Precursor

by C. J. Cherryh

  He walked through into a cubbyhole of a hall section, with four open doors facing one another, before the hall ended in a more ordinary security door.

  They’d kept the room assignments equivalent, at least, a little diplomatic evenhandedness, Bren said to himself. The numbers involved could set atevi teeth on edge; but the Mospheirans would be quite happy in them, two and two, he supposed, like the fabled ark.

  Feldman came out to meet them with a mild gesture toward the farther right hand door. “Mr. Cameron. If you please.”

  “Thank you,” Bren said.

  “Shall I wait, sir?” Kaplan asked.

  “If you would, Kaplan, please. —Would you mind giving this very obliging gentleman a cup of tea, Mr. Feldman?”

  “We don’t have any tea, sir,” Feldman said.

  “Then, Kaplan, would you walk back to our quarters and ask my chief of staff if he’d provide a generous packet of tea for the Mospheiran delegation?”

  Kaplan began to obey that order, then looked taken aback. “He doesn’t understand me, sir.”

  “Feldman, go with Kaplan. Translate. For that matter, take Shugart with you. Get some exercise.”

  “I don’t know if we—” Feldman began, looked at Kaplan, looked at Lund, who’d just come out the door. “Mr. Lund, he wants me to take Shugart and get a packet of tea from their quarters.”

  Bren folded hands behind his back, looked down, looked up, and gave Lund a direct look; translators from the Foreign Office were not need-to-know on the proposals he had to make.

  Lund caught the notion that something was up, apparently. “Tea would be welcome,” Lund said. “Go, do that. Both. —Mr. Cameron. Come in.”

  Bren walked back with Lund toward that rear room, while Feldman turned out Shugart and explained the mission; and in the remote recess of his hearing as he walked into the room with Kroger, Feldman and Shugart were explaining tea to Mr. Kaplan.

  “Mr. Cameron.” Kroger was seated at the table. They had not moved tables for the conference. They still had a bed in this room, but had moved in an additional chair, or had moved one out. There were four floor braces, three with chairs, and Bren found himself moderately curious whether the four ate together and interacted in this room, or whether it was routinely two and two. He rather suspected the latter.

  “We’re attempting to secure tea,” Bren said lightly as he slid into the third chair. “Good day, Ms. Kroger. Ginny.”

  “You’re up to something, Mr. Cameron.”

  Lund swiveled a chair and sat down, the three of them at indecently close range at the little table, if they should lean forward. Bren did exactly that, arms on the table, and watched Kroger lean back.

  “I’ve just sent to Mospheira and to the mainland, and I think things are going very well. Talks went very well yesterday, frighteningly well, in fact; and I have a proposal for you.”

  “The nature of which, Mr. Cameron, if you please.”

  “The nature of which is very commercial. The Pilots’ Guild wants a functioning station. Commerce of an atevi pattern is very dubiously suited to a human ship’s needs; they hardly want artworks or tea services. It does strike me, instead, that if we’re to set up this station to function as it might, according to the historical capacity of large commercial stations—”

  “We’re talking about a war, Mr. Cameron, their war with these damned aliens.”

  “Eventually. Perhaps even sooner than we wish.”

  “We don’t wish, Mr. Cameron. We don’t ever wish!”

  “Nor do we. But the commercial potential of this station…”

  “We’re talking about invasion and murder and a damnable atevi tendency to settle their disputes by assassinating the opposition!”

  He blinked several times, considering that forceful declaration of Kroger’s position. He did not retreat, rather leaned where he was.

  And smiled. “Very precisely. War. Stupid, mistaken war. We don’t want that sort of thing, either, I assure you. Atevi have absolutely no interest in dockside concessions, entertainment, or other things that one human community can very readily provide another… do you know Mr. Kaplan out there had not a clue what a tea service is?” Jase had come down to the planet relatively ignorant of varieties of food, having experienced very little in the way of fresh produce. “The potential market, fellow humans, the extension of island companies to the station—do you know there’s not a single teashop, no paid entertainment, no pay for anyone on the ship, and no clothes that aren’t simply drawn from ship’s stores?” He had had the picture from Jase, and reckoned that Yolanda had likely explained that matter on the island fairly thoroughly. “Think of these yellow hallways endlessly extended, no commercial zone, no such thing, not even a soft drink dispenser? We could well do with a SunDrink stand.”

