by Jim Rudnick
She had felt bad—he was a catch, for sure, but the last thing she wanted to think about was sitting on a dais for the rest of her life, as his mate. She wanted to learn, to study, to teach, to discover … for her it was an academic life that was her driving need.
So they’d parted somewhat amiably, but over the next thirty years, that amiability changed to a longing she knew was partly her fault.
It had happened on Madrigal at a big conference about ten years after they’d gone their own ways. She was speaking at the conference, and he had been a guest on the planet for some other reason she didn’t know about. She had been in the lobby of her hotel when the elevator door had opened, and he came straight out of it and almost into her arms.
“Still wearing that blue and brown get-up, I see,” she said as his Ramat guardsmen surrounded her.
Sharia grinned at her, waved off the guards, and hugged the hell out of her. Sweeping her with him, he went back to the lobby, and they sat in a seating area and chatted. It had been ten years, and it took a bit of time to catch up—and the sparks were still there, she realized.
He looked at an aide who was waving at him for some attention, and they’d agreed to meet later for dinner.
“My treat,” he said, and she chuckled.
That dinner had been great. They’d ended up in, bed and that’s how the whole affair began those years back.
Since then, his father had passed away, Sharia had been made the Caliph, and she’d moved from Carnarvon over to Neres and had taken full professorship of the language department of Neres University. Yet they still found time to meet at least a few times a year.
The fact that she was on the xeno team was not news as she had told him about it via that PDA EYES ONLY Ansible message system she so distrusted. He had been more than surprised that a ship had been found, and they’d talked about it for a bit, but then the roll-out of the brand new Barony Drive was the latest news.
He had asked if she would let him know if they found anything important to the Caliphate.
And she had the few times she’d sent an EYES ONLY to him.
Today, she wanted to fill him in on more news, and she pulled out the list from her pocket to go over how to hook up the PDA so that her messages to Sharia would be un-read by anyone else. That the actual message itself was hidden too, he’d said was important, and she followed her list numbered item by item … punching in the correct keys and making the needed connections work for her and her intel on the wrecked ship.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Today, Trade Master Lofton thought, the light was again flat and the shadows from the blue Leudie sun were still dark blue in the deepest area of the large outdoor patio. Every day was a summer day, but not every day held the challenges they faced as of this morning.
He took off his toque and spit on the twin captains bars, polishing them by rubbing them into his dark green cloak as he unclasped his neck doublet too. The sun, still weak in these early morning hours, shone down on the thirty or so of the amassed group of traders around the pushed together tables. As the duly elected trade master, Lofton reported to the council that governed the planet on all things having to do with trade. As such, he’d always felt he was more important to their fortunes than anyone who actually sat on the council, and he’d turned down those offerings each year or two.
His neck snake was still dozing as he stroked its muscled coils around his neck, and he wondered for the millionth time what the first Leudie had thought as he picked up a snake and wrapped it around his neck. Over the past thousands of years, the bond between the Leudie and his neck snake had grown even stronger, and it came as no surprise that the bonds were also bio-oriented too, as the snake had an appendage that inserted itself into an orifice on the Leudie’s neck—to make the symbiosis complete.
He smiled at that, as the coil beneath his hand slowly flexed, and the coils moved as the snake woke and uncurled a bit in the weak morning sunshine.
He held up a hand to stop the incoming questions that the latest arrival here on the patio must have wanted to ask, and he said, “In ten more minutes. We’ll need a quorum of the full forty of us for this …” He closed his eyes and leaned back to soak up the sunshine such as it was.
In a few more minutes, someone tugged on his cloak, and he sighed, sat up, and looked around.
A quick head count showed forty-one traders were present, and he nodded at them all.
“Thank you for the attendance here today—so sorry about the time, but we need to discuss and work out a plan to thwart the latest Faraway foray into our commerce. Without the whole long backstory, you all know that we Leudies were the first trading planet to join the RIM Confederacy—more than a thousand years earlier than these Faraway usurpers. We trade here on the RIM as well as off-RIM too—something that they do not do. So in my mind—in most of the Confederacy’s mind, I’d imagine—Leudies are the more valued traders to all the RIM planets.”
He leaned forward to take a small sip of the water in front of him and shook off the passing waiter’s query about something to eat.
He half-smiled at the assembled traders. “We—rather I—came into the following information just last evening—an EYES ONLY from my contacts over on Faraway. After some major discussions and it appears some falling-outs of any kind of management by their ministry, Faraway will be issuing via their RIM Confederacy Council member an ultimatum to the RIM. Either they get relief from what they claim are restrictive tariffs that were instigated by Leudie—or they’ll leave the RIM Confederacy.”
As he finished that simple declaration, the forty-plus traders all grinned and laughed loudly.
“Booyah,” one said, “our problems go away!”
“Hoo-Hah—couldn’t be a better outcome!” said another.
