The one consolation Davie had – and it was a very small consolation – was that the Diplomatic Corps had the publicity situation in hand. They had used their favoured method of dealing with this, a procedure they called ‘proactive subversion.’ That meant that they had given all media stations full permission to broadcast K’Pah’s spectacular dash across the system and landing in Capitol Square, including her declaration that she was an alien ambassador and the request ‘Take me to your leader.’ They had put no embargo on them broadcasting reports and footage from her odyssey around the system, either.
The subversion part of this, of course, was that when the Diplomatic Corps or any other authority was asked for their response to the story that there was an alien ambassador wreaking havoc in the capital, they would just smile, or sigh, and point out that the whole idea was just absurd. Asked what was really going on, then, they would shrug and say ‘no idea’, though suggestions were being leaked through appropriate outlets.
The one which gained the most ground in the media debate was that the whole thing was a realism movie being shot real time with characters interacting with ordinary members of the public. That flight across the system could only have been carried out by a stunt pilot, after all, and the way the ‘alien’ was acting weird in a number of high profile locations made it look very much like the basis for a movie. It was probably, the media said, being filmed by micro-cameras within their costumes. Within minutes, investigative journalists had unearthed the ‘fact’ that the relevant authorities had indeed issued all the necessary permits for a stunt-flight through the system, a landing in Capitol Square and commercial filming for a movie. They hadn’t announced it at the particular request of the movie makers because they wanted reaction to be genuine, with people having no idea that they were taking part in a film.
Within a few more minutes, the movie makers themselves had been identified – Moon Productions, a company based on nearby Sharfur. If members of the media recognised that as a company they knew very well produced material for the Diplomatic Corps on exodiplomacy issues, they made no comment on it, at least on air. For the public, at least, the matter was satisfactorily explained.
‘Good work, guys,’ said Davie, well aware of the tremendous, very rapid efforts that the Diplomatic Corps had to have made in order to create that story and all the necessary backup of paperwork and people primed to give interviews. Nobody would consider this at all important, now – in fact, it would drop off the live news feeds entirely within a few hours.
First Contact, anyway, would not take it the slightest bit seriously. The League’s biggest ‘alien believers’ society had a big membership on Chartsey, possibly because Solarans visited there so often that unusually high numbers of people had become aware of them, or possibly just because they were more cosmopolitan than other populations in the League. They were, anyway, a force to be reckoned with on Chartsey, far more so than the tiny nutter group First Contact often was on other worlds. When their spokesperson was asked for a response to the story, their reaction did more to kill it than any amount of official statements.
‘Oh, please!’ the earnest young man said, with a derisory sigh. ‘It’s pathetic!’ he said. ‘As if any alien is actually going to land outside the Senate! And ‘Take me to your leader?’ My God! It’s going to be a lousy movie, I can tell you that.’ Then, clearly mounting his hobby horse, ‘and the thing is ridiculous pranks like this undermine the real, serious search for the truth about actual alien visitations, which are…’
He was off, with that, prepared to talk for as long as the journalists would let him, unwittingly helping to ensure that nobody would believe that Silvie really was an alien.
Anyway the publicity situation, at least, was under control, which was one less thing for Davie to worry about. That still left him a great deal to worry about, though. Chief amongst his anxieties was for K’pah’s own safety. She’d already narrowly avoided being punched by a man she’d advised really needed to get some help for his anger and violence issues. Another man had been dragged away hastily by the police after K’pah recoiled in revulsion and told him that his interest in small children was utterly repellent. She was fast enough to dodge any blow, of course, but Davie couldn’t help thinking of her as a vulnerable child wandering blithely through the urban jungle.
At the same time, paradoxically, he had to be concerned about what she might do to that urban jungle, and not merely in the emotional scenes she was creating wherever she went. Those were small scale, after all, rarely more than twenty or thirty people involved, and were covered sufficiently by both the authorities on scene and the ‘movie’ excuse.
After the Incident with traffic control, however, it became apparent that her impact might be far more significant. Davie would never forget that moment, the sick hollow feeling in his stomach as he realised just how far her disregard for rules could take the quarian.
It happened so fast – she had taken a shuttle from the spaceport, perfectly legitimately since they were taxi-shuttles available for any suitably qualified pilot to use. She had even agreed that she would stick to system flight regulations, as the barrage of requests from other authorities and Davie’s own feelings on the matter had convinced her that free piloting within system limits really did upset humans, however silly that was.
In the event, though, someone at Traffic Control tried to hold up her shuttle in a well-meaning attempt to let Davie catch up with her, which K’pah realised at once. So she accessed traffic control to override the traffic signals. But then, noticing that the system was not working as efficiently as it might, she occupied herself for several seconds in running a complete sweep and reprogram. In all, more than eighteen thousand traffic satellites had their timings re-set. Seeing this on their control screens, Traffic Control started screaming – literally, as the controller in charge gave a shriek of pure horror.