  “You’re talking nonsense, Mr. Cameron.”

  He didn’t let his smile vary. “They want us to build a ship.”

  “Build a ship,” Kroger echoed, and blinked.

  “The aiji’s effectively agreed.” It was so, since the aiji had sent him to make agreements, and he had made them. “However… wherever there are increases in personnel, supply is a problem; franchises for station operation, for, say, SunDrink, Inc., would be a fairly valuable commodity. Atevi happen to like it moderately well. Especially given the difficulties of transporting fresh juice.”

  “We’re not empowered to agree to human personnel up here. We’re against it.”

  “Atevi, however, are interested in this shipbuilding. In mining. You don’t need to do these things. I believe we’ve tried to make that clear. But these halls filled with workers simply drawing uninspired rations from some ship’s store… atevi simply won’t put up with that sort of thing. Think rather of human industry supplying a vital commercial zone, with all interested companies selling goods and services tailored to crew and, of course, an increasing dockfront presence…”

  “They don’t have currency.”

  “Oh, but that, that can be solved. Think of Port Freedom carried into orbit, think of stores, shops… Isn’t that what the stations used to be? Isn’t that our historical image of the station?”

  “We’ve got a damned alien menace out there!”

  “I don’t think it’s arriving next week, or if it is, we’re absolutely hopeless. We’re not going to fold up shop and refuse to develop because we’re anticipating being blown to hell. I’m quite serious in this. Atevi prefer fruit juice to yeast cultures. There’s a thousand or so people in orbit who have never had a cup of tea. I’m told the food is no inspiration at all.”

  “Understatement,” Lund said with a small twitch of the shoulders.

  “A modern economy is not monofocused. You can see there’s a market for a widening humans-in-orbit population. Everyone who wants to go up, can go, so long as they have a job to do up here.”

  “What side are you on, Mr. Cameron?” Ginny Kroger asked.

  “The aiji’s. There’s not a single item of the aiji’s business that proposal interferes with. Pizza definitely has a future on the mainland, but atevi generally find the Mospheiran diet quite bland and far too heavy on the sugars. Not to mention their absolute rejection of the meat preservation industry, which they have absolutely no desire to emulate. It would be ethically and morally ruinous to them to try. There’s not going to be any objection whatsoever to Mospheiran companies ex-panding to in-orbit operations, small now, very small, but increasingly important as the population up here increases, and it will. I’m sure it will.”

  “What do you get out of it? What does the aiji get?”

  “What do the atevi get? A sizable orbital population of their own which they’ll maintain, in their own ways. We’re not going to crowd one another, not up here, not in this whole wide solar system. We can engineer our unique facilities, each do what we do best, both benefit.”

  “And what about these aliens?”

  “They haven’t shown up yet. They may never. They may come tomorrow. In the one inst
ance we have no problem worth worrying about. In the other, our whole discussion may be moot, but in the eventuality we have time to do something, I suggest there’s a great deal we can do. First, take possession of our shared orbital space. We know how to do it. Our economies have been interlocked for two hundred years, increasingly so in the last several decades; it was a decision of several administrations to allow what we called independent but interlocked…”

  “Not living interlocked.”

  “Nor living interlocked here, either, not changing our ways of doing things. Respecting our separate ways. You noticed that rather substantial door out there…”

  “You’re proposing to set doors between our two populations.”

