by S MacDonald
‘That’s all right,’ Alex smiled. ‘I value your opinion. In fact I’d like you to join our command team meetings – as a member, I mean, not an observer – so you can have your say, too, when decisions are being discussed. That’s only fair, after all, when you’re the one who’ll have to work with the consequences of those decisions.’
‘Thank you, I’ll be privileged,’ Tan said, with quaint courtesy followed by another twinkle. ‘And don’t worry; I will stick to your meeting protocols.’
‘Very different from the Diplomatic Corps, I know,’ said Alex, who had endured several meetings at Embassies and considered them not far short of torture. ‘We keep things brisk. If there is something you’re concerned about, please don’t leave it till the meeting anyway, raise it with me at once. And I meant to say, too, feel free to shadow me any time you like, if you think that would be helpful.’
‘Oh – really?’ Tan was pleased. ‘If you’re sure it wouldn’t be an imposition having me looking over your shoulder, as it were…’
Alex laughed. ‘I’m on shipwide livecam all the time,’ he pointed out. ‘Besides being recorded in footage that I know will be scrutinised every which way by armies of analysts. It is also part of our officer training to provide opportunities for shadowing and questioning me, particularly for our Subs; not at all unusual to see a Sub trotting after me making lots of notes. Being watched is not a problem, Tan. And I don’t mind questions, either – I know you’ll time them so they’re not disruptive.’
‘Thank you, that really is most kind,’ Tan beamed at him, and Alex smiled back.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I expect to benefit too, from your experience and from the different perspective you bring to the table. We don’t have much time today, obviously,’ he gestured to indicate that they had almost finished breakfast, with both of them aware of how much was waiting to be done. ‘But if there is anything that’s struck you about the handling of the mission so far, anything you have concerns about, please, do say.’
‘Ah.’ Tan paused for a moment as if to consider, though Alex felt sure that he already knew what he wanted to say. ‘There is one thing – not advice, just an opinion. I think that you – the Fourth, I mean, not just you personally – are overly-concerned with what you describe as the ‘loss’ of the Guardian.’ As Alex looked at him in some surprise at that, he explained, ‘We were picking up news from cross-travelling couriers on the way out here, obviously, and I was able to access the reports you were sending back to Chartsey. The Solarans turning up here was certainly a surprise and I have no idea myself who might have asked them to do that, if it was anyone at all. But that the Guardian accepted them as ending the need for quarantine was a very good thing, threw the doors wide open for us to come here, with all the possibilities that opens up. Yet your report of it seemed to view it as some kind of disaster.’
‘Well, it was,’ Alex said, incomprehending. ‘The shock of it has traumatised practically everyone on the planet, for a start, and that hasn’t been easy to deal with. But most of all, of course, we lost any hope we had of learning about that technology.’
Tan shook his head. ‘There was never any hope of that,’ he said, with total conviction. ‘Sorry, Alex, I know you thought there might be but there really never was. We’ve had that kind of tech in our hands, you know, captured Solaran ships from the bad old days. And we’ve taken them apart, too – well, chopped them up would be a better description. There is nothing to take apart, no machinery, no power systems, no controls, nothing you could figure out and reverse engineer There’s just ship, a weird material that can apparently shift between matter and energy states according to need, and which shifts itself through hyper dimensions in ways we can’t even begin to understand. The Solarans, of course, tell us very helpfully that the ship is powered by another dimension and that they operate it by knowing what they want it to do. The Guardian was clearly that same kind of tech, utterly beyond us, no chance of gaining any tech from it even if we’d chopped it to fragments.’
‘Yes, I know,’ Alex admitted. ‘But I was hoping that the Guardian itself might be persuaded, in time, to tell us itself how it worked.’ He considered that himself as he said it, and gave a wry grimace. ‘Never much of a hope, admittedly.’
