The Terrans

by Jean Johnson

  Some sort of oval-shaped map occupied the screen. A-yinda had explained that the solid portions of the logo’s map outlined their main planet’s continents on grid-striped water; in turn, the oval sat surrounded by curved branches from some sort of highly leafy, short-twigged, plant. The background color was blue, the overall images scribed in silvery white with a thin outline in black.

  Those were auspicious colors for the Gatsugi, Li’eth knew. The colormooded aliens found the Imperial scarlet and gold of V’Dan a bit aggressive. The uniforms worn by officers in Gatsugi territory therefore tended to be made from creams accented with gold and scarlet, rather than scarlet with gold and cream, but these people were Terrans.

  The V’Dan-style uniforms these Terrans had come up with were reasonably comfortable, and reasonably well fitted in spite of Shi’ol’s complaint. True, the garments were a tiny bit too long in the body now that they were walking around in a reasonable facsimile of gravity, but not by too much. Li’eth had worn uniforms that were off by about that much, himself. The scarlet was a close match for trousers and jackets, the latter had cream front panels and lapels edged in some gold-like cloth, and there was plenty of braiding crossing the fronts, albeit a few more rows than expected.

  Lars had said something about “. . . borrowing a classic nuh’poly-on’ic pattern for the base design,” whatever that meant. Some sort of uniform design from a couple centuries before, apparently. But it was close enough to the real thing to make Li’eth feel comfortable. Even Shi’ol had only complained about the fit, not the extra frogging—a case of her trying to make demands and get special favors. Admittedly, such things someone of Second Tier or higher would always expect, but that was in V’Dan society, not Terran.

  Even an approximation of the proper shoulder and sleeve-cuff insignia for their ranks had been manufactured for them, albeit none of their medals and awards had been made. Ayinda had stepped in again for that one, stating that they couldn’t rightfully manufacture medals for a foreign military; that would be an insult to the V’Dan government. But she could make their rank insignia.

  Li’eth could see her point about the medals. V’kol had grumbled a little over that one, since as a gunnery officer, his uniform had been decorated with the symbols of many enemy kills. But the four leftenants superior had been given steel triangular outlines to wear on their shoulders and cuffs, with the hypotenuse approximately the length of the first and second fingerbones, since they had no way to accurately translate units of measurement, yet.

  His own triangle as a Captain was a solid piece of steel, no open outline. Polished to a bright shine, it came with a backing bar set with tiny, rare earth magnets to clip it into the appropriate spots on their jackets. That was rather clever in his opinion; the backing bars were flat, the corners carefully rounded and polished just enough for safety, with no real way to harm the wearer. The Empire still used actual pins for their insignia, and if you lost the protective clasp, you could puncture yourself. Or even just pick up some nasty bruises when taking a hit on the shoulder or wrist.

  The undergarments were Terran in style, not too uncomfortable. The cream dress shirts . . . an approximation of V’Dan shirts, which in the current military style buttoned down one side, so as to avoid combat bruises on the sternum. They certainly weren’t made from silken qu’oleq, which was a form of ballistics cloth meant to protect the entire torso while still remaining reasonably lightweight and breathable.

  Then again, we are at the mercy of our Terran hosts, Li’eth reminded himself, waiting for Ja’ki to show. He was the first to arrive in the dining hall turned conference room, and had planned it that way. If they really wanted to kill us, they could do so at any time . . .

  (You know we’re not going to do that,) Ja’ki sent back to him, hearing his thoughts. She wasn’t in the same room, but she had heard him. (If we wanted you dead, we’d have left you in Salik . . . erm . . . hand-tentacle-things.)

  Anyone else, he might have flinched or demanded they not eavesdrop, but Li’eth knew he was still struggling to master his projective abilities. He knew she was watching him to help him know when he was thinking projectively instead of just thinking loudly. With her . . . it felt as easy as clasping and holding someone’s hand. Someone he genuinely liked, the more he came to know her. It felt even more natural to just keep “holding hands” as it were, so how could he object?

