani shook her head. The movement exposed more of her already prominently pointed ears. “My sister by adoption, um, sort of. Okay, it’s like this. My biological sister – although Lano do not really make that distinction among ourselves – Lilla was one of the officers on the first ship to meet Terrano. Humans that is. Well there was an accident in space, and my other sister, Serafyma, although technically she was not yet my sister at the time, rescued Lilla and well one thing led to another and they became very close and decided to take the Oath of Adoption.
“That’s not really very common,” Ralani continued, “not even in the Trelendir, because any such Oath also binds anyone else who is already kin to accept the adopted party as kin as well.”
“Okay, that makes sense, I think,” Zeke admitted. “But what did this Seravina do?”
“Serafyma,” Ralani corrected him. “She was just gentle and caring and accepted me without trying change me. And strangely that’s what changed me. Dad hated her on first sight, I think he felt threatened, if you want to know the truth. Sera stands head and shoulders above him although she is only a little taller than average for a human woman. Lano are, on average shorter than humans.”
“You’re not tall, but I know girls who are shorter,” Zeke commented.
“I’m tall for a La,” Ralani told him. “Take a look at Lani over there. She’s about average and I’m several inches taller. I wouldn’t want to get into a fight with her though. She’s really strong. She has to be, really. She’s the ship’s engineer on Meriwether I and believe me that takes a lot more than just pushing buttons.”
“She is a starship engineer?” Zeke asked betraying surprise.
“Yes, she’s one of the best, in fact,” Ralani replied. “Why?”
“She just doesn’t look like an engineer,” Zeke noted.
“What’s an engineer look like?” Ralani countered.
Zeke thought about that and decided, “I guess I don’t know. I guess I always thought of it as something men do.”
“Well, that’s not fair,” Ralani told him. “Next you’ll tell me I can’t be a ship’s captain.”
“You’re not…” Zeke started uncertainly.
“Not yet,” Ralani laughed. “This is my first trip. I’m assistant communications and navigation officer.”
“Wow, I’m still trying to get through college,” Zeke told her. I didn’t think you were that much older than me.”
“I have to go back after my compulsory hitch in the military,” Ralani told him “and I’m only twenty-one.”
“You haven’t been to college yet?” Zeke asked.
“I have, but I have graduate school ahead of me,” Ralani told him. “I’ll never be a thalua without advanced classwork.”
“What’s a thalua?” Zeke asked.
“In your language that would be a wizard,” Ralani chuckled, “but that sounds as silly as calling Thalirip magic. There’s nothing magical about it. There are just some things certain Lano can do that others cannot without the use of machinery. Our technology is based on thalirip in the same way human technology is based on electronics. We’ve been combining technologies since contact, though and the new hybrids are pretty amazing. What are you studying?”
“Hmm? Oh, I’m going to be a doctor,” Zeke told her. “I’m taking the pre-med curriculum, then next year it’s on to medical school.”
“Very nice,” Ralani smiled. “So I’m not really much older than you are, am I?”
“I guess not,” Zeke admitted. “Are you sure you’ve never danced before?”
“Well not since I was very little and the dances were nothing like this,” Ralani told him. “I guess I just have a good teacher.”
Zeke smiled embarrassedly at that, but before he could recover from the compliment, the music ended and the band took a break. “Um, would you like something to eat?” he offered.
“Well, maybe a cup of coffee,” Ralani smiled.
They had just barely stepped off the dance floor when they were confronted by several young men and women about Zeke’s and Ralani’s age. One of the men shoved Zeke hard, pushing him back several feet. “Freak!” he accused.
“Zeke the Freak” one of his friends laughed.
“Oh grow up,” Ralani replied, turning to help Zeke.
“Shut your mouth, yellowskin!” one of the women told her.
“I don’t believe I heard that correctly,” Ralani retorted, turning back. “Would you care to try again?”
“We don’t need alien trash on our world,” the woman told her.
“Watch your mouth,” Zeke told her.
“You watch yours, freak,” the man who had shoved him shouted angrily. “Dating outside your species. That’s sick!”
“Is there a problem here?” someone else asked softly, stepping in behind Zeke and Ralani. Ralani turned to see several other young men and women standing there. Still more people were gathering to see what was going on. The young man who spoke “You know, Dougie, you ought not to criticize. I doubt any girl in either species would want to date you.”
Dougie screamed wordlessly and jumped at the man who had just spoken, but Ralani raised her right hand and Dougie stopped in mid-leap and fell to the ground unconscious. Three others who had been standing with Dougie started running forward in support but Ralani used the same thalu on them and then four were passed out on the ground. The others stood there, stunned.
“How did you do that?” Zeke whispered.
“A simple self-defense thalu,” Ralani shrugged.
“Magic,” one of the attackers’ friends accused. “She’s some sort of witch.”
“Don’t be so medieval, kids,” Jerry’s voice cut through the angry mutters. “A witch? Next you’ll have me thinking you believe in fairies.” He looked around and saw the three men and the women Ralani had knocked out. “I think maybe you ought to be seeing to your friends here.”
“Is that all you have to say?” a middle-aged woman said from the edge of the still forming crowd. “Did you see what that thing did to our children?”
“No, madam,” Jerry replied firmly, “and I rather doubt you did either. Did she touch any of them? Fire a weapon at them? No, I thought not.”
An angry mutter rippled through the crowd, but a uniformed police office stepped in just then. “Hold on there, folks. We wouldn’t want to ruin a nice holiday with anything we’ll all come to regret.”
“You should arrest that alien witch,” the middle aged women told him, “for what she did to those poor innocent children.”
“Ma’am, these are hardly children,” the cop told her. He took a second look and saw the four on the ground were starting to sit up. “And they don’t seem any worse for the wear. Furthermore if I arrest anyone here this afternoon, it will be the troublemakers who started all this unpleasantness.” He glared at the people still sitting on the ground. “Now why don’t we all just move along and enjoy the rest of the fair, hmm?”
“Good idea,” Jerry agreed. “Come along, kids. Your friends can join us too.” Jerry led Ralani, Zeke and the young men and women who had defended them away from the others and toward the concession stands. “I think a round of ice cream cones on me is in order,” he told them after introducing them all to Lani.
While they were eating the ice cream, Ralani noticed two women approach Jerry and Lani and talk to them for a few seconds and then move away again quickly. “Ralani,” Lani told her, “it’s getting late and we really should be getting back to the ship.”
“It’s not that late,” Zeke remarked, “The sun hasn’t set yet.”
“I know,” Lani agree, “but we have a rental to return. Ralani, honey, say goodbye to your friends and we’ll be off, okay?”
“Sure, Lani,” Ralani nodded. She reached into her purse and pulled out a small pad of paper and a pen. “Zeke, I imagine I’ll be all over known space for the next two years but if you’d like to keep in touch, Meriwether Inc. will know where I am.” She scribbled as she talked then ripped the top sheet off the pad and handled it to Zeke. Then she gave him a quick hug and a kiss on the cheek and hurried off with Lani and Jerry.
“All right,” Ralani commented once they were in the flyer, “why are we really leaving?”
“You caught that, did you?” Jerry asked. “Clever girl. The truth is we got a tip that some of those kids you dropped by magic were going to try something.”
“It wasn’t magic,” Ralani corrected him, “It was…”
“Thalirip, I know,” Jerry interrupted, “but it’s not how they saw it and we both know you got lucky. That thalu you used only affects one person at a time. You would have been in trouble had they all attacked at once.”
“But they didn’t,” Ralani pointed out.
“That would have come next,” Jerry told her. “Besides the best way to avoid trouble is to not be there when it happens.”
“That sounds like running away,” Ralani accused him.
“Yes,” Jerry agreed easily. “The better part of valor and all that. Kid, had we stayed, the likelihood is that someone would have been hurt, possibly us. If it had turned into a full scale riot, and that is not impossible given the way your friends were taking up sides, someone might have been killed. There was nothing to be gained by staying and had there been more trouble it might have affected our ability to learn what happened to Meriwether I.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Ralani admitted. “But it’s not fair, you know. The Lano have never done anything to them. Why did they hate me without even knowing who I am?”
“It’s easier to hate someone you don’t know,” Lani told her. “Remember how the anti-Terralano factions were a few years ago? Not every La welcomed the presence of Terrano either.”
“And one more thing,” Jerry pressed on.
“What?” Ralani asked.
“A riot would have absolutely ruined a nice day,” Jerry chuckled. “And overall it was a nice day, wasn’t it?”
Ralani thought about that. Leaving aside the unpleasantness after the dance, she had enjoyed herself. “Yes,” she replied at last. “Yes, it was.”
“Clark,” Alano told him over the breakfast the next morning. “We have trouble. It seems there are protestors at the main gate to the spaceport.”
“We just got here,” Clark replied, trying to stifle a yawn. “Are you sure this involves us?”
“It does according to the local news,” Alano replied. “You know I always watch when I’m in port. It’s a habit I picked up after nearly losing my ship on Cereloi. This is how it started out there too.”
“All right,” Clark nodded, helping himself to a cup of coffee from the galley counter. “What have we done now? If these people get upset over a visiting spaceship, their idea of entertainment must be sitting around to watch the stagecoach come in.”
“A what?” Alano asked, and then stopped Clark from answering. “No, not now. Jerry took Lani and Ralani to a fair yesterday while we were using the local library, for all the good it did us.”
“It was worth a shot,” Clark shrugged. “On most worlds we could have gotten that data off a public terminal. Fairhaven seems to be a stickler for privacy issues, I guess. Still anyone with the correct access code could have found it out. So why is an outing to the fair causing protests? Did they hog all the fried dough for themselves?”
“It appears Ralani was dancing with one of the local boys,” Alano replied. “There was a charming clip of that, in fact.”
“Are Lano dances particularly lewd by human standards?” Clark asked.
“I don’t imagine so and these were Terrano dances in any case,” Alano replied. “The problem seems to be that she was there in the first place and mixing socially with a human. That Jerry and Lani were an obvious couple seems to have fired up the protests even more. It’s all blinding stupid if you ask me, but as you can see there are a couple hundred angry people demanding we leave Fairhaven immediately.”
Clark looked at the vid screen and commented, “I see their placards aren’t particularly literate. At least they should have checked their spelling.”
“Have you two seen what’s going on out there,” Sue asked, walking briskly into Salinien’s galley.
“Alano was just bringing me up to speed,” Clark explained. “Ten minutes ago I was still wearing a bathrobe. We cannot leave Fairhaven until we have Eesai’s exit data.”
“Maybe we could calm things down if one of our ships lifted,” Alano suggested. “I could take Salinien up or Sue could take Meriwether although having the one with a Lano name lifting might be better if the locals don’t like alien monsters coming by for tea.”
“Neither ship will lift until we have what we came for,” Clark told them stubbornly. I will not have anyone in our company forced off a planet. It sets a bad precedent, especially if we ever have to come back here. Oh geeze!” he added, catching activity on the vid screen. “New protestors are arriving by the busload.”
“Good thing we’re a quarter of a mile away and behind the gate,” Sue commented. “I put my crew on standby and told Lani to prep the drive engines just in case.”
“I should do the same,” Alano commented and got up to give the orders.
The new arrivals, however, were not demanding that anyone leave Fairhaven, in fact and, according to the signs they were waving around angrily, were willing to welcome all visitors, especially the Lano. The two groups faced off and tossed insults back and forth, but for the moment seemed to be peaceful for all that.
“There,” Alano told the others. “The problem is that it takes a third of one of our hours to prep the engines and they cannot be kept on standby for more than a few hours, as you know.”
“It’s enough to see if there is going to be trouble out there,” Clark told them. “If nothing happens for an hour, have the engines brought down again.”
“Will do,” Alano agreed, “but may I suggest we keep our engineers on battle shifts, just in case the protests start to get violent later on?”
“Good idea, and let’s keep guards at the main hatches with orders to close up if a mob suddenly breaks through,” Clark told him. “Although so far it looks like they just want to shout.”
“Shouting is good,” Sue remarked. “Beats the heck out of throwing rocks and dynamite.”
The protestors continued to gather over the next two hours. Eventually a line of the local police was formed to keep the two groups apart, although from the look of things neither group really wanted much to do with the other. However, when reporters from the local news media started asking for interviews with the captains of the ship, Clark decided to hold a news conference.
“Let the kid make the opening remarks,” Jerry advised him. “She can introduce you, Sue and Alano.”
“What’s the point of that?” Clark asked.
“Ralani is a star,” Jerry chuckled, “and a natural with any newsman. Do you remember her performance in the Council of Generals?”
“I was still on Earth at the time,” Clark reminded him.
“Oh, so you were,” Jerry recalled, “but you must remember how she did with the Lano newsies, right?”
“She was quite compelling,” Clark admitted. “I doubt she’ll win anyone over with adorability points though.”
“You never know,” Jerry told him. “I was going to put her back in her uniform again, but decided that would only emphasize she’s not human. Instead we’ll keep her in khakis like the rest of us when in space and Lani is helping her select an appropriately civilian blouse. I suggest we all dress the same way. It will look sort of uniform, but very human.”
“Nobody here but us chickens, huh?” Clark asked. “Yes, let’s display how alike we all are. Maybe if we wear hats to hide the Lano ears?”
“No,” Jerry disagreed. “That would be dealing out subtlety with a sledge hammer and it’s all too likely someone would catch on that we’re trying to hide something.”
“We’re not trying to hide anything,” Clark denied.
“Oh, yes we are,” Jerry chuckled. “The Lano aren’t human. It’s obvious to anyone. Conversely, humans are not Lano; another blinding glimpse of the obvious. We’re trying to hide that rather basic difference and accentuate our similarities, but we don’t want to do it in a manner that insults the intelligence of the people of Fairhaven.”
“There are a lot of them I’d like to insult that way,” Clark grumbled.
“Don’t blame you,” Jerry laughed, “but we aren’t going to. No, we’ll all dress in a similar, but not identical fashion. Make sure Alano isn’t wearing that kilt of his, although that would probably go over well on New Scotland.”
“You think that will really make a difference?” Clark asked.
“It certainly won’t hurt,” Jerry pointed out. “It will also be a display of solidarity and unity.”
“And stubbornness?” Clark prompted.
“Could be,” Jerry shrugged. “I’m not an expert on political twist and spin. We would need Malana here for that, and I’m still only an amateur anthropologist. Oh, cheer up. If I’m completely stupid you will at least have someone to blame.”
“You know I don’t go looking for scapegoats,” Clark responded, “and it won’t make me feel better if you’re wrong instead of me. It would still be my decision to accept your suggestions that would be at fault, but what you’re saying sounds sensible to me too. All right, let’s get on it.”
They arranged to use one of two lounges in the Port Fair facilities with the representatives of Meriwether, Inc. seated before the large picture windows that overlooked the landing pads where the two ships sat. This was actually the smaller of the two lounges and a bit cramped by the time all the cameras and reporters arrived, but it kept the ships in full view reminding reporters and viewers alike who was holding the conference and what it was about.
“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen,” Ralani began. After the attack of nerves she always felt before speaking publically she calmed down and became the poised and confident young woman all Treloi had come to recognize several years earlier. “Thank you for coming. I am Ralani Di Lasai from the planet Treloi and currently serving as Assistant Navigator on board the Meriwether II.” Jerry had coached her on that point. Mentioning her double duties would only confuse her audience and they decided that navigator might sound more important to the land-bound colonists than communications officer. “We are here on Fairhaven because one of our ships, the Meriwether I is missing and are waiting for your Council of Governors to meet and grant us permission to see where that ship went once she left this system.
“Since we had the misfortune of landing at the end of your work week,” Ralani continued, “It has been necessary to continue our stay until after the weekend. Since you have such a lovely and beautiful world, some of us thought it would be pleasant to see the sights and meet some of your people. Hey, I admit to being a natural tourist and have rarely encountered a world like yours.” Another exaggeration. None of the people on Fairhaven would know this was only the second world Ralani had visited since leaving Treloi. “So on learning of the Briscow Country Fair, we rented a flyer yesterday morning and went to see it for ourselves. For the most part, I am happy to report that the people of Fairhaven are as open and inviting as any I have encountered elsewhere, but I am afraid that there were others, just a few, who objected to my presence.
“I’m not sure why,” Ralani continued with a shrug. “I’m informed that by human standards I’m passing cute and I don’t smell bad, but there you are. When some small unpleasantness began I protected myself and my friends in a manner that harmed no one and seeing that our continued presence might spoil the event for others we left Briscow soon after and returned to Port Fair to wait for Monday.
“As I am sure you know,” Ralani went on, “we awoke to find that there were some protestors at the gate of the spaceport demanding that we leave this world. Again, I am not really sure what we may have done to upset people so, and once we have the data we came for we will, indeed leave Fairhaven, although I would like to thank those friends who took the time this morning to come here and show their support.
“That is my statement at this time,” Ralani concluded, “I would now like to turn this over to Admiral Lewis Clark Anspach, one of the owners of Meriwether, Inc. Thank you.”
The reporters all had questions for Ralani, as Jerry had predicted they would, but Clark held them off as he made a statement of his own and then turned the rostrum over to Sue and Alano. When all statements had been made, however, it was Ralani who received the bulk of the questions. Evidently no one here was concerned with the missing Meriwether I or the search and rescue mission. Once again Jerry was correct, it was Ralani who was the star of the show.
“Miss Di Lasai,” one reporter began. “It is said you were dancing with a young man about your age in Briscow. If you were just there to see the sights why were you also socializing?”
Ralani’s brow furrowed a bit as she decided how best to answer what she thought was a silly question. “First of all, I hope you will not mind a polite correction, but that would be Miss Ralani, or more accurately at the moment, Ensign Ralani. Di Lasai means ‘Daughter of Lasai,’ although my mother’s name is actually Shaeri. Lasai was my father’s grandmother. Lano choose their matronymics and patronymics to honor certain ancestors we consider to be outstanding and it can change from generation to generation. It all depends on one’s family, but when addressed in short, it is our given name that is used.
“And yes, I did dance briefly with a very nice young man named Zeke,” Ralani admitted, allowing a smile of pleasant reminiscence to appear. “If I remember correctly I had been talking to some children, answering questions – you know how kids are – and Zeke asked me to dance. What of it? I said we were there to meet the people of Fairhaven, not just see the sights.”
“Why didn’t you mention that in your statement?” the reporter pressed.
“I glossed over a lot of needless details in my statement,” Ralani laughed gently. “Should I have mentioned that I discovered I love cotton candy and ice cream but learned I could not digest the fried dough? Did you want to know I rode the rollercoaster twice and nearly spun myself sick on that thing called the Tilt-a-Whirl? Those details are about as apropos to the reason we are on Fairhaven as the fact that Zeke taught me to waltz yesterday. Look, we were just there for a pleasant day while waiting for the Governors to approve our request for data.”
“Ensign Ralani,” another reporter asked. “Did Meriwether, Inc. assign you that rank.”
“No, ma’am,” Ralani replied. “Meriwether, Inc’s ship’s officers have titles but not rank, but within the Trelendir, all young men and women must serve a compulsory hitch of at least two years in one of the military services. Most do so in government offices, filing or working in mailrooms and such, but my sister, Lilla Di Lasai joined the Treloian Navy and I’ll admit I look up to her, so I did too.”
“Then why aren’t you serving on a Treloian ship?” the woman asked, “or at least on a military ship?”
“My sisters Lilla and Serafyma both work for Meriwether, Inc,” Ralani explained, “and they are both on board Meriwether I. I found a loophole in the laws concerning military service and discovered that I could request transfer to any ship captained by a La. Meriwether I ‘s captain is Eesai Di Sonea, so I requested to serve on her ship. Much to my surprise the request was granted, so here I am trying to find the ship to which I was assigned.”
“You were assigned to serve on the lost ship?” the reporter asked.
“That is why I am here,” Ralani replied simply.
Other reporters took up that line demanding to know if Ralani was an agent of the Treloian government. She replied, “Technically, I suppose I am, and it is probable I will be debriefed as to what I learned and saw. Well, that shouldn’t matter to anyone. Both Meriwethers I and II have been employed by the Trelendir. There is nothing I could tell the Space Navy about them it does not already know. I’m not exactly going to be privy to any state secrets of the Terran Confederation, nor even involved with any of their military vessels. There are dozens of Lano sociologists on Terra and some of the colonies already too so even my observations of Terrano, humans that is, are not likely to be of interest.”
“Then why do you think your request to be stationed on a human commercial ship was approved,” one of the reporters asked.
“I’ve thought about that, and frankly I don’t know,” Ralani admitted.
“Ensign Ralani is being modest,” Alano cut in. “A few years ago after first contact there were a fair number of Lano who felt about humans the way some of the protestors today seem to feel about Lano. There were many more, however, who liked the idea of a Human and Lano alliance. They think of both our peoples as Terralano. Our current ruling party on Treloi is even called the Terralano Party and Ralani here was one of the early leaders of the Pro-Terralano movement.”
“How long ago was this?” yet another reporter asked.
“About eight years,” Ralani replied. “I was in high school. The Pro-Terralano movement is still going strong but is no longer as active since most people in the Trelendir are in favor of the Terralendir. Um, that’s our word for the combination of the Trelendir and the Terran Confederation. It’s been accepted as an inevitability in most of the Trelendir and to some extent on Terra and some worlds of the Terran Confederation, those nearest to the Trelendir.
“And it is not just Terrano and Lano anymore,” Ralani went on. “We’ve also made friends with the Carono. That means ‘Stone people.’ We called them that before we learned how to talk to them because their ships are made of stone slag, but the name suits them as well, as their bodies are silicon based. I met one of them not too long ago. We had to meet in space because their environment is too hot for us to survive in and ours is too cold for them. But the one I met was very nice. They’re very different from us, but you know, people are people whether they are made of flesh or stone.
“And that’s what really bothers me about these anti-Lano protestors,” Ralani went on. “What did I do to them? How did dancing for a few minutes with Zeke hurt anyone? And yet other people were calling out insults and attacking us. Well I have this to say to the people of Fairhaven; if you don’t like aliens you may as well close your spaceport. This is called xenophobia and it might start with the fear and hatred of people of a different species, but it won’t take too long before you start deciding that other humans aren’t your sort of people either. If you want to be an isolated backwater planet, well that’s your own business, but the rest of civilization is spreading out in every direction and, in a few decades or a century or so, you’ll be surrounded by prosperous worlds filled with people you don’t have anything to do with and who won’t have anything to do with you. So just ask yourselves; is that what you want?”
By all rights that should have brought the news conference to a close, but if reporters anywhere recognized a final statement, the ability to acknowledge it had been bred out of them long ago. They kept firing questions, mostly just rephrases of those asked before and Ralani answered them until Clark stepped in and informed them that if they had no further original questions the conference was over. The next question was nearly a word-for-word repetition of one asked five minutes earlier so Clark wasted no time in telling the reporters the conference was ended.
“I see they got our main message,” Jerry observed a short time later as they were watching the local news. “That we’re just here to find our lost ship.”
“They don’t seem to have gotten my message,” Ralani commented sourly.
“Well, I think that might have been slightly beyond their ability to comprehend,” Lani told her. “And for now, most of the protesters seem to have gone home so maybe you gave them something to think about.”
Ralani was about to reply when her name was called out over the ship-wide intercom from the main hatch. “Ralani here,” she responded.
“Your boyfriend’s here, Miss Ralani,” the man at the hatch replied. “Should I send him and the others up?”
“Others?” Ralani wondered. “Uh sure, I’m in the C deck lounge.”
“Sounds like you may have gotten through to someone,” Jerry remarked. “Unless you’ve been slipping off ship while I wasn’t looking, I suspect that’s Zeke and some of your other friends from the fair yesterday.”
Jerry’s prediction proved to have the accuracy and clarity Nostrodamus never achieved and Ralani immediately perked up as Zeke and the others entered the lounge. “Wow, this is a great ship,” Zeke told her, after a quick hug.
“Thanks,” Ralani nodded. “She’s fast too, with a modified Matsuya-Tron drive or as some are calling it a Terralano drive because it’s a hybrid of our two technologies. Much faster than anything either people had before contact.”
“Actually that’s why we’re here,” one of the young women told her.
“What?” Ralani asked, “You want to know about starship drives? Better ask Lani about them.”
“No,” the other woman laughed. “About the Terralano. We heard you talking about it at the news conference and we liked what we heard. How can we start a Terralano movement here?”
Ralani spoke with her friends deep into the night and back out the other side so that the sun was just starting to lighten the sky as they left the ship, carrying several notepads and Ralani’s old “I’m Terralano” pin.
Then Sue suggested the young La get some sleep. “We hope to be able to lift later and I want everyone alert at their stations.”
“Aye aye, ma’am,” Ralani saluted tiredly.
“What?” Sue asked archly.
“Oops,” Ralani shrugged. “Sorry, Skipper.”
Ralani felt like she had just closed her eyes when the call to stations was sounded. She hastily scrambled into her shipboard clothing and ran up to the bridge. “Ensign Ralani reporting for duty,” she puffed out breathlessly. She looked around at the amused crew and asked, “It’s still too early for the local offices to be open, isn’t it? Why are we leaving.”
“It appears we are being given the bum’s rush,” Sue commented.
“Evidently the demonstrations yesterday got the governors just a bit nervous,” Jerry amplified with his characteristic grin. “They met last night it seems, probably while you were sewing the seeds of revolution among your buddies.”
“I did no such thing,” Ralani denied.
“No?” Jerry countered. “Well, wait a few months and we’ll see. In any case they decided to release Meriwether I’s exit data. It was delivered just a few minutes ago with a brief note thanking us for our visit.”
“Thanking us?” Ralani asked.
“A diplomatic way of saying, ‘Farewell, adieu, sayonara, and get lost,’ all at once,” Sue told her. “Well, we have what we came for. Hopefully it will turn out to have been worth the wait. There are several systems in the direction they went. No doubt we’ll be checking into all of them.”
“What I wouldn’t give for an old solid fuel booster rocket,” Erich Schwartzwald, chief engineer on board Meriwether II, sighed.
“A what, chief?” his first, Sanari Di Kinsana asked, bewildered. They were outside the ship, trying to rig up a system of solar panels on the hull and a collection of Lano light-gathering cells on the booms of the skysilk sails.
“Before the invention of the Matsuya-Tron drive,” Erish replied, “before even the first primitive Matsuya drive, we used to launch spaceships on top of tall towering cylinders that primarily burned hydrogen and oxygen to provide lift. But some ships were too heavy to lift that way economically, so some of them had disposable booster rockets attached. The solid fuel burned rapidly and provided a lot of thrust to get those early birds off the ground. Then once up and away and as the solid fuel ran out those boosters were ejected and the main engines got those ship up the rest of the way.”
“Doesn’t sound very practical, chief,” Sanari told him.
“Compared to modern methods, it isn’t,” Erich admitted, “but it worked.”
“But how did you ever get out of your own solar system?” Sanari asked. “You couldn’t possibly have carried enough fuel to even get you to Luna under power.”
“We didn’t,” Erich agreed. “To get to the moon we had to coast most of the way. To send spacecraft to the other planets, we had to calculate minimum fuel trajectories, often using Earth herself as a gravity sling.”
“Those must have been very long trips,” Sanari decided.
“Three days, one way, to Luna,” Erich replied. “Trips to Jupiter and outwards took years.”
“How did you carry a year’s worth of food?” Sanari asked.
“We didn’t,” Erich explained. “Those were unmanned spacecraft. We had to develop some pretty incredible recycling systems for the trips to Mars, though. That took months when we finally attempted it and there was also called ‘cold sleep,’ a sort of attempt at suspending life. It wasn’t very good. It turned out nearly seventy percent of the people it was tested on died, until they learned how to screen out those whose bodies would not tolerate it, but even with screening, we lost one in ten on those missions.”
“That’s still too high,” Sanari opined.
“You’ll get no argument from me on that point,” Erich told her. “It was a foolish system anyway, but all we had to use at the time and if it had not been for their sacrifice we might never have gone any further than our own moon. In any case, if we had a couple of those old booster rockets we could get ourselves out of here. Once away from the nebula, our main systems might not suffer as much drain.
“We could at least call for help,” Sanari agreed. “But couldn’t we make a rocket of some sort?”
“I’ll have to think about that,” Erich told her. “Until we rebuilt the engines we had an emergency chemical booster system built into Meriwether I, but it was removed to make room for the improved drives. At the time I thought it was just as well. We never needed it anyway. Well, that’s all the solar cells. Let’s get back inside and see if that did anything to help.”
They went inside to find Eesai just inside the lock waiting for them. “Shouldn’t you be on the bridge, Skipper?” Erich asked.
“I don’t see why,” Eesai replied. “I’m captain of the whole ship and besides, it’s cold up there and for some reason I forgot to bring my winter coat this trip.”
“Well, I hope these modifications will help there,” Erich told her.
They finished unsuiting and went around the central shaft to the Engineering Compartments. Erich and Sanari made a few connections and after a brief prayer to any god, human or Lano, who cared to be listening, Erich flipped a switch and checked the power readings.
“Well, it’s an improvement,” he reported. “I think it will melt the icicles on your bridge, Skipper. It will help make the rest of the ship more comfortable too, but that’s about it, I’m afraid.”
“Why not?” Eesai asked.
“A number of reasons,” Erich admitted. “No ship was ever designed to run on solar power, even those that habitually work in close orbits to stars, so the best we could have expected was a significant boost, but I would not call this significant. For one thing we’re really not near enough a primary to get a lot of power. To tell the truth, this rig is working better than we had a right to expect and I suspect it’s the Lano solar cells doing most of the work. We’re trying to run on distant star light, not that of a nearby primary. Second, a fair percentage of what we are generating is being drained off by whatever it is that’s draining the rest of our systems.
“We have life-support,” he continued, “with a bit of power to run some of our instruments left over, so while we’re still becalmed on the edge of this nebula, we’re in no immediate danger.”
“What if you divert all life-support and instrument power into the engines?” Eesai asked. “Could we get enough of a boost to pull us free?”
“Not even a little, Skipper,” Erich shook his head. “Sanari gave me an idea, however.” He told her about the old chemical booster rockets and the possibility of cobbling one together.
“Sounds good to me,” Eesai agreed. “Anything that might get us back underway sounds good to me right now.”
“Well, I’m fairly certain we have nothing to cobble a decent chemical rocket together with,” Erich shrugged. “Well, nothing worthy of the name. I’m sure I could raid some things out of the medical kit that would do the trick, but not in the qualities we have. It takes a lot of thrust to move a tub the size of Meriwether around.”
“I’m not sure I like to hear anyone else calling my tub a tub,” Eesai frowned, “but as engineer I suppose you have the right, but if that wasn’t what you had in mind, what was?”
“The reason chemical boosters worked, Skipper,” Erich explained, “is that they converted reaction mass into propellant very very rapidly. They did it with such force that comparatively little reaction mass was needed to lift their payloads. I say comparatively because there are other ways to achieve the same thing, just not as sufficiently. Pressurized water or air, for example, can be used to push a load and here, where we are not actually in orbit, it’s really just a matter of moving away from the nebula, if we can. I’ll need to do some calculations, though. to see if we can produce sufficient thrust.”
“Then do so, please,” Eesai requested.
Erich chuckled, “You know, in an old science fiction story, this is where the engineer would pull out his trusty slide rule and come up with an answer in seconds.”
“What’s a slide rule?” Sanari asked.
“An old calculating device,” Erich explained. “I have an antique one on my office wall, but no one has used one seriously in centuries, any more than our navigator would depend on an astrolabe or take measurements with a sextant. No, never mind you won’t know what those are either, but I’m sure there are Lano equivalents; old thaliripi no longer considered useful. Anyway, it’s never that easy in real life, but we’ll get to work and see what we can come up with, Skipper.”
Two ship days later, Erich came up to the bridge to announce his partial solution. “Compressed air?” Eesai asked. “We can’t possibly have enough on board to push the ship anywhere.”
“Not the ship, Skipper,” Erich told her, “but I can rig up a distress beacon on a small missile, cover it with solar cells for power and launch it from the ship. I’m reasonably confident it will fly out of whatever is sapping our power in short order.”
“An air-powered missile, hmm?” Eesai mused.
“We could use water under pressure too, but the air missile would be simpler to devise. A single small tank would be the actual missile, you see. We just have to rig it to fly in the direction we want, and a way to release the air when it is pointed the right way. Should be simple.”
“I have some reservations about it,” Ito Despande, the engineer’s mate spoke up. “Not about the feasibility as a missile. If Erich says it will work, I believe him. But I’m worried that anyone following our beacon back to us will get caught as well.”
“That’s a good point,” Erich admitted, “but there’s no law against having the beacon broadcast a message as well as a standard distress tone. Hmm…”
“I hate when my engineers make that noise,” Eesai told him. “What does ‘Hmm’ mean?”
“It seems to me that we could paint a small device on the surface of the missile to measure the power damping effect and broadcast the results back to us. If it doesn’t extend too far from the ship, we can probably send a second transmitter on a tether to just outside the effect. It might allow us to talk to whoever finds us.”
“Not a bad idea, but we should wait until someone gets close,” Eesai told him. “We’re technically inside the nebula and it looks like we’re following a current of some sort. Motion is slow and projections show we’ll stay on the surface of the cloud for the next thousand hours or so, but our path will not be a straight one.”
“Are nebulae always so clearly defined?” Erich asked.
“Depends on the nebula,” Eesai replied. “Some are quite diffuse and others are fairly dense. This one is unusually dense and quite complex in structure.”
“Complex?” Erich asked. “It’s a dust cloud, isn’t it?”
“Dust and gas,” Eesai replied. “There’s a lot of methane and our scans find a wide variety of elements and complex chemicals of other sorts. There are also currents within the cloud that flow slowly in a wide circuit with all sorts of swirls and eddies. When you see it in infrared it is almost hypnotic. We also are detecting electrical emissions that seem to flow in surges along the paths of those currents I mentioned.”
“Electrical?” Erich asked? “As in lightning?”
“Maybe,” Eesai told him, “but while there are flashes of sheets and bolts of lighting from within the cloud, the ones we’ve seen move considerably more slowly, like reports of ball lightning maybe. We’re still trying to figure it out really. We’ll be nearer, maybe even inside a current in fifty hours or so. We might know more then.”
“I wonder if that might explain why our power is being drained,” Erich remarked. “I’ll see if I can cobble up some way to measure that.”
“Okay, that sounds good,” Eesai replied, “and if you must, start drilling holes in our hull.”
