by Marc Neuffer
To scoop up needed funds, the Foundation had released the process for making transparent metal. All new ships now had wide viewing windows. Like most ships, Ranger’s bridge was in the protected center core. Lots of stuff between it and the cold dark, so, no windows there. The lounge and staterooms had been back-fitted to include them.
Releasing this, and similar, benign technologies, in other galaxies, kept our accounts with other races, flush with cash, or whatever they used for trade payments. A physical human credit was worthless out there, except as a collector’s curiosity.
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This homecoming was much easier than the last. It somehow felt routine. I had re-entered not only the planet’s atmosphere, but also the human race. A much-needed balance had been achieved.
Sandy watched the videos Sarah and Noah had taken. When around the locals, displays of technology were forbidden on Old Earth. Small disguised and hidden cameras were allowed. Most of Noah’s vids were of the nature variety. I’m sure he scrubbed his collection of all the views of Riley’s backside, and those of the farm maiden, before he let his mother watch.
Sarah’s vid series was all about people; the locals, Riley, her sister and Angela. Considering her out of date knowledge of the quantum-smoothing effect of travel back in time, I wasn’t sure how Sandy would take it when she learned her daughter had taken a little time-trip with Riley.
Mica and I were arranging for a collection of twenty horses, along with saddles, tack and farrier supplies, to be transported to Satchel. The Bears were tasking construction bots to build a horse ranch, adjacent to our new house. It should be completed before we got back. We would also need a few non-sentient, human looking androids to do the care and feeding. Horses aren’t too fond of machinery-looking bots.
After hearing Sarah’s stories, Abby nudged Mica into agreeing to a trip to Old Earth. She wanted to know, first hand, about her adopted human roots. Their kids were all adults now, three had started their own families. Abby wanted to purchase a permit that would allow them to stay a month on humanities home.
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We were scheduled to return to Shangri La in two days. At least that had been the schedule. A hot mercenary war had broken out among three systems in the human galaxy. Mica had been asked to help calm the waters; a show of force, by a disinterested third party, to be added to diplomatic efforts aimed at preventing the conflict from widening. The surrounding neighbors were highly concerned about spillover.
There’s no galactic government. That concept had been tried several times in the past. Each time it had devolved into either semi-totalitarian regional regimes, or a morass of political and bureaucratic maneuvering, with nothing of any significance ever being implemented or enforced.
The glue, currently holding it all together, was commerce and contracts. War is not good for commerce. Neither is slavery or excessive indentured servitude. The marketplace ruled. The bean-counters, seeing the long-term trends, started requiring human-rights clauses in every contract. At least the big players did. Subcontractors had to follow suit. In the long run, those clauses had positive effects on profits and corporate stability.
Of course, the requesting powers that be didn’t know I had returned from the grave. My name had slid into a dusty pigeon hole. I was fine with that. Mica, being the figurehead of the Foundation, in human space, popped up in the news every time we released new technologies. They thought he had control of, or probably access to, the battle-wagons I had toured with decades ago, before I’d died.
I called in the cavalry; six of the big boys, two for each system; fighter squadrons packed into each. They wanted a show of force; they would get one.
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Sandy, Sarah, and Noah were with me, aboard Avalon, paired with the El Dorado. Mica chose not to accompany us. He said he’d only be a very disinterested observer, with nothing much to do.
The two ships had arrived with standard contingents of conflict-resolution diplomat Bears, as had the other four in the other two systems. The Bears were very good at what they did, having had a lot of practice, through the years, with other alien species. To them, humans are just another one of those.
Sandy and I had talked it over. I’d wanted Noah and Sarah with me, to further their education in the philosophies and operations of the foundation, in preparation for passing the baton when the time came, in a hundred years or so.
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Initially, our uncloaked arrival had created a big stink. We had other humans aboard Avalon as representatives of the closest systems. We also hosted a few of the bigger corporate trouble-shooters.
Human reps were onboard one ship in each system. Sandy and I, using Ranger as a shuttle, had conducted the requisite formal introductions between the human and Bear groups. Translator armbands had been provided.
On each ship, their assigned areas had a well-controlled, single access, double airlock passage to the rest of the ship. No humans were going to do any tech snooping.
Most of the conflict had been limited to areas out past the goldilocks zone. It hadn’t spread to the main human-populated worlds. It would have been very bad PR, for any group, to bombard cities from space. Each side was seeking leverage through forced embargos and isolation of each other’s in-system industrial and mining facilities, while defending their own. Ship’s and lives were being lost. Attrition of the three systems navies resulted in them calling in mercenary groups.
The system we were in had an agricultural world as its human base. It was being strangled, and was in worse defensive shape than the others; little to no offensive capacity.
It was a reflex of mine to intervene on the side of the weak and defenseless, but this was a job for longer, more considered, political solutions. We were here to stop the shooting and ensure that no one got unwillingly pushed into a bad deal.
