He agonized over what he could do. If he died, his data would be safe from theft. It would self-destruct the minute someone tried to get it that wasn’t him. He had learned that trick from the Keulfyd. But he had worked for centuries on these programs. They were needed to implement just this type of repair to treat the Niseyen using the Healing Machines. It would save years of work. He was buzzing with frustration. They could treat ten newborn babies in one machine every hour or so, around the clock. He sighed. How many born? How many Machines? This would take so long. Decades. Maybe if they just treated girls for now. He had the programs to adapt the Healing machines so fast. It would save other Okme months of work to start and years to get it as good as he could in mere days of re-programming. They could start treating in days, if only he could get his programs to the Okme.
Chapter Eleven
The morning after they arrived, the Niseyen ship set off straight after breakfast. On the bridge were Sarah, Mahmoud, and Hueskin, one of the Zeobani who had been on board the spaceship with the main group of over five hundred. Hueskin was confident he could identify the ship they had been on. Dai thought using that ship would be a good idea as it was provisioned and ready to go. It would probably need only its power supply supplemented, and Dai thought he could do that from his own generators. He wondered why this was the only shipload. A planet of over ninety million, so the Priskya had told the Terrans. What had happened to all the others, in the air, on the ground, in space? Many would have been grounded in the planet’s off-season, but there still would have been thousands of planes and ships in air and space. This planet ran on mostly imported goods, all needing to be brought here. Had they all been shot down? But then there would be debris in space, and there wasn’t. Did the Keulfyd have satellites that disposed of space debris? There had been rumours that such satellites were used by pirates to destroy evidence. They had seen just a few crash sites on land but anything that landed in the oceans would be undetectable, as would all the debris that burned up on re-entry.
Mahmoud was in his element. Sarah was fascinated, and could sense the eager anticipation of the crew. The Niseyen had spent the night in their ship but intended to move into the city later that day, taking Sarah’s invitation to move in literally.
She was unaware that Dai had warned off his crew: he had claimed Sarah as his. By Niseyen custom, this gave him a clear shot without any competition. Of course, Sarah could override this, but Dai counted on her not knowing this custom. The way she had smiled at him, she had to be interested in him. He needed to find out so much. He kept making mistakes and riling these Terrans up, which was pretty easy to do. However, they calmed down nearly as easily and Niseyen had a long reputation for treading softly, being polite and calming and soothing hurt feelings or, more usually, busted protocols. And these Terrans didn’t even know the protocols so they smashed them. But what was life without a challenge?
He thought about Sarah. He was after the job as well as the woman. Co-President of a world! Another Niseyen world! And all he had to do to get it was get this woman to Choose him. He was fairly confident. After all, his main response to women was to decline, which he did quite regularly. He had vowed that next time he would be a lot more careful. He had accepted twice, the first marriage long and, until Reciedl died, very satisfying, except that there had been no children. Some time later he had accepted Leasan. One parasitic gold-digger was enough and he had learnt a hard lesson. He was older and much wiser now. This woman Sarah lacked the beauty of Leasan but she had brains, conviction, and courage. He loved the story about her taking over the leadership. She was his type of woman.
Any doubts Dai had had about these Terrans being fraudsters were evaporating fast. If Aswin and Kazwa were right about them, he was in with a chance at an incredible woman and an unbelievable job. She was young enough to have children, too.
Dai dragged his mind back onto the job as they neared the city. “Shields up, bomb doors open, weapons hot,” he ordered. As they circled the city he saw a few people emerge, some signalling the ship. Cautiously he manoevoured the ship and landed in a park, doing a bit of damage to some trees. Like most big ships, this one landed on legs, coming down vertically and very gently.
He ordered the ramp lowered and, staying within the Shield, went down in plain sight and waited while the others watched on the screens. Soon twenty or thirty People had come close enough to hear him. He triggered the volume enhancer on the ship’s system and announced, “The war is over. Torroxell is now a Treaty planet, five Races, Niseyen being one. I assume you all want to go home? I am here to organize that.”
He looked to the left as he heard a disturbance and saw three Niseyen, one of them a woman, running for the ship. He moved quickly to the area where he knew the Shield wall would be and nullified enough of it to let them in. They ran up the ramp.
“According to our information, there are nearly five hundred survivors here,” Dai told the others. “I suggest you get them to come where they can hear me. I’ll come back when more are here.”
He went back to the three who were by the door at the top of the ramp. He opened it and let them in. The woman, who seemed to be in shock, held another who on closer inspection looked like a teenage boy. Dai led them up to the bridge. As soon as the woman saw Sarah she ran to her. Sarah hugged her and soothed her, talking gently. It was some time before the woman realized that Sarah spoke only a limited amount of Universal and the Translator she wore was mostly speaking for her. She drew back, puzzled. Dai explained that Sarah was an Originator and they called themselves Terrans. They were one of the five Treaty Races.
“Never mind,” said Sarah. “We’re all busy trying to get on. There are a lot more women, and some children too, where we are going, though many of us do look a bit peculiar to Niseyen.” She looked at Dai. “I’m going to have a few words with those Cats! They said there were no Niseyen here. We could have done with these ones before.” Dai smiled. He was glad he wasn’t a Cat — they were in for ticking off. Sooner them than him.