“Holes?” Erich asked. “I don’t get it.”
“Because, if I have to, I’ll see that every crewman is issued oars so we can row our way out of here,” Eesai told him.
“What about the pinnace?” Ito asked.
“What about it?” Eesai asked him.
“Has it been drained of power too?” Ito asked. “It’s been in stand-by mode all this time. We’ve noted that batteries have been holding their charge when off-line. Maybe the Pinnace could tow us out of here.”
Erich looked into that and found the small auxiliary craft was, indeed, still fully powered, but when they took her out of her bay and started to tow the larger ship the small craft immediately started to experience the same power drain and Eesai ordered it back immediately.
“We may need that as a lifeboat,” she told them. “It seems to have the power to get itself out of here even if towing is too slow. Best we leave it in its bay in case that turns out to be our only option.”
“The boat’s been badly drained by this exercise,” Erich admitted, “but I may be able to recharge the battery. It will be a desperation move, though, the last thing we want to try. The very last if you follow me.”
“I follow,” Eesai sighed. “Keep one or two of your people working on it, though. It’s our only lifeboat and if we get out of here, we might need it for the next emergency.”
“Planning ahead, Skipper?” Serafyma asked as she stepped on to the bridge.
“These things tend to come in clumps,” Eesai grumbled.
Erich’s voice came in over the intercom, “Skipper, we might use several compressed air tanks to push the pinnace out of the region. It would be slow going, but she would move, I think.”
“You think?” Eesai echoed.
“Well, I’ll need to do some calculations with data I don’t yet have,” the engineer informed, “but we’ll have it as soon as we launch the beacon tomorrow.”
“All right, Erich,” Eesai told him. “Do what you can. Any news, Sera?”
“Nothing really,” Serafyma admitted. “I’ve been doing chemical analyses of the peripheral cloud material. There’s an amazing amount of metal we weren’t picking up in the spectroscopic analysis.”
“Metal?” Eesai asked. “Really?”
“Well,” Serafyma shrugged, “I think it’s mostly in loose atoms and compared to the other dust and gasses it’s still fairly low by percentage, but still more than I expected. I think this cloud is composed of the remains or part of the remains of an old supernova and is slowly re-coalescing.”
“Well, it’s big enough for a solar system,” Eesai shrugged. “Are there any clumps inside the cloud that might support that hypothesis?”
“We haven’t been able to use the radar,” Lilla spoke up from her place at Communications.
“No power?” Eesai asked tiredly.
“Well, it would be a waste, but I did send some early pulses out,” Lilla told her, “but they don’t bounce back. The cloud absorbs the whole signal.”
“That doesn’t sound good,” Eesai replied. “It implies that if we pass completely into the nebula, our radio signals will be blocked effectively.”
“I suspect they already are,” Lilla told her, “or rather they are badly attenuated. The nebula’s edge is not quite as sharp as it looks. It’s more like a very dense fog and a little lighter at the edges. From what I can tell, we are already inside the outer border of the cloud and the really dense stuff is just the next layer.”
“Terrific,” Eesai commented dryly. “Will the ship’s hull suffer harm when in contact with the cloud, do you think?”
“It shouldn’t,” Serafyma informed her. “At normal speeds it would be quite abrasive, but we’re just drifting along with the current and are effective at rest relative to it.”
They may have been drifting along in the current but it was not always a smooth and easy ride. The dust and gas stream had numerous eddies and swirls so Meriwether I was often being slowly turned about or getting stuck in an eddy. With the power on minimum, the ship’s artificial gravity did not always compensate for these abrupt changes in direction.
Eventually, Lilla reported that she had been able to rig up her communications gear into a passive scanner of the area around them. “It’s even more intricate that we thought. You remember those electric pulses we detected?”
“The ball lightning?” Eesai asked.
“Hmm, maybe,” Lilla replied. “Well, now that we’re inside the cloud, I can see they don’t actually follow the flow of the currents, but some do travel parallel to them and others run off perpendicular to them. If we had full sensors, I’m willing to bet we would be able to make out a network of, well, I’m not sure what it would be of, but we could probably see the paths those surges are following.”
“If they are paths,” Sue pointed out.
“I think they are,” Lilla insisted. “Successive surges appear to travel along them. It could just be following an already established ionization trail, but it’s almost like something running down a road and through a channel or wire.”
“Effectively, all three analogies might be accurate,” Eesai considered. “Well keep scanning so long as it doesn’t cut into our comfort zone. Now that the bridge is not freezing cold, I’ve come to like it that way.”
Lilla continued to watch her screens. As she brought them into high focus the surges of electricity really did begin to resemble ball lightning and she was able to make up individual colors in these electric blobs, as she started to think of them. As the ship drifted closer and closer to one of the paths the blobs followed some of them and slowed down while passing and others stopped to float around the ship for an hour or more before moving away. After three days of that Lilla came on duty to find they were surrounded by thousands of colorful, pulsating lights. They floated around the ship for a few minutes and then, one by one, zipped off to other places in the nebula leaving only a single large greenish, pulsing blob that hovered outside the ship for several hours.
“This one seems to be staying with us long enough to analyze,” Lilla commented.
“Is there something to analyze there?” Eesai asked. “It’s just ball lightning, isn’t it?”
“Yes, no” Lilla responded unhelpfully. “I’ve been recording its pulsations and, to a lesser extent, to those of the others. To the eye they look as regular as a heartbeat, but when slowed down, there are oscillations that are very complex. I haven’t been studying them long enough to prove this, but I suspect that no two are exactly alike. Earlier, I tapped in to Erich’s spectroscope to study their spectrums. That was amazingly simple. They never vary by even the tiniest measurable bit in color, but, so far, no two of them are exactly alike, except, maybe for this green fellow.”
“Fellow?” Eesai asked skeptically. “Sounds like you think these blobs are alive.”
“Just an expression I picked up from Sera,” Lilla admitted. “But they could be. Why not?”
“Living lightning?” Eesai asked.
“The Carono are essentially living rocks,” Lilla pointed out. “And I’m not ready to say whether they are or definitely are not alive. Probably they aren’t, but they are displaying certain lifelike attributes.”
“So you think we could ask them to help us get out of here?”Eesai laughed.
Lilla answered seriously, “I’m not yet ready to declare them a form of life, Skipper. It would be an even greater step to think of them as sentient. Too great a step to make on such little evidence. I mean they would practically have to walk up and say, ‘Hello,’ before I’d believe that, well, not until I have a chance to study them more.”
“Just the same,” Eesai told her, “I would rather you did not have the chance, but while you do, you may as well make the most of it.”
“I’m still trying to detect repeatable patterns in the pulses,” Lilla told her and Serafyma the next day. “So far it seems to be very complex and constantly changing. There’s a broad overall pattern, but it’s like that heartbeat I was talking about. Inside the pulses is where it gets interesting. I can pick out certain small bits of pattern-like activity, but no larger combination of patterns ever seems to be repeated and the activity is apparently unpredictable, at least so far. I’m really quite lucky this green guy has stuck with us so long.”
“Why are you trying so hard to find a pattern, Lilla?” Serafyma asked.
“Actually, Sera, I’m trying to prove there is no pattern,” Lilla replied, “or rather that it is a form of communication.”
“Oh?” Eesai asked. “Have you decided now that this is an intelligent life form?”
“I’ve decided it’s a life form,” Lilla replied. “I think I can prove that when we get the computers completely back on line for full analysis of my recordings. As for intelligence,” she shrugged. “For all I know this is the village idiot.”
“It’s just a blob of ball lightning, isn’t it?” Eesai asked.
“A very complex one,” Lilla argued, “and it seems as interested in us as we are in it, or it is if that is why it’s still here. All the others went away.”
“Maybe greenie there was left to guard us?” Serafyma suggested. ”Just a watchdog.”
“That would just argue that the others could be intelligent,” Lilla pointed out.
“There are animals that leave members of their packs or troops to act as guards and lookouts,” Eesai pointed out, “but, for now, we ought to keep in mind this thing just seems to be alive and might not be.”
“Define life, captain,” Lilla challenged. “No, I can already tell you there is no universally accepted definition. There are conditions and behaviors that are agreed on that all life possesses, but until we know more of these blobs, we won’t know if they are alive. It’s just a hunch on my part. But while it might be just a blob of ball lightning, it seems to be a very complex one.”
Just then the green blob circled the ship very rapidly and then suddenly splashed against the hull. All the lights in the ship came on and all systems started to hum, although for just a few seconds. “Blinding… What happened?” Eesai demanded.
“Green seems to have hit us and been absorbed by our electrical system,” Lilla replied. “At least I think so. Erich’s calling from Engineering.”
“Talk to me, Erich,” Eesai commanded.
“Skipper, we just experienced one heck of an energy surge,” Erich reported.
“No kidding,” Eesai replied dryly. “What damage?”
“None that I can detect so far, Skip,” Erich replied. “But we popped a few dozen circuit breakers. We’re resetting now. The surge seems to have dissipated. Did we hit anything?”
“Something hit us,” Eesai replied. “One of those bits of lightning. You’re certain there’s been no damage? Nothing burned out?”
“Haven’t found anything yet, but I’ll keep you informed,” Erich promised.
“Thank you, Erich,” Eesai replied.
A strange gargling sound mixed with static started sounding through the ship’s intercom. “Now what?” Serafyma asked nervously.
“Some sort of interference is my guess,” Lilla replied. “Captain, our computer is back on line. Fully powered and running self diagnostics.”
“Interesting,” Eesai nodded. “Is that our ball lightning?”
“It’s energy in any case,” Lilla replied over another garbled burst of static.
“Too bad it didn’t get absorbed into the engines. We could have gotten out of here,” Eesai remarked. “That noise is annoying. What’s causing it and can’t we turn it off?”
“I can’t find a cause from here, Skipper,” Lilla replied. “Maybe Erich or Ito could, but I’m getting no warning lights. It’s just static in the system.”
“After Green went splat on us,” Serafyma remarked, “we’re lucky anything is working at all.”
Just then the static turned into a clear deep tone. “About one hundred and twenty cycles is my guess,” Lilla estimated. “I can turn down the volume, but I think we should wait this out.”
“Why?” Eesai asked her.
“I don’t think Green was killed or destroyed in that splat,” Lilla opined. “I think he’s inside our computer. Let’s just wait.” The sound went up in frequency until nearly too high to hear and then dropped rapidly down into the subsonic level and back up again.”
“If Green is alive,” Eesai remarked. “He is having entirely too much fun.”
The sounds and noises coming out of the intercom speakers changed over the next few hours and Lilla was forced to turn off all the speakers except for the one on the bridge. With all that noise going on, the system was useless for intra-ship communications anyway. As time passed the sounds seemed to get more and more complex until they started to resemble the initial static again. Then finally the speaker became quiet once more.
“Is that it?” Eesai asked in the sudden silence. “Good. Maybe now I can get some sleep.”
“Aaah,” the speaker sounded softly, “Eeeeeiiiii, ooouuuu.”
“Now that sounds like some sort of speech,” Lilla proclaimed, but immediately after a long string of syllables streamed out of the speaker, getting faster and faster and getting progressively louder and that then too stopped.
Eesai, Lilla and everyone else on the bridge waited silently for several minutes until a pleasant tenor voice asked, “Hello?”
^Green* was a herald, a professional messenger and diplomat, and a very successful one at that. His job involved travelling between cities, carrying messages, money, settling disputes, advising and so forth. He loved his work and the ability to see all the nations of the world was a privilege he would trade for nothing he could imagine.
The People were all over the world, of course. The civilized ones lived in cities that were large gleaming constructs personally maintained by their leaders and their servants, mostly their servants. Most of those cities were in the eastern lobe of the world and along the bright side of the west, but down on the dark side of the west and on that odd jutting peninsula to inward there were the barbarians; the primitive people who lived without so much the civilized took for granted.
^Green* laughed at himself. The barbarians lived like heralds, or rather as heralds did much of the time. Living without shelter to recharge in, wandering from place to place and calling no one location home. “We could always use more heralds,” ^Green* said to himself, “I wonder if I could train some from among the barbarians.” At least they wouldn’t whine the first time they had to sleep outdoors, not that a truly prosperous herald ever had to sleep. Sleep was for those who had to conserve themselves. A good herald also had energy to burn. In fact a good herald had to burn energy. Heralds were well paid. Well-paid heralds would become fat and vulnerable if they allowed their prosperity to accumulate.
Not for the first time, as ^Green* journeyed on business, he wished there was a way to store one’s excess money. Consuming it seemed so wasteful, and yet if he did not, it would only be stolen. The highwaymen were a terror to most travelers. Those who could travel were usually vulnerable. If they were smart they hired guards and never traveled alone. If not, they might find themselves completely drained and dying on a back-country road. A successful highwayman might find himself in the same position; fat and bloated after stealing all a traveler might have, he might find himself facing others of his kind.
Until recently everyone knew the highwaymen worked alone. None of them were willing to share what they stole, but lately there had been stories. Highwaymen working in pairs made a certain grim sense. Two of them ganging up on the single traveler and neither would be too bloated to defend themselves against other raiders or animals. Animals did hunt in packs sometimes.
A good herald, however, feared very little. The trick was to stay just at the threshold between great power and great vulnerability. There was a point where you could physically destroy any enemy with the power you had, but just an erg beyond that and you were fat and weak. Then all your power was needed to hold the power.
Heralds had training. They knew how to hold their energy in and could carry more comfortably than most people and they knew their limits. A herald who did not know his limits was a dead herald. But there was a comfortable feeling, being fat, and ^Green* always allowed himself one day of that luxury after being paid. Then he burned it off before leaving the shelter of a city and taking up his life on the road.
He was generally rather thin by the end of a journey, but that was alright; only a sick and starving animal would attack a thin traveler and even then ^Green* could protect himself. But the talk of highwaymen acting in concert bothered him. It was probably just a story. People liked stories, even scary ones, but it was the sort of story that might be true. If it were not true, it might still become true. If you were a highwayman, desperate for money, teaming up with another highwayman made a certain sort of sense. It made sense if you could trust your partner. Of course in that case your partner would be a ruthless, remorseless killer who would stop at nothing to get what he wanted, just as you were. The chance of two such people teaming up for even a short time seemed slight.
^Green* was carrying a number of messages between the Kingdoms of England and Spain. It was one of his easier jobs. The messages were written on energy tablets, and stored temporarily within his body. When he arrived in Spain he would deliver most of the tablets to the Royal Postal Service, although he was also carrying a personal message from the King of England. That one would be have to be delivered in person.
Running along the road from England to Spain was an easy task. This was an often-used trail that had been built so far in the past that no one remembered when. Trail blazing was another heraldic duty, although a rare one these days. The roads went everywhere so why build new ones? He did not have to follow a road, he could go cross-country, but that used up energy at a ferocious rate and there was no point to it this trip.
Then the unexpected happened. The road trembled. There was something big happening up ahead. ^Green* picked up his pace and ran down the vibrating road as fast as he could. Whatever it was, it was not close and he had to run a long time until it came into view.
It was large and dense. He had never seen anything so dense. It had obviously entered the world from outside. This, in itself, was not unknown. Strange rocky objects passed through the world every so often and ^Green* had heard of other denser objects, but had always doubted those stories. Now he knew better.
But why was it just floating here like this? The things from outside normally just tumbled slowing through the world and soon passed back out again unless they hit something along the way. There were clumps in the world; places where the world was harder where heralds had to go around rather than move along a straight line. Some of those clumps moved with the currents, or maybe they caused them – no one really knew for certain. But this strange thing was just sitting here.
Was it moving? ^Green* stopped to watch it for a very long time. The thing was blocking the road so understanding it was far more important that the messages he carried. It was moving incredibly slowly, he decided, and would be blocking the road for ages to come.
Finally duty won out over curiosity. The strange thing would soon break the road, so ^Green* took a little time to build a detour and then continued on at top speed toward Spain. The object must be reported and the Spanish king was the closest authority to report it to.
As ^Green* ran, he met others along the road and paused briefly to warn them of the dense thing, telling them to help spread the news, but aside from that he never slowed down, and he consumed his energy at a ferocious rate. Once, a desperate highwayman stood blocking ^Green*’s path. There were standard ways of dealing with such, but ^Green* did not have the time for that and instead slammed right into his attacker and absorbed as much of his energy as possible in the brief encounter.
Looking back, ^Green* saw a greatly reduced highwayman limping back away from the road. The highwayman was lucky. Normally ^Green* would have been more complete, but the extra energy gave him a burst of extra speed and soon the erstwhile attacker was a distant memory.
The Kingdom of Spain was one of the largest nations in the world. The King himself controlled not only his capital city, Madrid, but the old capitals, Toledo, Zaragoza and Barcelona, as well as dozens of smaller cities. This king had build Madrid himself rather than using the old city of his father as a symbol of Spanish prosperity. And Spain did prosper. Even now new cities were being built on the periphery of the world. They were colonies that promised and delivered great wealth to His Majesty.
Madrid was a wonder even for a jaded herald like ^Green*. Its soaring fountains and majestically complicated structures all bore testimony to the power of the King and unlike in many older cities, there were no little back corners where the constructs had started to become worn and fuzzy. Madrid was all sharp angles and bright lights; a beacon to all who approached.
While the city itself was maintained by His Majesty’s subjects, the king controlled every facet of the royal palace. It was, in fact, an extension of himself.
^Green* might have built a city had he been so inclined. Certainly he had amassed enough energy over the course of his career to have built several cities, but the builder of a city, be he mayor, baron or king, was confined to that city. The King of Spain might rule his kingdom, but he would never see any of it outside of Madrid. If he did, there would be no Madrid to return to. ^Green* much preferred the life he had to the restricted life of a ruler.
^Green* rushed to the Royal Post Office and dropped off his messages and then off to the palace. At the gateway into the palace, ^Green* was stopped by two guardsmen, servants of the king, placed there to keep lesser beings from disturbing His Majesty. ^Green* scoffed. As though anyone would dare, but he supposed it might make the King seem all the more important to some people if seeing him was more difficult to accomplish. ^Green* paused with the guards only long enough to flash his heraldic credentials and they instantly backed off, allowing him to continue on. No one in his right mind would attempt to block the path of a herald on duty.
^Green* needed no directions to find the king. Nobody would. The power flow within the palace advertised his location at all times. ^Green* simply followed the flow and soon found himself in the presence of a large violet person, several times larger than he was. A monarch did not have to worry about the vulnerability of holding too much power. He was not going anywhere and from inside his own palace he was unassailable by anything short of an army.
“Your Majesty,” ^Green* greeted him. Several smaller people moved quickly away.
“Lord herald,” the king responded formally.
^Green* was always tempted to laugh when addressed that way. Heralds were not lords. Why would they even want to be? They were far more powerful and respected than any mere lords, but kings granted them the honorific anyway. ^Green* supposed it was a mark of respect and produced a brief flash within himself that indicated he felt as honored as the king had intended.
“I bring you tidings from your brother, England, Your Majesty,” ^Green* went on. All kings were brothers, it seemed, even kings who had never heard of each other. Even kings who had been born a decade or two earlier to peasants a dozen kingdoms away were brothers to all others of their rank. And all such rulers were spoken of in the singular, even though the King of England was actually three beings ruling in concert. “I also bring word of another matter of concern,” he added after handing over the royal message.
“If you say it is of concern, Lord Herald,” the King of Spain responded, “then I am at your immediate disposal.”
^Green* smiled inwardly. Even kings did not care to ignore the words of a herald. He went on to tell of the large dense thing that was in the act of breaking the road to England, describing everything he saw and did, including the building of the detour.
“You have done very well,” the king thanked him, “and deserve your reward.”
^Green* felt the energy flowing into him. He grew, expanding until he was about half the size of the king. It was far too much, but it would have been a mortal insult to refuse whatever payment the king deemed proper. He supposed that after the pleasurable feeling wore off there would be a dozen charities that would benefit indirectly from Spain’s generosity.
“We shall send a Royal Inquisitor to investigate the matter,” Spain decided. “But I must send you to my brother, England forthwith, that he be informed of this as well.”
^Green* sighed. Those charities would benefit far sooner than he had hoped, but the king was right. The two nearest kingdoms should be in concert in this. He blinked his assent and with a polite dismissal from the king, ^Green* hurried out of the palace as best he could in his current bloated condition.
Even in the most prosperous of lands, there were always those unfortunates who needed help and agencies set up to help them. The Guild of Heralds saw to it that excess payments such as ^Green* had received were redistributed to those truly in need. If ^Green* ever found himself destitute, he could always apply for the return of some of the immense credit he had built up within the Guild over time. It was the closest thing to a bank anyone had in the world, but he could never recover all he had donated, only enough to reestablish himself to a healthy position. ^Green* had never had to borrow back any of his energy credits, however, and only knew a few heralds of working age who did.
He did not donate as much as he might normally have this time. To get to England quickly he would need more energy than he normally burned in travel. It would not leave him vulnerable since the excess would be gone before leaving Madrid.
^Green* circled the great city once, building up speed at an immense rate and then once he reached the road to England, sped on down at an amazing rate. It was not something he could keep up all the way, however, but it gave him a good head start. By the time he reached the detour around the strange thing, ^Green* was back down to his normal travelling speed, a fast, but economical rate that would have him in England in good time.
He paused briefly to look at the thing once more and noted that while it had moved a little, it had not moved any more than the flow of the world could account for. Then he picked up the pace once more and ran the rest of the way to London.
In many ways, London was similar to Madrid. It was a large city with many constructs given over to the display of wealth, but this was a much older city. Whereas Madrid had been entirely built by the King of Spain, the Triple Monarchs of England had merely improved on the capital city of their predecessors. This meant there were areas of squalor in the city, especially near the center, once one got some distance away from the Triple Palace.
Once again ^Green* gave his report and received far more energy than he knew what to do with. The Triple Monarchs were even more alarmed than their Spanish brother and instantly sent out investigators of their own.
Normally after a mission like this, ^Green* would take the time to rest. This was not to let his energies recharge, of course, but to allow his mind to recharge and relax from the tensions of work-related activity. However, curiosity got the better of him. He had to know what became of the various investigations. He wanted to know all there was about the strange object, so he kept enough energy for a full charge, but no more, and headed back toward Spain once more.
By the time he arrived, not only was the Spanish Inquisitorial staff on the scene, along with the English investigators, but thousands of other people had come to look at it. ^Green* found that mildly surprising. He expected to find some fellow heralds in the crowd, and did, but so many of these people were city-dwelling workers who had taken the time off to come and see the strange object. Well, ^Green* supposed, it was very unusual and not likely something anyone had seen before. He could hardly blame them for having the same curiosity he felt.
After a while, the novelty of a big dense thing wore off and people began to go home. The investigators concluded that while the dense object was indeed a nuisance, it was essentially harmless and they too left. Eventually only ^Green* was left to observe the object.
^Green* studied the object for a very long time. Rocking back and forth and circling it slowly until he finally settled down and remained motionless, contemplating the oddness for longer than it would normally take to get to the furthest civilized kingdom, China. He wasn’t sure he, or anyone else for that matter, had ever stayed still for so long and as he sat there strange thoughts occurred to him. Mostly he thought about mathematics, especially the mathematics of shapes and how one could calculate the area described by a shape of set proportions. That was not new, of course. In his classical training, ^Green* had studied geometry in detail, but he was not a professional philosopher and it was not something he had time to think about since his childhood. The object seemed to be a conglomeration of circles and cylinders, triangles, rectangles and trapezoids. With a scale to measure it all by, he could easily calculate the area of the surface of the object and the volume it encompassed. He didn’t not have such a measure, but he caught himself making a rough estimate and starting to work all that out.
After the longest time, ^Green* thought of something else. He wanted to get closer to the object and investigate it in a more tactile manner. He circled the object rapidly and then swooped in to touch it and found to his surprise that he was able to pass right through it with only a slight amount of resistance.
As soon as he was inside the outer skin of the object, he instantly became aware of a complex network of tiny roads or pathways. It was a miniature world all its own and he was instantly drawn to travel these strange new roads.
He had too much energy and after a brief moment realized that in order to fit he would have to both scale himself down and stretch himself out, but he could fit without losing any of himself in the process. The glory of it was that he could feel power flowing all around him. This place was actually generating power and he could always take what he needed later when he wanted to leave.
He was everywhere within the object and was surprised to discover it was mostly hollow, but there was nothing about hollow space that interested him, not when there was so much where he was to look into. At first nothing seemed to make sense. All the roads ran in long loops and if he traveled them long enough he would always come back to where he started. It was a puzzle, but somehow it seemed that was how the power was being generated and released into the system. He wondered if the same could be done in the real world if all roads could be set up in long loops, but he still did not know how it worked. He was fairly certain closed loops were not all that was needed.
He discovered a vast array of electronic constructs, like small cities, but so much more complex. His first discoveries were the small cold stars that seemed to have no function he could determine and then the much larger ones whose light illuminated the large hollow areas, or rather he thought that was what they did, but did not know it for certain until he found a set of other constructs that created images of the hollow spaces.
He was shocked to see the large moving solids inside the object. How could solid objects move? Even more mysterious, how could they move without breaking? And yet they did and then ^Green* formulated a most bizarre hypothesis. These moving solids were alive. He had no idea how anything solid could be alive, but as he watched them he concluded they were not only alive, but like people. The thought was revolutionary and compelling. They seemed to be communicating with each other, at least he thought that was what it was. Certain movements with their limbs and faces seemed to elicit other movements of a similar sort. It was confusing and he had to admit they might only be animals. If they were people, however, he wanted to talk to them.
And then he found the store of knowledge. At first he was not sure that was what it was. Instead of energy tablets there was a vast array of towers in which something like writing had been written. The only problem was if it was written, it was in some sort of language or code he had never seen before. This was going to take some time.
^Green* worked harder and faster than he ever had in his life. After a long while he began to understand some of what he was encountering. By trial and error, he began to build up a small lexicon of nouns. He learned that the constructs that fed him the images of the hollow area were called cameras and the written data was in something called a computer and, most astounding, there were things called batteries that were supposed to actually hold power to be used later. These people did not have to carry their wealth within them!
Then he discovered the speakers, which, if he understood, produced a series of waves called sound and if the moving solids were people, that sound might be meaningful if only he could figure out how to use a speaker. ^Green* no longer doubted these were people. Only people could have built this amazingly large store of information. So much of it was meaningless to him so far, but with his basic store of words he tried to say them through the speakers.
Learning to understand the data store, even to the small depth he had so far, had been the hardest thing he had ever done, but it proved simple compared to learning how to make sound. Then he found, soon after starting to experiment with the speakers, that there were reversed speakers; something called microphones. Using the microphones he could listen to the sounds he made, but he still did not really know what sounds to make. None of his attempts produced any meaningful results until he discovered the text-to-voice routine in the computer’s operating system. Then he realized he did not need to actually produce the sounds he wanted, just feed the words he wanted spoken and the computer would say it for him.
^Green* stopped to think about what he could possibly say to these strange moving solid things that might be people and all he could thing of was, “Hello?”
“Blinding Hell!” Eesai swore, “What’s that?”
“My name is,” the voice in the speaker began. There was a short clicking sound and then, “Green,” followed by a pop.
“You are green?” Eesai repeated. “I’ll give you green. Who’s doing this? This is no joking matter!”
“Joking?” ^Green* echoed wonderingly as he looked up the word. “No! No joke. I am a herald. I carry messages, act as a diplomat, an arbitrator.”
“Skipper,” Lilla interrupted “I think that’s the green blob we saw enter our electrical systems.”
“Skipper?” ^Green* asked. “That is your name?”
“This better not be some practical joke,” Eesai muttered, “or I’ll have Erich install a keel just so I can haul you over it. I am Eesai Di Sonea, Captain of Meriwether II, a commercial exploratory ship of the Terralendir.”
There was a slight pause before ^Green* replied, “Pleased to, uh, meet you, Eesai Di Sonea, Captain of Meriwether II, a commercial exploratory ship of the Terralendir.”
“Um, it’s okay to shorten that to just Eesai, uh, Green did you say?” Eesai replied.
“Thank you, Just Eesai,” ^Green* replied.
Lilla cut in, introduced herself, and explained that the word “just” was not part of a name. Then she asked, “Where did you come from?” Chen Li McGrath, Lilla’s co-communications officer on board arrived on the bridge just then and sat down in one of the other chairs but signaled to Lilla to keep talking.
“I was, engendered? Born? Created? Calved? In the Kingdom of, uh, Poland,” ^Green* replied, having had to search for the right words.
“Poland?” Chen Li echoed.
“Uh, there is no direct translation for the name so I chose one from your, um, library,” ^Green* admitted haltingly. “Your, uh, craft? Ship? Is currently about midway between England and Spain.”
“Fair enough,” Chen Li admitted. “At least it sounds like you can learn our language faster than we can learn yours.”
“Yes,” ^Green* admitted, “I mean no insult? Offense? But you seem to be slow moving things? Creatures? People?” Suddenly ^Green* felt an intense pain as a small part of him was bitten off. He made an electronic yelp over the speaker involuntarily.
“What’s wrong?” Lilla asked concernedly.
“I am under attack,” ^Green* replied between bursts of electronic noise. “You have animals?”
“Animals?” Eesai asked. “In the electrical and computer system? Some bugs maybe, but not animals.”
“The AV deterrents,” Chen Li guessed. “The anti-virus system must be identifying Green as a foreign bit of malicious programming.”
“It could be the firewall,” Lilla added.
“Not once Green was already inside the system,” Chen Li argued as he quickly manipulated the computer from the next console. “The firewall blocks entry into the system, but once you are inside it does not have the ability to search you out unlike the AV systems.”
“But the firewall could stop him from leaving too,” Lilla insisted.
“He?” Chen Li asked, still working on the computer, “well maybe. But I doubt he was trying to get out of the system. Oh, there we go, the AV is paused. Green? Are you still with us?”
“I am here,” ^Green* replied. “That was close, though. It was like being eaten by an animal I could neither see nor touch.”
“It might be possible to program our security program to ignore you, but I’m no programmer. For now I’m going to turn it off. Please don’t wipe out our data banks. We’re going to need them to get home.”
“Destroy precious data in a library?” ^Green* was horrified by the very concept. “Never! Only a barbarian would do that.”
“You have barbarians?” Lilla asked interestedly.
“I don’t have barbarians,” ^Green* replied, understanding the question literally, “but they live in other parts of the world.”
“The world? “ Eesai wondered. “You mean the nebula. Yes, I guess you would call it a world. So, you are civilized?”
“I should hope so!” ^Green* replied, sounding more amused than affronted. “Although I only spend as much time in cities as I must. I am a herald. I cannot do my job if I do not travel. What is this place?”
“This is my ship,” Eesai replied. “We use it to go from one place to another.”
“Ship?” ^Green* marveled as he learned the word. All this was exceedingly slow going for him and he thanked the Ultimate Power that as slow as this felt to him, he was still able to keep up with these strange Solid People, these… He paused to look up their word for themselves. People? Did they use the same word for themselves that he did for his? They did, but “People” was a broad and generalized word. They had more specific ones. He sorted through dozens until finding the one that was most current and fitting. He was able to keep up with these Terralano.
Terralano, it seemed was the word they used for two different types of people; Terrans and Lano. Green had trouble understanding that. Could there truly be two types of Solid People. They all looked the same to him, but no! He found a reference to another solid type of people, the Carono, the Stone People. Stone people? He wondered. Could those solid objects that sometimes fell through the world be people too? Then he found a description of the Carono and his mind rebelled. That was absurd. He shoved the Carono matter aside. There were no stone people in this place.
“Ship?” Incredible! A place that went other places. How did they do that? No, he stopped himself abruptly. That would be too much too fast and how was not important just yet, but a place that could move… ^Green* had never even imagined such a thing, and then he discovered these Terralano had many sorts of moving places; ships, airplanes, carts and they lived… no that was almost too much to believe. They lived on balls of rock? Was that even possible? He supposed it must be if their library said so. They had fiction, he saw, just as his own people did, but these living balls of rock were stored among the facts. It must be true. In that moment he got a glimpse into just how deep the library of Meriwether I was. It would take lifetimes to learn it all! Did these Terralano live that long? He could make nothing of their means for measuring time, at least not yet.
Then he heard faint and distant words. “…calling Meriwether I, this is Salinien, calling Meriwether I. Come in Meriwether I.” And another voice saying almost the same thing except that it identified itself as “Meriwether II.” Were these moving places actually alive? Yes, that would make more sense. Living things moved.
“You are being called, I think,” ^Green* informed them. “I hear words coming as though from far away.”
“A transmission?” Chen Li asked. “I don’t hear anything but the usual space static.”
“I think I might hear something through the static,” Lilla replied. “But it is so faint. It’s the sort of thing you later find out you just imagined. Usually, that is. Green do you really hear the signal clearly?”
“I do,” ^Green* told her. “There are two other moving places, ships calling you. Salinien and Meriwether II. Is that correct?”
“It might be,” Eesai admitted. “They are friends,” and added, “and family,” with Alano in mind.
“They must have found our missile beacon,” Lilla decided, “but are taking the warning about staying clear of the nebula too seriously.”
“Or the nebula is blocking the signal,” Chen Li added.
“Or both,” Eesai decided. “Lilla, would you turn the intercom back on please, I need to call Engineering.”
“Done,” Lilla replied with a wave of her hands that caused the Terran manual switch to flip as though by itself.
“I am never going to get used to that,” Chen Li admitted.
“It’s the most basic sort of thalirip,” Lilla shrugged, “and it feels more natural to me than actually touching the controls. Even before I learned I was a thalua, I handled controls on Inilien that way. It was the only way they worked.”
“You two can swap recipes later,” Eesai told them. “Engineering, this is the Bridge. Erich, are you there?”
“Right here, Skipper,” Erich replied. “We’ve managed to turn off the noise maker.”
“More like our noisemaker learned to talk,” Eesai replied. “Do you still have that tethered beacon? We think we have Salinien and Meriwether II out there looking for us.”
“It’s already mounted in the airlock and ready to launch, Skipper,” Erich informed her. “I set it up a few days ago when Serafyma asked for a sample of the nebula’s dust and gas and before you ask, yes. the airlock is still facing outward from the heart of the nebula.”
“I should have thought to ask,” Eesai admitted. “Well, it’s time to launch and see if we can contact the other ships.”
Half an hour later Lilla made contact with her sister on Meriwether II “Ralani? What are you doing there?”
