XD:317 (Fourth Fleet Irregulars)

by S J MacDonald

  ‘None taken.’ Shion assured her. ‘And no, we are no kind of threat to your people. And nor are the Solarans, if that’s a concern. They are the gentlest of people, and have no weapons of any kind.’

  ‘But is that why you let us – me – come aboard, then?’ Tass was far more focussed on her own situation than on the possibility of alien invasion, and she was looking at Alex with some indignation. ‘Are you using us, to spread the word about aliens being here?’

  ‘Not at all,’ Alex assured her, honestly. ‘Though we did, obviously, have to consider how you would react to being brought in on this. Allowing a trickle out of awareness that aliens in general are visiting our worlds is one thing. Allowing a public spotlight to fall on Shion as a first-contact visitor is something else again. So we did have to be sure that either we could trust you entirely never to breathe a word of this to anyone else, or to be sure that if you did go out there and tell people, it really wouldn’t matter. The Diplomatic Corps opted for the proactive subversion approach. What that means is,’ he looked at Tass, ‘you could go over to the station right now and tell anyone you like that you’ve met an alien here on the Heron. Go on, feel free. Talk to the media, tell First Contact, stand up on a box with a megaphone and announce it, nobody will try to stop you. I do have to tell you, though, that if anyone then calls us to ask what’s going on with that, we will just snigger and say ‘Civilians, honestly, they’ll believe anything.’’

  Understanding dawned on Tass’s face, to be quickly followed by outrage. She called Alex a name that called his parentage into question, but he took no notice. She was, after all, not the first to call him that.

  ‘Please,’ he requested, ‘take a moment here to see the bigger picture. I am, right now, responsible for Shion’s safety and welfare. I also have a responsibility to the people on Karadon, and even beyond. If they were to realise, and believe, that we have an alien visitor aboard our ship, can you imagine the panic? There’d be running and screaming, just pandemonium, and all very well for you to say that we could show them what Shion is like, how gentle, how harmless, but you’d been told all that yourselves before you realised she’s actually from another species and you still freaked out, so what makes you think the tourists and travellers at Karadon would be any different?

  ‘And when news hit our worlds that an alien was here, with all the confusion and panic that would cause, what impact would that have on our worlds? Global stock markets have crashed, before now, on rumours of Marfikian invasion. Cities have had riots, people have committed suicide. You may say that’s unlikely at the news of just one sweet, harmless visitor, but me, I am entirely behind the Senate on this, that we just cannot take that chance. So if it comes to a choice between protecting Shion and preventing even the smallest risk of that disaster hitting our worlds, or making you look like a nutter or an idiot, sorry, no contest.’

  ‘Of course we’re not going to tell,’ Chantal said, with a little edge to her voice as she looked at her assistant, ‘We signed up to this, remember!’

  Tass shifted her shoulders, accepting but resentful. ‘But,’ she persisted, ‘why did you let me on board, then?’

  ‘To work on the biovats,’ Alex said, simply. ‘Why else? We are going on with our normal work, you see. The Admiralty would certainly have taken us off all other assignments to take Shion anywhere she wants to go, but Shion herself asked, particularly, to be allowed to travel with us on whatever missions we were already scheduled for. That, obviously, includes the research teams from the Second.’

  Both Chantal and Tass swivelled their eyes towards Shion. They’d been told several times by now that she was travelling with them because she wanted to see something of life in the League while making a useful contribution, but it was clear that they were having some difficulty getting to grips with this. Shion sipped her tea and smiled.

  ‘I love it here,’ she said. ‘Nobody here treats me like a freak, they just accept me as a person. I really hope that you’ll be able to do that, too.’

  It seemed more likely that Chantal would be able to do that, than that Tass would. Once she’d recovered from her faint, Chantal had been more fired up with curiosity than alarmed. Tass, however, was looking at Shion with awe in her eyes.

  That look had not diminished by the time they’d had tea and Alex suggested that they might all, if fully recovered, consider going back to work.

