by Bill Nolan
Robert said, “A moment ago you requested permission to ask a question. That permission was denied, and yet you have asked a question anyway. I warn you now, don’t do it again. I am a Tocal, which in this instance is something like a judge. Do you agree that I may decide or don’t you? If you don’t, you must pick a different Tocal to decide. If you don’t know any, a list will be provided.”
Maria was very careful not to ask any questions. “If I am wrong, please correct me. I won’t know any of the names on the list. I don’t even know what will be decided, but whatever it is, I guess you may as well decide.”
“Good, your answer has been recorded. That concludes the formal portion of our talk. You can ask questions now, if you still want to.”
Maria took a deep breath. “Where am I? What kind of a jail is this?”
“It isn’t a jail,” Robert answered. “It is a room in a To’Ach’an warship named Shanna. You brought a firearm into a restaurant on Earth and attempted to rob the place. The firearm discharged, and the bullet severely injured one of our people. She nearly died. Our law specifies that we have jurisdiction to decide this issue. As Tocal, I will now determine who, if anyone, is responsible, and what punishment is warranted."
Maria’s voice started to thicken. “The person who was shot, how is she? Will she be OK? My God, I’m so sorry. She’ll be OK, won’t she?” She tried to go on, but couldn’t. The tears were flowing freely now. Robert looked at the wall behind her. Podara was on the screen, and she signed that Maria wasn’t acting, and for Robert to meet her outside. Robert ignored her.
Maria was crying like a child whose dog had just died. Robert could sense the desolation she was feeling. His instincts said to hold her, like he would any hurt child, and he was a man who ran on instinct much of the time. He scooped her up and hugged her tight, and she cried for a long time. After a few moments, Podara came into the room and joined the hug. She was speaking soft, comforting words in a language Maria had never heard before, but Maria could feel the warmth flowing between them. Somehow, Podara was soaking up much of the hurt and fear. Maria could feel it dissipating from her, although she didn’t know how.
When she had been calmed enough, Robert spoke. “OK, Maria, tell us everything. Start at the beginning.” Maria knew what he meant. She told them about leaving home, and why, and everything that had happened since. It was a long story. When she was done, Robert said, “OK, I have talked to the others involved, and also the witnesses, so now I will decide. It should be fairly soon.”
The remaining emotion had washed out of Maria as she told her story. Now that she was done, she felt completely calm, completely at peace for the first time since long before she had left home. She didn’t know that Podara had done much of this. She looked up at Robert, who had stood to leave. “What will happen to me?”
“It’s too soon to say. If I determine you are responsible, your punishment can be anything I decide, including death.”
“Thank you,” Maria answered. “Also, I would like to apologize to the person I shot. May I do that?”
Robert brushed her hair back from her face. “I’ll ask her. It’s up to her.”
About five minutes after Robert and Podara left, Shanna told Maria she had a call, and asked if she wanted to take it. When Maria agreed, a screen lit up, and Maria saw a girl who looked about 17. She said, “Hi, I’m Letha. Robert said you wanted to talk to me. I’m the one you shot.”
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to shoot you. In fact, I didn’t even know anyone had been hurt until they told me. Please forgive me.”
Letha told Maria she wasn’t angry about it, and knew it hadn’t been on purpose. The two girls had been talking for quite a while when Shanna told Maria that Robert wanted to see her. With Shanna’s guidance, Maria made her way to Robert’s office. It was some distance, and the walk, through many areas with people in them, was trying, since Maria was wearing nothing but skin. Shanna assured her that nudity wasn’t a taboo among the To’Ach’an.
When she got to Robert’s office, there was another person in the room. She had yellow eyes, which Maria hadn’t seen before, at least not on a person. Robert told her his decision was ready.
“Well, Maria, since you entered the restaurant with the gun and tried to rob the place, you bear responsibility. This is true even though harming someone was not your intent. However, you were not acting with free will. Your experiences of being kidnapped, forced into prostitution, and being frequently beaten had caused you to act in ways outside your nature. Therefore, I am fining you 400 zarigs, which you must pay immediately. If you don’t have it, I will loan it to you in exchange for a standard contract.”
It took a bit of explaining, but eventually Maria understood what was happening and agreed. Then Robert said, “Of course, the major responsibility lies with Jake, your pimp. His actions, which he took freely, caused one of our Tovena to be shot. Accordingly, I have decided that he will die. My friend, Kysandra, will handle the execution. She has some questions for you.”
Kysandra smiled at her. “Hi, Maria. I mainly need to know everything you can tell me about where to find Jake, floor plans of the buildings where he may be, weapons and friends that are likely to be handy, stuff like that. Let’s go get something cold to drink and some dinner while we talk.”
About three hours later, Kysandra walked up to a house in Glendale, AZ. When a woman answered the door, Ky said she needed to see Jake. “I have a message for him from Maria.”
The woman told Ky to come in, and when Kysandra came into the little house, she was in the living room. There were four women and three men in the room. One man fit the description Maria had given her of Jake.
