K’pah had turned that off before the sub had left the docking bay, hacking the system to do so. Davie would have done the same, so he had no argument with that. Nor was he surprised when she decided, five minutes in, that this was extremely boring after all, so she hacked the sub’s supposedly unhackable controls and turned it around. Then she headed back to Chartsey.
Her swim actually went quite well in terms of situation management, but it was a diplomatic calamity. She had chosen to swim in deep ocean, far from any reefs or other popular diving locations. She wanted to see Chartsey’s air processing systems in action.
They were quite something to see. The population had long since outstripped the ability of the planet to generate sufficient oxygen, with practically every square kilometre of land built on and even the ‘wilderness areas’ hardly more than parks. Every new building on the planet was required to have its own air-scrubbing system as part of anti-pollution efforts, but they still relied on the oceanic processors for oxygen. Each processor consisted of a floating refinery some five kilometres long, anchored to the sea bed by massive cables. They sucked up sea water, reducing it to oxygen and hydrogen molecules and venting clean air into the sky. On still days, this could create ghostly air towers and striking visual effects. Today was quite breezy, though, so the thousand or so processors in the area of ocean K’pah went to swim in were simply giving their air to the wind.
She had said that she would find it interesting to see human technology on such a scale, and there was a team standing by ready to give her a tour of any of the processors she wanted to visit. In the event, though, she swam around one of them for a few minutes and got back into the air-boat that she’d hired for the trip.
It was only when they saw her face, saw that she was wiping tears away as she got back aboard the boat, that they realised the swim had upset her.
‘Davie…’ she called him as she was taking the airboat back to its docks. ‘This is a horrible world,’ she informed him. ‘I’ve seen enough. Can we go now?’
‘Whatever you want,’ Davie said, with a mixture of relief and concern. ‘We’ll have a car for you at the dock, okay? But what’s the matter, Sis?’
‘They’re killing the ocean,’ she said, in a voice choked with emotion.
‘Ah.’ Davie couldn’t deny that there were environmental issues involved in using oceanic air processors. They had changed weather patterns, though since Chartsey was climate controlled anyway few people noticed any difference from that. They were lowering the sea level, too – mean sea level had fallen several centimetres since the processors had first been installed. But few people saw a problem with that, either – it would be tens of thousands of years before the falling water level became a serious issue, and in the meantime, increasing the amount of land available for building could only be a good thing.
The impact on existing sea life was something many people did feel was regrettable. The processors were all located in deep ocean and were not supposed to have any significant impact on the oceanic biosphere but there was compelling evidence that they were, with fish numbers declining and some larger deep ocean species on the verge of extinction. But as Chartseyites themselves observed, they didn’t have a lot of choice – they had to breathe, after all, it wasn’t as if oxygen was a luxury that they could do without.
K’Pah – or Vida as she had been then – had said she understood that, but seeing the reality of what was happening had evidently changed her mind.
‘I know, it’s sad,’ Davie said, with real sympathy. He had strong environmentalist views himself, insisting that every company he owned operated so as to benefit both the community and the environment. His father still thought it was a childish idealism he would grow out of, but it would in fact be a firm, lifelong commitment. ‘Will you come up?’ he asked her, meaning the station where the president was waiting to meet her, ‘or would you rather go back to the ship?’
‘Oh, I’m coming up,’ she said, and with a note of grim purpose, ‘I want words with President Tyborne.’
It was not for that reason that Marc Tyborne elected to meet her in the exo-suite where there would not, in fact, be a face to face encounter.
‘Security is insisting on sim,’ he said. Even Davie could tell that the president had been massively relieved by that advice and had put up no argument against it at all. True, there might be legitimate security concerns when the president met an alien with the ability to read feelings and no notion of privacy. It was far more likely, though, that he had simply bottled out of meeting her in fear of what intimate matters she might reveal about him.
Davie made no comment. He could tell from the careful lack of expression on Ambassador Gerard’s face that the League’s top diplomat had already advised the president, no doubt very forthrightly, that backing out of a physical meeting like this could well be perceived as insulting to the quarians, indicating a lack of trust and reluctance to engage with them directly. But it was equally obvious to him that the president had made up his mind, and on balance Davie had to agree that it was probably better that he didn’t meet K’pah if he was in an anxious or defensive state of mind.
So it was Davie who went to meet her and escort her to the exosuite – a meeting which was, in itself, a surprise to both of them. She had changed her persona again, perhaps feeling that what she’d experienced in the ocean made the jokey K’pah persona inappropriate. She hadn’t had a change of clothing with her but she had removed the kitsch glittery bits from her outfit, taken her hair down from the comical cone and washed off the makeup. With her hair combed back behind her ears she looked young, fresh faced and serious.
‘Davie!’ she exclaimed, as soon as she saw him, with a look of startled concern. ‘You’re shattered!’
Davie stared at her for a moment and then gave a helpless guffaw.