It took even Davie a few seconds to understand that the quarian ambassador had just reprogrammed the capital’s system traffic network. It was just a casual matter, to her, no doubt meaning no more than to be helpful. But she had just taken over vital system infrastructure and it would be some time even before they even understood what she had done. Suppose she took it into her head to take a look at their defence systems?
‘Please, please!’ For the first time in his adult life, Davie felt himself close to tears. He’d set out on this mission with such joy and excitement and it was just a disaster. ‘You have to stop! I’m serious!’ At the same time, he was messaging Traffic Control and asking them to give him system access - I can find out what she did and put it right. This offer, however, was being rejected with high pitched hysteria. Traffic didn’t know that Davie North was genetically engineered, and even if they had, that would not have made them more inclined to allow him access to their system. ‘Please, this is getting really dangerous now!’
‘Nag, nag, nag!’ said K’pah, gliding her shuttle through the lanes at a sedate system limit. Davie, with an SDF escort, was coming up behind her much faster. He would be alongside her in nine seconds. Quite what he would do then even Davie wasn’t sure. If she refused to allow him to dock with her shuttle and started pulling evasive manoeuvres things could get dangerous very fast, not for them but for the streams of traffic all around. All he could do, really, was go with her and try to get to her before she slipped away again.
She was heading for another tourist venue – a domed park on the moon of one of the outer worlds, of which the central feature was an ice volcano. It had been on her wish list, along with a submarine ride into the black depths of the ocean buried under a surface crust of kilometres of ice. They had been scheduled to take that trip in three days, but K’Pah had evidently decided not to wait. Given the relatively small scale of the park and the nature of its domed, enclosed environment, Davie felt confident that he could catch her this time. And he had no doubt what he was going to do when he did.
Part of the problem, as he understood, was that she jus
t couldn’t see how worried he really was while they were talking on comms. No matter how fervent he made his words, tone and expression, she was missing the vital element of emotional awareness that quarians relied on, so she couldn’t even really tell if he was being serious or not. He had every intention of hitting her with the full blast of his feelings once he caught up with her. If necessary he would take her hand, too, so that physical contact would magnify her awareness and leave her in no doubt as to how upset he was. He knew that such emotional impact might well be regarded by quarians as a kind of empathic assault, but he was getting desperate by then.
And then, just as he felt he really was within fingertip reach of her, he was ordered to pull back. There was only one person with the authority to issue such an order – President Tyborne himself, who was also getting desperate and had decided on a change of plan.
‘Your chasing her is just making her run away,’ he said. ‘So disengage – I want you here, Mr North – ASAP.’
A protest rose in Davie, but was not uttered. He considered Marc Tyborne to be a pompous, rather stupid man who’d ended up the President of the League chiefly because he possessed the knack of getting other people to make him look good. Whatever his personal opinion might be, though, Marc Tyborne was the duly elected president and Davie was bound to obey his orders. That went far beyond his commitment as a duly sworn Ambassador, too, it was a matter of bedrock principle, upholding the democratic process enshrined in the Constitution. Marc Tyborne’s tone made it clear that he did not expect any debate about it.
‘Mr President,’ Davie acknowledged, and dutifully turned his shuttle away.
Four
Marc Tyborne received him a few minutes later. The President was aboard the Affinity station, officially a VIP hospitality venue providing accommodation for visiting system presidents and the like, but actually an exodiplomacy facility. It was here that the Solarans had their embassy, with their official diplomatic team in residence as well as any visitors who were just here to see the sights. Until just a few days before it had also housed the delegates from Samart, the first of their people to visit League space. They were not, technically, aliens, since their world lay within the Firewall that defined human space and their DNA had turned out to lie within the range defined as human by the Homo Sapiens Identification Act. It was, however, very much a first contact situation and their visit had been so secret that even spacers hadn’t found out about it yet. The exosuites, however, were in a self-contained section of the station, well away from the presidential suite where Davie was ushered into the Presence.
Marc Tyborne was looking harassed. He was a big man, running to fat, with a mannerism of constant restless movement which fooled many people into thinking that he was a very active, positive leader, striding about flinging commands at a gaggle of hurrying staff. Famously, he rarely sat in the Big Chair even in meetings, but would pace up and down the office. Today, he was storming around this office with the manner of a frustrated bear. There were seventeen other people in the room, the highest ranking representatives of many organisations, each of whom was holding a comp and wearing headsets, passing on reports to the president and giving orders to their subordinates.
Davie fully expected to walk into a thunder of presidential wrath. It would not be unreasonable, he felt, for the president to express his concern at the way this visit was going, or to hold Davie responsible for it. He was, after all, responsible for it.
Rather surprisingly, though, the president greeted him with a look of relief and welcome.
‘Ah – Mr North!’ he strode over to shake Davie’s hand and gestured him into the room, ordering, ‘Tea for the ambassador.’