  (Can you speak for every single person in your empire?) he asked her instead, playing Saint’s interrogator. (I know among our own people, there will be radicals and mentally disturbed persons who will try to attack you just for being different. Can you say there will not be similar upset souls in this place?)

  (I will not deny we have similar problems, though we have a very good mental-health system, invoking many different styles of therapies, both chemical and nonchemical in nature. There may be those who have slipped through the cracks who may try to harm you, but we will do our best to stop them. Unless you attempt to harm us, we have neither reason nor inclination to harm you . . . and the law says that unless circumstances prove otherwise, we must not do so.)

  He had an impression she was struggling to get her hair pinned up, though she knew she was running out of time. Now that they were out of null gravity, she didn’t have to keep it pinned up, but it looked more professional to these people. His own were similar in preferring neatened hair, so he had used some of the grooming fasteners found in the toiletry drawers in his bathroom facilities. His locks had been pulled back into a braided queue, exposing every bit of his face for the formality of the moment. Now he waited with the flat little bottle of Clear 180 tucked into one of his pockets, wrapped in a kerchief she had found somewhere.

  The others started arriving. Once again, the V’Dan gathered at one end of the table, the Terrans at the other. This time, Li’eth had hurried through his preparations in order to claim the end seat, the position of power. Shi’ol arrived through the door at his end of the chamber, the one not closest to the kitchen. She had to check herself and swing toward one of the other chairs. The logistics officer frowned a little, if not quite in his direction. Not with an implication of insubordination. Yet.

  Finally, Ja’ki strode in, neatly dressed in one of these Terran military uniforms and carrying a box. Where Robert, A-yinda, and Brad were clad in somewhat dull, medium blue uniforms with black stripes down the pant legs and sleeves, buttons gleaming in silver, and where Maria and Lars wore gray uniforms with blue and black stripes, her uniform was stark black relieved by gold buttons down the front, and silvery-gray and medium blue stripes down arms and legs. She had given up on pinning up her hair and had instead simply twisted and pulled back the sides, confining her dark curls to the sides of her head before letting the mass of it spread out down her back, where it fell almost to her waistline.

  When she set the box down on the seat of one of the chairs to her left, on the Terran side of the room, Li’eth noticed something else that a lack of gravity and then baggy clothes had hidden: The cut of her formal jacket showed off her figure. It was fuller compared to the other four women, the V’Dan included.

  If one ignored the utter lack of proper marks, she looked very . . . adult. Ah-yinda was very modest in the chest compared to the others, while Shi’ol, Dai’a, and Mah-riia were moderate in their curves. Ja’ki . . . looked very adult. Li’eth had a preference for full-bodied women, and when Ja’ki—Bright Stone—moved, he wanted to . . .

  Determined to erase the rest of that thought, Li’eth rose to his feet. His fellow V’Dan did as well, eyeing him in confusion. Rising was reserved for when a superior entered a room in formal uniform, but she wasn’t one of theirs, he knew. Still, she was their hostess and deserved all the respect he and his surviving crew members could give. That meant he stood, and tightened his mental bubble to keep her from overhearing any less-than-formal, respectful thoughts.

  She faltered a little, not expecting that, but finished walking back to the center of the table opposite the windo
w-turned-viewscreen. “Thank you. Please be seated. Before we begin, I will give you a few instructions, and a bit of information; here are some pens and tablets of paper if you would like to take notes; you may make them in V’Dan or Terranglo, whichever you feel most comfortable with,” she added, pulling notepads and Terran-style pens out of her box. “These notes will be for your personal use only, and will be destroyed if you wish it so—we still use paper from time to time because electronic data can be copied all too easily without noticing, and you can shield the tablets from any camera viewpoints with their covers. If you have questions, particularly once the proceedings are under way, then it would be good to write down your thoughts to help organize and refer to them when given a chance to speak.”

