by P H Campbell
"Hopefully not the worst," Emily muttered.
"If we have to fight for a place to live, we'll do it," Torian insisted to her friend. Turning to Cinder she added, "You just hold up your part of the bargain. We'll do the rest."
"You know I will," Cinder assured them. "Keeping bargains is what I do best."
"It looks like the Fusions are agreeing to the proposition," Katy reported to the other two a day after Cinder had her conversation with Emily about the voting results. "She says they'll be ready for H-space in about two weeks standard.
"With travel time, that gives us a month to finish the evacuation before they're done with the tour of Earth."
Neither Treah nor Miralenda seemed concerned about it.
"Then it is time to uninvite the guests we have living on this planet," Treah decided. "I'm not happy to do this to them, but they will find life much more suitable where they are going."
"If the ecology gets saved, yes," Miralenda agreed. "If not, well, the colony ship will still be there."
"I enjoy having backup plans," Katy agreed.
For Seren, the rest of the Delegation and the Twins, with no one from either side being with them on their trip to their final destination, the Delegation remained subdued but tense. They could cut the tension with a laser. They knew a lot was riding on this, and they wanted to make sure they sold their roles. The lies weren't lies; the explanations were the truth. But it would cause people to ask questions they might not have asked had their respective representatives stayed with the group.
On arrival at Earth, they gave the mining ship a full Fleet escort from break-out to planet side, along with an overflight of fighters trailing multicolored smoke once it landed. Lasers danced in the clouds, making the stars shimmer and dance. It was all blindingly pretty, but Seren wondered what the point to it was all about. Ceremony for the sake of ceremony was wasteful to her. She had to assume that none of the other designated leaders who had met here with similar, if less ostentatious, ceremonies had picked up on the general displeasure they caused among the delegation. It accomplished nothing other than an attempt to impress someone. She could understand ritual and tradition if they had a practical purpose. But empty ceremonies just wasted time in her point of view.
There were hundreds of people waiting to greet the delegation.
"I don't recall asking for an audience," Seren muttered under her breath.
"It's obviously ceremonial," Morlendrus pointed out with a similarly strained tone. "You've endured that before."
"It's not that they're doing it," Seren replied. "It's that it keeps getting bigger. I prefer it to be low key."
"It's obvious someone else thought differently," Morlendrus noted.
A tall, thin and middle-aged human male approached while the others in the crowd held back. Seren didn't recognize him, noting that he seemed spry enough for his age, but he looked almost malnourished. He walked up and bowed formally in front of her.
"Hi, I'm Seren," she introduced herself holding out her hand. "These are my co-delegates, Morlendrus, Sasha, Markov, Koreen, Majel, Walentia, Ronik and Gliff."
"I am Councilor Walter Mortman," the man replied, taken aback by Seren's abrupt gesture at first, then recovering and shaking the offered hand. Seren recognized that name as the current council head of the United Galactic Worlds civil leadership. The councilors were equal co-leaders, settling issues by vote rather than imbuing executive power in one person. But someone had to run those meetings, and each council member in turn took that position for a specific number of days, with the next one in line taking over after that period had lapsed. They usually held the meetings on a monthly basis.
"Good to meet you, Walter," Seren held out her hand. "I'm not much for ceremony, and we lost our UGW representative at her home planet when we took a side trip, so we're sort playing things by ear here."
"Yes, Councilor Treah has informed the council that there is some kind of crisis on her home planet," Councilor Mortman replied. "We may have to evacuate the planet."
"I'm sorry to hear that," Seren said sincerely, even if she fully expected to hear that news. The news came as a great relief to her. It meant the plan was proceeding according to schedule. "I assume the UGW can do that on short notice with one of those McGrew Ports? I didn't see much in the way of technological advancement there. It was even more primitive than my planet is."
"There may be some difficulties in that, but that's not for you to concern yourself about," Councilor Mortman replied, looking over the group. He didn't see who he expected to see. "There was a rumor that Cinder is not with your party any longer. Is that true?" Councilor Mortman asked.
"She was unexpectedly promoted," Seren informed him. "She's now the leader of the Shade Alliance."
"So the rumors are true," Councilor Mortman mused. "Well, howsoever that works out for her, I have taken it upon myself to be your UGW representative while your delegation is here on Earth. If you'll please follow me, we've set up a small reception in your honor."
"If you don't mind my askin', Councilor Mortman, what's with all the pomp and circumstance?" Koreen inquired in reasonable English.
"Oh, it's what we do for all heads of state," he brushed it off, sensing that the ceremony might have been less well received than he'd hoped.
"But we're not heads of state," Markov pointed out.
"Is Seren not in charge of the planet named The World?" Councilor Mortman asked.
"The planet mostly runs itself, divided by four societies," Seren explained. "The Grand Council sits members from all four societies and decides based on what each of the society's councils decided."
"So where do you fit into all of that, Seren?" Council Mortman asked as they walked.
"She's the council's babysitter," Koreen mentioned. "When they act up, she goes in and spanks them."
