GALACTIC SURVEY (COLONY Book 3)

by Richard F. Weyand

  Moore nodded.

  “That makes sense,” he said. “It also makes sense that this is the hub of their system. There’s a clean approach over the water.”

  “We have our shuttlepad clearance,” McKay said. “The computer has picked up the transponder on the pad. Looks like compatible systems.”

  “Sure,” Moore said. “We’re both using the systems we shipped out with. Protocols are slow to change. Too much infrastructure to change all at once.”

  “Gavin, I had a request,” Diakos said.

  “Sure, Loukas. Whatcha need?”

  “Can you ask them if they have a pilot’s lounge or something where we can get a shower before meeting with their high mucky-mucks? We’re inured to it by now, but it has been six weeks after all.”

  “Oh, yeah. That’d be good. I’ll ask them next time on the air.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Gavin,” Moore said. “In that same vein, I’m thinking about letting the computer do this one.”

  “The landing? Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. Same transponder. Let the computer bring us in. If it screws up, it wasn’t us.”

  “Yeah, there’s that,” McKay said. “All right. Go for it.”

  Moore engaged the auto-landing sequence.

  “Computer engaged,” the voice came from the cabin speakers. “Shuttlepad transponder locked. Approach nominal.”

  “Well, it sounds happy,” McKay said.

  “Just stand by in case it doesn’t stay happy.”

  But the computer stayed happy and brought the shuttle down in a pinpoint landing on shuttlepad 14, per their clearance from Earthsea traffic control. A stairway was brought up to reach the cockpit door of the shuttle high up on the containers latched side-by-side to its belly.

  Salvatore Romano, as one of the people already in on the story of where this particular shuttle had come from, was waiting on the top of the stair when the cockpit door opened. The first blast of air from the cockpit smelled like a locker room that the janitor had skipped over for the last month, but he had no reaction to that.

  The four men who emerged, each with a little travel bag, though, he addressed directly.

  “Gentlemen, I am Salvatore Romano, Director Laurent’s personal aide. If you would come with me, we can get you to a facility where you can touch up a bit before meeting with the director.”

  “That would be very welcome, Mr. Romano,” Diakos said.

  Romano nodded.

  They walked down the portable stairs to where an electric cart waited.

  The shuttleport terminal did indeed have a pilot’s lounge, a misnomer for a collection of rooms that could better be called pilot services. One of those services was a washroom with showers for cleaning up before heading home from work.

  After a shower and a shave, Diakos and his aid dressed in business attire deemed appropriate for Earthsea. Moore and McKay dressed in pilot’s flight suits, which they had not worn on the trip. All the fleece lounging sets and booties were put in a laundry bag for servicing later.

  “That feels much better, Peter,” Diakos said.

  “Yes, sir. I agree wholeheartedly.”

  “Are we all set, then?” Moore asked.

  The pilots had been done sooner, but had waited to exit the room, to keep the group together.

  “Yes, I think so, Mr. Moore.”

  “If you would then, please, Ambassador Diakos, lead us on out.”

  Diakos nodded and led the group out of the washroom to where Romano waited.

  Romano led them to a conference room in the pilot’s lounge area of the shuttleport.

  “All right, gentlemen,” Romano said. “If you could have seats there. We have placeholders for your party.”

  Diakos nodded, and everyone sat down at their place. Romano scanned the setup.

  “Very good,” he said. “I will let the director know we’re all here.”

  Romano left then, returning in several minutes.

  “The Director of Earthsea, gentlemen.”

  Diakos immediately rose, followed by the rest of his party. Valery Laurent strode in, followed by a man in a business suit. Laurent walked up to Diakos.

  “Ambassador Diakos, I’m pleased to meet you,” she said.

  “The pleasure is mine, Madam Director.”

  “This is Amit Patel, Vice Director of Earthsea.”

  “Mr. Patel, a pleasure.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Ambassador.”