“Looking for you, of course,” Ralani replied with a relieved laugh. “It’s a very long story and if you’re still dead in space like the message said, we can talk about it later. We’re homing in on your signal. Oh, and tell Captain Eesai that her husband is here too, but possibly out of range at the moment.”
“Tell Sue to be careful not to get too close,” Eesai cautioned Ralani.
“Aye aye, Skipper,” Ralani replied.
“I’m handling the controls myself,” Sue cut in just then.
“A good captain learns to delegate,” Eesai quoted back at her.
“So maybe I’m only a mediocre captain,” Sue shot back, “But I’m still a first rate pilot. How close is too close? That message in a bottle you sent wasn’t too clear on that.”
“We weren’t too clear on it either,” Eesai admitted to her adopted sister. “Our power drained out almost imperceptibly at first and we thought nothing about it. By the time it was a real problem we were caught.”
“So it must increase geometrically in inverse proportion to distance from the visible edge of the nebula,” Jerry commented over the radio. “Hi, Eesai. So what else have you been up to?”
“Not much,” Eesai replied in the same forced casual tone Jerry had used. “Mostly just picking up hitchhikers. Turns out the nebula is populated.”
“Populated?” Jerry asked, astonished. “By whom?”
“Well, they call themselves ‘The People,’” Lilla informed him.
“Who doesn’t?” Jerry countered.
“Well, I’ve been thinking of calling them Volano,” Lilla added uncertainly.
“Electric people?” Ralani translated and asked at once. “Are they really made of electricity?”
“Sort of,” Lilla replied.
“If I understand your words,” ^Green* replied, “Our bodies are electric. Our minds, that which we really are, are inside our bodies. I think that is right.”
“Who’s that?” Jerry asked. ^Green* introduced himself with the prefix and suffix modifying syallables. “Nice to meet you, Green.” Jerry replied, dropping what were meaningless noises to him from the name. “Uh, sorry. We’ll talk later. I have to get out of the way to let others talk now.”
Slowly over the next hour, Sue eased her ship closer to the tethered beacon that was attached to Meriwether II. The plan had been to use it to tow Eesai and her ship to safety when Erich informed both captains that the line he used was strong enough to support a tow so long as Sue eased out carefully. During the slow maneuver Alano and his Salinien arrived on the scene, but stayed back from the nebula for the sake of safety.
Alano’s caution was borne out when Meriwether II finally tried to tow her sister ship out of the nebula and they discovered that she too had lost too much power to even rescue herself. “I should have been listening a bit more closely,” Sue admitted ruefully.
“Sue, I can try to tow you out,” Alano offered, but Clark cancelled that.
“Let’s hold off and consider this a bit,” Clark told the three captains. “Neither ship is going anywhere fast and while Salinien might be able to tow one, she won’t be able to tow both at once and we don’t have a long enough line in any case.”
“I do not understand your problem,” ^Green* admitted.
“Something about your world is draining the power out of our systems, Green,” Lilla explained. “Unless we can stop the energy loss, we’re stuck here.”
“Oh,” ^Green* replied. “I thought that was natural. All living things expend energy and then gather more in in order to live and your ship seemed to generate so much of it… So if the energy loss stops, you can move again?”
“We think so,” Eesai replied. “But surely the drain is from more than one system.”
“You leak energy into my world from all over your ship,” ^Green* informed her. “I might be able to do something about that. I am a herald, after all.”
“What does being a messenger have to do with plugging up an energy leak?” Eesai asked.
“A trained herald is an efficient worker of energy,” ^Green* informed her. “How else could we afford to travel so much?”
“I don’t know,” Eesai admitted, “I’m just a glorified astronaut, but if this works, I probably will not care.”
A second later the lights on the bridge, which had been shining with only half their usual brightness, began to get brighter. As they did so other controls on the bridge came to life and the fans in the life support system, which had been working at a much slower than normal speed, could be heard revving up, the sound rising softly in frequency. “Better?” ^Green* asked.
“Very much so,” Eesai agreed, squinting against the suddenly normal lighting.
“I cannot do everything at once, however,” ^Green* admitted. I will need at least one more herald, I think. Then we can help you get free if you want.”
“But if we get out of the nebula,” Jerry objected, “how will we get you back home?”
^Green* never heard the question, however. As soon as he knew what had to be done, he gathered up sufficient energy from Meriwether I’s generator and zipped out of the ship and rushed as fast as he could toward Spain. There would be other heralds there. Now if he could only convince them to come back.
Back on Meriwether I the lights dimmed again and the fans slowed down once more. “Well, that was nice while it lasted,” Eesai admitted. “Where’s Green?”
“I think I saw him flash away to galactic west,” Lilla reported, “but it was very fast. For all I know it might have been a reflection of him going the other way altogether.”
“Can’t exactly get a radar fix on a sapient power surge,” Chen Li remarked, “but I think you’re right.”
“Well, let’s just hope his sense of time is not in inverse proportion to the speed at which he travels,” Eesai paraphrased Jerry’s words. She frowned at that and decided to translate, “I mean I hope he gets back as quickly as he left.”
They did not have to wait for long. Less than two hours later ^Green* returned with three colleagues who he introduced as xRed~, !Blue_ and #Yellow@. “Sorry it took so long to get back,” ^Green* apologized. “I needed to travel to several cities before I could find enough volunteers.”
“You weren’t gone long by our standards,” Lilla assured him.
“I was not sure,” ^Green* admitted. There was a burst of static. “!Blue_ is asking how soon we can start. Please excuse me, but I must teach my colleague much before we can free your ship.”
^Green* spent a full ship’s watch teaching the other Volano heralds what he had learned about the Terralano and their ships, but when Eesai woke up all ship’s systems were running at optimum.
“So it takes four Volano to keep us from leaking our energy?” Lilla was asking ^Green* as Eesai stepped back on to the bridge.
“Two of us could do the job with ease,” ^Green* replied. “If pressed I think I could do it myself now. I learned a lot as we brought your ship back to life. I think we can also make all systems more efficient too and we shall work on that as we travel. But my colleagues and I are an official delegation representing the nations of Spain, England, France and Italy, and by extension the other civilized nation of our world.”
“You mean you represent all Volano?” Eesai asked.
“All civilized Volano,” ^Green* agreed. “I suppose anything we accomplish will eventually benefit the barbarians as well. But we can only speak for those we know. The four nations I mentioned were the only ones we had time to contact, but any benefits the others will want to be a part of so we can negotiate for them in good faith.”
“You might have different rules of diplomacy from us,” Eesai told him, “but I’ll leave that to our diplomats. How soon can we leave?”
“Immediately,” ^Green* replied. “The ship is yours to pilot out of the world.”
“What about Meriwether II?” Lilla asked, “There are no Volano on board there, it never quite entered the nebula. Can two of you transfer to her?”
“No need,” Eesai decided. “If we are at full power, we can give her a tow.”
It took another full watch but after that all three ships were clear of the nebula and setting a direct course back to Sol System.
“What did you say these were?” James Twoblackrocks demanded.
The chief of Terran Customs on Luna had been having a good day until now. Not one, but all three ships belonging to Meriwether, Inc. had come back empty. He knew full well that Lewis Clark Anspach wouldn’t lie about that and a quick inspection of the cargo bays had proven it. Oh, he might have smuggled in a pound or two of diamonds or some other minor substance that would not show on his scans, but diamonds weren’t all that valuable anymore. The true treasures – monopoles, chondy gems and the like – could not be hidden so easily. Even the materials necessary to shield such substances from scanners would have shown up revealingly. Meriwether, Inc. had nothing of value on any of its three ships.
And then Anspach had strolled into the inspection station with his crews and four large cylindrical batteries and placed them carefully down on the counter. “Not what, Jim,” Clark corrected him, “Who. These are the ambassadors to the Terralendir from…” he paused a moment to find the right words. Then with a shrug he decided to push on, “from Spain, England, Italy and France.” Years earlier, personnel had been passed through by Customs officials visiting their ships, but there had been a bribery scandal four years earlier in New Delhi and since then all ports of entry were required to handle entries in official Customs stations where all transactions were recorded on camera.
“Is this some kind of joke?” James asked suspiciously.
“Would I do that?” Clark countered, a grin on his face.
“Yes, I think you would,” James scowled. “This is not the first time you’ve pulled this, you know.”
“And last time was following first contact with the Lano,” Clark told him.
“Okay, wise guy, why can’t they speak for themselves and where are their credentials?” James demanded.
“I don’t recall that Madame Malana had a passport you recognized either,” Clark pointed out. “And didn’t you build the interface I requested three days ago? I made it quite clear that these people are made of electricity and would need a computer system to speak to us through.”
“And you expected me to believe that?” James sneered.
“Why, yes,” Clark nodded. “Yes, I did. We sent word ahead as soon as we entered the system that we have encountered a new form of intelligent life and informed you the needs of these new people.”
“We can transport them in batteries,” Jerry added, “but there is an inevitable energy drain even from the best battery and we must get the ambassadors to a grounded circuit before they suffer personal damage.”
“Yeah, right,” James scoffed. “Nice bluff. Those batteries can hold a charge for ten years, even if you have some sort of people in there.”
“Oh stuff it, Twoblackrocks,” Eesai cut in. “I have had it with you. For years you’ve been sitting up here on this rock like the petty king of a country that couldn’t fill two city blocks. You push all spacers around because you think we can’t push back. You make us wait for hours longer than need be and always find an excuse to put a later-arriving ship to go first, but this time you are in deep trouble.”
James gave her a nasty laugh. “You think I’ve been giving you and your friends trouble? From now on you’ll find out just how much trouble you’ve got.”
“Not likely, Bucky,” Eesai matched his laugh. “I know for a fact your last stupid mistake involving foreign legates got you overlooked for promotion. I know that because while you may have forgotten, I was part of that initial delegation. Nobody wants to spend his life posted to Luna, the taxes here are too high and the air is too expensive. I’ll bet your only income is whatever bribes you can skim off the returning spacers.
“Well, you got a second chance and blew it,” Eesai went on. “Again. I may not have ambassadorial status this time, but I can still swing the diplomatic hammer when I need to. Madame Malana remembers you and I have already been in contact with her. The Terrano government has been informed as well. Well I can’t speak for Terra, but Madame Malana knows all about the Volano and is waiting to greet them formally and you’re doing everything you can to slow it down.”
“I’m not slowing anything down,” James told her heatedly.
“No?” Eesai laughed. “Then you’ll have to explain why we’ve been waiting here for twenty hours at a time when no other ship has arrived in three days.”
“You think all I have to do is inspect inbound ships?” James countered.
“It’s your primary job to oversee that inspection, yes,” Eesai shot back. “And that’s another thing. I looked into this and you have over fifty agents working for you. What’s with the personal touch every time a Meriwether, Inc. ship sets down?”
“I don’t sit around on my butt like some bosses do,” James told her smugly.
“Maybe not,” she allowed, “but when I was getting curious, I also decided to look up just which ships you inspected personally and isn’t it amazing how there are only eighteen different ships you have personally inspected in the last five years, but you have inspected them every single time they made port. Makes us all feel real special.”
“Where are you going with this?” James growled at her.
“That depends on you, Jimmy,” she chuckled. “But do keep in mind that their excellencies are not going to appreciate knowing you kept them bottled up any longer than necessary.”
“This is not over, short stuff,” James told her coldly. He grabbed their passports and quickly stamped them in and shooed them away without bothering to make them prove there were people stored in the batteries.
“Weren’t you taking a chance, skipper?” Ralani asked after they had left the customs wing of Luna Base.
“Not as much as you might think,” Eesai told her. “I’ve been assembling quite a dossier on that unpleasant man and Malana really is quite interested in meeting the Volano. I don’t normally go out of my way to antagonize a customs official, but…”
“I doubt you could antagonize James Twoblackrocks anymore than I already have,” Clark interrupted. “But, Eesai, he could have claimed you were threatening him with blackmail and that would have landed us in a lot of trouble.”
“He would be a fool to try it,” Eesai shook her head. “Those cameras in there might have shown us arguing, but there was no sound. He would have to prove blackmail and I really do have a lot of incriminating evidence against him.”
“The Customs officers stick together, though,” Sue pointed out. “Ratting out one of them, won’t exactly turn the rest of them into friends, Sis.”
“I wasn’t planning on being the one to turn him in,” Eesai admitted, “but I also don’t care to be pushed around by him any longer. Wait a minute!” She turned on Ralani. “What did you call me?”
Ralani replayed the conversation back in her head. “Uh, Skipper,” she responded and then gave her a salute. “Ensign Ralani Di Lasai reporting for duty, Ma’am.”
“Huh?” Eesai responded. “I thought you were working on Sue’s ship. What are you doing here for that matter? I’ll grant you may have grown up a lot since I saw you last, but you should still be serving on a Lano ship.”
“Any ship commanded by a Lano captain is a Lano ship,” Ralani informed her. “I worked off my passage on Meriwether II, but I was assigned to Meriwether I.”
“I meant a ship in the Treloian military,” Eesai told her.
“All Treloian ships are military,” Ralani replied with practiced ease, “That’s where I found the loophole. Then it was just a matter of applying for this posting.”
“And talking so fast your commanding officer got dizzy, I’ll bet,” Eesai remarked.
“Well, I did have to justify the posting several times,” Ralani admitted, “but in the end it was decided it would be good experience for me.”
“I’m surprised they didn’t negotiate to assign you to a Terrano Navy ship, rather than mine,” Eesai admitted. “That would have been easier to justify as equivalent duty.”
“They could have exchanged several young Lano and Terrans,” Lani added.
“That was discussed,” Ralani admitted, “but there was no time to make such an arrangement before I had to be posted, and I wanted posting on a ship, not at a desk on one of those office jobs they used for people just doing compulsory service because it’s the law. I wanted a more interesting posting and the chance to serve with my sisters…” she trailed off.
“I’m not running a family business here, you know,” Eesai pointed out.
“Sure you are, Skipper,” Ralani told her. “Meriwether, Inc, is a family business. Admittedly it’s the Anspach family, but…”
“In a sense all the shareholders of Meriwether, Inc are family,” Clark pointed out, “so she’s right there.”
“Well, should I move on board for the trip down to Earth, Skipper?” Ralani asked.
“Uh, no,” Eesai decided. “You’ve been working as one of Sue’s officers. Stay there until we touchdown in Bolivia.”
“Bolivia?” Ralani asked. “Not Australia?”
“We have no cargo to unload,” Eesai pointed out, “so there’s no reason to land in a commercial port like Woomera in Australia or Mandelaport in South Africa. When we get there we’ll figure out where your quarters will be, but there’s no need to move in since it will probably be a while before we leave again, right, boss?” she asked Clark.
“We probably have to make a run to Treloi and back,” Clark pointed out, “but you and your crew deserve a month off and Salinien had just arrived before we went looking for you too.”
“Sounds like it’s my turn again,” Sue shrugged.
“We don’t know we have a job yet,” Jerry pointed out.
“In any case, none of us will be going out for at least two weeks,” Clark told them. “Possibly more. It will take that long at least to complete the required maintenance and inspections, and for three ships, well, it’s likely one of you will still be here when the first ship out gets back. Nevermind, this was all worth it just to get you guys all back safely.”
“Well, it might have taken three ships,” Alano pointed out, “but it wasn’t completely a dry run.”
“Do you have a bolt hole full of rare earth elements you haven’t been telling me about?” Clark asked.
“I meant we had found the Volano,” Alano replied. “As I recall the company was awarded royalties for both first contact events.”
“That’s right,” Sue agreed. “We’ve been receiving healthy percentages of the dealings between humans and Lano as well as Terralano and Carono.”
“There’s no law that says we automatically get royalties every time we find a new intelligent species,” Clark argued.
“The precedent was set in Rendezvous System,” Alano noted, “and then ratified following our encounter with the Carono. Of course, there’s no saying there will be any financial trading with the Volano, but if there does turn out to be some sort of trade, we have a fairly strong case for expecting a cut.”
“I’ll have Janice look into it just in case,” Clark decided.
“Who’s Janice?” Ralani asked.
“Janice Wall is our corporate attorney,” Clark told her. “If there’s a legal argument in our favor, she’ll find it. I think, in fact I’ll ask her to meet us at Louise’s place.”
“It is good to get out of those batteries,” ^Green* told them once they had decanted him and the other Volano into the electrical system of the estate of Louise Anspach. “Only one camera?”
“Hello, Green,” Louise greeted him. “Also Red, Blue and Yellow. Welcome to Earth. Please call me Louise. And yes, only one camera inside the house. I am not used to living my life in front of a recording device. There are others that monitor the grounds and, in fact, this one was a spare. Clark, Malana is coming here with Malvina in an hour or so.”
“Malvina Smythe?” Clark asked. “But she’s out of office now. Why isn’t President Kassanov coming, or do we have to bring the Volano to him?”
“Malvina is coming here as an official unofficial welcoming committee,” Louise explained. “Guillermo Kassanov is not yet ready to extend official recognition. You remember the trouble we had getting our Lano friends recognized, but you are right, normally the visiting ambassadors should have gone to the president or his representative, but that would have meant landing in Australia and even then whoever was greeting them would have had to board the ship. Janice tells me this actually makes it easier for Kassanov to hold back an official greeting until he knows which way to jump.”
“That is not unlike the way our rulers behave,” ^Green* admitted from one of four speakers that had been set up in Louise’s living room. By common consent each of the Volano picked one of the speakers as his own so their hosts would not get confused although Lilla claimed she could tell them all apart by their distinctive voices, although most had trouble distinguishing xRed~ from !Blue_. “Heralds like us need to adapt to the customs and mores of all the lands we visit. This is no worse than some, but how will we visit your president when the time comes?”
“We can always cart you over in batteries again if it comes to that,” Jerry told him, “but the electric grid is worldwide, we may be able to provide a map and just have you meet us there.”
“I would prefer to travel by way of your grid,” xRed~ decided. “I thought I would go crazy in that battery.”
!Blue_ made a rude noise from another of the speakers. “I would not mind putting a few highwaymen in such a thing. It might teach criminals the errors of their ways.”
“You have criminals?” Ralani asked.
“Anytime you have a commodity that is deemed to be of sufficient value but insufficient supply,” Jerry commented, “there will be someone who thinks his best way to get more is to simply take someone else’s.”
#Yellow@ explained about the highwaymen of their world, stealing a traveller’s energy and leaving him for dead. “There are other sorts of thieves as well,” he added. The crews of Meriwether, Inc. had long since decided to think of the Volano as masculine, although they had no gender as the Terralano thought of it. “Dishonest merchants who do not give proper value for their goods, for example.”
“But, I thought energy was your sole product and currency,” Ralani commented.
“We build things with energy,” #Yellow@ replied, “and some sell those things. Also energy comes in many flavors.”
“Terralano would call them frequencies,” ^Green* clarified.
“Uh, okay, yes,” #Yellow@ agreed. “Some frequencies are more valuable and beneficial than others. And some are more useful, depending on what you intend to use them for.”
“Same here,” Jerry nodded. “That’s just essential economics at work.”
“It’s what keeps us all in business,” Clark agreed. “But I’m not sure how we could sell you energy of any sort.”
“There is something far more valuable than mere crass energy,” xRed~ replied. “Information, knowledge…”
“Stories!” !Blue_ enthused.
“Yes,” ^Green* agreed. “Our people love stories. All sort of stories. The story of our visit here would make us all wealthy if we were not heralds.”
“Heralds aren’t allowed to be rich?” Jerry asked.
“There is no law against it,” ^Green* explained, “but a working herald cannot afford to get… uh… fat. If we have too much we are vulnerable to highwaymen. So we donate most of what we earn to charities and to our guild. The Guild of Heralds will support us should we fall on bad times. Should we choose to leave the Guild we would be set up for a life of relative ease. Very few heralds leave the Guild, however. We are the elite, specially trained, and like Meriwether, Inc., we are like family.” The others made sounds of agreement.
Not too much later Malana Di Masai, Lano ambassador to Terra and Malvina Smythe, former President of the Terran Confederation arrived in a single limousine accompanied by an entourage of personal guards. The Guards, were there for President Smythe. The two women, while they had much in common personally, were, physically, a study in contrasts. Malvina Smythe was tall with dark skin and hair, although that hair was showing a few stray wisps of gray, while Malana was short, as any La might be compared to a human, and had gray hair and amber skin. Malana might have requested such protection if she desired or brought Lano soldiers of her own to serve as body guards, but it had always been her habit to travel with only her personal assistant, Helani Bi Terralano.
Ralani ran out of Louise’s house to greet Malana and Helani. She held Malana in the greatest esteem, and while there was something about Helani that intimidated her, Ralani had to admit, that the woman had always been nice to her. When Ralani considered it, she knew that Malana was a powerful thalua, what the Terrano would call a scientist-wizard, but Helani was not. She was a personal secretary, well-educated and quite intelligent, but she freely admitted that her ability with thalirip began and ended with the ability to turn on the lights and operate various required office equipment. But there was something about Helani that reminded Ralani of steel and fire. It confused the younger woman.
“Ralani?” Malana asked once she had finished hugging the two Lano women. “Have you met President Smythe?”
“No, ma’am,” Ralani responded. “Pleased to meet you, Madame President. I am Ralani Di Lasai.”
“Ah, so this is the famous Ralani?” Malvina chuckled. “It’s nice to meet you too.”
“Famous?” Ralani asked. “Me?”
“Some of your speeches made their way to Earth some years ago,” Malvina replied. “And Presiding General Tauko mentioned you as well when I was on Treloi. He credits you as recruiting him to the Terralano cause.”
“I did not do so much,” Ralani shook her head modestly. “I was just the poster child, as Jerry calls it. Fortunately almost no one remembers me these days. It would have been sheer hell in college. Anyway, I believe our new friends are waiting to greet you inside. Well, they can probably see you through the security cameras, but we don’t have any speakers set up out here.”
“Just as well,” Malvina remarked. “It’s a bit breezy up here this afternoon.”
They spent the rest of the afternoon and most of the night speaking to the Volano. Malvina eventually admitted, “If it were up to me I’d be glad to officially recognize the Volano and their nebula, but first of all it is not up to me. I can make my recommendation but Mister Kassanov is from the opposing party. He isn’t likely to take my advice readily.”
“Then why did he send you?” Jerry asked.
“It’s the sort of thing you do with foreign dignitaries with whom you have not yet entered into official negotiations, I guess,” Malvina admitted. “I’m here to show we are not intentionally snubbing the Volano, but nothing I say can be construed as an official agreement to anything.”
“You mean like you snubbed Malana when we first came to Terra?” Eesai asked.
“I did not snub Madame Malana,” Malvina denied. ”I sent my vice president to talk to her. That was actually more cordial than how Mister Kassanov has responded.”
“In some fairness,” Malana put in, “we were obviously both real and alien. Until you met the Volano, I would never have believed such a form of life might exist.”
“That’s my second point,” Malvina told them. “It is only because I have dealt with you all before that I can feel certain this is not some elaborate hoax. I think you all realize that it would be quite a simple thing to rig up a few speakers like these and have people using microphones in some other part of the house to talk to us.”
“I’m convinced by personal observation,” Malana countered. “I cast a simple tracking thalua while we were talking. The people we are talking to are definitely in the wiring of this house. I could see them.”
“I can’t,” Malvina replied, “and I’m afraid most Terran politicians will not believe anything they cannot see.”
“How about this, Madame President?” ^Green* asked. A moment later bright green ball lightning popped out of a nearby wall circuit, circled once around the room and then returned into the wiring. “Whew! That took a lot out of me. Louise, would it be all right if I replenish myself from your power source?”
“Mi electricidad es su electricidad,” Lousie laughed. “Help yourself.”
“Slowly,” Jerry cautioned. “You don’t want to pop a circuit breaker.”
“I shall be careful,” ^Green* agreed. “And it is more pleasant to sip than to gulp, in any case.”
“Ah, a connoisseur?” Malvina asked.
“A moment,” ^Green* requested and then just as quickly answered. He did this from time to time when encountering a new word. Ralani wondered why he bothered, since from the point of the Terralano, there was almost no pause. “Yes, I suppose so. In our world, heralds can afford to enjoy only the best. Well, of course, since most of what we earn is soon given away, there is no reason we need to scrimp or settle for less.”
“Well, unlike Malvina here, I do speak for my people,” Malana told them. “But while I’m all for official recognition, it would be best to follow the precedent we set on meeting with the Carono when we met as the Terralendir.”
“Lilla Di Lasai and some of the others have told us of the Terralendir,” ^Green* admitted. “We would like to join your Terralendir.”
“Wouldn’t that make it the Terravolendir?” Jerry remarked.
“More like Terracavolentir,” Eesai shrugged, “but we can’t keep adding syllables every time a new people joins us. Let’s keep it as Terralendir since our two species are the founders.”
“Suits me,” Jerry told her, “but are we the ones who get to decide that?”
“Why not?” Eesai laughed. “Someone has to and it might as well be us. Whether anyone listens to us, well, I guess that remains to be seen.”
“Anyway the recognition of the Carono was part of what truly established the Terralendir in the minds of Treloi and the rest of the Trelendir,” Malana went on, “but while the Trelendir thinks of itself as being part of the Terralendir, the Terran Confederation is still coming to grips with that. Even though it’s been years, we have no actual document that established the Terralendir as a real political entity. Perhaps we never will. Maybe the Terralendir is not supposed to be something that exists officially but just a state of mind. Personally I’d like to see it official. It’s been the greatest accomplishment I have attempted as ambassador to Terra, but so long as it exists, officially or not, I’ll be satisfied.”
“If it does,” Lilla smirked, “You’ll be out of a job.”
“And nothing could please me more,” Malana told her. “There are other jobs for diplomats, I assure you, and I could always go back to the circus. It’s been some years, but…”
“You used to work in a circus?” Malvina asked, surprised. “You mean a circus with clowns and animals and…”
“I used to swing a mean trapeze,” Malana grinned. “I might be a bit out of shape for that these days, but my main job was providing the special effects. Ralani, remind me to teach you a few of those while you’re on Earth. You too, Lilla, if you’re interested. I doubt being able to produce lights and illusions will be of much use in your current careers, but it never hurts to have a party trick or two.”
“The information is there for the taking,” xRed~ told the others some hours later while the Terralano were all sleeping. “We can learn what we want by reading their data banks.”
“We can,” ^Green* agreed, “but it would be stealing without giving back something of equal value.”
“We have already taken data just so that we could communicate,” !Blue_ pointed out.
“That could not be helped,” ^Green* told them. “We needed that data just to make our needs known and to become acquainted with theirs.”
“Essentially,” #Yellow@ added, “we borrowed only what we needed to function as heralds among these people. Yes, I agreed, but it puts us in their debt.”
“They do not begrudge us the data,” xRed~ argued.
“Perhaps not,” #Yellow@ allowed, “but it is a debt we must repay nonetheless. They also give us all the energy we need to be strong and healthy. We owe them for that as well.”
“#Yellow@ is right,” ^Green* agreed. “We owe our friends for their kindnesses. A good herald never allows a debt to go unpaid, but I fear that we may only be able to offer our friendship to these particular Terralano.”
“You don’t know that for certain,” !Blue_ told him. “I believe we must learn more. Perhaps that way we can find out how best to repay our debt.”
“Then you agree there is a debt?” #Yellow@ pressed.
“Of course,” !Blue_ responded instantly.
xRed~ made a flash of assent as well. “We are heralds, not highwaymen,” he added. “I merely thought that since the Terralano do not value their data as highly as we do, we do not owe them all that much.”
“Their system of values is different than ours,” ^Green* replied. “That does not mean we should cheat them.”
“If they are happy with the deal,” xRed~ argued, “are they being cheated?”
“I believe that is potentially true,” !Blue_ replied. “I have had to conduct trades between Egypt and the nearby barbarian tribes. The Egyptians are all too ready to buy off the barbarians with poorly made constructs and it was part of my job to make sure the barbarians did not deal for quality goods only to receive hastily made imitations. The situation is analogous. Our Terralano friends don’t know the value of what they have and may over-value what we have to offer. We must not pauper our own people, but I am sure a fair deal can be struck to please everyone. However, we need to know more.”
“You propose to put us even deeper in debt?” #Yellow@ asked.
“If what we learn helps us to deal fairly, we may be able to agree it pays for itself,” !Blue_ told him.
“Yes, we must learn more of these Terralano,” xRed~ agreed. “it will help us to judge a fair deal and will also help us to know what to ask for. I volunteer!”
“For what?” ^Green* asked.
“I will look into some data banks and learn more,” xRed~ told him. “You all agree we must.”
“We do, but we are only looking for help in judging what the Terralano value,” ^Green* replied. “We can simply ask them.”
“They are asleep,” xRed~ argued. “It is a strange thing to me.”
“It is how they recharge,” ^Green* replied.
“But if they were right, they will continue to sleep for another two or three hours,” xRed~ “It feels like an eternity.”
“That is an exaggeration,” #Yellow@ remarked, “but it does feel like a very long time.”
“We can save time and learn what we need before they desleep,” xRed~ pointed out.
“The term is ‘wake up,’” ^Green* corrected patiently, “and I am not sure it will really save any time. I am also not sure you can find the sort of information we are talking about as easily as you think. If the computer onboard Meriwether I was typical, it won’t all be neatly organized into a single file as they call them.”
“I’m sure I can learn what we need in one of their master data banks,” xRed~ insisted. “One like the one Louise’s network derives data from. I will go look.”
“You must be very careful,” ^Green* warned him. “The Terralano computers are normally equipped with security programs. I was nearly killed by one when I first met them.”
“I will be careful,” xRed~ promised.
“I had better go with you,” #Yellow@ decided. “If there is trouble perhaps I can help.”
“Good!” xRed~ exclaimed. “Let’s go!” Together they zipped out of the wiring of Louise Anspach’s home and out into the planetary power grid.
“Maybe we should have stopped them?” !Blue_ asked.
“How?” ^Green* countered.
xRed~ and #Yellow@ circled the world several times in the first few minutes, looping through power generators, bounding across long distances through power lines and even occasionally sparking across the gaps in various electrical equipment without finding any databanks. “This is not as easy as I had hoped,” xRed~ admitted.
“Perhaps we should not have followed the power grid,” #Yellow@. “The data was not being accessed via these lines.”
“No, but then we would have only had access to one source of information,” xRed~ pointed out.
“Maybe there is only one ultimate source,” #Yellow@ speculated. “The Terralano did say something about central databanks.”
“I thought that implied multiple databanks, not just one,” xRed~ replied. “It is hard to tell as we have to store our data in people.”
“Perhaps we should go back and try again,” #Yellow@ suggested.
“Why?” xRed~ asked. “Surely, Louise’s computer is not the only one in the world.”
“Because it is the only one we have seen so far,” #Yellow@ replied. “These Terralano power many sorts of constructs with electricity.”
“As do we,” xRed~ pointed out.
“As do we,” #Yellow@ agreed, “but we do not have computers and we also cannot tell what something is until we have entered it.”
“Most of the time I still do not know what something is even after we have entered it,” xRed~ admitted. “Their power is familiar to us, but their technology is foreign.”
“Their technology is bizarre!” #Yellow@ laughed, “but I cannot help but think we have much to learn from these people.”
“I wonder if we could build a network like this power grid,” xRed~ mused. “Our roads are good solid structures, but this is like riding something alive and with such power all around should we need any. We could travel at optimum power at all times.”
“Energy is neither created nor destroyed,” #Yellow@ pointed out. “It merely changes states.”
“The Terralano create energy,” xRed~ argued.
“They seem to create energy,” #Yellow@ responded. “I think they just have ways of changing energy states we do not understand.”
“Perhaps they are magicians,” xRed~ laughed, “and do it all with magic.”
“Don’t talk dirty,” #Yellow@ told him. “Are you a child to believe that things just happen without cause or expenditure of energy or are you a herald, fully trained and educated?”
“I apologize,” xRed~ backed down embarrassedly. “I am new to the Heraldry.”
“Really?” #Yellow@ inquired. “We never ask that of each other. It is not considered relevant or polite.”
“I come from Uruguay,” Red admitted. “We are technically considered civilized, but my people are very superstitious. I fear I have not yet overcome my childhood training on that count. Again, I am sorry.”
“Think no more of it,” #Yellow@ told him. “You came from Uruguay, but you are a herald. Let us return to the home of Louise Anspach now. We have already been gone longer than anticipated.”
xRed~ agreed, but they soon discovered they have lost their way. “This power grid is ever so much more complex than our world,” xRed~ worried.
“It is,” #Yellow@ agreed. “We should not have attempted this without carefully noting our path.” They came to a sort of junction where power seemed to be flowing away in all directions. “I think this is a large generator. We can use it as a landmark.”
“Oh, I see!” xRed~ said suddenly. “Look. The energy seems to be created, but actually it is being generated by moving parts of some sort. It is a case of energy going from one state to another. You were right.”
“I wish I could see beyond the moving parts,” #Yellow@ replied, “but we don’t have time for that now. If we proceed carefully we can split up and meet back here. See if we can either find Louise Anspach’s home or any computer.”
“What good will a computer do if we are still lost?” xRed~ asked.
“Have you not noticed that all data packets are encoded with more than just the base data?” #Yellow@ countered. “They each have addresses of their source and destination. I remember the address of Louise’s computer. Once on the data network we should be able to find our way back.”
The search was extensive, but finally, #Yellow reported he had found a computer. They made their way to what turned out to be a small personal device and from there into the data network of TerraNet. “Careful,” xRed~ warned as they left the first computer. “I think we are causing damage.”
“Are we?” #Yellow@ asked. “We have grown too large on the powergrid,” he decided.
“Yes, we are causing a power surge that Terralano computers cannot handle,” xRed~ agreed. “We need to discharge a bit and also move much more slowly.”
Discharging was a slow process on the data network, but after a long time, they felt they had once again become small enough to travel the information superhighway without causing damage. “There’s a large server ahead,” #Yellow@ announced.
“How can you tell?” xRed~ asked.
“From the volume of data coming and going,” #Yellow@ replied. “We are on a single set of wires and there is cross-talk between them so we do not lose ourselves, but if you stretch out your senses you will detect thousands of similar wires all going to the same place and with data going back and forth like a two-way stream. Now when we get there, we must be careful to stay with the data stream. You may have noticed in the last computer how easy it would be to pass back into the powergrid.”
“I did,” xRed~ confirmed. “I’ll be careful,” he announced, dropping back a short way in the data cable.