  “With that said,” she told them, drawing in a deep breath, “you are about to face the full assembly of the Terran United Planets Council, which is our highest governing body. We no longer have royals or nobles who rule directly, in the sense of crafting laws as well as enforcing them; they do not work for the legislative branch of our regional governments, though they may serve as the executive branch, making sure those laws are carried out. The Council, as I said, is the legislative branch, with the Secondaire and Premiere being placed above all Councilors and governors, royal or elected. They function as the chiefmost members of the executive branch, trained through years of service in the legislative branch to understand the laws that are made, altered, or repealed, and thus how to implement them.

  “The Council is elected through a system of tests, votes of confidence by the people, and a very strict ethical standard for its members’ conduct,” she continued, and tapped on a small datapad she pulled from her pocket. The viewscreen shifted in the center to a view of brown and green continents surrounded by blue ocean. “I myself served for five years as a Councilor for this particular region.”

  A swath of islands large and small, and a very large patch of ocean, lit up first in pink, then broke down into three smaller sections in beige, yellow, and orange.

  “This is Oceania, which is composed of Polynesia—where I was born, which includes the island hosting our capital—Micronesia, and Melanesia. Other regions can cover entire continents, such as Australasia, or are broken up into many much smaller cultural and population-based regions, such as the continent of Europe, which has fifty-three distinct provinces. Those range from entire regions, such as the peninsula of Italy, to the megacity zones such as the eight lobes of Paris in the province of France. As you can see, there is a lot of diversity, both in environment and in cultural pressures, which you will be facing . . . but everyone on the Council speaks Terranglo, so you should be able to make yourselves understood.

  “If you cannot find a word or phrase in Terranglo which suits your needs, you may question me aloud in V’Dan, and I will do my best to translate. If they ask questions that we have not yet discussed, if you do not feel comfortable discussing it, simply state, ‘That is yet to be determined,’ or ‘We have not yet discussed that subject,’ or some variation along those lines. One more thing,” Ja’ki explained, holding up a finger in caution. “There will be a group of people seated in a specific section of the Council Hall. Their seats are white, as are the section railings, and they will all be wearing short, sleeveless white vests.”

  A touch of the controls shifted the image on the viewscreen to an image of several Humans in various different outfits; each and ever one was wearing a sleeveless, white, waist-length vest.

  “These people are not Council members, and are not trained diplomats. So if they ask a question which you deem to be offensive, please simply say, ‘My culture considers that question to be inappropriate,’ and please do not take actual offense. It will not be meant that way, I assure you,” Ja’ki stated.

  “Why shouldn’t we?” Shi’ol asked, arms folded across her uniformed chest. “If they are going to ask us offensive questions—”

  V’kol answered her, interrupting her. “We don’t know their culture. People from the Tarkonda mountains wipe away their tears with their bare fingers, saying it is an offense to the gods to do anything else. People from the Capital cities would be offended at this unhygienic practice because it runs the risk of smearing bodily fluids onto various surfaces, or getting contaminants on the hands into the eyes. Capital residents prefer that a cloth be used, even if a sleeve cuff or a shirt hem is the only thing at hand. But when in Tarkonda, even the Empress might wipe tears away with her fingers out of respect for local custom.”

  Shi’ol snorted. “Her Eternity would never—”

  “We are getting off topic,” Li’eth asserted. He did not want to hear what the countess thought his mother would or would not do. “Who are these special people in the white-colored seats, Ambassador Ja’ki Maq’en-zi? Or rather, what are they? What makes them special, and why might they ask odd questions and not the others?”

  “The white-vest wearers are members of the Fellowship Lottery,” she stated, and explained further at their blank looks. “Once every two weeks, a drawing is held across the United Planets. Every single province gets to select by random drawing two to four delegates, depending upon the local cultural diversity as well as its population density. Their immediate families are also allowed to attend, up to four additional people per selected Fellow, though only children aged twelve or older may accompany them, and only the Fellowship members themselves may attend the actual Council meetings and so forth.

