by S MacDonald
Silvie nodded. The complexities and subtleties of politics were beyond her, but she understood well enough that people back on Chartsey would want answers about an incident like this and that Alex would be expected to provide them.
‘Shoot,’ she said, obligingly.
‘All right – first, can you explain on what basis you decided it would be justified to take one of our shuttles, overriding security to do so?’
‘On the basis,’ said Silvie, ‘that a man was drowning and that by the time I’d asked permission and explained what I needed to do, he would have been dead.’
Alex made no comment. He already knew all this, it was just an explanation they were making for the benefit of people back at Chartsey who wouldn’t understand.
‘You are aware,’ he asked, ‘that we have already discussed response to emergencies at sea with the Carrearranians and that we have contingency plans in place and already agreed with them? Using drones, and the snatch pod?’
‘Yes, I know that,’ Silvie said, being patient with this idiocy because she could see that it was important to Alex that she answer the questions, however daft they were, as if they were important. ‘But drones are slow to deploy – by the time you’d got a drone down there capable of doing undersea search and rescue, he would have drowned. And you know that, right?’ She gave him an interested look. ‘You’ve done the analysis?’
Alex nodded. He’d spent most of the last hour on comms, some of it apologising to islanders who’d been alarmed by the thunder roaring out of a clear sky, much more of it talking with them about what Silvie had done. All the liaison teams had been busy with that, too, but there’d still been lots of people looking at the numbers, working the analysis of what had happened. One such analysis, already filed in the log, had confirmed that if they had followed the pre-planned procedure, the drone would have arrived too late to save the man’s life. Their contingency planning had not taken into account circumstances in which a man was effectively tied to a stone and sinking like one.
‘If you hadn’t acted,’ he confirmed, ‘it would have been a fatality. And you knew that at the point when you decided to take the shuttle?’
‘Yes, of course, obviously, I could see that he would be drowned within sixty five seconds and given Carrearranian physiology, the depth and pressure of that water, significant brain damage would have occurred within two more minutes of that, with brain death as good as certain in five. Speed of response was critical. I was also aware, yes, of course, obviously, that your drone response would take six minutes to get to him from the moment you declared the emergency. No other option would have got to him in time, and I did consider several, including asking Shion to pilot in and drop a grab-line. None of those options was as quick as me going myself, though, so that’s what I did. And yes, I know, I have agreed not to override security protocols, but I did say at the time that I reserved the right to break that agreement in case of life or death emergencies and this was that so I’m not going to apologise.’
‘All right,’ Alex gave a little grin at this stern declaration. ‘So – diplomatic issues. You did not have permission from the Carrearranian people to enter their atmosphere.’
‘No, I didn’t,’ Silvie agreed. ‘But I feel – and felt – absolutely certain that if I did have the time to call everyone on the planet and ask me if they wanted me to save that lad’s life or leave him to drown, they’d have told me to get on with it. And you’ve confirmed that too, right?’
‘Well, the official mandate hasn’t yet been reached,’ Alex replied, ‘but the response so far is overwhelmingly positive. We have been asked, in fact, by everyone we’ve spoken to so far, to pass on their thanks and compliments to you.’
‘That’s nice of them,’ Silvie remarked. ‘But it was my pleasure, really.’
‘All right.’ Alex moved on to the next issue he knew would be critical for the authorities. ‘And are you, in your capacity as Ambassador for Quarus, claiming this as a first-footing contact on behalf of your people?’
‘What?’ Silvie was startled by that one. ‘No.’ She gave him a perplexed look. ‘I wasn’t being an ambassador; I was just fishing a guy out of the sea. And I didn’t land, anyway, so it hardly counts as first-footing, does it?’
Alex did not attempt to argue the niceties of that one.
‘We’ll record it as a non-diplomatic encounter, then.’
‘That makes it sound like I wasn’t very polite,’ said Silvie. ‘But okay.’ She took another bite of cookie. ‘Next!’
