by Jean Johnson
Hana’ka stared at the display screen a long moment, shaking her head slowly. She finally flipped her hand at it while Jackie was taking a sip of the rich mocha-like drink. “Why bring this to me? I may be the Empress, but this is just the way my culture is. This is the way our culture has been for ninety-five hundred years!”
“And this is not the way Earth’s entire culture has been for over one hundred thousand years . . . with the exception of an idiotic period of skin-based prejudice that ran for about five hundred years or so,” she allowed. “More than that, an entire culture can change within a single generation. Entire clusters of cultures can be changed, with hard work and full official support. So please don’t play the ‘this is the way my culture has always been’ game. It won’t work with me.”
Jackie knew she was hedging a very fine line with that statement. Various tribes and factions and nations on Earth had gone to war in various locations over differences in ethnicities, religious beliefs, cultural clashes, and so forth—including skin color—but never as a problem for the entire world. Until, of course, the period between the Age of Colonization and the Age of Insystem Travel.
Hana’ka studied the image on the tablet, and sighed. “Over 80 percent, you say?”
“It’s a very widespread problem,” Jackie said. “Even someone I thought had been trained to avoid making that sort of mistake—as in their job would be on the line if I told you who it was—made the mistake of reacting to my people as if we were children at one point recently.”
Hana’ka narrowed her eyes. “One of the Elite assigned to your embassy zone?”
“Your Highness is perceptive, but I will not mention who, as they apologized quickly enough when I chastised them for it . . . and they have not made that mistake since,” she added. “I will not have anyone punished for making a mistake if they are willing to admit to it when called out and are willing to apologize and put some effort into not making that same mistake again. I do not ask for perfection, but I do ask for your understanding of just how deep this problem is.”
“What do you want me to do about it?” Hana’ka asked. “Make a public announcement? Make it a law that all Terrans who claim to be adults should be treated as adults?”
“I do not think such a law would catch on—that is to say, be seen as enforceable, even participated in—unless and until you can put some real feeling into why it is necessary to treat Terrans differently,” Jackie told her. “I had an idea, watching your son shave this morning.”
That made his mother roll her eyes. Her cheeks turned slightly pink. “I thought we were not going to discuss that.”
“I’m not discussing that,” Jackie confirmed. She leaned forward, setting her cup down and bracing her forearms on the table, her hands lacing together. “I was looking at the patch of jungen-burgundy stubble on his cheek, at the base of the stripe that covers his right eye. When we found them, none of the three men had been able to shave for the entire length of their incarceration by the Salik.”
“Are you going to have the Terran males stop shaving?” Hana’ka asked her. “Beards might convince a few shopkeepers, since most males don’t grow proper beards until their twentieth year, but it won’t do anything for the female adults.”
Jackie shook her head. “No. Watching him shave reminded me that he also had most of that cheek stripe covered up. From just below his lower eyelid down into his stubble line, by some sort of flesh-adhering face paint that could only be removed by high-content alcohol.”
“Plasflesh, yes,” his mother confirmed. “The Imperial Family has been using it to disguise our facial markings since about a hundred years or so past the point we developed widespread distribution of photography, when every member of the Family became easily recognizable to the masses in the ranks. Before that point, we used face paints that had to be applied every day.”
“Well, I’m not going to ask you to use the old-fashioned paints,” Jackie told her. “Or maybe I will, depending on what you have available. No, I challenge you, Hana’ka, to try something. For just one full day, I want you to cover up every single mark you have. Even your hair. Put on a markless blond wig, use blond paint on the burgundy strands, whatever it takes. Hide your jungen for one day,” she stressed while her hostess blushed and frowned, shaking her head. “Live one day as a Terran in appearance on this world. I think you will find it very enlightening.
“Oh, and feel free to tell your people in advance that you are doing this. I wouldn’t want you thrown out of the Winter Palace from an accusation of being an impostor,” she added, picking up her cup of mo’klah again. “I don’t have to take the reverse test to know that I would be treated very differently if I painted my skin in V’Dan stripes with your plasflesh stuff. My point is that your culture should not have to demand that my billions of citizens coat themselves in the stuff just to be treated with common courtesy and respect.
“I don’t think you can see it, just yet. I don’t think you can really grasp that problem until you have lived it. So I am challenging you. Remove all traces of your jungen from your appearance for twenty-four V’Dan Standard hours.”
Hana’ka studied Jackie for a long moment. She picked up her own cup, sipped at the slowly cooling beverage, and mulled it over. Finally, she asked, “What do I get if I go through with it?”
“Well, considering it’s a personal bet between you and me, I could be flippant and say ‘surfing lessons’ . . . but how about enough ceristeel plating to coat your personal transport here on V’Dan? Hovercar, aircar, ground car, whichever one you like, custom fitted. Your garage mechanics can get us the exact dimensions for replacing all panels and the undercarriage, and we’ll get you hull plating that’s far more laserproof than anything you currently have,” she offered. “That’s worth quite a lot of money, economically . . . and quite a lot of peace of mind.”
“Enough of your hull plating for every vehicle in the Winter Palace,” Hana’ka bartered.
