First Contact_A Pax Aeterna Novel

by Trevor Wyatt

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  Trevor Wyatt

  Jeryl

  Jeryl was weary of New Washington. Simmering with discontent, he stalked along the elevated walkway over the main promenade, dodging aliens and hearing translations of their babble, courtesy of his Trask implant. He made the “delete feed” gesture so many times that he probably looked like he was trying to swat gnats.

  It was almost enough to make him miss his days on Sonali Prime, when he had to use the translator unit all the time. Now, he would love to have the damn, physically unobtrusive but mentally tiring in-ear implant removed.

  There were occasions, however, when Jeryl still needed the implant. Walking in public, though, was not one of them. The thing was that the device couldn’t be turned off; he could only cancel a conversation. Design flaw.

  There were vendors up there, too, mostly those hawking fresh foods of various types. Jeryl’s nostrils caught various odors as he passed their stalls—some were enticing, some revolting. He was used to this.

  He stopped to purchase a mug of hot, thick deftol from a green-furred, monkey-like native of Vozel. Deftol was a bitter-tasting infusion for which he had developed a liking. It contained compounds that acted as mild stimulants—helpful on days when his spirits were a bit low.

  Sipping his mug as he wended his way through the crowds, he felt a bit better. The deftol’s energizing effect lifted his mood.

  Jeryl was wearing a business suit, which was why he was outraged when a small form hurtled out of the crowd and slammed onto him, spilling his deftol all over his coat.

  “Stop, you young thief!” Jeryl heard someone shout.

  Without thinking, but not without cursing, he grabbed the little so-and-so who collided with him. It was a young native of Irivani, a moon circling the planet Majriti, a jovian planet in the Upsilon Andromedae system.

  He (or so Jeryl assumed; they had three sexes, which he couldn’t tell apart, but the “males” were more aggressive) was grasping a hammed fruit in one of his four hands as he struggled in Jeryl’s grip, trying to free himself.

  “Lemme go, you stupid Terran pig!” he spat.

  Surely, he didn’t expect Jeryl to understand, but he had his Trask implant.

  He shook the kid and said in Irivani, “Respect your elders, you little goniff.”

  The thief was so astonished that he stopped struggling for a moment. It gave the victim—a portly Irivani, probably a female (all Irivanian vendors are female)—time to bustle up to Jeryl, panting.

  Irivanians were used to a thicker atmosphere, and exertion on New Washington quickly got the older ones out of breath. The little creep who stole the fruit was probably born there, so he was acclimated. It was a moment before she could voice her complaint.

  “Yngvi, you little louse! This is the second time in this cycle that I’ve caught you stealing my wares!” she cried. She snatched him away from Jeryl and shook him even harder than he did. “To the temple we go, where you can beg the forgiveness of Great Ved.”

  And she marched him off, paying no heed to his whining. Before they finally vanished into the crowd, she turned her head completely around on her shoulders and flung a word of thanks to Jeryl.

  Well, it was more than he expected. Jeryl’s mood, not to mention his coat, was ruined by this encounter despite the ameliorating effects of the deftol.

  He found the closest wardrobe shop, where he purchased a new outfit and ducked into a fitting booth. He stripped off his dripping clothing, tossed it in a recycler, and emerged a few moments later to continue on his way towards his meeting with Grand Admiral Howard Flynn.

  His lofty ideals, so firmly in place when he began the process of trying to set up the Galactic Council two years ago, had taken a beating over time. Jeryl’s intervention with the thief, Yngvi, exemplified this. The aliens squabbled endlessly among themselves and with other species. Their petty arguments often went from minuscule points of protocol down to the color of their seat cushions.

  Jeryl was convinced a lot of these considerations were purely passive-aggressive nonsense, but that didn’t make them any less of real concerns. Someone had to deal with them. That someone would have to be him.

