Only when they had passed this process, with affirmative response from all three parts of the interview, were candidates offered the role of goodwill ambassador, with a heavy thump of paperwork landing in their in-tray. Goodwill ambassadors were normally appointed for a year, with the duties they were actually to undertake agreed between them. Embassies had been known to grab A-list superstars visiting their worlds even for a few days of active role, and it was understood, here, specified, that the role would require active participation in diplomatic role only for the duration of their visit at Quarus.
Even so, they still had to fill in all the paperwork, read and sign the policies, and present themselves at the appointed time to swear the oath and sign the contract.
This was Alex’s bit. He’d held aloof from the interviews because that was not something His Excellency would have any part in, but when it came to the swearing of the oath, that had to be him.
It took all day. A tentative suggestion that they might get along faster if they had people swearing the oath in batches of, say, ten at a time, was emphatically vetoed by Alex himself.
‘This is special,’ he said. ‘And we will not diminish it by any kind of rushing, mass-processing or trivialising.’
And it was special, too. Everyone from Bonny to Ab Abnedido felt it to be a special occasion, a moment unique to them, even though they knew that everyone else was doing it too. It felt, in fact, very much like a graduation ceremony in which each of them had their moment to step up on stage and receive their degree.
In this case, stepping up on stage meant reporting to the Embassy office at the specified time, wearing smart groundside rig. There, with due ceremony, they were led through the taking of the oath by Jun Desmoulin, signed the contract displayed on the formal signature lectern and had their hand shaken by His Excellency.
It took only a few minutes each time, with a scheduled comfort break for the participants every hour, but even so it was eleven and a half hours after their first oath-taking before Alex finally shook hands with the last of them. By then, the words of the oath were ringing in his head to such an extent that he felt that if one more person said ‘I do solemnly swear…’ in his presence he might well be tempted to give vent to an oath or two of his own.
It was worth it, though. By the end of it all nobody was in any doubt that this was real, a genuine diplomatic appointment which conferred real responsibility. They would be representing not just their ship, the Fourth or the Fleet, but the League.
Surprisingly, there was some discontent over this in the lab. None of the Second Irregulars people had been invited to interview for a goodwill ambassador role, and after a day or two it became apparent that they considered themselves to have been somewhat slighted.
Alex was mystified. To the amazement of the Heron’s crew, not one of the Second’s contingent had pushed through the training required for inclusion in groundside trips, even though Alex himself had told them that if they completed all the same training as expected of his crew he’d be willing to allow them to go swimming on the same basis.
Some of them had dropped out early on, daunted even by the series of talks which had brought people up to speed on how quarians perceived the humans who were visiting their world. Those who’d joined the ship at Serenity had been offered the chance to play catch-up by watching those talks from recordings and working through the same training modules, but only Ecky had done so. And none of them, not even Ecky, wanted to swim at Quarus badly enough to overcome their horror at the requirement for using quarian lavatories. That had been the biggest psychological hurdle to get over, even for the Fourth, and for the Second, whose primary focus was as always on their research, it had proven to be just too much. Ecky had tried, since the opportunity to see Quarian molluscs in their natural environment was enough to get him into the bathroom and attempting to take off his clothes, but he’d bottled out when Excorps had been watching him taking off his underpants, and had had to be taken away for a quiet cup of tea to recover. Nothing, not even the lure of molluscs, would get him into a bathroom like that again.
Given that they hadn’t completed the training and that they self-evidently could not cope with the kind of experience the goodwill ambassadors would be expected to, Alex was at a loss to understand why they then felt themselves to be slighted because they ‘hadn’t even been invited to interview’.
‘But…’ Alex had been asked to go to the lab to discuss ‘this situation’ with them, and had found them sitting in an aggrieved chunter, waiting for him. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but you’re not qualified.’
He sat there, then, waiting patiently while several of them tried to talk at once and Oti called them back to order.