‘Quarantine issues,’ Alex said. ‘You did not decontaminate before you went and you did not wear a survival suit.’
‘I did not decontaminate before I went,’ she was mimicking officialdom, ‘because I did not have the time. I did not wear a survival suit because I can’t swim in them, at least not with any speed or dexterity, and I needed to be as quick and agile as possible. That is why I left the shuttle where I did, to give me a high-speed dive entry. If I’d been wearing a suit I’d just have gone splat on the surface and had to fight my way down; those suits float. And I wasn’t concerned about quarantine. I know that I am not carrying any pathogens – I have the same type of immune system as Davie, even tougher than the Carrearranians, actually near to impossible for us to even get sick. I’m fully up to date on my medical monitoring, too, so I knew when I set off that I was taking nothing harmful there. I did a burn entry into atmosphere in order to make perfectly sure that there was not so much as a microbe on the outside of the hull, and I ran a full-flush decontam in the shuttle, too, before I opened the outer hatch. Coming back, I knew that quarantine procedures here would confirm that everything was safe, both ways. It was all good, all fine, nothing to worry about. The only slight glitch,’ she looked reproachfully at him, ‘was when it turned out the shuttle didn’t have remote access for emergency gear, which I hadn’t checked before I jumped out, but really, I can’t think that’s my fault since it’s something they obviously should have. You need to look at that and give them an upgrade generally, Alex, they’re slow and basic, those shuttles, and they handle like bricks.’
‘Well, they’re not intended for search and rescue operations,’ Alex said, ‘and sending fighters into another world’s airspace, even for rescue work, is highly sensitive and not something I want to do if I can avoid it. In the light of what’s happened today, though, we’ll look into the possibility of upgrading a shuttle for ocean rescue duties, all right?’
Silvie looked satisfied. ‘Fair enough,’ she agreed. ‘And..?’
‘And,’ Alex grinned a little. ‘A sticky one,’ he advised her. ‘The way the Carrearranians behaved throughout that rescue was, well, unusual, and apparent too that they became very animated and emotional only after you’d got some distance from them. So were you affecting their state of mind, and if so, deliberately or not, and how?’
Silvie laughed with remembered pleasure.
‘That’s not a sticky,’ she said, a ‘sticky’ being a topic the Diplomatic Corps considered highly sensitive. ‘It’s simple. Yes, I was affecting their state of mind. I’ve seen officers here do it often enough, when they’re getting things under control in a crisis, the blast they give of I need you to be quiet and follow orders. I wasn’t, like, hypnotising them or doing any kind of …’ she wiggled her fingers mysteriously and made woo-woo noises, ‘mind control. It was simply that I did need them to be quiet and cooperative while we were sorting things out, I needed them to be that and they were. Call it,’ she grinned, ‘charismatic influence.’
Alex grinned back, but his expression was interested.
‘Carrearranians have a low esper index, though,’ he observed. ‘Don’t they?’
‘Oh yes – rock bottom, so muted they hardly broadcast at all. Which I have to tell you is a pleasure to be around, such lovely quiet people, even when they’re stressed it’s more of a hum than the shrieking I have to put up with from most humans. But as I expected, just because they don’t broadcast their own emotion
al state at any great esper volume doesn’t mean they’re not responsive to emotion in others. That’s actually very well developed – they compensate for a lack of esper output by communicating very well, expressing their feelings clearly and openly, much of it in the strong oral tradition which is at the heart of their culture. So just because they can’t sense that another person is upset, for instance, they can hear that they are and they have just the same emotional response to that as if they were picking it up through empathic sensitivity. So they receive well, even though they don’t broadcast. Those guys…’ she gestured vaguely in the direction of the planet, ‘understood that I needed them to be quiet so that we could get things sorted, and they did that for me just as if I’d asked them to out loud.’
