Assegai

by S J MacDonald

  ‘I don’t think,’ said another of the group, who’d experienced profound spiritual development during the visit, ‘that we should joke about religious beliefs.’

  ‘I thought it was a good double-reference,’ Dan protested. ‘Since religious belief is part of the glue that holds…’

  ‘Dan,’ said Min, ‘behave.’

  Dan grinned. ‘Aye aye,’ he said. ‘Aunty Min.’

  Once order had been restored Alex brought them back to the assigned topic, pointing out that this was a real and serious phenomena.

  ‘And one that will have to be addressed, too, if Camae isn’t going to be overwhelmed by ever-increasing numbers of tourists who come for a holiday and never leave.’

  The Camag would have no choice but to make provision for them, as one of the fundamental principles of the Constitution meant that any League citizen had the right to live on any League world. That sobered the group. They had all seen the projections. Even if only one hundredth of one per cent of the anticipated influx of tourists chose to stay, in ten years’ time that would be seriously impacting on Camag housing, jobs and even their culture, particularly if incomers, as incomers so often did, agglomerated themselves in sizeable clusters. They might want to stay because life on Camae seemed to offer them the old-fashioned idyll their grannies had talked about, but it would not be long before they started wanting things Camae didn’t have – apartment blocks for couples and singles, shops, restaurants.

  ‘PAII Syndrome,’ said one of the commanders, pronouncing it ‘pay-eye’ and explaining, thoughtfully, ‘Perfect As It Is. That’s the factor which makes so many officials sent there switch from proactive endeavour to conservatism.’

  After considerable discussion, they decided that Idyll Syndrome was both a good descriptor and one which would be readily understood even by tourists.

  ‘All right,’ Alex said. ‘So – let’s see if we can do something about that, shall we?’ He looked around at them as several them appeared surprised, evidently having thought this was a purely academic discussion. ‘You are,’ he pointed out, ‘a think tank. So let’s think. Bring all that analytical and strategic talent to bear on the problem. I want an Advisory. Three advisories. One for the Fleet, one for the Diplomatic Corps and civil authorities and one to be issued to the liner companies for their guidance in managing tourists. And yes,’ he said, reading their expressions correctly. ‘I am serious. This is important – important enough to justify taking a little time from the combat skills analysis. So we will give it…’ he glanced at the time, ‘Six hours.’

  ‘What?’ Even Dan exclaimed at that, amidst the general furore.

  ‘Five hours ninety four minutes,’ Alex pointed out, after some minutes of people competing to tell him that that kind of analysis and advisory took months to consider and complete. And it would, too, in the universities which were asked to look at the issue.

  Silence fell, as they recognised that Alex really did expect them to do this.

  ‘First drafts,’ he said. ‘We will blitz this today, get our observations and thoughts down. Then we will set it aside, look at it and think about it individually, review and redraft it just before we reach Therik.’ He didn’t add all right? because it was clear that this was going to happen, no debate on that, but his look around at them made it a challenge.

  ‘Okay,’ Eldovan said, and spoke for them all. ‘Let’s do this!’

  As it turned out, the Idyll Syndrome Advisories were the result of an extraordinary multi-species collaboration. Jarlner and Bennet were in on it throughout, bringing their own analytical skills and the perspective of detached observers. Davie was there throughout, too, with his unique perspective on planetary infrastructure and global economics. His corporations, in fact, were worth more than the global economy of Camae. So when he talked about the advantages of installing a space station with all the hotels, restaurants, shops and so forth that offworld incomers would crave, it was not a vague suggestion. He put an actual space station on the table – or at least, the plans for one, to be built by one of his corporations and to be up and running within fifteen months.

  Then Silvie turned up, too, having heard that the training group was on some kind of major buzz, shut into the seminar room with a ‘do not disturb’ for the rest of the afternoon. She was curious, and not thinking for one moment that any ‘do not disturb’ could apply to her, just strolled in to see what they were up to. And stayed. Idyll Syndrome, as she joked, had grabbed her, too. The buzz they were on was intense, the sense of tightly focussed teamwork, heightened communication, tremendous energy. Silvie wanted in. And she had a lot to contribute, too, bringing both a quarian perspective and her experience of having a directive role in the development at Serenity.

