by John Scalzi
Moeller did his graduate work at the latter, gaining access to the intensely competitive program by agreeing to specialize in the Garda, a seasonally-intelligent race of tube worms whose recent mission to Earth was housed on the former grounds of the Naval Observatory. However, shortly after Moeller begun his study, the Garda began their Incompetence, a period of engorgement, mating, and lessened brain activity coinciding with the onset of Uuuchi, an autumnal season on Gard which would last for three years and seven months on Earth. Because Moeller was able to work with the Garda for only a limited period of time, he was allowed to pursue a secondary track of research as well. He chose the Nidu.
It was after Moeller’s first major paper on the Nidu, analyzing their role in helping the United Nations of Earth gain a representative seat in the Common Confederation, that Moeller came in contact with Anton Schroeder, the UNE’s observer and later first full-fledged representative to the CC. He’d left that behind to become the current chairman of the American Institute for Colonization, a think tank based out of Arlington committed to the expansion of the Earth’s colonization of planets, with or without the consent of the Common Confederation.
“I read your paper, Mr. Moeller,” Schroeder said, without introduction, when Moeller picked up his office communicator; Schroeder assumed (correctly) that Moeller would recognize the voice made famous by thousands of speeches, news reports, and Sunday morning talk shows. “It is remarkably full of shit, but it is remarkably full of shit in a number of interesting ways, some of which—and entirely coincidentally, I’m sure—get close to the truth of our situation with the Nidu and the Common Confederation. Would you like to know which those are?”
“Yes, sir,” Moeller said.
“I’m sending a car over now,” Schroeder said. “It’ll be there in half an hour to bring you here. Wear a tie.”
An hour later Moeller was drinking from the informational and ideological fire hose that was Anton Schroeder, the one man who knew the Nidu better than any other human being. In the course of his decades of dealing with the Nidu, Schroeder had come to the following conclusion: The Nidu are fucking with us. It’s time we start fucking back. Moeller didn’t need to be asked twice to join in.
“Here come the Nidu,” said Alan, rising from his seat. Moeller gulped the last of his milk and rose, just in time to have a bubble of gas twist his intestine like a sailor knotting a Sheepshank. Moeller bit his cheek and did his best to ignore the cramp. It wouldn’t do to have the Nidu delegation aware of his gastric distress.
The Nidu filed into the conference room as they always did, lowest in the pecking order first, heading to their assigned seats and nodding to their opposite human number on the other side of the table. Nobody moved to shake hands; the Nidu, intensely socially stratified as they were, weren’t the sort of race to enjoy wanton familiar person contact. The chairs were filled, from the outside in, until only two people remained standing; at the middle seats on opposite sides, were Moeller and the senior-most Nidu trade delegate in the room, Lars-win-Getag.
Who was, as it happened, son of Faj-win-Getag, the Nidu ambassador who walked through the door of Moeller’s Meats four decades earlier. This was not entirely coincidence; all Nidu diplomats of any rank on Earth hailed from the win-Getag clan, a minor, distaff relation to the current royal clan of auf-Getag. Faj-win-Getag was famously fecund, even for a Nidu, so his children littered the diplomatic corps on Earth.
But it was both satisfying and convenient for Moeller regardless—fitting, he thought, that the son of James Moeller would return the favor of failure to the son of Faj-win-Getag. Moeller didn’t believe in karma, but he believed in its idiot cousin, the idea that “what goes around, comes around.” The Moellers were coming around at last.
Ironic in another way, Moeller thought, as he waited for Lars-win-Getag to speak in greeting. This round of trade negotiations between the Nidu and Earth was supposed to have broken down long before this level. Moeller and his compatriots had quietly planned and maneuvered for years to get Nidu-human relations to a breaking point; this was supposed to be the year trade relationships implode, alliances dissolve, anti-Nidu demonstrations swell, and the human planets start their path to true independence outside the Common Confederation.
