She sighed, inwardly. It hadn't been easy for her to accept that the Tadpoles accepted an infant mortality rate that would have horrified humanity, if the positions had been reversed. In the past, maybe, child mortality had been terrifyingly high, but modern medicine had ensured that children almost always survived long enough to reach adulthood. The Tadpoles, on the other hand, could have saved their children, they just didn't care to try. It had led to some uncomfortable discussions before the whole subject had been declared verboten.
Grace sat down on the uncomfortable chair. “We shouldn't be giving them any more help until they abandon the idea of human sacrifice,” she said. “Or killing people, or keeping slaves ...”
Joelle met her eyes. “Do you want to drive them to another interstellar power?”
“We can't encourage them to kill their own people,” Grace protested.
“I was unaware they needed encouragement,” Joelle said. She allowed her voice to soften, slightly. “They will change, given time and technology. Slavery will no longer be economical when their technology reaches the point where it can replace the slaves.”
“They’re holding billions in bondage,” Grace flared, “and you’re talking about economics?”
“I rather doubt they’re holding billions in bondage,” Joelle said, coolly. The most optimistic assessment of the planet’s population was just below a billion, although the researchers had hastened to clarify that it was largely guesswork. Some parts of the planet seemed less developed than others, less capable of supporting large populations. “And yes, that’s the way they work.”
She sighed, feeling a flicker of sympathy for her aide. Grace had been born in an era where Britain and the other Great Powers had no need to coddle the smaller nations, not when there was nothing the Great Powers wanted or needed from them. There was no need to pay lip service to human rights on one hand and turn a blind eye to gross abuses on the other. To her, having to compromise her principles to get what she wanted was something of purely academic interest. Joelle, who’d spent time negotiating with the Tadpoles, knew she needed a more pragmatic view of the universe.
“Tell me something,” she said. “Where were you during the bombardment?”
“The University of Britannia,” Grace said, puzzled. “Why?”
Joelle nodded. That made sense. Britannia had never been attacked during the war, despite housing one of the largest shipbuilding complexes outside Sol itself. Grace would not have known real danger, or the long-term chaos inflicted by the bombardment. She would never have had to fight to survive, or crouch in a refugee camp and pray the guards didn't decide to turn nasty. It had given her a decidedly naive view of the world.
“There’s nothing we can do,” she said, flatly. “We need to work with the aliens, the ones who have allied with us, to maintain a presence on the surface. And if that means tolerating their ... barbarities, it means tolerating their barbarities.”
Grace shook her head. “The public wouldn't stand for it.”
“The public has stood for a great deal in the past,” Joelle said, darkly. “I don’t think there were ever protests when we hammered some little state in the Middle East for daring to raid our shipping. Nor did anyone complain when refugee boats were sunk in the channel after the bombardment, or when we had to send military units to Ireland to assist what remained of the Irish Government.”
“But this is different,” Grace insisted. “These aren't humans.”
“I doubt it will matter,” Joelle said. She had a suspicion the media would make a great deal of hay out of it, but no one would really care. “There’s very little we can do about it without fatally compromising our position here.”
Grace looked stubborn. “I want to file a Memorandum of Disagreement,” she said. “This isn't going to reflect well on us.”
Joelle lifted her eyebrows. “Do you know,” she asked lightly, “what that could do to your career?”
“Yes,” Grace said.
“You would have disagreed, publically, with your superior,” Joelle said, anyway. “There would be questions, when we got home, and if they disagreed with you your career would be at an end. And most of the Mandarins in the Foreign Office are ruthlessly pragmatic. I can guarantee they would disagree with you.”
She paused. “I can forget I ever heard that, if you like,” she added. “You wouldn't need to mention it again.”
“I have to,” Grace said. “This is wrong.”
Joelle silently gave her points for idealism, then deducted them for naivety. Grace’s career would not survive a Memorandum of Disagreement, not unless there were strong reasons for their mutual superiors to back Grace over Joelle. The hell of it was that Joelle could even admire Grace’s willingness to gamble with her career, but she knew, all too well, that there was nothing they could do. Perhaps, she wondered privately, some of her predecessors from before the Age of Unrest had felt the same, as they were forced to watch helplessly while their hosts made a joke of human rights.
We need to keep our alien allies, she thought, grimly. And that means we cannot reprimand them like children.
“If you are insistent on filing a Memorandum of Disagreement, you may do so and it will be carried home on the next ship to leave Vesy,” Joelle said. She wouldn't check to see if Grace had actually done so, she told herself. It would give Grace a chance for second thoughts. “I won’t try to stop you.”
“Thank you, Ambassador,” Grace said.
