by E. M. Foner
“Dual use?”
“Cloning or military. After confirming that the nanofabric is still functional you’ll have to deliver it to the Gem ambassador.”
“Will they be able to start manufacturing it again?” Flazint asked. “You know that I studied traditional metallurgy at the Open University rather than anything high-tech, but I was taught that manufacturing process secrets are often lost to the passage of time. Regaining them depends on the availability of good documentation.”
“That’s generally true, but nanobot technology is the one area other than cloning where the Gem haven’t gone backward,” Libby told her. “In this case, a sample of the functional fabric would be enough for their scientists to reverse engineer the material and manufacture identical nanobots.”
“You mean they’ll clone them,” Dorothy said. Then she grabbed Flazint’s upper arm and exclaimed, “Do you know what this means? We can have a monopoly.”
“How do you figure that?” the Frunge girl asked.
“My mother told me last week that the current Gem Ambassador is stepping down because Gwendolyn and Myst are returning.”
“Myst?” Flazint closed her eyes for a moment to consult her long-term memory. “Oh, your clone friend who left the station to go into stasis right after you started working with me at the lost-and-found. But wasn’t she going to sleep long enough for them to grow her a boy?”
“She has. We were both sixteen when she went to sleep, and that was over twelve years ago. I was ten when Metoo fixed the election to get my mom elected Carnival Queen, and that’s when the Gem started cloning baby boys from the genetic samples they bought from the Farlings with Myst’s prize money. So the first boys are eighteen years old now.”
“You’re talking about Human years,” the Frunge girl reminded her. “Even though they’re clones, the Gem are an advanced species with normal, I mean, extended lifespans.”
“But unlike the rest of you, they mature at almost the same speed as humans do until they’re grown,” Dorothy told her. “I asked Dring about it, and he said that the Gem were obsessed with efficiency even before they reduced their civilization to a single individual. Altering their DNA to speed up maturation was actually their first species-wide genetic experiment.”
“So why didn’t they choose to mature even faster than Humans?”
“The speed of Human maturation is already near the theoretical maximum to allow for the development of higher cognitive functions in the humanoid form factor,” the station librarian informed them.
“And you think that the new, I mean, the original Gem ambassador will give us a monopoly because they believe your mother sparked their revolution?” Flazint conjectured.
“We can ask, anyway. Besides, I already sent Myst a message telling her all about SBJ Fashions and inviting her to come work with us. We were always designing make-believe clothes for princesses when we were girls.”
“But she’s been in stasis this whole time. If the Gem mature at the same rate as Humans, isn’t she too young to start working? Maybe she’ll want to go to the Open University next year.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Dorothy admitted. “I hope she doesn’t feel like I’m pushing her.”
“Let’s take this sash to my apartment and start recharging the nanobots. Is there anything else we need to know about it, Librarian? Like, if I drape it right over the lamp, could it catch fire?”
“For best results, the fabric should be far enough from the lamp to avoid excessive heating. An arm’s length would be fine. You’ll have to contract directly with a Gem nanotechnology expert for reprogramming information.”
“So unlike the Verlock technology, if we use the nanofabric in our fashions, the color will only be changeable by the owner?” Dorothy asked.
“The fabric is woven from threads of millions of identical nanobots,” Libby said. “Gem encryption is rudimentary, but reprogramming requires physical contact, so I believe you could call it secure for practical fashion applications.”
“And just so I know how much I need to butter up Jeeves, what will it cost to manufacture?”
“You know I can’t share that kind of competitive information with you, Dorothy.”
“Can you tell us what it cost at retail back when this was made and adjust for inflation and the exchange rate of Gem currency?” Flazint asked.
“I could, but I would just be leading you down the garden path. The cost structure of Gem nano-manufacturing is not a constant, and their new government’s goal of growing interspecies trade will have more impact on the price than the raw materials and engineering effort.”
“Just a hint?” Dorothy pleaded. “You don’t even have to give us a number, just a range. Like, will it be more expensive by measure than the Frunge micro-weave designer pack I bought at the last CoSHC tradeshow?”
“Appreciably so,” Libby replied.
“Ooh,” Flazint said. “Jeeves isn’t going to be happy.”
Three
“Why did you want to meet so early?” Samuel asked his mother’s special assistant. “I was awake anyway because I’m still on the Vergallian clock, but the EarthCent embassy doesn’t open for another hour.”
“I wanted us to get here before Donna and Daniel come in,” Aabina said. “Ambassador McAllister asked me to show you how everything works, and we’ll just get in the way if we wait until later.”
“Do you have to call my mom ‘Ambassador McAllister’ while you’re talking to me?”
“It’s only proper while we’re in the embassy,” the Vergallian girl replied. “First, let’s get you authorized for the locks.”
“Can you do that?”
“Sure, that’s just basic admin-level stuff. Ambassador McAllister wanted to give me the top security clearance, but I had to decline since I’m an alien and it’s against EarthCent Intelligence guidelines. Besides, the embassy contracts out to the Stryx librarian for all of our information technology needs. Libby?”
