Feinseirblit nodded.
“Good. Within a century, Oilflig had a complete infrastructure built throughout the Galaxy, and was the richest being ever. Having achieved his life’s ambition, he formed a committee to do all the normal running of his empire for him so that he could have some time off, windsurfing with naked ladies on his back and that sort of thing. One day the committee took a vote and a hired assassin took his life, praise Oilflig, may his memory live forever...”
“Praise Oilflig,” echoed the recruits.
“Yeah, that,” added Tom, slightly afterwards.
“From then onwards,” continued Husky after a sharp glance his way, “the power within the organisation was distributed across key people who work within it. There is no real leader, although the memory of the great Oilflig lives within all our hearts, with us, every day.”
“How is it all held together?” Kara ventured the question.
“Good question, Ndroy. You will go far, I’m sure.”
Tom caught the glint in Husky’s eye—almost reptilian, he thought.
“You are quite right in asking,” continued their guide. “The system needs to be co-ordinated from a central point. We use a Super-Sentient as master controller, but there are many other nodes backing it up, and we have the data securely off-sourced to a number of systems on fourth-world planets, variously disguised as coffee machines, hi-fi systems and other devices you might wonder why you’ve got, and never use. The location of the Super is an absolute secret of course. Even I do not know where it is.”
“Do you have contingency?” Griosclanu had his hand up.
“Of course,” continued Husky, looking harassed, “we do have backup systems, but these are currently being upgraded for Trillennium compliance. They may be out of action for some time, because management outsourced the engineers working on it, before they had finished. What the new engineers didn’t mention was that there was a galactic tsunami in their solar system, and most of their datacentres had been blasted away, along with a lot of their staff. We have been able to recruit temporary replacements by intercepting the immigrant ships trying to sneak across our protectorate. It’s surprising how hard those guys will work for no money, if we threaten to send them back whence they came. They aren’t very quick, really knowing only how to make bombs and shoot guns, but they are learning, and some have been useful in quelling the odd revolution on some of the outer worlds. Not that a backup matters because ‘Sentients’, as you know, are self-healing and never fail, but we have to pretend we have adequate contingency, in order to satisfy the auditors.”
Tom noticed a sardonic smile curling the corner of Kara’s lip. Fortunately Husky was watching Feinseirblit, who was tapping notes into a data pad.
“However, despite all that,” she continued, “the main basis of our wealth is that we do not actually manufacture anything. We are in the procurement and distribution business. We obtain goods and services at little or no cost, and then sell them at higher rates.” Here she looked round at the group to judge how they were taking the information. Most looked interested, although one of them was gazing, wide-eyed, through the window at the exotic terrain outside. She shrugged, “Now, Appain...” Tom jumped as Kara elbowed him in the ribs, “...if you would like to join us again, we’re off for a little walk. Keep close to me, and don’t wander off.”
The group followed her out of the conference room into another sumptuous corridor. This led to a tunnel, seemingly filled with grey mist.
“Where does it go? Is it a steam room?” Tom had asked the question before Kara could stop him. She sucked in a breath.
“This is a ‘spatial tunnel’, if you haven’t seen one before,” said Husky. “It links two far-apart locations together…”
“How’s that work then?”
Husky pursed her lips. “Griosclanu, I was going to explain, if you hadn’t butted in.”
“Sorry, miss.”
“It accelerates our molecules as we move through, a bit like one of those old-fashioned moving walkways, you will be able to get as fixtures for your houses when you become too fat to use your legs. This means that we can move around the Galaxy with comparative ease, improving our effectiveness–‘communication is control’–one of our maxims for you to remember. Now come on, step lively. Follow me.”
They entered the tunnel one at a time, and Tom gasped as the acceleration took his breath away. The corridor he had been in disappeared into the mist behind him, and at almost the same moment, the far end of the tunnel cleared. Another pace took him out of the tunnel into warm sunlight. He blinked in the glare, and joined the rest of the group, waiting for him on a smart boulevard, lined with exotic trees and manicured lawns and hedges.
Husky called them back together. “We are now on another planet, and about to enter, as guests, the residence of a ‘Negotiator—Grade three’. Don’t dawdle.”
They followed the girl up a long flight of steps, to stand in front of an enormous house, with tall, white stone columns at the entrance, in the Ancient Greek-American style.
A butler appeared from the side door, and humbly approached the group. “Allow me to take your suits, ladies and gentlemen.”
Tom and Kara said that they would keep theirs on, as they were wearing very little underneath, but Feinseirblit unzipped his, proudly revealing his ‘Consortium Galactic Tour UD52800-803’ T-shirt. He handed the suit over to the butler, who took it and darted an ominous glance at Husky. She shrugged, and feigned a yawn. Feinseirblit was clutching his throat, and choking, and collapsing on to the concrete, and dying horribly, as his body desiccated and turned black. The butler nodded and heaved the corpse on to his shoulder to deposit that, and the overall, into a large, black, wheeled dustbin, labelled ‘recycling, not for organic material’ at the side door.
