The Lonoki Solution

by Sharon L Reddy

  "You have one more call waiting than I do, but I'm not jealous. I look forward to meeting you in person as well, Tarun. Give my regards to your sister."

  "I shall. Comm off."

  The ambassador smiled, quickly finished with the two calls and began rewriting her report. She ended with a personal note to her superior. She told him granting permission for Warren Taylor to go to work for Evrun Ship Builders was turning out to be the "best damned decision" he'd ever made. She added she'd be instructing all members of the embassy staff and humans currently on planet that no mention of the exact nature of the lonoki discovery was to be made, until they were ready to file for patents. She told him about the urgent call from Tarun and the better understanding he'd given her of the way his people felt about their place in the society of space-faring species of the Orion Arm. She wished him good luck dealing with his superiors, who were probably going to be quite unhappy no one would tell them what the lonoki discovery, that would "change the universe," was, until the lonoki were ready to do so.

  The six prepared. Yan and Taral worked every moment they weren't working out and most of the staff of Evrun Ship Builders worked with them, in one way or another. The space dock plans were changed, but not a great deal. The ground facilities were changed much more as preparations to build the drive progressed at the same speed the design did. One night, Yan called to say he wasn't going to make the evening workout or dinner, and possibly not class the next day. Taral called a few moments later and said Yan had forgotten to mention he wouldn't either. Dane looked at Kiev and she nodded. He made a fast call to tell Kola not to expect anyone, then called Kano and Mal and told them to meet them. He and Kiev ran for the door and her flyer. They were at the spaceport and running for the R and D lab a half-unit later.

  Yan looked up when they ran in and whooped. Dane just moved Membis and got on the terminal she'd been using. Membis laughed and got out of the way as Kiev, then Kano and Mal, ran through to where Taral was working on the prototype of the power conversion system. She ordered dinner for the lab staff and got on another terminal. She put three others on terminals too. Yan and Dane were working fast and they could do straight computation and have values ready for them when they were needed.

  Tarun and Wren Taylo came from opposite directions and practically collided at the door of the lab. Membis watched them run through to the prototype lab, grinned and got back to work. Four of them were barely keeping up with Yan and Dane.

  The lab got more crowded as the evening progressed and engineers got the word the equations and prototype were both about to be completed. Some of the crowd, Jarun and several of his girls, came with dinner and literally fed people while they worked. Kola arrived with Iliev and made them all take a short break to "refresh spirits." Membis was surprised how much faster she worked after doing the stretching and breathing exercises he conducted. Yan and Dane weren't. Kola went into the prototype lab and Iliev and Jarun organized refreshments which contained a mild natural stimulant. Wren was yelling for "coffee." Iliev knew the tea he called "close enough" and had it brewing.

  Just before midnight Yan yelled, "Finished!" and Dane tossed him into the air and whooped. The physics lab staff cheered and raced after the two of them, toward the prototype lab. They were back on comp terminals in seconds. This time with engineering equations on the screens in front of them instead of physics formulas. The only real difference was the equations were being applied and not solved. At six-and-a-half units after midnight, the prototype was ready to be tested. Four units later, Tarun called the human ambassador. They were ready to file patent applications. It worked. Four 'hours' later, a courier ship lifted for Earth with the patent applications and the news that the Orion arm had just gotten smaller.

  About half the people on the Evrun estate were asleep when the courier hit translight speed and the news of what had been done hit the media on their world. They didn't get to sleep much longer. Interviewers, commentators and camera crews moved in on the Evrun complex at the spaceport and the staff yelled for help, with the mob pounding on the doors.

  Chapter Eight

  Dane cleared a landing space for the big flyer in front of the complex, with a powered dive that scattered news crews, drew whoops from Tarun, Kiev and Yan and yelps from several others aboard. Dane was out of the flyer and clearing "idiots" as soon as he got the power off.

  Dane yelled he'd have the area cleared, if the group didn't straighten up and behave like civilized adults. They got the message when he picked up a big male with a cam, who tried to shove him aside to get to the flyer, and tossed him into the big waste bin beside the huge doors to the manufacturing plant. He knew it was about half full of semi-solid fire suppressant foam and the person would have a soft landing, or he wouldn't have done it, but the mob of newspeople didn't. They got quiet and well-behaved fast.

  He thanked them, got them organized by agencies they represented, picked one interviewer/commentator and camera person from each and formed them into a ring around the ramp up to the lab door. Then he led the group from the flyer to the top of the ramp. Personal interviews would be arranged later. He introduced Tarun and stepped back into the group.

  "Thank you, Kiev Dane. I'd held little hope this could be accomplished in reasonable fashion. Members of the media and people of our world, two young males in our family have made all of us very proud to say we are lonoki this day. They are slaves, but we understand how little difference that makes in the love and respect an individual is given within a family and our society. Be prepared for the many who will not. The work of these two, and the many who aided, will bring people of every species to our world. They won't be trained ambassadors with open minds, merely ordinary business people with all the prejudices ordinary people have. We have them too. The very words 'master' and 'slave' will strike at the heart of their belief in the basic equality of all people. It is up to us to show them that the respect they are sure those words deny is quite present and no person of this world is denied it on that basis. It begins with my intense pride in the two young males I am about to introduce. People of our world, Yan and Taral, of the family Evrun. Yan, you speak first."