‘Never any hope at all, realistically.’ Tan said. ‘It was a drone, Alex. A very sophisticated drone, admittedly, but still a drone, pre-programmed to perform a defined task in rigidly defined ways. That much is obvious from the history of Carrearranis itself – it’s an astonishingly static society, maintained in effectively the same state over thousands of years. That’s not natural, it was imposed by the Guardian which could not, itself, adapt and develop. As for persuading it, I think you’d have more chance asking a lump of rock to teach you about stellar engineering. Really, yes. I don’t believe the Guardian was any more sentient than a lump of rock – I see no AI function about it, it seemed less smart to me than the kind of bot we use to give information at tourist spots. I’m not joking,’ he said, as Alex laughed. ‘That honestly is the level I’d peg it at. It could answer specified questions with set responses, but anything beyond that it just came back with ‘That’s beyond my remit.’ You couldn’t have a conversation with it, let alone change its programming. I’ve wondered, in fact, whether the Olaret ever intended for it to stay working as long as it did, at all. They didn’t leave drone defenders around any of the other colonies we know of, did they? Or if they did, it was only perhaps for the initial phase, while the colony was establishing. It strikes me, you see, that the guiding principle of the Olaret was to create survival species tailored to each planet, to provide them with everything they’d need to thrive, and then to leave them to get on with it, to strive and grow into a mature, advanced society. And that’s the very opposite of what’s been done here, they’ve been kept back, held in a permanent state of anti-development. So either the Olaret for some reason created one colony that went against everything we know they were working for, or something went wrong somewhere. Personally, I suspect that that drone should have self-destructed thousands of years ago, and I certainly feel that the Carrearranians will do very much better without it.’
‘Well, there is that,’ Alex said, much struck. ‘And I must say I’ve never quite thought of it in that light… that’s a very interesting point, Tan. I’ll certainly give it some thought. But...’ he glanced at the time, and began clearing the table. ‘Morning briefing awaits.’
The most important matter on the agenda for that morning was the question of whether they should bring Arlit up to the ship for a medical.
‘I am,’ Alex said, ‘satisfied that the plan manages all risks safely, and I believe that the information we will gain from it will be of vital importance not just in terms of progressing the mission but also in enabling us to treat medical emergencies from the basis of full knowledge about genetics and physiology. It does, however, have to be noted that if he comes aboard conscious there are diplomatic ramifications, since this would, in fact, constitute FDC, First Direct Contact. That’s a huge moment in the history of any world and we were planning to do it with a ceremonial landing and greeting. It also bypasses Arak, who has the status of course of the Carrearranian ambassador and might well feel insulted that we choose his young cousin for this honour and not him. So – thoughts?’
He looked at Buzz, who had raised his hand slightly in the customary indication that he had something he wanted to say.
‘I don’t believe that Arak will want to come aboard,’ he said. ‘He’s keen for us to go there but he’s expressed nothing but horror and pity for the way we live and has physically shivered at the suggestion that he might come up for a visit one day. I think that if it is put to him as a visit for medical tests, he’ll be happy to let Arlit volunteer.’
‘You said ‘if he comes aboard conscious’, skipper,’ Martine Fishe was very good at picking up the skipper’s cues, asking the questions he wanted asked so that he could clarify things for the benefit of
the watching crew. ‘I suppose he could be sedated, so it wouldn’t count as FDC.’
Alex gave her a Look.
‘Diplomacy,’ he observed, ‘does not normally involve knocking your guests unconscious.’
There was an outburst of laughter both around the table and from about the ship, in which Martine herself joined.
‘Visitors will only be sedated on medical grounds,’ Alex said. ‘So, if he is willing to come, and subject to Arak’s agreement, do we do a low-key FDC today or go the whole hog with choirs and plaques?’ He looked at Davie with that one, and Davie grinned, remembering the high ceremony they’d contrived for the first formal meeting at Samart.
‘Let’s treat it like the cadet swap, low key preliminary, and keep the ceremonial for first landing,’ he suggested, and Alex gave a nod. They had, at the Samartians’ request, exchanged their most junior officers for a few hours on reconnaissance visits – their most junior not because they were expendable but because the Samartians were concerned they might look foolish and none of the seniors wanted to risk it.