“Second lesson,” said Husky, “never give anything away to anybody. We never give things away. Even our ‘free’ software has limited functionality and contains ‘nagware’ to make people buy the main product. If they try to uninstall, it wipes all their data, burns their eyes out and then roams the area, tracking down and killing everyone in their mailing list... Anyway, please note that the atmospheres of all our planets contain a lethal poison, to discourage unscheduled visitors. Without the protective mechanism in the badges you are wearing, you cannot survive. If you are offered a job, of course…” Oifigan put his hand down, “you will be given a permanent vaccination against the poison. Now, this is the residence of our negotiator,” she continued. “Five years’ education has gone into training this person, so we will now go and study him at his work, to give you the general idea.”
Their footsteps echoed round a vast entrance hall, as they entered the mansion. Servants scurried in all directions, going about their daily business. The students gazed at priceless artefacts on display, seemingly putting even the wealth of the showroom into the shade.
Before they really had time to appreciate the splendour, they were ushered into the back garden, or safari park, as it seemed to Tom. The perimeter fence stretched for miles in both directions, and within it, herds of tame exotic animals roamed, casually browsing the foliage, and each other. By a lake under a huge tree, a highly sun-tanned, but thin and shifty-eyed man was chatting with a four-legged being, which looked roughly like a small pyramid. A conversation was in progress as they approached. The Pyramid was obviously agitated.
“So, to conclude,” said the man, moving a large pair of reflective sunglasses from the top of his head, to the bridge of his nose, “we will exchange a gallon of Pepsastim for every ton of your refined sand.”
“You drive a hard bargain,” said the Pyramid, “but we have no choice, we are dying of thirst. When can you deliver?”
“Our ships are already in orbit round your planet.”
“You are very presumptive.”
“Not really, it was only a matter of time before your water ran out, after you sold it to us in exchange for glass sculptur
es.”
The Pyramid growled. “If it hadn’t been for that change in our sun’s orbit, you mean… We had plenty of water until then.”
“Yes, bit of bad luck on that score.” The Negotiator shrugged. “Is there anything else we can do for you?”
“One day…” The Pyramid vanished before completing the threat.
“Come and meet one of our best negotiators, Ivan Conopolis,” said Husky, as her students looked confused. “I’ll explain what just happened.”
After greeting their guide with an obscenely suggestive comment, which she pretended not to hear, Conopolis spoke directly to the recruits. “The creature you saw was a projection from its own planet, Pyremos. We don’t do any of that time-consuming space travel any more. It makes negotiations a lot easier and safer than when we had to visit in person. We used to lose a lot of people that way.”
“Only the crap ones who couldn’t talk their way out of difficult situations,” put in Husky.
“That is correct,” agreed the negotiator. “You can imagine that some of the more difficult discussions would end in a degree of animosity. Referring to the transaction you have witnessed, the sand we extract will be shipped to our glassware workshops as a raw material. It won’t actually cost us anything more than the transportation, because the Pepsastim is to be exchanged for half a dozen of those faceted light units we keep in stock. We, of course, charge packing and delivery for the Pepsastim we ship to the Pyramids.”
For a while, he continued good-naturedly boasting about his techniques, and even answered a few questions. He offered them drinks, and was a little taken aback when people recoiled in suspicion. Husky grinned apologetically at him, and they took their leave.
“That case was a good example,” said the guide, when they were back outside beside the spatial tunnel. “The deal was originally set up by a Grade One Exploiter. The Pyramid’s planet was nearly all water, which we needed. They exchanged it for small luxuries for a while, until our secret exploration team discovered that the sand underneath the water was ideal for making the sort of glass used in our highly acclaimed works of art. The Exploiter completed his five-year schooling with a thesis and practical that secretly crashed a nova-bomb into the back of their sun, where they couldn’t see it. This raised the temperature of the planet, to evaporate most of the remaining surface water. They blamed it on global warming, of course, and for a while, everyone had to pay extra taxes for bathing. They got fed up of this, lynched the local tax collectors and turned to us for help. Thus we are in a position to negotiate the exchange of the sand.”
“What happens to them when the sand runs out?” asked Siopan.
“Then we have no further use for those people.”
“That’s awful. Have you no humanity?” asked Siopan. “Ow!” He disintegrated into many pieces right in front of them.
The butler humbly holstered his disrupter gun, “Sorry Ma’am,” he muttered. “It must have gone off by accident.” Husky nodded to him, and he shuffled ingratiatingly back into the house.
“Siopan used a prohibited word, I’m afraid, and accidents do happen. Sentiment is not permitted,” said Husky. “I thought I had made that plain. Do you think we would have made progress if we were sentimental?” She glared around at the remaining three recruits.
Kara nudged Tom sharply. He shut his mouth with a snap.
“Now,” continued the guide, “follow me down the tunnel to the next part of our tour.”