A well laden tea trolley was produced and Davie sat down in the deep armchair the president had indicated. Someone, he recognised, had informed the president that he needed to have something to eat. It had been more than three hours since he’d eaten, after all, and that was a long time for him to go without food. His physiology required a frequent intake of nutrient, or his blood sugar levels could drop very fast. He already knew that his blood sugar was low, in fact, from the feeling of exhaustion that was creeping over him.. K’pah would be fine, she was eating everywhere she went, causing panic in the medical team as they saw her consuming junk and street food with no notion of its contents. Quarians did have an immune system, and they’d given her some implants to boost it for her visit into human space, but the medical team were still anxious about toxicity and bacterial infection.
Davie reached for a plate of savouries. He did, he realised, need to eat. And it was actually rather comforting to realise that somebody had been looking out for his welfare in all this. The President, waving him on to eat, was still talking.
‘The feeling is that if we calm things down we may be able to get her to come to us,’ he explained.
It was, Davie conceded, a viable strategy – and a fair point, too, that it had been his own pursuit of her which had caused K’Pah to be bouncing around the system as she had. Without him chasing her on, the situation might well, even should, calm down. And he recognised too that their timing was well chosen. The Ice Park she was now arriving at was a relatively small, contained situation. They had people on site prepared to run interference in whatever Incidents might arise, and she was certainly a good deal safer there than she might be exploring some of the rougher areas of Chartsey. If they allowed her to enjoy her visit there, it was reasonable to hope that she might then be prepared to join them.
‘We’ll give it a few minutes – let things settle,’ the President decreed, and it was apparent to Davie that he was following a pre-agreed plan.
‘I am,’ Davie said quietly, ‘very sorry about all this, Mr President. If you want me to step aside…’
‘No, no!’ Marc Tyborne actually looked alarmed at the suggestion, and he was not the only one, as Davie saw a frisson of panic flit around the room. ‘You’re doing the best you can; we know that, which means the best that’s humanly possible, beyond humanly possible. If it hadn’t been for you holding things together and doing some very fast interventions – and I won’t even ask how you did some of them – we’d be in one heck of a lot bigger mess than we are, that’s for sure. And I’m speaking for all of us,’ he gestured at the chiefs of staff, some of whom gave supportive smiles while a few looked awkward. ‘When some of them,’ his gaze rested betrayingly on General Udson, the army chief, ‘started griping about what you were doing, I asked if anyone felt they were up to taking over from you.’ He gave a smile of grim satisfaction. ‘Strangely, it got very quiet at that point.’ He gave the general another scathing glance and then spread out his hands in a helpless gesture at Davie. ‘Frankly, after the reports we had from Serenity and from on your ship we knew it might go pear shaped, and we know that if you can’t handle it, nobody can. Though actually,’ he was still striding up and down the office, and turned at that point to give Davie a grin which was just a little malicious, ‘I have to say that it’s quite something to see that you are as human as the rest of us, at least in some respects.’
There was so much that was offensive about that that Davie could have made a list. But he just let it go. He had noticed a few little smiles amongst the chiefs of staff, and was coming to a realisation.
He was never, ever going to live this down. Once the drama was over and people relaxed they would start to laugh about it, as people did, and one of the things they would be laughing about, for sure, was the way that Davie himself had pursued the quarian ambassador for the better part of three increasingly desperate hours. He might even laugh about it himself once it was over. But in any reckoning of the casualties of this visit, his dignity had certainly been shot to hell.
He ate a few cream buns by way of consolation, and found that he was feeling better. They still had confidence in him, which meant that he was still doing what he had been born and brought up for – serving the League and doing his best to represent them in exodiplomacy. Nobody had ever said that w
as going to be easy.
So, he finished off the buns and got back to work, calling K’pah and showing her that he was in the presidential office on Affinity Station.
‘It would be very much appreciated,’ he said, ‘if you could come and do the diplomatic bit, you know, meeting the president, once you’re done there?’
K’pah grinned impishly. ‘I’m going for a swim first.’ She informed him.
‘Okay – no problem,’ said Davie, though it was, of course. They were trying to coax her in, here, and putting pressure on her would only be counterproductive. They had already made plans for all the areas she’d said she might want to swim, and they were already on full alert, too, as with every other venue on her wish list and everywhere else they could think of that she might want to go.
Fortunately, the next half hour passed off quite well. There was only one little Incident at the Ice Park, when K’pah commented warmly on how lovely it was to see people honestly and deeply in love.
‘So unusual for humans,’ she observed, leaving the couple embarrassed, bewildered and concerned for her mental health.
Other than that, and the minor glitch of the submarine ride, there were no problems. She had a sub to herself – the authorities on scene had made sure of that – and it was supposed to go for a half hour trip down to the bottom of the ice-covered ocean. It was hard to see how anyone could really find this exciting. It was absolutely pitch dark and totally lifeless, so all you could see was water illuminated by the sub’s lights, and then at the bottom some more ice and a crevasse which had been fitted up with a lot of lighting effects to make it ‘spectacular’. In-cruise entertainment was provided by a super-dramatic voiceover which included quoting poetry.
New Title 2 Page 9