GALACTIC SURVEY (COLONY Book 3)

by Richard F. Weyand

  “Do not make the mistake of underestimating them. He has an education in business and finance, she in engineering. Both are very accomplished – in fact, the most accomplished people in an accomplished family.

  “Oh, and do not record the conversation with them. That would be seriously unwise. An unforgiveable indiscretion.

  “Do you have any questions, Mr. Ambassador?”

  “No,” Romano said. “You’ve been most thorough. Thank you.”

  The liaison left. Romano had, of course, recorded the meeting, and listened to it twice more before leaving for the Chen-Jasic family compound.

  Mindful of the liaison’s last admonition, before he left Romano turned off the recording function of his communicator, lest he forget later.

  Prime Minster Milbank had dispatched his car, with driver and shotgun, to take Romano to his meeting with the Chen. They pulled up in front of a large apartment building. The driver opened the door and Romano got out of the car.

  Across the street was a large building, down this whole side of the block, UPTOWN MARKET in tall letters running down this side. It was busy, with people in and out constantly. Part of the facade on the first floor was a restaurant, on the corner across from him, with a sign that displayed a single Chinese letter, one Romano could recognize already. It had been on the tea gift box presented to Director Laurent on Earthsea by Ambassador Diakos.

  Just one Chinese character on the sign: Chen.

  “Through those doors, Mr. Ambassador,” the driver said. “The counter clerk will take you to Chen Zufu.”

  “Thank you.”

  Romano walked through the doors to the lobby. Behind a counter to one side, a young woman, perhaps sixteen years old, was studying in her heads-up display. She looked up when he walked in.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Ambassador. This way, please.”

  She came out from behind the counter and motioned him to follow her. She was wearing a floral-print lavalava and flip-flops. She was topless.

  She led him down a short side hallway, through a locking security door that unlatched as she approached, presumably unlocked by her in her heads-up display, around a corner and down another hall. She stopped at a doorway with a wood and rice paper sliding door.

  She knocked once on the door frame and slid the door open.

  “Ambassador Romano, Chen Zumu.”

  “Show him in, JiGang,” Romano heard a woman’s voice say.

  JiGang waved him through the door and slid it shut behind him.

  “Mr. Ambassador, welcome,” Jessica said. “Please be seated.”

  She waved to a pillow across a low tea table from her and a man Romano guessed to be Chen Zufu.

  Romano took in the scene. The couple before him were, as the liaison had said, in their seventies. He wore a lavalava, and was bald. He was at least half Asian, likely Chinese, but there were other strains there, too, including a large dose of European and perhaps a little African.

  She was also half Asian, a large part European, and perhaps a little Indian. She wore her long, white hair straight, pulled together at the nape of her neck, and was dressed in a robe of royal blue, with multi-colored dragons rampant among trees, flowers, and clouds. The stitchwork was incredible. That robe had been a labor of love.

  Romano’s field before going into government was history, and it was still his hobby. He recognized with a shock that her robe was silk, and too new to have been brought from Earth over a century ago. He couldn’t begin to guess it’s value. But the larger point was not lost on him: They had successfully transplanted silkworms to Arcadia!

  The Arcadians had not even mentioned silk as a trade good, but the trade route across Asia to Europe in antiquity had been called The Silk Road, after all. Romano thought again that he had to make this deal work. Had to. He just didn’t know how.

  Behind the couple, a large teak-beamed doorway framed the view into a beautiful garden, a slice of paradise transplanted into the heart of the city. Young men and women in lavalavas worked in the garden.

  Between his guests he saw a statuette, an exact miniature of the statue he had seen in the downtown square, set upon a carved jade pillar on a carved stone base. The statue itself was a yellow-tinged white metal he didn’t recognize, but it showed no signs of rust or wear from being out in the weather.

  As he looked out the doorway, a young woman – child really – of perhaps thirteen entered carrying a teapot. She wore a lavalava and flip-flops, and was, like all the rest, topless.