  “They must be adults—which is defined as anyone eighteen years or older—they must have lived and worked in the drawing region for at least one year, and they must have plans to continue to live and work in that region for at least another full year past their selection point. Fellowship members are drawn from all levels and kinds of life, whether it’s cattle herders in central Africa,” she added, pulling up a picture on the side of leather-clad, brown-skinned Humans in bangles and beads riding on four-wheeled vehicles through dry, yellow-withered grasslands among four-legged animals almost as big as the vehicles, “or the Sami people of northernmost Europe,” another image of pale-faced, dark-haired people bundled in layers of clothing, riding strange beasts with branched horns among trees dusted with snow, “to the most street-savvy businessman or businesswoman of North Tokyo province, which is part of a megacity in the heart of the islands of Japan.”

  A golden-skinned woman with flattish, almond-shaped eyes and black hair, clad in a navy suit spangled down one side and sleeve, stood on a very busy street lit by colorful lights, with billboards, signs, and buildings towering all around her. She was doing something with a datapad. On the main map, different areas lit up to highlight the different regions being discussed.

  “Each one of the Lottery winners is brought to the capital on the island of Kaho’olawe at the government’s expense for two weeks,” Ja’ki continued, her voice shifting in its accent on the name of the location. That, Li’eth finally realized, was the source of the slightly different accent she had, compared to the others. It was different from Maria’s, from Brad’s, from Lars’ accent, from all of the other Terrans’. “And this is what the capital looks like.”

  He turned his attention to the map, where she was pointing. The pinpoint that she highlighted, Li’eth noted, lay within the uppermost of the broad, ocean-spanning triangle called Polynesia, within the region of Oceania. More images appeared, of a modest-sloped hill and crater on an island that was rather dry and desertlike, its reddish soil showing through though tufts of vegetation on its north-northwest side. On the opposite side, the south-southeast, bushes gave way to trees and greenery, interspersed with various buildings that blended in and complemented their surroundings. The buildings in the crater, located on the east side, were surrounded by more desert than by greenery, and stood out rather blatantly compared to the buildings in the thick foliage to the south.

  “What are those structures?” Dai’a asked, pointing at one that looked like an unfurling flower, and another like a spire-tall clump of green crystals,
and at a third like a series of stacked cubes in a rainbow of metallic colors.

  “The green one is called the Tower, and it is the heart of the military. The rounded one with the suggestion of flower petals is the Council Hall, nicknamed the Lotus, after a type of flower found in ponds. It is the heart of the government in the sense that all the Councilors have their offices there, for it is where the Council meets. The sprawling one with different layers and colors is the Departments Building . . . which those of us in the government liked to joke is the ‘Department of Departments,’” Ja’ki added wryly, humor coloring her tone. “While the Council Hall holds the offices for all the Councilors, every province, and even many prefectures, has an office as well for its representative and executive segment located in the Department of Departments. On top of that, all of the actual departments and bureaus of the government have their headquarters located there—the Department of Health, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Ecology, so on and so forth.

  “The north side of the island is maintained as a cultural preserve for the people of the islands of Hawai’i—my mother’s people—and the south side is filled with residences for those who work on the island in the various service branches, for the Fellowship members and attending families of the Lottery winners, for Councilors, and for visiting dignitaries.

  “As I was saying about the Lottery winners, the Fellows come for two weeks, and during those two weeks, they sit in on every Council session, they ask questions, they can challenge laws—they can pause those laws in the process of being made, forcing those proposing it or opposing it to present new data to justify said support or resistance, though they cannot make or unmake any laws—and they are there to serve as witnesses to all aspects of the highest levels of government,” Ja’ki explained. “The United Planets Council does most of its business openly, with all sessions recorded and most made available for anyone to watch, and the Fellowship stands watch to personally ensure that reality matches those recordings.