‘Fair enough,’ the skipper agreed. ‘So – I’ll talk to Arak and if he agrees, you can organise it with Arlit and take project lead, yes?’
Davie looked pleased, understanding that Alex was asking him not to work in with the team as a consultant but to function as an officer himself.
‘On it, Boss,’ he confirmed.
‘All right.’ Alex took no notice of this form of address. Davie called him by all sorts of teasing monikers, a familiar banter between them. The only one Alex had ever really objected to was ‘Skippy’, which Davie had seen and never used it again. ‘So – everyone clear?’ He glanced around and saw that Tan had raised a hand, a little tentative but obviously wanting to speak. ‘Tan?’
‘Question,’ Tan said, and had obviously been studying the protocol for this kind of meeting. ‘Will it make any material difference if Arlit’s medical finds that the Carrearranians aren’t human?’
There was a stunned moment all round, in which Alex looked at him in bewilderment.
‘Er… no?’ he said, with a questioning note as if he wasn’t really sure, himself, what Tan was getting at. ‘Why would it?’ he asked. ‘Human or not, they’re the same people, with the same needs, our job here won’t change.’
Tan’s would, though. He wondered if he should try to explain to Alex and the rest of them just how vital a question that was to the League government, the difference it would make whether Carrearranis was a human world to be brought into the fold with the ultimate aim of becoming a League member world themselves, or an alien one which must always be outside their borders. Governments across the League were braced for widespread panic if it did turn out that the Carrearranians were alien – even the word alien was regarded as synonymous with evil and monster by most groundsiders. An alien world right there on their border would be serious cause for concern.
That wasn’t the Fourth’s fault, of course. It had been President Arthas who’d made the call to go public with news of the discovery, though the presence of the Guardian had been concealed. She had apparently assumed that the people of Carrearranis were human, but Tan himself had doubts. Not all of the Olaret colonies fell within the human genome, after all. They’d created the colony on Quarus, too.
‘I just wondered,’ he said, ‘whether it would alter your approach.’
‘No,’ Alex replied, ‘There’s nothing in our orders which says ‘do this if they’re human, do that if they’re not’, our orders are simply to learn as much as we can about them and make friends. I take your point, though, and it is something we have considered, back before we even found Carrearranis and then again after President Arthas went public with the news of the discovery. The odds are against it being a problem because all the evidence so far is that this is a human population, but we are aware of the issues, obviously, if it should turn out otherwise. Not for us, in terms of our mission objectives, but as high impact news. It isn’t for me to make that call, though, – that one is in the hands of government.’
‘True,’ Tan agreed. ‘And there will be contingency plans upon contingency plans, for sure. But if you’ll forgive me, I do think that you should bear in mind that when it is reported that you’ve had a Carrearranian visit the ship, the question that will be yelled by frantic hordes of journalists at every president of every world in the League will be ‘Are they human?’ And if the answer to that is ‘no’, it will be the biggest diplomatic crisis in nearly a century.’
There was a moment’s silence as they thought about that.
‘Can’t they just lie?’ said Martine. ‘Like usual?’
Tan looked at her apparently innocent face as this made lots of people splutter and giggle, and he grinned too.
‘Yes, of course they can,’ he conceded. ‘And they will, too, if lying through their teeth is what it takes to protect their worlds from mass panic. It won’t always be that way. I firmly believe that we will one day be able to report exodiplomacy so routinely that it’s a normal part of everyday life. But we’re a long way from that and I do think you need to be aware that if they are facing that question and the answer is no, they will be looking to you to give them something, some kind of story they can use.’
‘All right,’ said Alex. ‘If the answer is no, we’ll fake up some files to support them saying that it’s yes.’
He spoke without irony, because he too would lie through his teeth if that was what it took to prevent outbreaks of mass panic. But he spoke quite casually, too, because he really didn’t think that it was going to be needed.