‘I have been trying to tell you,’ he pointed out, quite mildly in the circumstances, ‘that you’re creating mayhem. And I have not,’ a taut note in his voice at that, ‘been chasing you up and down and round about the system for fun.’
‘Oh!’ She looked surprised. ‘But I was fine.’ A little shake of her head, kindly but reproving. ‘Honestly, you are going to have to get used to the fact that I can take care of myself, and stop fussing like this. You’ll wear yourself out!’
Davie looked at her, utterly lost for words, and she put her finger on her lips.
‘Shhhh!’
Davie, with what even he felt to be a superhuman effort, pulled himself together, remembering that the president of the League was waiting for them.
‘So,’ he said surveying her appraisingly. ‘How shall I introduce you?’
‘Representative,’ she said.
‘Ah,’ said Davie, recognising the significance of that. Quarians would obligingly provide a ‘president’ to meet with diplomats on their own world, but it was never the same president twice and they certainly had no authority to make decisions or any more right to speak for their people than any other quarian. What they did have, however, was the concept of a representative, someone from a particular group going to meet with others in order to come to consensus. They were chosen for the role because they exemplified the views of that group. There was no status associated with the role, just a social obligation to act for the benefit of all. So what she was saying, with that name, was that she was going to speak for her people, here, that she was going to work.
‘Shall we?’ Davie said, indicating a nearby transit pod, and this time making sure that they stepped into it together.
There was no difficulty, though, about taking her to the exo-suite, though he was right, she was not at all pleased to find that she was shown into a VR simulation room.
‘I thought I was going to meet him,’ she queried, giving Davie a searching look.
‘Hmmn,’ Davie gave her a rueful look in return. ‘If I thought you’d believe it, I’d tell you that he is developing a slight cold and they’re concerned in case you are infected by it. But
as you won’t buy that for a second, I’ll tell you that there are security concerns – as chief of staff of our military forces, you see, he has a lot of very highly sensitive information in his head.’
‘But…’ she looked perplexed. ‘I’m not a telepath.’
‘I know that.’ He gestured between the two of them. ‘You know that. But your strong empathic ability coupled with your very fast analytical skills does look a bit like telepathy to some people, and in any case, frankly, there are issues of dignity, too – as the most important man in our culture, we have to protect his dignity. We don’t, for instance, want anybody commenting if the president should be feeling the need to break wind. But he is here on the station and has been waiting all morning to meet you. And you did say you wanted a word.’
‘Oh, yes,’ she said, and sat down in the central chair. Within moments the VR simulator had kicked in and the wall they had been facing appeared to flick aside, showing another room beyond it. The décor and furnishings were identical, and the VR quality was such that you could readily believe that you really were in a physical meeting with the other people in the same room.
Well, Davie could, anyway. To the quarian, it was as unconvincing as a standard comscreen. There was just no awareness of people there; they might have been so many phantoms.
Five phantoms, in fact – Marc Tyborne was in the central chair with Ambassador Gerard and another diplomat on a small sofa to one side, while the army chief of staff occupied the other sofa, watching Representative as if afraid she might explode without warning. The man sitting beside him was Dix Harangay, first lord of the Admiralty, looking quietly interested but perhaps just a little tense.
The president had a formal welcoming speech, but he didn’t get very far into it and had only managed to say ‘honoured’ twice before she interrupted.
‘That doesn’t mean anything,’ she dismissed the carefully crafted speech impatiently. ‘Look, I’m here on a fact finding mission, yes? I’m supposed to find out about your people and how we can develop relationship with you or even if we should develop relationship with you. And the things I’ve experienced today… I’ve been locked in at your Embassy which even I know is a violation of diplomatic immunity, I’ve had people threatening to shoot me because I broke your traffic laws, everywhere I go there are people with messed up heads and dysfunctional relationships, hardly a healthy mind amongst them, and now I find that you are brutally destroying your own oceans – the only real natural biosphere you’ve got left, the source of all life on any world. So can you give me one good reason, just one, why I shouldn’t get Davie to take me straight back home and tell my people that there is no way in hell we should have anything to do with you?’
To his credit – and Davie for one felt that it was probably the finest moment of his term of office – the president did not hesitate.
‘I can give you many reasons,’ he said. ‘But right here and now the most important is, I feel, that you are undoubtedly suffering from culture shock.’ As she gave him a challenging look he explained, ‘You’ve just run full tilt into the most high impact, challenging environment in the League – even people coming from other central worlds to visit Chartsey can find it overwhelming, which is why we went to such trouble to organise your visit, to give you time to absorb and process experiences, to ask questions and discuss things. It was, if you will forgive me saying so, highly inadvisable for you to throw yourself into all those experiences at such high speed, and frankly – I am aware of how highly quarians value honesty so I hope you will forgive me being very blunt about this – frankly, I am not at all surprised that you are feeling emotional, overwhelmed and disoriented. I’m sure that if I’d attempted even a fraction of the exploration you have on your world, I’d be utterly exhausted and bewildered, too.’