  ‘What?’ Tass gaped at him. ‘We’ve just met an alien, a real live alien, and you’re expecting us to just go back to work?’

  ‘It might help,’ Rangi suggested, kindly, ‘to try to stop thinking of her as ‘an alien’ and just get to know her as Shion. The whole issue of defining homo sapiens as ‘normal’ and everything outside that definition as ‘alien’ is profoundly flawed, for a start. There’s huge range even within the genomes we have within the League, ring-fenced within the Homo Sapiens Identification Act. Me, I don’t see ‘human’ or ‘alien’ at all, just different kinds of people. And the things we have in common, our needs, our feelings, our spirit, are far greater than any physiological or cultural differences.’

  Tass, however, gazed at Shion with worshipful eyes.

  ‘The things you could teach us...’ she breathed.

  Shion looked intrigued.

  ‘Like what?’ she queried.

  ‘Well, you know...’ Tass floundered a bit, gesturing helplessly. This was something that was taken for granted by the First Contact fraternity, that aliens would come to teach mankind and lead them into a golden age. ‘Wisdom,’ Tass said, and then blushed as even she realised how silly that sounded. ‘I mean,’ she qualified, hastily, ‘your people don’t have any crime, do they, or poverty, or illness? You could teach us so much – save us from ourselves.’

  Shion looked frankly appalled.

  ‘You really think that I could do that? Or that I would want to? Or that people here would want me to, even if I could?’ She shook her head. ‘We don’t have crime or poverty because we are a small population living in an ancient, harmonious society. We don’t have illness because our world is in quarantine. But there is a price to pay for that. My world is tranquil, yes, and beautiful, you might even call it idyllic. But nothing has changed there for thousands of years, and nothing had changed there for millions of years before the Falling, the plague, forced change upon us. It is your worlds, your people, who are the vibrant, growing culture. The Solarans believe that your people will one day become one of the great species of the galaxy, and not in some far distant future, either, but soon. I’m not here to teach, certainly not to preach – I’m here to learn from you. And since it is important to me to make a real, practical contribution to the society in which I live, I at least am going back to work, now.’

  She did just that, and after some more conversation with Rangi, Chantal and Tass also went back to their research. It would take some time, Alex felt, for Tass especially to get over her preconceptions and get to know Shion as a person. In the meantime, though, he felt sure that he could rely on them both to honour their commitment to confidentiality.

  He certainly knew that he could count on his crew for that, even if they were occasionally less than discreet about other matters. As, for example, the following day. Alex was stretching his legs in a break from dealing with calls and paperwork, taking a walk around the ship and talking to people. His attention was caught, as he made his way towards engineering, by the sight of Able Star Trevaga diving into an airlock to avoid him. There was no doubt about that in Alex’s mind, seeing the crewman’s alarmed look and abrupt change of direction to hurry into the nearest airlock. It was always possible of course that he’d been suddenly caught short and needed to make use of the lavatory facilities to be found in any airlock, but Alex didn’t think so.

  This, he knew, had nothing to do with the incident, weeks before, when A/S Trevaga had crossed the line in teasing him about a fabricated story in the media. That was long forgotten as far as Alex was concerned, and had been trivial even at th
e time. They’d had many conversations since without any sense of awkwardness between them, and Trevaga was, indeed, shaping up very well.

  Alex thought about it for a moment and then just stopped where he was, waiting patiently. About a minute later, the airlock hatch opened and Trevaga peeped out.

  As soon as he saw the skipper waiting there for him, he came out. He was red around the ears and horribly embarrassed, giving Alex an appealing look.

  ‘Honestly, sir, I’m really sorry,’ he said, straight off. ‘I didn’t mean to, honest.’

  Alex looked enquiringly at him. He was rather more pleased than anything. Trevaga had a history of being bullishly combative when he knew that he was in the wrong, so this frank apology was a major step forward. Hiding in the airlock wasn’t so good, but Alex always focussed on the positives.

  ‘What have you done?’ he asked, with an air of purely academic interest.

  ‘Well, that thing on the news, sir.’ Seeing that the skipper still didn’t know what he was talking about, Trevaga added, ‘the thing about you beating me up.’