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This was humanities first exposure to an alien race, aside from our contacts, which had been kept under wraps. Humans thought they were the only intelligent, advanced race. They were right, if you kept that definition to this galaxy. While we had encountered hundreds of thousands advanced races, most galaxies had none. Very, very few had more than one. I now knew why. The Zees had been lopping off the tops of ladders every billion years or so. Riley and her cohorts had stopped that.
I had Avalon’s AI monitor civilian com-traffic to keep tabs on reactions to the revelation of another spacefaring race. I imagined armadas of human ships heading our way. We had released warning beacons and monitor drones at the edges of each system. Ring the doorbell, don’t barge in.
Each ship, with human representatives, would be hosting negotiations between the belligerent parties. We were preparing to receive the groups involved in this system.
Fern and Flint, two Bears and I were going over the final preparations for pickup and delivery of the opposing negotiators. All the Bears had names relating to natural things on their home world. I’m sure there were multiple repetitions of these names, but I’d never met two with the same one.
Sandy came roaring into the conference room, a paper printout clenched in her fist.
“Have you seen this? Have you seen it?”
I had no idea what she was talking about. Sarah had drifted in behind her, carrying a worried look on her face.
“Amanda Wright, Amanda God-damn Wright. She’s on the list! One of the five reps from the Agri world.
Now I knew why I’d had a vague brain itch when I first heard the name of this system mentioned with the others. This is the system we’d shanghaied Amanda Wright to. Just after she’d participated in an attempt to steal Ranger, and probably kill us, just to tidy things up. That had been over twenty-five years ago.
15 Enthalpy
Enthalpy: a quantity equivalent to the energy content of a system; the energy required to create the system, plus the amount of work required to make room for it by displacing its environment.
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As I had done i
n the other two systems, I met the contingent from Nothia, the agricultural planet we’d sent Amanda Wright to, with a bogus administrative ruling meant to keep her there for ten years, working off her judgement.
Considering the volume and seriousness of her crimes, it was a shorter sentence than she would have received from a real judicial court. A former space force naval officer, she’d been hip deep in Mr. Big’s criminal syndicate; murder and mayhem.
Sandy had insisted that she attend their arrival. These arrival meetings would be the only times the opposing forces would see us in the flesh.
It was a crowded group the five members of the planetary contingent met, including seven Bears, and seven human reps from other planets, along with Sandy and me. All the arrivals had been given a briefing package covering the Bears and the required formal introduction procedures. I would be making those introductions.
Noah had taken Ranger to meet the group planet-side for transport to Avalon. The much stronger opposing group was being brought over from one of their ships at the system’s edge by Sarah onboard Dodger, another of my small ships.
Amanda was third in line as they descended Ranger’s extended ramp. Our briefing package listed her as a union group representative, with a twenty-million aggregate membership. When we’d had her transported to Nothia, her records listed her as a fertilizer apprentice. That had been a little present from Sandy.
Being on a colonial Agri planet, engaging in manual labor, had aged Amanda. She’d been thirty and attractive, in a blue-blood, nose in the air sort of way. She hadn’t come from money, but she had shaped a persona which made people think she had. Amanda looked her age, late fifties, greying hair, a scattering of deep winkles around the eyes. I noticed she no longer carried herself with superiority and distain for others.
Sandy and I, due to our new human bodies, courtesy of Surron tech, looked very much like we had back then. That process yields very long-life bodies. Well, at least Sandy looked the same. I had undergone some slight facial modifications and skin tone changes to keep my true identity hidden from facial recognition AIs in the human galaxy. Martin had either erased or modified all my DNA records, including those held by my planet’s military.
As the arriving group lined up in front of us, I stepped forward to make group introductions, with individual intros to follow. I watched as Amanda scanned the assembly in front of her group. She gave me a few second’s glance and then moved her gaze; no evidence of recognition in her eyes or actions. As I continued, I saw her visibly moved. She must have sighted Sandy, a Sandy that looked like she had twenty-five years ago. Amanda quickly recovered.
I half turned to indicate the human negotiators on our side of the line. Sandy was shooting a steaming hot glare in Amanda’s direction. This may have been a bad idea. A very bad idea. I didn’t want the animosity between them to derail the talks. Fern and Flint had taken Sandy’s side in the decision to have her attend this initial meet and greet. They were curious as to the dynamics of human adversaries. I told them to ask Martin’s cat about curiosity.
Aides for the out-system reps helped line everybody up for the individual introductions, passing out translators. The Bears were first in line. I facilitated those formal proceedings. The humans could introduce themselves to each other. I wanted to get this over with.
Oh, crap. Sandy had inserted herself right behind the last Bear. I was staying to prevent any fireworks. As she came face to face with the first planetary visitor, I introduced her as an administrator of the foundation, same procedure with the next. Amanda now stood in front of Sandy, looking at her with a quizzical expression.
Her first words to Sandy, “It is you, isn’t it?”
“Yep, it’s me.” My pulse quickened
Amanda continued, “I’m so sorry for what we did. I sincerely apologize for my actions. There’s no defense for them. Please forgive me.”