  She poured tea for each of them in turn, beginning with him. She set the teapot down on the table, bowed to a spot between them, and left without saying a word.

  Mindful of his briefing earlier, Romano picked up the tea cup and sipped. MinChao sipped next, then Jessica sipped. The tea was yet a third variety and was, like the others, incredible.

  After a pause to enjoy their tea, Jessica broke the silence.

  “So, Mr. Ambassador, what do you think of Arcadia?”

  “I like it a great deal, Chen Zumu. The people have been very friendly, your food is wonderful, and your teas are amazing.”

  “You hope to be able to put a trade deal together then, Mr. Ambassador?”

  “I hope to, Chen Zumu, but I am wrestling with a couple of issues that I don’t know how to address.”

  Jessica nodded.

  “Yes, we spoke to Prime Minister Milbank about them this morning. These are not without solutions, Mr. Ambassador.”

  “I hope you can help then, Chen Zumu, because I am somewhat at a loss.”

  “First, the calendar issue we have no concern about whatsoever. This was all solved with respect to time zones both on Earth as well as on Earthsea and Arcadia long ago.”

  “It was?”

  Jessica looked to MinChao, and he stirred.

  “Of course, Mr. Ambassador,” he said. “When one specifies a contract, for instance, one specifies it in terms of the time zone. It is from midnight to midnight in this time zone. Bergheim Time, say, or Arcadia City time, for example. It is not from midnight two time zones east to midnight two time zones west, or vice versa. One would be four hours longer, and the other four hours shorter.

  “So contracts need to use dates with a specification of whose calendar one is using, nothing more. For simplicity, we should probably just use Earth’s calendar. Then neither planet ‘wins’ or ‘loses’ in the selection of a universal calendar.”

  “That is a splendid solution, Chen Zumu,” Romano said. “And, as you say, it builds on our experience with time zones. The other problem, though, is likely to be more intractable.”

  Jessica nodded.

  “The issue of our lack of a dress code for our citizens,” she said.

  “Yes, Chen Zumu,” Romano said. “We have freedom of the press, but if we open the interstellar links to the news wires, many people on Earthsea will be offended.”

  “As will many people on Arcadia, Mr. Ambassador. Being forced to wear clothes while swimming, for example, will look to the people of Arcadia like tyranny.”

  Romano started at that. It was a viewpoint he hadn’t considered.

  “Yes, Mr. Ambassador. Both populations are likely to be a little nonplussed by the other, at least at first.”

  “Then what do we do, Chen Zumu?”

  “Consider, Mr. Ambassador. Do you not have friends who have their little quirks? Something that other people might find offensive, but, in the context of your friendship, you consider innocuous, or even charming in a way?”

  Romano thought about it and nodded.

  “Then why not between friends like Earthsea and Arcadia, Mr. Ambassador?” Jessica asked. “’Oh, you know those Arcadians. Running around half-naked all the time. Tsk, tsk.’ Or ‘That’s Earthsea for you. Nice place if you don’t mind getting all dressed up to go swimming, believe it or not.’”

  “A mutual tolerance of our disparate quirks, Chen Zumu?”

  “Of course, Mr. Ambassador.”

  Romano nodded.

>   “I can see that happening over time, Chen Zumu. But how do we get from here to there? Without violating freedom of the press?”

  “One’s right to free speech does not put a duty on others to listen, Mr. Ambassador. Nor does freedom of the press include a compulsion on others to read.

  “We can put a notice on interstellar feeds that the culture of one planet is not identical to the culture of another. Make people opt in to receiving the news wires and other materials from the other planet. In both directions. If they are offended, they can opt out just as easily.”

  “That may work, Chen Zumu.”

  “Of course it will work, Mr. Ambassador. But I thought I would up the ante a bit for you. You’ve no doubt noted my robe and wondered. So, yes, it is real silk, and yes, that silk was made here. Tea and spices and silk, the staples of the Far East trade on Earth for centuries.