There were plenty of knocks on the various tables around the restaurant patio, and he let them go for a minute.
“Wait,” one said, and he stopped the rest of the talk cold.
“Why are you not happy with this result … we have effectively just killed off our competitors—right?”
Again, all were quiet, and one could only hear the footsteps of the few waiters out on the patio this morning.
He nodded to the trader who’d made the leap of understanding and half smiled too. “We have done that—but what that might mean—no one knows. If Faraway leaves the RIM Confederacy as a member—that would still allow them to land and sell and buy goods on an RIM member planet. That’s written into the Confederacy Constitution—I had it looked up last night. But what that could also mean is that they can still trade—buy and sell and without any tariff restrictions at all. The Confederacy would have to work out how to charge the buyers—on every single planet, mind you, with some kind of extra set of payments to go into the Confederacy treasury … via the Customs Ministry …”
He let that sink in for a moment.
“And as you all remember, that kind of member payments work perfectly, right?”
He didn’t smile at that, as he and everyone else here knew about the last time this had happened when the RIM Navy itself had been created and each planet was taxed with new fees. Most had said no, not interested, even though the council had passed the tax statutes and they were legal. In fact, some of the members had threatened leaving the Confederacy on their own, and only an alien incursion at the edge of the RIM had made them all see that a centralized navy could protect them. They paid. But that had been an awful thing to go through.
Nods from some showed he’d made his point.
“So, a new trading competitor is born out of the ashes of the Faraway ultimatum … and their plan is now up to us to work on to come up with an answer …”
The discussions went more than two hours and ranged from nuke them to ignore them. He wasn’t able to guide it very well until someone—Trader Jackovik, he thought—said, “We should maybe do the same thing?” but without much conviction behind the idea.
He grabbed it as it went by and said, “Ther
e’s an idea … what might happen if Leudie also issued the same ultimatum to the council … get rid of the intolerable Faraway tariffs or we, too, will leave the RIM Confederacy. Both of us would be free traders with no tariffs at all … might that not work for us?” he asked, knowing the discussion was now in hand.
That got many of the traders up and agreeing with him, saying yes, we too can be these free traders and no tariffs would mean great profits plus more trades too.
One trader suggested they go ahead with this idea and make it a binding motion that was sent via the trade master up to their member who sat on the RIM Council. That got even more knocks on tables and shouts of booyah, and it seemed to have worked, Lofton thought.
He nodded and made sure the group understood that should the council not find a solution—that Leudie would then have to leave the Confederacy.
Not a single one of the group disagreed with that—as trading needed only a buyer and a seller … something that could be found anywhere in the galaxy. Lofton sent the EYES ONLY ultimatum that he’d crafted last night to the Leudie Council member.
Would probably come back with a confirmation needed type of reply, he thought, but he was ready for that too...
#####
“Sure wouldn’t take long to climb the ladder in this ministry,” Mindy Smith said to herself as she settled into a chair about halfway down the table. Twenty-three chairs, some of which already held other Ministry of Customs staff, were spread around the table, but at one end sat a bigger chair than all the rest.
Minister sits there, she figured, so she’d gone down the far side of the table and sat about halfway down. Behind her, the windows showed the cloudy showers that rained down on Juno today, which was bit unusual for this late spring day. Still, through the streaked glass, she could see some of the other RIM government buildings—over there the large one of red brick was the commerce ministry, and way off to the one side, she could see Navy Hall too, its white limestone streaked today with rain stains.
She looked around as a few more people came in, and they all sat to her right, closer to the head of the table, so they obviously valued their positions over her own. Fair enough, as she had been hired only a month ago as a temporary filing clerk, and in the last month, she’d been hired on full time, promoted twice, and she was now the head of the application division.
The job had no title really—except department head—and yet she enjoyed that it was her hard work that had gotten her there—and that almost made her laugh right out loud.
It hadn’t been anything that she had done at all—it was just that everyone between her temporary position and the department head had quit. They couldn’t handle the pressure of the huge new daily influx of applications and the stress of the load to verify and then authorize new tariffs.
Me? Hardly, but right place right time, she thought and smiled.
The minister walked in and took that big chair, and an aide took the one to her right.
The minister looked at the table and then shook her head. “Off the record, but good God, where are the rest of the department heads?” she said to the table.
Her aide answered, “Quit, or off on disability, or on short-term sick days—or fired. We’re down to these … fourteen department heads, Ms. Minister,” she said without any inflection at all.
“New application department,” the minister said
“Is here, Ms. Minister—on your right about halfway down the table—wearing the lime green smock,” the aide said before Mindy could reply.
Mindy blushed. She held up her hand tentatively and even waved it a bit at the minister who just stared back at her.
The aide nodded and waved back.
“And who is here representing the tariff inspectors?” the minister asked.