  “As we reconstruct this station, yes. Two separate authorities; we do the gross construction, and the mining, which atevi do very well. You do the interior refurbishment and start the cycle of light industry up here which can make the shipments to and from the planet profitable. The atevi economy can support more heavy construction below and provide a certain amount of raw materials supply; but the very part of the economy that serves dense, linear human populations, the food preservation and the mass-production approach to manufacturing… all that is completely alien to the atevi economy and hurtful to their psychology. We proved that in the War. We also proved over the last two hundred years that we can interlock our efforts up here, profitably, sensibly, and get that linear multiplication of population linked into a prosperous economy. I’ve had some very substantive agreements with Guild authorities; they’re willing to make gestures of goodwill on their side… I think there’s every opportunity for us both to make sensible agreements with the Guild.”

  “We’re here to study that,” Lund said.

  “Tom, agreements are on the table. I’m here to make firm commitments. And I know my responsibility to the aiji; I know he’ll honor agreements I make with you. I’m proposing them.”

  “We’re not empowered to negotiate with the Guild, let alone with you.”

  “What’s this, ‘Let alone with me’? We’ve been negotiating for two hundred years. That’s what I do. That’s what my office is. We collectively, in this room, are the planet. What’s more, I know the State Department, I know Tyers on a personal basis;you take notes back to him; you talk to the President, personally; you just hand the government a workable agreement and trust they’ll get it through the committees with their recommendation.”

  “Mr. Cameron,” Kroger said shortly, “you can omit to tell us our business.”

  “Bren,” he said with a fixed smile.

  “Mr. Cameron, —we have instructions from the Secretary. We can manage.”

  “I’d be damn surprised if he knew I was coming up here, since I didn’t know it, although who knows? He’s very sharp. He might have guessed. Did he give you instructions regarding cooperation with me?”

  “Damn you, Mr. Cameron! —No, he didn’t.”

  He smiled his smallest, gentlest smile. “Take it from me that I regard him as a friend… that word, which I don’t use on the mainland.”

  “I’m gratified you still recognize it,” Kroger said, not pleasantly.

  “I do. Believe me. You’re from Science. Tom, from Commerce. You’re not Tyers’ personal picks. I think you might be someone the President relies on.” This with a look at Tom Lund, who didn’t immediately deny it. “But you’re out of Science.” A glance directly at Kroger, who sat thin-lipped and furious. Then he cast a deliberate sop to pride and party. “The scientific point of view. I don’t expect decisions until there’s proof.”

  “Exactly, Mr. Cameron.”

  “I respect that, Ms. Kroger. A fair mind-set, sharp judgment, objective examination of the facts. The Mospheiran point of view… you’re not a friend of Shawn Tyers; not of the President, either—and a damned good thing,” he added, as Kroger opened her mouth. It was not what she expected. “I think it’s very well if multiple points of view on the island have their independent fact gathering. But I also know that a distinguished member of the Department of Science and Technology, with your background isn’t going to be gathering anything but fact, no matter who appointed you, and anyone who thinks to the contrary isn’t going to find damned much political value in you. You’re no one’s fools, I very much think you’re no one’s fools; certainly not Gaylord Hanks’ fools, no matter what the source of the university’s grants and funding.”

  Kroger’s face actually colored. But she stared eye to eye and leaned forward, her elbows on the table. “Mr. Cameron, you have more gall than any human being I’ve ever encountered. Does that attitude come from the mainland or did you get that out of the University on some grant?”

  “Ms. Kroger, how do you feel about atevi?”

  That brought a slight twitch, a flare of the nostrils, a widening and narrowing of the pupils.

  “How do you feel about them, Mr. Cameron? Damned fond, so I hear.”

  If he didn’t react, it was a miracle. But there was no implication she knew more than the rumor mills said.

  “Entirely. As I have a naive affection for the human species, one I was born with. I’m not going to destroy my species, and I’m not a fool.”

  There was a prolonged staring match—him, and Kroger.

  “Ms. Kroger, I want to deal with your committee. Give me some cooperation.”