"Unofficially, I'm the council mediator and often the troubleshooter," Seren smirked at her grinning friend. "But I don't have an official title or standing in the way they run The World. The councils all make the decisions, whether it's what I think to be best or not."
"I admit, we were unprepared for Treah's departure from this assignment, for which she volunteered, so I am not as conversant with your world's social make-up as she was," Councilor Mortman confessed. "Could you elaborate on that while we walk?"
"Sure," Seren agreed and laid out the way The World was socially and politically. The others in the delegation also added their tidbits of information. Councilor Mortman said nothing more of Treah or her home-world, which wasn't unexpected, since Seren wasn't there to fix that issue.
The reception was, as expected, exceptionally boring. The locals wanted a look at their potential new allies, and the potential new allies wanted a look at the locals, so it all worked out as planned.
Once the reception was over, they led the group to an area where they could relax and wind down before being told what they had planned for them.
No one in the Delegation mentioned that they were there strictly as a formality, and that they had already implemented their decision. Seren wasn't looking forward to telling the Grand Council on The World what she'd done, but it was a majority decision for the group to do it, which meant the Grand Council would have probably done it anyhow. The fact they didn't tell the Grand Council before they implemented their plan might cause them issues, but there really wasn't any way they could do that.
The Colony Ship had to evacuate UGC 0751-C before they announced their decisions. That act set into motion several other critical aspects to their plans, and they had to complete the evacuation for the plan to even succeed.
After their moment of relaxation, where they had been cautioned to not discuss anything they didn't want overheard before they had arrived on Earth, they were eased into their tour of the place where humans had first evolved. The itineraries were set and each delegate chose where to go. Having seen the delegation mostly defer to Seren for major decisions, Councilor Mortman had come to the conclusion that she was the de fac
to ruler of her world, even if it wasn't in a traditional role. That being his understanding, he chose to escort her and Sasha personally, rather than leave it up to a local guide as before.
"As you probably know, this planet was the cradle of humanity," he explained as they traveled to one of the more ancient monuments. "Millennia ago, race and nationality divided us, with thousands of different languages, customs and beliefs. Today, we're all one race, one nationality, if you want to call it that, with a myriad of customs and even beliefs. What used to divide us the most no longer do. We speak the same language, we are the same race, even if we all don't look exactly alike."
"Humans run the galaxy, I take it?" Seren asked.
"Not in so many words," Councilor Mortman denied. "Our closest allies are the Methonians, who embraced us when we first visited their world. They are an integral part of our society."
"Not the first visit, but the second one," Seren corrected him. "Remember, we were over in the Shade Alliance. We heard all about the Great Disgrace and the Purging. We even met a few Fusions."
"I was not aware you were so conversant with galactic history," Councilor Mortman remarked.
"It depends on what part of the galaxy you're talking about," Seren replied. "Did anyone tell you about my back-story?"
"Bits and pieces, yes," Councilor Mortman.
"And about Sasha's and Markov's?" Seren asked.
"Not specifically, but I understand they were among the revived colonists from the Colony Ship Wethersfield," Councilor Mortman replied.
"And did you know about what happened to my planet?" Serena asked.
"Only that there was some disaster in the distant past which ruined the ecology and caused mutations among the colonists," Councilor Mortman admitted.
"That's fair," Seren shrugged. "In all of that telling, plus what we learned over in the Shade Alliance, I think we have a good grasp on galactic history as it might relate to our world.
"But it's not it's past I'm thinking about."
"Indeed," Councilor Mortman agreed. "It is about our mutual futures."
"And how mutual that might be," Seren added.
"Have you not already arrived at a decision?" Councilor Mortman seemed surprised. "The differences are stark and compelling."
"That they are," Seren earnestly agreed. But there are matters of procedure involved that you may not understand. The most important one is that this delegation won't be making the final decisions about anything. We're fact-finders for the Grand Council. While our impressions will carry a huge amount of weight, and what we say and do will have consequences, the decision of which side to join ultimately rests with the Grand Council."
"So what are your impressions so far?" Councilor Mortman wondered.
"Both sides have compelling arguments for joining," Seren replied honestly. "The UGW has the technology that can better aid us, but the Shade is socially and philosophically more aligned with our way of life."
"Is it?" Councilor Mortman inquired with surprised. It wasn't what he expected to hear.
"You should probably visit my world sometime and see the conditions we live under," Seren mentioned. "Until five, or seven, years ago, depending on how you want to count that, we had been at war with one another for a thousand local years, which is about thirteen hundred standard, give or take. I hear the Fornyth War ending caused all sorts of issues for the UGW."
"That would be an understatement, and I understand what you're saying," Councilor Mortman agreed, showing some real emotion for a change. "But it doesn't have to be social upheaval for your people."
"I get that things change, Councilor Mortman," Seren asserted. "I know our way of life is not optimal, to put it mildly. But it's what we know, and change comes hard to people who still cling to the past, because doing anything else usually meant getting killed."
"If you don't mind my asking, what have you found to be adverse in the UGW's way of life?" Councilor Mortman wondered.