  Shion arrived a few minutes later, suspecting that Silvie’s presence would be disrupting the group – with laughter, no doubt, but throwing them off whatever they were doing. Shion was going to suggest that Silvie might like to go over to the Stepeasy with her for a while, but instead she was called in to join them, Min observing that her linguistic skills might be of value.

  This was a part-truth, and a very small part, too. What Min really meant was that Shion, too, would have a unique perspective here. She had arrived in the League with so little knowledge of their culture that practically the only thing she’d known about them for sure was that they had superlight craft she wanted to fly. She had spoken an almost incomprehensible version of Standard, culled from a bizarre language guide produced by the Solarans, it seemed, for the benefit of other species wanting information about the humans. Shion had had to learn about them from an outsider’s perspective, like Jarlner, Bennet and Silvie, but her perspective was that of someone who had grown up on a world which was also deeply conservative, prizing history and ritual, hereditary rule and a quiet but powerful morality.

  Min did not need to be so sensitive, though. Shion understood that she was not being asked to undertake any kind of diplomatic role here on behalf of her people, but to contribute to the discussion based on her personal experience and understanding of Camag culture. So she stayed, too, joining the group which was writing the advisory for the liner companies and everyone else who might be involved in tourism to Camae.

  It wasn’t until they had come back together again to look at the three drafts they’d produced that it occurred to any of them what an amazing thing had just happened there. They had used a standard Fleet format for writing advisories, which specified the identified problem first and then asserted the bona fides of the people who were writing it.

  For this purpose, they had identified themselves as an ad-hoc think tank, listing their names, ranks and academic qualifications as the format required.

  And there it was, pointed out by Eldovan as they looked at their afternoon’s work. It was a collaborative effort by humans, quarian, Samartians, Pirrellothian… four species, working together there for a common purpose.

  ‘Is that the first time that has ever happened?’ Eldovan asked, having been the first to realise that it was. Which the others were only just catching up with.

  ‘It has to be,’ Dan realised. ‘There’s never been a situation before where…’

  ‘It’s always humans and,’ a commander interrupted. ‘Us and Solarans, or Gider, or quarians… we never bring them together.’

  And they hadn’t, everyone knew, brought them together with any deliberate or purposeful intent here, either. It had been ‘humans and Samartians’, with the assigned mission of working with Jarlner and Bennet on an exchange of combat skills. Silvie had merely come along because she preferred to stay with Alex. And Shion had come along because she was looking after Silvie.

  ‘I rather think,’ Skipper Hevine said, with ponderous importance, ‘that we have just held humanity’s first multi-species academic conference.’

  ‘Way to go us,’ said Dan the irrepressible.

  ‘It might,’ another of the group ventured, ‘have been more significant if we had set out to do it
intentionally.’

  Alex laughed, at which everyone looked at him and waited for him to speak.

  ‘No,’ he said, and with a sense of deep contentment, ‘I think the important thing here is that we didn’t set out to do it intentionally – it just happened naturally, without thought, because we see one another as colleagues and friends.’ He let that hang for a moment. ‘Not aliens.’

  They looked at one another, and expressions became either sheepish or delighted, or a combination of both.

  ‘Seriously,’ said Dan, ‘way to go, us.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Skipper Hevine said, stunning them all by not only agreeing with Dan but speaking with approval. ‘This,’ he declared, with the air of a man about to make a keynote speech, ‘is the way to go. I believe that we are glimpsing – nay, creating, a future in which we…’

  ‘Save it for the Senate,’ Dan said, and as Skipper Hevine switched into huffy response and the seminar descended into a familiar familial bickering, Alex chuckled again, very quietly, just to himself.

  Yes, he thought. This was the way to go. And good, too, to be getting back into the swing of shipboard life. There had been some hours, there, after leaving Camae, where he’d had to exert firm control against giving way to irrational and self-indulgent feelings; a lurking sense that he had lost something precious. But he was over that now, he told himself, back in the groove and looking forward to the run to Therik.

  He might fool himself, but he was not fooling Silvie. She put up with his denial for a week, and then told him frankly it was getting on her nerves.

  ‘Everyone else,’ she pointed out, ‘has got over the Idyll Syndrome stuff and the ending of relationships they made there. They’re spacers, that’s what they do. Out of port, out of mind! But you’ve got this deep, deep stuff going on and it’s mucking up your clarity and your denial of it is as brittle as a dried out starfish, like an irritating scritchy noise going on and on and on and on, so come on, please, Alex, can you do a deep breath and open up so we can get this sorted?’