Suddenly they found themselves in the central processing unit, getting battered by passing data going in all directions at once. #Yellow@ forced himself through the maelstrom and into a data stream being sent to one of many banks of temporary random access memory. He felt xRed~ behind him and on the right path so he took a few microseconds while waiting to look around and sent a query into a bank of semi-permanent memory, where data was stored for the long term.
Before xRed~ could catch up to him, #Yellow@ found himself in a fight for his life as electronic entities attacked him from all sides. They were not people, they were not even smart enough to be animals, #Yellow@ thought, but they were a menace and they had him overpowered. Why had no one warned him of such monsters? And then #Yellow@ realized that ^Green* had warned him. These monsters were the security programs. They immobilized #Yellow@ efficiently and inexorably, quickly transporting and imprisoning him in a block of memory as xRed~ watched helplessly from a distance.
xRed~ was about to run away when he realized the monsters had ignored his presence, so carefully and slowly he moved to catch up to the older, more experienced herald. “What were those things?” xRed~ asked when he finally dared to approach the imprisoned #Yellow@.
“Security programs, I think,” #Yellow@ admitted, mentioning how ^Green had warned them. “We were not sufficiently careful. I suppose I got careless after it turned out their firewalls did not even notice us.”
“I’ll get you out of there,” xRed~ offered, but as he did, #Yellow@ spotted the security programs headed back their way.
“No! Get out of here fast,” he told xRed~ urgently. “Here’s the address to Louise’s computer,” he send a quick burst of data to his companion.
xRed~ flashed a quick affirmative and shot off with the security programs silently on his tail. They continued to chase him until he had finally left the server and was sailing down the wire and into a router. The router threw him for a loss in a way previous ones, or even this same one had not on earlier passages and xRed~ decided that that might have been the security program’s last attempt to get him. However, as his thoughts began to straighten out, he looked around at nearby data packets and saw from their addressing that they were all headed in the same general direction as he was.
Addressing on TerraNet was not geographical so a neighboring address could be a device thousands of miles away from the one xRed~ wanted, but that hardly mattered so long as he ended up in the right place. He passed through another five routers without incident and then finally found himself inside Louise’s computer.
“Where’s #Yellow@?” !Blue_ asked instantly.
“Trapped,” xRed~ reported.
“He went to keep you out of trouble and got into trouble instead?” ^Green* asked.
“It may have been my fault,” xRed~ admitted. “I kept making mistakes so he took the lead. By the time I caught up to him he had been caught.”
“Can you show us where?” ^Green* asked.
“It’s dangerous,” xRed~ warned him. “They immobilized him,. He can’t move and I was nearly caught by the security programs too.”
“Perhaps if the three of us can work as a team we can get #Yellow@ out,” !Blue_ suggested.
“We can try,” ^Green* replied grimly, “but we must be careful. You can find that place again?”
“I have the address,” xRed~ told him and repeated the string of numbers and letters that identified the machine on which #Yellow@ had been trapped.
“Then let’s go,” ^Green* replied. Together they made their way quickly to the router that led to #Yellow@’s prison, but were unable to pass.
“I believe we may be up against what our friends call a firewall,” !Blue_ remarked.
“It wasn’t here before,” xRed~ noted, “although I had some trouble getting out.”
“I think it is safe to say this was modified following #Yellow@’s arrest,” ^Green* speculated. “the system must have analyzed his properties and adapted to keep similar foreign influences from entering.”
“Is the machine intelligent?” !Blue_ asked.
“I don’t think so,” ^Green* replied, “but the programmers were and they wrote their security routines cleverly. Maybe too clever.”
“There is a key to every lock,” !Blue_ replied.
“What?” xRed~ asked.
“It’s an expression I picked up from the Terralano,” !Blue_ replied. “I meant that there has to be a way to get around this firewall or through it.”
“How?” xRed~ wondered.
“It must scan for and detect the outwardly obvious properties of constructs like #Yellow@,” Blue considered.
“#Yellow@ is not a construct, he is a person,” xRed~ protested.”
“This is no time for religious arguments,” ^Green* told him. “Scientifically the only thing that differentiates people and animals from constructs is that we are alive.”
“Animals, perhaps, but people?” xRed~ was scandalized.
“And we are differentiated from the animals in that we are sentient, animals are not,” ^Green* went on. “If you are willing to classify animals as a sort of construct then you must accept that people are as well.”
“But we have souls,” xRed~ insisted.
“Yes?” !Blue_ asked. “Have you ever seen a soul? Does it have a measurable amount of energy? ^Green* is right, we have no time to consider religious arguments here. Even priests admit that we are made of the same energy that goes into our constructs and for good cause. We use our own energy to build constructs. Now with that in mind, would a construct know the different between a person and a construct?”
“Constructs do not think,” xRed~ replied.
“Right,” !Blue_ agreed, “and neither do Terralano machines. This firewall cannot tell the difference between us and a construct or a malicious program, for that matter. Having identified #Yellow@ as a foreign, uh, pattern maybe, it now seeks to keep all similar patterns out, but we have the ability to shield our inner selves and to change our outward appearance. If we look different enough, if we look more like these data packets that come and go, the firewall will let us in.”
They worked at it for a while and finally !Blue_ devised a disguise that the firewall would ignore. Inside the server, xRed~ led them to where #Yellow@ was being held, but he was unable to communicate beyond flashing for yes or no. Security had evidently immobilized him even more thoroughly than it had done earlier.
!Blue_ detected a pattern similar to that of the firewall, but when he tried to counter it, security constructs raced in to arrest him and the other two Volano. The three of them raced off, but soon found dozens of constructs zeroing in on them.
“We need a surge,” ^Green* told the others. “I’ll do it and you two split up and try to get away.”
“Won’t you cause damage that way?” xRed~ asked.
“I’ll try to keep it down to just the threat of damage,” ^Green replied. “It’s a diversion that will let you get away.”
“What about you?” !Blue_ asked.
“I have a plan,” ^Green* lied. Just then he flashed brightly and veered away from the other two. Most of the security programs chased after him. He led them around the system and then, just as they were about to catch up, he zipped toward the firewall and router where he got stuck. Outside, they had bounced off, but inside the wall was adhesive. ^Green* concentrated and willed himself to change again. Suddenly he was inside the firewall and being churned up by the router, and then he was outside with xRed~ and !Blue_.
“We’re going to need help,” !Blue_ observed.
“We have a problem,” ^Green* told his Terralano friends.
“What’s wrong?” Lilla asked. Alano, Eesai and Sue had gone to Hawaii the previous evening after Malana and Malvina had left, just as most of the rest of the crews had gone off after securing the ships for their stay on Earth. Lilla and Ralani had been planning to travel to Kiev with Serafyma to visit her family while Jerry and Lani were all packed to go to their home in Vermont. Only Clark had planned to stay in Bolivia full time.
“xRed~ and #Yellow@ went exploring last night,” ^Green* reported. His simulated voice sounded dispassionate, but Lilla could tell from experience that the way he paused between words, ^Green* was very worried.
“Where?” Jerry asked.
“Well, we thought that if we learned more about your people and their needs, we would have a better notion of what to negotiate for and with, uh, if you follow what I mean,” ^Green* admitted.
“So they went snooping through databanks?” Jerry chuckled. “You could have just asked.”
“I said that,” ^Green* admitted, “but you were sleeping and we can do so much faster than you. We thought we could save time.”
“All right,” Jerry shrugged. “So they got curious. Cultural information about people in general is freely accessible to all. What happened?”
“When they tried to read some files, #Yellow@ was trapped and imprisoned by some sort of security program,” ^Green* replied.
“It thought he was a virus or a worm or a malbot or something,” Jerry decided. “Wait, you mean they left this system and decided to poke around inside someone else’s computer? Is Yellow still alive?”
“He was when xRed~ last saw him,” ^Green told him, “just immobilized.”
“Okay,” Jerry sighed. “So he may have incurred a few fines or opened us up to a lawsuit, but we can probably buy our way out of trouble. Do you know where he is? ^Green* gave him the address xRed~ had reported. “Let me just do a simple Whois search here,” Jerry went on and tapped in the address. “Uh oh!”
“What is wrong?” ^Green asked.
“Your boys have been snooping through one of the servers that belong to the AeroSpace Force,” Jerry informed him. “That could be very serious. Classified information. And to make it worse, the sorts of things you wanted to know aren’t likely to be there in any case. Depending on what they did, Red’s exit from the server might be traced back here. We’d better do this completely open and above board.”
“What do you mean, Jerry?” Lilla asked.
“What would happen to someone caught breaking into the archives of the Treloian Navy?” Jerry asked her.
“Well, that’s a very serious crime,” she considered. “Oh, I see what you mean. What do we do next?”
“I think we’d better have Clark or Louise give Janice Wall a call right away,” Jerry decided. “Clark, I think, since I can wake him up without incident. I doubt Louise would forgive me for sneaking into her bedroom.”
“Too right, I wouldn’t,” Louise said from the doorway, “not since you and Lani got married in any case. What’s the problem?” They quickly brought her up to date and she, in turn called Janice.
“Good thing I’m in Pretoria this morning,” Janice told them. “I would have hated having to get a call like this at Two in the morning. I’ll look into it and get back to you as soon as possible. We may be able to plead diplomatic immunity even if they have not been recognized yet.”
“We’ll gladly pay the fines if it comes to it,” Louise told her.
“There aren’t generally fines involved in breaking into a military area,” Janice replied. “Just jail sentences unless you get shot by the guards who catch you. Hmm, I might be able to get a sentence reduced to time served if the time scale is what you say it is for these Volano.”
The next few hours passed with numbing slowness while they waited for Janice’s call back. “I don’t think your boys could have picked a worse place to break into if they tried,” she eventually reported, “unless they had been caught infiltrating…” she paused and then continued, “no, I can’t think of anyplace worse. However, I have managed to get Yellow released. He should be along any moment now. I used the diplomatic immunity ploy and if the Volano could be thrown off the planet they would be, but instead I bought them one last chance, but you have to explain to them where they can and cannot go. Next time, those anti-virus guns are going to be set to kill and there won’t be a thing I can do to help.”
“I understand, Janice” Clark told her. “We’ll do our best.”
“Not just your best,” Janice told him. “See that they understand. I’ve been assured that the only reason #Yellow@ is still alive is that he was being studied as a new form of virus. Now that they know what he is, there won’t be any hesitation to automatically delete.”
“All right,” Clark agreed. “We’ll make them understand.
#Yellow@ was back before Clark finished talking to Janice and assured them all that after that experience he would not willingly try to go into any computer system uninvited. “There are public and private files almost anywhere,” Jerry explained to the Volano, “but from your point of view, I’m not sure how clearly marked they are. The thing is, I don’t see why you need to go directly to a databank yourself to get data. If it is public and accessible, you can have it downloaded to you remotely, without having to take the risk of running into hostile security programs.”
^Green* expressed surprised at the concept of sending a message without a living herald to carry it, but after Jerry demonstrated using the computer’s controls, the Volano worked out their way to send the appropriate requests.
“I’ll be going to my home in an hour or so, but when I get there, I’ll send you a note so you can follow it to my address. I’ll turn off the anti-virus program so it will be safe for you,” Jerry promised. “I’ll just have to be careful how I use the system.”
“If we’re on your system,” !Blue_ told him, “we can keep it safe.”
“You can?” Jerry asked.
“We have found various viruses, worms, kits and bots attempting to get into Louise’s system since we got here,” !Blue_ replied. “We didn’t mention it, but we eradicated them simply enough. They tasted strange at first, but we got used to the flavor.”
“You ate them?” Jerry asked, surprised.
“They represented a miniscule amount of energy,” !Blue_ responded in such a way Jerry imagined a shrug. “To us they would represent a sort of,” he paused to look up the word he needed and was silent for several seconds. “Well, I guess the term virus is accurate enough even if we don’t have the concept in our own language.”
“The analogy is imperfect, Blue,” Jerry noted. “We don’t eat viruses, well, not intentionally.”
“I agree. I meant to say that these programs are not quite alive as we think of it,” !Blue_ explained, “but appear to be made of similar materials to that which is alive. In any case we have been keeping such not-alive nuisances off this system and will do the same for you and the same for Ralani when she calls in.”
“Oh? Has she promised to invite you to Kiev?” Jerry asked.
“She has, yes,” !Blue_ replied, “although she only has her portable terminal with her. It is barely large enough for one of us to fit on without endangering the system. It will give us another place to go.”
“Hmm, I can understand how you might be getting cabin fever,” Jerry sympathized. “First you were confined to our ship-board computer and then in tiny batteries and since then mostly stuck inside Louise’s system.”
“Oh we’re not all that confined,” !Blue_ replied. “We have free access to the electric power grid, but the landmarks there are harder to discern. That’s how #Yellow and xRed~ got into trouble. They got lost on the power grid. We need to be more careful when we travel that way.”
“Or maybe we can set up a beacon of some sort to allow you to find you way back,” Jerry suggested. “Tracer signals are sent on the power grid all the time when looking for problems.”
“They might be hard to detect from a distance,” !Blue_ noted, “but that would give us some freedom of movement.”
“We have a few such devices on the ships,” Jerry told him. “I’ll get one installed before Lani and I leave and we’ll put one in Vermont as well.”
Serafyma, Lilla and Ralani arrived in Kiev just as Jerry was plugging in the signal generator at Louise’s home. Kiev’s Aero-spaceport was a small affair compared to Port Woomera, but Ralani had learned that the Australian spaceport was the largest on Terra. Unlike Port Woomera, Kiev’s facility did not normally play host to ships arriving directly from deep space, but instead this was a place where sub-orbital passenger flights came in several times each day.
“It’s strange you still have cars that actually stay on the ground,” Ralani told Serafyma. “Why is that? I know you have the technology to lift a car anti-gravitionally.”
“It’s just the way it is,” Serafyma replied as she got behind the wheel of the rental car. “Tradition. If we want to fly we fly, and if we want to travel along the ground, we use vehicles with wheels. I think most non-spacers would feel uneasy in your sort of car, if you want to know the truth. They’d be afraid it wouldn’t stop in time and remember we do not have thaliripi to do the steering for us either. This is all manual. Most humans don’t trust automatic pilots in their cars.”
“If you say so,” Ralani shrugged. Then she switched languages, “Is my Russian good enough?”
“You’re accent is foreign,” Serafyma replied. “It’s like Lilla’s and even thicker, but my folks won’t have any trouble understanding you. You learned very quickly.”
“The tapes helped,” Ralani replied. “Too bad your parents don’t speak Terrañol.”
“Oh, they speak a few words when they have to,” Serafyma replied, “but Russian is the language we use at home.”
Serafyma avoided driving through the city itself. “We can play tourist tomorrow, there’s a lot to be seen here,” she told Ralani, “but it would take hours to drive past any of the ancient monuments, the few we can get near. The entire old city is blocked off to all motor traffic. Do you know how to ride a bike?”
“What’s a bike?” Ralani asked.
“Bicycle, a manual two-wheeled vehicle,” Serafyma explained and then sighed. “Never mind. You may be a quick study, but bike traffic in the old city is heavier than motor traffic is elsewhere. That’s no place for an inexperienced rider. We’ll stay on foot.”
Serafyma’s mother came out to greet them as they got out of the car. “Why didn’t you come to visit on your last trip to Earth?” she asked Ralani after greeting her with a warm hug.
“I did not want to impose,” Ralani explained.
“Impose?” Mrs. Ivanoff scoffed. “What impose? You are family.”
“Thank you,” Ralani grinned.
“Mom,” Serafyma cut in. “We need to get Ralani settled in. I think she can sleep with Lilla in my room and I’ll take the couch.”
“No, Sera,” Ralani refused. “I can sleep on the couch. I don’t mind. But I would like to set up my portable terminal if it’s okay.”
“Sure,” Serafyma nodded. “Take over the table in the library. In fact the couch in there is probably the most comfortable to sleep on. And there are doors for privacy. Mom, we’ll probably only be here for a few days this trip. There’s a lot going on and we may be needed.”
“Yes, yes,” her mother replied easily. “I saw on the news. So why is it always your ship that finds the new people?”
“Just lucky, I guess, Mom,” Serafyma responded.
“It’s causing quite the ruckus this time, I see,” Mrs. Ivanoff went on.
“Ruckus?” Ralani asked.
“Trouble,” Serafyma translated. “Wait a minute, Mom, it’s causing trouble? How?”
“See for yourself, dear,” her mother suggested. “It’s all any reporter has been talking about all day.”
“Now what?” Lilla wondered.
“Maybe what happened to Yellow was worse than we thought?” Ralani guessed. “Maybe we should have stayed in Bolivia another day or two.” They did not have to wait too long to find out.
After showing Ralani where the library was, Serafyma turned on the Vid and found it was, predictably given her parents’ taste in programming, already set to the news channel. They had to wait through more commercials than Serrafyma was prepared to be patient about. “You see?” she told the others. “This is why I go to space. Everything here is advertisements. Once we’re on a ship we have canned entertainment or we entertain each other, but at least we don’t have to sit through questionable insurance offers and ads for products we’ll never need or want – most of which don’t work well, if at all.”
“I thought some of those were parodies,” Ralani admitted.
“Advertising on Treloi is not as aggressive,” Lilla explained to Serafyma’s mother.
“So?” Mrs. Ivanoff responded. “Perhaps I should move there. It’s a long way, but I don’t like the ads any more than you do. Why do you think I don’t leave the set on all the time?”
“Because it costs money to run and there are children starving on New Rochelle?” Serafyma asked impudently. Her mother merely snorted. “So who is this Reverend Doctor Hannes Eckhart?”
“Never heard of him,” her mother shrugged, “but he seems to have a lot to say, not much of it good.”
“Do all your religious leaders get involved in this sort of thing, Sera?” Lilla asked. “It was some Reverend Someone last time who caused all the trouble with the Lano discovery, wasn’t it?”
“That was Reverend Stump,” Serafyma recalled. “He was an American televangelist. I wonder whatever happened to him.”
“Him?” her mother snorted again, this time with disgust. “He was found dead just after you returned to your rendezvous with the Lano. It was all the news would talk about for a week. It was ruled a suicide, but it was murder if you ask me. After he died, all sort of things came out about his backers. Hoodlums and thugs, most of them were. Trash. No surprise there. I think they killed him after he was no longer any use to them.”
“I only ever heard about him,” Lilla admitted. “So is there any relationship to this Reverend Eckhart?”
“I doubt it,” Mrs. Ivanoff replied. “That Stump was an evangelistic preacher of his own made-up variety of Christianity. Eckhart is a Lutheran with a respectable past. From what I can see, he is merely acting as his convictions dictate.”
“And how is that?” Ralani asked. Serafyma’s mother merely pointed at the screen and they stopped talking to listen.
Reverend Doctor Eckhart was speaking in German so they had to wait for a translator to put his words into Russian. “Because these Volano are by their nature confined to very few places on Earth,” He was answering a question. “They must be transported in batteries, completely isolated from all sensory experience and once on Earth may only live inside a circuit.”
“Not entirely accurate,” Lilla commented, “but partially true. But how does he even know that? Who’s been talking?”
“Malana and Malvina gave a press conference in Sydney after we went to sleep last night,” Serafyma told her. “Wait. What did he say?”
“Yes, slavery,” Eckhart repeated. “What else would you call it when a person is taken essentially in chains from his home world and transported to where he is entirely dependant on those who took him to bring him back home again? We have heard they will work. I say that since they cannot simply walk off the job and go home when it pleases them they are being placed in a state of slavery. Some call it indentured servitude and say they would only be expected to work off their passage from the distant nebula they call their home, but that is not only just as illegal under the law, but a lie as well. Do we have any proof these poor souls would ever be allowed to go home? No, we do not. Do we have assurances that they can choose not to work? Of course not! No this is slavery. These first four Volano may be here by choice, but how long before we start transporting thousands here to do our bidding? No, this foul practice must be stopped before it starts…”
“He’s a loon,” Serafyma muttered. “He might have a respectable past, but that just makes him a respectable loon.”
“Sera!” her mother admonished here, “He’s a man of the cloth.”
“Then he’s a respectable, holy loon, Mom,” Serafyma retorted. “We aren’t slavers and the Volano aren’t trapped here. We’ll take them home any time they ask. Clark said so. This Eckhart does not know what he’s talking about. But what bothers me the most is that this is going to cut our visit short, and we just got here.”
“It was bad enough that we had to deal with the break in at the AeroSpace Force computer,” Clark told them two days later, “but with this Eckhart raising holy hell, maybe literally, over the slavery issue, we’re going to have a hard time of this. Just today I was informed that the Terran World Congress is investigating us as is Internal Revenue.”
“They ought to be investigating Reverend Eckhart and his church,” Eesai commented sourly.
“This one isn’t like old Stumpy,” Clark shook his head.
“It’s all so ridiculous,” Lilla added. “The Volano want to earn data and power. That Eckhart thinks it should be given freely and I’d normally agree, but the Volano don’t want to accept charity.”
“And they are not imprisoned or being forced to work at all like he says,” Ralani complained. “The Terrano power grid is nearly as large as their nebula, they are no more confined than we are, and they can leave any time.”
“Only to go into a battery or another similar system,” Jerry pointed out.
“It’s still not imprisonment or slavery,” Ralani maintained. “You may as well say I am being imprisoned because I can’t just walk home to Treloi or that I am a slave because I am assigned to Meriwether I and must stay there until either my hitch is up or I receive new orders.”
“That’s different,” Lani told her. “You’re an officer in the Treloian Space Navy, serving out your compulsory service for the good of Treloi.”
“And they are heralds,” Ralani maintained, “and they are doing their jobs for the betterment of all Volano. Where’s the difference?”
“The difference is in perception, I think,” ^Green* told them. “Ralani, I like the way you speak and as ironic as it may be for a herald to say this, I believe I need a spokesperson. Will you do that for me?”
“I’d be honored,” Ralani assured him, “but I’m really quite young for a Terrala. Maybe you should ask Jerry.”
“Ralani,” Jerry laughed, “You’re the natural speaker among us. I’m just a scientist who can’t keep his mouth shut most of the time, but you’re the one who can hold and convince an audience. You did it during the Terralano Crisis on Treloi and you were still in secondary school at the time.”
“Lilla, then” Ralani suggested. “She’s a communications specialist. I’m a generalist working toward a degree in Thalirip.”
“I’ve been training as a Thalua too,” Lilla protested, “and I dare say I’m further ahead in my lessons, little sister, but Green and Jerry are right. I’m no public speaker, but you are.”
“Well, okay,” Ralani agree reluctantly, “but you know I only did all that because it didn’t seem like anyone else would.”
“That’s what makes heroes, kid,” Clark laughed. “I think we’re all going to have to do some talking about this, but press conferences might not be the key, otherwise we’ll just be having a long and drawn-out debate with Eckhart and those who see things his way.”
“You think we should be ducking the Press?” Sue asked.
“No, that wouldn’t be making friends and influencing whomever,” Alano shook his head.
“Right, we need to show ourselves to be willing to talk to anyone and everyone about this,” Clark agreed, “but we need to be concentrating on the politicians of this world.”
“I think we should pair up on this where possible,” Jerry suggested. “Two speakers working together should be able to present more compelling arguments than just a single person sitting in an office chair. My only question is how does one go about making appointments with presidents, governors, senators, ministers and the like? It would have been easy on Treloi. You and Alano are admirals there. You were granted terms in their Council of Generals. Here we’re just ordinary businessmen and women.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Louise Anspach noted.
“Not bad,” Jerry laughed. “I prefer to be able to live quietly in Vermont, when not otherwise wreaking havoc on society, but that does not give us an in with the so-called movers and shakers on Terra.”
“As spokespeople for the Volano it should,” Ralani pointed out.
“We should ask Janice, I think,” Clark decided. “She makes appointments of that sort all the time.”
“And I can ask Malana,” Ralani pointed out, “or better yet, Helani. She’s the one who handles all of Malana’s appointments. She will also know the names of everyone’s assistants and probably has a good notion as to who might be inclined to agree with us.”
Ralani, with some help from Helani Bi Terralano, managed to get her foot in the door of more politicians than the others and, with Lilla, spent the next two weeks being politely declined by all of them.
“I don’t understand,” she admitted one late afternoon in Sydney. She and Lilla had been invited to tea with Malana by Malvina Smythe. Malana explained that she and Malvina met like this several times a week when their schedules allowed and that was why they had arrived in Bolivia together. “They listen to me, thank me for coming and that’s all that happens. I’m getting nowhere.”
“I don’t think you need to worry so,” Malvina advised her. “I know there’s an investigation going on, but no one is really taking it seriously. None of the representatives on the committee are senior members of their delegations and their findings, if any, are probably not going to be paid attention to right away if at all.”
“Why?” Ralani asked.
“It’s an election year, dear,” Malvina replied, “and the possible plight of aliens is not an issue with the voters.”
“Not yet,” Ralani argued, “but with Reverend Eckhart and his followers speaking against us all the time, that could very well change.”
“So far all they are doing is talking,” Malvina told her. “Let them. Without a case in court, it’s just talk. Groups like this do this sort of thing all the time. They pick some cause and make a great load of noise about it, but it’s rare for anything to come of it. After a couple of months, people will be tired of hearing from this Reverend Eckhart and someone else will come along to try to grab their attention.”
“You said that without a court case it’s just talk,” Lilla pointed out. “Couldn’t they make a court case out of this?”
“They could,” Malvina nodded, “but it would be very foolish of them. Rushing a case to court is a good way to make it go against you where you might otherwise managed to convince enough voters to petition their representatives. Once a court makes a decision it… well it’s not final until the Supreme Court decides, of course, but most cases never go that far and usually it takes years to do so.”
“It seems to me we have the same problem the reverend has,” Ralani remarked. “We want the Volano given diplomatic recognition, whereas he just wants them protected in spite of themselves, but we are both trying to influence your politicians during a period in which they are likely to ignore us. Do I have that right?”
“That’s correct,” Malvina nodded, “but you aren’t trying to have a law drafted and passed, just drum up enough of a political tide to convince President Kassanov and the congress to instruct the Department of State to undertake the opening of formal recognition.”
“I’m still worried about Reverend Eckhart’s movement,” Ralani admitted. “Last I heard he was gaining support with all his talk.”
“Hold off a bit, dear,” Malana advised. “Let him go on for a while. His movement is likely to fizzle out and even if it doesn’t, it is far harder to present an initial argument than to tear it apart in rebuttal. Let him do the work and if there aren’t enough who take him seriously, you won’t have to do anything on his account.”
“Sounds lazy to me,” Ralani opined.
“Not lazy,” Malana corrected her, “prudent, dear.”
“All right,” Ralani nodded, “but how do we get recognition for the Volano if we don’t get political support? How do we get the people on our side?”
“For now you may have done all you can,” Malana replied. “You’ve visited with all of the congressmen and women who would even agree to see you. If you make pest of yourself, they are likely to vote against you if a bill comes up. Take some time off and let me handle the next step. As the Lano ambassador, I might be able to provide a fair amount of influence, especially if I let some of the State Department know I intend to recognize the Volano regardless of whether they do.”
“You’ve told them that already,” Malvina pointed out.
“So I’ll tell them again,” Malana replied. “It is not a bluff. It’s the right thing to do no matter how the work issue is solved. Also if we can get diplomatic recognition established, I think the whole slavery nonsense will go away.”
“Maybe,” Malvina responded.
Lilla and Ralani took their advice and along with Serafyma accepted an invitation from Jerry and Lani to visit in Vermont. Their house was built on the side of a mountain about fifteen miles north of Killington and was one of a few dozen such that an agency rented out while the owners were not in residence. It was an ideal situation for spacers who were often off planet for months at a time. The rentals helped pay for the household expenses and the agency kept the house cleaned and maintained in Jerry’s and Lani’s absence.
The sisters arrived at the beginning of a delightfully picturesque snowy morning in the late autumn while there were still a few colorful, past-peak leaves on the maples. Jerry got a fire going in the fireplace and they were able to just sit and relax and try to explain the weather and the fire to ^Green* and xRed~ who had come up to visit.
“I wish we could find a way to let you walk around among us,” Ralani told the Volano. “I think part of the problem is that the people we’ve been talking to have a hard time seeing you as real people. You’re just voices coming out of a Comm. speaker to them.”
“We deal with people over the Comm. all the time,” Jerry pointed out. “People we don’t ever actually meet.”
“Yes, but this is different,” Ralani maintained. “At least I think it is. I mean Terrano and Lano met face-to-face and got to look at each other. We had to make some accommodations for meeting with Carono, since neither of us can tolerate the other’s environment, but we can still meet in space each in our own environment suits, but the Volano have no physical form that we can see.”
“We see them as ball lightning,” Lani pointed out.
“We saw them, yes, especially in the nebula,” Ralani replied, “and Green showed us he can pop out of a power socket if need be, but only for a very brief time. I think the people we’ve been talking to don’t really equate the Volano with real people.”
“I see what you mean,” Jerry replied. “They need some sort of physical body that can walk around in our world. Yes that might make them seem more real to the doubters. Lani, could you build them mechanical bodies, do you think?”
“I suppose I could but they would probably have to be the size of a car to hold a whole Vola each,” Lani replied.
“Why?” Jerry asked. “We carried them out of Meriwether I in batteries, didn’t we?”
“We had to compress ourselves way down to do that,” ^Green* informed him. “We let nearly all of our energy go and kept only enough to hold that which is our personality and memory. We were only conscious on the most minimal level in that condition. I imagine it was like what you call sleep.”
“Sounds more like a sort of electric suspended animation,” Jerry commented. “You all perked up quickly enough when we plugged you back in though. Lani? I recognize that look on your face. What are you thinking?”
“I wonder if we can jam a ton of extraneous circuitry and wires into a general purpose robot body,” Lani replied. “I’m going to have to call Erich in on this. I flatter myself that I can make any Lano-built machine sing, and no one is better than I am with the new hybrid Terralano drives, well, except maybe Erich.”
“The two of you invented them,” Jerry pointed out.
“Invented is too strong a word, unless you’re at the Patent Office,” Lani replied. “It may have spawned a couple of new patents, but all we really did was combine the best of both drives. At the time it was the only thing we could do.”
“There’s an old human saying about necessity and inventions,” Jerry remarked.
“There are some Lano ones too,” Lani laughed. “From what I understand the actual content of the circuits doesn’t matter, so long as there is enough for Volano to fit comfortably without having to squeeze.”
“I don’t get it,” Jerry admitted. “I saw how large Volano are in their natural habitat. The sizes I saw ranged from that of a basketball to about twice that size. How do they have trouble fitting in any fair-sized robot?”
“Size is not the issue,” ^Green* explained, “It’s being able to inhabit one of your circuits without burning it out. We need to spread ourselves out so there is not too much current over any particular spot. We can only trim off so much energy before we start to lose what you call our intelligence quotient and some memories. No one cares to do that so we keep ourselves healthy and spread out over as large a volume as we can. It is easier on a live circuit such as household wiring as we can borrow energy from the circuit without disrupting it, but we still need enough so that that what we are does not get lost.”
“Do you mean your souls?” Ralani asked.
“That is part of it,” ^Green* replied. “It is the religious part of it. Scientifically, there is no real agreement as to what mechanism contains our memories and ability to think.”
“I have detected an incredibly complex pattern of vibrations within you,” Lani told him. “At least I think they are patterns. There seem to be certain similarities in similar conversations and situations. Someone more qualified than I should study that. For all I know those are just autonomic processes, stuff you do without thinking, like breathing is for us.”
“So how does a Vola, never mind four Volano, fit inside a ship’s computer?” Lilla wondered.
“Oh, we weren’t in the computer except to look up vocabulary words and the like,” xRed~ told her. “We were mostly in the power plant of the engines and only extended enough of ourselves as we needed into the shipboard wiring so we could use the cameras and speakers.”
“Can you send a part of yourselves somewhere such as these robot bodies we’re talking about?” Lani asked. She pulled out a computer pad and started working on calculations.
“I’m not really sure what a robot body is,” ^Green* admitted, “but we can detach a subset of ourselves when we need to. It’s usually done to investigate something dangerous, but it is very important not to send too much of oneself or to stay apart for very long or else we cannot reintegrate with that subset and we lose a bit of that which is us.”
“Do you mean that the subset becomes a separate person?” Ralani asked. “Is that where young Volano come from?”
“No, the subset is not viable for long,” ^ Green* replied. “It starts to degrade. That is why we cannot reintegrate it.”
“It’s spoiled,” Ralani translated.
“Yes,” ^Green* replied. “It can make us ill or even kill us if it has been gone too long.”
“So where do little Volano come from?” Ralani asked.
“The stork brings them,” ^Green* replied without any hint of humor.
“Huh?” Ralani asked as Jerry started to snicker. “What’s a stork?”
“A large bird, known for its long legs,” Jerry explained. “It’s an old human myth or folk tale or whatever you want to call it. Rather than explain the birds and the bees, parents would tell their kids the stork brought them when they were new born. Silly, but a convenient way to avoid an embarrassing question. Green, where did you hear it?”
“It was on a number of vid. comedies I viewed,” ^Green* admitted. “Seriously, Ralani, young Volano are created when two or more Volano join together to bring one to life. It’s a serious undertaking and not done lightly as a parent is obligated to teach his offspring and see to it that he becomes a useful and contributing member of society.”
“So do you have sexes?” Ralani asked. “You know, male and female or even more genders?”
“No,” ^Green* told her. “We are a one-gendered life form. Any two or more Volano can join to give birth. Actually three or four parents are most common so they can share the work without it becoming a burden.”
“Well, I don’t think we can use robots, then” Lani decided after looking up from her calculations. “I can’t make one large enough that can walk through the average front door and still fit a whole Vola.”
“Why does a Vola have to enter it at all?” Serafyma asked.
“Huh?” Lani reacted.
“Well, the point is to be able to give them the ability to interface with the physical world somewhere other than the power grid, right?” Serafyma asked pointedly. “Why not just build a machine they can control remotely? Seems to me that would both be easier and cheaper in any case.”
“I’d still have to design and build such a thing and equip it with radio controls,” Lani noted, “but all those parts are available.”
“Can’t you just adapt an industrial robot?” Serafyma asked.
“Why?” Jerry asked. “Are you expecting the Volano to build cars or deliver mail? We’ve never really developed our robot technology to the point of developing a good general purpose robot. It could be done, I suppose, but I guess there just hasn’t been much call for it.”