A new president and his Nidu-friendly administration had screwed it up; the new Secretary of Trade had replaced too many delegates and the new delegates had been too willing to give up diplomatic real estate in the quest to renormalize Nidu relations. Now negotiations were too far down the road to manufacture a diplomatic objection; all those had been hammered out two or three levels down. Something else was needed to bring negotiations to standstill. Preferably something that made the Nidu look bad.
“Dirk,” Lars-win-Getag said, and bowed, briefly. “A good morning to you. Are we ready to begin today’s thumb twisting?” He smiled, which on a Nidu is sort of a ghastly thing, amused at his own inside joke. Lars-win-Getag fancied himself a bit of a wit, and his specialty was creating malapropisms based on English slang. He had seen an alien do it once in a pre-Encounter movie, and thought it was cute. It was the sort of joke that got old fast.
“By all means, Lars,” Moeller said, and returned the bow, risking a small cramp to do so. “Our thumbs are at ready.”
“Excellent.” Lars-win-Getag sat and reached for his negotiation schedule. “Are we still working on agricultural quotas?”
Moeller glanced over to Alan, who had made up the schedule. “We’re talking bananas and plantains until ten, and then we tackle wine and table grapes until lunch,” Alan said. “Then in afternoon we start on livestock quotas. We begin with sheep.”
“Do ewe think that’s a good idea?” Lars-win-Getag said, turning to Moeller to dispense another ghastly grin. Lars-win-Getag was also inordinately fond of puns.
“That’s quite amusing, sir,” Alan said, gamely.
From down the table, one of the Nidu piped up. “We have some small concerns about the percentage of bananas the treaty requires come from Ecuador. We were led to understand a banana virus had destroyed much of the crop this last year.” From down the table, a member of the human delegation responded. The negotiations would continue to burble on for the next hour at the far ends of the table. Alan and his opposite number with the Nidu would ride herd on the others. Lars-win-Getag was already bored and scanning his tablet for sport scores. Moeller satisfied himself that his active participation would not be required for a long period of time and then tapped his own tablet to boot up the apparatus.
It was Lars-win-Getag himself who inspired the apparatus. Lars-win-Getag was, to put it mildly, an underachiever; he was a mid-level trade negotiator while most of his siblings had gone on to better things. It had been suggested that the only reason Lars-win-Getag was even a mid-level trade negotiator was that his family was too important for him to be anything less; it would be an insult to his clan to have him fail.
To that end Lars-win-Getag was policed by assistants who were notably smarter than he was, and was never given anything critical to work on. Largely predetermined agricultural and livestock quotas, for example, were just about his speed. Fortunately for Lars-win-Getag, he wasn’t really smart enough to realize he was being handled by his own government. So it worked out well for everyone.
Nevertheless, like intellectually limited mid-rangers of most sentient species, Lars-win-Getag was acutely sensitive to matters of personal status. He also had a temper. If it weren’t for diplomatic immunity, Lars-win-Getag’s rap sheet would include assault, aggravated assault, battery, and on at least one occasion, attempted homicide. It was the last of these that caught the eye of Jean Schroeder, the son of the late Anton Schroeder and his successor as the head of the American Institute for Colonization.
“Listen to this,” Jean said, reading from a report his assistant had compiled, as Moeller grilled steaks for them on his deck. “Six years ago, Lars was at a Capitals game and had to be restrained from choking another spectator to death in the stadium
bathroom. Other guys in the bathroom literally had to tackle him and sit on his big reptilian ass until the police came.”
“Why was he choking that guy?” Moeller asked.
“The guy was standing at the sink next to Lars and used some breath spray,” Schroeder said. “Lars smelled it and got crazy. He told the police the scent of the breath spray suggested that he enjoyed cornholing his mother. He felt honor bound to avenge the insult.”
Moeller stabbed the steaks and flipped them. “He should have known better. Most humans don’t know anything about what smells mean to the Nidu elites.”
“Should know better, but doesn’t,” Jean said, riffing through the report. “Or just doesn’t care, which is more likely. He’s got diplomatic immunity. He doesn’t have to worry about restraining himself. Two of his other near-arrests involve arguments about smells. Here, this one’s good: He apparently assaulted a flower vendor on the mall because one of the bouquets was telling him he kicked babies. That was just last year.”