  He was feeling even more discontented than before. He was even more pessimistic in thinking how the races would ever learn to get along with one another when they couldn’t even live harmoniously among themselves.

  For two years, Jeryl worked his ass off to get the Galactic Council off the drawing board. Jeryl had been so busy that he had only seen the Grand Admiral a handful of times in the past year. Even before he collared the fruit thief, he felt the need to vent a little. It was one reason why he asked Flynn to fit him into his busy morning for just a few minutes.

  Plus, he wanted to get rid of the guilt he had been feeling as he was not able to speak with him in ways other than slipstream.

  After all, the Council was partly Flynn’s idea, though he was far too modest a man, for a general, to take any credit for it.

  Of course, the flip side of that coin was that when things went wrong, he didn’t have to accept any of the blame. All that stuck to Jeryl like the gooey deftol.

  It didn’t generally bother him, because as someone else in authority used to say, “The buck stops here.” (A buck was an old-style unit of currency from the nation-state of the United States of America.)

  He wouldn’t have become a vice admiral without being able to accept responsibility. Truth be told, he enjoyed problem solving. As a kid, he loved puzzles and games, and it got better when things became more challenging.

  Jeryl never dreamed of trying to organize representatives of alien civilizations. When he started this effort, the idea was to get ten races (humans being one of them) together to form the hub of a functioning legislative body, something that could mediate disputes, oversee trade, and monitor political activities in a member’s native star system, as well as interactions with other council members.

  Jeryl swore this looked workable on paper.

  They started out simply, or so he thought, with only oxygen-nitrogen breathers who could tolerate a more or less Earth-normal temperature and pressure range with minimal implants—like the Sonali, for one, along with the Irivanians, the Vozelians, and several others.

  They contacted the chlorine breathers and some other exotremes. Some of them agreed to send emissaries, but only virtual ones. The climate on New Washington was lethal to them. And so, they were represented in gatherings through a holographic projector.

  Of course, they had the example of the Sonali staring them right in the face—they fought a war with them because of misunderstandings.

  Sharing a preferred atmosphere didn’t mean sharing a viewpoint. The Irivanians were solely concerned with the bottom line—what’s in it for them. They were master traders and merchants, and they were impatient for the Council to get down to business (no pun intended) so that they could start making a profit.

  At last, Jeryl arrived at Howard’s office and pressed a finger on the CALL pad. It analyzed his electrolytes, found him in its database, and then slid open. He was in the outer office, where his secretary, another Vozellian, nodded at him.

  “He’s expecting you, Admiral,” she said. “Go right in.”

  “Thanks, Leekerchee. Looking good today, hon.”

  She simpered at him as he passed through the inner door.

  “Jeryl!” Howard exclaimed, coming out from behind his desk to seize his hand. “Einstein on the beach! It’s good to see you.” He sniffed. “What’s that I smell? Is that deftol?”

  With a sigh, Jeryl took a seat and related his little adventure on the upper level. Howard laughed, but not too hard. He, too, had his own share of close encounters.

  “It beats getting shot at by Sonali warships, though, eh?” he said, offering Jeryl a shot of bourbon.

  “Early for me,” Jeryl said, waving it off.

  “Me too,
but this place can drive a man to it,” Howard said. “I’m not fit to be a diplomat, Jeryl. A dipsomaniac, maybe, if we keep getting wrapped up in bureaucratic crap.”

  Jeryl nodded ruefully. The truth was that, although the Earth-Sonali War had ended, its resolution had brought a series of other conflicts to light. Some of them was probably about to burst into the open to ensnare Earth in an interstellar web of technological, mercantile, and political interests.

  “Yeah,” Jeryl said, poker-faced. “Who knew that interspecies diplomacy would be so hard?”

  Howard gave him a hard look, then laughed.

  “I don’t see why we have to be the ones to try to resolve all this,” Howard said, turning to stare out his window. He had gotten a much better view from his office than he had from Jeryl’s.