“Yes, Aabina?” the Stryx librarian replied immediately.
“Can you authorize Samuel for all of the embassy locks and display desks at my security level?”
“Done. Welcome to the EarthCent embassy, Samuel. Please let me know if you need anything.”
“How can you tell Libby to grant me access to the display desks when my real job is working at the Vergallian embassy?” Samuel asked Aabina. “We all joke about EarthCent not having any secrets worth stealing, but I don’t have your royal training in compartmentalization.”
“Firstly, I know that Ambassador McAllister talks about work at home, so unless you’re ready to move out with Vivian, you’ll be dealing with a conflict of interest until you leave the Vergallian embassy. Secondly, access to a display desk means that you can use it for your own work, not that you can look at what other people have been doing.”
“If you say so, but I don’t know how much use I’ll be to anyone around here. You know that half of my job at your mother’s embassy was dancing at dinner parties, and the EarthCent embassy doesn’t even have a ballroom.”
“But the other half of your job was acting as a filter for all of the problem cases who showed up at the Vergallian embassy, and we both know you excelled in that role. I’m good at helping people with legitimate questions but you have a gift for dealing with the crazies. Now, let’s sit down at Donna’s display desk and I’ll take you through everything on the calendar for the next half-cycle.”
“Is that everything?” Samuel asked forty-five minutes later. “Aside from the upcoming tradeshow stuff, I handle more appointments in a slow week at the Vergallian embassy than you get in a month here.”
“But there are at least five times as many Vergallians as Humans living on Union Station, and I don’t know how many more passing through.”
“Well, I could take over orientation for new immigrants,” Samuel offered, running his finger through a list of appointments in the holographic calendar. “I went along on a few of those with my mom du
ring school vacations as a kid.”
“That will be very helpful because I didn’t know where I was going to find the time. We used to get around one request a month for a station tour, but recently the number has increased by more than tenfold. I probably shouldn’t have added it to the list of embassy services in our last Galactic Free Press ad.”
“EarthCent advertises the embassy? Since when?”
“It’s been a few cycles now. The idea grew out of my customer satisfaction field survey.”
“Did you stand around in the Little Apple or the Shuk with a tab asking strangers questions about the service they received from EarthCent?” Samuel teased.
“Yes, actually, that’s exactly how I went about it. I didn’t want to limit the results to the self-selecting audience we’d get if I only interviewed people who came into the embassy looking for help,” Aabina explained. “One of my most interesting findings was that among new immigrants, which I defined as Humans living on Union Station for less than a year, only eighteen percent even knew that EarthCent had an embassy here.”
“Just eighteen percent? Did you ask how many knew that EarthCent even exists?”
“Not as a direct question, but I’d estimate that at least half the people I talked to were pretty hazy on the concept. It’s not that surprising given that the original purpose of EarthCent was to serve as humanity’s point of contact with the other species. Almost everybody I interviewed had heard of the Conference of Sovereign Human Communities, though some of them didn’t recognize the CoSHC acronym. It will be much simpler if they change it to the Human Empire.”
“So you talked my mom into advertising?”
“She was getting a bit desperate to find things to do with all of the cookbook money coming in. That was one of my survey questions, by the way. I asked people who was responsible for publishing the All Species Cookbook, and every last person was sure it was the Galactic Free Press. Humans living on the station don’t understand how much Ambassador McAllister has accomplished for them.”
“Morning,” Daniel said, entering the embassy with a large cup of take-out coffee and a box of donuts. “The two of you are here early.”
“I wanted to show Sam how everything works without getting in the way,” Aabina explained. “The meeting starts in ten minutes, so don’t get stuck on a holo-conference.”
“I’m just going to straighten up my office a bit before my wife gets here,” the associate ambassador told them. “Shaina volunteered to take a few weeks off from SBJ Fashions to come in and help until the tradeshow is over. This empire business is going to make life complicated.”
“We’ll get the conference room ready,” Aabina said, taking the box of donuts from the associate ambassador. “Do you need me to teach you how to make coffee, Sam, or do you already know?”
“Of course I can make coffee, it’s coded in our genes,” the EarthCent ambassador’s son replied, and started for the conference room. “Do you have the briefing packs and the minutes from the last meeting prepared and ready to zap to people’s tabs as they come in? Your mother taught me the basic version of the Imperial Rules of Order, so I can manage discussions for groups up to a hundred.”
“We don’t do things so formally here,” the Vergallian girl said, looking somewhat embarrassed. “Ambassador McAllister likes to encourage the free flow of ideas in her meetings.”
“Sounds like chaos,” Samuel muttered, but he went into the kitchenette and started the coffee brewing. He checked the fridge, and then called through the open door to Aabina, “Where are the vegetable platters?”
“It’s just caffeine and sweets for morning meetings,” she replied. “Come help me with the chairs.”
Together they quickly rearranged the conference room, moving the custom chairs intended for bulky or tall aliens against the wall and replacing them with the human-sized spares.
“Leave that one,” Aabina instructed Samuel as he began to move the Verlock-sized chair used by Ambassador Srythlan away from the table. “Clive promoted Wrylenth to be his personal assistant at EarthCent Intelligence and brings him to all of the meetings.”