“It probably had daisies in it,” Moeller said, poking at the steaks again. “Daisies have a smell that signifies offspring. Where are you going with this, Jean?”
“You start negotiations with Lars next week,” Jean said. “It’s too late to change the substance of the negotiations. But you’re negotiating with someone who is neither terribly bright nor terribly stable, and has a documented tendency to fly into a rage when he thinks he’s being insulted by an odor. There’s got to be a way to work with that.”
“I don’t see how,” Moeller said. He speared the steaks and put them on a serving plate. “It’s policy at Trade to be respectful of Nidu sensitivities. Negotiations take place in rooms with special air filters. We don’t wear cologne or perfumes—we’re not even supposed to use scented underarm deodorant. Hell, we’re even issued special soap to use in the shower. We’re serious about it, too. The first year I was at Trade, I saw a negotiator sent home because he used Zest that morning. He actually received a reprimand.”
“Well, obviously you’re not going to walk in with a squirt bottle with Essence of Fuck You in it,” Jean said. “But there’s got to be some way it make it happen.”
“Look,” Moeller said. “Lars’s dad gave my dad a heart attack. Nothing would make me happier than to derail the bastard. But there’s no way to secretly stink him into a rage.”
Two days later Jean sent him a message: Something smells interesting, it read.
Back at the negotiating table, the Nidu had gotten the Earth delegation to take out the Ecuadorian bananas in exchange for the same percentage of bananas to be shipped from Philos colony. This made everyone happy since Philos was closer to Nidu than Earth, and the Philos plantation owners would accept a lower price for their bananas, and the Earth wanted to promote colonial trade anyway. Moeller nodded his approval, Lars-win-Getag grunted his assent, and the negotiations moved on to Brazilian bananas.
Moeller opened the window for the apparatus software on his tablet and tapped on the “message” toolbar command. The window immediately listed four categories: Mild insults, Sexualrelated insults, Competence insults, and Grave insults. Fixer, who had designed the apparatus and adapted the off-the-shelf software to run it, found a chemical dictionary for the Nidu smell language from the science library at UCLA. He dispensed with everything but the insults, of course; Moeller wasn’t planning to tell Lars-win-Getag that he looked pretty, or that it was time for his puberty rites. Moeller also immediately discounted insults about competence, as the incompetent never question their competence about anything. Let’s start small, Moeller thought, and selected the “Mild insults” option. Another window opened with 40 suggested insults; Moeller picked the one at the top of the list, which read, simply, You stink.
The touch screen presented an hourglass, and in his colon Moeller felt a tiny vibration as the apparatus moved elements around. Then a dialog window popped up. Processing enabled, it read. Fire when ready.
Moeller was ready almost instantly; the combination of the milk and the vegetables and bacon at breakfast had worked their wonders in the gastrointestinal tract. Carefully so as not to attract attention, Moeller shifted in his seat to help the process along. He felt the gas travel the few centimeters into the apparatus chamber. The dialog box changed: Processing, it read. Moeller felt a second small vibration in the apparatus as the middle chamber worked its magic. After about five seconds the vibration stopped and the dialog box changed again. Ready. Choose automatic or manual release. Moeller chose the automatic release. The dialog box began a countdown.
Ten seconds later the lightly compressed gas exited the apparatus and moved toward the final exit. Moeller was not especially worried about it making noise; one doesn’t work for decades in the diplomatic corps and its endless meetings and negotiations without learning how to silently depressurize. Moeller leaned forward ever so slightly and let it out. It smelled vaguely like parsley.
About 20 seconds later Lars-win-Getag, who had been giving every appearance of drifting off to sleep, jolted himself straight up in his chair, alarming his aides on either side. One of them leaned in close to find out what had disturbed her boss; Lars-win-Getag hissed quietly but emphatically at her. She listened to him for a few minutes, then arched her nose up and gave a brief but notable sniff. Then she looked at Lars-win-Getag and gave the Nidu equivalent of a shrug, as if to say, I don’t smell anything. Lars-win-Getag glared and glanced over at Moeller, who had all this time stared down the table toward the banana discussion with an expression of polite boredom. The air scrubbers were already dissipating the odor. Eventually Lars-win-Getag calmed down.
