Planetary Parlay

by Cameron Cooper

  Terrans versus Carinads…and the away team was sleep deprived and filled with doubts and horror at the ways of the opposing side.

  We were going to get slaughtered in there.

  —16—

  When I asked Fiori for a stay-awake, the next morning, she didn’t even argue with me. Nor did she hunt to find the container. She just reached into her pocket and nudged a tablet out of the dispenser lid and held it out to me on the palm of her hand.

  “I’m not the first,” I guessed, taking the tablet.

  “You’re very nearly the last,” Fiori said, and pushed her hair back off her head with a sigh. “You know the drill. That will last twelve hours, but if you do not sleep after that, you will start hallucinating.”

  “Yep, got it.”

  “Actually, cancel that,” Fiori said. “You won’t have hallucinations, because I will come after you with a tranquilizer dart and put you to sleep if you don’t go to bed yourself. We can’t have Carinads suffering delusions loose amongst the Terrans. Especially you.”

  I shuddered and grinned. “Hell, no.”

  As it was, I timed it too late—no wonder everyone else had asked Fiori before me. I was still stifling yawns and waiting for the stay-awake to kick in as we filed into the Assembly room on the floor above our suite.

  In the few hours since we had dined in there, the room had been transformed. We entered from the same big doors we had used last night. No Rayhel to greet us, this time. One of the Drigu with us jumped forward to push the doors open for us.

  Last night, the dining table had been long and slim, and ran from one narrow end to the other and apart from the chairs, there had been no other furniture in the room.

  Now the table in the middle of the room was running across the oval space, where the walls were furthest apart. It wasn’t long and narrow, though. It was nearly as wide as it was long. It ran for five meters on the long side and nearly four across.

  There was no pristine tablecloth today. The table’s gleaming surface, which had the same golden glow as the walls and floors, was bare.

  On this side of the table, five chairs were pulled up to it.

  Ranged behind them were rows of comfortable chairs with very wide arms with flat surfaces. Working surfaces, I realized. For the non-diplomats observing the proceedings.

  But that was not the truly unsettling part of the room. What made my heart beat faster as we all clumped just inside the door in silent wonder, was what lay on the other side of the table.

  There were three chairs on that side of the table, and behind them, waiting for us, were Rayhel, Isuma and Constantine. Behind them were more rows of the same chair-and-desk combo as was on this side. Before each chair stood more Terrans than I could count just by scanning them. There were three rows of them, staggered so each could see through the pair of chairs in front of them. Some of the Terrans I recognized from yesterday morning—and they all stood in the front row. Everyone behind them were strangers to me.

  And behind each chair stood a Drigu, and a translator android.

  But even that regimented display wasn’t the real kicker.

  It was the statue that had been hauled into the room during the night and now stood where the room narrowed down to the end of the oval. It was just tall enough to fit into the height of the room and for all I knew, it had been built just for this purpose. I’d seen the statue before. This one was a smaller version of the colossal figure that had dominated the rotunda in the center of the slave training building on Hegara.

  The symbolism of the might of Terra lost none of its power, despite the smaller scale of the statue.

  Dalton swayed toward me. “We are going to get our asses handed to us,” he whispered.

  I nodded.

  Then I nudged Jai into moving forward, with a hand to the middle of his back, which would jolt everyone else into following him. What else could we do? Go back home and polish our shrivers?

  Believe me, I was tempted.

  *

  The first session started rocky and went downhill from there.

  First, we had to get through the tiresome business of formalities and opening speeches. Belfon Constantine stood at the table with a fist resting against the mirror-like surface and thundered about cooperation and amicable compromise and a lot more that sounded to me like we were going to give them everything they wanted.

  Jai was a natural speaker, so he didn’t bellow or posture. He instead used simple words to express our hope that these negotiations would end with an agreement that would let both sides live their very different lives in peace, as co-existing neighbors in this wondrous galaxy we were fortunate to call home. His voice rang clear across the room, although he did not appear to be trying to project.