  “Most of that trade was well before there was radio communication on Earth. The caravans and tea clippers did not have instantaneous communications. They carried messages back and forth. That system worked quite well without other, faster, methods of communication.

  “If Earthsea decides not to join a trade consortium of the colonies, that is up to them. We will carry on without them. The QE radios would be very nice to have, but interstellar trade does not depend on them, Mr. Ambassador.”

  The threat was clear, and Romano nodded.

  “I understand, Chen Zumu.”

  “And now I will show you something no one else has seen, Mr. Ambassador. But first, where we are headed.”

  Jessica gestured to the side wall, and it came alive with the largest three-dimensional display Romano had ever seen in a private home. It encompassed the whole wall. In the center of the display floated a large cylindrical ship, against a star field, being serviced by a number of shuttles delivering containers. It was a three-dimensional simulation, but it was a good one.

  Romano picked up on size cues. Windows, containers, shuttles. The ship was huge.

  “Very compelling, Chen Zumu.”

  “Ah, but that is more than a dream. Mr. Ambassador. This is where we are now.”

  The display changed. This was no simulation, but three-dimensional camera imagery, and it was so real Romano almost clutched at the table to keep from being sucked out into space through the open wall.

  In the center of the display, three metafactories worked at producing the hull of the ship he had seen in the simulation. It was perhaps a quarter complete, growing out of the asteroid as the factories pushed the completed portion away from them. Lights blazed on the asteroid face so the computers could camera-guide their tools. The flares of welding arcs were continuous in dozens of locations.

  And it was real.

  “With fitting out and stocking ahead of us, we are perhaps two years away from beginning the tea, spice, and silk trade all over again, Mr. Ambassador.

  “It is up to you to make sure Director Laurent understands. We are going to do this. Earthsea can be a part of it, or not.”

  Intermezzo

  As it turned out, Valery Laurent was as desperate to get to an agreement as Salvatore Romano was. Laurent was a student of history as well, and nobody needed to tell her that Arcadia could go it alone if they wanted to. QE radios or not, there would be a trade consortium. Arcadia would be fielding the modern equivalent of clipper ships, running tea, spices, and silk to the other colony planets.

  Aside and apart from the QE radios and its magnificent cheeses, Earthsea stood to dominate the interplanetary banking transfers that went along with such a trade. A small percentage fee on very large transactions still added up to a great deal of money.

  Laurent wanted that business, and when the Chen’s solutions were presented for the two potential problems that had cropped up, she seized them and ran with the ball.

  As in most high-level negotiations, by the time the principals met, the details had been ironed out.

  What Director Laurent did do in her private conversations with Prime Minister Milbank is give him permission to transport the two QE radios destined for Amber. It was decided Paolo Costa would be one of the passengers to Amber, to get the QE radios up and operating on the Amber end.

  Before he left, Costa oversaw the installation of the second QE radio staying on Arcadia – the one paired with one of the Amber units. This unit, though, was installed at the hyperspace facility at the Arcadia City Shuttleport. There was no point in placing both units in the same building, or connected to the same power, when they were redundant nodes in a multi-point self-patching network.

  Costa used a radio link to the other QE radio to download the software from Earthsea into that unit, and brought it up. He left it in ‘Configured – Waiting For Connection’ status. When he brought the second Amber unit up, they ought to connect easily.

  The other person going on the trip to Amber was Sasha Ivanov. Another political ally of Milbank, Ivanov was a scientist and engineer with a broadly based understanding of technology. Milbank brought him in at the tail end of discussions with Laurent so he would be up to speed on the negotiations for a multi-planet consortium.

  Ivanov would attempt to extend the Arcadia-Earthsea agreement to Amber.

  The broad shape of the Arcadia-Earthsea agreement was simple. Each planetary government would allow entry to the other planet’s products without any import tax or duties other than the common sales tax that applied to their own domestic products.

