Quarus (Fourth Fleet Irregulars Book 6)

by S J MacDonald

  ‘In fact,’ Alex said, ‘if you ever do discover a true unicorn in the Diplomatic Corps, there is a prize you could claim from the First’s offices on Chartsey. Unicorn hunting is something of a sport amongst profilers.’

  Nyge chuckled. He was well informed enough now to recognise that a unicorn was a radically different senior member of an organisation who for some reason was tolerated amongst them. Academic unicorns were ten a penny, as universities traditionally embraced all manner of contrary views and the maddest eccentrics, but the more rigid an organisation was, the rarer its unicorns.

  ‘I find it helpful, myself,’ Alex said, ‘to consider organisations in the context of what class of ship they resemble. The Diplomatic Corps is essentially just like the leviathan we’ll be coming up on next week. Getting the Diplomatic Corps to change their mind on anything is very much like trying to turn a leviathan, very slow and requiring tremendous effort. Getting frustrated with them in that process is pointless, counter-productive. And the same principles apply as with the Big Picture Briefing – don’t, or try not to, push people too far beyond their comfort zone in one go.’ He nodded to Nyge as the cadet had swept them around the outside of the squadron and was now looking at him to see if Alex wanted to go back to the Heron, now.

  The next day, the Fourth themselves embarked upon the highest-impact aspect of their own mission preparations.

  It was bathroom training. They had set up just the same kind of lavatory and spa/salon in their training gym as the Harmony had in their quarian quarters, with an initial half-hour training session in how to use the facilities and the products available and in bathroom etiquette.

  It was not, of course, compulsory, as Hetty Leavam established firmly for the record. It was only required for people who were applying for groundside role, those who wanted to go to Quarus itself.

  There was a hundred per cent take-up amongst the Fourth’s crew. None of them wanted to have come all this way only to sit on the ship and look at Quarus from orbit. That was what the vast majority of people going out to the Embassy had to do, since only the ambassador and a handful of senior staff went groundside and no quarians had visited the ship in over twenty years.

  The first three days of bathroom training were so hilarious to Silvie that she had to leave the ship. There was only so much laughing you could do, after all, before you ended up with stitch and a headache. So Silvie went over to the Stepeasy for a while, leaving them to get over the hideous embarrassment of nudity.

  It was hideous, too – embarrassing for most humans, but almost unendurable for members of the Fleet. Physical modesty was drummed into them during basic training, as anyone inclined to stroll about communal areas in their underwear was told very fast to go and put some clothes on. People got dressed and undressed in showers, and even sleepwear was a soft sports-style shorts and t-shirt to preserve modesty if the ship came to action stations during the night. Any kind of intimacy aboard ship was frowned upon, too, and cause for court martial for officers.

  So, to get naked in mixed groups with men, women, ratings and officers, using lavatories with nothing more than extractor kilts, was at the upper end of what the Fourth themselves could handle. And the horror which ensued when the skipper came in was just too much for a couple of people who excused themselves frantically and fled.

  Once they had taken the plunge, though, it did begin to get a little easier. The Excorps guys were very helpful in that, though it might not have seemed so at first. They had embraced their role as embarrassment-makers with huge enthusiasm and there was always at least one of them in the bathroom to point and laugh and make excruciatingly inappropriate comments. Reactions varied. Some people tried to maintain some degree of dignity whilst others just gave way and laughed. A few found it too much, and left. But they were always back, and generally within a few minutes, too, eyes on the prize of being able to visit Quarus.

  The discovery that he was giving his entire crew nudity training brought the Harmony’s skipper over, once he’d recovered his equilibrium with some diary writing and a strong cup of tea.

  ‘You’re… planning to allow everyone groundside, sir?’ he asked Alex, with a faint note and a rather desperate stare.