A short while later, they were standing in a military headquarters somewhere in what Tom’s astronomers would have called ‘the Crab Nebula’. Husky cleared her throat. “This is central control for the Consortium of Realigned Galaxies Internal peace-keeping force, CORGI-PKF. You will notice that OrcommNE supplies all the systems control, and that all military personnel are in our employ, salaried, of course, on a scale similar to that enjoyed by our normal employees. Most of the people here are failed negotiators. They make the best soldiers because we believe that any attempt at independent thinking in military personnel is undesirable.”
“What happens to failed military personnel?” The question was out of Tom’s mouth before Kara could stop him.
Husky looked irritated and reached for a bag at her hip. Tom squeaked. She unclipped the lid and handed him a brochure, in English of a lovely property, ‘a squeak’ for GD67,999,999.99. The description read, “Please let seduce you by this ancient house including a big stay, four chambers, three water sources, big dependencies, nestled in a custard tart of hillside. Park of 1.4 hectares.”
“That is a clue.” Husky smiled. “There is always a market for the people who write those captions. Now let's move on.”
The group meandered through wide corridors, teeming with uniformed beings marching stiffly in formation, and eventually stopped in a circular room with a high ceiling. Half the circumference of the room was a raised gallery, and from here important-looking military gentlemen issued orders to less important-looking military gentlemen down below. Taking up most of the opposite side from the gallery, was a large three-dimensional star-chart. As they watched, one light flashed red within the mass. An order was barked from the gallery.
The hologram zoomed in to an area containing a few of the stars. A glowing red ball moved antagonistically from behind one of them. A glowing green ball moved to intercept. The scale of the hologram changed again, and this time, actual spacecraft were visible, highlighted in red and green. The green ships moved in on the red ones, and one by one, the red lights went out, until only green ships remained.
“Sangrian revolt crushed,” reported a man from the floor.
“Excellent,” said a man in the gallery. “Return surviving craft for refitting and rearming.”
“Very good, sir,” said the Floor.
“Thanks a lot, don’t mention it, it was nothing,” said the Gallery. “I talk like this all the time.”
The map returned to the original hologram, and Husky ushered the group into a side room. They sat down expectantly in front of a large screen.
“Peacekeeping across our dominion is one of the jobs the Consortium is employed for,” she said. “In the particular case we witnessed, I have been informed that the Sangrians had inconsiderately mustered a fleet, to prevent us from removing their atmosphere. We were going to replace it of course, with waste products from the manufacture of bricks–mostly harmless to that species. It was our duty to encourage them to try the new atmosphere, before they started complaining. We don’t really want maverick fleets wandering the Galaxy. Any military force, other than the Consortium, has got to be opposed to natural law and order, hasn’t it?”
“Yes,” chorused the group.
“What is so special about the Sangrian atmosphere?” asked Oifigan.
The other recruits held their breaths.
“It contains a substance which alleviates depression in humanoid life-forms,” Husky’s face reddened slightly, “a common problem with our executives, for some reason. Anyway, we are coming to the end of the tour, and you have seen that by joining us, you become part of the force that administers the galaxy, and subsequently, you could become members of the company elite, and actually then have some influence in what goes on. You would progress from Negotiator to Manipulator, and if you are particularly devious, you may even be promoted to Governor or even Prime Nabob of a planet under direct Consortium control. Eventually this will lead to command of an entire sector. So, by following this career path, you will gain complete control over your own destiny, won’t you?” She looked expectantly at Oifigan.
“Yes,” he nodded automatically, and then vaporised into a cloud of pink smoke, which was greedily sucked up by the extract filters.
“No,” said Husky, removing her finger from a button on her belt labelled ‘Vaporise’, “that was a trick question. He wasn’t paying attention. Central Control regulates all personnel in OrcommNE, and don’t you forget it.” She took a breath. “Now we are going to see
a film, to give you more idea of the history of the founding of the company.”
The door opened and another girl, equally beautiful and dressed like Husky, put her head round. “Ah, the survivors of the other groups are here, to join us.” Husky beckoned. “Come on in. Move up, you three, and make some space.”
The remnants of the tour entered meekly. It looked as though they had suffered as much as Tom’s group. In all, only about a quarter of the recruits had survived this far.
“Right,” said Husky when they were all settled, “we are ready. Sit still and don’t fidget... whatever happens.”
The room darkened, and then Tom found himself alone in an alien landscape, still seated, but not in one of the comfortable chairs of the briefing room. He was on a rock, a seemingly comfortable rock. He felt panic rising, convinced it was some trick to dispose of him, but Kara's voice whispered in his ear. “Don’t worry, it’s only the latest development in Be-evision. You haven’t moved; this is a spatial illusion.”
“Whatever that is,” murmured Tom.
“You’re sitting in it,” said Kara.
The sun came up from behind the trees, and lit a bright and cheerful land. There were multi-coloured spheres everywhere, drifting around, and flashing gorgeous colours at each other. Light reflecting off their many-faceted surfaces highlighted small, rabbit-like creatures darting about on the ground. An air of peace and harmony made Tom feel warm and relaxed.
The Legend of Dan Page 18