This confirmed what the two young men had themselves described, in relating their experiences. It hadn’t been long after Silvie had left – seconds, in fact – before they’d remembered the comm that the almost-drowned one had on his wrist. They’d called home to the chief of their island, clamouring excitedly as they told him and their families about their amazing experience. One of them said that it was strange, that they knew Silvie wanted them to stay very quiet, that she didn’t want them to be frightened and only wanted to help. It had just felt, the other agreed, like the right thing to do, to stay quiet. Silvie had been wonderful, so kind.
Rather less flattering had been their description of their first encounter with an offworlder. She was not, they said, pretty. She was enormous, of course, they had expected that, but she was horribly thin, like she’d never had a good meal in her life, and her skin was the colour of fish-belly, like she’d never been in the sun. She was ugly, too, her face all sharp and pointy, her hair so rough and sticking up and that funny colour, not like proper hair at all.
Alex spared Silvie this commentary on her physical attributes, however.
‘All right – thank you,’ he said, and glancing at the screen he’d prepared with debriefing points, ‘I think that about covers it.’
‘You’re welcome,’ Silvie said, but looked across the table at where Tan was sitting. He’d remained silent, but had been paying close attention throughout, and she could see how he was feeling. ‘Go on, then,’ she said. ‘One question.’
Tan was bursting with things he wanted to ask, but he had learned at least some things during his ill-fated term as ambassador to Quarus. He drew a breath, focussing his thoughts and feelings, deciding what was the one thing he wanted to understand more than any other.
‘The way you carried out the rescue,’ he said. ‘There were so many things you could have done – bringing them up to the ship as casualties, dropping them over to an island, but you chose to help them fix their boat. And you did it with their tools and materials, too, though there were a lot of things to hand on the shuttle that would have done it quicker and better – a laser knife and plastape, for a start. I’d love to understand why you did it the way that you did.’
Silvie could see that was true, it was no idle curiosity but a real fascination with the thinking that had gone into that decision.
‘I didn’t take them away from their boat,’ she answered readily, ‘because a boat is a very high value item in their world and not abandoned unless absolutely necessary. It had a cargo, too, of gourds which other islands are waiting for and in need of. It was fixable, they didn’t need to come up to the ship and it was just the obvious thing to help them fix it. And I didn’t over-tech their boat for the same reason that I wouldn’t over-tech an aircar I found broken down on one of your worlds. I could, sure, strip it down and tech it up to be a super-car but doing stuff like that is rude. It’s insulting, basically saying that the vehicle is rubbish, and it’s showing off, flashing it, like, ‘See what I can do.’ Humans are sensitive about their vehicles, too, I’ve found – for most of them it’s the same as if you went into their homes and redecorated or changed the furniture. It might be upgraded, but they still think it’s arrogant and out of order for you to do that kind of thing without asking, and if that’s what they think, then it is. Anyway, it’s basic courtesy to help people out, not take over and sort people out. The only thing that did concern me a bit there was when I found that their supplies of water and food for the journey had been lost. I could have provided them with water and emergency rations from the shuttle but I really didn’t want to. For one,’ she ticked off on her fingers, a habit she’d acquired from Alex, ‘I know that sharing food and drink is very high on the first-contact scale and not something that either we or the Carrearranians are ready for yet. Two, I know that our drinking water will taste foul to them – it tastes foul to me and I’m used to it. These people drink from natural springs and they have connoisseurship about water in the same way you guys do about wine. The dead, flat, sterile and distilled stuff we drink on the ship would make them gag. Three, giving them our emergency food bars, which was the only food available on the shuttle, would not only be unpalatable and risk giving them stomach upsets, but would also introduce the first non-biodegradable packaging this world has ever known, and I did not want to be the person to introduce the Carrearranians to the wonderful world of plastic trash. I’d have had to try to figure something out if they needed food and water, but as it was they were able to manage without, so that dodged that bullet.’ She grinned at him amicably. ‘Happy with that?’
Tan beamed back at her. ‘Thank you.’ He knew that Silvie, like all the quarians he’d met, found it tiresome to have to explain themselves at the length and in the detail necessary for humans to understand them, and for Silvie, being pestered with questions would be a real irritation.