‘I am not at all bewildered,’ said Representative, with rather impressive dignity. ‘I am very clear on what I’ve seen, and on what I think about it. You give hazardous chemicals to your children to eat, and you tell them it’s a treat. You see that someone is in pain and you just ignore it and tell them to carry on working. And you are killing your oceans, which is so utterly beyond belief that I can hardly believe any sane species would do that. And don’t even get me started about Carpania, a world that’s choking on toxins so that other worlds can have cheap plastics. You’re the president, yes? They tell me it’s your job to protect the League and its people, so why aren’t you doing something about those things?’
Davie was vividly reminded of an almost identical demand he’d made of his father, shortly after finding out about Carpania. He’d been three at the time.
‘Forgive me…’ he could see that the president was drawing breath and was about to attempt a politician’s answer, and worse than that, a politician’s answer as if to a child. ‘May I?’ he asked, and at the president’s cautious nod, it was Davie who turned to the quarian.
‘I’m sure that President Tyborne will be happy to discuss those issues with you, at length,’ he said. ‘But I want to address your first question, the ‘give me one good reason.’’ He gave her a smile. ‘There is a point of principle involved. And let’s just take it as read that yes, humanity has a great many issues and there are some deeply distressing aspects to our culture. But as a very clever man once said to me at a point of crisis in a rescue operation, ‘you can help or you can go away.’ His smile was rueful, with that, but his eyes were warm, compelling as they gazed into hers. ‘I’ll never forget that, the absolute determination with which he was facing impossible odds, and that stark choice shoved straight at me – either help or go away. So…’ his head tilted slightly, his manner questioning. ‘What will you do?’ he asked. ‘You really haven’t seen us at our best today, admittedly. But there it is, faced with the realities of disturbing and upsetting discoveries about us, what are you going to do? Are you going to help, or leave?’
She didn’t hesitate, giving an acknowledging nod.
‘When you put it like that…’ she conceded, and gave him a look of slightly marvelling realisation. ‘You can be quite intelligent when you focus.’
‘Thanks,’ he said drily, and was aware that Ambassador Gerard was having to make an effort not to smile.
‘So,’ the quarian said, with an air of calm resolve, now. ‘What can I do to help?’
‘Work with us,’ said Davie, ‘let us help you to fulfil your mission and learn about us, yes? And for a start, please don’t harangue President Tyborne over things which really aren’t his fault and which he genuinely can’t do anything about. The issue of the damage to the oceans, for instance – those decisions were made centuries ago, he’s inherited the problem and there really is nothing, realistically, that he can do about it.’
‘But you must be able to see,’ Representative argued, ‘that this world is hugely over-populated, dependent on other worlds for your food and destroying your own oceans even to make enough air for you to breathe. That’s unsustainable, and a horrible environment for so many people to live in, too – it’s no wonder so many of them have mental health problems.’
‘Yes, we know,’ said Davie. ‘Everyone agrees that Chartsey is massively overpopulated and the quality of life here is pretty dreadful for most people. But what exactly do you think that we can do about that? Population control is out of the question – it is a fundamental human right to procreate and the government has no right to impose limits on childbirth. And there is, I should point out, Sharfur. That’s an initiative that was pushed through way back when it was first realised that the population was heading past the planet’s ability to sustain it – Sharfur was terraformed specifically to be a suburb world to Chartsey. It’s only five days away by liner and it really is a lovely world – huge green spaces, wonderful birdlife, clean and open cities. Any resident of Chartsey can move there. They’ll be paid to move there; under the colonisation scheme people relocating there get free passage, a guaranteed job on arrival and a relocation grant. Hardly anyone takes it up thoug
h, however grotty their lives might be here and however glossy and glowing the adverts are for Sharfur. Basically, the vast majority of people prefer to stay on the world they were born on. So what can we do? We can’t ship people offworld against their will, and no responsible citizenship campaign ever tried will stop people having babies. So we’re using the best tech we’ve got to keep those people alive, and we’re investing heavily in research and development to find better ways of doing that, ways which won’t damage the ocean, as well as ways in which we can expand living facilities on other worlds within the system. And if your people could help us with that, say, working with us with their expertise in aquatic engineering and sealed habitats, that would be wonderful.’
Representative looked thoughtful. ‘I can’t speak for them in that, but I can certainly tell them you need help.’ She looked back at the president. ‘This really is a horrible world.’
‘Well,’ said the president, swallowing that with as good a grace as he could, ‘as Mr North says, you haven’t seen us at our best. And I must, really must, apologise for that most unfortunate misunderstanding earlier at the Embassy…’ he glanced significantly at Ambassador Gerard, who shifted slightly as he picked up his cue.
‘Please do accept my …’ he began, but got no further, as Representative flapped a hand dismissively.
‘Forget it,’ she said, and looked back at Davie. ‘But I don’t want to stay here. Are there nicer places to go than this?’
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