  They were on the aquadeck, relaxing in the lounging nets, and Alex looked at her in some surprise. He would have said, and believed, that he was truly relaxed, content in the moment, nothing troubling him whatsoever. But as Silvie spoke, it was as if a tooth he’d been careful to avoid using suddenly got a sharp poke, revealing that the nerve was very close to being exposed. Ouch. He was about to make an instinctive protest, then realised that the emotional jolt had come from him, not Silvie.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, and was quiet for some time, trying to resolve and clarify his feelings.

  Silvie bore with this emotional head-spin for about half a minute.

  ‘Is it,’ she prompted, ‘Migan? An Ulisanus and Pellic thing?’

  ‘No.’ Alex had parted from Migan as he had known they must part from the moment they met. It had been a little sad, of course, but mostly, it had been sweet. She had given him the picture which now hung in his quarters. And he had given her a pebble… a chunk, really, a little lump of rock which might have lain for a million years where Alex had picked it up, untouched by any atmospheric weathering. It was an unremarkable bit of rock, though quite pretty, with the glitter of amethyst crystals within it. And it was all that was left of the planet Alex had destroyed.

  ‘No,’ Alex said again, his feelings clarifying on that, at least. ‘It was wonderful while it lasted, but it was never going to be long term.’ He smiled at her. ‘My heart is not broken, Silvie. Not even aching.’

  She could see that, at least while he was thinking about Migan, the sentimental memories, but a sense of closure.

  ‘What is it, then?’ Silvie was perplexed. ‘Because there’s something, Alex… something niggling away at you like a sore toe. And don’t say you’re sorry – just fix it.’ She spoke with the assurance of someone who took it for granted that emotional problems could be as easily healed as a stubbed toe, with a little empathic first aid. ‘Delve,’ she instructed. ‘Acknowledge, Analyse, Act.’

  Alex did as she said, closing his eyes and doing a breathing exercise to help him focus. I am feeling troubled, he admitted to himself.

  Yes, I am. Realisation crept over him. He was feeling troubled, with feelings buried way down deep where he shoved things he did not want to think about, but feelings which would not stay buried, coming back at him in dreams he didn’t remember and in moments of unease he overcame with immediate positive thinking.

  And that was…

  Cerdan Jennar, his subconscious prompted, generating a backlash of incredulity and refusal to believe it. He could not, not, not, not in this universe, actually be feeling any sense of loss or unease over the resignation of Cerdan Jennar!

  Of course, there was the issue of Alex’s reputation for destroying the careers or even the mental health of people who went up against him. Unfair, perhaps, but Alex himself was sensitive to any suggestion that he might be responsible for yet another person crashing and burning after taking a hostile stance against him.

  But that was not an issue this time. There had been no head to head between Alex and the Third Lord because he had never allowed it to become one. And he had always been, as he understood very well, the focus of a rather bigger conflict between Cerdan Jennar and Dix Harangay. Dix had been wanting Cerdan Jennar out of the Admiralty before Alex had even got his first command, and after all these years of battling it out, Dix had finally won.

  Alex could only be pleased about that, recognising that it was in the best interests of the Fleet to have a head of Internal Affairs who was not a rabid, bigoted, power-mongering hypocrite.

  No, he decided. He wasn’t sorry to see the back of Cerdan Jennar, and nor could he be. But there was something…

  Changes at the Admiralty. There would be changes at the Admiralty. It wouldn’t merely be a case of another officer moving into Cerdan Jennar’s office. The five lords of the Admiralty functioned as a council. There were many decisions, like the appointment of port admirals and other flag-rank postings, which were issued in the name of the First Lord but which had to be ratified by them as a group. The internal dynamic of that group would be radically altered by the arrival of a new member… just as the training group here had changed with Eldovan’s arrival. And whether it was Terrible Tennet who got the job or some other candidate, there would be changes.

  ‘I think…’ he said, opening his eyes, and stopped. ‘No.’ He shook his head in bewilderment, as if a nascent thread of thought had fallen away before he could grasp it. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, and then, with the emotional awareness and vocabulary Silvie had taught him, ‘I can’t crystallise it, the feelings are too nebulous. But – yes, something.’