“Too hard,” Lani told him, “and probably too expensive as well. Humans have been building robots for centuries but they are all highly specialized devices. It’s a lot cheaper and easier to design them for a single task or a series of tasks. Once programmed, you just let them run. If you improve the program, you upload it and put the machine back to work. A general purpose robot has to be programmable on the fly and be able to switch from one job to another quickly and efficiently. It would have to have almost as much memory storage as a person. For all I know it might become a person, but I’ve always thought it takes more than memory to have intelligence. Artificial intelligence research was never explored in the Trelendir and on Earth it went out of fashion a century ago when under the technology of the time a general purpose robot would have had to be twice the size of a man and would then still have to be reprogrammed for each new environment or task.”
“They could have some preprogrammed for all the common household chores,” Jerry remarked.
“I’ve read a lot about it, Jerry,” Lani told him. “It comes up in the tech journals all the time. They could have been built, but only the richest people could have afforded them and most chose to spend their household money elsewise. There have been specialized robotic devices around for centuries; vacuum cleaners, dishwashers, window washers. Why a century ago some enterprising engineer built what he called a ‘Maidbot’ designed to clean a house. From the plans I’ve seen it was rather impressive, especially since there was not a thalu to be seen in the manufacture and operation, but it was more expensive than the three or four devices it replaced and did not do as good a job. All it did was save about ten percent of the space the others took up.
“The manufacturer had hoped that initial sales would fund further development of the Maidbot and they even planned free upgrades for the customers of the first model,” Lani went on, “but they only sold fifteen of them. There’s one in the Smithsonian Institute if we’re ever in Washington and want to see it, but if it still runs, they never turn it on and all you see is a dark gray cube with various appendages sticking out of it.”
“You could build something like that,” Jerry told her, “only without the intelligence, right?”
“With thaliripi, I can do better,” Lani replied. “Oh I couldn’t begin to design the logic circuits a robot would need, but if I start with a hoverchair, one like they use in your hospitals, I can attach a camera, manipulators and the radio control circuitry to allow the Volano to use it.”
“That will allow us to see more of your world?” xRed~ asked.
“It would allow you to see and, to an extent, walk through our world,” Jerry told him. “So far you have seen very little of Earth.”
“We have been out on your power grid,” ^Green* told him. “It is a strange landscape with many hazards of a sort we have never encountered before, but it is not entirely unlike our world.”
“That’s just it,” Jerry told him, “That’s not the world we live in, or rather for us it is just a tool to help us live in comfort. With a device like the one we’re discussing you’ll have a better understanding of what it is like to live on our sort of world.”
“I’m going to order the parts I need,” Lani decided. “Maybe I can pick them up locally.”
“Not today you aren’t,” Jerry told her, looking out the window. “The way it’s snowing, we may as well just relax in front of the fire.”
“Ooh!” Ralani breathed, staring out at the mostly white world. “I’ve heard of snow, but we live in the tropical zone of Treloi. It never snows there.”
“Treloi has a very wide tropical zone as I recall,” Jerry told her, “and most of your cities are built there and in the subtropics. In comparison to Earth, Treloi’s temperate zone is fairly narrow, just a belt between the subtropics and the arctic zones.”
“Oh, it snows on Treloi,” Ralani laughed. “I even saw snow frozen on the ground when I was touring for the Terralano movement, but I was never anywhere it was actually falling out of the air. Can we go skiing around here?”
“What’s skiing?” Lilla asked.
“A Terrano sport,” Ralani told her enthusiastically. “They strap these long boards to their feet and then throw themselves off mountains and slide all the way down.”
“Jerry, you do this for fun?” Lilla asked skeptically.
“I do a bit of cross-country skiing. There’s a nice trail that goes by not too far from our back door,” Jerry replied. “I’ve never had the time to try Alpine skiing, like Ralani described, although the description of strapping boards to your feet can be a bit misleading. When the snow stops tomorrow, perhaps I’ll dig out my skis, I have some extras for company, and I’ll show you how if you like.”
“I want to try the downhill skiing,” Ralani told him.
“You’re crazy,” Lilla told her without heat. “It sounds like you’re essentially falling down a mountain.”
“In a sense, you would be,” Jerry allowed. “But an experienced skier is in control of his descent. If we’re here long enough I can take you down to Killington and you can have lessons on how to ski downhill. It isn’t something you should just try without lessons. Even cross-country skiing takes practice, but the trail here is an easy one and made for beginners like me.”
“You’re a beginner?” Ralani asked. “But you live here.”
“I live here now,” Jerry told her. “I grew up in South Carolina on the coast where it almost never snows. And since signing on with Meriwether, Inc. I’ve never been here long enough to get really expert in the sport, but it’s good exercise.”
“I still want to try the downhill stuff,” Ralani insisted.
Jerry chuckled and turned back to Lani. “Better not bring the parts you need here.”
“Why not?” Lani asked.
“What are you going to use for a workshop?” Jerry pointed out. “You’re the one who said this place didn’t even have enough closets.”
“You’re right,” she admitted. “My real workshop is on the ship and that’s in Bolivia.”
“So have everything delivered there,” Jerry shrugged. “In the meantime you can plan it and see what Erich has to say. We weren’t planning to be here more than a week anyway.”
The vid phone rang just then. “It’s Alano,” ^Green* informed them. “Shall I answer for you?”
“That should make his day,” Jerry chuckled.
There was a pause of nearly a minute and then suddenly the vid screen lit up with Alano Ki Mitchi looking concerned. “There you are! Jerry, something’s come up and Clark is calling a war council here at Louise’s place. How soon can you get here?”
Jerry looked out the window. “Not today. We’re in the middle of a blizzard. Um,” he paused remembering their earlier discussion about Treloi. “Do you know what that is?”
“Of course I know what a blizzard is, Jerry,” Alano told him briskly. “Far too much snow, wind and cold all at the same time. I might live in Pansili, but I’ve visited just about every world in the Trelendir and a fair number in Terran space too.”
“Oh, sorry,” Jerry shrugged. “Well, technically these are only near-blizzard conditions. It’s not cold enough for a true blizzard, but the snow and wind is enough to keep us house-bound until it stops and we can dig out.” While talking he had been checking the weather forecast. “According to the predictions, though we should be able to leave in the morning.”
“That’s fine,” Alano agreed. “We haven’t even found half the crews yet, and I’m still in Hilo with Eesai and Sue, waiting for a flight. See you sometime tomorrow then.”
“Remind me to have a little chat with Malana and Malvina,” Ralani commented darkly the next evening. “They told us this would just blow over and never get to court.”
“Well, they were wrong,” Clark replied. “Actually Malana is on her way here now from somewhere in Africa so you can have that chat in the morning if you’re still of a mind. She would be here now, but she missed her connection.”
“That seems to happen all too frequently in African airports,” Jerry remarked. He turned toward Janice Wall and continued, “So far all you’ve told us is that the Terra Civil Liberties Union has filed suit against Meriwether, Inc. on charges of slavery, kidnapping, and fraud committed against the Volano. It’s a pretty flimsy set of charges considering the Volano don’t feel they’ve been enslaved or taken advantage of in any way. Why should we be worried?”
“The TCLU has, on its staff, the best civil liberties lawyers in the world,” Janice replied. “Better than me, I’m afraid, as it is not my specialty, although I’m no slouch and I’m bringing in consultants of my own to aide in the case. However, if I were running their case I would claim that you have so thoroughly duped the Volano that they don’t realize they’ve been enslaved yet. They are also relying on various definitions of slavery and forced labor that would apply even if the Volano happily entered such conditions and were still happy about it.”
“I have looked up this Terran Civil Liberties Union,” ^Green* told them. “According to their charter they take cases on behalf of those who cannot defend themselves when requested to. I did not make such a request, nor did !Blue_, #Yellow@ or xRed~. How can they make such a case without our request and consent?”
“The TCLU received its request from the Volano Freedom Foundation,” Janice replied.
“Who?” everyone interrupted at once in a ragged chorus.
“The Reverend Doctor Hannes Eckhart has incorporated his movement,” Janice replied, “and as such it is they who requested the TCLU’s assistance.”
“I’ve never heard of the TCLU acting on behalf of another organization,” Jerry remarked.
“They justify themselves in two ways,” Janice replied. “First this is an extraordinary case, or so they claim. Frankly, in legal terms nearly all their cases are extraordinary, but I’ll grant that a case dealing with the enslavement of non-corporeal extra-terrestrials does not come up every day.”
“We’re not non-corporeal,” #Yellow@ objected. “We have bodies. We are just not made of matter is all.”
“Forgive me,” Janice apologized. “Cancel the ‘non-corporeal’ and it is still the first time such a claim has been made. Their second point of justification is that they claim they are not aiding the VFF, but all Volano as a class. They are merely taking a case suggested by Doctor Echkhart’s foundation, or at least that’s their claim.”
“I normally admire the TCLU and their work,” Clark commented, “but this case is unfounded and being prosecuted on behalf of people who do not want them to do so.”
“Civil liberties cases can be that way sometimes,” Janice shrugged. “In an added complication. the Terran Congress has been deluged by letters and demands from the followers of the Reverend Doctor Eckhart who are dismayed by the ‘awful plight of the helpless and innocent Volano.’”
“I could hear those quotes from over here,” Jerry remarked.
“And well you should,” Janice told him. “About ninety percent of those letters were sent verbatim from off the VFF’s TerraNet Site. That phrase is the one I’ve seen quoted in the news most often.”
“The news?” Lani asked. “I must have missed it. How long has this been going on?”
“We started calling all the Meriwether shareholders just yesterday, minutes after the suit was filed,” Alano told her. “None of this was publically known until then and the letters to congress started in about the same time.”
“What an interesting coincidence,” Louise noted sarcastically.
“So our congressmen have to prove their literacy,” Jerry scoffed, “or rather some members of their staffs do. What’s that got to do with the court case? The way my civics teacher taught me, the judicial branch of the government is separate from but equal to the legislative. It’s something the Terran Confederation inherited from the old United States of America. Congress is more likely to get mired down in arguing over some bill, but it shouldn’t have any effect on the case currently in court.”
“Jerry,” Janice smiled knowingly. “Lawyers get rich off of people like you and politicians get even richer. The three branches of our government are technically separate but equal, but while I’ll grant you equal, in some senses, at least, separation is a very misleading term here. What are not accounted for are political parties. We are proud of our tri-party system, assuring ourselves that we have a government that is more focused on the job at hand without the tedious nonsense of having to build coalitions within the Congress, while avoiding the democratic tyranny of the old bi-party system. Isn’t that how our civics teachers put it?”
“I’ve never been entirely sold on the hype,” Jerry admitted, “but yes, I do remember the attempt at indoctrination.”
“Then you’re one step ahead of most clients I have to explain this to,” Janice told him. “Nearly every politician, and that includes judges and justices regardless of whether they are elected or appointed, belongs to one of the three major political parties. If you don’t belong to one of them, the chances of building up sufficient funds to wage a successful campaign go way down. It happens sometimes, but it is comparatively rare.
“So no matter how separate a judge or justice might be from the lawmakers of this world,” she continued, “they still have their political ideals and it can’t come as any surprise when those ideals line up with those of their political parties. The ones with a lifetime term and those with a term limit of one term are not as swayed by the political exigencies, but any judge who relies on a renewal of his appointment or who needs to be reelected will always be just another flavor of politician and he’ll have to listen to his party. It won’t often affect his eventual ruling, but it will make a difference in what cases he hears.
“I’m trying to get this whole case thrown out of court before it can even start,” Janice went on. “That would solve a lot of problems for us, but with the political pressure of Eckhart’s supporters I don’t have a lot of hope.”
“I see a lot of lawyers on Vid shows trying to get cases thrown out like that,” Sue remarked. “Does it ever really happen?”
“Frequently,” Janice nodded. “Many suits are deemed either frivolous or without sufficient merit. When that is obvious from the start and you can demonstrate in a matter of a few words you can get a dismissal. I don’t really expect that this time. This is a unique case concerning very serious charges. The charges are groundless, but what seems obvious from our vantage point is not likely to be obvious to the judge. And with the Congress being bombarded with letters on the subject it would be a very rare judge who would dare to throw the case out at this point even if she agreed with me.”
“She?” Jerry asked. “You know the judge?”
“Jerry, I know every judge likely to hear a case of this magnitude,” Janice replied. “In this case it’s Meriam Wolkowicz, Chief Judge of the Thirty-fourth District Superior Court.”
“Is that good?” Sue asked.
“It could be a lot worse,” Janice shrugged. “She’s fair and she’s not likely to let either side get away with the usual courtroom antics. Well, I can live with that.”
“You wouldn’t want her predisposed to agree with us?” Clark asked archly.
“Of course, I would,” Janice laughed, “but this is the next best thing. Besides, Judge Wolkowicz has one of the best records as far as rulings being upheld by higher courts go. If we win the case with her, we aren’t likely to have trouble in an appeal, if any.”
“I see lawyers holding press conferences about their trials all the time,” Louise commented. “Will we be doing this too?”
“I don’t really like trying a case before the public,” Janice remarked. “We held quite a few conferences when we were trying to get the Lano recognized, but that was for the benefit of Congress and the President. When it’s a court case we have to be especially careful as to what we say and talk about.”
“That isn’t stopping Reverend Eckhart or the TCLU,” Eesai pointed out. “They’ve been holding daily press conferences.”
“Eesai’s right,” Jerry agreed. “Talking about the case is one thing, but official recognition for the Volano is another matter. We can’t allow Eckhart to do all the talking on that subject.”
“You have a point,” Janice agreed, “and while we cannot answer direct questions about the trial, we can certainly talk about the issues involved.”
They held the press conference in Sydney, in the shadow of the Confederation Hall where the Terran Congress met. It was as far as they could get from the scene of the upcoming trial in Ohio and Janice insisted they needed to imply that this had nothing to do with the upcoming trial. By mutual agreement, none of the people from Meriwether, Inc. made any statements about the trial, but instead talked about meeting the Volano and what the Volano hoped to gain by coming to Earth.
They started out with a slide show, narrated by Jerry, which included pictures of the Volano in their natural habitat and discussed what they knew of Volano civilization, philosophy and technology. Sitting in the discussion panel were Jerry, Sue, Eesai, Clark, Alano and Ralani, although Ralani was there only because ^Green* insisted the young woman was his spokesperson. Janice was there but strictly in an advisory role and was taking no questions.
“Why aren’t the Volano themselves here today?” was the first question asked.
“The Volano bodies are made of electricity,” Ralani explained patiently. “In an environment we find comfortable, their energy drains away rapidly.” She went on to describe conditions in their nebular and how they could survive on a power grid or any sufficiently large circuit.
“Then why should we even believe they are real?” came the follow-up.
“I can’t help what you believe,” Ralani laughed lightly. “The fact of the matter is even if they were here today, you still would not get to actually see them, merely talk to them through the PA system we’re using for the press conference. How would you know we did not just have someone offstage, answering questions through a microphone? In fact I’m sure that question would have been asked had we made that particular arrangement. The simple fact is we cannot prove a negative, but there is a sufficient number of people who believe the Volano are real that we felt compelled to be here today. If you wish to speak to the Volano directly, arrangements can be made.”
“What sort of arrangements?”
Ralani could not help but roll her eyes a bit at the question. “Please contact Meriwether, Inc. if you would like to interview the Volano,” was all she said.
Jerry and Clark fielded most of the questions that afternoon, but the one thrown at Eesai was, “Captain Eesai Di Sonea, you have been present at all three first contacts so far. Isn’t that an amazing coincidence?” It was a more pointed version of what Serafyma’s mother had asked.
“I would say so, yes,” Eesai agreed readily, “but hardly impossible. I was the First Sub-captain on board Inillien when she broke down in Rendezvous System. That we were rescued at all was fortunate happenstance. We could have been floating there for years, long dead by starvation had Meriwether I not found us. I later took a job with Meriwether, Inc. as captain of that same Meriwether I but with my ship in the yard, I chose to take a working vacation on board Meriwether II, captained by my adopted sister, Captain Ho. While we were on Treloi, we were hired by the Treloian government to investigate a series of missing and damaged ships. This resulted in first successful contact with the Carono.”
“Why you?” the reporter asked. “The Treloian Government must have ships of their own to investigate. Why hire a commercial trader to conduct that investigation?”
“First of all,” Eesai replied, “Please keep in mind that all spaceships in the Trelendir are government owned. Furthermore, by tradition, any person in the Trelendir is considered a citizen of the Trelendir. Shortly after the meeting with the Carono the law was revised, but at the time anyone in the Trelendir was assigned a military rank compatible with their place in society. So Captain Ho was immediately considered a captain of the Trelendir and was as susceptible to being drafted into service as any native-born La. As I said, this has since been changed so that a visiting person who is not Lano, while accorded a courtesy rank is not on-call to service, but at the time it was perfectly legal to assign Meriwether II to that task. It was, in fact, why Carono and Volano alike call our two peoples the Terralano. They can’t really see the differences between us.
“More importantly, however,” Eesai continued, “We were drafted because we already had a successful contact with alien races and the fact we had a mixed Terralano crew made us ideal representatives of both our peoples. However, the decision to hire or draft us, depending on how you see it, was not taken lightly and not done until after two Trelendir military vessels had been lost on the same search. One of those ships was found with its drive completely in ruins and it was hoped that Meriwether II, with her modified Matsuya-Tron drive would fair better. Was it coincidence that we were there at the right time? Well, yes, I suppose it was, but Presiding General Tauko would not have been as likely to press any other Terran vessel into service, at least not that particular service.
“So we went and found yet another new species,” Eesai went on. “Why us? We were there. Ladies and gentlemen, Meriwether, Inc. is an exploratory firm. We specialize in exploring beyond the sphere of known inhabited worlds. There are not a lot of companies that do that, since there is still so much to find within the known sphere of Terralano occupation. If you do not go as far afield as we do you are not likely to run into other intelligent races. First contacts, we think it’s obvious, will likely always happen on the periphery of exploration, so just how coincidental is it really that Meriwether, Inc. ships and personnel have been involved in all three first contacts? Not much, I would say.”
“There have been charges that you kidnapped these Volano and even now are forcing them to work for you,” was a later question.
“Nonsense!” Ralani replied. “The Volano are here willingly and are eager to earn what they see as our most precious commodity, data. They are also interested in our fiction. Like so many people they love stories and our literature is full of concepts they have never even thought of. They also trade in energy. They want to earn energy as that is what they use for currency, but the knowledge is worth even more. Furthermore, while they are flattered by the efforts of the Terran Civil Liberties Union on their behalves, they do not want their help and have requested in a formal letter that the TCLU withdraw their case.”
“And what was the TCLU’s response to that?” another reporter asked.
“That request was only sent two hours ago,” Ralani replied. “I don’t believe there has been sufficient time for a response.”
The response by the Terran Civil Liberties Union was a resounding, “Hell, no!” although the actual words used were far more formally polite. Within minutes of the Meriwether, Inc. conference, the TCLU held one of their own, maintaining that regardless of what the individual Volano involved believed about their situation, the TCLU had the entire Volano civilization in mind, not a few representatives and that they would be pressing their suit as a matter of principle. When asked, however, about the charges that Meriwether, Inc. had not really found electric-based life forms and transported them back to Earth, but instead were guilty of a hoax, Sara Lindhardt, the lead attorney for the TCLU in the Volano matter found herself in the unenviable position of having to defend Meriwether, Inc. as an honest and honorable company who would never lie about such a thing even while trying to maintain they were a disgusting pack of slave traders.
Sara Lindhardt had spent over fifteen years working as a corporate lawyer and as such she had been one of the best and moved from company to company, plying her trade in creative legality. However, as her skills grew, she found herself moving out of departments that drafted contracts and into ones whose jobs were to defend their company from legal suits. Sara Lindhardt found she was very good in the courtroom and enjoyed the activity of debating regardless of which side of the debate she found herself on until the day she realized that her side was not always right, even if it was her side.
Sara had been working for a pharmaceutical company at the time. That company had made its fortune producing some of the most sought-after medications that did everything from curing AIDS to relieving the symptoms of the Common Cold. By the time Sara came in to lead their legal team, however, what the company needed most were cleverly written disclaimers that, when boiled down said that the company would take no responsibility for their products or their side affects. This did not bother her at first. Such legal boilerplate had been a staple of corporate life for centuries before she got into the game and it never meant anymore than a judge was willing to let it mean. Rephrases of the same old thing just fuzzed the issues out for a while and gave the lawyers something to shout about.
But then came the day that a news story broke about how the company had tested a new birth control drug in collaboration with the regional government of Sichuan and had, in fact tested it on women who had neither volunteered nor, in some cases, even been aware they were being medicated. Discussing the case with departmental colleagues over lunch, Sara caught herself actually describing how this had been both legal and responsible on the part of the company. Revolted at what she heard coming out of her mouth, she returned to her office, wrote one last memo to her boss and packed up her personal belongings.
Before being recruited by the TCLU, Sara had worked tirelessly on behalf of sugarcane workers in Brazil and Cuba, miners in Antacrtica, and victims of white slavery in Central Europe. In short, she was now defending the very people her erstwhile employers had been oppressing over the years. By the time the TCLU hired her, Sara Lindhardt had already gained her reputation as the most feared courtroom opponent any corporate lawyer could ever hope not to meet. As one of TCLU’s top legal representatives, however, she was one to inspire nightmares among her adversaries. She had never lost a case since leaving corporate law and when found she was the head of a legal team, other attorneys often settled out of court rather that risk even worse penalties.
Sara Lindhardt was absolutely and morally certain of her position in the Volano case. She had not even a shred of doubt these people were real, but just as certainly she knew that Meriwether, Inc. was just another exploitative corporation, intent on using the Volano by selling them into slavery. That Meriwether, Inc. was currently the most prosperous exploration firm in the Terralendir – Sara liked that term and fully embraced the concept of multiple sentient species living and working together – only proved in her mind that they were guilty of conspiracy to engage in slavery at the very least. Corporations were, she knew, mindless, slavering beasts that would devour everything in their path that did not devour them first. Sure, corporations were made up of people, but having once been one of those people she knew full well how people could and would justify their own crimes and turn them into virtues.
Sara’s only uncertainty, in fact, was whether the people of Meriwether, Inc. had actually kidnapped or coerced the four Volano they had imprisoned on the Anspach Estate outside La Paz, or if those four Volano were in collusion with Meriwether, Inc. to enslave their own people. It was not impossible, she knew for a fact. People could be disgusting and if humans could enslave their own kind, there was no reason other people might not do the same. Further, according to the press releases, the Volano lived in a society that was culturally similar to Feudal Europe of the Middle Ages, a time when slavery and serfdom was a matter of course.
And even if the Volano were happy in their situation that was irrelevant. She knew that the road to corruption was paved all the way with little compromises, each meaning nothing by themselves but which inevitably added up to damnation. She had been on that road, and paved a long section of it while she was there, but now she knew in her heart that her job was to demolish that road, if she could.
Sara’s definition of slavery or, if she was forced to back down to the slightly lesser offense, indentured servitude was predicated on the fact that whether the Volano wanted to be here or not, they could not simply walk off the job and go home. By signing with Meriwether, Inc. and accepting the ride to Earth without advanced payment, they were obligated to stay with Meriwether until they had worked off the cost of passage and until it suited Meriwether to return them to their home, which currently was a company secret of Meriwether, Inc. So not only could a Vola not leave on his own, he could not ask anyone but the people of Meriwether, Inc. to take them home. These poor Volano were even more dependant on their employers than any Medieval serf had ever been.
As Sara said so in her own press conference, the people of Meriwether, Inc. were watching her performance on the Vid screen as they flew back to La Paz. “Who the, uh, heck does she think she is?” Ralani demanded. “She’s never met the Volano, she can’t possibly know anything about them. If they didn’t want to stay with us they wouldn’t.”
“And as for being helpless,” Jerry chuckled, “they could burn out every wire on the power grid if they wanted to.”
“That would be suicide,” Ralani argued, “but they could damage most of it and hold all Terra hostage for any demands they cared to make.”
“It might be a good thing they don’t know that,” Eesai commented.
“What makes you think they don’t?” Ralani countered. “They told me.”
“Then it’s a good thing they have a sense of morals that includes the old ‘Thou shalt not steal,’” Clark remarked.
“It also seems to include, ‘Thou shalt not wreak planet-wide mayhem and destruction,’” Jerry pointed out, “not that I’m complaining.”
“But her definition of enslavement is so poorly thought out,” Ralani commented.
“Huh?” Jerry asked, thrown off by the seeming change of subject. “Who?”
“That Lindhardt woman,” Ralani clarified. “Her definition is so broadly stated that it includes spaceship crewmen. They cannot just walk off the job either.”
“That’s a good point,” Jerry admitted. “Maybe you can use that, Janice.”
“Only if I must,” Janice told them. “I intend to take the tack that Meriwether, Inc. is only protecting their place of origin until they can be recognized and a formal treaty can be signed.”
“How can they sign a treaty?” Ralani asked.
“That’s the least of our worries,” Jerry replied. “Janice, that sounds good, but how can you be sure that will fly?”
“No human really knew where Treloi was until after the treaty had been signed, did they?” Janice asked. Sue and Eesai looked at each other guiltily. Janice caught the exchanged glance. “Better tell me about it.”
“Well, no one told us not to,” Eesai admitted, “so Sue and I traded the coordinates.”
“Not unlike two friends swapping Comm. numbers,” Clark commented. “But no one knew about it until shortly before we lifted to return to Rendezvous System. To tell the truth it shocked the heck out of me when Eesai took the first watch as pilot and set in the course.”
Janice sighed and told Sue and Eesai, “Well, try not to tell anyone you did that. It would not help the case. Alano, you didn’t know where Earth was, did you?”
“Only in the broadest, most general terms,” Alano replied. “I think Clark and I were both aware of which directions we flew off in when we parted the first time, but neither of us knew how far the other had come. I doubt any guess of mine would have come within twenty parsecs. How about you Clark?”
“We couldn’t even see each other’s home suns from where we were,” Clark replied, “but I knew you were somewhere off to galactic east. Had the treaty talks fallen through or if for some reason the Lano ships had failed to return, I would have headed out in that general direction if only to bring Malana and Eesai home or at least find a Lano planet to drop them off on. Of course Eesai knew her way home so we would have gone directly to Treloi.”
“Even if the Trelendir had refused to negotiate,” Alano added, “I’d have found an excuse to return to Rendezvous to retrieve Eesai and Malana.”
“Good enough,” Janice decided. “Like I told the Bobbsey twins here, don’t mention it to anyone.”
“Shouldn’t be hard, we haven’t even discussed it in years,” Clark shrugged.
“I’m not the first to say it,” Janice told them a week later when she called from San Francisco on her way to Australia, “and I certainly will not be the last. Politics makes strange bedfellows.”
“So I’ve heard,” Clark agreed. “What makes you say it?”
“The Good news; I got the continuance we wanted,” Janice reported. “I was afraid it was a weak argument, but Judge Wolkowicz agreed that the court cannot hear a case concerning a life form, especially one so radically different than any we have yet encountered, that has not yet been formally recognized. Until they are recognized the Volano are not legally people.”
“That’s nonsense,” Clark argued. “Are you telling me I could kill one and not be prosecuted?”
“Not in Judge Wolkowicz’s court,” Janice replied, “not this afternoon in any case, but do me a favor and don’t try it.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Clark assured her. “I would never kill a friend and all four Volano are friends, Jan. So what’s the bad news?”
“Pardon me?” Janice asked.
“You said that was the good news,” Clark recalled. “What’s the bad news?”
“Oh. Not bad, just strange,” Janice replied. “You see now that the case has been continued pending formal recognition of the Volano, we have a new ally in getting them that recognition.”
“Oh no!” Clark exclaimed. “Not the TCLU.”
“The TCLU,” Janice agreed. “Sara Lindhardt to be very specific.”
“You’re right that is strange,” Clark agreed.
“To be honest, this sort of thing happens all the time,” Janice remarked. “An opponent in one case becomes an ally in the next. What make it strange is that this is still pretty much the same case.”
“I suppose Ms Lindhardt will want to meet the Volano?” Clark asked.
“I imagine so,” Janice nodded over the video link of the Comm. “I hope so in any case.”
“You do?” Clark asked.
“She was going to want to meet them before the hearings on the slavery case started,” Janice told him, “at least I would have in her place. To tell the truth, I would have demanded that as soon as the initial pleadings had been filed. I might even have wanted to meet them before filing to determine whether there really was a case, but Sara made up her mind without the benefit of facts.”
“Do we want an ally like that?” Clark asked.
“Oh sure,” Janice shrugged. “She’s has an almost religious ferver for any case she takes, and I want her to get to know the Volano. Maybe if she does, she’ll decide that the slavery case is not worth pursuing.”
“If she’s like that, I wouldn’t be so sure she won’t decide Volano denials of being enslaved are absolute proof they are,” Clark pointed out.
“We can’t help what she decides it means,” Janice told him, “but it is more likely to change her mind than to set it in stone. Sara’s not a fool and she is not completely unreasonable. Oh, once we’ve achieved recognition for our friends she will probably go right back to trying to prove the slavery charges again, but maybe she won’t. We’ll see.”
“When will you need us in Sydney?” Jerry asked.
“Not until after Sara and I have gotten things arranged,” Janice told him. “For all the weeks it has been, no one here has even bothered to put Volano recognition hearings on the docket.”
“Darned good thing the issue of the Carono was handled on Treloi,” Clark muttered. “All we had to do there was turn their government inside out.”
“Yes, Admiral,” Janice smirked, reminding him that it had not been as simple as he made it sound.
“Well, it was more fun there,” Clark grumbled. “However, that brings up the real problem. This is the third time we have encountered a new form of intelligent life. You would think by now we would have a system of dealing with it. What are we going to do if or when we run into someone who would rather kill us than talk to us?”
“My, aren’t we feeling paranoid this morning?” Janice chuckled.
“I read science fiction,” Clark told her. “I know that’s unusual in a spacer. Most like to read non-fiction and the sorts of stories that are definitely Earth-based, like old mysteries.”
“I didn’t know that,” Janice admitted.
“Reading in space is an escape,” Clark told her. “Reading a typical space opera about daring young men zipping and zooming between the stars is hardly an escape for most.”
“I suppose,” Janice admitted. “I have to read so much for work, I prefer a good movie during my off time.”
“To each his own,” Clark allowed. “But really, what’s the point? If the Lano had taken so long to recognize us we would have been insulted.”
“From what I hear, Treloi went through several governments while Malvina was busily sitting on her fence,” Janice pointed out.
“True,” Clark agreed, “but they were never in doubt as to whether there were people here to deal with.Their problems were based on who was going to deal with us. They did not waste a lot of time deciding about the Carono either, not once we convinced them the Carono were not some ploy by PeeGee Tauko to keep his office.”
“Do you really like their military form of government?” Janice asked curiously.
“It works for them,” Clark told her. “I doubt it would work here. I certainly can’t see President Kassanov appointing Alano or Malana to a seat in the Congress, even if he could, but Tauko had no problem assigning the rank of Admiral to me which automatically entitled me to a seat in their Council of Generals.”
“The history of military based governments in human history is not pretty,” Janice pointed out.
“I said, I didn’t think it would work here,” Clark reminded her. “The Lano government, however, is as representative as ours is. After their first term in office the generals and admirals must be elected. It’s a complex and all too exciting system in a crisis. By the time I left Treloi, Alano and I had quite a constituency because in a declared emergency voters could change their representing general on the spur of the moment.”
“Our government is much more stable,” Janice replied.
“And slow to react in a crisis,” Clark argued. “We haven’t had to be quick this last century, but we’re getting off the subject. We should at least have a set procedure for recognizing new people as we find them.”
“Hmm,” Janice considered. “I might be able to make that part of my arguments.”
“I wasn’t looking for an edge on the recognition process,” Clark told her.
“I know,” she smiled. “Clark, it really is amazing you managed to gain such a political following in the Trelendir.”
“Must have been something I said,” Clark replied.
An hour later, Lani walked into the house, followed by a hoverchair, floating a few inches off the ground and which had a metal box welded to the frame where a seat would have been. The box had a pair of cameras mounted on the top and a pair of long, folding mechanical arms on the sides and a pocket in the front for various specialized attachments and tools for those arms. There was also a small Vid screen on the front, in which a smiling green Terralano sort of face shined out.
“I was going at it all the hard way,” she admitted to Clark. “The Volano don’t need to actually live inside these robots. Well actually they aren’t robots, there are no logic circuits in them, but they will be semi-robotic extensions of themselves. This is Green, by the way.”
“Hi, Green,” Clark greeted him. “How do you like this buggy?”
“I like it very much, Clark,” ^Green* assured him. “Devices like this mean we are not bound to your wires and Lani assures me that similar mechanisms can be built that will likewise allow us to explore those parts of our world, the Deep, where even the most well-trained explorer cannot reach.”
The green male face was instantly replaced by a bright red female one that seemed to be trying to look everyway at once. The twin cameras on top kept moving back and forth rapidly. “This is great!” xRed~ exclaimed. “and fun to use!”
“Why are you using a feminine face while Green looked like a man in the display?” Clark asked.
“I just liked this one,” xRed~ replied. “I think it makes me look like a sister to Ralani, Lilla and Serafyma.”
“Now that you mention it, you do seem to have combined their features,” Clark noticed.
“I need to finish the other three this afternoon,” Lani told him, “so they can each have their own buggy.” She used the same word for the device Clark had.
“Is that what this is called?” !Blue_ asked, taking over the display with the blue face of a mature human.
“I guess it is now,” Lani smirked. “Buggy is as good a word as any, I suppose.”
“So how do you control that contraption?” Clark asked.
“By talking to it,” !Blue_ replied.
“They communicate electromagnetically,” Lani explained. “You knew that already. It was just a matter of finding the right frequency and working out a series of commands.”
“We need to practice with the arms,” #Yellow@ cut in. This time the face was that of a woman, but one who was far more calm, and perhaps somewhat older than the one xRed~ had chosen. “It will take a while to become adept at manipulating objects with them, and we are still getting used to stereoscopic vision through the cameras. Lani are you sure that is necessary?”
“This is a three dimensional world,” Lani replied. “Just as yours is. From what I can tell you get perspective naturally by radiating from all over your bodies and then studying what gets reflected back. I suppose I could have equipped you with radar, but you are already used to interpreting what a camera sees and I prefer the passive scan method over an aggressive one.”
“What if it’s dark?” Clark asked.