  “And let me introduce my companions. Mr. Peter Dunhill, my aide. And Mr. Justin Moore and Mr. Gavin McKay, our pilots.”

  There were handshakes all around and then Laurent’s party went around to their side of the table and sat down. Laurent sat opposite Diakos, Patel opposite Dunhill, and Romano opposite the pilots. As Laurent sat down, Diakos slid a parchment document across the table.

  “My credentials as Ambassador to Earthsea, Madam Director,” he said.

  Laurent glanced at the calligraphy at the top of the page. ‘By nomination of the Prime Minister of Arcadia, and confirmation by the Chamber, be it known that the Honorable Loukas Diakos is hereby named Ambassador to Earthsea....’

  “Very good, Mr. Ambassador,” she said. “This is truly remarkable. You’ve come from Arcadia?”

  “Yes, Madam Director.”

  “How far is that, Mr. Ambassador?”

  “Thirty-one hundred light-years, Madam Director.”

  “And how long did that take, Mr. Ambassador?”

  “Six weeks, Madam Director. In a cabin a fraction the size of this room.”

  “Remarkable. Thirty-one hundred light-years in six weeks.”

  “Yes, Madam Director. About three light-years per hour in hyperspace. Perhaps a bit more.”

  “Prime Minister Milbank says you are building a fleet of large hyperspace vessels, Mr. Ambassador.”

  “Yes, Madam Director. The design is complete, and the construction was about to begin when we left Arcadia.”

  “And how large are those vessels, Mr. Ambassador?”

  “They will hold a thousand passengers, five hundred crew, and a couple thousand cargo containers, Madam Director.”

  “And they will be capable of the same speeds, Mr. Ambassador?”

  “Yes, Madam Director. As I understand it, that is more a property of hyperspace than of the ship itself.”

  Laurent nodded. She was also picking up signs of the fatigue of her visitors.

  “Well, enough of that for now, Mr. Ambassador. We will have plenty of time to talk later. What I propose right now is that we give you a chance to rest from your remarkable journey.

  “We have reserved the penthouse floor in one of our downtown hotels for you on the short term. How about dinner from room service and a good night’s sleep in a real bed before we speak again?”

  “That would be very welcome, Madam Director.”

  “Very well, Mr. Ambassador. We will talk to you again tomorrow.”

  “Of course, Madam Director.”

  With that, Laurent and Patel got up from the table and walked out of the room. Diakos and his party stood to see them off, then Romano addressed them.

  “This way, gentlemen. I have a car waiting to take you downtown.”

  Diakos started awake at the knock on the door. He was in an armchair in a strange room. He had gravity. Awareness gradually crept back. The hotel in Bergheim. On Earthsea.

  The knock again.

  Room service.

  Diakos got up and went to the door. He opened it and the room service waiter brought in his dinner on a tray. He set the covered dishes out on the small table.

  Diakos acknowledged the tab in his heads-up display, which he was surprised worked here on Earthsea. Protocols were sticky, and the interface was the same. Romano had told them he had set up accounts for them in the local system. They would worry about squaring things up later.

  The waiter left, and Diakos sat down to eat his first real meal in six weeks. He had kept it simple – bread,
eggs, a bit of fruit and cheese – until his digestion recovered a bit from weeks of bland, low-residue meals.

  Once finished eating, he stripped down and climbed into bed. He was sound asleep within minutes.

  Diakos woke the next day in bed, the early morning sun slanting across the room.

  Had all that really happened?

  Diakos looked around the room. He was definitely not on Arcadia. Furniture styles were not sticky. They changed at a whim, much less in a century, and this room would be outré on Arcadia.

  Diakos went to the windows and pulled back the sheers. Mountains towered to the north and crashed down into the sea to the east, the direction his windows faced. The rising sun had just cleared the shoulder of the last of the hills and was rising over the ocean.

  Beautiful planet. His climbing skills would certainly be challenged.

  But for right now, his negotiating skills were facing the big challenge. Could he put a deal together? At least an interim deal?

  Would they even want a deal?