  ‘Change.’ Silvie said. ‘You’re worried about change…’

  ‘Yes…’

  They sat in silence for a while, Silvie giving him time to think about that.

  ‘It’s like,’ Alex said at last, ‘that gut instinct you get when you know that something is about to go wrong but you just can’t figure out what it is. Pilots get it, you know? That instinct before your brain has had time to consciously recognise a problem, alarms are going off in your head. And I have that – an unease, like you say, niggling away at me.’

  ‘You feel that things are going to change,’ Silvie said. ‘And not in a good way. So – dig deep, Alex. What’s your worst case scenario?’

  ‘I lose my command,’ said Alex, without even needing to think about that. And as he said it, certainty did crystallise. That, yes, that. That was what he was afraid of.

  ‘Huh?’ said Silvie, ‘But…’ she stopped herself, seeing that Alex truly believed that this was a real possibility. ‘No – go on,’ she said.

  Alex thought about it, forcing himself to be analytical.

  ‘There are going to be changes,’ he said, ‘at the Admiralty. It’s complicated, too many ramifications even to speculate about, really. But I feel… there are pressures, you know, massive pressures, trying to push me up. The President, the Senate, the
Diplomatic Corps, all of them have tried to push me into high-powered roles and in doing that, take me out of the position of skippering a ship.’

  He looked at Silvie to see if she understood, and she nodded.

  ‘I remember,’ she told him, ‘how worried people on the Heron were at Chartsey; that this might be a move to slide you out of command, that they might not get you back. But Dix promised, didn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, he did,’ Alex confirmed. ‘But promises, even made with genuine commitment at the time, can be made untenable by unforeseen developments. And I feel… in a strange way, Cerdan Jennar’s continual raging against me and all those plots and schemes to force me out of my command, they might actually have been having a contrary effect, you know? Dix and Terese, at least in part, fighting to keep me in command of the Heron because it was Cerdan Jennar trying to force me out.’

  ‘Tuh,’ Silvie said, expressing her opinion of the bizarre way humans behaved, but nodding understanding of that, too. ‘And you think now..?’

  ‘What if,’ Alex said, and was thinking it out as he spoke. ‘What if the dynamic of that changes, with the introduction of a new voice? And what if that voice proposes, with genuine belief that it is in the best interests of the League, the Fleet, even in my best interests, to ‘raise’ me out of ship command.’

  ‘You think Terrible would do that to you?’ Silvie was shocked. ‘She’s your friend!’

  ‘Exactly.’ Alex said. ‘So people would listen to her, be persuaded by her, when they’d reject the same suggestions from Cerdan Jennar out of protection of and loyalty to me.’

  ‘But you think Terrible would do that?’ Silvie pressed.

  ‘I think she would, yes,’ Alex said. ‘If she is appointed, which seems very probable, she will give her opinion on that as she always does, without fear or favour, in what she believes to be the best interests of the League and of the Fleet. And…’ a rueful look. ‘She has never said… not directly, but I know she disapproves of me being called ‘skipper’ in the Fourth, not ‘captain.’, and of what that implies for how I see my role and conduct myself. So yes, Silvie, I do think – I know – that if she’s in the Third Lord’s office she’ll be pressing for me to be moved out of ship command. And Dix – well, he’s said more than once that he thinks it’s too much to ask of me, handling both operational and routine shipboard command, and he has tried, too, to persuade me to create a flag suite on the interdeck, handing over day to day management of the Heron to another skipper. I said no, of course, obviously, and he accepted my argument that I can’t work like that, have to be hands on with the ship command in order to work them up into an operational unit. But I’m afraid,’ he said, with a sigh, ‘that Dix, and Terrible, and others, may now point to what has been achieved on the Assegai as evidence that I can work up a ship’s company effectively, and lead them through missions, in a high-command role and working out of a flag suite. They even,’ he added, with a slightly bitter note, ‘gave me my own choice of mission! I felt at the time that there might be something more going on with that than them just not being able to make up their minds – frankly, if Dix really hadn’t thought it was right to put that level of high command responsibility on me he’d have stood out against it, even if that meant him picking one of the missions at random. So I do think, yes, that there was a dual purpose to this – meeting the Samartian demand for my involvement, and trying to nudge me into a high-command role.’