Juanita Coulson - Children of the Stars 04

by Past of Forever

  “Well?” Kat wiggled. “What did you tell him?”

  “The truth. No reason not to. The manager definitely was impressed. If push comes to bash, he may back me against a repossess artist—or against Feo’s dirty-tricks boy. That’s ironic. I doubt Adam would lean on Port authorities if they gave me trouble. But the manager thinks he would,” Dan said with a grin. “That shuttle strip boss sure doesn’t want any Fleet Inspectors coming here and nitpicking his logs and procedures and fining him.”

  He yawned again, more widely. “I also had a gab with a couple of pilots while I was there. It started out as shop talk. Then they kicked a few rocks at the Assembly. The usual stuff. Our science is a waste of time. Xenoarch doesn’t put food on settlers’ tables and so forth. It’s not real work. And I ended up defending us. The pilots backed off. They looked at me as if I’d been talking to them under false pretenses. I... I forgot to act like an indie hauler,” Dan said, mildly surprised.

  Kat smiled. “You dropped your mask.” He glanced at her warily as she went on. “When I first met you, you deliberately downplayed your intellectual capacity. I think you even fooled yourself, to a degree. Now you’re beginning to let your deeper strata show.” She added with exasperation, “What are you afraid of? You’re one of the quickest, most adaptive people I know. There’s nothing wrong with being a damned fine xenomechanician and an innovative novice scientist.”

  “Protective coloration, Chen called it, according to Praedar.” Dan shrugged, feeling embarrassed. “I’ve spent almost twenty years on the lower ranks of the Terran status ladder. I took plenty of flak down there, too, because of my name, even though I tried hard to fit in and be just an ordinary spacer. But stuff I learned when I was younger—the Saunder-McKelvey song and dance, for one—sticks with me. I guess it comes out, under the right circumstances.”

  “Genetics,” Kat suggested. “You got a huge dose of your ancestors’ genes, as well as a polishing by your parents.”

  He chuckled sourly. “Great. Why couldn’t part of it have been a fortune?”

  For a minute, the brunette was silent. Then she said, “Something’s been eating you since last night’s ceremony, hasn’t it? If it isn’t too personal, what did Feo say to you?” Dan, a bit reluctantly, described the conversation. Kat gasped in anger. “He was lying! It’s another of his tricks!”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. My dad is too proud for his own good. He and Feo could both be telling the truth, the way they remember it,” Dan admitted.

  “You’re torturing yourself needlessly.”

  “Am I? This really yanked the rug out from under me. Which version of the facts is the right one? Or are they mutually skewed, with some truth on each side? Is it all a matter of interpretation?” Dan scratched his blond mop. “I keep thinking about Praedar’s comment on the Old Ones—that from their point of view, maybe what they did to the N’lacs wasn’t evil. It’s tough, getting inside someone else’s head...”

  “Yes.” The Terrans started. Praedar stood an arm’s length away from them. Neither had heard him return to the room. “You accurately summarize the essence of xenoarchaeology and of truth seeking.”

  Following the logic, Dan nodded. “We have to be careful when speculating on another race’s motivations. Huh! I can’t even guarantee that members of my own family aren’t tailoring facts to suit their memories and egos. It’s arrogant to assume I’d be absolutely correct in pegging a nonhuman’s reasoning.”

  “Indeed. Yet our work demands assumptions.” The felinoid’s crest bristled, revealing his irritation. “But it is divisive to use assumptions to attack colleagues who offer data interpretation varying from one’s own.” He held out an object for the Terrans to examine.

  It was a stick-on badge. Manufacturers had passed out a number of those at the opening ceremony—sticky buttons, puffing their products. This button had obviously been made in a hurry on an expedition’s specimen-tagger. Four words jumped at the reader: saunder spells superior selectivity!

  “So much for the ‘Amity of Science’ theme!” Kat exclaimed. “So counterattack,” Dan said. “Make up a slogan to balance the scales.”

  “Such as?”

  He mulled the possibilities. “How about saunder spells spurious selectivity'? Or is that too low?”

  “Not for me,” another Terran voice cut in. Joe Hughes leaned against the door jamb of his roomlet and rubbed sleep from his eyes. “It’s exactly what the Saunders and their pushy staffers deserve,” he said.