‘Pleasure,’ Silvie said, and looked back to Alex, a question on her face. ‘So?’
He grinned at her. ‘Come off it,’ he said. ‘You know you saved a life today and you know how grateful I am for the initiative, courage and generosity with which you did it. So…’ he held out his hand to her. ‘Thank you, Silvie. You’re wonderful, what would we have done without you?’
Silvie preened like a kitten basking in sunshine, but the sparkle in her eyes was one of mischief.
‘Well, body retrieval, obviously,’ she said, and as people cracked up laughing at that around the ship, she gripped Alex’s hand and shared a happy moment. Then she giggled.
‘So – how mad is he?’ she asked, and as Alex sat back from the handshake he considered, then gave a judicious show of seven fingers.
Silvie sniggered. ‘He is such a fusspot,’ she said, at which Alex, with due consideration, extended another finger and made the score eight. ‘Okay…’ Silvie laughed, understanding that this meant that Davie North was watching and that her comment would not have done anything for his emotional state. ‘I’ll give him an hour,’ Silvie promised, ‘then I’ll make peace.’
‘Thanks.’ Alex said, and meant it. Davie North loved Silvie too – very much. She was the closest thing to a sister he had, though she preferred ‘cousin’, herself, that being how close their genetic relationship was. They were, the two of them, the only living members of their genome, neither fully human nor fully quarian but meeting somewhere between. Silvie loved him too, and their relationship was very much like those of siblings.
Unfortunately, it was a sibling relationship of the quarrelsome kind. Davie blasted esper output at a volume and tangle of multi-cognitive complexity that was nerve-jangling for Silvie to be around, and she drove him nuts with her crazy, reckless unpredictability. The security lockout issue was a particular irritant. At one point when she had been travelling with him on the Stepeasy there’d been a difference of opinion about the direction that the ship would take. Silvie had overridden the security systems and locked him out of the controls of his own ship. He’d had to figure out how she’d done it and get the controls back, locking her out, only to find a few minutes later that she’d done it again and the ship had just changed course back to where she wanted to go. For a while there they’d been counter-hacking the Stepeasy like kids bickering over a toy, and it h
ad been Davie in the end who gave up and let her have her own way. Now she’d gone and done it again, on the Heron this time, after promising faithfully that she’d never override the warship systems. It had taken Davie himself considerable effort to find out what she’d done and take out the locks which were preventing the Heron gaining remote access control to their shuttle. He was furious with Silvie for that, and for risking her life in that edge-of-catastrophe descent. He was, without a doubt, feeling far more inclined to give her a whole series of hypersonic fleas in her ear than to give her a cookie. The fact that she would just giggle, pat him on the arm and tell him not to be silly would not help one little bit.
Alex, as close friend to one and a kind of foster-father to the other, did his best to keep the peace between them. Even the fact that Silvie could see that he was concerned about Davie would help. ‘And I believe,’ he said, with a delicate note, ‘that Shion would quite like a word about your piloting technique.’
‘Oh.’ Silvie didn’t snigger at that, but looked at him with slightly comical trepidation. If Alex was her emotional foster-father, Shion stood in the role of Mum – carer, guide, educator and role model. Shion, too, could have made that dash groundside; could have made it a great deal faster and smoother in Firefly than in the shuttle, and with just an air-mask, too, could have swum down to the rescue of the drowning sailor. Shion hadn’t done so because she was a Fourth’s officer and complied with the chain of command even if she didn’t always like it. Shion might be prepared to concede that in this case Silvie had been justified in breaking bounds, but the way that Silvie had treated the shuttle would be gone into in detail and with considerable feeling. Shion adored her fighters, but she felt even about the humble shuttles the way most people felt about pets. ‘Where can I hide?’ Silvie asked, half joking.
‘Nowhere in this galaxy,’ said Alex, and grinned.