  “We haven’t the authority. We weren’t granted the authority, Mr. Cameron.”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time someone’s taken it. Call me Bren. And let’s deal sensibly with the hand we’ve been dealt here. Let’s get this settled. Whether there are aliens out there who give a damn about us one way or the other, we’ve got two halves of the human species in renewed contact, we’ve got the

  atevi who have their first ticket into space, and at this start of everything all of us have a prospect of control over our own destinies if we don’t hand this over to some damn Mospheiran committee for political wrangling. Paralysis follows. —Ginny Kroger, you know that. Represent your view, but for God’s sake, lay it out on the table.“

  The steady, angry gaze shattered like a mirror, became an expression of outright fear.

  “I’m nobody’s fool, Mr. Cameron.”

  “Bren.”

  “Mr. Cameron, sir. You have an island-wide reputation for fast and shady dealing.”

  “Fast dealing. Never other than honest. I intend to maintain that record.”

  “Damn your attitudes, Mr. Cameron!”

  “You’re in charge, aren’t you? Mospheiran committees are always committees, but if they’re ever going to work, they tilt. It’s always understood which way they tilt. Tom, here, won’t be listened to, except by the President and the Secretary of State, who’ll hear him. You have legislative backing. I know damned well where, and you won’t be listened to by the other side. But you still rate yourself independent-minded.”

  “I’m Dr. Ginny Kroger, Mr. Cameron, and I damned well am independent-minded. As you’ll discover!”

  “You’re going to fight. Good. About damned time. So do you take my deal?”

  “God!”

  “It’s a fair deal,” Lund interjected, “if we could rely on it.”

  “I’ll assure you the last thing Tabini-aiji wants is the Sun-Drink concession on this space station. Mospheira and its economy, on the other hand, its whole lifestyle, are set up to use that opportunity and to innovate in its own directions, which is exactly the difference between humans and atevi. You leave our section to us, to the atevi, and you handle trade with the ship, for whatever coin you can get out of them. We’re not going to charge for building the gross structures of the station, or for building the second starship.”

  “You can’t do that! We’re not about to—”

  “We charge, however, for shuttle space. We charge you not in coin, necessarily, but various things which we hope you’ll supply, and those supplies are the matters I hope to start working out with you at least in gross detail before we even return to the p
lanet. Mospheira understands the way to trade with the aishidi’tat. Mospheira knows we’re a very, very different system. We didn’t go bankrupt building the first shuttle; you won’t lose by paying us for seats and cargo room, especially if you deliver contracts to SunDrink and Harbor Tea. We’ll make sure the Mospheiran economy doesn’t run short of grain or fruit. If we’re waiting for an alien invasion, we might as well be comfortable and progressive about it.”

  Lund had leaned forward. Kroger had, too. It was now three heads together. “We’re not talking theory now,” Lund said. “It’s a damn economic miracle you got the shuttle to work at all; I know what went on, on the mainland—”

  “Damned scary,” Kroger said, tight-lipped.

  Bren shook his head. “Not a bit of it aimed at you. That Tabini is in charge of the mainland right now, with the various subassociations all cooperating, is the atevi response to what turned up orbiting over their heads, and a constructive response: build. Compete. Trade. There are far worse responses possible. He does not see it possible to associate humans with the aishidi’tat. It’s not good for the two species, damned sure not good for the atevi; and Tabini frankly doesn’t want you under his rule. By no means does he want to rule Mospheira. He does want to cooperate with you, viewing you as having notably good ideas, amid your nerve-wracking disadvantages to his species. And that’s the most constructive model of our cooperation you’re going to get on short notice, but that’s the economists’ jobs, which they’ve been doing for two hundred years. I know how it can work.”

  “Mr. Cameron,” Kroger said, drawing a large breath.

  “Bren.”

  “Bren, damn you. All right. What’s the gist of it? Lay it out. Let’s see this nonsense.”

  “Delighted,” Bren said. Remote from them, he heard the seal-door open, heard footsteps in the hall, and heard a small disturbance of voices speaking Ragi.

  Then Kaplan, saying, “Just hold right here. Here, you understand? Stop!”

  “Stop here,” he heard Feldman say, in unfortunately impolite terms, but he trusted his staff took it in high good humor.