  Praedar turned the offending button over in his big palm. “As you say, a counterattack. Appropriate. Is it possible?”

  “Sure,” Dan said. “We’ve got a tagger.”

  “And a friend on Imhoff’s team can get me a supply of badge blanks,” Joe volunteered. “Let’s get to work!”

  Dan participated with enthusiasm, hoping the game would occupy his mind and help him forget that bombshell Feo had dropped on him. It was a tight race to finish the counterattack ammunition before the day’s sessions began. Within minutes after the T-W 593 team arrived in the main building, they’d passed out their entire supply. Not every attendee who took one of the badges was an ardent supporter of Praedar’s expedition. But all of them resented the ‘saunder spells superior selectivity!' buttons the other side was sporting. The tactic had backfired. Numbers were now almost equal in these badge wars. Stalemate.

  The contest had been an amusing diversion. However, it was time for far more serious business—the Assembly.

  Ramdas of Earth, a dean of Terran xenoarchaeology, gave a keynote address. Lectures and presentations followed. Vid monitors and a bottomless supply of cheap translation devices made it possible for guests to look at the exhibit halls and manufacturers’ displays and still keep abreast of everything going on in the meeting rooms. But many attendees, including reporters, were eager to see presenters in the flesh. They queued up before each session and jammed the program items.

  There was considerable cautious circling. Dan had seen hundreds of similar sizing-up routines on dozens of worlds. Ter-rans assessed each other. They and aliens studied their opposites. The questions didn’t vary much. What was the other being really like? What did he really want? Was the translator device working as an intermediary, rendering words and phrases accurately, with all the nuances? Caution was a tool for survival in a potentially hostile universe or at a scientific conference.

  Because the Assembly was hosted by Terrans and attendance was predominantly Terran, the main agenda matched their bio clocks—three hours of morning sessions, a midday break, and three more afternoon sessions. T-S 31I ’s hours were shorter than Earth norm, but not so much that adjustment was a problem. Diumally oriented Vahnajes and the marsupial Rigotians liked the schedule. Noctumally oriented, polyphasic Whimeds and Lan-nons added night programs for their tastes, a secondary session track within the main one.

  “The Amity of Science” was the theme, but chauvinism was running the show: mferspecies chauvinism and intraspecies chauvinism; clashes between Whimeds and Vahnajes, Rigotians and Lannon; and hostilities between Ruieb’s “Progressive Research” faction and lutrinoid “Conservative Antiquarians.” Loyalists of one institution of higher learning bickered with those of another. Jealousy flourished between conflicting attitudes toward digging, analyzing, and interpreting—“lumpers” versus “splitters.”

  The friction separating the Saunder group from the T-W 593 expedition was complicated by the multispecies makeup of Praedar’s team. The visiting xenoarchs were an embodiment of the Assembly’s motto. They pleased the media. They could make solid contact with three of the conference’s five racial representations. And Praedar’s team now had a Saunder-McKelvey on their side. They used Dan and his name as weapons. He marveled at the results. The media still were susceptible. Dan braced himself every time a news hound approached. But usually they were only after a PR quote—how his family had always been in the forefront of human endeavor, or how pleased he was, as a Saunder-McKelvey, to participate i
n this conference.

  In many ways, the Assembly, like a dig, was composed of strata. The surface was a straightforward, five-day meeting for presentations of papers, exhibitions, models of the more important sites, and manufacturers’ displays. Beneath that layer, there were deeper, hidden facets of cooperating and undercutting, angling, and seeking status. The methodology varied, according to species and long-held cultural patterns, but the attendees’ goals were remarkably similar. The media, too, were wheeling and dealing to outmaneuver their competitors. Science publication reps were very much on guard against Rei Ito, the reporter from a powerful general network. The scene encapsulated millions of years of evolution. Five species, five stellar civilizations, in all their diversity, were intent on ensuring that their kind would lose no ground in this arena. Now and then there were outbursts of raw emotion, thinly disguised in polite words. The mood in lecture rooms and meeting halls often became downright acrimonious.

  Whenever possible, Dan maintained a low profile. He was here to help his team impress its sponsors and to learn. Verbal brawls were risky. But it was impossible for him to avoid rubbing elbows with the attendees’ likes and dislikes. Even in the exhibit halls he was constantly overhearing nasty exchanges.