Joelle held up a hand. “Don’t thank me yet,” she said. She allowed her voice to darken as she held Grace’s gaze. “However, I will not tolerate you attempting to disrupt our relationship with our alien friends. You are not to lecture them, you are not to step away from the official script and you are not to do anything that might suggest we will make poor allies. If you do anything of the sort, you will spend the rest of the deployment in Warspite’s brig and face a Board of Inquiry when you get back home. Do you understand me?”
Grace swallowed. “Yes, Ambassador.”
“Good,” Joelle said. “I would prefer not to put you in a position where your duty conflicts with your principles, but I‘m afraid it’s already too late. There’s no point in offering your resignation now as you’d only remain stuck on Vesy ...”
“With the bill for the trip home awaiting me,” Grace interrupted.
“Quite,” Joelle agreed.
She gave Grace a considering look. “Take the rest of the day off and get some sleep,” she added, then paused. “Get something from the dispensary to help you sleep without nightmares. You’ll probably need it. Tomorrow ... there’s a whole backlog of NGO ships to inspect before they’re allowed to land on the planet. You’ll probably be needed to help smooth ruffled feathers.”
“Thank you, Ambassador,” Grace said. She frowned. “Is it always like this?”
Joelle smiled. “Like how?”
“Like ... having to watch something awful when you’re on a diplomatic assignment,” Grace said. “Or ...”
Joelle had to smile. “The French will seek whatever advantage they can for themselves,” she said. “If you give them an inch, they’ll take a mile. The Russians will take you to dinner, then stuff you until you feel you’re going to burst, hoping to put you in the right frame of mind to give them whatever they want. You won’t be in any state to argue. The Chinese will happily spend weeks talking about nothing before finally getting to the point ...
“In short, yes; you will have to learn to roll with the punches and handle the unpleasant surprises they throw at you,” she concluded. “An alien being executed in front of you? If you stay in the service, you’ll probably see a great deal worse before you’re done.”
She watched Grace leave the room, then opened a new file and hastily jotted down her recollections of the meeting. It was hard to blame Grace for being horrified, but it wasn't an attitude she could tolerate, not now. There was no room for being squeamish when working for the Foreign Office. Enemy diplomats might not come a
t you with guns and bombs, but they would skilfully isolate any hint of weakness and use it to achieve their aims. If Grace had accidentally caused a diplomatic rift between the British and their allies, Joelle had no doubt that the Indians would happily take advantage of it.
And that would give them control over more of the surface, she thought, sourly. They might wind up with a decent claim to the entire system.
Putting the file aside, she went back to work.
***
“Lieutenant,” Lieutenant-Colonel Wilson Boone said, once Percy had entered his office and saluted. “What happened?”
Percy didn't allow himself to relax. “The aliens sacrificed one of their prisoners from the war to their gods,” he said. “It was not a pleasant sight.”
Boone snorted. “Any more or less pleasant than seeing one’s comrades ripped apart by plasma guns?”
“No, sir,” Percy said. He’d taken a moment to look up Boone’s service record and discovered that the officer had served on Target One, back during the war. “The civilians didn't take it very well, however. Some of them were publicly sick.”
“That must have surprised the Vesy,” Boone said. “What did you tell them?”
“That the food didn't quite agree with human stomachs,” Percy said. “It did happen before with some of their meats, sir, so I thought it an acceptable excuse.”
“Good thinking,” Boone said. He gave Percy a sharp look. “Did they buy it?”
“I think so, sir,” Percy said. “They do know we can't eat everything of theirs, sir; some meats are poisonous, others are definitely an acquired taste.”
“Which is worrying, because it gives them a chance to poison us,” Boone said. “Or would you say that wasn't a problem?”
“I don't think they could poison all of us,” Percy said. “Only a couple of my Bootnecks ate the meat they offered, sir. Even if they did ... they wouldn't be able to do anything about the rest of Fort Knight, or the ships overhead.”
“Good to know,” Boone grunted. “Do you think they’re telepathic?”
Percy blinked, thrown by the sudden twist. “Sir?”
“It’s on the list of possibilities,” Boone said, tapping a sheet of paper. “The contingency planners went a little mad, Lieutenant. We have plans here to cope with them being able to read minds, or control minds, or infect us with tailored diseases that would spread back to the Human Sphere before going active and slaughtering us all.”
“A little mad,” Percy repeated. “Sir, with all due respect, there isn't a shred of evidence that they can read their own minds, let alone ours.”
“There isn’t a shred of real evidence that humans have any psychic powers at all,” Boone pointed out, “but that doesn't stop people from believing in them. The Tadpoles don’t have any psychic powers either. And I’m required to sign off a list of potential threats.”
He sighed. “There was a story I read as a child,” he said. “I’ve forgotten the title; a human starship meets an alien starship, several hundred light years from Earth. The aliens are reasonably friendly, but neither side dares to go home for fear the other will follow them and locate their homeworld. They even come up with elaborate plans to seize the other ship, only to discover that the other side had the same idea. In the end, they swap ships ... because it’s the only way to be sure they can get home without letting the other follow them.”