  Then we had to agree to an agenda of items to be discussed. I thought of them as sore points to argue over, but I was a flunky in the back row.

  But before that discussion began, Jai raised a point that wasn’t on the agenda. “Director, Secretary, Deputy Director. I would request that the Drigu present in this room be dismissed.”

  We had left the Drigu who had been assigned to us in the suite—which had taken long minutes of explanation via Slate before they understood that we were not unhappy with their work. But they were still upset when we left them behind.

  And now we were asking that the Terran’s Drigu be sent from the room, too.

  The range of astonished expressions the Terrans wore in response to Jai’s request made me bite the inside of my cheeks. I think that until that moment, when Jai drew their attention to the slaves, the Terrans had simply failed to notice they were there.

  “What do you mean, send them away?” Isuma asked, her voice breathless with shock. “They are our helpers, our assistants.”

  Jai nodded. He had expected this blank confusion. “A great deal of the discussions we are about to have are about them. It makes us extremely uncomfortable to have the subjects of our conversations standing there, listening to us.”

  “But…they are Drigu,” Isuma said, as if that explained everything.

  Perhaps it did, to Terrans.

  Jai shook his head. “They have ears, eyes and brains to understand what we are saying. Do you really want your slaves to hear all our objections to slavery and perhaps hear how our worlds thrive without it?”

  That got them, as Elizabeth Crnčević had predicted it would.

  Isuma glanced at Constantine, who nodded once. Rayhel just shrugged.

  “Very well,” Isuma said, her voice trembling. She made a gesture with her hand. As one, every Drigu in the room turned and filed out through the small door behind the statue. The door shut with a soft thud.

  Isuma gave us a tremulous smile. “Well…this is…novel,” she said, looking about the room, which was much less crowded now.

  “Let’s move on,” Constantine said heatedly. “Shall we agree upon the points for discussion?”

  Right there was where things got heated. We had a simple and short shopping list. One—enslaving our people had to stop. Two—raids into Carinad territories had to stop. Other than that, Terra had nothing to offer us. Five minutes before we’d arrived at the meeting, I’d watched Jai strike the third point from the list—trade agreements.

  If he had been feeling uncertain enough to believe we could not reach agreements on mutual trade before he stepped into this room, he had to be flailing by now. But he looked cool and contained, between the other four diplomats.

  The very first item had the Terrans almost frothing at the mouth.

  “You do not have Drigu of your own,” Belfon Constantine pointed out. “You can only want to discuss this matter because you want to change something about our Drigu. This is not open to discussion. You have no right to direct how we lead our lives.”

  Jai lifted his hand in a calming gesture. “Then let us discuss aspects of slavery that do affect Carinad worlds. Those Carinads you have taken from us.”

  It took another hour for the squabbling sides of
the table to define the parameters of what could or could not be included in the discussions about slavery, before they moved on to the next item to be agreed upon.

  I shifted in my chair and fidgeted and wished I’d bought a pad with me. I noticed that several of the Carinads—Calpurnia and Seong, and Sauli were just three I spotted—were leaving the room. They slid through the chairs and slipped out between the doors. After a while they came back.

  I did the same, sliding out of the room and back to the suite to find my pad and return. I settled back in the chair and leaned far over to speak to Dalton softly. “What did I miss?”

  “Not a thing,” he breathed.

  It was close to noon and the end of the day’s session, when the points for discussion were finally agreed upon. Among them, the Terrans had requested a talk about trade agreements, which made me wonder if Jai had anticipated this and removed the item from our list just for this reason. The Terrans asking us for trade treaties put them on the back foot. But trade was at the end of the list. By then, would anyone have the energy to even care about trade?

  After a brief recess, the meeting turned to the first point up for discussion.

  “We would like our Carinad people returned to us,” Jai said.

  Belfon Constantine frowned. “But you stole your Drigu from us on Hegara.”

  “We took them back,” Jai said, his tone flat. “But we were not able to retrieve all of them.” He turned to look behind him. “Seong.”