“The Vid screen on the front actually emits enough light to see by. The cameras are very sensitive,” Lani explained.
“I think I’ll let Janice know about this,” Clark decided. “She’s been concerned that merely trading knowledge for work might not go over well during the hearings. Being able to trade physical goods will make more sense to the land-bound bureaucrats.”
“Those who don’t go to space can be so unimaginative,” Lani sighed.
“I’ve not noticed that was restricted to the land-bound,” Clark told her seriously. “Well I’ll let, you all get on with this. I think I need to talk to Ralani, though. If she’s going to continue to be the spokesperson for the Volano, she should probably be down in Sydney helping Janice prepare her case.”
“She’s in Hawaii today,” ^Green* told him. “She and her sisters went with Sue and Eesai. It had something to do with peas, I think.”
“Peas?” Clark wondered. “Oh, they must have gone sailing. Sue has a small sailed dinghy she calls her peapod. It’s bit small for four people though. Okay, then, I’d better call them up so as soon as Ralani is done learning the ropes of sailing she can move on to her next job. I wonder if this was what she had in mind when she asked to be assigned to Eesai’s ship?”
While Janice had always given Clark Anspach and Meriwether, Inc. her personal attention, her practice had grown since the discovery of the Lano from a one-woman show to one with several partners, more associates than she could keep track of alone, a full herd of admins and offices in major cities on every continent on Earth, including Antarctica. Her main office, however, had always been in Sydney within view of the Confederation Hall, albeit from across the harbor. On the whole she would have rather had a view of the old Opera House; it was old fashioned looking, but she found it more pleasant to look at than anything related to politics.
Unfortunately, something related to politics was precisely what she was looking at right now. Pictures of thousands of protestors filled the Vid. screen in her office. It was a live broadcast of what was happening just across the harbor as people demonstrated their opposition to the possible enslavement of the Volano. “This is your fault, you know,” she told Sara Lindhardt who was sitting in the next chair. “You do realize that, don’t you?”
“Timing is everything,” Sara grumbled.
“Well this timing is abysmal,” Janice shot back. “These anti-slavery protests are preventing the Congress from meeting altogether and without that neither of us gets what she wants.”
As they watched, the crowds suddenly broke through the police line and surged up the steps of Confederation Hall. As the ones at the top attempted to break into the hall, the wail of sirens and the beat of helicopter rotors filled the air and a loud, amplified void ordered everyone back. When they started throwing rocks, bricks and anything else that was not nailed down, shots rang out, peppering the crowds with stun shots.
“This is not going to end well,” Sara fretted. Janice decided there was nothing she could say to that that would not sound like, “I told you so.”
Finally the water cannons were brought into play and the crowd panicked. Many scattered, but thousands were arrested, hundreds were badly injured and several were killed, trampled by their fellows.
“I can only think of one way that could have been worse,” Janice told Sara, whose face had lost all color as the riot developed.
“Uh?” Sara asked.
“Congress could have been in session,” Janice replied. “Those doors would have been open then and the rioters would have gotten inside. I want to know who’s been inciting them.”
“I thought you were blaming me,” Sara remarked.
“I was being mean,” Janice admitted. “At worst you’re an accessory before the fact, but really you were only doing your job as best you knew how.”
“But you still think I was wrong,” Sara accused.
“I know you were,” Janice replied. “Sara, you’re a big girl and you know as well as I do that courtroom drama is best left to Hollywood. I tried to tell you that the Volano were available for you to interview and you ignored the invitation. Since we started working together I’ve repeated that invitation and you keep putting me off. Why?”
“There’s just too much to do here for the hearings,” Sara replied.
“Getting to know our clients is part of it,” Janice replied.
“Which you have already done,” Sara pointed out. “It left me to pursue other aspects of our presentation in Congress. I haven’t been summoned to testify like you have.”
“No, but you are a legal consultant in the matter,” Janice told her, “And I would have expected you to be acquainted with all aspects of the case, including interviewing the witnesses and preparing them for their testimony before Congress.”
“Haven’t you done that with the Volano?” Sara asked.
“When I’ve had the time,” Janice replied, “but additional perspective is necessary. You know, if I didn’t know better I’d say you were afraid to meet them.” Sara looked uncomfortable. “Oh come on now!”
“I don’t want it to prejudice my other case,” Sara told her defensively.
“No, you are afraid of them,” Janice realized. “Is it just the Volano or are you generally xenophobic?”
“I don’t think I’m actually phobic,” Sara told her, “but I’ve never actually met an alien.”
“They’re just people,” Janice shrugged. “Look, we’re on the same team at the moment and I need you to meet the Volano and the people of Meriwether, Inc. They won’t bite and it will help you in your anti-slavery case.” Sara started at the thought. “Ah ha!” Janice exclaimed, finally understanding Sara’s reluctance. “You’re afraid you’ll find out you really were wrong about my clients.”
“I have a responsibility to the TCLU,” Sara explained.
“The TCLU’s purpose is to uphold the rights of all in the Terran Confederation,” Janice replied, “especially those otherwise unable to defend themselves. I’ll admit you and your colleagues have been on the opposite of more of my cases than I care to think about, but that’s your job. What you seem to have forgotten is that it is also your responsibility to be in the right. My job is to represent my clients to the best of my ability regardless of whether they are right or wrong. Yours is to defend your clients’ rights. If you find they don’t need a defense, you ought to withdraw your suit and if what you find reinforces your first impression, then you should defend the Volano even more aggressively. Right now, however I would say you are failing to do your job properly if you do not meet them.”
“Why do you say that?” Sara asked.
“One of the charges being made against us is that the Volano do not even exist,” Janice replied. “So you should be assuring yourself that they do.”
“You’re right,” Sara agreed, “and it doesn’t look like the Congress is likely to reconvene until the demonstrations die down. It will be days at least.”
Three days later Congress finally dared to announce they would come back into session, but by then there were two groups of protestors in the city. The first were followers of Reverend Eckhart, convinced that the Volano had been coerced to come to Earth and that the Congress would once again bow to “Big Business” and look the other way while these “good and gentle people” were worked to death or worse. These were the true believers and no amount of proof would persuade them otherwise, even when Sara, having finally met the Volano insisted that Janice allow the electric people to speak for themselves.
The newer group of demonstrators favored recognition and a formal treaty with the Volano. There was a lot of support for that across the world, but it only came out in polls. Most pro-treaty people were moderate and less likely to protest in the streets. Those who did feel strongly enough to flock to Sydney to voice their demand that the Volano be recognized as a partner in civilization were mostly students. Since Reverend Eckhart was advocating the immediate repatriation of the Volano and that they be left in peace in perpetuity, the two groups did not mix well.
So on the morning Congress should have reconvened, the congressmen and women did not arrive at the scheduled hour, but Confederate Police riot teams did. It turned out to be a major tactical error. The local police, after some initial fighting between the two groups, had been carefully allowing the protestors to demonstrate, but each in their own carefully agreed-on zones. The Confederate Police, however were considered a reserve military force and the presence of trained riot troops only managed to spark off the anti-slavery protestors anew.
When they stormed the line of Confederate Police, they were met by more stun shots and water canons, but the pro-treaty demonstrators heard and saw the commotion and thought they were under attack as well and reacted in kind. By the time the dust had settled, hundreds from all three groups, anti-slavery, pro-treaty and the Confederate Police were filling the local hospitals and Sydney was placed under martial law. Over the next twenty-four hours similar disturbances broke out all over the Earth.
In the week that followed, the Volano, usually accompanied by Ralani Di Lasai, were granting interviews with the press left and right and they, along with many of the Meriwether, Inc. people were rapidly becoming the darlings of the late night chat show circuit. Once Lani had finished their mechanical body extensions, they were able to be seen in a manner most viewers were able to understand, although most people thought the Volano were actually inside the robot bodies rather than merely controlling them from the nearby power systems. !Blue_ found himself a guest on one such show where in a new regular segment, audience members tried to stump him with trivia questions. After his first appearance there, he returned each night by a remote camera link, and in fact he was cheating, looking up the answers on TerraNet, but could do so with such speed no one caught on.
This little game, however, led to another related problem. There was nothing illegal about !Blue_ accessing the public data files of the Confederation Archives, but the high number of accesses in an exceedingly short time span set off alarms that had to be investigated and the Confederate Bureau of Investigation was brought in. On the third afternoon, one bright young agent noticed the time of those accesses coincided with the recording of the chat show and following that lead, the Chief of the CBI demanded to meet with !Blue_ personally.
“You are the same Blue who has been appearing on The Night Show?” Harris Reed, CBI bureau chief asked briskly when !Blue_ arrived in his office with Ralani.
“I am,” !Blue_ agreed, but did not correct Reed on his pronunciation. None of the Terralano seemed to pay much attention to Volano honorifics and family indicators.
“The Bureau has taken note of the game you play there,” Reed commented. “You’re cheating, aren’t you?”
“Sir,” Ralani cut in. “There’s no fraud involved. I’m assured that all participants win prizes from the show even if none can stump Blue.”
“I was not concerned about that, Ensign,” Reed told her. “It was his means of obtaining the answers that got my attention. Blue, you did not actually know all those answers, did you? You obtained them from the Confederate Archives.”
“Was that illegal?” !Blue_ asked with a hint of worry. “I was assured that the files I accessed were available to the public.”
“No, it was perfectly legal,” Reed assured him and explained why !Blue_’s activity had set off alarms. “But I did not ask you here to arrest you. I have agents for that. Instead I would like to offer you a job.”
“What sort of job?” Ralani asked immediately.
“The CBI is devoted to maintaining security within the Terran Confederation,” Reed answered. “That includes data security. Blue here has proven he can access files faster than any mere human can.”
“Faster than any Terralano, you mean,” Ralani corrected him.
“That too,” Reed shrugged. “I mean no offense, but the Bureau has no Lano agents at the moment. Naturally I was thinking in terms of humans only. In any case, Blue can do data searches faster than any of my people, probably faster than any ten of my people. Hmm, make that definitely, since while you access about ten times the speed of any hu… uh Terralano, ten people working on a single search are likely to duplicate each other’s efforts.
“I had a world-wide access search done and noticed that you Volano also broke into some more private files soon after your arrival on Earth. No,” he held up a hand to stop Ralani’s instant protest, “We saw that activity stopped almost as soon as it had started. The fact is, however, that you did it with apparent ease. Tell me, Mister Blue, would you be interested in assisting the Bureau, not only with speedy data searches, but in tightening up our own security? I figure that if you can devise a method that would stop you, our files should be as nearly impregnable as they can be.”
“I’d love to,” !Blue_ replied without pause.
“That brings up some other issues,” Ralani cut in. “First of all, what do you intend to pay Blue with? And how much? Terralano money is only of limited use to the Volano. They want energy and data.”
“Are you his agent now?” Reed asked with amusement.
“Not in the professional sense,” Ralani replied, “but he is my friend and I won’t stand to see him being exploited.”
“I will have a formal proposal in the form of a contract drawn up,” Reed replied. “Blue, you and your agent can read through it before signing.”
“I think we’ll have Janice, our lawyer, go over it and let her suggest alterations as well,” Ralani remarked. “However, that’s not the real problem. The Volano have not yet been recognized and Blue has only been entered on a temporary visa. How can he work for you if his people do not officially exist.”
“Recognition is a diplomatic issue,” Reed shrugged that aside, “and Mister Blue is in the Confederation legally. It will be a simple matter to arrange a work visa for him even if our government is not yet treating with his.”
“I don’t have a government,” !Blue_ replied. “I am a herald. The Guild of Heralds is neutral of all the governments of our world so that we can work for all without favoritism.”
“I don’t see that as a problem then,” Reed nodded.
The possibility of !Blue_’s employment gave Janice and Sara more ammunition with which to present the Volano as being poised to become valuable and contributing members of the Terralano Confederation. Their public mention of that one afternoon, however, ignited yet another facet of political activity on Earth.
Nathan and Katherine were junior classmen at the venerable Boston University that spring. Sitting in Nathan’s suite’s common room near the top of 700 Commonwealth Avenue, a large dormitory that had replace two others in succession over the centuries, they were avidly watching the news that evening when a clip from the daily Volano press conference was played. The concept of a combined Terralano people had always been popularly accepted on most college campuses, and in many cities it was considered to be just a matter of time before such a confederation was declared officially.
“That’s a good point, Katie,” Nathan agreed when she commented along those lines, “but why hasn’t it happened? The Terran Confederation and the Trelendir remain two separate political entities even though we have engaged in treaties together with the Carono and soon the Volano as though we were one. Why aren’t we the Terralendir yet?”
Katherine shrugged. “Probably because governments, no matter whose they are, are over-zealous about guarding their secrets and power. There will be no Terralendir until both our Congress and their Council of Generals are forced to acknowledge it.”
“Seems to me that so much of these recent problems with the Volano are simply because we can’t even conclude the one treaty we ought to with our oldest ally,” Nathan replied.
“Maybe, Nate,” Katherine considered. “The Congress probably would not be so reticent about accepting a new species into the fold if half of them were Lano, but what can we do about that?”
“Do you know Dachi Ki Galano?” Nathen asked.
“The Lano kid from Banuloi?” Katherine asked. “I think he’s in my advanced Organic Chemistry class.”
“Could be,” Nathan allowed. “He’s a pre-Med student. He has a History elective with me on Tuesdays and Thursdays and he’s just one of several dozen Lano students here. I was thinking that maybe we should get together with him and some of his friends and see how they feel about a pro-Terralendir organization on campus.”
“I have friends at Harvard who might be interested in this as well,” Katherine pointed out, “and some at U. Mass. too. How about you?”
“I’m from California and most of my high school friends went to UCLA,” Nathan admitted, “Those that didn’t decide on Berkeley. But if this goes well, I’ll call some of them up. I think they’d be interested.”
The budding Terralano movement only had ten people at their first meeting, the next day, but two days later they needed an auditorium to fit all the interested students and faculty members from the greater Boston area who showed up and ten days after that, there were similar meetings happening all over North America and word of the movement had spread to Europe and Asia.
Finally, three weeks after the disastrous riot in Sydney, Congress announced it would come back into session with a three mile-wide radius around Confederation Hall cordoned off. The protestors were still in the city but now they were joined by the Pro-Terralano demonstrators. The people who were there to support the recognition of the Volano fell in immediately with those in favor of the establishment of the Terralendir and now so greatly out-numbered the anti-slavery demonstrators that Eckhart’s followers stopped trying to pick fights although they still made public speeches that accused the Terralendir supporters of being blinded to the fate of the “poor Volano.”
When The Volano arrived in Sydney with Ralani and the others from Meriwether, Inc. they were met by cheering crowds as they tried to enter their hotel. “I knew we should have hired a helicopter to drop us off on the roof,” Clark muttered as they made their way up the narrow path that led from their limo to the hotel lobby.
“This is exciting!” ^Green* enthused.
“Sure,” Jerry laughed. “You got here by way of the TerraNet. All that’s at stake for you are your robot bodies.”
“I have become quite fond of mine,” xRed~ replied in the smooth feminine voice she had chosen to go with her electronic face. Jerry mused how he had originally thought of the Volano as all male, but now had begun thinking of xRed~ and #Yellow@ as female. “…and would not want to lose it,” xRed~ concluded.
“Ralani! Ralani!” several young men and women shouted to gain her attention as he approached.
“You know me?” Ralani asked. She had traveled extensively with the Volano since they started granting interviews and appearing on the Vid, but had only once ever actually been on camera with them and then only fleetingly.
“Sure!” Katherine told her. “You’re Ralani Di Lasai. You founded the Terralano movement on Treloi.”
“Not hardly,” Ralani laughed. “I was their poster child for a while because the PeeGee got curious and decided to ask me some questions while the Council was in session. So I made a few speeches and I guess I had some fleeting fame but that was years ago.”
“Those speeches were broadcast here on Earth, you know,” Katherine told her. The student from Boston was wearing a gold and green pin that said “I’m Terralano!” and reminded Ralani strongly of the pin she was first given on Treloi shortly before her appearance in the Council of Generals.
“They were?” Ralani asked. “Must have made for pretty dull listening. I mean I was just a high school student at the time and passing cute, or so I’m told I was once I cleaned myself up. I’m sure that’s the only reason anyone listened to me.”
“I doubt that,” Katherine laughed. “Look, I know you’re busy now, but could you speak to us? Not, here, I mean but in a few days maybe. I know our people in Boston would love to hear what you have to say.” Katherine shoved a small piece of cardboard into Ralani’s hands and added, “my number. Call me!”
Ralani nodded dumbly and allowed herself to be led inside.
“Fans again, dear?” Malana asked once she met them in the much quieter lobby. “You know you all should have flown in from Port Wallaby.”
“That’s what I said,” Clark commented, “but Louise arranged for the limo.”
“Well, no harm done,” Malana chuckled. “Let’s get you all to your rooms. We have the entire top floor to ourselves.”
“Don’t you live here most of the time?” Ralani asked her on the way to the lifts.
“I do,” Malana agreed, “but I usually only have one of the penthouse suites, not all of them.”
“I don’t even want to know how much this is costing me, do I?” Clark worried.
“Clark, you have the most prosperous exploratory company in the Terralendir,” Malana reminded him, “and could afford to buy this hotel outright. Worrying about the cost of a few nights here is beneath you.”
“You’re right,” Clark admitted. “I guess I was poor too long before I got rich.”
“Well, it’s not costing you anything,” Malana admitted. “The government of Treloi is picking up the tab this time.”
“Thank you,” Clark replied graciously.
“Think nothing of it,” Malana shrugged. The elevator’s doors slid open and they all stepped inside. Malana gestured toward the appropriate button and cast a thalu which cause the button to be pressed.
“You could have just pushed it in with your finger, you know,” Jerry told her.
“I know,” Malana chuckled. They chatted among themselves until the doors opened again at the top floor. “Now here are our rooms,” Malana announced. “The one on the right is my suite. Green, Blue Red and Yellow, why don’t you four use the one beyond that. Clark, you and the rest can figure out where to sleep in the other two on the left. Ralani, Lilla, could you join me in my suite first, though?”
“Go ahead,” Serafyma urged them.
Helani Bi Terralano was just setting out tea cups as they entered. Ralani hugged Helani in greeting and then finally sat down when Malana and Lilla did. Helani poured for all four and then joined them.
“So?” Malana asked after her first sip. “How goes thalua training for you two? Lilla?”
“Slowly, I’m afraid,” Lilla admitted. “Clark paid for my master’s degree and I learned a lot during those two years, but I know I have just gotten started. I’ve been doing as many classes by correspondence as I can, but that’s really the slow way to learn. I’m thinking of taking a year off to finish the classwork for my doctorate, then I can work on my dissertation while onboard.”
“Sounds reasonable and I’m sure Clark will be glad to pay your way again,” Malana replied.
“He will,” Lilla responded. “He told me so himself, but it’s a matter of staying on Treloi while Serafyma goes off with Meriwether II.”
“You and your sister have gotten very close, haven’t you?” Malana observed.
“We are,” Lilla nodded. “We like spending time together. Oh we know we won’t always be able to be together. We both plan to marry some day and Sera is likely to live on Earth and I’ll settle down on Treloi, although, who knows? Neither of us wants to stop exploring just now so I suppose we’ll have to find men who want to work with us.”
“Or perhaps you’ll change your minds later,” Malana suggested.
“Maybe,” Lilla shrugged.
“And how about you, Ralani?” Malana asked. “How are your studies?”
“Very well,” Ralani smiled. “Thank you again for the scholarship.”
“You deserved it, dear,” Malana assured her.
“Thank you,” Lilla nodded. “I’ve been doing my exercises, and have a few advanced texts, but I’m pretty much just holding steady until my compulsory service is over.”
“That’s reasonable,” Malana nodded, “but you are going on for advanced study?”
“Of course!” Ralani smiled. “I already have a scholarship lined up for graduate school, although in the long run I think I want to stay with Meriwether, Inc. Exploring really appeals to me and the military structure of Lano ships doesn’t.”
“I imagine you’ll do a lot of different things over the years, just as I have,” Malana told her, “although if you can, try to avoid politics.”
“But you make it look like such fun!” Ralani laughed.
“I try to make the most of it, but I’ll tell you truthfully, if I were thirty years younger I’d want to be on Meriwether too,” Malana confessed.
“One of the people out there wants me to talk to her group sometime soon. What do I do?” Ralani asked.
“Have you suddenly forgotten how to speak, dear?” Malana asked.
“Not hardly,” Ralani grinned, “but should I be getting involved with the Terralano movement on Terra?”
“I don’t see why not,” Malana responded. “Isn’t that what you did back on Treloi?”
“Not recently,” Ralani shrugged, “and I am not allowed to express possible political opinions as an officer of Treloi. I’m fairly certain that’s not allowed, but I’d feel like such a hypocrite if I refused.”
“Well, then don’t wear your uniform while speaking,” Malana suggested. “Ralani, the regulation is not intended to keep you from speaking but from taking it on yourself to speak for the Space Navy. Now, I’ll admit that for most young members during their compulsory term that means any public speaking, and I’m sure that it would be a bad thing for a young officer such as you to get tangled up in Terran politics, but so long as you wear civilian clothing I think you are fairly free to speak your mind. Just don’t get in trouble with the local authorities.”
“It got me in trouble last time,” Ralani admitted.
“It did not,” Lilla told her. “The way I remember it, you recruited Presiding General Tauko to become Terralano.”
“And I apparently have yet to live that down,” Ralani grinned. “So it’s alright?” The elevator reached the top floor and they started getting out.
“I should think so,” Malana replied. “Ralani, as ambassador to the Terran Confederation, I believe it would be to the benefit of the Trelendir for you to publically advocate the formation of the Terralendir. Don’t go making any promises for the Trelendir, that’s my job, but so long as you make the same sorts of speeches you did eight years ago on Treloi, you have my permission.”
“Well, I wasn’t planning to say anything I didn’t say on Treloi and, as I recall, Tauko approved,” Ralani pointed out.
“Yes, but that was on Treloi,” Malana cautioned her. “It’s more than a bit different when on another planet, especially one that is not a member of the Trelendir.”
“The Terralendir,” Ralani corrected her, “and yes it is. The Terrano just don’t all know it yet.”
“Well, so long as you’re careful, I suppose it’s alright if you find a gentle way to tell them,” Malana told her.
Ralani was surprised to find her name on the list of those being subpoenaed to testify before Congress, but Malana assured her that nearly everyone who had been in contact with the Volano had been summoned, and in fact when her time came to answer questions, it amused her that most of the congressmen and women on the investigative committee spent more time making speeches than asking questions. More than once she found that after carefully listening to twenty minutes of oration she would have to ask, “I’m sorry, but what was the question?”
Most of those speeches had little or nothing to do with the Volano or any related subject and Ralani found herself wondering if maybe some of these ladies and gentlemen had wondered into the wrong room that morning. Others asked one question after another, not allowing her to answer any of them until they were done talking. In contrast her testimony before the Council of Generals has been brief and concise with General Tauko and the others asking relatively direct questions and then allowing her to answer. Even that dreadful General Taomi Ki Taomi had not strayed from the topic or failed to allow her to answer one question before firing off another
“You’re handling that first type just right,” Malana assured her. “Some of these windbags need a good sharp remainder that if they want you to give them an answer they have to ask a question. With those others who ask a dozen questions at once, you can generally get away with answering only the last question. If they really want answers to the rest, they’ll ask again.”
“What about the ones who don’t even talk about the Volano?” Ralani asked. “One of them went on and on about building bridges. I thought maybe he was speaking in metaphors, but by the time he was done, I realized he meant real bridges over rivers and such.”
“Ignore that and give an answer to a question you would have liked him to ask,” Malana told her. “If that old windbag really wants your opinion on how to cross a river, he’ll let you know. A lot of this meandering is because you’re one of the early witnesses and these guys don’t often get on camera during a hearing. Well, actually all hearings are televised but only on a special Congressional channel that almost no one but other politicians watch. This one has been picked up by the general news media so they’re taking the time for free political advertizing.”
“This is taking forever,” Ralani complained. “It’s been a week all told so far. My own testimony looks like it will run another day, like Jerry’s did, but how much longer before they actually interview the Volano?”
“The longer these guys take to get to business, the more likely it is to have them go our way,” Malana told her. “The protests outside are starting to grow again, so Congress probably will not take much longer. Of course if President Kassanov would just consent to meet with the Volano, all this would end very suddenly.”
“Why?” Ralani asked.
“It would be taken as a sign that he wants them to be in favor of recognition,” Malana explained. “The silly thing is, it is not really their decision to make. It belongs to the president and his Department of State, but they are letting Congress go through the motions, mostly because if they don’t, Congress will make political trouble for Kassanov in some other way. Unlike Malvina, this president is not in the same party as the majority of Congress. He has to play an exacting game of give and take, if he wants anything from them.”
“Does he want to recognize the Volano?” Ralani asked.
“I doubt it,” Malana shrugged. “Malvina was adept at political balancing acts, this Kassanov is not. So he’s much clumsier about it. If he was really in favor of recognition he would have gotten it done already. He would have given Congress something it wanted, he’s not completely straightforward that way, but in the end he does what he wants. I don’t mean he is opposed to recognizing the Volano. I just don’t think he cares very strongly one way or the other. And to be fair, he’s far more concerned with getting aid to the Colony of Neo Janeiro. The colony may be failing due to a planet-wide climate change.”
“Climate change?” Ralani asked.
“Neo Janeiro is one of two worlds that share a pair of closely matched orbits. Every so often they catch up to one another and through a unique gravitational dance normally only seen in planetary rings, they swap orbits. This goes on for a while and when conditions are right, they swap back again. The problem is… well there are all sorts of problems, really,”
“I’ll bet. That doesn’t sound like a very smart place to settle. There must be some horrendous earthquakes everytime they interact and the tides… I can’t even imagine,” Ralani admitted.
“It’s not a good place to own beachfront property,” Malana admitted. “Even some of the larger lakes slop about when it happens, but habitable planets aren’t so common that colonists can afford to be picky and there are places of known tectonic stability, so when the world was colonized about fifty years ago, it was felt they could cope with the eccentricities. They were quite predictable, after all. But what was not known was that the world had another climatic cycle related to its primary’s solar cycle which seems to have a period of ninety-six years. They are now in a phase of increased sunspot activity and the world is getting just a bit warmer than it normally is during its turn on the inner orbit. So the climate is changing. Where there had been sufficient rainfall, they are now suffering a drought. Deserts are now being rained on for the first time in nearly a century, and the colonists are starving. There are a dozen charities sending supplies, but it’s never enough for an entire world. The Terran Confederation is going to have to step in, but allocating the funds is a job for the Congress and they’re playing all the usual games politicians play when the lives at stake aren’t their constituents’.”
“Delightful,” Ralani let sarcasm drip.
“It happens in the Trelendir too, child,” Malana told her. “Anyway, that’s what’s distracting President Kassanov from the Volano issue.”
“You would think he could think about both problems at once,” Ralani commented.
“It’s never that simple,” Malana sighed. “That’s just the big problem. There are hundreds of little matters that most of us never hear about unless we bother to read the Confederate Record and there are only so many hours in the day. We just have to wait until the Volano issue is one Kassanov has to deal with.”
Ralani finally accepted an invitation to speak to a pro-Terralano group in Sydney a day after the Congress was done with her. By then she had time to do a bit of research of her own, with ^Green*’s help and now knew more about the situation on Neo Janeiro than Malana did. The initial reports on the world, she discovered, had mentioned the long-term cycle of that system’s sun but that the data had been repressed and so none of the colonists knew about it, until they started having warmer weather and the crops began to die..
Ralani knew she shouldn’t get involved in Terran politics, but could still not help but mention the plight of the Neo Janeirans in casual conversation after her usual lecture about the benefits of being Terralano. She did not actually advocate any action, but the Terralano movement suddenly decided to adopt Neo Janeiro and added demands for aid to that world to their agenda. By the time Congress had gotten around to interviewing the Volano there were Terralano demonstrations that somehow linked recognition of the Volano with aid to Neo Janeiro.
Ralani had to admit that the connection made no obvious sense to her, but evidently it did to the president, so as soon as Congress had finished asking questions of ^Green*, President Kassanov officially greeted him and the other Volano in the Presidential mansion. The next day, the State Department announced formal recognition.
Formal recognition of the Volano, however, did not get Meriwether, Inc. out of trouble. With that phase completed the temporary detante between Janice Wall and Sara Lindhardt came to an end and Sara once more picked up her case against Meriwether, Inc. petitioning the court in Ohio to reopen it. After a mere five minutes to deliberate, Judge Wolkowicz agreed.
The next morning the anti-slavery protestors were back in their usual haunts surrounding the courthouse and screaming at the Pro-Terralano demonstrators, who in comparison were determined to keep their demonstration peaceful. As a sop to the crowds, the Judge agreed to have a large screen display installed so that the trial could be observed by all. It was a fairly standard procedure for important cases when there were far more spectators than any courtroom could hope to accommodate.
The situation was tense, but aggression was confined to verbal assaults for the first three days. However, when the actual trial began and one of Sara’s experts turned out to have changed his mind about the Volano and disputed her claims on the witness stand. The anti-slavery protestors became incensed and stormed through the police cordon and placed the courthouse under siege as they tried to break in.
While the protestors were finding something to use as a battering ram against the large courthouse doors, military helicopters and anti-gravity floaters rushed in to evacuate the people inside via the roof. They were nearly too late and as the last evacuees, including Judge Wolkowicz, who insisted on seeing everyone else out safely, lifted off, the crowds gave up on breaking into the building and instead started lobbing primitive fire bombs in through the windows. When the sun rose over Ohio the next morning all that remained standing was one corner of the building.
This time the Confederate Police moved in and arrested four thousand protestors, five hundred sixty-one of which had to be hospitalized with nine dead. There were instant accusations of Police brutality, although investigations later proved that nearly all injuries were due to being trampled.
In the aftermath, with President Kassanov uselessly urging calm, a new political party calling itself the Terralano Party and based on one by the same name in the Trelendir was founded. It claimed affiliations with the Treloian Terralano party and when Ralani asked about it at Malana’s request, it turned out they had, indeed contacted the party on Treloi by way of Lano students on Earth. “I think they started that as soon as they organized for the demonstrations in Sydney,” Ralani told Malana.
“I’m surprised no one told me,” Malana grumbled. “I am a high-ranking member of the Terralano Party, after all.”
“Technically, so am I,” Ralani pointed out, “but in my case there’s no way they should have known I was on Earth. By rights I ought to be exploring the galaxy right now. I have been asked to invite you to speak to the party’s convention next month though, whatever that is.”
“A political convention?” Malana echoed, “It’s the way they do such things here. Our parties meet off and on in whatever numbers can get together and vote on party issues by correspondence. Here they meet every election year en masse to make the same sorts of decisions. Well, tell them to put the invitation in writing and I’ll be pleased to accept.”
“Good,” Ralani nodded. “They want me to introduce you, at least if I’m still on Earth by then. Did you know they’re calling for President Kassanov’s resignation?”
“They’re what?” Malana asked. “You’re just full of surprises today, aren’t you? Is there anything else I should know?”
“If so, I don’t know it either,” Ralani replied. “I told them I couldn’t get involved in that particular issue.”
“I shouldn’t either,” Malana agreed, “but I’m surprised I did not know. On what grounds are they demanding his resignation?”
“Um,” Ralani paused to remember the exact wording and then quoted, “Nonfeasance of office by failing to provide the necessary leadership that would have avoided the current crisis.”
“I’m not sure that’s entirely fair to Mister Kassanov,” Malana admitted, “but he has not been as responsive as I would have liked. Still we must be careful not to get involved in this.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Ralani agreed, thinking guiltily about having mentioned Neo Janeiro to her human friends.
The Comm rang just then and when Malana activated the set, Malvina Smythe’s face filled the screen. “Good morning, Mal,” Malana greeted her. “What can I do for you today?”
“Well, I’ve made a decision, Mal,” Malvina replied. “I’d like to join the Terralano Party.”
“For the punch and chocolate chip cookies?” Malana asked before realizing Malvina was serious. “What? Oh sure, that’s fine by me, but why did you call here?”
“Just thought I’d let you know,” Malvina replied. “I’ll be making the announcement first thing in the morning here in Sydney, and I’d love to have you here.”
“Uh, I was just thinking that as ambassador I ought to avoid being seen as medling in your local politics,” Malana replied.
“Nothing local about this political move, Mal,” Malvina told her. “Once in the party, I intend to make it my personal business to see to it that the Terralano Charter is concluded and signed.”
“The what?” Malana asked.
“What you’ve been working on, Mal,” Malvina told her. “Formal establishment of the Terralendir.”
“Can’t argue against that,” Malana agreed, “We need to have provisions to allow the Carona, the Volano and anyone else we meet in the future to join us, you know.”
“I agree,” Malvina nodded. “So will you be here?”
“I will,” Malana promised. “You know the Party is demanding Kassanov’s resignation, don’t you? This is pretty much going to number his days in office.”
“I know,” Malvina replied smugly. “But he’s been even more of a fence sitter than I was when you came along.You would have thought he’d learn from my mistakes. Oh well, see you in the morning.”
“Isn’t this all happening rather fast?” Ralani asked.
“Politics can be that way,” Malana replied. “You can go for years barely changing at all, save for the faces in the news, and then one day you have a whole new world in front of you.”
“No wonder you have so much fun with it,” Ralani nodded.
“It’s a perversion, child,” Malana told her with a chuckle. “Stick to deep space exploration and you’ll be much happier.”
While the burning of the courthouse made the news for three days after the event, it was soon forgotten by all as President Kassanov’s government found itself under siege. Unlike Reverend Eckhart’s followers at the slavery trial, the Terralano party kept its attacks strictly legal and in a war of political words. There were crowds of protestors in Sydney, but they stayed obediently behind the barricades and kept their message fresh in a series of daily press conferences. But the real news happened when the Terralano Party called for a vote of no-confidence and the president’s party found itself unable to block it.
By the time the dust had settled Kassanov’s government had fallen and he was desperately trying to piece together a coalition with stale promises and shoe strings. When he was unable to do so, a special election was called for sixty days hence, the minimum statutory time allowed. However, even while he was doing that, the Terralano party was gaining members within the Congress as politicians flocked to join. A week after President Kassanov’s government had fallen, Malvina Smythe was elected “Head of the Assembly.”
“What does that mean?” Ralani asked. Following the courthouse disaster in Ohio, everyone had returned to Bolivia. Lousie’s estate was a haven for the people of Meriwether, Inc. and as much a home on Earth for them as any place was.