Percy considered it. “I don't think we’re facing the same situation here, sir,” he said. “The Vesy may be alien, but they’re primitive. They don’t have the ability to threaten us, either directly or indirectly.”
“I still need to verify it,” Boone said. He shrugged, then leaned forward. “How are your men coping with the current deployment?”
“Better for being able to get out of the fort,” Percy said. “We’ve been learning much more about the surrounding area, now we’ve been able to roam further afield.”
“Good, good,” Boone said. “There will be another wave of landings in a week, if the updates are to be believed; I’m going to want you to escort the NGOs as they make contact with more alien cities and communities. There will probably be additional media visits to their cities too, which will also require escorts.”
“Yes, sir,” Percy said. Penny would probably love it. “Do I still have authority to sit on them, if necessary?”
“I’m afraid so,” Boone said. “Try not to hurt their feelings too much, Lieutenant.”
Percy groaned, inwardly. His men were no longer completely alone on an alien world, but they still had strict orders to refrain from doing anything that might provoke the Vesy to attack - or, more practically, switch sides. If a reporter asking dumb questions could provoke a human into a furious rage, with a burning desire to bury his fist in the reporter’s jaw, who knew what it would do to the aliens? Would one of them try to behead a reporter?
And that would be an amusing thought, he told himself, if Penny wasn't one of those reporters.
She’d coped well, he had to admit, with watching the sacrifice. But then, she’d seen horror; the waves, the rising floodwaters, the desperate bid for safety ... and then, sleeping in the refugee camp while her brother had been dispatched to one of the work gangs fighting to build defences before the waters rose again. Percy didn't know precisely what had happened to her there, but his imagination provided too many possibilities. Perhaps his baby sister was tougher than she looked.
Boone cleared his throat. “On other matters, you may be assigned to watch the Indians,” he added. “Could you and your men move overland to their base?”
Percy considered it. The Royal Marines had been known to march for hundreds of miles, if necessary, but there were four hundred miles of largely unfamiliar country between Fort Knight and the Indian base. They had plenty of experience at sneaking through jungle terrain - Percy had fond memories of training cycles in Latin America - yet he rather doubted their ability to move undetected. Humans would stick out like sore thumbs if they showed themselves to prying satellites, high overhead. And besides, the Vesy were alarmingly good at sneaking through the undergrowth.
“Not without being detected,” he said, finally. “We could call it a long-range patrol, without trying to make a secret out of it, but the aliens would flock to see us.”
“So I’ve been told,” Boone said. “They’re not scared of us, are they?”
“This isn't Earth,” Percy said. “There’s no datanet, just ... rumours. Aliens who live a mere hundred miles from the God-King’s empire may not really believe in his existence, let alone the Russians. A thousand miles away? The battle here, the battle that ended when Warspite hammered the aliens from orbit? It’s going to sound like a myth to them. The gods dropped fire from the sky and obliterated whole armies. They probably won’t believe it, not really.”
He shrugged. “To them, sir, we look strange ... but not fearsome.”
“Or so we are told,” Boone said. “Humans tend to have a more xenophobic response.”
“The Vesy have their gods,” Percy said. “Some of them are ... well, big Vesy-like creatures in the sky. Others look like they would give Lovecraft nightmares. Hell, sir; they still believe in entities hiding in the jungle and fairies at the bottom of the garden. I think they’re a little more familiar with the concept of intelligent life that doesn't look like them than we tend to believe.”
“Good thinking,” Boone said. He frowned, contemplating his fingernails. “Have you mentioned that to the Professor?”
“I haven't had a chance to talk to the Professor, sir,” Percy said. He recalled the man, but he hadn't had any real contact with him before the trip to the alien city. “He seemed to have a better understanding of what we were seeing.”
“Tell him your theory,” Boone said. “He may make something of it.”
“Yes, sir,” Percy said.
“And write up a complete report about the visit too,” Boone added. “I may need something to show my superiors, once the report gets home. Human sacr
ifice ... the Vesy aren't cute and cuddly, are they?”
“No, sir,” Percy said. His lips twitched with amusement at the thought. “But if they looked like teddy-bears, would we actually take them seriously?”
“I dare say a few more people will take them seriously from now on,” Boone said. “Dismissed, Lieutenant.”
Percy saluted, then left the room.
Chapter Eighteen
“Captain,” Lieutenant-Commander Tara Rosenberg said. “I have another freighter heading towards the planet. The IFF identifies her as a chartered vessel.”
John nodded shortly as he glanced at the display. There were quite a few chartered ships in orbit now, some sending shuttles and supplies down to Fort Knight. Thankfully, the agreement to search all such ships was holding up, although John rather doubted it would last indefinitely. There were two new governments involved now and neither one had signed the agreement.
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