It was certainly a very special moment when Arlit came aboard, not just for the Fourth but for those on Carrearranis who were watching, too. The only difficulty that there’d been in negotiating an agreement for the visit had been that it was no sooner announced than a hundred and seventy three other people had promptly volunteered for it too. A certain amount of tact had been needed to ensure that it was Arlit who came, and only Arlit.
Davie had been absolutely right when he’d said that Arlit was up for this. The Fourth had seen many visitors come aboard their ships, even civilians from their own worlds overwhelmed by the intimidating environment of a warship buzzing with classified tech. As the first of his people ever to leave his world, everyone assumed that he’d be frightened. And there was the factor, too, that everyone here would be so much bigger than anyone he’d ever seen before, with the ship itself and its fittings on that giant scale.
Arlit, though, was wholly undaunted. It had been arranged that he would sail to an atoll just a couple of klicks from the main island. Davie had felt that landing a shuttle right at the village might be alarming to start with – once they’d seen it land and take off again from the safe distance at the atoll, hopefully they would be fine about it coming in if need be for emergencies.
Arlit certainly could have been forgiven for being apprehensive, standing there alone on the atoll as the shuttle came down very slowly. Though it was the smallest of their shuttles, it was fifty times the size of the boat he’d pulled up on the shoreline and unlike anything he’d ever seen before. It gleamed in the sun as it descended; the great blazon of the Fourth’s emblem and FFI Heron glittering like laser-bright jewels. Once it had landed, the airlock opened and revealed the cocoon within. Rangi had considered this too frighteningly stark as a plain white plastic shell, so he had fitted a soft lighting effect which swirled ocean colours in a slow, soothing pattern. He’d also set the air processors to produce a very light scent of damp greenery, which he believed the Carrearranians would find pleasant. There was peaceful music, too, of the spiritual healing variety. Simon had sniffed a bit at that, but hadn’t argued. If it helped to keep passengers calm, fair enough.
Arlit didn’t need to be kept calm. He climbed into the pod with a look of delight, running his hands over the flowing colours and exclaiming at the music. Air composition and gravity were set to be Carrearranian, which did disappoint him a little.
&
nbsp; ‘I thought I would fly,’ he said, talking to Davie throughout.
‘Later,’ Davie promised. The shuttle was already lifting off, cruising up in a direct vertical which accelerated once it reached stratosphere and was hypersonic by the time it swept out and away from the planet.
Launching the shuttle superlight while under remote piloting was the most delicate part of the process – doing so, indeed, was illegal in any League system and Alex had imposed all manner of precautions about it. One of them had been that the pilot handling things from the Heron had to be either Shion herself or one of the advanced fighter pilots she had trained.
In this case, it was Shion, who carried off the launch run so smoothly that not even a tremor of vibration passed through the cocoon. Four minutes later, she brought it in to dock at the quarantine airlock with such precision that there was barely even a muted clunk as the two airlocks engaged.
Davie was there to meet him when the airlock opened – just Davie, keeping it quiet and low key so as not to overwhelm the islander. In fact, the whole ship had gone quiet, illogically since they all knew very well that the comms were only open one way and they could make as much noise as they liked. Instinctively, though, they went very quiet as he came aboard, as if not to frighten him.
‘Davie!’ Arlit came through the airlock with a rush, laughing with joy and then laughing with merriment. ‘You’re enormous!’ he exclaimed.
They embraced, as friends did on the islands. Davie was, in fact, rather small by human standards. His physique had been engineered to superhuman levels at the cost of having to eat extraordinary amounts to keep it fuelled. If he’d been much bigger, as he said himself, he’d have spent all his time eating, day and night. Even so, he was nearly twice the height of his Carrearranian friend – he dropped on one knee for the hug, and almost engulfed Arlit in his arms.
‘Good to see you, Arlit,’ he shifted back a bit and grinned at him. ‘Welcome aboard.’