^Green*’s mechanical body was standing next to her as she looked out thee the broad picture window and down into La Paz. He quickly looked up the answer and replied, “When a government has fallen and the president has either resigned or been unable to build a coalition that equals fifty percent of the Congressional votes or more, Congress may declare itself in emergency. The members of this Emergency Congress may choose to build their own majority and elect a leader pro-tempore called the Head of Assembly. This elected official will lead the Emergency Congress until such time as regular or special elections can be held to re-establish the government on a non-emergency basis.”
“How odd,” Ralani decided.
“This is not how the Lano do it?” ^Green* asked, although he was already looking up the answer to that as well. “And you think this system is odd?” he asked at last.
“I grew up with the Trelendir form of government,” Ralani replied, smiling, “and learned about it before anyone ever heard about a Terrano. You know the Lano and Terrano have only known each other for nine years or so.”
“Intellectually I know that,” ^Green* admitted, “but… I don’t understand it deep within me. First of all, the Terrano and Lano really are Terralano to me. You look enough alike that I have trouble telling whether someone is from Earth or Treloi and you act like one people; more so than two Volano from two different kingdoms might. It might not seem so to you, but it does to me. You really are the Terralano.”
“Good!” Ralani replied. “I think so too. It’s just a matter of convincing everyone else.”
“I think that is almost accomplished even now,” ^Green* told her.
“Have you broken into the government’s data bank again?” Ralani asked suspiciously.
“Not at all,” ^Green* assured her. “But I can look into public records just as anyone else might. There have been Terralano marriages and adoptions…”
“Only two of each,” Ralani interrupted him.
“You are misinformed,” ^Green* pointed out. “There are fifteen mixed Terralano marriages on record and over one hundred adoptions in which adults adopted each other into their families. The Terralano are made for each other, I think.”
“That many?” Ralani wondered. “Why didn’t we know about it?”
“I imagine those involved felt it was nobody’s business but their own,” ^Green* replied, “or perhaps you’ve been too busy having your own life to worry about anyone else’s. Tell me, do you think you would marry a Terrano man?”
“Me?” Ralani laughed. “I haven’t even dated since entering the Navy. Well, there was Zeke.”
“Zeke?” ^Green* prompted her.
“A nice boy I met on a world called Fairhaven,” Ralani admitted. “It was just a dance or two and ice cream after.” She decided to edit out the less pleasant events of the evening. “But, okay, I suppose I could fall in love with a Terrano man eventually.”
“And you already have a Terrano sister,” ^Green* pointed out.
“Sure,” Ralani nodded. “I love Sera, even if it was Lilla who adopted her into the family, not me. What’s your point?”
“Only that the combination of Lano and Terrano seems so natural that you don’t even think of it most of the time,” ^Green* told her. “I heard from !Blue_ a few minutes ago.”
“Oh?” Ralani asked. “How is he doing?”
“Having a lot of fun from the way it sounds,” ^Green* replied. “Since the CBI only hired him as an outside consultant, he has gone into business helping other organizations with their security.”
“So he can start a business now that you have been recognized?” Ralani asked.
“It turns out that recognition only applies to governments,” ^Green* replied. “So long as we are on Earth legally, which we are, we have the right to apply for business licenses. !Blue_ did that and is thinking of staying here. He’s asked me to find some more Volano interested in doing security work here.”
“You mean he might never go home?” Ralani asked. “What about family?”
“Heralds don’t have families,” ^Green* replied. “Most of us are orphans, a few of us chose the heraldic life and gave up our families, but they are very rare. The Guild is the closest thing to a family we have.”
“I didn’t know that,” Ralani commented.
“You might have asked,” ^Green* told her. “Jerry did, but it is only because we have no other family that we can do our jobs fairly and without bias.”
“Ralani! There you are!” Lilla called from a doorway. “Better pack your bags. We’re off to London in an hour.”
“London?” Ralani asked. “Why?”
“The trial was moved there,” Lilla explained. “We couldn’t have been so lucky as to have it cancelled altogether after the riot.”
“Why London?” Ralani asked.
“Haven’t the foggiest,” Lilla replied. Ralani smiled, realizing her sister had just used a Terrano expression without even thinking about it. Maybe Green was right about the Terralano. “Maybe the mayor there lost a bet?”
“I am placing this entire trial under a publicity blackout,” Judge Wolkowicz informed her court. “We have moved here without publicity, the actual site, while secure, has not been publicized and if anyone here is responsible for leaking this location to anyone not directly invoved with the trial, I will consider it a gross contempt of court and personally see to it that you suffer the full penalties for that contempt.
“Furthermore,” she went on, “there will be no more press conferences, no little conversations on the courthouse steps and, in short, no talking to anyone not involved in this trial until it is over. I will not tolerate any public statements about the trial, not about the venue, what gets said here or even how many times I breathe each minute until it is over. We have already been disrupted twice, the second time at the peril of our lives, and I will tolerate no more of this.
“Miss Lindhardt,” Judge Wolkowicz continued, “you told the press the trial was being moved to London last night. Be thankful you did not tell them where.”
“I broke no laws at that time,” Sara protested.
The judge rapped her gavel at Sara to stop her from going on. “I did not say you did, but you were instructed to come here without publicity. Stopping by the office to call a press conference is hardly what I call ‘without publicity.’”
“I, ah, didn’t actually call a conference,” Sara replied. “The reporters just sort of found me at the airport.”
“Oh yeah?” Judge Wolkowicz asked disbelievingly. “Well, should they just happen to find you again, I shall hold you in contempt if any words besides, ‘No comment,’ happen to pass your lips. Any new releases about this trial will come from my office or not at all until this trial is over.”
“You can’t do that,” Sara protested. “I still have my freedom of speech.”
“That freedom is revoked for the duration of the trial,” the judge told her sternly. She went on to recite a series of alpha-numerics that identified a specific law pertaining to trials under emergency conditions. “Accordingly I have the right to impose absolute silence about this trial. This trial is in emergency twice, by my count. First because its very existence caused the riot that burned down the courthouse in Ohio and second because the government is in emergency session. Don’t you dare argue with that,” she told Sara whose mouth had started to open. “If need be I will sequester the entire court, including all your intended witnesses. I can do that too and will if we have to move or interrupt this trial even once more.”
The trial resumed immediately and finally the Volano were allowed to take the stand on their own behalves. Finding the process of question and answer excruciatingly slow, ^Green* asked the judge for permission to make a brief statement under oath. “I think it will clear up a lot of misconceptions, Your Honor, and possibly cut through a lot of the time-consuming questions. Then if Ms Lindhardt or Wall have further questions for me, I will be happy to answer them. I know this is unusual, but there is a precedent for it. I, uh, looked it up.”
“It’s not as unusual as all that,” the judge told him, “and given the highly unusual nature of this trial and most especially given the circumstances in which we have been forced to proceed, the court is inclined to try the unusual so long as all parties consent.”
Niether lawyer objected and ^Green* was allowed to proceed. “This was stated in the opening arguments, but I understand those are just words lawyers use to outline their case. They are not meant to be taken as testimony or evidence. But what I say under oath is. We Volano are here because we desire to join the Terralendir. Not only that, but we wish to be equal partners in it just like the Terrano, Lano and Carono. We have much to gain from such an association and much to offer in return. To us the most valuable commodities you have are energy and information. You have a saying, ‘Knowledge is power.’ For us that is literally true, for we can trade knowledge for energy.
“In return,” ^Green* continued, “we can offer you our expertise with energy systems. Your technology is far beyond ours, save in the area of efficiency. Do you people have any idea of how much energy you waste? I think not. While traveling here in Meriwether I we had a chance to study the drive in that ship and took the liberty of making a few adjustments. I believe you will find she has at least triple the range she had before, although without constant fine tuning that will not last, but a single Vola could keep the drive so efficient that the ship could stay out for two years without stopping to refuel.
“Here on Eartth, so much of your energy is wasted, and we can help there as well. But we can do more as well,” ^Green* told them. “My colleague !Blue_ has already established a profitable data security company with some of your own governmental agencies as his clients. Your Honor, we can actually eat computer viruses, or at least, that is the closest analogy I can come up with. With enough Volano on the job, we can eradicate malicious software from the TerraNet. These are just two of the ways in which we can contribute.
“Our friends in the Terran Civil Liberties Union fear that we have been duped,” ^Green* went on. “They worry that we have been tricked into captivity and will be forced to work for you without pay or any hope of ever seeing my home again. The TCLU is a good friend to the Volano, but they are mistaken. Frankly, we marvel that life can exist under the conditions you consider normal. There is no way in which we can be considered enslaved nor can we be. I would rather this never got out into public knowledge, I would not like to be feared but I could single handledly crash every power generator on Earth and burn out most of your wires in under a day. Such an activity would harm me as well, but we are by no means helpless. Furthermore we have discovered we are not confined to Earth or any ship we might travel on.
“We could leave anytime we wanted to by broadcasting ourselves via radio,” ^Green* explained. “I would be glad to demonstrate this by going to Luna and back, but my point is unlike any Terralano, we could walk off the job even on a spaceship merely by beaming ourselves back home. True, we would be restricted to the speed of light, so it would take many years and we would arrive very thin and weak through the effort of holding ourselves together during the transit and reintegrating ourselves on arrival, but we would arrive alive. So we are not dependant on anyone in order to get home as has been claimed.”
“Why didn’t you say so?” Sara blurted.
“You never asked,” ^Green* replied, “and, until now, we did not have an opportunity to explain. Of course we would rather travel by ship. “It’s faster and safer and we have full run of the electronic systems and power plant of any ship we travel on. Your planetary power grid is like a system of what we call roads and there is a lot of room for us to move around. We are not confined and cannot be physically coerced to work. We’re here because we want to work. We want to be Terralano.”
“Do the lawyers have any questions for the witness?” Judge Wolkowicz asked. Sara held up her hand for time to think. “Ms Lindhardt?” the judge asked after a long pause.
“No, Your Honor,” Sara replied at last. “Not at this time.”
“Then I must recess to consider the matter,” Judge Wolkowicz replied. “This is going to take some time and a lot of research. I will let you know when the court is able to reconvene.” Her gavel came down and they left the courthouse.
Because of Sara’s previous admission, the word was out that the trial’s venue had been moved to London and over the next three days, the protestors from both sides filtered rapidly into the city. With what had happened in Sydney and Ohio in mind, the Confederate police were prepared and kept the protestors spread out and isolated from each other, and also away from the courthouse. One reporter noticed that they were actually being kept away from every known court venue so round-the clock cameras were set up in order to keep a look out for the known members of Meriwether, Inc. or any of Sara Lindhardt’s legal team.
Ralani, ever the perpetual tourist, had hoped to be able to tour the British Museum, the Tower of London and various other points of interest, but with the press camped out just beyond the hotel doors, she reluctantly remained confined to the floor Clark had arranged for Meriwether’s members and employees.
“Alano’s the lucky one,” Ralani grumbled on the third afternoon of enforced activity. “He’s on his ship and halfway to Treloi by now.”
“Would you have rather been assigned to his ship?” Serafyma asked.
“No, I want to work with you and Lilla,” Ralani replied instantly, “but that’s just it. I want to work on Meriwether I with you. I think I’m doing worthwhile stuff while we’re on Earth, but I want to get back into space and explore.”
“It’s pretty boring most of the time, you know,” Serafyma told her. “I can’t tell you how many systems I’ve visited where we found nothing that made it worth the trip. Rendezvous system was like that, in fact. We were running out of fuel and Meriwether was in bad need of repairs. If we hadn’t found Inillien that would have been the end of the company. And when something interesting does happen, it usually involves someone getting hurt. You know I’m a klutz, right? Well, I must have bruised everyone on board at leat once, except for Jerry. I broke his leg with the pinnace.”
“You what?” Ralani was not certain she had heard correctly.
“Our space suits all have jets on them,” Serafyma explained. “Only some Lano ones do. At first we thought it was that Lano were much more accurate at gauging how to jump between ships and stuff like that, because we saw Eesai make what seemed like an unassisted jump, but her suit did have jets. I guess it’s cheaper to make them without so only a few can be used by someone who is not tethered to a ship. Anyway, Lano suits that do have jets have their own propellant, but human suits use the same supply of air we use to breath.”
“That doesn’t sound very sensible,” Ralani opined. “What if you run out of air because you jetted too much?”
“What if you could have had enough air if you could have used the stuff in the propellant tank?” Serafyma countered. “It doesn’t matter, the point is to not overextend your supply no matter which system you use. Jerry was out too long and so I went to pick him up with the pinance. Well, one thing led to another and when he said he didn’t have enough air left to both breathe and jet, I tried moving the pinace’s airlock to within reach of him.”
“That was dangerous,” Ralani commented.
“Yes, but I didn’t think I had time to suit up and pull him back in,” Serafyma explained, “so I nudged closer and closer as best I could. But when I was close enough, he used the last of his air to push him into the airlock, but at the same time I gave the ship one last nudge and he slammed into the airlock door. Fortunately, I had already opened the outer door for him, so I closed it after him and repressurized so I could open the door and pop the seal on his helmet before he suffocated. That happened shortly before we got to Rendezvous.”
“See?” Ralani pointed out. “That was interesting and exciting.”
“And ended up with someone getting hurt, little sister,” Serafyma told her pointedly. “The thing to remember is that adventures are really only good things in the past tense.”
“I guess,” Ralani agreed, “but I sure would like to have a bunch of them in the past tense.”
“Ah hah!” Lilla’s voice came from the doorway. “I found them!” she shouted back over her shoulder. “Come on, you two. We just got a call from the court. Judge Wolkowicz is ready to render a decision.”
“Hmm, maybe you’ll have a chance at adventure soon enough,” Serafyma told Ralani as they rushed out of the room.
There were several limousines waiting for them at street level where there were still a few pro-Terralano protestors waiting, but nowhere as many as there had been a few hours earlier. They cheered as the people from Meriwether, Inc. came out and quite a few waved as the limos drove off.
“I don’t think this is the same courtroom we were in last time,” Ralani commented as they stepped through the doorway.
“It isn’t,” Clark told her. “But maybe the other room is in use. The legal system here in Great Britain still has many features from the old pre-Confederation days. Each region does have its own local laws and procedures and our trial, being run in the North American form is just sort of borrowing the facilities here. There’s no surprise we might have to change rooms to make way for the regular business.
The furniture in this room was arranged differently. Instead of a single judge’s bench there were three standing side by side and no place for a jury box, although this had not been a jury trial to begin with.
When Judge Wolkowicz arrived, she was accompanied by two other judges, who she introduced to the others after everyone has been seated. “I found that the nature of the decision I had been expected to render required a tribunal,” she explained.
“Objection!” Sara Lindhardt called out immediately. “You cannot change the nature of a trial once it has begun.”
“Overruled,” Judge Wolkowicz replied calmly. “As a matter of fact you can.” She cited two precedents.
“Objection,” Sara repeated. “Both those cases were unique and unusual situations and ought not to be used as a precedent.”
“Ms Lindhardt,” the judge told her firmly, “this case is also an unusual situation and probably ought not to be used as a precedent. No doubt all future trials being asked to decide the question of whether a newly found sentient race has been enslaved will begin with a tribunal of judges. In any case, you are overruled. Let us continue.
“Because I expected Judges Finneran and Boumsong to be able to rule fairly with me, we needed several days to review the recordings of all the testimony so far and then needed to discuss whether any further testimony would be needed to render a fair decision.”
“Objection!” Sara interrupted once again. “The plaintiffs have not yet finished presenting their case.”
“And the defendants have not presented any of theirs, Ms Lindhardt,” Judge Wolkowicz replied, “although we did have all the exhibits from both sides to examine. That too was debated, but the reason the court was recessed was so that I could decide whether the Plaintiffs’ case had any merit at all following the testimony of the Vola known as Green. It seemed that all your claims had been neatly refuted, and while the TCLU exists to defend those unable to defend themselves, the Volano proved that they were both cognizant of the ramifications of any contract they might undertake with Meriwether, Inc. and quite able to defend themselves should it become necessary.
“Further,” she continued, “that testimony cast grave doubt on your accusations against Meriwether, Inc. It is true that corporations have exploited ignorant people in the past and no doubt will be caught doing so in the future, but in this particular case, Meriwether, Inc. is found to have acted honorably and fully within the letter and spirit of the law, and, in fact, has exceeded any legally defined expectations we could determine when dealing with a new alien people. We expect Meriwether’s example to be followed in all future first contacts.”
A cheer broke out in the courtroom, but the the judge was not yet finished. “We commend the TCLU’s efforts on behalf of the Volano, however, and commend you in particular, Ms Lindhardt, for presenting a forceful and compelling case. It is just that this time it was not necessary.
“Now as to the Volano themselves,” Judge Wolkowicz went on. “We find they are not under any condition of slavery or indentured servitude or being coerced into any situation above and beyond that of any legally binding contract that a Terralano citizen might be expected to fulfill.”
“Objection!” Sara piped up once more. “The term ‘Terralano…’”
“Sustained,” Mirriam Wolkowicz agreed. “Sadly the Terralendir is not yet a legal entity, so I have used the term Terralano in an improper context, for now at least. …beyond that of any legally binding contract a citizen or resident of the Terran Confederation might be expected to fulfill. As it happens the only contracts any Vola has signed involve Mister Blue and his security business.
“That does bring up another point,” she went on. “It has been shown that the Volano can bypass our data security systems with relative ease, so I must point out that the Volano must learn to respect private systems and databanks and that being employed to illegally access such private systems will result in the same punishments any other person might expect. Once again Mister Blue appears to be working to improve security in a number of systems and this court requires him to work toward a method of security that will prove as impregnable to Volano as to any other sort of person.”
“Yes, Your Honor,” !Blue_ agreed easilly.
“Objection!” Sara called out one last time.
“Are you doing that out of habit, Ms Lindhardt?” Judge Wolkowicz asked.
“Your Honor, I do not believe this court is empowered to require Blue’s private company to provide such a technological break-through at his own expense,” Sara explained.
“I never required him to do the job for free,” the judge replied, “merely that he undertake the project.”
“It it still highly unusual, Your Honor,” Sara commented.
“As is this entire case,” Judge Wolkowicz agreed. “Ms Wall, do you have anything to say on behalf of your clients?”
“No, Your Honor,” Janice replied. “It sounds as though they have been completely exhonorated. We are happy with your decisions.”
“Very well,” Judge Wolkowicz nodded. “Case dismissed.”
With the case’s dismissal, Sara Lindhardt and the TCLU moved on to other issues. Somehow there were always other issues involving the civil liberties of Terran citizens, and without the support of the TCLU, Reverend Ecklhart stopped arguing that the Volano were being enslaved so his followers soon ceased protesting as well.
Sue and Eesai were busy with their crews, preparing their respective ships for lift off when Clark gave them a call a week later. “Sorry, but we’re still grounded.”
“What?” Sue demanded. “Why?”
“Well the TCLU is no longer accusing us of being slavers, but the Terran Congress is all up in arms over the Terralano question as the media is calling it,” Clark explained. “And we have been enjoined to remain on Earth while they thrash the issue out.”
“I really hope they plan to compensate us for the business lost,” Eesai remarked acidly.
“Heh,” Clark chuckled. “For a captain who came directly from the military you seem to have a good grasp of the business side of this venture.”
“My family are ranchers,” Eesai reminded him. “Keeping an eye on the books is something I learned in the cradle. So are they?”
“No,” Clark shook his head. “They feel that since Alano is out on a mission in Salinien we’re already conducting enough business.”
“Politicians!” Eesai grumbled. “They ground two thirds of our fleet and expect us to be thankful? See how thankful they would be if I could suspend two-thirds of their income. For that matter I still have an income because I’m a stockholder. Most of my crew isn’t and they only make money from their shares of the profits of this ship, not Salinien.”
“I know that, Eesai,” Clark agreed, “but if any of them need an interest-free loan to get by on in the meantime, you send them to me. Like it or not, we’re stuck on Earth. Finish prepping your ships, though and then you may as well take a vacation.”
“Another one?” Eesai asked. “I’ve had more vacation time this year than in the last ten combined.”
“Sorry,” Clark told her.
“We promised to take Ralani surfing if we had a chance,” Sue reminded Eesai. “This may be our last chance this trip.”
“Well, okay,” Eesai agreed at last, “but only because I like Hawaii.”
Meanwhile in Australia, Malana’s Comm. was ringing in her suite. “Blind!” she swore mildly. “I just got to sleep,” she told the screen as she hit the accept button. The screen lit up to reveal Malvina Smythe.
“Late night, Mal?” Malvina asked.
“An ungodly early morning, maybe,” Malana replied. “Several of your Congressmen and women decided to pop in around midnight to bend my ear about the Terralano Question.”
“Didn’t they like your answer?” Malvina asked.
Malana Di Masai had been widely quoted some years earlier as saying, “The Answer to the Terralano Question is, ‘Yes!’” Now she grumbled, “I think they liked my answer a bit too much and kept pressing me for details. No wonder your Congress doesn’t convene until the day is almost over. None of them are awake yet.”
“It’s not that bad,” Malvina laughed. “Well, mostly not. Then it probably doesn’t come as a surprise that’s why I’m calling.”
“You already know my answer,” Malana pointed out.
“Yes, but how would you like to address the Congress on the subject?”
“I think I did that last night,” Malana replied, “but you mean while they are arguably working?”
“We generally say ‘in session,’” Malvina corrected her.
“Truth in advertizing then,” Malana quipped. “Well, I’d be a hypocrite to refuse… who said that to me recently? Nevermind. Yes, I’ll do it, but I thought the Terralano party had a majority in the Congress.”
“We do,” Malvina replied, “but we don’t have sixty percent, which is what we need for official ratification of whatever official treaty you and I agree on.”
“It’s been eight years since the Trelendir started thinking of us together as the Terralendir,” Malana commented, “and in that time I have yet to get your Congress to agree that we share a common periodic table of elements.”
“It’s been about two centuries since we had a foreign nation to conclude a treaty with,” Malvina explained. “We’re out of practice.”
“The Trelendir is even more out of practice but that isn’t stopping us,” Malana pointed out.
“We have a solid fifty percent. It’s that additional ten I need you for,” Malvina told her. “Just come and give the same speech you’ve been giving as long as I’ve known you.”
“I’ve certainly had enough practice,” Malana agreed, “but don’t you think I should open with a magic trick or two? It used to work in the circus.”
“I’ll leave that up to you,” Malvina laughed. “This will be a typical committee of the whole procedure. This will be conducted by the Foreign Relations Committee, but the rules have been suspended to allow the entire Congress to be in attendance and have a chance to ask questions.”
“I’ve just agreed to some obscure Terran torture session, haven’t I?” Malana asked.
“Relax and enjoy it,” Malvina recommended.
In nearly nine years of representing the Trelendir on Earth, Malana had never actually sat as a witness before a Congressional investigation. It was an experience she would gladly have foregone, but she was too good a politician herself to not understand what was at stake. She had arrived on Earth shortly after the Terralano Party on Treloi had become the majority party in the Council of Generals, with a draft of what she hoped would become the Charter of the Terralendir. She had put it together with her son Presiding General Tauko Di Masai and so long as he remained the PeeGee she knew she would have his approval, but Malvina‘s term of office expired before it could be presented and President Kassanov was not interested in strengthening the bond between the Trelendir and the Terran Confederation.
“Am I supposed to present the charter?” Malana asked.
“That’s not a bad idea,” Malvina agreed. I can see that they are expecting that, but maybe we’d better go over it together first. Can you meet with me over lunch?”
Malana checked the clock. “In an hour?”
“I’ll clear my appointments,” Malvina promised.
“Me too,” Malana nodded.
Malana was allowed to make an opening statement and in spite of her earlier irreverence for the political process, had neither made jokes nor performed tricks. She did, however, talk long and earnestly about the benefits of forming the Terralendir and expressed her opinion that it was inevitable their two peoples would become a single confederation in time since they were so socially compatible in the first place. She also pointed out how humans and Lano had jointly contacted two other intelligent life forms, and so to ratify the charter she and Malvina had agreed on would merely be a matter of recognizing a condition that already existed.
When she was finished, the congressmen began their expected squabbling. In this Committee of the Whole format it had been agreed that members of the Foreign Relations Committee would each have half an hour to question Malvina, the only scheduled witness, and that each other Congressman or woman would have ten minutes if they desired. Malana groaned on learning that. There were one thousand two hundred sixty-five representatives to the Terran Congress, including those from the colonies, and Malana resigned herself to a grueling two or three weeks depending on just how many really felt the need for camera time.
Many of the Congressmen never actually asked a question of her and instead used their time to debate points of the proposed charter. Roughly half seemed to be of the opinion that the initial treaty of Rendezvous was sufficient with the others being convinced that closer ties between human and Lano would be both beneficial and necessary as they continued to expand throughout the galaxy. After the first three days, many of the representatives were ceding their allotted time to party leaders and the whole supposed committee-run investigation turned into an extended debate with the debaters occasionally turning to Malana for an outside opinion.
When one side mentioned a treaty with the Volano, however, Malana, pointed out accusingly, “There is no actual treaty with the Volano, I would have been happy to sign one, but it was this body that refused to go that far. You went on and on not all that long ago over whether the State Department should recognize them and finally agreed on recognition, but have failed to even schedule a vote to ratify the treaty that was agreed on in principle.”
“Madame Malana,” one old politician told her. “We have never actually ratified the treaty with the Carono either.”
“Why not?” Malana demanded, briefly losing her temper. “You are benefiting from the trade that treaty provides. You will just have to forgive me if my cultural prejudices see your refusal to ratify foreign treaties as cowardly.”
“Madame Malana,” came the affronted reply, “we attempt to maintain a certain level of cordial colleagiality in this Congress.”
“I’m sure you do, sir,” Malana agreed, “but don’t let artificial courtesies blind you to the fact that you are essentially snubbing your allies. Do you think I don’t recognize political games when I see them. Ladies and gentlemen, I grew up in a family that included five sitting generals and admirals in our Council of Generals and I personally refused to sit as the Presiding General several times now. I know all the tricks and so far you have yet to pull a new one on me. This whole Committee of the Whole routine is designed to accomplish nothing while you spend several weeks trying to look busy for your constituents.”
“You go too far, Madame,” the man accused her, even as half the congress applauded.
“I suppose you could vote to have me expelled,” Malana shrugged. “Oh wait, you can’t but maybe you could request your colleagues on the Foreign Relations Committee to have me dismissed as a witness.”
The Committee chair, a middle-aged woman from the region of Tibet used a gavel to gain attention as the congress began to buzz. “Madame Malana,” she told her, “I sympathise with you, but would kindly request you bear with us just a bit longer. I would also remind the Minority Leader of this Congress that his time is up, yet again.”
“The Region of Fiji yields ten minutes to our colleague from Alaska,” a man shouted from the floor.
“That’s nice,” the Tibetan Congresswoman nodded, “but the Region of Fiji is out of order and it is not Fiji’s turn to speak in any case. I would remind the entire Congress that we are straying off the topic yet again and that those of you who are not members of my committee are allowed to speak in this session by courtesy only. Please do not make me regret having extended that extraordinary courtesy. Let us get back to the direct subject of this Terralendir Charter. The floor belongs to the Colony of New Galveston for the next ten minutes.”
“Thank you, Madame Chairman,” the next Congressman replied predictably. “New Galveston cedes its time to our colleague from Texas.”
“Very well,” the chairwoman nodded. “Proceed, Texas.”
“Thank you, Madame Chairwoman. Madame Malana, I notice your proposed Charter includes recognition of the Carono and the Volano. Is that really necessary, given the fact that we have already recognized them?”
“That is a good question,” Malana acknowledged, privately wondering if Malvina had set it up. “When we first began to think in terms of the Terralano Question, the Volano were entirely unheard of and the Carono were an unknown menace that was killing ships and crews way out to the galactic east. In short, we only knew of each other. We made first contact with the Carono on a Terran ship that had a mixed crew of humans and Lano and Ambassador Gupta and I later concluded a treaty with the Carono jointly. To this day the Carono think of us as a single people. We are the cold people to them; the Terralano.
“We also made first contact with the Volano on a Terran ship with a mixed crew of humans and Lano,” Malana continued. “Many of the same people who first contacted the Carono, in fact. Consequently the Volano see us as a single people as well. And the official recognition of the Volano was made by Malvina Smythe and me acting in concert so that neither the Terran Confederation nor the Trelendir took precedence.
“We have been equal partners since we met, ladies and gentlemen,” Malana went on, “and it is time we made that official. However, what you may not understand of the Trelendir is that in the minds of most Lano, the Trelendir includes all known space and the worlds and the people within that space. We’re not foolish and realized instantly that while we might think of Terran space as part of the Trelendir, our laws did not extend there, and yet until nearly three years after our own first contact, we could legally draft a visiting human into our armed forces. In fact this was done in order to send Meriwether II out to what became first contact with the Carono.”
There was a buzz of conversation with tones of disapproval and outrage at that statement, so Malana proceded on hastily, “The people of the Meriwether were compensated handsomely, I assure you, and the conscription was a mere legal formality, but it goes to demonstrate the nature of the Trelendir and why we soon embraced the concept of the Terralendir.
“The Terralendir,” she continued, “includes all the feeling of unity of the Trelendir, but without the Lano-centric viewpoint. In short by embracing the Terralendir we understand that we are not the masters of creation, but equal partners with our friends and relatives of Humankind. From what I have observed in my tenure as ambassador to Terra, I believe most humans feel the same. Well, we must take this a step further. If the Lano and humans are the Terralendir, then all intelligent species we meet should be allowed to join us as equal partners as well.
“We have included recognition of the Carono and Volano in the Charter, first of all to show this new union respects the laws and commitments of the Terran Confederation and the Trelendir and to set guidelines in accepting the Carono and Volano as well as any new peoples we meet from here on into our own Terralendir,” she concluded. There was a satisfying amount of applause and the chairwoman had trouble bringing the meeting back to order.
The congressman from Djibouti used that speech to re-raise the Volano issue. “Madame Malana, I can readily see how the Volano would benefit from joining this Terralendir. They would gain the energy they crave and access to the Terralano stores of knowledge. But would not some of this knowledge be far too advanced for a people who are living in a cultural equivalent of our own Middle Ages?”
“I have watched many classic Terran entertainments,” Malana replied, “and read much of your fiction, but I seriously doubt we need to invoke Star Trek’s Prime Directive. For one thing the Volano already know more about electricity and power generation than we do and from what I have been informed recently, most Terralano technology and Thaliripi could never apply to them. They are far more interested in our philosophies, religions, social sciences and so forth… oh! And fiction. They love a good story. That is the sort of data they wish to acquire.”
“But what do we get for it?” the man from Djibouti asked.
Malana was tempted to ask where he had been these past few weeks, but decided she had already used up her quota of snide remarks. “Sir,” she replied. “The Volano have already demonstrated that they can optimize the drives of our spaceship and planet-bound power generators. They are faster at data retrieval than we are and can act as a better voice-controlled computer interface than anything human science or Lano Thalirip has yet produced. I suspect that is just scratching the surface of what their contributions will amount to over time.”
The man from Djibouti remained unconvinced, but he ran out of time and Malana soon found herself listening and sometimes replying to still other politicians. The committee investigation was still going on when something happened that changed the Congressional viewpoint.
“This is fun!” Ralani told Sue as she paddled her board back out into the deeper water.
“To my ancestors,” Sue told her, “surfing was an art, a sport and a part of our religion. It was practiced by nobles and commoners alike for centuries before we had contact with Europeans. To come to the sea and ride it on a board was as much a religious duty as it was a pastime.”
“When can I try standing up?” Ralani asked eagerly. Her sisters were sitting on shore with Eesai. Serafyma and Lilla had been content to ride their boards prone, and Eesai, having grown up in a desert, could barely swim let alone feel comfortable on a surfboard. Ralani, however, was anxious to try everything and Sue found she had to hold the younger woman back, forcing her to do the preliminary stretches, waxing of her board, and then all the beginners’ exercises that even the most accomplished surfer had once been through.
“If you really think you’re ready,” Sue sighed, “I suppose you can try. You will wipe out the first few times, though.” They paddled out and Sue sat up on her board getting a good look at the sea. “I don’t know about this,” she fretted. “The waves are starting to get higher. We had some nice beginner’s surf going when we started, but now it’s…”
“Doesn’t look so bad to me,” Ralani told her.
“And you’re an expert now, are you?” Sue asked pointedly. “Look, I’m not an expert, not really. Yes, I’ve been doing this all my life, but not consistently since I went to space.”
“I’m not going to know if I can do it if I don’t try,” Ralani countered.
“Oh very well,” Sue relented. “Try, but don’t blame me when the first thing you do is fall off your board.” Ralani laughed and paddled a few yards away, trying to guage the best spot from which to catch her wave. “You’re sitting too far back on your board,” Sue called to her. “The nose should only be a couple inches out of the water.” Ralani reseated herself accordingly, but missed the next two waves. “You need to start paddling earlier,” Sue advised. Ralani nodded and moved her board back to her starting position.
Then she spotted the wave she wanted. It was a little larger than the others between several smaller ones and even with her limited experience, Ralani knew this would be the best she had tried that afternoon. She turned and began to paddle.
“No, not that one!” Sue called to her, but Ralani could not hear Sue over the noise of the surf. “Well,” Sue said to herself out loud, “I’m probably being over cautious.” As the wave got closer, however, it grew up, getting ready to break and Sue realized it was more than Ralani was ready for.
Sue dug in and paddled as fast as she could, just barely catching the wave higher up than she would have liked. She saw Ralani off to her right still riding prone on her board, but Sue began to stand. It was dangerous, she knew to try to watch both Ralani and the sea at the same time, but she needed to be on the scene should anything go wrong. Sue edged cautiously closer to Ralani, staying back at a safe distance. At first it looked like Ralani would not try to stand up on the board, that she would remain cautious and ride the board in a lying position, but then suddenly she tried to stand and with a whoop of sheer joy got to her feet.
Ralani remained on her feet for several long seconds and then, when she tried to change direction, she stepped too close to the back of the board and fell off. The board was thrown upward and then came right down into the white foaming water. A moment later Sue spotted Ralani’s motionless body floating in foam. Sue fell back on to her surfboard and paddled as fast as she could to where Ralani was. At the same time Lilla and Serafyma were running out into the water and even Eesai was forgetting her unease and following them through the surf, but Sue got there first and lifted Ralani out of the water and on to her surfboard.