  “. ..Hamada? Boring! I’m boycotting his presentation. We know what he’s going to say. He’s been dribbling out those ‘preliminary papers’ of his for years.”

  “Hell, he can’t publish. His dig’s a dead end. All he can do is fake it...”

  The comments troubled Dan, as Feo had during that private chat at the opening ceremony. “.. .a failure like Juxury. Sooner or later—maybe at this conference—his theories will come crashing down in ruins.” And they might, if the Saunders convinced Praedar’s sponsors and supporters that they were backing the wrong team.

  Dan tried to shake off that depressing possibility. He viewed exhibits and attended sessions, soaking up info. Some of the papers were too esoteric for anyone but specialists in those disciplines. Many, though, held Dan’s interest to the end. His stints in his home team’s vid library paid off. By now he understood the jargon pretty well. Displays further whetted his appetite for knowledge. Projects he’d only read about in journal files came to life. The scientists who headed those digs were here in person. Their findings were on view, and sometimes attendees were allowed to handle sample artifacts and get a solid feel of other worlds and long-dead cultures.

  The Sueh-Bou expedition presented its intriguing discovery of a six-limbed, six-eyed race. The gems of that vanished civilization were its singing rocks, mementoes of a species that had committed mass suicide. The Vahnaj scientists theorized the rock singers had reached perfection and ended their line to prevent eventual degeneration. Was that truth or Vahnaj stereotypes imposing themselves upon extinct aliens?

  Svejar of Whimed explained his hyperbaric gestation project. Dan attended that lecture with Joe, getting an expert’s insight along with the presentation. The before-and-after holos of primitive catlike females and their offspring complemented Joe’s work with the N’lacs. Dan hoped that would help later on, when Joe made his presentation.

  Dr. Jarrett, Getz’s chief rival, staged an eye-opening show of an effigy cult with real effigies—humanoid figurines with intricately carved faces, hands, feet, and genitalia. In the question-and-answer segment, Getz got into a furious argument with Jarrett, delighting the news hounds.

  The scheduled midday break wasn’t long enough for a decent nap; by the afternoon sessions, Dan was feeling badly sleep deprived. He punched up his med patches and struggled to stay sharp.

  Throughout the afternoon, the Saunders were ubiquitous in the session rooms, exhibit areas, and the manufacturers’ hall. Shaking hands, bowing, and conversing, they were always smiling. Their PR machine ran full throttle. Even Dan came in for a share of their backslapping.

  Rei Ito, too, seemed to be everywhere, popping up unexpectedly, cornering people, and wheedling interviews. Her lens pendant zoomed in mercilessly again and again. Dan felt it picking him out of the crowd and he waited tensely for the reporter to pounce on him. Did she know about the blacklist and the star-hopper’s registration? Was she on Feo and Hope’s side, or Praedar’s?

  She didn’t pounce. Neither did any other news hound. Dan got the impression they were toying with him, lulling him until he let his guard down. Then they’d swarm in for the kill. Anticipating that and concentrating hard on the job Praedar had handed him sapped energy. Dan drifted, following Praedar’s, Kat’s, or Joe’s lead. Assembly shop talk swirled around him, filtering through the translation receivers he was wearing.

  Praedar woke Dan out of an eavesdropper’s fog. “We will visit the manufacturers’ display. I require your opinion.”

  The booth offerings ranged from frivolous to essential. There were newer models of insta-cells, easier to transport and assemble, sturdier in adverse weather than the T-W 593 complex. Clothing recyclers were displayed that could incorporate style changes—as if a working dig had time to waste on such nonsense. Dan lingered over a display of advanced tools and vehicles, checking manuals and questioning sales reps, while Praedar listened in.

  As they left the hall, Dan said, “We sure could use a couple of those super dredgers and the remote sensor rigs. But the prices!” “Yes. Not easy to arrange at current exchange rates,” Praedar admitted. “Yet it is well to be informed. That is why I wished our xenomechanician to assess. It is possible grants will permit us to enlarge our equipment expenditures in the future. You can best decide what investments would serve us.”