He stood up and came over. “So, Maria has a message for me? Where is that bitch? I’m going to beat her bad when I find her.”
Nobody in the room saw Ky move, but suddenly she was holding what could only be a weapon, and it was pointed at Jake. “Jake,” she said, “I have bad news for you. Maria was so scared you would beat her if she didn’t bring back enough money that she tried to rob a restaurant. One of our people was shot, and almost died.”
“In our society, cases like this are decided by a person having the title of Tocal. The Tocal decided you were the main cause of what happened.”
Jake laughed. “So, are you here to arrest me? All by yourself?”
“No,” Kysandra said. Then she smiled. “It’s already been decided by the Tocal, like I said. He decided you should die. That’s why he sent me.”
Jake started to say something, but Ky shot him in the abdomen. The pellet gun had been set to a low charge, so the explosion right after it hit didn’t spray pieces around the room. It did do a lot more damage to internal organs than Earth medicine could possibly fix.
Jake went down, but he remained conscious. Kysandra took two steps and stood over him to deliver the message. “Maria said to tell you she’s glad you’re dead.” Then she shot him again, in the head this time.
The other two men in the room finally reacted. One jumped up, and the other grabbed for a gun from the end table. Ky shot the first in the ankle, and the second in the wrist, and then turned and left. Ten minutes later she was in Robert’s office in Shanna making her report.
* * * * * * * *
In six months, Earth was a mess. The Empire had arrived in force, and that was a good thing. Earth’s economy was in collapse, and millions, perhaps billions, of people were in real trouble. For a change, the biggest impact happened in developed countries. The US was a perfect example. Just as Secretary Anderson had predicted, the effect of the To’Ach’an products was profound.
Telephone companies had lost most of their long distance, and at least a third of subscribers had dropped their local service as well. Cell phone companies were history, having lost most subscribers already. The only cell phone customers left were the ones waiting for their contract to expire, and all of them had switched to a minimum plan. On the new phones, under a sliding cover, was a data por
t that could be connected to most computers using a standard USB cable, and it was faster than a T3 connection. The orbiting stations could handle the data traffic with no problem, and the Internet was already about 60% wireless.
Electrical demand on the traditional grid was down over 35%, and falling at about 8% per month. The companies that made electric furnaces, electric water heaters, and heat pumps couldn’t begin to keep up with demand. Suddenly, an all-electric home meant a home with no utility bills at all.
Transportation was still in transition, but the writing was on the wall. Need to go to Australia? Lots of folks had set up an instant business as a “super cab.” If you had one of the new phones, you just asked for one of the cabs, or went out on the Internet and found somebody there. They would pick you up at your house and drop you at your destination in Australia for $100 per person. Multiple passengers got a discount. Inside the US, it was never more than $50.
Of course, odds are you knew somebody who would be glad to drop you off for free. Airline tickets were off 80%, and gas sales were down 70%. A lot of people sold their cars and just used the aircars. Of course, within three or four months, almost nobody would buy a car. Parking was never a problem. Your aircar would just go hover somewhere, and when you wanted it, you called it on your phone. Cities had rapidly set aside areas for the aircars to drop off and pick up their passengers.
The aircars stayed subsonic in the atmosphere. This meant that the fastest way to get someplace over 100 miles away was straight up. The aircar would rise straight up until it reached space, which took about 10 minutes. Most people hadn’t known that space was so close. The atmosphere is only about 50 miles thick. Of course, it has no real edge. It just keeps getting thinner and thinner, but at 50 miles you are above almost all of it.
In space, the aircars could move at their normal cruising speed, which was about 5000 miles per second. At that rate, they could be over any spot on Earth in less than three seconds. Once over their destination, they would settle straight down through the atmosphere, again taking about 10 minutes. This created the odd situation where it took just as long to reach a place 150 miles from your starting point as it did to travel halfway around the Earth. If you lived in Washington, DC, you could have dinner in New York or Bombay, and the travel time was the same, about 20 minutes.
Many single people and couples decided to just live in their aircar. It was small, but adequate for two people, and had a small bath and kitchen. With a little furniture, it was perfect for one person and quite livable for a couple. Parking wasn’t a problem. The aircars were just as happy to hover over the ocean, or out in space somewhere, and then drop you anywhere you needed to go. This option was great for students, and worked fine for anyone not needing much space. Once you bought the aircar, your only living expenses were food and clothing.
The aircars could fly just fine with every cubic inch of space loaded. They held as much as a truck and an aircar could make a couple of cross-country trips a day, even counting loading and unloading time. Plus, there was no fuel expense, no maintenance, no insurance, and no licenses. Oil consumption in the US was down over 50%, and falling like a rock.
The trouble was, if you worked at an auto company, an airline, a phone company, an electric company, a business serving highway travelers, or lots of other places, you were probably out of work. Unemployment in the US was at 35% and rising rapidly.
