Friends in the Stars

by Mackey Chandler

  “Some,” Lee agreed. “Eileen is opposed to that. Vic sees it pretty much like a Derf. He’d release them but be artistic about it.”

  “No, making a harsh public example of them would be as bad as execution.”

  “No, no, nothing like that. He rattled off three or four examples. The man can think up new things far faster than he can say them. I remember the last best. He suggested dressing them in funny period clothing from the mid or late twentieth century United States, putting some period money in their pockets and dropping them off in Australia.”

  The Mothers all looked back and forth amongst themselves and cracked up.

  “He is a trickster!” the Third Mother said.

  “He has a very strange sense of humor,” Lee agreed.

  “Then so do we,” the First Mother said. She didn’t take offense at all.

  “I can’t start to predict how that would work out,” Lee said. “They might talk their way back to their masters or they might get locked up in the local insane asylum if they tried to tell the truth. I’m not sure anybody would believe anything they said.

  “That’s the beauty of it,” the First Mother said. She was nodding like she was agreeing with Lee. “You think the Mothers are all about stability and order, but the sameness of it all gets to us sometimes. So that’s our sense of humor when we dare unleash it, sowing chaos! Tell Victor to ‘dispose’ of them as he pleases. I knew there was something I liked about that fellow.”

  That put the Mothers in a good mood, and they ordered a fancy dessert brought out to share. Lee enjoyed it and let them settle down before she spoke again.

  “I’m going to take my new ship on a shake-down cruise to Providence,” Lee informed the Mothers. “Do you have anything you need taken to your survey crew or anything brought back?”

  “We are supplying their food,” the First Mother said. “Part of their survey is to find what local items are edible and do some test plantings of our own things. They have identified some local plants, but so far nothing in the way of local animals are edible. They are trying out several Derf crops as well as some Earth items, but we are being very cautious about introducing invasive species with which the local organisms can’t compete. We really regret introducing Earth swine to Derfhome and don’t want to repeat that mistake. They are nowhere near being able to support themselves locally.

  “If you could take some field rations to them that would be helpful, dear. They took supplies for a year with them, and they have only been gone a bit more than a half year, but better to stay ahead of their needs than run short. We have some things they will appreciate as a taste of home, but I will put an order into our supplier of preserved rations in Derfhome, Capital Provisions. They weren’t expected to report back so soon, but I’m sure they will have maps and reports for you to bring back already. I imagine they have filled out a lot of detail to the satellite surveys.

  “I have a young fellow on an agricultural track who has been petitioning us to go to Providence,” the First Mother said. “I’m afraid if we don’t send him, he’s going to walk away and go to town. He’s a really bright cub, if a bit pushy, and we’d like to retain him. If you could take him along that would be a kindness, to both of us. If any of the team there are unhappy and want to exchange with him, bring one back, please. If not, I’m sure they will find work to keep six busy.”

  Lee nodded and struggled to keep from grinning. The fact the mothers were breaking down and making any kind of accommodation to keep good people from going to town and forsaking clan life thrilled her. She and Gordon worked for that quietly and behind the scenes, not wanting to provoke any sort of open conflict.

  “Do they have a sat phone so we can tell them we are coming when we get to the station and it’s a local call?” Lee asked.

  “It never occurred to us to give them one,” the First Mother said.

  Lee thought of all the possibilities of injury and need a survey team on an isolated island could encounter but said nothing. It wasn’t much different than the hunting parties the clan sent out every fall. They were just on their own for months. But it didn’t have to be that way now. She hoped they didn’t avoid giving them a phone for fear they’d become accustomed to having it and expect it back home.

  “I’ll leave one with them,” Lee said, not asking permission. “It would be so much more convenient if we could call them from orbit next time before showing up and know if they needed particular items before we get all the way out to their site.”

  She didn’t even mention the safety aspects for fear she’d lose her temper. The Mothers didn’t object, probably because she presented it as being for her convenience. They didn’t even ask for her to supply them the com codes.

  “We have four Derf sized seats we can switch in or out with the Human-sized ones. I’ll have them switch out one of the rears for your guy. There’s already one in the front for Gordon,” Lee said.

  “How will you get out to the island from the spaceport?” the Third Mother asked.

  “We’ll take a commercial shuttle down and buy or rent transport that will reach the island. I have no idea what is available, but it’s a class A world undergoing early development, so there must be a ton of options. I may not be able to haul your goods out in the same vessel, but we’ll hire that too. They aren’t delicate, so if we need them to be airdropped that’s fine too. How did your survey team go to the island?

  “We gave them an ample letter of credit and trusted them to make local arrangements,” the Second Mother said. “There wasn’t that much detail in the Claims Commission prospectus. Since they didn’t get back to us we assume they didn’t find any problem with which they couldn’t deal.”

  Lee was torn between seeing that as being very complimentary to the Mothers trust in their people and being depraved indifference. They could micro-manage the pickiest little things in the Keep, and yet send a crew off to act independently. If she could ever figure out which way they would act at any given moment it would be a real gift.