The aide didn’t even squirm on her chair. “That department is now without a new head—we lost three more of them since our last department head meeting—all three went off on long-term disability. Stress induced, the doctors said, Ms. Minister …” she added, and the minister nodded.
“So, re-cap, please, department head of applications?” and she leaned back as Mindy realized she had to present the report.
Thank God, the console she used in the department head office back down in applications had had last month’s report, as all she’d done was copy and rename it and then update the numbers.
What the numbers were that she used was one thing—what they said about the current state of affairs was another.
“Ms. Minister, yes, I have the most recent report, and I’ll beam it to your aide STAT. But what it shows is pretty shocking, if the numbers are correct,” Mindy said as she clicked on her tablet, connected to the room AI, and put up the spreadsheet on the large wall display opposite the windowed wall.
AI in the room realized that while the day outside was gray, the light might have interfered with the view-screen display, so it filtered the windows’ opacity, and the report was the center of attention in the room.
The room was quiet, as all were looking at the numbers.
New applications were way up—more than seven hundred in the past thirty days. All for new tariffs on either Leudie or Faraway FOB ORIGIN goods too.
Backlog of applications hit now, eleven hundred files. Had not had even a look-see or a quick vetting of any kind … just in the hopper waiting to be assigned to a customs investigator.
Current pending applications—in an investigator’s hands for their work—were now more than thirty-five files each. That would have almost been acceptable—except there were now only nine investigators instead of the normal full complement of twenty-seven, which meant about sixty files were in limbo.
Number of applications fully investigated and verified and authorized or denied was forty-five this month. Usually, the department handled and decided on more than a hundred a month. But not this past month. Too few investigators meant less work was done.
Department efficiency rating was a C-minus. As far as Mindy knew from her two years in business college, a C-minus meant the area was rife with issues that needed immediate attention. Maybe I shouldn’t have added in that efficiency rating to the report, she thought but then rationalized that as it’d come up on the screen, she had to show it on the report.
The minister nodded, went to her tablet for a moment, made some notes, and then spoke privately to her aide.
Mindy sat and waited. And waited some more.
“Department head Smith—I note the C-minus rating. Do you think that this is indicative of the state of the department as a whole?” she asked.
Trap here maybe, Mindy thought, but hey, forge ahead with full speed.
“Ms. Minister—I simply put in the rating number that came up on the screen. What I think is much more basic than that number or how it was arrived at. What I think, Ms. Minister, is that we just need to hire more customs investigators—lots more, Ma’am, as you can see, the department is way behind in pendings and in-hopper files.
“Or, we just rubber stamp them all as authorized or denied and kill the lot of them in one day, Ma’am,” she said. Even though the last bit had been a bit facetious, it would really help if all these applications could go away and the department could go back to the twenty applications a month like before the trade war between Leudie and Faraway.
The minister leaned over to speak to her aide. The two heads were close, and they talked for almost five minutes before the minister nodded and leaned back over to sit up straight in her own chair.
“Thank you, Ms. Smith—can we go now over to Health, and I’d like to hear from—”
“Ms. Minister,” her aide said, “we do not as yet have a new department head for the Health department—but we are in the final vetting of a couple of candidates, Ma’am,” she said, and the minister nodded.
“Duty department then.”
Her aide gave her the same look, and the minister held up her hands in defeat.
“Then who might be next,” she said.
Her aide pointed down the table to a Provost officer seated way down near the bottom of the table. “Security would be next, Ms. Minister—department head Colonel Alec Michaels, Ma’am,” she said, and he nodded back.
As Mindy listened to the officer talk about security on the landing ports, over at the naval yards, and then across the RIM itself, planet by planet, she wondered if she could apply for long-term disability as she was bored beyond tears.
Wonder how anyone listens to stuff that has no bearing on her own department and doesn’t just fall asleep, Mindy thought, as she caught her head dipping down for the third time.
“Fine,” the Minister said. “And I see that our department head from museums and antiquities is here—go ahead please, Professor McCray …”
Mindy paled at that, as the report that appeared on the screen said that it was showing page one of thirty-nine pages…
Boring bureaucracy … she thought, wonder why that hadn’t been a course at college …
#####
Admiral McQueen was stumped and he knew it. He had been pondering the current trade war here in the Confederacy for almost a month now, and so far, no answer. He stared out the window in the executive committee meeting room up on the top floor of Navy Hall and wondered if the rain was ever going to stop.
It’d been raining now for almost a week, and the gray skies made Juno a very dull place. The skyline of the navy yards dead ahead was streaky as he looked out the huge panes of glass. Well past his ability to see what the ships were, he could still see two sphere ships from Alex’n, three cruisers from anywhere on the RIM, and the Atlas was lying there as well.
The Atlas meant something, but he had no idea as to what. Perhaps the Baroness was using it for transport, perhaps the new Barony Admiral Scott had brought in his flagship. He really had no idea, but that did ignite something else he’d heard only yesterday.