‘I’m the chair,’ she reminded them, indicating that this was in fact an officially convened lab meeting. ‘Alex,’ she said, taking the argument straight to him, ‘that isn’t fair. We all speak the language – some of us,’ she acknowledged, as a couple of people looked like they were about to interrupt, ‘more fluently and with a more extensive vocabulary than any members of your crew. We are all very well informed about quarian culture and have been positively vetted by the quarian ambassador, as we were not even allowed to come on this ship unless Silvie approved us. It seems to us that the only real issue here is our reluctance to use quarian lavatories, and it really does not seem fair that we should be denied the opportunity even to be interviewed for a GA role purely on that basis. There are alternatives, you know, even medication or medical procedures which we would be perfectly happy to undertake.’
Alex managed not to laugh. The Diplomatic Corps had tried all manner of solutions to overcome this particular ‘sticky’, including having their ambassadors go through a colonic wash and bladder drain and then take medication which would mean they wouldn’t need to visit a lavatory for several hours. When the quarians had found this out, though, they’d been so appalled by human cruelty to their own ambassadors that the Corps had had to stop doing it.
‘I’m afraid that isn’t a viable option,’ he said, and refrained from adding as you would know if you’d taken the bathroom training. ‘And I’m afraid that it is an essential requirement for the role. The fact is that quarians find our refusal to use their hygiene facilities offensive. Turn it around to understand – if you had someone come into the lab obviously feeling an urgent need to relieve themselves, doing the pee-pee fidgets, and you offered them the use of the shower, here, what would you think if they refused it with obvious disgust and revulsion? Treating your shower as if it’s filthy. And then, when they can’t keep it in any longer, stepping over into a corner and urinating into a water bottle, which they then drop into the garbage and stroll back wiping their hands on their trousers. That is how offensive our refusal to use their lavatories and our insistence on using car-potties is, to them. It was identified decades ago as a diplomatic sticking point, causing major offence, and it is essential that we do not add to that offence but show an ability to behave in what is, to them, a clean and decent manner. And, since the first responsibility of a goodwill ambassador is to avoid giving offence, the ability to use their lavatories is a requirement for the GA’s I am appointing for this mission. You were told that at Serenity. And you were told, too, what the time requirement would be for completing that training.’
‘So – you’re telling us that it’s too late to do that training now?’ Oti was challenging, as if they hadn’t already been told, by several people, that it was too late to start that training now.
‘Yes,’ said Alex, uncompromising on that. ‘It is. I discussed that with you myself, if you remember, explaining that if you wanted to be involved in groundside role you’d have to do the full phased training. The first half-hour training session was very high impact, which was why everyone was allowed to step back and then try again whenever they felt ready, in that first week. That was the access week, as you were told that you had to start the training then in order to take part in the four subsequent phases.’
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That had been, to start with, a requirement to use the quarian facilities after sports or exercise in the gym – a relatively familiar locker-room situation which eased people in. Later, people had been asked to take one shower every day in the quarian bathroom, other than when they’d been using the gym. In the third stage they’d fitted the quarian facilities to the wardroom and mess decks but still had all the stand-alone units about the ship for use, asking people to use the quarian facilities as much as possible. Now, in the final stage, all but a few standard shower units had been deactivated and everyone was using the quarian facilities all of the time. Buzz had estimated that it would take between three and four weeks for people to overcome their embarrassment and get so used to it that it was the new normal. There was certainly no way that these people, too shy even to cope with the first half hour of training, could catch up to that level of confidence in the next few days.
‘I’m sorry,’ Alex said, as they muttered their disgruntlement at that. ‘But it is not possible, at this stage. You will be meeting quarians, if they take up our invitation to visit the ship. And if things go well, it is possible that there may be opportunities for you to swim in an encounter-zone environment. But for this, for just literally dropping you out of the sky into the quarian ocean, no, I’m sorry, you’re not qualified.’ He saw them boggle at that, and raised an eyebrow. ‘You do appreciate, of course, that goodwill ambassadors will be simply dropped out of the sky, diving from shuttles into the sea, and that they will, obviously, be doing that alone?’