  “You intend this vessel as a diplomatic courier, correct?” The First Mother asked.

  Lee answered very carefully. The Mothers could be sensitive of their prerogatives and wouldn’t hesitate to rebuke her if she overstepped.

  “Yes, if you call me to serve again, I’ll use it that way. I feel the need of my own ship, and I can’t keep asking the loan of the Sharp Claws every time I act for you. But it’s only a diplomatic vessel when I have an assignment. I would only declare it to traffic control or sovereign states as a diplomatic vessel when an ambassador or voice is using it for official business. It would be overstepping to declare special status and expect special clearance for something like a personal visit to Fargone to visit my home there.”

  “Your personal modesty is exemplary,” the First Mother allowed, “but I’m less willing than you to expect people to make such a distinction. Better not to confuse them. In a critical situation, they may hesitate to treat you correctly if you’ve appeared to them before as a private vessel. Better to be consistent in how you present yourself with the majority of people who unfortunately are either shallow thinkers or officious. If a situation like these spies targeting you happens again, maybe a clear status will be a protection. If it lets you get an occasional perk traded off our reputation we shall not begrudge it of you. Present yourself as our Voice as you go about all your business so they are accustomed to treating you that way.”

  “That is generous of you. I will be especially careful of my behavior since it will reflect on your reputation as well as my own.”

  The Second Mother laughed. “If we ever need to appoint a minister of propriety, we’ll free you from your other duties for the post.”

  The other two looked amused too.

  Lee wasn’t sure if they were complimenting her or reproving her as too strict.

  “Here, we were saving this until we had another assignment for you,” the First Mother said. “But take it now.”

  She tossed
a square rod sized to fit Lee’s hand across the table. It looked very much like the seal the Mothers sent with her to negotiate with Central but smaller. That seal was yellow with age and stained on the end from making inked impressions. This one was crème colored and polished, but it was the fresh polish of something buffed to a satin finish by a craftsman. The other older one she’d used had the patina of being handled by a hundred generations until it was as smooth as glass.

  “A copy?” Lee asked. That would make sense. She’d wondered what they would do if they needed their seal while she was away carrying it. Even as safe as ships were now it made Lee nervous to be carrying an irreplaceable historic artifact off-planet.

  “No, a new thing,” the First Mother said. “Can you read the inscription yet? Have you gotten that far along, or do you just have spoken Derf?”

  The writing was fancy, not like machine printing and a bit harder to read. It was engraved in a recess in the material and stained. Lee thought the old seal was bone, but this made her rethink that.

  “This side is my name!” Lee said, shocked.

  “Almost,” the First Mother agreed. “But that symbol at the end means the first.”

  Lee rolled it over and read the opposite side.

  “I can read Voice, but that’s all,” Lee admitted.

  “It names you first Voice for Red Tree to other peoples. We debated our word for species, but we don’t really speak to the wild creatures, so people it is. We don’t have a word that translates well for race. That gets so misused in English that some might claim long and short-haired Derf are different races. Two sides are blank so if you need to pass it to a successor or some significant event needs to be noted it can be added. Our seal is to deal with other clans, and now with the trade cities and businesses. This wasn’t sort of seal wasn’t needed in the past when we didn’t know other thinking people, but there is need of it now.

  “If you are going to go about in public as our Voice, even when you don’t have a mission assigned, you should have a symbol of office. If something or someone requires you to assert that authority for us, you have this as proof, even to those who do not know us yet. Who knows what or who you will run into on your travels?”

  Lee clutched the little carving against her breast and quietly wept.

  “I am not unhappy,” she choked out.

  “We would not mistake it for that,” the Third Mother assured her.

  * * *

  “I see something that might work as a cover operation,” Pamela told Undersecretary Wilson at their next meeting, “the Derf like sweet flavors. They have some naturally sweet crops themselves, but nothing that lends itself to large scale efficient production.

  “They have adapted the sugar beet but have resisted adapting sugar cane because it might become invasive. But take a look at their imports and what they spend for honey.”

  “Wow, why didn’t that jump out at us?” Wilson asked. “They spend more to import honey than any other foodstuff, almost as much as information services or electronics.”

  “I’m going to make an assumption here, that I need to research,” Pamela said. “I’d bet the Derf heard insect and couldn’t imagine they could import bees without the same risk of them going invasive that they worried about with sugar cane.”

  “Actually, I’d have assumed the same thing myself,” Wilson admitted. “They’re little, they fly. It seems like once you let a bunch of them loose you’d never get them all back. To add to the horror of the whole thing, they sting.”

  “That’s because you have no idea about their biology or the art of beekeeping. Since I saw these numbers I’ve learned more about bees and beekeeping than I ever wanted to know. I was also careful to ascertain that besides introduced Earth plants, there are flowering plants that have what passes for nectar on Derfhome as well. If the bees will accept them and thrive is something we’d simply have to try. That doesn’t mean I want to get anywhere near them personally. But to make a long, complicated, story short, they don’t reproduce outside the hive. If you control the hive you have full control of them. The only way you’d have them get loose is when an entire hive splits and a new hive swarms out with a new queen who does all the reproduction.”