Ralani was not breathing as Sue pulled her out of the water, but she did not wait to get into shore before applying artificial respiration. A surfboard was far from the ideal place to try administering cardio-pulminary respiration, but Sue did the best she could and after only a few breaths Ralani was coughing up water and breathing on her own again.
“Leave her on the board,” Sue told the others as they reached her. By then she and Ralani had floated to where the water was only knee deep. “We can use it as a stretcher.”
“What happened?” Eesai asked.
“Is she alive?” Lilla asked, frightened.
“She’s breathing,” Sue replied. “She wiped out. That’s common enough in beginners and pros alike. She fell off the board and it flipped around and I’m pretty sure it hit her on the head.”
“How far is the nearest hospital?” Serafyma asked quickly.
“Back in town, I’m afraid,” Sue replied. “Good thing we didn’t go to my private beach today.”
“How could we?” Eesai asked. “There’s only room for two in your peapod.”
“Three maybe,” Sue replied, while rehersing the best route to the hospital in her mind. “Okay, ready? Let’s lift.” They did so and quickly slid Ralani, still on the surf board, into the back of Sue’s parents’ station wagon, a long car that was still popular in some parts of the world.”
“She’s bleeding,” Lilla fretted.
“Here,” Sue grabbed a towel and handed it to Lilla. “Put this under her head. Gently and I’ll grab another for you. Where’s Sera?”
“Right here,” Serafyma replied rushing back with the other surfboard.
“Why did you go back for that?” Sue asked even as she took it and strapped it to the roof of the old car. “Getting Ralani to the hospital is more important than that thing.”
“I figured Ralani might wake up wanting to fight,” Serafyma replied as they all got into the car. Lilla stayed in the back with her sister and Serafyma crawled in on Ralani’s other side while Eesai rode shotgun and Sue drove. The car was already moving when Sera finished, “And having the board nearby will give her something to fight with.”
“I’d say she has already fought with the board,” Sue replied.
“Trust me,” Serafyma forced a laugh. “She’s going to want a rematch.”
“I didn’t know surfing was this dangerous,” Lilla fretted.
“It’s dangerous,” Sue confirmed, “but this was a freak accident. “Thousands of people surf every year and the worst that happens in a wipeout is they have to figure out what happened to their board. Heck! Ralani fell off her board twice today just learning how to catch a wave. This was just unlucky.” Lilla was not consoled, but she didn’t argue the matter either.
“Should we call ahead to the hospital?” Eesai asked.
“Do you have the Comm number?” Sue countered and then realized she was wrong. “No, of course not, but you can dial the emergency number. Tell them we’re headed directly to the emergency room at Hilo Medical Center.”
“Why not call the hospital directly?” Serafyma asked.
“All we’d get is a switchboard operator or maybe the admissions desk,” Sue replied. “They’d tell us how to get there, but if we want paramedics to meet us as we drive up, the emergency number is what we want.”
As Sue predicted there was a hover gurney waiting as she pulled up to the doors of the emergency room. Two men quickly got Ralani onto the floating bed and rushed her inside. “Go with them,” Sue told Lilla and Serafyma. “Eesai and I will park the car.
By the time Sue and Eesai got back from the parking lot, Lilla and Serafyma had just finished signing admission forms and were at their wits’ ends with worry, so Eesai had them make the phone calls. By morning, Ralani was still unconscious, but all her friends from Meriwether, Inc. had arrived and were camped out in the hospital waiting room, including the Volano, although without their robot bodies. Instead, Lani had brought a modified portable Comm unit through which they could communicate.
Malana showed up just as a doctor had come to talk to Lilla and Serafyma. “There’s not much I dare to do,” he told them. “I have references on Lano physiology, of course, but I’m not an expert and I am not even certain what some of the EKG readings I am getting mean.”
“Madame Malana,” Lilla appealed to her, “Isn’t there something you can do? A healing thalu, maybe?”
“I know my first aid, dear, but I’m no more a physician than you are,” Malana told her. “I could look at these readings, though,” she told the doctor. “Ralani has had thaliripic training and head injuries can sometimes cause our brains to behave strangely in what some think is an attempt to heal themselves.”
“Is that what she’s doing?” Lilla asked hopefully. “Healing herself?”
“So some think,” Malana nodded. “There have been some amazing cases that might have been just that, but they are quite rare. We really need a Lano doctor.”
“I have called for Doctor Lorachi Ki Wanai,” the doctor informed them.
“I didn’t know he was on Earth,” Malana admitted.
“He is teaching at Harvard this year,” the doctor told her, “I read about it in the Journal and called him as soon as I saw I was out of my depth. We spoke at length on Miss Ralani’s case. He gave me some advice as to how to make her comfortable and promised to be here on the next rocket.”
“I’ll pick him up myself if I have to,” Sue promised instantly.
“No need,” the doctor assured her. “Doctor Lorachi had his flight booked before we got off the Comm.”
“Well if anyone can help Ralani,” Malana noted, “Lorachi’s the man.”
“Do you know him?” Lilla asked.
“I think Malana knows everyone,” Serafyma told her.
“Not hardly,” Malana laughed, “but Lorachi was probably Wallo Bi Lano’s best student.”
“I didn’t know Doctor Wallo ever taught,” Lilla remarked.
“You think Wallo was just a Navy starship doctor?” Malana laughed. “I don’t think you realize just how lucky you were to have him on Inillien. No, Wallo used to teach at Pansilli Medical School and students waited semesters to get into his classes. Joining the Navy as a ship’s doctor was more of a retirement job for him. Why do you think Alano sought him out when you went to encounter the Carono? Wallo was one of the best and also one of the few who does not mind doing things most doctors disdain unless they are fresh out of school.”
“I like Doctor Wallo,” Lilla replied a bit defensively. “He was always very nice to me and helped me get over my initial fear when I first was assigned to Inillien. And he taught this Lorachi?”
“Yes,” Malana nodded.
“Doctor Lorachi is reputed to be the foremost expert on Lano physiology,” the doctor explained. “We are lucky he is on Earth this year.”
“May we see Ralani?” Lilla asked.
“She is in Intensive Care,” the doctor explained, “so only two of you may visit her at a time.”
“Sera?” Lilla asked her human sister imploringly.
“You and Malana go first,” Serafyma told her. “Maybe Malana will see something that will help.” Lilla nodded and left with Malana.
Lilla trembled when she got her first look at her little sister. She was a small helpless thing who seemed ever so much smaller on the hospital bed with tubes and wires attached to her. And her skin was glowing ever so slightly. “Why is she glowing?” Lilla asked fearfully.
“That’s one of those odd things that sometimes happen to injured thaluas,” Malana explained. “One of the most common, actually. Probabaly just a harmless side effect of whatever is really going on inside of her.” Malana studied the various dials, meters and displays and then asked the doctor, “Which of these is her brain activity?”
“Over here,” the doctor pointed at several displays. “From what Doctor Lorachi told me, this is very high activity, but he was unable to make a proper diagnosis over the Comm. That’s why he is coming here. He did say that some patients come out of this sort of thing on their own.”
“Not many, I’ll wager,” Malana commented. “I’m sorry, Lilla. This is way beyond me, but the good news is that she is still alive and her brain is active. I would be far more worried if there was very little activity.”
“I’ve heard of this,” Lilla told her. “We kind of covered it in school. She could be burning out her neural circuits.”
“Neural circuits?” a voice asked, seemingly from out of the air.
“Yellow?” Lilla asked. “Where are you?”
“In the electrical wires mostly,” #Yellow@ replied, “but there is a camera and an intercom in here. Do your brains have circuits?”
“Our nerve cells fire off very minute electrical pulses,” Malana replied. “I don’t think you could call it a circuit as such. The term ‘neural circuit’ is really just an expression.”
“Maybe not,” the doctor disagreed, “but Doctor Lorachi is better suited to answer that question.”
“Circuits in Terralano,” #Yellow@ mused. “Excuse me, I need to learn.”
“Yellow?” Lilla called after the Vola, but there was no answer.
The other Volano had disappeared as well, they soon discovered, but the rest of Ralani’s friends and relatives maintained their vigil, visiting Ralani in pairs, while they all waited for Doctor Lorachi to arrive. During that time, there was no apparent change in Ralani’s condition, although random twitches in response to sounds and the motions of her eyes beneath their lids continually gave hope that maybe she was waking up.
When Lorachi Ki Wanai arrived, he and the attending doctor conferred for a long time and then called Malana and Lilla into the room. “I know this is not your areas of expertise,” he told them, “but the more who are trained in thalirip the better in a case like this. What Ralani has suffered is comparable to what our human cousins call a concussion. I think you already know her skull is cracked as well and she is badly bruised, but that is relatively minor in comparison. Most Lano would suffer the same sort of symptoms a human would when their brain has been knocked about inside their head, but those with thaliripic training, and very often even among those in whom the ability remains dormant, will commonly respond as Ralani has. Had she not been a thalua I suspect she might not have survived, but when the thaliripic centers of the brain are active, they will respond like this in life-threatening situations.
“The result is that Ralani is hanging on with everything she has,” Lorachi explained, “but the process, once started can only be allowed to continue for so long and then must be suppressed. If we cannot suppress this thaliripic activity, it will kill her as certainly as the concussion would have. If we were on a Lano world, we would have all the medical equipment and trained people to use it and this would be a very simple procedure. However, we have none of that on Earth and so we must attempt to do it the old-fashioned way.”
“You mean like ancient shamans, casting their spells?” Malana asked.
“Not quite that old-fashioned,” Lorachi chuckled. “We need not attempt to propitiate the gods although I’m sure there has been enough prayer on Ralani’s behalf already. No, this procedure was still in common usage two centuries ago. Fortunately, my training is in both physical and thaliripic medicine so I can make the attempt. I have to see if I can suppress Ralani’s trauma-induced reaction, but she has a lot of energy invested in what her brain is doing and energy is never destroyed, so as I work, much of it will be released. I need you two to help by siphoning it off so I can concentrate on healing her.”
He went on to describe in detail what he wanted Malana and Lilla to do. “Doctor,” Lilla asked tremulously when he had finished, “you said this was a very old technique. Have you ever actually done this before?”
“Honestly, no,” Lorachi replied with a sigh. “Oh we covered it years ago in med school and I’ve taught it as well, but no one ever does this on an actual patient these days unless they are isolated from modern medical equipment as we are here. I know how to do it, though.”
“And what are Ralani’s chances?” Lilla asked quietly.
“I don’t know,” Lorachi admitted. “The reason we stopped relying on this technique is that using thaliripic devices is much more reliable.”
“Let’s just get on with it,” Malana suggested.
Doctor Lorachi worked for a long time and while he did, Ralani stopped seeming to glow and the activity on the monitors sunk down to an almost normal level, but after two hours he had to stop and Ralani started glowing again less than a minute later. The activity in the parts of her brain associated with thalirip became more active again as well.
“I’m afraid that is all I can do for her just now,” Lorachi told them. “Her brain activity is not as severely disturbed as it was, but she will not be out of danger until her activity drops back to normal.”
“I knew I should have stopped her from trying to surf,” Lilla remarked.
“No. Don’t blame yourself for that,” Malana told her gently. “Our little Ralani is very much an adventurous sort. She would have tried it or something just as exciting whether you had intervened this time or not.”
“That’s true,” Lilla admitted. “She’s always been much braver than I am.”
“Oh yes?” Malana chuckled. “I heard how you went running into the waves after she fell off her board. No, you just have a bravery of a different sort. After all, if you were as easily scared as you think, you would have never gone to space. Alano told me that. He has always been quite impressed by the way you face what you fear.”
“He said that?” Lilla asked. Malana nodded.
“Doctor?” #Yellow@’s voice came through the intercom again. Lorachi started, and Lilla quickly introduced him to the Vola. “I have been observing you this past hour and before that my colleagues and I were studying what we could find about Lano physiology, especially injuries to the brain.”
“You have?” Lorachi asked. “It takes more than just reading an article or two you know.”
“Oh, we know that much,” #Yellow@ admitted, “but we could not just stand by and do nothing. Ralani Di Lasai is our spokesperson, you know.”
“Yes,” Lorachi nodded. “I have seen her speaking for the Vid cameras.”
“Well, we did a lot of studying and while we didn’t understand all we read, the others think I understood it best of all, and I have a possible idea I would like to run past you. Oh and, Lilla, Serafyma wants to know what to do about all the reporters outside.”
“What reporters?” Lilla asked, annoyed.
“Let’s go find out,” Malana suggested, “and leave these two to talk.”
While Lilla and Malana had been assisting Doctor Lorachi, Janice Wall had been sending out a press release, so that by the time #Yellow@ began consulting with Lorachi, an army of camera people and reporters had coagulated outside Hilo Medical Center. “They want a statement,” Clark told Malana.
“So give them one,” Malana retorted.
“We already have,” Clark replied, “or rather Serafyma and Eesai did.”
“Sister and captain,” Malana noted. “Human and Lano. A good mix there, but I shouldn’t be the one to make statements here. Anything I say could be construed as a political statement or, if not, then I am likely to be asked about my ongoing testimony before the Congress.”
“Oh yeah,” Clark nodded. “Shouldn’t you still be there?”
“Blind, no!” Malana swore. “Do you have any idea of what it is like to sit there answering their questions day after day?”
“I had a mild taste of it on Treloi,” Clark pointed out.
“Very mild,” Malana told him. “Besides, Ralani is my protégée. No one can honestly expect me to be anywhere else while she’s like this.”
“How is she anyway?” Clark asked. “I should have asked first.”
“You should have, yes,” Malana agreed. “She’s a little better. We were able to stabilize her condition a little but we’ll have to try again in another hour or two.”
“Well someone is going to have to tell them that or they’ll start trying to sneak into the ICU.”
“I’ll talk to the press,” Lilla told him. “Ralani is my sister. I should be the one to tell them.”
“I’ll go with you,” Serafyma added. “She’s my sister too and I think we can make this a brief statement.
Serafyma’s prediction proved true, but when they returned inside, Sue rushed up to them and told Lilla. “The Doctor needs you in the ICU. Malana’s already there.”
“Why? What’s wrong?” Lilla asked, sensing this was not routine.
“Yellow did something,” Sue replied. “We don’t know what, but they need you as a wizard.”
“A thalua,” Lilla corrected her automatically as she rushed toward Ralani’s room. A nurse tried to slow her down but Lilla use a thalu to freeze her in her tracks. She did not harm her, nor even knock her out as Ralani had done on Fairhaven. She had merely held the nurse motionless for the few seconds it took her to get past and to the door to Ralani’s room.
“What in the world?” Lilla asked when she got her first look inside. All the monitors were going crazy. Lights were flashing wildly and while Ralani seemed to be resting comfortably the indicators looked like her body was completely out of control.
“It’s Yellow,” Malana explained. “After talking to Lorachi, she had an idea and just started going to work. Blue is working with her.”
“I tried to stop them,” Lorachi explained, “but they wouldn’t listen. I don’t even know for certain what they are doing.”
“They are repairing the damage in Ralani’s head,” ^Green* explained from the intercom.
“They’re inside her head?” Lilla only kept herself from screaming by a hair. Had the Volano had physical bodies, she was certain she would be trying to shake some sense into them. “That much power will fry her brain and kill her.”
“Not in her head,” ^Green* replied calmly. “Not entirely.”
“What do you mean?” Lilla demanded.
“Well, most of them are in the machines,” ^Green* replied, “all of !Blue_ is but #Yellow@ is sending little tiny bits of herself into Ralani to repair her brain. !Blue_ is guiding her mostly.”
“You don’t just repair a brain,” Lorachi pointed out.
“Well, that depends,” ^Green* told him. “We cannot regrow the tissues any more than you can, but we can cauterize broken veins, although Ralani is not bleeding. Yellow is certain she could destroy a tumor with care, but what we are doing here is calming down each brain cell in the affected area by draining away the excess energy. According to what we read, what is happening is the cells in the inner temporal lobe, that part of the Lano brain associated with thalaripic abilities, are all firing off as though manipulating a thalu except there is no thalu in question.”
“That is the popular opinion,” Lorachi agreed, “but there are thousands of cells involved.”
“Yes,” ^Green* agreed. “#Yellow@ says this is going to take a very long time because we do not dare to rush the process and risk harming Ralani.”
“I would feel better about this if the monitors were not going so crazy,” Doctor Lorachi complained.
“That can’t be helped,” ^Green* admitted. “Our presence in the machine is affecting the displays.”
“So just imagine what you are doing to that young woman’s brain,” Lorachi told him.
“No,” ^Green* disagreed. “I told you that very little of #Yellow@ is actually inside Ralani’s brain.”
“So she’s just poking her little finger inside?” Malana asked and added, “So to speak?”
“Not even that much of her really,” ^Green* replied. “I do not really have an accurate analogy. Maybe the equivalent of a hair.”
“And that is enough?” Lorachi asked.
“We are aware of and in control of every single bit of us,” ^Green* replied. “#Yellow@ might be extending a mere hair into Ralani, but it is a hair that can see and act as she deems necessary.”
“You cannot possibly know that what you are doing is safe,” Lorachi argued.
“We are sure it is quite dangerous,” ^Green* admitted. “That is why Yellow is being so cautious.”
“Green,” Malana asked, “did you say a Vola could perform surgery without a blade or a thalu?”
“Some sorts,” ^Green* replied. “I don’t claim we are experts even after all the books we read through, but we think a careful Vola could destroy a cancerous tumor with repeated and carefully applied electric shocks to kill it cell by cell and probably could also act as a sort of anesthetic without a drug, simply by deadening the pain responses of associated nerves where necessary. Essentially, this is what #Yellow@ is doing to those hyper-activated cells in Ralani’s brain.”
“Green, essentially, Yellow is experimenting on my sister,” Lilla told him sternly. “That is wrong.”
“Why?” ^Green* asked innocently causing Lilla to remember that as Terralano as the Volano seemed in outlook sometimes, they were the most alien people yet encountered.
“We do not conduct medical experiments on people,” Lorachi told him. “Such things are done on animals first and studied carefully before trying it on a person and even then only a few isolated cases are made and studied intensely before offering some new technique or therapy. And even before we try something new on an animal, it is tried in computer simulation and discussed with colleagues. We try to understand all the ramifications and dangers before we try it on a living subject. We certainly do not ask a few questions and then dive right in. Yellow did not even tell me what she intended to do.”
“The ramifications in this case are that Ralani probably would have died or at the least been severely incapacitated,” ^Green* pointed out.
“I said that was a worst case scenario,” Lorachi insisted.
“Ralani is our friend and we are not going to let her die,” ^Green* replied.
“Tell Yellow to stop now then and we will see if we can measure any progress,” Malana suggested.
“I cannot,” ^Green* admitted. “#Yellow@ is so intent on what she is doing that I cannot break through her concentration. This is something a few of us can do when we are solving a problem”
“Volano go into a state of monomania to solve problems?” Lorachi asked.
There was a slight pause before ^Green* replied, “Yes, I suppose that is right. We do not do it often as it consumes energy at a frightful rate.”
“That may explain why the displays are all crazy,” Lorachi commented. “We’ll just have to wait and see what happens.”
For the next two hours very little changed except that Malana went out to join the others and Serafyma came in to help comfort Lilla. They were starting to fall asleep in their chairs when all the alarms in the room went off. The lights, which had been blinking on and off were now all staying on and getting brighter and there were ominous buzzes coming from several of the monitoring devices.
“What’s happening?” Lilla asked worriedly. Then both she and Serafyma shrieked as sparks started flying from all the equipement and all the lights in the wing became dim. They stayed that way for a long quarter of a minute and then the lights flickered back to normal and sharp acrid smoke rose up out of some of the equipment.
Under Doctor Lorachi’s direction several orderlies rushed the burnt machinery out of the room and the ICU as the automatic ventilation system cleared the air. “What was that?” Serafyma wondered aloud.
“We’re certainly going to need stronger circuits if we ever try that again,” #Yellow@’s voice commented faintly from the intercom. “I did what I could, though.”
Lilla and Serafyma turned to look at Ralani. Their little sister was just opening her eyes and looking uncertainly around the room. “Where’s the surfboard?” she asked very hoarsely.
Word of Ralani’s recovery and how it was produced made headlines for the next three days while Doctor Lorachi insisted she stay in the hospital for observation. After the first night, however, Ralani insisted she was well enough to leave and, “The food in this place is enough to kill me. I need something with flavor, not this bland stuff,” but she agreed to stay one more night when Jerry smuggled in a cheeseburger with bacon and jalapeño peppers.
“Better get your rest while you can,” he advised her. “You’re a celebrity and all the reporters want to talk to you.”
“Again?” Ralani wrinkled her nose. “Why me?”
“That doesn’t sound like you,” Jerry remarked.
“No,” Ralani shook her head, “I mean they ought to be talking to the Volano or Doctor Lorachi. All I did was get hit on the head while surfing. Sue was right, though. I was not ready to ride the waves on my feet.”
“Even the best surfers wipe out sometimes,” Jerry told her. “Anyway they want to hear how you feel after your radical new form of surgery.”
“I’m still a bit bruised and battered,” Ralani admitted, “but my mind is clearer than it ever was and thalirip comes so naturally to me now that I often catch myself using it to do stuff I always did by hand. I mean I just think about what I want and if I’m not careful it happens. Thaluas are dangerous enough as it is. I did not need that.”
“Sounds pretty good to me,” Jerry remarked.
“Oh sure, at first,” Ralani nodded, “but what if I lose my temper with someone? You know a thousand little murderous thoughts go through our heads all the time without our even being aware of them. I suppose the same number of good thoughts do as well, but I need to get a very firm control over my subconscious. I don’t want to flash-fry a good friend just because he or she was teasing me. My time as an Apathete is turning out to help there. You know, when I just did not care about anything?”
“I thought that was more of an outward affectation,” Jerry replied.
“It was when you get right down to it,” Ralani admitted, “but remembering the way I thought back then seems to keep me under control. And Malana has been in here tutoring me in some advanced thaliripic exercises. You really do have to have your subconscious under control for the big stuff, but she says I might be the most powerful thalua ever. Not sure I like that.”
“Great responsibility comes with the power?” Jerry asked.
“Sounds like you got that from a comic book,” Ralani chuckled.
“Quite likely,” Jerry agreed, “but it’s true.”
“Mmh,” Ralani remarked. Suddenly the Vid seemed to turn itself on. “See?” she told Jerry. “I was just wondering what was going on in the world and that happens.” She started to gesture in a way that would turn the set off, but Jerry stopped her.
“Looks like it’s something to do with the Congress,” he told her. “Can you turn up the sound?” Suddenly the volume was way too high, but a moment later it was down to a normal level.”
“Sorry,” Ralani apologized. “Maybe I’d better stay here a bit longer.”
As they watched the Vid, a reporter was announcing that the Congress was currently voting on the issue of approval of the Terralendir Concordance, as the charter had come to be called. “That name was the only thing Malvina would allow them to change,” Jerry added with a chuckle. The reporter went on to explain that the vote was expected to pass with a slim margin and then went on to gush about how the historical moment would be the start of an entirely new era.
“Hah!” Ralani laughed. “He should have been on Treloi eight years ago. That’s where it really started.”
“No, it was almost ten years ago in the Rendezvous system,” Jerry corrected her.
“Good point,” she admitted. “Where are the Volano? I haven’t seen any of them since yesterday morning.”
“Green is busy being the ambassador he is with Red’s assistance,” Jerry told her. “He’s giving interviews like mad and talking to just about everyone who will talk back. Blue is back working with his security company and Yellow is talking to doctors all over the world about what the Volano can do for Terralano medicine.”
“I’ll bet the Carono will find them at least as useful,” Ralani remarked. “Their bodies rely on current even more than ours do and their slagships just as much. And we already know what the Volano can do for our technology.”
“It will be a fair trade,” ^Green*’s voice came out of an intercom. “You know so much more than we do.”
“Hi, Green!” Ralani greeted him happily. “When did you you get here?”
“Just now,” ^Green* replied. “How are you feeling?” Ralani told him and they chatted until Lilla and Serafyma arrived. Sue and Eesai came by a few minutes later and Ralani remarked how good it was to be out of Intensive Care so she could visit with all her friends at once.
“So when do we ship out, Skipper?” Ralani asked Eesai.
“In two or three weeks,” Eesai admitted. “Sue is taking Meriwether II to Treloi in a few days so if you want to send any letters home, you can start writing.”
“I imagine I had better,” Ralani remarked. “If the press is covering my injury here, it is likely to be deemed newsworthy on Treloi as well and Mom and Dad will be frantic.
It was much later that night, after all the others had left that #Yellow@ came in to see Ralani. She clumped in, wearing her mechanical body, so Ralani had something to look at while speaking. “It’s after visiting hours,” #Yellow@ explained, “but I wanted to talk to you alone and as a doctor of sorts it seems I can come in here late if I like.”
“I couldn’t sleep anyway,” Ralani replied, turning off the Vid.
“Well, I think I need to apologize,” #Yellow@ told her.
“What?” Ralani asked. “For just rushing in and putting out the fire in my brain? I should find a better way than words to thank you.”
“No, not that,” #Yellow@ denied. “It was during my initial probes into your brain. I kept getting stray images and thoughts; your memories on thousands of topics. It was very distracting, but after a while I figured out how to tune that out.”
“Sorry about that,” Ralani shrugged.
“Don’t be,” #Yellow@ told her. “The thing is, it was a horrible invasion of your privacy.”
“Couldn’t be helped, I’m sure,” Ralani told her.
“Maybe,” #Yellow@ allowed, “but I know how to avoid it in the future. However I am not capable of forgetting any of it. It’s like I had some of you inside me. I’m remembering things I never did and it’s a little confusing. Although it is interesting to know what it feels like to have a physical body. What I’m getting at is I feel a connection with you of a sort no Vola has ever experienced. And from you I know a lot about Terralano customs. Ralani, could you use another sister?”
“Ensign Ralani Di Lasai reporting for duty, Skipper,” Ralani greeted Eesai as she walked up the ramp to Meriwether I’s main hatch. Ralani had donned her uniform for the occasion. She had not worn it frequently since leaving Treloi, and on Sue’s ship she had more often worn the unofficial Meriwether, Inc. uniform, but somehow it seemed right that she be dressed in crisp military fashion when boarding her assigned ship for the first time. “Permission to come aboard?”
Eesai grinned. “Permission granted, Ensign. What’s with the formality? And crew doesn’t have to ask permission, you know.”
“Well, officially I’m not crew until I’ve been boarded,” Ralani shrugged. “So when do we lift and where should I be?”
“I hear you’re a fair pilot for a rank beginner,” Eesai smiled, “and we need an assistant pilot. You’ll have the second watch there, but be up on the bridge to work with Tommy Holtz for lift-off as well. In the meantime I have a more important job for you. See that lad coming across the tarmac?”
“Lad? He looks about my age,” Ralani observed. The young man was carrying a duffel bag over his shoulder similar in nature to the one Ralani had.
“He’s our new assistant engineer,” Eesai told her. “Peter DeCosta. I met him in Brazil last week and on my recommendation Clark hired him.
“Captain Eesai, ma’am!” Peter saluted her.
“Work with him,” Eesai told Ralani waving a half-hearted salute in Peter’s direction. “I’ll be up on the bridge.”
“Hi,” Ralani began. “I’m…”
“Ralani Di Lasai!” Peter finished. “Wow! I’ve seen you on the Vid. I didn’t know you were on this ship.”
“Everyone has to be somewhere,” Ralani chuckled as she led him inside the ship. “Come on, let’s go find you a cabin then I‘ll show you down to Engineering. Have you met Erich yet? He’ll be your boss. Oh! Hi, Sera!” she called to her sister who was just coming out to the hatch.
“Cutting it a little close, aren’t we?” Serafyma asked archly.
“Malana called,” Ralani explained. “Couldn’t very well brush her off even if I wanted to, which I didn’t. I’d still be planet-bound if it weren’t for her training sessions.”
“Well, we do have an hour yet,” Serafyma admitted. “Who’s this?” Ralani introduced Peter. “Nice to meet you,” Serafyma told him. “Welcome aboard. Ralani, why don’t I take your bag to your cabin.” She reached for it, but as Ralani let go of the heavy bag, Serafyma accidentally dropped it on Peter’s foot.
After all the apologies and Serafyma had hurried off, Ralani laughed and told the slightly limping Peter, “Well, I think that’s your official initiation. Sera’s a bit of a klutz, I fear and we’ve all sported a bruise or two on her account.”
“So where are these Volano I hear about?” Peter asked.
“Well two of them are staying on Earth,” Ralani explained. “Blue has a security business going that is generating a lot of credit for the Volano in general and Yellow is engaged in medical research.”
“^Green* and I are onboard, though,” xRed~ told her via a nearby intercom. “Hello, Mister DeCosta. Welcome aboard.”
“That’s Red,” Ralani explained. “Red, I forgot to ask where Peter’s cabin is. Do you know?”
xRed~ replied, “No but I can find out.”
It was sometime later, just before lift off that Ralani finally made it to her station on Eesai’s bridge. “Still dressed for parade are we?” Eesai asked.
“Haven’t had a chance to change into something more comfortable, Skipper,” Ralani admitted.
“You can do so once we’re clear of orbit then,” Eesai decided.
“I think you look very good like that, Ralani,” ^Green* told her. He was speaking through one of the Comm station’s speakers. “The uniform suits you.”
“Thanks, Green, but dress uniforms are never comfortable,” Ralani explained. “I can take it for a couple hours though. It serves me right for trying to impress the new boss.”
“You did okay,” Eesai admitted. “However, you are not wearing the correct rank insignia. You are technically out of uniform.”
“I’m an ensign,” Ralani commented. “I’m weraring an ensign’s insignia.”
“Not any more,” Eesai laughed. She picked up a printout and handed it to Ralani. “That just came in a few minutes ago. You’ve been promoted and put on the command track. Congratulations, Third SubCaptain.”
“Really?” Ralani asked. “Wow! And thanks. Hey! That means a higher pay grade, doesn’t it? Hmm, it just occurred to me that I don’t actually get paid until we go to Treloi, do I?”
“Not normally, no,” Eesai told her, “but Clark’s giving you ten shares in Meriwether, Inc. as a belated graduation gift, and we do pay even our military interns. You’ll be able to buy lunch when you need to. In fact you were paid from your trip on Meriwether II.”
“Was I?” Ralani asked. “I don’t remember that.”
“I deposited it in your bank account on Terra,” Lilla told her. “And before you ask, that was established by one of the papers you signed when you first arrived on Earth. All salary is paid directly into a bank account. You aren’t the first Lano to arrive without a Terran account, so the company makes the arrangements for a savings account with the First Confedation Bank of Terra. You should have received a transaction card to go with it.”
“I might have,” Ralani admitted, “but I got so much stuff shoved at me, I just tossed it in my cabin’s desk drawer.”
“You didn’t leave it on Sue’s ship, did you?” Lilla asked concernedly.
“I’m not that forgetful!” Ralani laughed. “All that stuff is in my duffle just now. When I get a chance, I’ll see what it all is. It’s not like I’ll need much money for a while. Come to think of it, I never needed it while we were on Earth.”
“Most of your trips were paid for by the company,” Lilla replied. “Sera and I paid for your personal jaunts.”
“Oh, I guess I owe you two then,” Ralani told her. “I’ll make it up to you. I promise, and I guess it’s a good thing I have something from Meriwether, Inc. ‘cause who knows how long it will be before I get back to Treloi. But now we’re heading back to your home, Green. Excited?”
“I’m looking foreward to it,” ^Green* replied, “but I won’t be staying, of course.”
“No?” Ralani asked. “Why not?”
“Skipper,” Lilla reported, “we have final clearance to lift in five minutes.”
“Acknowledged,” Eesai nodded. “Inform Erich in Engineering.”
“Aye aye, Skipper,” Lilla replied.
“I obviously will have to return to Terra,” ^Green* replied, “and bring as many Volano with me as I can find who will want to come. This is going to mean a lot of changes to Volano society, you know.”
“How so?” Ralani asked.
“Tommy,” Eesai asked, “you have our course laid in?”
“Just putting the final corrections in now, Skipper,” Tommy replied. “You know none of the big planets are in the right part of the sky. We’re going to have to boost to speed without the help of a gravity sling.”
“Well,” ^Green* answered Ralani’s question, “we’ve never even known there were other worlds. Now, however, I think many young Volano will want to come to the Terralano worlds and work, but I’ve read about Earth’s history and this could turn out to be like the Industrial Revolution.”
“Can’t be helped,” Eesai replied to Tommy. “I’ve always thought the whole nonsence of using gas giants for a boost was a hold over from the early days of space travel anyway.”
“The Industrial Revolution?” Ralani asked. “You mean because you will be bringing back new ideas and things to use, like robot bodies?”
“Well, that, yes,” ^Green* agreed, “the robot bodies of various designs will allow us to explore the places in the Deep that even heralds cannot penetrate and that will add to our knowledge, and ideas always change things, but I meant that during the Industrial Revolution on Earth when so many people moved out of the country and into the cities. It spelled the final end of what was left of the old feudal system.
“No one realized that at first, of course,” ^Green* continued. “It was just that the jobs in the cities paid better than working the land, but soon whole towns had been depopulated as people moved to where the money was. Soon there were far fewer people working the land and the old landlord system collapsed.
“That sort of thing will happen in my world too,” ^Green* went on, “but I think it would turn out for the best. It may be that most civilized Volano won’t want to leave, but the barbarians might be interested, but I think more than we can carry will want to go.”
“A few shiploads will hardly depopulate your nebula, Green,” Eesai told him.
“One minute and counting,” Lilla reported.
“Of course not, Captain,” ^Green* agreed, “but I’m in negotiation for a ship of my own. It seems to me that if there are multiple worlds on which Terralano can live, there must be nebula worlds in which Volano can live. We can colonize just as Terralano do.”
“Your nebula is very unusual,” Eesai commented. “You may not be able to find another.”
“Possible,” ^Green* allowed, “but it might turn out most dense nebulae are inhabitable. The thrill will be in the exploring.”
“So will Volano ships carry only Volano?” Ralani asked as Lilla started counting down the final seconds until liftoff.”
“It’s true we can fly your ships by ourselves,” ^Green* replied as Meriwether I’s engines whipped up into a roar and the ship began to lift, “but it will be a lot more fun to have Terralano on board!”