Quarus (Fourth Fleet Irregulars Book 6)

by S J MacDonald

  Alex gazed at her in a tangle of feelings which after some moments resolved themselves into admiration, relief, affection and amusement.

  ‘Madam Ambassador,’ he assented, with a slight, formal bow of his head.

  ‘Ma’am,’ Bull capitulated too, as Silvie gave him a challenging look.

  ‘Yayyy!’ Silvie gave a crow of triumph, reverting at once to her normal manner. ‘I am good at this ambassador stuff,’ she commented happily.

  Twenty Four

  By the end of the following week, quarians were starting to visit the encounter zone.

  This was largely, as Alex acknowledged, thanks to Davie North. Davie was spending almost all of his time groundside. Like Shion, he had been granted the same privileges as an honorary citizen and often stayed in quarian accommodation. As he travelled around, seeing the sights, he was almost always accompanied by a cohort of admiring and fascinated quarians. Just as Silvie had predicted, Davie’s scintillating intellect and dynamic personality gave him much the same status as a rock star.

  He was, Alex knew, loving his time there, too. They didn’t have time to meet or even talk much but Davie was keeping them informed of his activities and any significant discussions. Davie, it was clear, had found his planet of genesis to be everything he’d hoped for, a place he truly felt himself to be at home. He had even discovered high nutrient food which was palatable, so for the first time in his life he didn’t have to be eating constantly to sustain his extraordinary metabolism.

  With regards to the encounter zone, it was he who took on the task of bringing the quarians up to speed on it while Alex handled the human side. And in that, it was Davie who called the shots, telling Alex how to organise things and when they were ready to go.

  The solution, it turned out, was badges. Quarians had already become familiar with their visitors wearing badges which indicated their proficiency as swimmers, with Silvie making sure they understood what this meant in terms of where people were allowed to swim and what equipment they must have. Davie had adopted the same system with regard to social proficiency, on a scale which ran from ‘Accredited Goodwill Ambassador’ right down to ‘Untrained: Anxious’. He had explained what quarians could expect from each category in terms of social skills ranging from the ability to use bathrooms to the likelihood of panic reactions. Physical zones had been created, too, with the beach and certain areas of the encounter zone building reserved for shoreleavers to relax in without having quarians around.

  It didn’t take long, though, for that zoning to be abandoned.

  ‘Nobody is using those zones, skipper,’ Hetty reported, at a morning briefing some days after shoreleavers had first been allowed to meet quarians. ‘Every member of the squadron has now been offered and made use of a ground pass, and there have been no significant security or diplomatic issues arising out of that.’

  The fact that she could say that when there had been, so far, nineteen incidents which the Diplomatic Corps would certainly consider to be of serious concern was proof, in itself, of how much even Hetty herself had absorbed mission philosophy. ‘Feedback,’ she said, ‘is unanimous that every member of the squadron wishes to increase their contact with quarians. They do not wish the current exclusion zones to be maintained and they would like the current limitation of twenty quarian visitors at a time to be raised. The majority, in fact, would like quarian access to be unlimited.’

  Alex considered this. The wishes of the squadron’s various crews, of course, carried no weight at all in his decisions, but then, Hetty had not reported that to him in any way as a petition.

  ‘That’s useful,’ said Alex, for the log, ‘as an indicator of their confidence.’

  Hetty inclined her head with magisterial confirmation. ‘I would say,’ she declared, ‘that initial contact with untrained personnel has achieved a high degree of success and confidence.’

  Alex nodded in return. ‘Agreed,’ he said. ‘And on that basis, we will proceed to the next stage of opening up the encounter zone by removing the human-only areas. We won’t, however, raise the number of quarian visitors at this point. Twenty is manageable for safety monitoring.’

  Just hours later, Blaze Tyler was able to get what would become one of the most famous images from the mission… a group of quarians hanging out with shoreleavers at the beach. Some of them were giving the bravest amongst the humans a gentle swimming lesson in the calmest part of the lagoon, whilst others were being shown by the shoreleavers how to play a beach-ball game up on the sand. It was an image which captured perfectly the relationship of friendly, mutual exchange, however trivial the activities themselves might be. And the fact that everyone there was just chatting and laughing with occasional whoops of delight captured the feeling of the mission, too; people from both species simply having fun and making friends.

  ‘Excellent,’ said Alex, watching that footage live from aboard the Heron, and chuckled as he saw a well-meaning shoreleaver introducing a quarian to his first ever fizzy drink. As revolted splutters and apologies disintegrated into laughter, Alex gave a nod of contented satisfaction. He just couldn’t ask for anything better than that.

  Twenty Five

  The following week, Alex was groundside in response to an invitation from Salomah.

  ‘But where are we going?’ They were in an aqua car, not heading for Feyor as he’d expected but cruising in atmosphere. As far as Alex could tell, their destination was a point right out in open ocean.

  ‘A magister whale is about to give birth,’ she told him. ‘I thought you might like to see it.’ Then, without a pause, picking up on his reaction, she gave a trill of mirth and changed the heading on the car’s controls. ‘Okay. Not, then.’