"The managing and rules," Seren immediately stated. "Your people are being stifled, shoved into jobs they don't enjoy doing, even if they can do them well. They rarely derive any satisfaction doing a task they don't want to be doing. I understand you intend the system to ensure full employment and livelihoods for people, but that's just not the way our people work.
"If they live well, or crash and burn, it's on them, and they take pride in doing their job of choice as best as they can, even if that level isn't optimal. The UGW pays for results. The World pays for the effort and the results. The UGW has a safety net, but what does that do to motivate people to better themselves when most of them can't do what they most want to do?"
"You seem very passionate about that," Councilor Mortman observed.
"I wouldn't be the person I am today if I didn't have the freedom to choose what I wanted to do," Seren replied. "And that goes even when I knew I had a choice, but didn't feel like I did."
"It sounds like a matter of perspective, both for your people and ours," Councilor Mortman observed.
"It is, very much so," Seren agreed. "Only, with our society, we're not so much into optimization as we are in just getting by, by doing our part."
"A subtle, but key difference," Councilor Mortman nodded. "Social optimization is not optimal for the individual."
"That's it in a package," Seren agreed. "I've talked with regular people of the UGW, and seen how your society is. It's outwardly placid, functional and gets along well. But beneath that, it's much darker. The people aren't content with how they're being managed, or that they're being managed, and have to cope with their discontent with diversions that take their minds off of it."
"An astute observation," Councilor Mortman noted.
"In the society I grew up, we did much the same thing – have a lot of diversions to take one's mind off of daily life," Seren explained. "Only the need for that wasn't because we were being managed and told by the authorities what we had to be doing. It was because we were being killed and had no way to stop it. It wasn't a matter of choice. It was one of personal survival. We value choices in life like the rarest things in the universe, because for most of our lives, we had so few choices. To survive, we did what we had to do, not what we wanted to."
"I begin to understand why you would find our way of life so abhorrent," Councilor Mortman agreed. "Especially our penal system."
"The less said about that, the better," Seren nodded.
"What about you, Sasha?" Councilor Mortman inquired. "How does life here compare to what you remember on Earth?"
"It's freer now than then, but also a lot less free," Sasha replied. "I didn't have the aptitude to become a physician. But I had the strength of will to do it. I wanted a fresh start, where people valued my skills more than my aptitude for a job. So I worked harder than someone who had the aptitude would have to work to become very skilled. I don't think I'd have been a physician if I were born in this time instead of that time, even if society here is less concerned about who one has sex with."
"I take it then that there's no stigma about your orientation on your new world?" Councilor Mortman asked.
"Among the colonists, there is," Sasha admitted. "But the children are Human and being raised to be cooperative, independent thinkers like their parents. Were I to hazard a guess, I'd say that the average level of intelligence among the Borderlandians, at the least, is considerably higher than among the general UGW population. You had to have been exceptionally quick-witted to survive, and ten thousand years of natural selection will see the most quick-witted live most often. When you consider that they required an above median IQ for colonization, and that everyone on The World are the offspring of colonists, and they all endured hardships that we can only imagine…"
"Except me, I don't have to imagine that," Seren pointed out.
"I get your point, Doctor," Councilor Mortman gently concurred. "You also seem very passionate about your new world."
"I am," Sasha agreed.
"I hope we can change that p
erception of yours, Seren," Councilor Mortman said to her.
"I'm open minded," Seren insisted. "I met a man from the UGW who negotiated with the Shade Alliance to fix some wording in the treaty between them and the UGW who struck me as a free thinker."
"Lyle Dufour," Councilor Mortman nodded. "He wasn't raised in the UGW of today."
"So, one's background is held against them in the UGW?" Seren asked.
"Not specifically," Councilor Mortman asserted, sounding rather uncomfortable about his slip of the tongue.
"Oh, that's good, considering I was a basically what you folks would think of as a child prostitute and bar bouncer, depending on the time of day and whether there was fighting going on," Seren nodded. "When there was fighting, I was a triage medic."
"I… beg your pardon?" Councilor Mortman stumbled a bit as he absorbed that news. "You were forced into child prostitution?"
"Oh, no, not forced," Seren insisted. "In my society, I was literally the only human-looking person until they started having fully human babies, and the only human adult until we decanted the colonists.
"So my tallness and paleness with my eyes and hair color were… very unusual. Most people looked like Ronik, Majel. The others look like Gliff or Morlendrus. But that made me a curiosity and not someone to shun. I had many people coming to our cafe just to look at me. Once I figured that out, I thought if they want to look I could show off how unusual I was for more in tips and other considerations. That's how it worked in bars, and cafes were usually bars at night. It was my way of earning credits for my family. I didn't have to do it for a living. I helped my adoptive mother – Majel – run the cafe. And when the battles were on, our cafe became a trauma center. We got a stipend for being a trauma canter, but we didn't get squat for being a cafe or bar unless we had customers.
"But we needed more income, so I loosened my top a lot more than I usually did and leaned over a lot more than was proper and if someone asked for a special favor in the back, I was fine with that, since that was more credits for the family. No one gave anything away for free except their efforts to help other people stay alive during the battles."