Friends in the Stars

by Mackey Chandler

  Jeff looked at his palm, then out across the city at the buildings in lengthening shadows. “Maybe eight centimeters at a hundred meters?” he guessed.

  “About, call it three out of five shafts at a hundred and twenty,” Strangelove said.

  “My jacket is soft armor,” Jeff said. “I wonder if it would stop such an arrow?”

  “It may stop it but blunt force trauma is still a problem,” Strangelove said.

  “Less so than you might think,” Jeff said. “It’s made of a very advanced materials and has layers that distribute the force over a much larger area than before.”

  “Then let me know if there is anything the Mothers can offer in trade to buy the secret of such a thing,” Strangelove said.

  “At this time it is a rarity among Humans, but I promise I will find out what it would take to produce it for Derf,” Jeff said. “I don’t believe the Foy’s have such garments yet, and I should speak to my Sovereign about that.”

  “That’s interesting,” Strangelove said, “we are both under females. I understand that isn’t always the case with Humans. I saw that learning English.”

  “Yes, there are both Kings and Queens. But if you don’t mind I’d like to go back in and shower. If you are staying with me would you accompany me to dinner? If, as Eileen mentioned there is a restaurant in the hotel that serves at this hour, that would do fine. Do you want to accompany us?” Jeff asked the Foys.

  “No thank you,” Eileen declined. “We’ll let you get adjusted to the local time and interrogate your native guide. You call us when you need us to do something and we’ll attend to our usual business until then. You can get served in your rooms too if you’d rather,” she added.

  “Maybe later, I wouldn’t learn anything that way,” Jeff said.

  “We’ll let ourselves out. No need to run your vehicle to take us home,” Eileen told Strangelove. “The car company we use is nearby and a one way is cheaper since they will find a paying fare on our end of town.”

  Strangelove just nodded agreement.

  Jeff had planned to brief the Foys on what he intended to offer Lee, but the presence of Strangelove made him hesitate to do that. If they were curious they could have asked at the airport. He didn’t want Lee told his intent ahead with time to think of demands and objections. It wouldn’t be that long anyway, tomorrow hopefully.

  * * *

  “Well crap! They slipped past me,” Sam said. “The Foys are leaving the Old Hotel, but I didn’t see them take their car service there.”

  “Maybe they got a stinky car or something and switched services,” Bill said.

  Bill didn’t appear to be doing anything, and Sam thought about asking him why he didn’t lend a hand, but decided against it and just started searching himself.

  * * *

  Jeff didn’t call ahead, he just walked down to the restaurant with Strangelove and presented himself at the door. He was surprised when the Maître d’ knew him by name and walked them across the room to a table set for on Human and one Derf. The dining room was fairly busy near sundown, Derf outnumbering Humans.

  “I wonder if Eileen warned them we were coming? They seemed to have a table waiting for us,” Jeff asked Strangelove.

  “I doubt it. I’d expect they grabbed a photo of your face or a short video of you as soon as you checked in and distributed it to every worker. The restaurant probably has your photo, and that of everyone else renting a suite displayed behind the reservation desk where you couldn’t see. I’d imagine all the security people have a guest image on their pad too.”

  “I didn’t see any security people.”

  “Good, that means they are doing their job really well,” Strangelove said.

  The room had a golden glow that matched the late day sun he’d just seen outside. The antique lighting fixtures held clusters of glass globes with glowing filaments inside. The lighting was shifted to the yellow so hard Jeff suspected the table cloth was white, but it looked a pale gold. Similarly, the utensils looked like gold instead of white metal. He picked the fork up and tried to judge if it was stainless or sterling and couldn’t tell. There were no hallmarks on the back to help him.

  “These are nice to create a period atmosphere,” Jeff said, of the bulbs, “but I wonder if they still make replacements for when these burn out?”

  Strangelove looked amused. Jeff was able to see that already. The corner of his mouth curled a little just like a Human, but his eyes got bigger instead of squinting.