  Seong stood. He looked very unhappy about being the center of attention and his shifted on his feet. I held my breath, hoping that he would not burst forth with his love of Terran ways right now.

  But he merely stood, his bottom lip thrust out, looking like any pre-adult boy in a truculent mood.

  “This is Seong, who you abducted from Carinad space more than four years ago, now. We were lucky enough to retrieve him from Hegara. But others were not so fortunate. You have sold Carinad people and sent them to other Terran worlds. Seong knew some of them, and Carinads we released from Hegara have told us of others you took, who we have not been able to retrieve. We want our people returned to us.”

  Seong sank back into his seat and curled his knees up against his chest, his gaze upon the floor.

  Constantine resettled himself in his chair, as if he was getting down to business. He actually looked mildly happier than I had ever seen so far. He put his hands together. “I am sure we will be able to come to an agreeable price for any Drigu you are interested in.”

  I sat up. Dalton reached out and gripped my wrist and squeezed.

  I wished I could see Jai’s face from here. I wanted to see his expression. None of our diplomats so much as twitched, though.

  Jai replied in the same neutral tone. “We will not buy our people back. We want them returned to us, as a gesture of good faith and a symbol of your desire to find a peaceable arrangement that will let our worlds co-exist.”

  Constantine, Rayhel and Isuma put their heads together and murmured intently for several minutes. Then they returned their gazes upon us.

  “We cannot confirm or deny that some of our Drigu might once have originated from those worlds you call yours. But if you are interested in acquiring Drigu, we cannot simply give them to you, not even as expression of good faith. We cannot remove them from the families who paid dearly for them. It would set a terrible precedent.”

  I wanted to scream in frustration at his response. How Jai and the others could sit there with smiles on their faces was beyond my ability to understand.

  I was saved from what Jai and Dalton would have called sloppy impulse control by a sudden shout just outside the doors of the Assembly hall. Then a great many more of them. Among them, I heard Common. “No, no, you don’t understand!” came the cry.

  Security was my responsibility. “That’s my cue,” I murmured to Dalton. “Gotta go.” Thankfully, I got to my feet and hurried to the doors.

  —17—

  I stepped out of the Assembly hall and into a swirling cloud of Drigu in their tunics and bare feet, and in the very center of them stood Keskemeti. I had failed to notice him leaving the hall, which was a slip on my part. I needed to keep track of when people came back. Not that I thought the Terrans might try to snatch one of us when we slipped out for a bio break. It would be far too cynical to consider such a possibility and I was such a reasonable woman…

  Just because I couldn’t think of a reason why they might do something that inane didn’t mean such a reason didn’t exist. I would monitor everyone’s movements until we all stepped back on board the Lythion once more.

  The insane negotiations going on in the room behind me had distracted me. Keskemeti being out here, when I had thought him to be in his chair, watching the proceedings with his fingertips together in front of his mouth, told me I needed to smarten up.

  He was the only one not dancing about and shouting. Everyone else was screaming at him and from the look of it, they were within thirty seconds of physically beating him.

  I waded into the group, pushing bodies aside and shoving, until I was in front of Keskemeti. He actually looked relieved to see me.

  “What the hell did you do?” I shouted at him.

  “Nothing!” he cried.

  I rolled my eyes.

  Keskemeti rubbed the back of his neck. “I told Mercia she was free to go.”

  “Go? Go where? And how the hell did you manage to communicate that to her?”

  He waved a hand back toward the assembly hall. I twisted and looked over my shoulder. The Drigu were still pressing in around us, but they were quieter now I was there. My confronting Keskemeti with my hands on my hips would have communicated to them that I was as upset with him as they were.

  Some were still chattering in semi-loud voices, but I couldn’t tell if they were wound up, because Terran always sounded fast and angry.

  Behind them, crowded up against the wall beside the big hall doors, was Slate. He’d taken himself out of the scuffle. Smart android.