  Jeryl shrugged. “Someone needs to do it,” he said. “No one else has stepped up. Besides, it’ll give us a greater voice in the galaxy. Think of the power and influence humanity will get—”

  “Power and influence is for people who have forgotten how to value the small, important things in life,” Howard grumbled.

  “Like a good view from an office window?” Jeryl said, grinning.

  “Smartass,” Howard said, smiling before he got serious. “The Terran Union made the mistake of reaching out to every civilization we’ve encountered. It isn’t our fault that many of them, up until now, have existed in a state of very little diplomatic contact with each other, like isolated kingdoms in the Dark Ages or European or feudal societies.”

  “Yeah, they don’t want to be helped, some of them,” Jeryl said.

  “But you’re going to keep on trying.”

  “I am.”

  “Good man. We’ve got to get these first ten races onboard, son. I don’t need to tell you how important it is that we humans become the unifying factor in the galaxy.”

  Howard was right, of course. Under Council auspices, the stability of the galaxy would increase dramatically.

  They talked a bit longer, but Jeryl had a full schedule, and he was aware Howard’s day was packed, too.

  “Keep me apprised of your progress,” Jeryl said, shaking Howard’s hand.

  Jeryl took his leave after promising to stay in closer touch with the Grand Admiral.

  Jeryl

  After leaving Admiral Flynn’s office suite, Jeryl took a drop-tube to the roof. It had been a long day and he was looking forward to being home, and even more to seeing his wife. They were not the most social people nowadays—she was the Captain of The Seeker and was away for stretches of time, so when they did find each other, it’s just the two of them together.

  They preferred each other’s company more than the company of diplomats, politicians, or alien emissaries as the norm had become.

  Their quarter, an official diplomatic residence in New Washington’s Administrative District, was comfortable and snug, if not luxurious. And they spent many nights there listening to music and playing chess or cards.

  It was not exciting. It was not the sort of life envisioned by people who read too many political thrillers set among New Washington’s style makers and embassies, But it was always a welcome relief for them;

  Their home was the only place where they could shuck their official roles and enjoy their time together as husband and wife over a glass or two of wine. It was where they could rest away from the endless bureaucratic headaches they coped with every day.

  The headaches were not getting less stressful, either. After years in the military, he thought he’d seen every type of pigheadedness, spite, and turf fighting a species could devise. Sure—maybe one species. But now he was wrangling ten, trying to get them all to agree on the charter of the Galactic Council.

  “It would be easier to wrestle a dozen octopuses,” Jeryl told himself, enjoying the brief solitude of the drop-tube capsule. In the case of one race, the members of the Drupadi Regime, the comparison was apt because Drupadians, though air breathers, wee descendants of an ancestor that looked a great deal like the Terran octopus.

  When he got to the roof, there were no cabs in the taxi stand. He stood and waited for one to come, looking out over the city and reflecting on the task before him.

  The Circle of Ten, as they came to be called, weren’t the only alien species lurking in the corridors of the Promenade down there. There were plenty of others who were also attracted to that place by commercial possibilities, or the chances of fleeing repressive governments and seeking educational opportunities. The Vozellian monkey-folk, Jeryl’s favorite deftol vendor, was just one example.

  Eventually, they would get them all under the Council’s umbrella, but for now, they were trying to gather the more influential races: The Sonali Combine, the Kurta Colonies, the Irivani Empire, the Tyreesian Collective, the Children of Zorm, the Drupadi Regime, the Vozelian Nation, the Terran Union, the Gadha peoples, and the Hastinapuran Hegemony.

  The Terrans, who would, one might think, be an easy sell, were anything but that because of the factions. The Outer Colonies were oriented far more toward the bottom line than the politicos there on New Washington, and the Earth-based contingent had its own agenda.

  Earth dwellers still thought they’re the boss of them. Despite lip-service paid to it, they had never really accepted the fact that the center of human affairs was now located firmly on New Washington. They still expected concessions and tax advantages. Their ship has sailed, but they have yet to admit it.