  “That might be a concern, but some of the bulbs that were put in use the first few decades electric lighting became available are still in use. They tend to last until they meet a hard floor or similar fate, and shatter rather than burn out. People still use them claiming the light is more relaxing and conducive to romance. People who like clutter display them with rocks and seashells and other pretty things on a shelf, so they don’t get thrown away. By the time there is any shortage of them I’d bet some enterprising business person starts making them again.”

  “Curios, which is obviously from curiosities,” Jeff said, “or knick-knacks, that’s what you call such little display items in English. I have no idea where that comes from. Spacers tend to put everything away, but I remember one aunt in India… You couldn’t set a drink down, because every flat surface had something displayed on it. What is the filament made of anyway, that it lasts so long?”

  “Some of the earliest ones are cuts of a particular reed, carbonized,” Strangelove said. “They tend to even deeper color. “Most of them now are a different thinner reed. They would make a soup of a special sort of clay with a resin added, blow that through the reed to cover the inside with a ceramic, and carbonize it.”

  “I suppose it isn’t any different than some Humans finding dinner by candlelight as a special treat,” Jeff decided. “But at least I can read the menu just fine. What is Devil’s Horn Soup and why has somebody penciled in a biohazard symbol by it?”

  “They aren’t true peppers, but little black fruit of so similar a shape the name was transposed. About so big,” Strangelove showed with his fingers. “They are theoretically edible by Humans, but a few Humans end up in the local emergency room every year from getting intoxicated and deciding they can snack on them raw.” He did an elaborate shrug. “But we used to get a few every year who decided after a few drinks to go cab surfing. They’d hire a driverless car and send it off after the drunk climbed on top. The challenge was to stay on your feet to the destination. Now all the cars have extra sensors on the roof and won’t move with a rider.”

  Jeff did a facepalm. “What you must think of my species, I can’t imagine.”

  “It’s been… entertaining.”

  The waiter showed up with a pad in hand to send the order directly to the kitchen. Jeff stuck to things he knew. The exotic items were interesting to read about but he was here on business and didn’t need that complicated by a new found allergy or gastric distress. Strangelove seemed to be having difficulty choosing.

  “It’s my treat,” Jeff said to be clear. “It’s not an issue with me and I don’t care if you order expensive items that would be a treat for you. I won’t feel you are taking advantage. There should be some reward for drawing guard duty on the crazy Human.”

  “Thank you. I have a Red Tree payment card, and a small personal allowance everybody gets living in the City, but the Mothers are notoriously… frugal. I have a couple of silver dollars Ceres in my pocket, but that won’t buy an appetizer here, not even the Human portion.”

  Freed of those constraints by Jeff he ordered quickly.

  “These things seem contradictory to me,” Jeff said. “You are entrusted with nuclear weapons, but aren’t entrusted with pocket money. You’ve seen the classic cult film “Dr. Strangelove”, but I can’t see how you could possibly have the cultural awareness to understand the things in the film. You haven’t studied our history to know about the time period when that film was made and before and after it.

 
“In Human society, at least the Spacer version, you never advance in one thing and stay behind in others. You are expected to have a broad knowledge and make reasoned decisions from a knowledge of history and law and customs. We are entrusted with certain duties and responsibilities in a pretty common sequence. You get the ability to go about in public, to carry money and do business. You get your own friends outside the family. You live on your own and can seek licenses to fly or pilot or run ground cars or heavy equipment. You can get professional certifications or a body of customers. You may marry or join a political group or seek citizenship. It may take a couple of decades to progress from the start to a finish of being independent.”

  That was obviously overwhelming to Strangelove and he was happy the appetizers showed up so he could have a reason to not talk.