“Who else will be here?”
“Daniel and Donna, of course, and hopefully Daniel’s wife will be here in time to start getting up to speed. You, me, and Ambassador McAllister.”
“Why don’t you say ‘Associate Ambassador Cohan’ all the time?”
“Daniel asked Libby for the names of my mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, and great-great-grandmother, and then he kept on addressing me formally until I agreed to use his first name,” Aabina admitted.
“Good morning,” Donna said, passing by on her way to the kitchenette, and reappearing a few seconds later with the coffee pot and a tray of mugs. “Does anybody take cream in their coffee?”
“Me,” Shaina said, entering a step ahead of her husband. “Don’t ask me any more questions until I finish the first cup.”
“I gather she’s as bad as you, Daniel,” Donna said.
“Where do you think I got the habit from?” the associate ambassador retorted. “Where’s Kelly?”
“I hope she isn’t buying more donuts,” Aabina said. “The box you brought—” she stopped and pointed at her ear.
“Good morning, everybody,” Clive said, entering the conference room with his Verlock assistant.
“There’s been a minor change in plans,” the Vergallian girl announced, dropping her hand. “I just heard from Ambassador McAllister and she’s going to be late. Samuel, your father is fine and she told you not to come, but he dropped a keg on his foot and was trying to walk it off when your mother saw him. She was afraid he wouldn’t go to the doctor unless she took him herself.”
“All right then, let’s get started, and you can fill the ambassador in on what she misses, Aabina,” Daniel said, taking his seat. “The purpose of this meeting is to make last-minute adjustments to our program for the CoSHC tradeshow in light of the pending empire tender from the Stryx. I spent the weekend on tunneling conference calls with mayors, governors, and managers from our member communities, and the only thing they all agreed on was that we should defer any serious decisions until we have a chance to meet in person.”
“So they aren’t in any hurry to declare the Human Empire,” Clive surmised.
“Correct, and thank you for sending me that executive summary of our options. It’s good to know that we can reject the whole thing and just continue on as we have, and the timeline for the steps to officially declare empire was especially useful. I only glanced at the treaty text and I didn’t realize there was a whole body of precedent-based law supporting it. How did you pull everything together so quickly?”
“Wrylenth had the plan prepared in his contingency files,” the director of EarthCent Intelligence said, and turned to his Verlock assistant. “Why don’t you explain it to them?
“Director Oxford insists that I spend twenty-five percent of my office time on independently conceived projects,” the bulky alien said at his best talking pace. “I identified a lack of contingency planning for high-probability events that are bound to affect humanity. Given the growth trajectory of CoSHC’s member community populations, it was clear that the triggering of the empire clause was imminent, so I researched the consequences and prepared a brief on possible responses.”
“Lucky for us you did,” Daniel said. “How long have you known about this, Clive?”
“I found out Friday evening, about ten minutes after you dropped by the office. Wrylenth didn’t feel that his underlying mathematical proofs were sufficiently rigorous to show me his plans before events caught up with us.”
“Are there any other just-a-matter-of-time events we should know about?” Daniel asked the Verlock.
“Many. My mistake was giving equal priority to all events with at least a one in ten chance of occurring in the next five hundred years, which is the minimum planning period Verlock civil servants normally take into account. I’ve since been informed that five
years is considered extreme by Human planning standards.”
“How about events likely to occur in the next year?”
“CoSHC making the empire cut-off was the only one with a probability of greater than five percent,” Wrylenth said.
“How can you make such concise predictions?” Samuel asked him. “When we took that required business course together at the Open University, I remember you telling me that forecasting the future is considered black magic by the Verlocks.”
“You’re forgetting the context—I was talking about business trends in retail and entertainment. For example, nobody knew that professional LARPing was going to become the next big thing on the tunnel network until it had already happened, and your sister could tell you that it’s impossible to predict the next hot fashion. Forecasting that CoSHC would reach a billion members was just a matter of extrapolation.”
“So this was basically an educated guess on your part, and you didn’t want to disturb your boss?” Daniel followed up on his earlier question.
“My last calculation put the probability at above ninety-eight percent, but still not what I would call a sure thing,” Wrylenth said apologetically.
“What would you call a sure thing?”
“One hundred percent, by definition.”
The associate ambassador exchanged a look with the director of EarthCent Intelligence, who could only smile at the Verlock’s conservative approach. “We’ll have to wait until Kelly arrives to hear what happened with the Intelligence Steering Committee yesterday,” Daniel continued and turned to the ambassador’s special assistant. “I know that you have a number of points prepared, Aabina, so why don’t you take us through those while we’re waiting.”
“Ambassador McAllister asked me to summarize the Steering Committee meeting for you since I attended as well,” Aabina said. “The ambassadors and the president agreed that we, I mean, EarthCent, doesn’t have jurisdiction in this matter since the communities involved are sovereign. Everyone agreed that we should do whatever we can to support decision-makers in CoSHC, including making available any intelligence and analysis we can provide.”