  ‘Everyone who passes the training, yes,’ Alex confirmed. They were meeting in his quarters, which a profiler could have learned absolutely nothing from beyond that Alex was giving nothing away. It was standard Fleet décor, unadorned by a single personal item. ‘And I think perhaps I should break it to you, Mr Thurgood – we are not going to ask first, we’re just going to drop our people out of shuttles and go swimming.’ Seeing the colour drain out of the attaché’s face, he indicated the tray which had been set on the coffee table in front of the sofa. ‘I think perhaps some tea…’

  Once Skipper Thurgood had recovered the power of speech, he managed a hoarse ‘Sir… you can’t.’

  ‘Yes,’ said, ‘I can. We’ve been invited to do that, given permission by Silvie.’

  ‘But…’ Skipper Thurgood cleared his throat, took a little sip of tea, cleared his throat again and continued, ‘Beg your pardon,’ he said, ‘I don’t mean to appear in any way uncooperative, sir. It’s just that the Corps has maintained an absolute commitment to cautious, fully-controlled encounters. We are still, frankly, attempting to cope with what Mr Delaney did, bypassing all our safeguards and procedures.’

  Alex was careful not to smile. Andrei Delaney had sent his own ship, as he was perfectly entitled to do – space was free, after all, and the League could not control access to Quarus. Independent ships did occasionally make their way over there, though it was too long a trip for any but sizeable freighters. Andrei Delaney’s ship had simply turned up, ignoring the Diplomatic Corps, broadcasting a general message to the planet asking if anyone there would be willing to carry out a genetic engineering project for them. The answer, obviously, had been yes. None of Andrei’s people had gone groundside, all Papa’s requirements having been conveyed by comms and the necessary cells sent down via drone. Andrei could claim, and did claim, that he had not interfered with the diplomatic process, that his ship’s visit had merely been a business call and they hadn’t attempted any diplomatic outcomes.

  It had to be infuriating, though, to see a civilian ship sweep in, do business with the quarians and sweep off again, when you were struggling so hard even to get a meeting with them. It had been nearly eighteen years since that event, but the Corps still spoke about it as if the outrage had been committed last week.

  ‘Well, speaking just as frankly,’ Alex said, ‘I am of the view that that cautious and controlling approach has clearly not been successful and that it is our mandate, the Fourth’s, to try something new. I do understand, I really do, how bound the Diplomatic Corps is by your own extremely strong hierarchical organisational culture. But it has always been one of your strengths, the Corps, to recognise when a situation requires a more radical and dynamic approach and to bring in people who can undertake that role.’

  Skipper Thurgood managed a weak smile.

  ‘We have had,’ he admitted, ‘a number of… unorthodox ambassadors, at Quarus.’

  Alex chuckled. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Be honest. You’ve had some total gimboids.’

  Skipper Thurgood retained Corps dignity.

  ‘I would never,’ he said, with prim disapproval, ‘describe any of our Excellencies in such terms. Sir.’

  ‘It’s true, though, all the same,’ said Alex. ‘Buzz and I have a difference of opinion as to which of your ‘extraordinary’ ambassadors wins the prize for catastrophic failure. Buzz says it’s that operatic diva who sang at them. Me, I cast my vote for the gaian who sat on a rock and attempted to attain a state of grace with the planet.’

  That did it – Skipper Thurgood’s lips twitched and as he cleared his throat again, this time, it was to control a little giggle, not a choke of panic.

  ‘There were great hopes for the gaian approach,’ he admitted. ‘It seemed to make sense, the quarians ap
pear to share gaian principles of connection with the living world and their empathic abilities chime with the esper beliefs which are often associated with gaian philosophies. The Corps spent four years in candidate selection and training, too, and months, of course, bringing His Excellency out here – duly appointed Ambassador, of course, when the previous Excellency decided she had done all that she could. It was extraordinary and not very comfortable for us that His Excellency left the spaceport in, um, a state of undress. But there really were hopes, real hopes, that the combination of his calm personality, his spirituality, his gaian meditation, would engage quarians sufficiently to form a bond.’

  He paused, envisioning those hopes… the gaian ambassador, sitting cross legged on a rocky outcrop with waves crashing around it, naked and at peace, achieving a state of spiritual harmony with the living world. Quarians, it was hoped, would emerge from the sea, attracted and intrigued, sit down to talk with him and find the common ground which was so desperately sought and so frustratingly elusive.