It was astonishing how quickly they changed their minds about wanting to be goodwill ambassadors.
Civilians, Alex thought, as he left them there agreeing that it really wasn’t their thing after all.
One of the biggest problems facing the Diplomatic Corps was the issue of ‘scale of contact’. It wasn’t merely that there were two billion quarians on the planet and only a few hundred humans at the Embassy, though that was problematical enough given the total lack of hierarchy with which they could interact. The real problem was that the only successful interactions there had been had involved one-on-one contact – quarians did not like to meet more than one human at a time, as one lot of insane yelling was more than enough to cope with at once. Even Silvie, bioengineered to be able to cope with it, found large groups of humans overwhelming. So sending an ambassador down meant just that – one person. Just one. There was always one person in the presidential office, and the current ambassador might roam around the area around that office which had been defined as the encounter zone, but they could never send teams down for meetings. All of the Fourth’s goodwill ambassadors, therefore, would be dropped individually, embarking on a solo expedition in what truly would be, in every sense, a full immersion experience.
As they got nearer to Quarus, the buzz of excitement was such that Silvie was bouncing off the walls from it, rushing about the ship and laughing hilariously at nothing she could explain. She was having fun, though, and Alex knew that the buzz lighting his ship up at the moment was at least as much due to Silvie’s own joy as they approached her homeworld as it was to the crew getting excited now that they were so nearly there.
‘Empathic feedback,’ Buzz observed, as yet another gale of hilarity swept through the ship for no apparent reason.
Alex nodded, giving a chuckle, himself, though he could not have said why. Everything just felt great, such a fantastic crew, such an adventure, having such a blast. He wasn’t resisting the feeling, either, not even attempting to impose a stern dignity in denying how happy he was. This was what it was it was going to be like at Quarus, and so long as they were in a fit and safe condition to continue operating the ship, Alex would not intervene.
He looked across at Hetty Leavam, though, who’d come onto the command deck and begun working on screens, there. She ignored him until she’d finished what she was doing, then looked up and gave him a nod.
Hetty, one of the few people on the ship immune to such waves of high emotion, was responsible at such times for checking that they were in a fit and safe condition to continue operating the ship. At a certain point, uncontrolled hilarity could become equivalent to being functionally impaired by having had a drink or two, so they had devised tests and checks – random tasks which ensured that everyone holding a watch station was alert, responsive and responsible.
‘Performance satisfactory, skipper,’ she reported, and Alex, having duly noted that for the log, thanked her.
It was interesting, though, that excitement levels did not dim noticeably when Silvie left the ship.
She did that before the Heron was even in sight of the system, as impatience got the better of her and Alex gave Firefly permission to launch.
With Shion piloting, the fighter shot ahead, flicking a 360 spin by way of salute and vanishing off their forward scopes in a matter of seconds.
For several minutes after that, the mood aboard the Heron remained so elevated that it was as if they were having a party.
Then Rangi asked the skipper to go to sickbay.
Word went round the ship while Alex was still in there consoling the medic. Lucky had passed away. The death of the gecko was entirely expected and completely natural, but still people reacted to it as if it was shocking news. The mood on the ship plunged from giddy delight to depression in a wave which passed through the frigate as the news got out. By the time Alex returned to the command deck and asked for the attention of all hands, there was already a sombre silence.
‘I am very sorry to have to inform you that Lucky passed away this morning,’ Alex said, and there were sighs and groans around the ship as if people had been refusing to believe it until the skipper confirmed it himself. ‘He passed peacefully in his sleep at 11.68. Dr Tekawa was with him at the time. He had, as you know, lived a good deal longer than was usual for his species and we all knew that the end of his natural life was approaching. All the same, Lucky has been an integral part of this ship’s company for the last three years and it is entirely natural and right that we should feel a sense of loss at his passing. There will be a memorial service for him at 1400 and before anyone asks we will, yes, be placing a plaque for him in the airlock.’