  Alex hadn’t seen that one, but looked interested rather than surprised.

  ‘Oh?’ he queried.

  ‘Well, the thing is, sir,’ Trevaga was brick red, now, and squirming, ‘I might have said something in the Freight Club.’

  ‘Something?’ Alex prompted.

  ‘Well, sir,’ Trevaga gave him an imploring look, ‘There were some mates of mine there, see, and they asked me what you’re like, sir, as a skipper, like, and I was telling them about when I come aboard, sir, you remember, being a bit cheeky, like, and getting slapped round the head, and I might have said that it was you who did it.’

  Might have, Alex recognised, was a euphemism for definitely did. Trevaga had obviously got carried away, telling the story of how he’d cheeked the skipper, turning the playful slap on the back of his head that he’d got from a shipmate into a blow from the skipper himself.

  ‘Well,’ Alex said, having given this due consideration, ‘I daresay it made for a better story.’ As Trevaga looked at him with almost breathless anxiety, the skipper grinned. It would be a sad day, after all, if spacers ever stopped spinning tall tales. That was as much a part of their culture as their superstitions. Any experienced spacer would be able to spot the point at which accurate reportage turned into yarn-spinning. They’d have no difficulty interpreting Trevaga’s story in that light, either, recognising that the part of the story where the skipper thumped him was just put in for effect. If a journalist or Liberty League activist had picked up on the story, though, they might not have realised that.

  Given the choice, Alex would rather not have had a story going out on air alleging that he’d beaten up one of his crew. But he wasn’t even prepared to consider keeping his crew from talking to outsiders at all in case anything was misinterpreted.

  ‘Just try not to get too carried away with it, okay?’ Alex said, and seeing that he really wasn’t even annoyed by this, Trevaga let go the breath he was holding, and broke into a wide grin of his own.

  ‘Thank you, skipper!’ He saluted, having no other means of expressing his gratitude, and Alex returned it. He was still grinning to himself as he strolled on, but had put the matter out of his mind before he got to engineering.

  Later that morning, he managed to catch up with Buzz, sharing a chuckle with him over the way Chantal and Tass had reacted to finally realising the truth about Shion.

  ‘Seriously though, dear boy, we do have to be responsible about this,’ Buzz observed, ‘Duty of care, and all that, and funny as it is, you know, we’re on the verge of traumatising people.’

  ‘Yes, yes, you’re right, of course,’ Alex conceded. ‘And all very well for us to laugh, I know – we’ve been knocked sideways by this ourselves, quite often, and needed time to get our heads around it. And we’ve had it in stages, over months. It’s one heck of an impact, getting it all, all at once. But difficult – what can you do when people just won’t believe you?’

  ‘I know,’ Buzz said, with a rueful note, though he’d enjoyed the entertainment of waiting for them to realise that what they’d been told was true, just as much as the rest of the crew. ‘And I doubt there is a simple answer, a procedure to suit every circumstance. But I do think we should come up with some kind of structured, phased briefing, making a decision, in that, for each individual, as to where we start, with a continuum ranging from people who are already exo-aware to those we have to sit down with a cup of tea and tell them ‘aliens are real’.’

  It wasn’t, after all, as if there was an existing ‘how to tell people about aliens’ manual that they could work from. The Diplomatic Corps had provided them with a library of books and guidance documents, but these were less than helpful when it came to specifics. Most of them were academic documents with a great deal of explanation but no hard advice. Even documents that claimed to be ‘field operations manuals’ were long on abstract diagrams of internalisation process and short on the nitty-gritty of what should be said, and when, and how. When it got to that level of detail it was left to the judgement of the person giving the information, as each case, each circumstance, was felt to be unique. The Fleet’s own protocol was obviously based on the leading Diplomatic manuals and amounted pretty much to ‘use your own discretion, with due sensitivity to culture shock’.

  ‘Okay – good idea,’ Alex agreed. ‘We’ll get to work on that when we’ve got time.’