  ‘And instead,’ Alex said, ‘after he’d been sitting there for two hours a quarian popped her head up out of the water and said,’ he grinned, ‘Don’t sit on a rock with no knickers on, you’ll get haemorrhoids.’

  Skipper Thurgood cleared his throat again and reached for his tea to cover a lurking grin.

  ‘It wasn’t funny, really,’ he said. ‘All that time and effort and the cost of it not inconsiderable, either, and that was it, the only contact he got. He did keep trying for another week or so, fair play to him, but by the end of it he was, well, cold and wet and…’

  ‘…had haemorrhoids,’ Alex concluded for him, and the skipper gave a strangled cough.

  ‘After that day’s president expressed concern that we’d left a lunatic sitting on a rock by the sea for so long, His Excellency withdrew and handed over to the next incumbent,’ Skipper Thurgood observed. ‘He was ambassador for nine days, all told – not the shortest incumbency on the Quarus posting, but certainly one of the most memorable.’

  He was relaxed again, now, eased back from the combined shock of discovering that Alex was training his crew to go naked and that he intended to just drop them on Quarus to swim.

  ‘The nudity,’ Alex commented, ‘has always been a sticky, of course, particularly in the light of how quarians react to people feeling the need to relieve themselves.’

  Skipper Thurgood nodded earnestly at that. ‘I’ve been groundside myself, of course,’ he said, since Alex already knew that. ‘And it is a major issue. Not too bad at the spaceport, of course, since we have our own facilities there, but once you venture out there is that dilemma. If you need to go, quarians react to you as if you’re defecating in public, but when the only option is to use their facilities with all the embarrassment that causes, that goes even worse. So if we’re going anywhere we take a car with comfort facilities and use that, but even that doesn’t work really because quarians see it as either bonkers or offensive, and they really don’t think much of our personal hygiene.’

  ‘No, I know,’ Alex smiled. ‘Which is why we are learning to use quarian facilities, confidently and comfortably, and to use products, too, which will be acceptable to them, not the chemical reek of our own toiletries.’

  ‘Most of our groundside personnel do use quarian hygiene product,’ Skipper Thurgood conceded. ‘I did myself, on the occasions I went groundside – and I did, too, when we were carrying Ambassa… sorry, Silvie… to Serenity. Some of our ambassadors, too, have attempted cultural integration through learning to use quarian facilities. Not for some years, though. There was… adverse comment.’

  ‘I am aware,’ Alex said. ‘But Silvie believes that this is the right way to go and we are being guided by her, absolutely. She wants us to just go there and swim, like tourists, to see the wonders of her world and, like good tourists, behave in ways which are culturally acceptable to the world we are visiting. We do that anyway, as spacers, always – not many worlds even in the League which don’t have their own particular customs and taboos, some of them extremely odd to visitors, like the by-law against showing bare elbows on Cestus.’

  ‘Oh!’ Skipper Thurgood was a Cestarian himself, and that, as Alex had known it would, fired him up immediately. ‘Visitors are told and told about that!’ he declared. ‘The liner companies give destination advisories to people when they book their tickets and there are local law and etiquette lectures on the ships before they arrive, and liners are told not to allow people to come groundside inappropriately dressed, too. But still, it’s constant, people disrespecting our laws – I’ve had people tell me that they don’t think Cestarian by-law should apply to League citizens from other worlds, and sometimes, even, they go flashing their elbows about as if they think it’s funny.’

  It was, to outsiders – quite nonsensical, especially to people from worlds which had no clothing by-laws or modesty taboos whatsoever. On some League worlds you could walk about naked in public without the authorities taking any notice. On most, a basic decency of attire was required at the level of bikini coverage in public. On Cestus, though, for whatever reason, they regarded bare arms as indecent, always had and probably always would. Visitors disregarding their law would be provided with a pair of ‘modesty sleeves’ and a warning for a first offence, but could find themselves being arrested for repeated or flagrant violation.

  ‘Well, then,’ Alex observed, ‘you’ll appreciate more than most how important it is for visitors to comply with local expectations of ‘decent and moral’ conduct.’