  I beckoned to him and he moved cautiously and slowly toward me. The Drigu parted for him, this time. Many of them babbled at him as he made his way toward me and Keskemeti.

  “They are very upset,” Slate said.

  “No kidding,” I replied. “Now, Keskemeti, what exactly did you tell Mercia?”

  “That she was free to go,” Keskemeti said, his tone flat.

  I tilted my head. “Go…where?”

  “Just go,” Keskemeti said.

  Behind him, I saw the young girl that had to be Mercia. She had been crying, and other Drigu crowded around her, one with her arm around Mercia, consoling her.

  It clicked into place. “Slate, did Keskemeti tell you to explain that the girl was free…no longer a Drigu?”

  “Yes, Danny,” Slate replied.

  Keskemeti sighed.

  “You fool!” I raged at Keskemeti. “You told the girl you didn’t want her, that she was fit for nothing, and had no future.”

  Keskemeti’s mouth dropped open. “I told her she was free!”

  I took a step toward him and flung out my arm, to indicate all the Drigu gathered around us. “They don’t know what freedom is!”

  Keskemeti’s mouth worked. His gaze darted. I saw the sweat bead on his temples as he finally understood his mistake.

  I gripped his arm. “Come on. We can’t keep yelling out here. We’ll interrupt the session.” Although perhaps that wouldn’t be a bad thing. “Slate! Come with me, please. Tell the Drigu to come, too.”

  “Yes, Danny.”

  “Where are you taking me?” Keskemeti demanded.

  “Just out of hearing range for now. I would much rather stuff you in a life pod and shoot you back to Carinad space, but that’s not in my power.” I kept marching around the long, open sided passage that ran down the side of the hall. Right now, the twenty-meter drop at the edge of the floor didn’t bother me.

  Ahead were the more workmanlike stairs which would take us down to the fl
oor where our suite was, but I stopped at the top of the stairs and hauled Keskemeti around to look at me. “You persist in impressing me with how truly stupid you are, Keskemeti.”

  He smoothed down his hair as the others gathered around me. “I…did not think it through,” he admitted. “It was an impulse. She kept running after me, which made me… And last night…” He made a chopping motion with his hand. “I will not explain it. I cannot.” And he sighed.

  “It made your gut clench and made you feel sub-human,” I finished.

  His gaze met mine. “Yes!”

  I nodded. “You think you’re unique, that’s the problem, Keskemeti. You keep weeping over the fate of the Drigu and the monstrous Terrans, yet you don’t see us, the Carinads around you, at all. All you see are receptacles for your disgust and hate.”

  Keskemeti licked his lips.

  “You think we like having another human trail after us, pick up our clothes, bathe us?” I leaned closer. “It bothers the shit out of me. It bothers all of us. But we’re persevering with this farce so that others won’t face Seong’s fate, or Mercia’s.”

  Keskemeti’s gaze stayed on my face for only a few seconds more. Then he looked at the floor and nodded. “Yes, I see that now.” His voice was small.

  “If you do not fix this, right now,” I continued, “you will neutralize any speck of good that Van Veen and the others manage to wrangle out the Terrans.”

  He looked up at me, startled. “How am I supposed to do that?”

  I beckoned to Slate. “Please ask Mercia to come and speak to us…if she is not too upset,” I told him.

  He turned and moved through the Drigu who had gathered behind him and stopped before Mercia and spoke.

  She looked at me, startled. Then at the others around her, looking for their reactions.

  “Are you doing what I think you’re doing?” Keskemeti asked in an undertone, worry lining it.

  “You are going to apologize your ass off and grovel like you’ve never done in your life,” I told him. “You’re going to make that girl feel appreciated. And then, you will ask her…no, you’re going to beg her to stay and assist you while you are on Terra.” I spun to face him, and saw the distaste and disgust cross his face. “I don’t care how you feel about the Drigu, Keskemeti. Not anymore. I only want you to make Mercia feel like she is worthy and that this shitty, hard labor life of hers has made a difference to someone.”