  “Of course, that’s where I lived. Central or Home, and The Lunar Republic are all similar. Down on Earth, everything is slower and more tightly regulated. In my father’s day, it used to be fairly easy for a young person to move from home and start living as an adult at eighteen years old. Now in North America, the culture from which Home sprang, it is difficult to do it before you are twenty-four. A lot of businesses won’t hire you before your full majority, and it’s difficult to buy insurance or sign purchase agreements for a house or ground car. You can’t even buy alcohol until you are twenty-four.”

  “How old must you be to be an adult on Central or Home?” Strangelove asked.

  “No set age. The community has to vote to grant you adult status,” Jeff said, “and Heather has vetoed a couple from even being considered they were so ill-regarded.”

  “Dear gods, I know some in the clan who might never get it,” Strangelove said.

  Jeff just smiled and shrugged. “Perhaps that’s safer for everybody, including them.”

  “They showed the nuclear weapons techs in training several Human films dealing with nukes and nuke war. They took a lot of explaining,” Strangelove admitted. “We’d undoubtedly have benefited from a wider study, but what I got was Humans have a deep aversion to using them on the surface of a planet, to the point of almost being a superstition culturally, but deploy them with indifference in space.”

  “That seems a reasonable conclusion,” Jeff said.

  “The fear of nuclear weapons was easy to get from the film, the confusion was from little things that didn’t make any sense. One thing I remember was a strange reluctance to damage a soft drink vending machine in the face of overwhelming need. I had to just let some of it go and embrace understanding the central message,” Strangelove said.

  Jeff nodded understanding. “There was a time people actually worried that if all the weapons held by the Great Powers were used at once it would exterminate life on the planet. Now we know better. It might have killed civilization, but life itself is more resilient than that. We’ve screwed up and released some pretty nasty nuclear accidents contaminating large areas. They make magnificent wildlife preserves because truth be known, getting hunted by Humans or hit by ground cars and freight trucks is a bigger risk to wildlife than a tremendous dose of radiation.”

  “Even with straight roads?” Strangelove asked.

  “Is that the Derf – straining to look innocent face?” Jeff asked.

  “You’re learning this stuff pretty quickly,” Strangelove complimented him.

  Chapter 17

  “Oh ho! The Foys did meet Singh,” Sam said aloud to Bill.

  “Did you think they are aware of your surveillance and hid it from you?”

  “No,” Sam admitted, a little deflated. “They’d have done a better job if they actually knew. It’s just they had a different car company drop a long-term rental off at their door and another car brought a Derf at the same time to be their driver. They rode directly to the port with him in the bigger car. After, they took him to the Old Hotel.”

  “Singh’s visit is a break in their usual routine, so it’s not odd that they do things differently than usual. Did the driver come from the same car company? Or did he arrive in a car from another company? And since Miss Anderson lives in the Old Hotel, does this mean he is visiting her there or is it just a suitable hotel?” Bill asked.

  “I don’t know,” Sam said. He was getting tired of this. Every time he had a few answers Bill had a bigger list of new questions.

  * * *

  “Did the Mothers assign you to drive me and be my bodyguard?” Jeff asked. He was chasing the last bit of apple dumpling around the bowl in which it was served. What he really wondered was if Lee knew he was on-planet, but was working up to that question. He didn’t think he should delay contacting her too long. He hadn’t even told the Foys to delay doing that directly. No harm if they said something to her.

  “I’m not even sure they know you’re on-planet,” Strangelove said. “The Foys called the Champion, Garrett. He’s their go-to for security in their new embassy, and wherever else they may require it. They haven’t requested it in their temporary quarters, though it wouldn’t surprise me if Garrett has them under some sort of observation. He’s not the sort to let things get ahead of him and then find out he’s needed in the middle of a mess too far gone. In honesty, we haven’t seen any direct hostility to them and the building is fairly secure. We’re more concerned with somebody mapping the embassy internally or putting listening devices inside during construction.