  Wilson looked skeptical. “And how do you control that? Put a cork in it?”

  “Basically yeah, but we can do it in a little more sophisticated way. By keeping all the hives separated from each other inside a building, with access to the outside through a controlled port. There are clear signs a hive is getting ready to swarm and when they show that is near you shut off their access to the outside and give them access to another hive you have prepared for them. They make spray cans of attractant pheromones. You give the new hive a little shot of that and the scout bees know right where to go.

  “Indeed, I have been assured that even if one escaped, a beekeeper can find a hive in the wild by offering honey to steal and triangulating the hive position from their flight path. An experienced beekeeper can monitor each hive with internal cameras and sensors. Indeed, that will be his primary job. He can get helpers for other things.”

  “And nobody else has figured this out?” Wilson asked.

  “Apparently not, and I can see why. The industry has become increasingly difficult. They’ve had to maintain quality and production while the natural habitat on Earth has declined, and the nature of farming changed in ways unfavorable to them. Why should they ruin one of their best-paying markets by exporting production?” Pamela said.

  “But we’ll be destroying that market if we succeed,” Kirk pointed out. “People will get upset with us even if it isn’t a huge industry.”

  “That’s why we’ll do it as a private venture,” Eric said. “We have no logical reason to do it as an official trade mission. We’ll launder the funds and send you as a private business. The amount involved will be easy to cover. I could never say so publicly, but I buy honey for my mother as a gift. It’s ridiculously expensive. It wouldn’t hurt my feelings to see a little price drop on increased local supply.”

  “Don’t ask me to go,” Todd said. “I’m allergic. I got stung as a kid and almost died.”

  “No problem,” Wilson said. “We’ll send our associate who has studied up and is the most familiar with bees.”

  “I already figured out I was volunteering if I proposed the idea,” Pamela said.

  Chapter 7

  “The actual bare disks will spin up to three hundred thousand RPM with a good safety margin,” Born said. “The material we deposit has to be mechanically locked to the surface by the machining marks. So it will deliberately have a rough finish. If we deposit too thick a layer it may creep or even strip off when spun up. But the containment is designed to hold a failed disk and make cleaning the fragments out fairly easy.”

  “It looks like a heavy-duty washing machine,” Musical said. “At least it doesn’t take up much room like the other machine.”

  “I have a supply cabinet on order to hold the current run of disks we’re testing right next to the machine,” Born said, pointing out the spot.

  “You’re not going to fit much more in here,” Musical warned.

  “That’s why I rented the storage room,” Born said.

  * * *

  The young Derf the Mothers sent her was so small Lee thought him a female at first glance. The more she looked though, there were hints in the shape of his face and body that he simply didn’t have his full growth. Likewise, his enthusiasm was a sign of his youth. He showed up at her door this morning, the same day they were to lift, after an early morning plane ride. That was probably so the Mothers could save the cost of a room for him overnight. She had their hospitality at the Keep. Lee wondered if they would really be shy to claim the same favor and impose a house guest on her?

  Not that he seemed tired from his flight. He was simply raving about being allowed to go off world. Lee hoped he would run down a little after they actually lifted. It could get a bit wearing if he stayed that hyper the w
hole way. Lee didn’t see his enthusiasm as pushy, but she could see how the Mothers would find it that way in short order.

  He had a name picked for dealing with Humans, Mike, although the only Human he really knew was Gwen, the vet who Gordon provided to Red Tree clan. Gwen brought modern Human medicine to the clan in a much more acceptable way than Human MDs.

  When asked who was his namesake was, he explained that he just like the sound of the name and didn’t have anyone in mind. After thinking on it, Lee realized he had little access to human history and culture living at the Keep to have picked a namesake human. That was different than the usual custom, but Lee didn’t see how she could fault it. Humans were often unacquainted with namesakes from very specialized professions or obscure historical figures anyway.

  At least Mike didn’t embarrass them when they took a commercial shuttle up to Derfhome station. He either used up all his enthusiasm on her this morning, or had more sense than she’d expected him to possess about how to act in public. To Lee’s relief, He settled right down when Gordon swung by in an auto-cab and picked them up. You might have thought he’d taken the shuttle to Derfhome station a dozen times. Gordon hadn’t seen Mike’s enthusiasm this morning before they met up to lift. Lee decided it would be unkind to mention it. It seemed to be a one-time display of youthful nervousness that might needlessly make Gordon distrust him.

  The Kurofune was docked at Derfhome station for the convenience of loading the Mothers’ freight. Lee had one of the shipbuilders dock it a day earlier to facilitate the transfer. Red Tree had a couple of tribe members on station duty to supervise loading and maintain a lock guard on it until they arrived. It was worth the docking fee not to waste a day to deal with it.

  Lee was just as happy not to have to deal with not only their freight, but getting Mike aboard in zero-g. The Kurofune hung nose to the station vertically with much less convenient access than a big ship, but still easier than dealing with a floundering newbie who'd never been in a suit before. There would be plenty of time for him to learn a minimal proficiency along the way.