  Diakos checked for mail in his new local account. He had a message from Romano not to be in a hurry, but to get in touch when he had awoken and had breakfast.

  Diakos checked the time. He had slept nearly eleven hours. For all that, he was up at daybreak because they had gotten into Bergheim in the early afternoon. He had been in bed by eight o’clock.

  Diakos ordered room service. He was famished, and starting off the day with a breakfast steak and eggs never hurt anybody.

  Hmm. Better add pancakes.

  As he began breakfast, Diakos sent a mail to his three fellow Arcadians, asking them to get in touch once they’d had breakfast. Each got him a message back while he ate, and he set a meeting in the living room of his suite for nine o’clock.

  “One thing we need to take care of is to get Peter’s and my cubic unpacked so we have our full wardrobes and our other things,” Diakos said. “I also want to get the container of tea mobile, so I can give it to the director early on.”

  “I can take care of that, Mr. Ambassador,” Dunhill offered.

  “No, I need you with me, Peter.”

  “We’ve got it, Mr. Diakos,” Moore said. “The accounts Romano set up for us are actually under an Arcadia planetary account, guaranteed by the Earthsea government.”

  “Really. I guess they know how to do inter-governmental accounts, given their city-state setup.”

  “Yes, sir. So we can get all the stuff out at the shuttleport done. It’s the same setup as the Arcadia shuttleport. There’s a parking pad next to the landing pad. We just take the shuttle up off the containers and park it there, then they can move the containers around.”

  “Excellent. Then we need to get the shuttle serviced and ready for the trip back.”

  Moore nodded.

  “We can do that. I was looking through the freight services this morning, and they have all the things we need. Cabin cleaning, refueling, oxygen, water, local delivery – everything.”

  “All right. I will leave that to you and Mr. McKay then, Mr. Moore. We need our cubic delivered here, we need the container of tea ready to go, and we need the shuttle turned for the trip home.”

  “Do you know who’s going back with us, sir?” Moore asked.

  “Not yet. It could be their ambassador and his aide. It could be Peter and myself. It depends on how things go over the next couple of days. Keep your fingers crossed.”

  The Deal

  “Thank you for joining me for lunch, Mr. Ambassador.”

  “Of course, Madam Director.”

  There were five of them seated around the table, the same five as yesterday, minus the pilots: Diakos, Laurent, Dunhill, Romano, and Patel.

  “Your pilots are busy elsewhere, Mr. Ambassador.”

  “Yes, Madam Director. Unloading the shuttle and preparing for the return trip. Part of its cargo is a container of tea, a gift from the people of Arcadia to the people of Earthsea. I have brought a small sample for you today.”

  Diakos produced from the pocket of his suit coat a small elegant hardwood box. Prominently carved into the lid of the box was the Chinese character ‘Chen.’ He handed the box across the table to Laurent.

  Laurent slid open the top of the box. Inside were several ounces of loose-leaf tea. To one side, separated by a wooden divider, was a tea ball of the correct size for a pot of tea.

  “Thank you, Mr. Ambassador. I’m afraid I’m not much of a tea drinker, however.”

  “You may be after this, Madam Director.”

  “Indeed?”

  “Oh, yes. The Chen family brought cuttings and seeds for a large number of Earth teas and spices in their personal cubic when the colony was transported. The teas provided with the colony supplies were, um, seriously lacking, from an epicurean point of view.”

  “Indeed?”

  Laurent turned to the head waiter of the Directorate, the director’s residence, standing by.

  “Patrick, can we have tea with lunch as well?”

  “Of course, Madam Director.”

  “A pot, I think. Enough for everyone.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Laurent handed him the tea box and turned her attention back to Diakos.

  “I propose we hold our serious discussion for after lunch, Mr. Ambassador, if that is all right with you.”

  “Of course, Madam Director.”

  The head waiter returned with the waiters, who served the salad course.

  “I am curious about your trip, however. What is hyperspace like, Mr. Ambassador?”