Reaction was pleased – relieved, almost, as if they’d feared that Alex would dismiss the loss of the gecko with a firm injunction not to be silly about it and to keep their minds on the task ahead. Both words and tone made it clear that he understood the sense of loss around the ship and that he would respect it.
Two people, though, watched him with particular intensity. Bonny and Hetty had come to the command deck, picking up on the sudden change of mood and the rumours that Lucky had died. Now they stared at Alex, both of them attempting to figure out exactly what he was doing, and why. They were just twenty six hours away from arriving at Quarus, and the skipper was proposing to hold a memorial service… for a lizard.
‘Just to confirm, skipper…’ Hetty waited until the skipper had finished his announcement, but not one moment more. ‘You are intending to hold a formal, official ceremony… including the placement of a plaque of honour?’
Alex understood at once why she was so concerned about that. The placement of a plaque of honour in the airlock for anyone who had died aboard ship was one of the most sacred traditions in the Fleet. There were those who would feel that to do that for a lizard would be beyond inappropriate, actually insulting to the fallen whose names were honoured in that way.
‘Specific for a ship’s mascot,’ he clarified, assuring her that he would not be using the official Fleet plaque for a member of the crew, but an alternative. Hetty still didn’t look reassured.
‘Even so, skipper…’ she demurred. ‘I would be failing in my duty if I did not draw your attention to the fact that that will be regarded, in some circles, as a highly controversial decision.’
‘Indeed,’ said Alex, unperturbed. ‘However, I feel that it is merited, both by the place which Lucky held as a mascot for the ship’s company and operationall
y. Bluntly, Commander, failing to address the emotional impact of this loss on the ship’s company would inevitably result in our arrival at Quarus with a good deal of unresolved emotions which would be highly detrimental to our mission.’
‘Ah.’ Hetty inclined her head graciously. ‘Understood.’
She began writing an incident report, but Bonny continued to gaze at Alex.
Alex looked back at her, quite expressionless. Seconds ticked by and neither of them looked away.
‘Go ahead,’ he said eventually. ‘Ask.’
Bonny grimaced slightly, an expression some way between doubt and apology. Then all at once she seemed to understand.
‘I’m wondering,’ she admitted, ‘just how much of that decision – to honour Lucky – is pragmatic… operational.’
Alex gave a slight smile. That was a tactful way to ask if he was carrying out a cynical manoeuvre to get his crew over their feelings about losing Lucky before they got to Quarus, pretending to a sense of loss he did not share.
‘None,’ he said. ‘I can justify it operationally but I would be doing it anyway.’
Bonny looked intrigued. ‘Out of respect for…?’
‘For the place Lucky had in all our hearts,’ Alex said frankly. ‘And yes, I will admit, he even won me over. No secret of course that I didn’t want to keep him, initially, and I even went so far as to issue a destruction order. When it came to it, though…’ he shook his head, remembering the trust and affection with which the little lizard had greeted him. Alex had stood there with a deadly hypodermic ready in his hand, ready to put the gecko painlessly to sleep. But those little black eyes had twinkled at him and the lizard had chirruped so happily, he simply hadn’t had the heart to do it. ‘He was just so cute,’ Alex admitted. ‘And he’s been a great mascot for us, since – in many ways, exemplifying what we’re all about, in the Fourth. I know a lot of people have found comfort, too, in going to see him when things are a bit stressful. So yes, Commander, I am genuinely sorry that we’ve lost him and I would be paying respects to him for that, and in respect for the feelings of everyone else, too, even if it wasn’t operationally imperative to resolve those feelings before we reach Quarus.’
Quarus (Fourth Fleet Irregulars Book 6) Page 55