A few minutes later Moeller let fly You mate with the unclean. Lars-win-Getag let out a grunt and slammed down a fist hard enough to rattle the entire table. Negotiations came to a halt as everyone at the table looked toward Lars-win-Getag, who was by now out of his seat and whispering fiercely to the rather nervous-looking aide to his right.
“Everything okay?” Moeller asked the second aide, to Lars-win-Getag’s left.
The second aide barely twitched. “The trade representative is clearly troubled by the quality of Brazilian bananas,” he said.
Lars-win-Getag had managed to sit himself back down. “My apologies,” he said swiveling his head up and down the table. “Something caught me by surprise.”
“We can discuss changing the percentage of Brazilian bananas if you feel strongly about it,” Moeller said, mildly. “I’m sure the Panamanians would be happy to increase their percentage, and we can make it up to the Brazilians in other categories.” He reached for his tablet as if to make a note of the change and in fact gave the order to process You bathe in vomit.
“That is acceptable,” Lars-win-Getag said, in a low growl. Moeller nudged Alan to get the discussions going again, and in doing so maneuvered just enough to let the latest missive slip out. Twenty seconds later, Moeller noted Lars-win-Getag breathing heavily and struggling not to explode. His aide was patting his hand, only a little frantically.
The next hour was the most fun Moeller could remember having just about ever. He taunted Lars-win-Getag mercilessly, safe in his own appearance of bland disinterest in the minutiae of the negotiations, the visible absence of a scent-emitting object anywhere in the room, and the Nidu assumption that humans, with their primitive sense of smell, could not possibly be intentionally goading them. Except for Lars-win-Getag, the Nidu were of the wrong caste to know anything more than the basics of the scent language and so could not share their boss’s outrage. Except for Moeller, the human delegation was utterly ignorant of the cause of Lars-win-Getag’s behavior. They could tell something was making the Nidu twitchy, but had no idea what it could be. The only person who noticed anything unusual was Alan, who by sheer proximity could tell his boss was gassy. But Moeller knew that the ambitious little squirt wouldn’t dream of saying anything about it.
In this garden of ignorance, Moeller savaged Lars-win-Getag with intolerable insults about his sexual perfo
rmance, his personal grooming, and his family, often in combinations of all three. Fixer’s apparatus was filled with enough of the trace chemical compounds needed to combine with Moeller’s own tract emanations that he could theoretically emit coherent gaseous statements for days. Moeller experimented to discover which statements enraged Lars-win-Getag the most; as expected, insults about job competence barely caused a rise in respiratory rates, but suggestions of sexual inadequacy really seemed to get him hot. Moeller thought Lars-win-Getag was going to pop when Your mates laugh at your lack of seed wafted over to him, but he managed to hold it in, primarily by gripping the table hard enough that Moeller thought he might break part of it off.
Moeller had just released You feast on shit and just punched in Your mother fucks algae for processing when Lars-win-Getag finally lost it, and gave himself to the negotiation-halting rage that Moeller was hoping for. “That is enough!” he bellowed, and lunged across the table at Alan, who, for his part, was shocked into immobility at a large, sentient lizardlike creature launching itself at him.
“Is it you?” Lars-win-Getag demanded, as his assistants grabbed at his legs, trying to haul him back to his side of the table.
“Is what me?” Alan managed to spurt out, torn now between the urge to get away from this snappy angry creature and the desire not to endanger his young diplomatic career by accidentally scratching the Nidu trade delegate in his rush to avoid getting killed.
Lars-win-Getag pushed Alan back onto the floor and kicked himself free of his assistants. “One of you humans has been insulting me for over an hour! I can smell it.”
The humans stared agog at Lars-win-Getag for ten full seconds. Then Alan broke the silence. “All right, guys,” he said, looking up and down the table. “Who’s wearing the scented deodorant?”