Meanwhile, the number of people outside the plane was growing. When it got up to a hundred or so Dai went back out. He watched the crowd carefully as he stated again that Torroxell was under Treaty and asked if they would all like to go home now.
“How do we know you’re telling the truth?” a voice called. “Have you seen this so-called Treaty?”
“Seen it? I signed it for the Niseyen!” he beamed. That action would be one of the crowning achievements of his life. “This is a military ship. Niseyen are one of the Races that tend to clean up these little messes, as I am sure you know. And I’m not giving you anything. You want to go home, there is a little problem of exit fees, transportation fees and damages to cover your looting and vandalism to be paid first. This ship has a bank on board. I can accept and convert any form of currency, including debt against collateral. And don’t think you’re going to get away with any booty. You’re all going to be searched. Any smuggling and you pay double. You leave in what you stand up in. You’re departing on the ship you were originally supposed to leave on. If you left your luggage on board you can keep that, and you can fight over any unclaimed baggage once you reach your destination.”
He was very satisfied at their reaction. He had judged it right. The problem the Terrans had was that they did not know how this system worked and they were way too nice — so people distrusted them. He was saying all the right things and charging them heavily for leaving, which they expected. He should get this done today, he thought.
He watched as more and more people came out. “Where are the original crew?” he asked, and was relieved when several People came up. The crew was almost complete: there were enough of them to make it legal but they would be somewhat overworked. “You are going to Petislay with a locked board.” He told them. “The ship then belongs to the Petislay military. They will bring it back, or the previous owners can buy it back. Negotiate that with the military. My crew will now take you to your ship and you can get it
ready and check your supplies.”
On Dai’s instructions, the passengers trudged off to the airport grumbling, after Dai’s crew let them in past the Shield two at a time and efficiently fleeced them of every fee they could think of, depositing the proceeds into the ship’s bank. Only off-world currency was accepted, as Torroxell currency had probably been stolen. The pile of Torroxell money mounted as People surrendered it. People coming to worlds like this tended to be rich if they were Terrestrial Races, which these all had been. They were somewhat poorer now but much happier, despite their bitching and moaning.
Dai intended to forget to hand the money over to Sarah just yet, to score some interest. The opportunity to leave had been offered to all the other survivors the Terrans had picked up before they left this morning in case some of them wanted to join this lot. But they had elected to work their passage back on the settler ships expected from the Niseyen worlds, which would be returning virtually empty. This way they would get paid to travel instead of being charged ruinous fares. Sarah had anticipated him and got in first and been very persuasive. She needed their labour. But it had been the financial consideration that had been most persuasive.
Dai had needed the scanners to get the last of the passengers out of the city, threatening them with being charged double if they didn’t get processed and on board the spaceship. When those boarding were faced with being searched, most handed over little items they seemed to have forgotten about. Mahmoud noticed that anyone wearing more than a normal amount of jewellery or technical items had all of it removed except their watches. Funny-looking watches, Mahmoud thought, looking at them with interest. They had things like seals on them. He wondered if they were like the type of credit card or debit card you just tapped onto a keyboard or applied to a charger. He noticed they ran the watches under what looked like a scanner then seemed to input a password.
Sarah watched in huge satisfaction as the spaceship left taking some most unpleasant, destructive and ungrateful People with it. What a relief! Still, it had taken only five hours to accomplish all this. Dai had judged it right: the People had all settled down and stopped being suspicious and frightened once they saw the familiar-looking Niseyen, in their recognisable ships, dressed in familiar military uniforms, and threatening them with exorbitant charges. Once the first people were able to access their own bank accounts, with their own passwords, saw their personal banking site and then their personal account, all as usual, balances correct, they started to relax. They then authorized the extravagant payment amount from their bank accounts and watched their balance reduce. All reassuringly familiar. At that point, they realized this was legitimate.
After lunch, tasty Niseyen ship food with texture, Mahmoud, Dai, Sarah, and most of Dai’s crew went through the city to secure it. Most of the damage was confined to shops and food outlets, and most buildings were fairly easy to secure again. Dai’s crew had borrowed some vehicles and were going to and from what looked like a huge hardware store. Sarah looked around, an idea growing, and wrote herself another note.
When they finally reboarded and set off home, all very tired, Dai asked Sarah, “What next?”
“You told Mahmoud most of your crew could do most of the jobs on board ship.”
“Yes.”
“There are four other Flying Fortresses. Could you strip them out and take them to Terra for more refugees and settlers?”
Dai said slowly, “You want me to order my women-starved, un-Chosen crew to travel to Terra to pick up a few thousand women?”
Sarah and Mahmoud started to laugh as the crew looked like they thought this was one of the best orders they would ever get.
“Is that your next priority?”