  Sure, the Academy and the Armada Command were on Earth. The President still had his offices there. But the galaxy was coming together, and the most interaction was happening there, in New Washington.

  Jeryl saw his ship was about to arrive. The cab passed over the top of the building, came around in a sweeping arc, and settled to a gentle landing on its service pad a hundred feet away. He was halfway across the roof by the time its gullwing door swung up, allowing a pair of business-suited human females to exit.

  Their conversation didn’t miss a beat, and they didn’t spare him as much as a glance when he passed by. They were speaking French, a language he didn’t know, but his Trask implants translated their discussion and Jeryl grinned as he understood their conversation; they were debating the relative merits of Blue Stilton versus Roquefort cheese.

  He was still grinning as he climbed into the waiting cab. He preferred cheddar, himself.

  Jeryl gave the machine his address. He let it scan the invisible ID tattoo on his wrist, and then settled back. The cab muttered mechanically to itself for a moment before it lifted off into the clear sky.

  Peace was a good thing.

  As he settled into the cab’s cushioned seat, he allowed himself to reflect a bit on this. Perhaps it was just the added perspective he had while he was aloft there, looking at the view below from above the most important city in human history.

  Peace allowed women to argue about cheese. Peace between the species they’d contacted would lead to increased opportunities in education, technology, and even social evolution. Best of all, to his way of thinking, it was a two-way street.

  They may not had possessed a lot in common with the Drupadi when it came to living space and preferred food, but they both valued peace. Jeryl came to understand that intelligent beings were more or less the same everywhere: people just wanted to be left alone to go about their lives. When people would only think about it, it would not be a lot to ask.

  Sure, there were disenfranchised minorities on almost every planet. The great fallacy of human society was the inability to visualize aliens as having civilizations as complex as theirs. Earth—and human culture—wasn’t a monolithic, homogenous mass like an ant colony. There were still a few hunter-gatherer cultures left on Earth, as well as some nomadic people who resisted the pressure to settle in cities. They had no use for the Galactic Council.

  It was the same in other worlds. There were downtrodden castes, unevolved cultures, or uncivilized backwater regions on every planet they had contacted. Sure, they like
d to bring them all into the current century; but the truth was that they didn’t want to join the party for whatever reason.

  And it wasn’t their business to force them.

  Like Jeryl said, it took them a long time to get to that point, and the realization proved to be a fragile thing. There were still plenty of people who believed that they “knew better” than others, and that their way of life was the only acceptable way.

  The Terran Union conducted an informal census a few years ago, and the numbers showed that there were roughly two million non-human Union members in a variety of worlds. Most of their numbers were concentrated on New Washington and on planet Earth. Many of those individuals were government employees, of course, and they represented billions of their citizens.

  Keeping them all happy— or trying to keep them all happy, Jeryl would say—had been a full-time job.

  My job, he thought.

  Some days were better than others. That day, in particular, wasn’t over yet.

  As the cab was spiraling in for a landing on the roof of his building, he craned his neck to get a better look. There were hundreds of protesters down there, waving signs and shaking their fists at the blank glass façade.

  Jeryl groaned. He knew who these people were. They were Terran Nationalists, and they’re protesting there outside the official residence of the human diplomatic corps.

  Protesting to me, he thought, among others.

  Jeryl settled back into the seat, resisting an impulse to tell the cab to take him back to Flynn’s office. He gripped the hand rests. He wouldn’t let those fools ruin his day.

  With that in mind, as well as an unbidden image of a plate of sliced cheddar and a cold bottle of white wine, he composed himself as best he could.

  He would need to talk to them and try to get them to disperse.

  The cab settled into the landing cradle, which accepted its weight without as much as a creak of protest. The Terran Nationalists were a relatively new group that had gained strength over the past three years in response to the influx of aliens in human worlds.