  ‘Yes, of course, absolutely,’ Skipper Thurgood agreed. ‘The Corps stresses the importance of that even amongst our own worlds, and it is vital, of course, vital, in exodiplomacy, so long as there is no essential conflict between our core human values of decency and morality and those of the exo-culture. We could not, obviously, comply with exo-culture which was in any way abusive or abhorrent. And we do try, on Quarus, you know, we really do. We would have instituted training in using quarian facilities if that had been what they wanted, but when we’ve tried it comment has been so adverse that we’ve pulled back. It causes offence, you know. We’ve never managed a situation yet in which one of our people has used quarian facilities without that causing offence – generally speaking, anyone else in the facility leaves at high speed.’

  ‘Well, yes, they would,’ said Alex. ‘We have the benefit of Silvie’s view on this – the unique benefit, since no other quarian has had enough understanding of our culture to make sense of this and be able to explain it to us in terms which make sense to us. For them, going to the bathroom is not something that’s dirty or embarrassing, it’s a natural function – considerate to use an extractor kilt so that others are not subjected to odour, but no more private than cleaning your teeth. And their bathrooms are very much like a spa, a place where they expect to spend some time in a relaxed and pleasant atmosphere, grooming and pampering themselves in a chill-out social environment. Ever been on a spa day, Mr Thurgood?’

  The Harmony’s skipper nodded. ‘My sister’s wedding,’ he admitted, as if to make it clear that he was not the kind of person who frequented spas normally.

  ‘Yes, for most of us a full spa day is a special treat,’ Alex said. ‘But for quarians it’s an everyday expectation. Silvie made sense of this for me – waited till I was in a completely relaxed, comfortable and rather self-indulgent state of mind, enjoying a sauna with her, and asked me how I would feel, and react, right then, to someone bursting in and shouting, ‘I really need to pee! Gonna pee right here! Don’t look at me! Don’t look at me!’’ He grinned at the other man’s startled expression. ‘I think most of us,’ he said, ‘would leave. Probably complaining to the management as we left. And as for using the facilities in your embassy cars, well, that’s about as pleasant and hygienic as far as they are concerned as someone in the street, piddling into an empty can, chucking it in a bin and walking away wiping their hands on their trousers. Silvie saw someone do that on Chartsey,’ he explained.
‘I’m guessing after too much to drink, but that is the kind of yerrgh factor that using car lavatories and hand wipes has to quarians, so you can’t be surprised that they don’t want to shake hands with you. So we are, yes, upping our game on the personal hygiene front. By the time we get to Quarus, we will not only be comfortable using quarian facilities, we will only be using quarian facilities. As people get more accustomed to it, we’ll be swapping out showers for quarian bathrooms in the wardroom and mess decks and on the interdeck.’

  Skipper Thurgood looked alarmed.

  ‘But… you’re not expecting us to do that, are you?’ he queried.

  ‘No, no,’ Alex assured him. ‘The idea of the squadron, remember, is to use phased exposure.’

  Skipper Thurgood had been told that when the Harmony had been assigned to the Fourth for this mission. Alex wanted his own crew to be operating as near to quarian as it was possible for humans to be by the time they got there. He also wanted, though, to introduce quarians to different levels of exposure in encountering humans. The Harmony, in that, would fulfil the role of traditionally trained diplomatic personnel. The Eagle would provide experience of Fleet people who were trained and experienced in exodiplomacy with Solarans, and the Stepeasy would provide encounters with people who’d had no exodiplomacy training at all.

  ‘But for us,’ Alex went on, ‘it’s important to get used to complying with quarian etiquette and to have facilities for quarians when they’re visiting.’

  Skipper Thurgood looked searchingly at him.

  ‘You’re going to allow them…’ he hesitated at the enormity of the words… ‘free access.’

  ‘Entirely unrestricted, yes,’ said Alex. ‘And yes, I know, that means they will waltz merrily through our security systems and play with the tech, quite possibly even take the ship out for a spin if they feel so inclined. We are prepared for that – not to prevent it, you understand, but to sit back and enjoy the ride.’