  "Oh, thank you, Tarun. Hello. Let's see, I found a value for one of the constants in the Holoss equations that indicated our assumption we'd reached the limit of translight speed was incorrect. Last night I, and a whole bunch of terrific other people, finished solving the equations with that value. Your turn, Taral."

  "Uh, I figured out a power conversion system that will allow a ship to use what Yan found. Last night, with a lot more help than Yan had, I got the prototype finished and it worked. Tarun, I'm done."

  "All right, Taral. People, these two extraordinary young males are quite obviously also 'ordinary' young males. They're both rather surprised at all the attention and currently trying to figure out a way they can both get behind Kiev Dane and out of the focus of the cameras. My niece Kiev, Membis, head of research and development, Kiev Dane and I, all have a rather thorough understanding of the discoveries and inventions. We probably have a much better understanding of what they mean to our world. We will take two questions each from those Kiev Dane has indicated will be allowed to ask them. Please identify yourself and the agency you represent and try to phrase your questions succinctly. We'll begin over on that side. You first."

  "Hassa of Worldnet. You prefaced your disclosure with a reminder and a warning. Do you think there will be actual problems?"

  "I'm going to give that one to Kiev Dane."

  "What?"

  "He says that a lot. You're the one about to get an advanced ranking in sociology, Dane. The question is yours."

  "Yes, there will be problems. They needn't be large ones, but that's dependent on how we deal with them. Every person on this world is educated in why our culture and society exist as they do. That isn't true, or necessary, on other worlds. It will be very difficult for many who come here to understand the struggle for survival, which is the basis of our culture. It isn't a
pparent now. Be patient with their seeming bigotry and know the statistics of our survival. Tell them we had a population of eleven billion when Tregdull set loose the mutagen, which began our long struggle. Tell them it was down to one and falling rapidly, when the government began to try to counter it. Tell them it fell to eight hundred thousand, before we accepted the way that works for us and it has taken us seven hundred years to rebuild the civilization of our world to its current level and our population to just under three billion. If they still don't understand, put their opinion aside as unimportant. You all know the truth of it. Opinion cannot change it, or it would have when we were still eleven billion. If the person is still a problem, call their embassy and ask they deal with it. They will. We have something they all want. They'll be working hard to see no one messes up their chances of getting it."

  "What's going to stop them from just copying it?"

  "We just filed for patents with every species out there, thanks to the assistance of the human embassy."

  "Lillot, News Seven. Kiev, what are your feelings about the accomplishments of your slaves?"

  "I'm smug."

  "A bit more please."

  "Counts as your second question. Just teasing. What does any person feel when someone they love does something spectacular? I, like most young masters, knew when the time came to build my family. Like most, I went into the city on the semi-annual market day. I was looking for Kiev Dane. I didn't know he was who I was looking for, until I found him, but I knew he was the one when I did. Our family needed some others too. So we looked. Taral didn't turn out to be the maintenance engineer we needed, but we're obviously not disappointed. I bought a sixteen-year-old male with yellow hair because he looked like he really wanted to come home with us. We didn't actually have a need for him, but he had excellent marks in math and I thought he might be able to handle the physics curricula and be ready for a position in research and development in five or six years. It's been about two-and-a-half and there's not much doubt he can handle the position I had in mind."

  "After these accomplishments, won't it be difficult for them to adjust to a normal work day routine?"

  "It depends on what that normal work day is. Somebody has to get out there and sell this innovation to the other species. We've been studying to do that too. We'll be ready when the first ship is built with the new drive. Yes, new drive. My other two males, Kano and Mal, have been working on that with Wren Taylo. Now the equations are solved and the method of sustaining power has been tested and what would have been just a more powerful drive is going to be a much faster drive."

  "Jasew of Interplanet Communications. How much faster?"

  "Somehow, I doubt you're ready for the answer. Yan, in terms we can all understand, tell them, please."

  "Um, terms we can all understand? Kiev, I'm not sure... Let me think. It now takes eighty-seven days at maximum speed to reach the area of space where the human worlds are located, one hundred nineteen to their home world of Earth. With the new drive, using the new solution to the Holoss equations, it will take about three-and-a-half. See, it's a function of pi and it's applied three times and... Um, we won't go that fast most of the time. I mean, we have to reach full speed and slow down, so about eight or nine to Earth. Kiev, I'm not making it better. They look pretty stunned."

  "I rather expected they would, Yan. Wren bumped into things for three days after you told him."

  "I still bump into things when I think about it, Kiev. I quit thinking about it before I damaged myself. People of the media, Yan and Taral just put your people and mine on the same block and the eight species between us in the same building, so to speak. It's now only about two years across our galaxy. Of course, one would be going too fast to see anything, but it makes true galactic exploration possible. Speaking for humans, in general, which I'm not authorized to do, but will anyway, it's going to be real nice to have the lonoki as close neighbors. Of course, you will have to give your world a name."