  Dan studied the Whimed sidelong. There was promise as well as wistful desire in the words. The boss was hinting that Dan might have a permanent place on the dig—if he wanted it. “Do you really think that kind of funding will ever materialize for us?”

  Praedar shrugged, an almost human motion. “It occurs. Not often. But it occurs.” Abruptly he shifted mode. “We will meet now with Jon Eckard.”

  That was all the warning Dan got. The Chartered Settlement Planets Councilman was waiting in one of the numerous small caucus rooms. He and his aide shook hands with the T-W 593 team members and swapped small talk.

  Eckard steered conversation around to his connections with the Saunder-Mckelveys, and Dan remembered where he’d seen the man before—with Adam, years ago, when the young officers had visited Reid and Fiona on Alpha Cee.

  “Your brother’s a good man,” the Councilman was saying jovially. “Hard, though. I never did figure out how he knew where all the upper-echelon skeletons were buried.” Eckard’s bland mask slipped a trifle. “That’s probably why Adam ended up with a sector command while I got kicked sideways into a civilian post. Yes, sir, used to be real chummy with him and that pretty ensign he married. Those were the days.”

  There was an edge to his voice. Jealousy! Dan hadn’t realized his brother had fought for Trina Wheeler’s heart and hand. Eckard was still sore from that battle two decades ago. This situation would have to be handled carefully. The former Fleet officer was C.S.P.’s rep to the Terran-Whimed Xenoethnic Board, a counterpart to Anelen, its felinoid chairman. The two of them held a near life-and-death power over renewal of dig permits and desperately needed credit allocations—and they could upgrade the N’lacs’ status, protecting them from exploitation into the foreseeable future.

  “Your grandmother was Jutta Lefferts, right?” Eckard asked. “I knew it. Why, one of my committees works with the Lefferts and the Wyoma Foix Medical Foundation. Wonderful job they’re doing back on Mars and the Mother World...”

  Breathing easier, Dan said, “It’s a family tradition, that project. You know the Wyoma Foix group saved my grandfather, after the second FTL experiment disaster.”

  “Genius. That’s what Morgan McKelvey was. Just like Ward Saunder...”

  Eckard rattled on, repeatedly stressing his tenuous links with Dan’s relatives. It was almost as if he were trying to impress the younger man, rather than the other way around. That amused Dan.

&nb
sp; The meeting ended with nothing accomplished, as far as Dan saw. Praedar made a point of shaking Eckard’s hand firmly. As the Councilman rushed off to another appointment, Dan muttered, “How did we do?”

  Praedar eyed him curiously. “I thought perhaps you could inform me. He is a member of your species.” Dan couldn’t tell if the alien was joking or not. His gaze distant, Praedar said, “These matters are difficult. I dislike the dependence upon the whims of a remote group. We beg for hearings and are given few answers. It is a degrading procedure.” That was the closest he’d ever come to griping about the necessary bureaucratic wrangling his profession demanded. The complaint made an already charismatic being even more likable.

  The day’s main program tracks had ended. Diurnal species were straggling out of the Assembly building, heading for their quarters. Dan’s team joined the crowd. The region’s regular nightly rains hadn’t begun yet, but a bracing wind swept off the surrounding forest. The blast jolted Dan awake, reminding him what he had to do. As his group passed the vehicle park, he turned aside and pulled a scooter from a rack. “I’ll be back soon,” he told the others.

  They halted, startled, and Kat demanded, “Where are you going?”

  “To the ship. Have to check her...”

  “You did that this morning,” Joe said.

  “I’ll check her as often as necessary!” Attendees stared, and Dan lowered his volume. “We can’t let our guard down. And I can’t be predictable. The Saunders and any repossess artists have to see that I may show up in Port at odd hours. I think I’ll boost the ship’s protective gear while Pm there, too. We aren’t out of these woods until we’re in outer orbit and making the FTL jump.”

  Kat smiled and shook her head. “You have an absolute gift for inventing and mangling .metaphors.”

  “Thank you, I think.”

  “You need sleep,” she scolded.

  Praedar, though, took another tack, saying “Do what you must. Go.”

  Dan did.

  The chore took a lot longer than he’d hoped, possibly because fatigue was eating at him. Driving back to the Assembly Complex in the rain was an ordeal.