That made Jackie wince. “I can’t authorize that much, meioa. In fact, I don’t think the entire Space Force has that much ceristeel to spare—I’ve seen how many hovercars fly into and out of all the hangars around this place, so no way. Nothing for anyone else’s use. Just for your personal use, or your immediate family’s use. But how about . . . five cars, all with identical silhouettes?”
“. . . Twenty.”
“Deal.” Jackie offered her hand.
Hana’ka narrowed her eyes. “You accepted that deal too easily.”
“A deal is a deal. Twenty identical sets of ceristeel body paneling made to exact V’Dan specifications for twenty identical planetbound personal transport vehicles, either aircars or ground cars, but not both.” She wiggled her fingers a little.
Sighing, Hana’ka extended her arm as well, clasping Jackie’s forearm to forearm. “How soon must I do this?”
“Well, tomorrow is a holy day for the Winter Temple, right? The extra day of the month that only happens nine times a year?” Jackie asked. The Empress nodded. “Then within one or two days after that. How about Fevra Second? Make a public announcement on the First, or as close to the revelation time as possible, and do not try to rearrange your schedule in any way. Go through a regular day’s work looking like a Terran. Military meetings, budget meetings, diplomatic meetings, all of it.”
“And how soon will I get my plating?” she asked.
“I’ll put in the order right now, if you like. All I need is a chance to speak with the right engineers here on V’Dan, get the exact specifications for vehicle armor, then send the requisition forms to Admiral Nayak. He’ll get the ceristeel industry working on the problem within a day, as soon as we know the exact dimensions. After that . . . it depends on how quickly they can program the manufacturing process to those specifications, but I’d say twenty panels would be ready to ship within two weeks, maybe a month at most.”
“Yet you want me t
o do this in three days?” the older stateswoman challenged her.
Jackie tipped her head. “Well, it is a reward for doing it . . . so you have to prove that you actually do it.”
“Then why put in the order right now?” Hana’ka asked, puzzled.
That earned her a quick, mischievous smile. “Because eventually you’ll want that plating anyway . . . and we’ll have it ready and waiting for the right incentive to sell it to you. At the regular economic-valued price.”
Hearing that, Hana’ka winced. Jackie gave her a small, sympathetic look, but only a small one; she knew the other woman knew exactly how much ceristeel cost. Those had been among the many trade factors hashed through in their economics-integration sessions. More to the point, Hana’ka knew that Jackie knew that she knew.
“I feel like I’m being extorted into this . . . An Empress should not be extorted,” Hana’ka asserted.
“It’s hardly that, Eternity,” the Terran Ambassador told her. Jackie sipped at her mo’klah, swallowed, and added, “If anything, my side is the one that could be considered under extortion since price for price, we’re paying the most out of pocket. A little plasflesh paint, a little hair coloring, and all you have to do is walk through your daily routine like you normally would. I have to convince an admiral of the second-highest rank to pay for all that ceristeel, when the Navy is busy building as many ships as it can, and needs all the hull plating it can get.”
“True, but you are asking me to do something no Emperor or Empress has ever tried,” Hana’ka countered.
“I presume you mean since the time of War King Kah’el,” Jackie said, leveling the other woman a look. “I may not know more than a fraction of V’Dan’s history, but I do know that the Immortal High One ruled for five hundred years longer than your bloodline has sat on that very same Eternal Throne . . . and I personally know she has no jungen marks.”
Hana’ka narrowed her eyes a little. They narrowed more, accompanied by a frown. A sip, and she continued to cogitate. Abruptly, her eyes snapped wide open, wide enough that Jackie could see the whites all the way around those pewter-gray irises. Jackie quickly flung up her hand, sensing the name that the Empress was thinking so loud, anyone above a Rank 6 in telepathy who could have been in the room with them would have heard it.
(Stop,) she ordered telepathically. The sending startled the older woman enough that her cup jostled in her hand. Hana’ka quickly set it down. Jackie sent again. (Do not say her name aloud. You and I both know this is being recorded by your security staff. Even I, a Terran, could guess that revealing her identity would cause all sorts of problems. I apologize for sending my thoughts to you, but rest assured, I am not reading yours directly. Except for the fact you were thinking that name so loudly, I could hear it through my shielding.)
Looking a little pale, Hana’ka set down her cup. “. . . I would like to discuss a certain topic of my own, now.”
Drawing in a deep breath, since she had expected something like this the moment she used her telepathy, Jackie nodded. “What would you like to discuss?”
Hana’ka looked away for a moment, gathering herself for something. She looked at the younger woman and lifted her chin the tiniest bit. “I want lessons in how to shield my mind. And I want the trade language of your people transferred to me. Not just to my husband, but to me. I am told that this is an intimate process, that I will learn things about you in the teaching method, but I still want it done.”
“A few things, though not many,” Jackie admitted. This was not what she had expected; rather the opposite, in fact. “The first one is always ‘the worst’ as my people say. I learned a great deal about Li’eth—Kah’raman,” she corrected herself.
His mother held up her hand, palm toward herself. “Call him what you like. If the two of you are a holy partnership, I can hardly stop it. And that is what multiple names are for, to give a child a choice of what they preferred to be called by their closest family and friends.”