  There was general laughter following Wren's statement. It was rather an old joke that most species had a half-dozen names for their home world and the lonoki had named every planet around them, but just called their home world "our world." They always had, and they'd resisted every attempt by other species to stick a name on it. Lonoki was lon, female, and nok, male, and the ending syllable made both plural. Basically, it was females and males, or people. The lonoki had struggled not to call humans womani for the first ten years after they'd met them. They were the only species they'd met whose name for themselves didn't just mean "people" in their own language.

  Dane grinned at Wren. The old joke had done exactly what he'd intended and 'taken the edge off' of Yan's statement. Dane had practiced until he could actually say his name properly as prelude to learning the human language. Warren Taylor sounded so odd to the lonoki that he'd changed it for them. They used all the sounds, but not in that way and he said he rather liked Wren. He'd told Dane a wren was a common small bird and Dane told him an "odd bird" would have been more reasonable. He'd laughed and agreed. They'd become rather good friends in the last quarter-year.

  The session moved on quite smoothly, until someone asked just the wrong question in just the right way and every male at the top of the ramp and Membis winced. Kiev went from cool to boil in an instant and the questioner got a lot more than he'd expected for an answer.

  "If you'd done some research, you'd know I have four. If you'd done a bit more, you'd know Kano and Mal will soon have thirty each, Yan and Taral will soon have thirty-eight each, and Kiev Dane will soon be the father of ninety. I had mine as close together as possible and as soon after I bought Kiev Dane as possible. I helped Kiev Dane accomplish what the breeding council demanded of him as soon as possible and as fast as possible too. He was about to realize I am in love with him. We don't owe our world children. And if you'd been paying attention, you'd have heard Yan tell you the most distant planet we know of with a spacefaring race on it is only about ten days of journey, so we will get home for visits. That was the last question for us. Inside now, Dane."

  "Yes, Kiev. Giggle inside, Yan."

  "Oh, and I thought I'd stunned them. Did you see their faces when she said ninety?"

  "No, Yan, I was watching my feet turn bright pink."

  "I'm sorry, Dane."

  "You told me you wanted to tell the whole world you were in love with me, Kiev. I should have realized you were going to find a way to do it then."

  "I did, didn't I?"

  "Oh, yes, you most certainly did. Hello, Jarun. I thought you were still at the house."

  "I drove down and snuck in the back. Sweet sister, you set them back a pace."

  "Uncle Tarun and Wren will smooth things, Jarun."

  "I doubt it. When I left the monitor, where I'd been watching the news, they were still laughing and Membis was beginning a lecture on what the new solution of the equations means to the science of physics."

  "She didn't leave them in any doubt we were getting prepared, Jarun."

  "No, Mal, she didn't. If you all want to go out the way I came in, I'll loan my car and take your flyer home when the mob clears a bit."

  "Thank you. You're the best brother a female could have."

  "You're pretty terrific yourself, Kiev. I think I'll go out and let them ask me a stupid question so I can tell them I have sixty-two females in my household, six with children and twenty-seven pregnant, plus your four, and state I really won't have time to miss you much."

  "Jarun, that's three more females than you had a few days ago."

  "I tried, Kiev. I've been staying home and being good, but I couldn't really say no when they told me they were in love with me and asked me to buy them, could I?"

  "No, Jarun, you couldn't."

  They monitored the news on audio and Dane almost had to pull over. Someone asked Jarun a stupid question and he gave exactly the answer he'd said he would. Tarun shouted he gave up and Jarun said the interview was over because his uncle and Wren were laugh
ing too hard to answer questions, Membis had run out of words of less than five syllables to explain the work, and he had babies who were expecting a story before their nap. The six in the car decided they liked Lillot of News Seven. There was a hint of laughter in her voice when she ended her story with the comment that the Evrun family had definitely given their world a great deal more than most would ever manage.

  When they got to the estate, everyone in the house seemed to be giggling. Someone had called Jarun's apartments and asked Gedin, who answered, how the females felt about all being in his household. She'd said since all but seven had told him they were in love with him and asked him to buy them, the answer would seem obvious. She'd added she and the other six who hadn't were quite obviously in love with him too or they wouldn't all be pregnant, then turned sideways for the cam just before she switched off.

  Kola strolled out of the kitchen about the time Lom finished telling the story and stated it had been an excellent attempt, but he doubted the family had cured the media people of asking foolish questions. He helped carry Dane to Kiev's apartments. He probably could have gotten up off the floor and walked, but being carried made him laugh even harder and they all liked the sound of it.

  Chapter Nine

  The university quarter was in its final few days when Dane was placed on the musical performance schedule. He was a bit nervous about playing for the judges, but had expected he would be. He had no doubts he'd pass, but he really would like to keep his record of marks in the top percentile in all subjects. He didn't mention the performance to anyone, but several other people mentioned it to a great many. No one told him they had.

  Examination performances had a strict set of rules, primarily designed to keep proud families and enthusiastic friends from making students nervous and judges irritated. If they were not followed, the performance was canceled and rescheduled, if there was time available before the end of the quarter.