  “We actually have no different sensations during the trip than in normal space, Madam Director. There was no sense of the transition into or out of hyperspace. One could not tell anything happened without looking out the windows.”

  “Really. That’s fascinating, Mr. Ambassador. And what did hyperspace look like?”

  “The pilots normally blacken the windows when in hyperspace, Madam Director. They unblackened them at one point, so I could take a look. It’s very unsettling.”

  “In what way, Mr. Ambassador?”

  Diakos shuddered with the memory.

  “There is nothing to focus on, Madam Director. Nothing that draws the eye. One has the sense of something happening in one’s peripheral vision, but when you look there, there is nothing. Just more of the same– formlessness, I would call it. Very disturbing. I was glad when they re-blackened the windows.”

  They spoke in the breaks in their eating, and the waiters soon brought out the main course, a small brisket of beef with potato wedges with cheese sauce and a pan-fried vegetable medley.

  “This cheese is superb, Madam Director.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Ambassador. Like your teas, I suspect our cheeses will be a major export item. We have quite a variety.”

  “It’s wonderful, Madam Director. You will have no problem finding an export market for cheeses like this.”

  “Back to your trip, Mr. Ambassador. I find it remarkable that you can perform a thirty-one hundred light-year trip and exit hyperspace so precisely to be within hours of the planet.”

  “We actually came out of hyperspace outside your system for the computer to get its bearings, then closed in with two more small hops through hyperspace, Madam Director. We are still refining how one might navigate in hyperspace.”

  “Interesting. And you now have no way to communicate back to Arcadia, Mr. Ambassador?”

  “Not without sending a message back the same way, Madam Director. We have no interstellar radio. The fastest we can manage is a hyperspace message drone.”

  “I see, Mr. Ambassador.”

  Dessert was a custard that again put point to Earthsea’s expertise with its dairy products. They had tea over dessert.

  “This custard is wonderful, Madam Director.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Ambassador.”

  Laurent took a first sip of her tea, pulled the cup away from her mouth and stared at it.

  “This is tea, Mr. Ambassador?”
/>   Diakos chuckled.

  “Yes, Madam Director. Not much like the colony supplies, is it?”

  “I should say not. I may become a serious tea drinker, Mr. Ambassador. This is wonderful. You will not have any problem selling this tea on Earthsea, either.”

  When the dishes had been cleared away, they settled down to serious business.

  “It is your mission to Earthsea, Mr. Ambassador. You may proceed.”

  “Thank you, Madam Director.”

  One reason Diakos had been selected for this assignment is because he was pretty good at reading people with very little input. He thought he had Director Laurent’s number. She would be unimpressed with subtlety, and more likely to respond well to a direct approach. So Diakos jumped in with both feet.

  “We have discovered hyperspace and how to navigate in it, Madam Director. The first question that comes up then is, Where does one go?

  “Not Earth, we don’t think. We are, like you, a mere twenty million people, and Earth was stable at four billion people when we left. That, we felt, was best left for later. So going to the other colonies was a natural choice.

  “But where are they? We were not told. In fact, the colony project headquarters archives contain no clue. We were able to determine roughly the location of Earthsea and Amber, the colonies transported before Arcadia, from analysis of the viewscreen recordings from the passenger compartments the colonists were transported in.

  “We sent hyperspace ships out to where we thought those colonies were and scanned for them. We found both Amber and Earthsea.”

  “Excuse me, Mr. Ambassador. How did you scan for them?”

  “In very low frequency RF, Madam Director. Under one hundred hertz. We were looking for the radiation from your power grid, and that is a frequency band in which stars have very low radiation.”

  “Ah, of course. Thank you, Mr. Ambassador. Carry on.”

  “Thank you, Madam Director.

  “Having found Amber and Earthsea, of course we wanted to know what sort of planets these were. Would they be friendly? Would they be representative democracy, have civil rights? In short, would they be like us? The history of the human race makes that not something one can assume, however the colonies started out.”