“Yes. It may sound weird but it is. Dai, I am embarrassed to admit it but the survival of your Race and mine is balanced on a knife-edge. We need to get a minimum of ten thousand Terrans of breeding age, mostly women and girls, off Terra as soon as possible to ensure the survival of our Race. To ensure the survival of the Niseyen, we need to do the same — ten thousand onto each of your planets. Just ensure you get settlers and refugees. The settlers will have to care for the refugees and ensure they cope and become self-supporting as soon as possible. We need medical personnel on every ship. We will need teachers, people who can run the infrastructure and finance, administrators and social workers. We need people to grow and distribute food. And some who can process all the people, so by the time they get here we know where to put them, what they can do, what they need.” She thought for a minute. “We need to teach them Universal, spoken and written. And they need to learn Niseyen arithmetic. On the ships would be ideal.”
“Aswin and Kaswa told me some of the problems your world is facing. Not exactly a united bunch, are you?”
“No.” Sarah sighed. “I suppose you think that’s terrible. Kaz told me the Niseyen are a very united Race.”
“Yes, we are. We would never fight each other. We never have. We have political squabbles but never warfare.” Dai knew that made the Niseyen fairly unique. He refrained from telling Sarah that other Races were the most vicious to themselves. The Nashi were the worst example he could think of. Two thirds of their young males died young due to fighting each other. “Do you have the co-ordinates for Terra?”
“Yes, and written in Universal too! Az and Kaz wrote it all out.”
“How did they find that out?”
“The children found it, Harsha, and Tasha. Tasha died in the War. They saw the spaceship in Christchurch, the city we left from. They saw it again in the city we landed in and remembered where. It was still there, disabled of course, but the navigation computer wasn’t locked and it looked as if the crew were living in the ship when the attack happened. We went back to it a few weeks ago and found all the seeds we traded for our passage here. We are trying to grow them — some are doing better than others. The greens we are eating we grew ourselves. There are enough seeds to start several market gardens, but we need people to do the work. On our world, we have people who call themselves seed savers so we still have a huge variety despite huge conglomerates trying to ‘own’ all the seeds and thus gain a monopoly and overprice them.”
“That’s bad genetically, to let any organization own the supply of seeds. Especially if you can’t control what they do with them. They could hold the food supply for ransom or poison it. Or the seed stock they have could be wiped out by disease. You need diversity to survive.”
“We well know that! Luckily we got around it using private institutions and volunteers, or I shudder to think of the consequences. We lost enough genetic variety as it is and all so some greedy companies or billionaires could make more money.”
“That has a familiar sound to it. Sarah, I need to stay with my ship here. Our leaders will have a fit if I leave the planet.”
“Could your crew take all four ships, flying two and towing two?”
“We could. It would take a few days to get them ready, though.” He looked around. “Any volunteers?” Every hand shot up. Dai laughed. Sarah and Mahmoud noted hands up to volunteer or attract attention meant the same in both Races. The problem was remembering what was the same and what wasn’t.
Over the next few days there was a fever of activity as the four Flying Fortresses were sorted out. Sarah was embarrassed that some of the food in each ship had spoilt because it had not been cleared out and one of the generators was nearly flat because too many things had been left running. Dai organized to charge it.
That evening, he held a meeting with all his crew. “Your primary mission is to take a good look at their planet to see if they are the Originators. Any way you can. Find any excuse so that one ship can delay in order to get a good look. Study everything you can. Use the scanners. Apologize if they detect it and object. Stop if they ask you to, but transmit all the data back to us. Ensure you count them and scan for any other Races. They say there are none. They say they are alone. Ask to see any evidence of us that they have. Ask for souvenirs, books, evid
ence. Make it sound like simple, personal, curiosity.” He paused. “No, it would be reasonable to say our leadership asked us to study them. They would understand that. And try to pick up refugees from different areas. Photograph the planet. Offer to leave a communications satellite behind linking them to our worlds.”
Sarah did not notice that Dai and a few of his men disappeared early on the day after the ship left with the survivors. They made a trip to see Helkmid. Dai negotiated a price for the whole crew, including himself, and organized rosters to get them all treated. To the delight of his men, he had organized how the full cost for all of them could be paid — and not in money. In three days, they were all treated. One got a bit of extra treatment for a condition he hadn’t known about. Helkmid, when told by the Okme operator, decided not to mention it.
The payment for the Okme was in kind. For one full day, all the Niseyen crew flew around the planet, finding requested supplies and bringing them back for the Okme who were flat out trying to identify all the nasty little bugs the Ridianit had been nurturing and attempting to coax the computers to give up their secrets. Simultaneously, they were trying to do their own work. They were running short of supplies and reluctant to stop working for a day to gather food. They could not eat most of the Ridianit food. They were focused on finding out how to keep the bugs alive before they died. Mostly they used standard methods but they were struggling with several batches and especially with three strains of bacteria.
Dai’s crew, totally and very personally involved, declined their usual tally-up and reporting of broken regulations such as “Use of military equipment for the personal use and advantage of crew” etc. Under the circumstances, they wisely shut up. While the Niseyen were doing this, the Terrans were off scrounging for the flavoring packets for themselves and the crew, the Priskya were flat-out fishing, while Alan and some volunteers prepared hundreds of fish for the refugees.
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