  Alex grinned. They had witnessed the birth of a whale on holo, in one of the wildlife talks given on the way out here. It had been enough to convince Alex that he didn’t want to be anywhere near such a messy business in real life.

  ‘Thank you!’ he said, with considerable relief. ‘So – where now?’

  ‘You said you wanted to visit a mine, sometime,’ Salomah observed, and smiled at his pleased response.

  In fact, the mine was not at all interesting. As Salomah had told him, it was no more than a hole in the sea bed into which bots vanished periodically whilst others emerged with a cargo of ore. It was gold ore they were mining; used a lot in quarian tech as it didn’t tarnish underwater. It was also a very common mineral here, thanks to the way the Olaret had terraformed this planet. Everything they needed was abundant and readily accessible. The mine, like every other industry on Quarus, was operated by bots, with no need for people to be involved unless something went wrong.

  ‘When the seam runs out we’ll have to choose another site to mine,’ Salomah said. ‘But this one is good for another two hundred years or so at current rates of consumption, so it isn’t something we need to think about yet.’ She looked at him with enquiry, seeing that neither the mine nor her information about it had held his attention. He was thinking about something else – something which was making him feel a complexity of emotions. ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh – sorry,’ Alex realised that he’d allowed his thoughts to drift. ‘I was thinking about Ungeline Beeby.’

  A further dispatch had arrived that morning, bringing news on topics Alex had asked to be kept informed about. One of them, and very high on the list of his own priorities, had been how Ungeline Beeby herself was coping as the Beeby Disclosure went out League-wide.

  The news had been a relief. The Diplomatic Corps had had a team in place throughout to support Ungeline and her family, including a professional therapist in the highly specialised field of dealing with sudden fame. As a result of that support, and her own natural resilience, the twelve year old was thoroughly enjoying being in the spotlight. ‘Ungeline is going to Chartsey,’ he told Salomah. ‘Well… she’ll be there by now, appearing on all the big shows, and being congratulated by the president and all that. I hope she’s having a wonderful time. Sh
e certainly deserves to be.’

  Salomah looked at him thoughtfully.

  ‘This child was not selected by you for this role?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You only met her for the half an hour duration of the interview?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  ‘And others – many others – are responsible now for her welfare, including childcare specialists and experts, you said.’

  ‘Well, yes,’ Alex agreed.

  ‘And still, you worry about her, feel yourself to be responsible, and feel it necessary to check on her welfare.’

  ‘Yes, well, I never was very comfortable with using a child in such a high profile, high pressure role,’ Alex admitted. ‘And I am responsible, ultimately, I did the interview with her.’

  Salomah smiled. ‘At moments like this,’ she said, ‘I believe there is hope for the future of our relationship. You are a credit to your species, Alex.’

  Alex gave her a smile which said likewise. Salomah was giving up a lot of her time to help him and learn from him, and even more in sharing what she’d learned with other quarians. He couldn’t have been more grateful for her generosity.

  ‘You’re doing it again,’ Salomah observed, and looked reproving, now. ‘Hoping.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Alex controlled the hope that kept arising whenever he thought about how generous Salomah had been and how well her understanding of human psychology had developed over the previous weeks. She had the benefit of Silvie’s reports, of course, but much of the knowledge and understanding she’d gained had been by her own efforts. He couldn’t help but hope, or stifle the feeling that if any quarian was likely to cope with making the trip to Serenity, it would be Salomah. Even hoping that, though, was as irritating to her as a persistently nagging child. So, putting all thoughts of her coming to Serenity with them resolutely out of his mind, he focussed his attention instead on the hole out of which an ore-carrier robot was emerging. ‘Can we go down there and see?’

  When Salomah had stopped laughing she explained that no, the shafts were far too small and not designed even for quarians to enter.

  ‘And besides,’ she added, ‘even if you could get down there there’s just bots lasering out ore.’ It was clear that she considered this a contender for dullest sight on the planet. ‘If you want to see machines,’ she suggested, ‘we could go to a refinery.’

  They went to a refinery, which was processing raw ores into completed products to order, much as the food factory had done. In turn, Alex took Salomah up to the ship and showed her the new SEP.

  ‘It’s the newest machine of its kind,’ he told her. ‘We’re trialling it – got it to work properly on the way out here.’

  ‘I’ve heard of it,’ Salomah said, regarding the compact unit with mild bewilderment. ‘Your people keep trying to give it to us.’

  Alex had to grin. It was true that they were proud of having got the SEP to work properly, and impressed with its performance, too, now that it had stopped firing out random products. It was felt that this was tech the quarians would like and benefit from. It was non-polluting, efficient, producing high quality items very quickly. It could be programmed to create whatever the quarians wanted, too, and even this small unit was capable of producing anything from the most delicate feather to industrial grade stress-bearing parts.

  ‘We think you’d find it useful,’ Alex said.

  Salomah shook her head. ‘It uses a ridiculous amount of power,’ she said. ‘And the siliplas gel would have to be shipped in, which isn’t resource efficient.’