“Thank you. A question. What made you decide this would be an acceptable thing to do?” Jackie asked, curious. “You are technically placing your mind—the last bastion of privacy you have—in my hands. What prompted you to trust me in this matter?”
“I am told you did this thing, giving our language, to your own highest-ranked leader, your Premiere A’goo-stus Callan.”
Jackie had to bite her tongue for a moment against the pronunciation attempt. Very carefully not mentioning it, she said, “Yes. I did so personally at his request.”
“If your own leader trusts you . . . and given the honor and honesty you have displayed to my people so far,” Hana’ka allowed, “then I shall choose to trust you.”
“Well, at this point, I am familiar enough with Imperial High V’Dan, I can transfer it without learning excessive amounts of your personal life. Some things will come across,” she warned her hostess, pouring more mo’klah into both their cups, since both were low, “but that is only to ensure that I am attaching the correct pieces of vocabulary to the requisite bits of memory. And I certainly will not use any of that information against you.”
“I have been Empress for twenty-seven years and grew up watching my father rule for decades before that. Tell it to the other ear,” Hana’ka stated dryly. “I know you will use some of it against me. I am willing to take that risk.”
Jackie met her scoffing gaze levelly. “That is not our way, Eternity. That is not the way of our politicians these days, and that is definitely not the way of our psychically gifted. In fact, of any group of people, any section of society, you will find that it is the mind-speakers of my people, the telepaths, who are the least enamored of the idea of reading someone else’s thoughts. Mental privacy is our highest goal in life—if you have ever been in a location where the walls are so thin that you can constantly hear people in the next room talking and talking and talking, you would have a glimpse as to why. Your people can think of mine as markless children inside the privacy of their own skulls. The only thing we require of them is that we be treated as full adults.”
“Yet you want me to undergo this test,” Hana’ka pointed out.
“You don’t have to, of course,” Jackie allowed. “But it will help you understand just how important it is to address this cultural rift between our people. If you want our business, you have to treat us with respect. If you want our troops to defend your worlds, freeing up your own to man your ships and space stations, your people have to understand, with all the conviction you as their leader can muster, that mine must be treated with respect. If they are to settle on your colonyworlds and contribute to the local businesses, economies, and social interactions, they have to be respected as they are.
“My people do not care if yours are brown-spotted or blue-striped, or carry no marks at all. We find such things to be silly, shallow, and a concept we left behind over a hundred years ago. It wasn’t easy, but we left it behind. We are able to accept you as you are and treat you with the respect of a fellow adult. Your son and his fellow officers were treated with respect by my people well over 83 percent of the time during their stay on Earth.”
“And you want my people to accept yours. I may be the Empress, but I am just one person,” Hana’ka reminded her.
“You are the Eternal Empress. Your people look up to you with great respect and consider your word to be law. If you say we must be respected—and keep saying it, and enforce it—then we will eventually be treated with respect.”
Again, the Eternal Empress mulled it over. Finally, she said, “I will do it . . . in exchange for language and mind-shielding lessons. For myself and my husband, and anyone else in the immediate Imperial Family who wishes them—all the ones who were on the Imperial Tier, plus our children and grandchildren who were not there.”
“I cannot make any such transfers with children, I’m sorry,” Jackie apologized. “The mind of a child is too underdeveloped, and the
vocabulary too inadequate. You really should take the ceristeel plating; the cost is considerably higher for that than for a couple dozen language transfers . . . which we would give you for free anyway, in the interests of smoothing diplomacy.”
“For free?” At Jackie’s nod, Hana’ka shrugged. “Very well, then. Let it remain unsaid that I tried to cheat you with a costly set of armor in exchange for a little face and hair paint, for I have offered otherwise.”
Jackie wrinkled her nose. “I suspect you’ll think you were short-sheeted instead, after your day is up . . . Ah . . . how do I explain that euphemism in V’Dan terms, since there’s no direct analog . . .”
Hana’ka picked up her cup and gestured for Jackie to go on.
JUNE 8, 2287 C.E.
FEVRA 2, 9508 V.D.S.
Jackie finished reading the last subparagraph and sat back, nodding slowly to herself. “This is good. This is really good. Rosa, Surat,” she told her Assistant Ambassador and the historian assigned to help her in her research, “this is a solid document. Li’eth explained to us what goes into an Alliance Charter, and I’ve read over the V’Dan and the Solarican ones in my spare time . . . and I think this is comparable to both. I think we can take these to the Alliance Assembly . . . whenever they can get around to having one, what with the war and all. Have you run this past the Council?”
Rosa shook her head. “No. I was going to do that after running it past you. I should do it in person, though.”
“I can run it to the Council,” Surat Juntasa told her.
“While ‘politician’ may no longer be a dirty word, young man,” Rosa told the slightly younger male, “I do still have some fame and clout on my side. It’ll get onto the discussion docket faster, and be taken more seriously, if I, as a former Premiere, present it to the Council as a good idea. You’re intelligent and articulate, but you haven’t been a Counselor yourself. You don’t have to recite the Oath every single workday for umpteen years.”