  That wasn’t going to be that day, as Buzz understood – they didn’t even have time to finish their coffee before Alex was being called away by yet another priority call coming in from Fleet Intel. Then, in amongst all the usual incoming, he had a call later that afternoon from Jon Quilleran.

  ‘Just a heads up,’ Quill told him. A courier had just arrived from Chartsey. It had brought the Fourth quantities of paperwork from various Admiralty departments. Most of it was routine, memos to all skippers and policy documents Alex was expected to read and send back signed confirmation that he had done so, but with typical Admiralty understanding of the pressures on skippers in port, much of it also carried an ‘immediate response’ classification. ‘We’ve just had an advisory that the Eagle will be arriving tomorrow morning, with a request to prep our VIP facilities for guests, unidentified.’

  Alex gave a philosophical nod. The Senate would almost certainly be sending out some high ranking governmental representatives to meet Shion. The spectre of having Senator Machet foisted on them seemed increasingly likely. Still, there was no point speculating about that.

  ‘Thanks, Quill,’ he said, and asked, ‘How are the Levets?’

  Quill broke into a grin. ‘Fine! Lovely couple, aren’t they? Actually, I’m thinking of giving them one of the garbage pile.’

  Alex’s eyes widened. Quill was doing his bit to make the spaceways just a little safer by buying up as many starseekers as he could. Quite a number of starseekers arrived at the station with their owners in a state of exhaustion, out of supplies or just stressed out by the journey. The discovery that Karadon would pay a generous price for their yachts and throw in free liner tickets home had prompted more than thirty such owners so far to sell their starseekers, abandoning them at the station. Quill wouldn’t sell them on, either. They were tethered to a long umbilical jutting out from the station, not a marina tube but a tether used for large sized garbage awaiting safe disposal. Quill had already offered Alex, tongue in cheek, the opportunity to have the lot for target practice if he liked. Alex was considering it, too. He’d have accepted straight off, but for the fact that his orders required him to stay at Karadon and such demolition would need them to go at least an hour away from the busy station.

  ‘You’re not serious?’ Alex queried, though he could see that Quill really meant this.

  ‘Yes, I am,’ Quill confirmed. ‘I found it hard to believe, myself, that they’re so set on getting another starseeker after everything they’ve been through. But they are!’ he spread his hands, showing his incre
dulity. ‘They know the insurance won’t pay out on abandonment when the ship wasn’t actually in danger, but they’re already trying to work out how they can afford to buy another second hand starseeker, one they’ll need to do up themselves. You know how I feel about starseekers myself, but fair play, Alex, these guys are no kind of morons. They’re well qualified, sensible people. I honestly don’t think they can be blamed for jumping ship with a banshee screaming at them. In their place, I might well have done the same thing myself. I’ve advised them on the kind of media deal they should be able to do at Telfa, and the first thing they said was that they could use that money towards getting another starseeker. You have to respect commitment like that. And me, I’ve got a five month old starseeker on the garbage pile I could let them have.’

  Alex laughed, shaking his head. ‘I don’t know who’s more nuts,’ he commented, ‘you or them. But your call, fair enough. Just do me one favour? Make it conditional on them joining a mother duck back to Telfa. I wouldn’t like to think of them going back through Kennerman’s on their own.’

  ‘Done,’ Quill said, with a note of decision now that he saw that Alex had no serious objection to him giving one of the abandoned starseekers to the couple.

  They chatted for a couple of minutes more, then Alex went back to work. He gave no more than a passing thought to the arrival of the Eagle next day. He did put a note in the log that they might be having VIP visitors, but that there was no need for any extraordinary preparations for that.

  His own matter-of-fact attitude to that was picked up on by the crew. A casual conversation between the skipper and exec a bit later confirmed the crew’s own suspicions that they were likely to get a Senator descending on them, possibly Senator Machet, and nobody was the least bit excited about that.

  Conversation aboard ship next morning, in fact, was mostly about the latest Tass-Shion joke. Tass had seen Shion doing water quality tests again early that morning and had been moved to protest.