  Alex had to admit that she had two good points there. Power usage wasn’t an issue on a starship, since superlight engines generated more power than they could use, at least until they came to alert and immense amounts of power were diverted to manoeuvring and gunnery. This one unit would probably use more power than the quarians used for domestic usage in an entire city. They would have to upgrade to major atomic plant if they were going to use SEPs on any large scale, and they were clear in their decision not to do that. The siliplas itself would indeed have to be brought out, a very long haul since there wasn’t even any system in this sector which produced it. Siliplas was manufactured primarily from sand, but it was a complex process involving large scale refineries. Even a modest refinery might be seventy or eighty kilometres across. It was such a filthy polluting process, too, that such refineries were almost always sited on a planet which already had a toxic hydrocarbon atmosphere.

  ‘And,’ said Salomah, decisively, ‘it is a stupid machine.’ As Alex looked at her in some surprise, she pointed out, ‘It has to be told what to do, in precise detail, every time you want it to do something. You have to replenish the siliplas cartridges, too, manually, and it can’t even do its own maintenance. We’d have to programme quite a lot of bots to operate it – if we needed it for some special purpose then it might be worthwhile, but we don’t. It doesn’t make anything that we don’t already make for ourselves already, and siliplas is not as good as the materials we already use, so where is the benefit?’

  ‘Put like that…’ Alex said, and grinned wryly. ‘Never mind,’ he said.

  Salomah laughed. ‘I know,’ she consoled him. ‘You just want to please us.’ Then, as if it was of no great importance, she went on, ‘I’d like to spend some time here.’ She gestured to indicate the ship. ‘To see whether I’ll be able to stand it. But if it’s tolerable, I will come to Serenity with you.’

  Alex gave her a broad smile and a rush of delight, relief and triumph which made her laugh.

  ‘All right, don’t yell!’ she said, and then, as a very different wave of emotion washed through him, she gave him a startled look. ‘And what’s that?’ She asked. ‘I thought you’d be happy!’

  ‘I am,’ Alex assured her. ‘I could not be more pleased, or more grateful, thank you. But at the same time I am aware, too, that this means… well, we’re going to have to leave.’

  Salomah laughed again, in part at the insanity of a species which could feel such contradictory emotions at the same time, and in part at the depth of his feelings for her world.

  Alex laughed too, though still with that little pang of regret. He’d always known, of course, that they could not stay here indefinitely. The Senate had authorised him to stay for up to a year – if nothing significant had been achieved by then, the feeling was, then they were unlikely to achieve anything at all. In fact, most opinion had been that, based on the history of previous diplomatic endeavours, he’d be lucky to make it to a couple of months before the quarians told him to leave.

  Here they were, though, in their fourth month at Quarus and already had a volunteer willing to consider coming back to Serenity with them, which was the ultimate success criteria of their mission. Alex could only be delighted by that. At the same time, though, and besides his regret at the thought of leaving, there was a small part of him which felt a twinge of annoyance. President Tyborne would inevitably consider the timing of this, directly after receipt of his own injunction to get a move on, to be to his own credit, pushing things along. Later, Alex himself would realise that there had indeed been a cause-and-effect there, though not as the President had intended. It had been his own reaction to that impatient interference, and the subsequent discussion between him and Bull Stuart, which had convinced the quarians that it really would be worthwhile making the horrible journey to Serenity in order to get to know the humans better. At the time, he dismissed that pang of annoyance as petty and unworthy of him, though admitting to the feeling of regret at the prospect of having to leave.

  ‘You can stay for as long as you like,’ Salomah told him. ‘I’m not saying I want to go to Serenity now, just that I want to spend some time on your ship to see how it feels.’

  ‘Yes, of course, you’re more than welcome,’ Alex said, but with a questioning look, too, ‘The Heron?’ he asked. ‘Not the Harmony?’

  The Harmony was still there, standing ready to transport any quarians who might be persuaded to
venture across the Gulf to Serenity. They and the Fourth had put a great deal of effort into making the Harmony as comfortable for them as possible, both in creating their quarters and in training the Harmony’s crew.

  ‘Yes,’ Salomah confirmed, and seeing that he was a little puzzled by that decision, explained, ‘Silvie says that given the choice, even with the upgrades to the Harmony, she’d infinitely rather travel with you. So…’ she spread out her hands and grinned. ‘The Heron it is.’

  ‘Well, we’ll do our best to make you comfortable,’ Alex said. They had contingency plans for carrying quarians aboard, should they prefer to travel on the frigate or, optimistically, if there were too many volunteers for this first trip for the Harmony to accommodate. They already had Silvie’s reef-garden, of course, and the tank which had been used for swim training on the way out here could easily be adapted for use as an aqua-level bedroom. Creating suitable quarters for Salomah, therefore, would need no more than some creative engineering and high tech refit of several systems including cutting a hole in a deck, re-routing between-deck systems and fitting a pressure hatch. Detailed plans for that had already been agreed and at Alex’s word, the crew got stuck into the work with an enthusiasm and a frank desire to show the quarians what they could do, too.