  There would be no attempt at price setting. The prices of goods and services would instead be allowed to float. And the exchange rate between their currencies would be determined by market forces as well, with the Bank of Earthsea maintaining a market in currencies.

  They also opened up the Arcadia-Earthsea QE radio link to public access. There were two levels of opt-in, one for text-only content and the other for imagery, both still and video.

  There was some grumbling on both sides about the other side’s cultural differences – described as backwardness from both ends – but it was hard for someone to legitimately claim offense at something they had opted in to read or see.

  Going along in the containers to Amber were the two QE radio units, one for the link from Amber to Arcadia and one for the link from Amber to Earthsea; a container of water and other supplies for the trip back, which also contained Ambassador Ivanov’s personal cubic; and a container half of cheese and half of tea.

  Milbank had asked Laurent’s permission to ship half of Earthsea’s gift of cheese to Arcadia as Earthsea’s gift to Amber.

  “As it was our gift to you, that is a generous offer, Mr. Prime Minister,” Laurent had said.

  “Madam Director, we are either in this together or we are not. Let us always work toward being in it together. Over the long haul, everyone will be better off.”

  “As you say, Mr. Prime Minister. And thank you.”

  From Milbank’s point of view, it was better optics if the cheese-tasting party sold out than if there was cheese left over.

  With one deal in the bag, Milbank decided to herald the departure for Amber. News crews were invited to video the intrepid hyperspace travelers boarding Hyper-1 at the Arcadia City Shuttleport. They broadcast the launch live on the news wires.

  It all went off without a hitch, and then it was time to settle down for the fourteen-week wait again.

  Wait! No, that was wrong. With the QE radios along, it would only be a six- or seven-week wait.

  During this time, Hyper-2 continued to deliver raw materials to the shipyard in the Beacon asteroid belt. Ball bearings, copper, and water were, for the time being, easier to ship from Arcadia. It meant there were no delays in the progress of the hull of the new ship.

  Ever the promoter, Milbank had run a contest for naming the new ship, with the people of Arcadia selecting the winner via the news wires. Star Runner was the clear favorite.

  In Beacon, the bootstrap factory had moved on. It had built the first metafactory, and then it and the new unit had each built one m
ore, putting three metafactories on Star Runner. It was these three metafactories that Jessica had shown Romano during their meeting.

  The bootstrap factory now had moved to a new asteroid and built a new metafactory. The two of them were each building one more, so there would be three metafactories to begin work on the hyperspace ship Star Tripper, the second runner-up in Milbank’s ship-naming contest.

  Star Runner would not be the only ship in her class.

  Not by a long shot.

  “Have a seat, ChaoLi,” Jessica said.

  “Thank you, Chen Zumu.”

  “You asked for this meeting, ChaoLi. You may proceed.”

  “Thank you, Chen Zumu.”

  ChaoLi gathered her thoughts while Jessica was content to sip her tea.

  “We are perhaps six months away from moving Star Runner to Arcadia for fitting out, Chen Zumu. That will take the better part of a year.”

  “So long?”

  “There is a lot of work to do, and one can only have so many people working on it before they get in each other’s way. There is also the issue of feeding them and dealing with human waste before the systems to deal with those issues are in place.”

  “An interesting problem.”

  “Yes, and we have some innovative solutions. One is to take self-contained units from here up to the ship for mess and lavatories, and plug them into the unused passenger container locations. These can be swapped out as they need servicing. Once the on-board facilities are built out, we can dispense with those, and use the ones on the Star Tripper.”

  “That’s clever. So your staffing is limited until the on-board facilities are built out.”

  “Yes, Chen Zumu. Then it’s limited by the need for people to have room to work. Not be in each other’s way.”

  Jessica nodded, then waved a hand for ChaoLi to continue.

  “My point today, Chen Zumu, is that it may be time to begin organizing both the fitting-out process and the spacing process as new companies, and begin hiring and training their employees.”