Some industries were booming. If you were a farmer, all you had to do was switch to growing the plants wanted for export, and you were doing fine. The higher end hotel industry was booming. Even though people could travel somewhere and just stay in their aircar, many opted to stay in nice hotels. Since a lot more people were traveling, these hotels were booked solid. Cheap hotels were often not as nice as the aircar, and so those weren’t doing so well.
Some furniture makers began producing furniture designed to work well in the small, round spaces of an aircar, while carpet companies began producing area rugs exactly sized and fitted for the cars. Enterprising furniture galleries set up mockups of the aircar interiors, showing them fully furnished and decorated. Ikea had about a dozen styles set up, at various price levels, and they even had people right there to set everything up in the aircar for you.
A couple of authors did very well with cookbooks specifically designed for the tiny galleys on aircars. Another author put together a guide to farmer’s markets all over the world, with locations, seasons, days and hours of operations, and a wealth of other information. It was an instant best seller, as was a guide to antique shops around the world.
The Empire stepped in with huge subsidy and retraining programs. If you were out of work, they would pay you while you went to school to learn what you needed to know to be able to start over in a new career. They were also training teachers to fill the huge demand for people who could teach courses about the Empire, Galactic history, and dozens of other subjects. Colleges were scrambling to offer new majors in subjects that hadn’t existed a year ago, but there was almost nobody available yet to teach the new courses.
In short, everything was changing. It made the industrial and computer revolutions seem like minor gusts compared to a hurricane. Even with all of the economic problems, though, the cultural misunderstandings were worse. The French confrontation was the perfect example.
Perhaps if the To’Ach’an had looked more alien, the French would have realized that they were not the same as humans of Earth. They really weren’t the same. They were an alien race, as different in many ways as a race could be. They happened to look like Earth humans, and they were even cross-fertile, but they just didn’t think the same way as Earth humans. Their values were so completely different that sometimes there was no middle ground for understanding.
Cultural Conflicts
Laura Taylor was an Earth woman, and had been an American until she went to work with the To’Ach’an. Now she was Tovena. She was in France setting up dealers to sell the aircars when she was confronted by French police asking for either a "carte de sejour salarié" or a “Detache” (the local equivalents of a green card). She told the police that she was Tovena and they had no right to bother her, and then she turned to walk away, as she had been taught. One of the police grabbed her arm, and she slapped him. It was a reflex. His partner nightsticked her, and she was taken into custody.
She was charged with assaulting a police officer, and the French promptly moved her to a hidden location, since they were fearful of a rescue attempt. The French government wanted to make a point about To’Ach’an immunity to their laws, and they had picked Laura to be the example. The To’Ach’an had not, of course, applied for diplomatic immunity for their people. Since they obeyed no laws but their own, they certainly weren’t about to apply to another government for a dispensation that they considered their absolute right.
Robert asked Leida to handle it. To the To’Ach’an, that meant that she had complete autonomy. Unlike many Earth based organizations, the To’Ach’an value initiative and the ability to make independent decisions and accept responsibility. Once this problem was handed off to Leida, Robert was no longer involved.
Leida and her team went to meet with the French government. The French had them meet with a low level diplomat named Jean Monier. Leida ignored the insult and explained to him that Laura wasn’t subject to French law. She demanded Laura’s return, and warned that there would be serious consequences if Laura were not immediately released. The government representative refused. He also mentioned that she had been moved to a secret location, so rescue was impossible.
Leida pointed out that the To’Ach’an considered this to be an act of war, and would respond in kind. He acted amused. Leida smiled back at the man, and said. “I warn you for a second time. You have made war on the To’Ach’an, and the consequences will be severe. You find this all to be a joke? Too bad.”
“Of course not,” Jean replied. “I’m sure we will be able to find some way to compromise on this issue. Let’s meet again t
omorrow, and, in the meantime, perhaps your government will reconsider your contempt for our laws. We ask for nothing but respect, and, after all, the process has barely begun. We have not even received a note of protest from you yet.” It was obvious that he thought he was handling the first stages of a protracted negotiation.
Leida stared openly at the diplomat for several seconds, and then shook her head slowly from side to side. “I see I have been wasting my time. You may tell your government that I will not meet with you again tomorrow, or any other day. I will not send any notes. There is no ‘process,’ as you call it. I came today to give you our warning, and I now repeat that warning for a third time. If Laura Taylor is not released immediately, there will be war between my people and yours.” A To’Ach’an tradition (not a law) was to give enemies three warnings when possible. Leida’s formal counting of the warnings as she delivered them would have been very meaningful to someone who knew them better. In this case, the significance of the three carefully counted warnings was completely lost on the Frenchman.
Leida started toward the door, and then stopped. She turned to face the man, who still looked amused. “I am afraid that you still do not comprehend my meaning, so let me try one more time to be very clear. We will not be meeting again. There will be no note. We will lodge no protests. There will be no process. You have a very short time to release the woman we have sworn to protect, and then we will make war. When next we come to visit you, it will be to rain death and destruction upon you. This will happen soon, within a few minutes or hours. We can totally destroy your country, and we have the capacity to kill every one of your people. If necessary, we will do both. I give you my promise.”