  “The Mothers may seem domineering to you, but they do value initiative. They oversee so many things they do not put up with endless reports of trivial matters from someone to whom they have given authority. If one tries to make oneself look important by announcing every trivial accomplishment, it’s possible to be sacked for a less able worker who doesn’t run to the Great Hall four times a day. So Garrett may not have said anything to the Mothers as long as it’s going well. It is going well, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, I’m getting a feel for the planet, and it’s helpful to meet you since my acquaintance with Derf has been limited. I don’t want to assume you are a big Human in a furry suit. Gordon is the only Derf I’ve sat and chatted with, and that in a group.”

  Strangelove’s face changed, and it wasn’t a cute smirk with the corners curled up.

  “OK, you flashed on something strong there, but I can’t read what,” Jeff admitted. “Is there a problem between you and Gordon?”

  “No not at all, not a problem, it’s difficult to explain. Name who first comes to mind if I say: The greatest Human military strategist who ever lived.”

  “Sun Tzu,” Jeff said without hesitation.

  “I haven’t heard of him, but as you are learning, we tend to only be taught what applies to our specialty in the clan,” Strangelove said. “But imagine if I said to you. I’m happy to sit and chat with you because my contact with Humans has been limited. The only fellow I’ve ever chatted with was Sun Tzu.”

  “That… might be a little intimidating,” Jeff admitted.

  “It has to be rough for Garrett,” Strangelove said, “because he’s Champion and head of the military, but when it comes to space warfare and strategy all he can really do is turn Gordon loose to do his thing and be glad he has his service. There really isn’t any way he could pretend to direct him without looking ridiculous.”

  “No one person can know everything,” Jeff said. “We all depend on others who have specialties. But I don’t want to talk to you about military tactics. I’m not terribly interested in that, so there no need to compare yourself to Gordon that way. In fact, I never talked about space warfare with him. Heather was the one who told him some war stories. I want to get a feel for Derf personalities. At least you do show emotions on your face. Even if I can’t read them well yet, but it’s a start.”

  “You should watch some children’s videos,” Strangelove suggested.

  “Now that’s nothing I expected to hear,” Jeff said. “Tell me why.”

  “They exaggerate all the facial expressions and emotions in their voices to beat the kids over the head with the m
essage. Not every cub is destined to be a great thinker you know. You will see what Derf consider their basic values they wish their youth to learn. We may not all manage to live those values perfectly, but as you said, it’s a start. You can’t even tell if somebody is being a jerk if you aren’t sure what they are supposed to do by local standards.”

  “I think you are basically describing a morality play,” Jeff said. “If they are for children then I imagine they are all in Derf.”

  “Yes, but the auto-translation is pretty good now, and it can caption for you in English while you hear the Derf. It also wouldn’t kill you to accidentally learn a little Derf,” Strangelove suggested.

  “OK, get me one to watch in the suite before bed. In the morning I’ll tell the Foys I need to meet Lee and her people and get down to business.”

  “Whatever you wish,” Strangelove agreed.

  “You aren’t charged with gathering any intelligence on me, are you?” Jeff asked. “You show no curiosity, and let pass a perfect opening to ask, and what business is that?” Actually, it was bugging Jeff a little that nobody was asking.

  “If they want a spy they’d be better off picking some naturally devious fellow. I’ve enough on my plate without constantly trying to remember two jobs at once. By coincidence, I’ve heard Gordon is that sort, to run parallel problems in his head like a freaking computer, but you’ve already met him to judge that.”

  Jeff thought on that a moment. “I can maybe see that,” he decided.

  * * *

  “I’m up and ready to get on with the day,” Jeff said, in a text. He wasn’t sure the Foys were morning people and Strangelove and he were both up before the sun cleared the horizon. He’d gotten up first and found out that Strangelove could be a bit short in the morning. It didn’t offend him, it amused him, and reinforced he was getting the truth from the tech, because he didn’t seem able to hide anything, including irritation.

  “That’s a nice half mug for me,” Strangelove said when he stumbled out and looked disgusted at the coffee maker. “What are you going to have little Human?”