That quickly let the air out of Sandy’s balloon. Her shoulders dropped. She wasn’t going to stomp her into a mud hole as she’d threatened to do, many times, a quarter century ago.
Amanda asked, “What ever became of your captain?”
Sandy tilted her head in my direction. She still hadn’t found her voice, not prepared for the Amanda that stood before us.
Amanda’s eyes surveyed my face. “Yes, I see it now.”
As I looked at Amanda, I heard Sandy softly say, “I accept your apology.” Sandy turned and strode away.
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I was busier than I thought I’d be during the three-way talks. After the first day, all three parties had been brought together on Avalon. Five from each warring group, five senior facilitators and five Bears. Including aides, the big room felt crowded to me. It was the largest, close-in, collection of humanity I’d been around, since the old days on Satchel, when our ‘family’ had attended social functions, with other groups of ranch families.
I had brought in two ships from the other systems, leaving one in each, to keep the peace during these tedious talks. We had demanded that all the navy and mercenary ships disengage, moving to neutral corners. The first minor breakthrough came when all parties agreed to move their offensive capabilities back to their own systems. It wouldn’t take much to bring them back. There was still a long road to settlement and possible reparations.
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Avalon chimed my Q-com. Someone had tried to murder Amanda. She was being transported to the closest med-bay, outside the negotiation areas. I breathed a sigh of relief when Avalon reported that the attacker had been a man. Sandy hadn’t shived Amanda in a dark passageway. That wouldn’t have been her style anyway.
I got to the med-bay as they were closing the lid on the Auto-doc. Sandy was there ahead of me. The perpetrator’s location and movements were known to Avalon. She was awaiting my instructions.
We didn’t have a Marine detachment. The only crew were my little family and Martin. What we did have were bots, lots of bots, lots of security bots. The man was making his way to the flight bay that contained the visitor’s shuttles. It had been easier to get them all aboard that way than sending Ranger and Snake after them.
I suppose the assassin thought he would be safe if he reached his group’s ship; he would claim he was in sovereign territory and untouchable. He was an idiot.
I directed Avalon to apprehend. Standing back, I waited for the medical status. The knife had carried an injectable poison and she’d lost a lot of blood, knife wounds to both kidneys, stabbed from behind. Avalon didn’t think she’d make it. Sandy left the room.
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I met with the senior negotiators and the representatives from Northia. The group the attacker was affiliated with strongly denied knowing anything and officially released him from their delegation. Their message was ‘do what you want with him.’
He was in the brig, somehow one of his arms had been broken during his apprehension, his knife arm. We held a summary courts martial. The man was represented by one of the Bears, just to give him a chance.
He had been one of Mr. Big’s lieutenants and apparently held a strong grudge against Amanda. He attempted to sway the court with stories of her involvement in heinous crimes from twenty-five years ago. The court was provided evidence of her penalization in an indentured status on Northia. A sentence long since served.
We didn’t reveal Amanda’s medical status during the trial, nor did we allow visitors, since her condition had her locked up in an auto-doc. Amanda had died fifteen minutes after she’d been placed on the med table. That was three days ago.
The defendant rose as the court officials filed into the room. Guilty. Sentence: mind-wipe. To be carried out immediately. Not only would his mind be wiped, his personality would be muted and his IQ reduced twenty points. In our galaxy, it was considered a more humane process than a death penalty. The results would be the same. That man would be gone. A new name and a new menial job awaited him back home.
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Amanda emerged from the aut
o-doc in a new body that matched her old one, minus twenty-five years. When Sandy had left the med-bay, she’d arranged to have Amanda’s mind and psyche scanned and recorded, before she died. She’d been stored in Avalon’s AI for later resurrection. That was today.
I watched as the lid pealed back. Sandy moved in to drape her body with a surgical gown. We were the only beings in the room with her. I had Avalon bring her around slowly. There might be a bit of a shock, waking up in a younger body, when the last thing you remembered was being stabbed several times.
Amanda’s eyes opened lazily. Her body had begun breathing during the last day of her printing. Sandy took her arm, helping her to sit up. Still very groggy, Sandy explained to her she had been stabbed, an attempted assassination. Amanda nodded, mumbling she remembered, as both hands went to the small of her back, her kidney areas.
With a sip of water and a few more minutes of recovery, she noticed her hands, no longer tanned and leathery. She pulled the arm of the gown up to examine her forearm.
I left Sandy to explain what had happened, how she’d been rejuvenated. Ten days ago, Amanda had sent a long, hand written note to Sandy, detailing her time on Northia. After eight years she could have left, but she found that the hard work and friends she’d made, helped her change from an unhappy power seeker to a more appreciative and empathetic one.
She found helping her fellow workers, and later rising in the unions ranks, being pushed up by those who had worked alongside her, had made her happier, giving her a more worthwhile existence. She didn’t begrudge a day she’d spent on Northia. It had been her education.
16 Yin-Yang
Yin-Yang: a concept of dualism, describing how seemingly opposite or contrary forces may actually be complementary, interconnected, and interdependent in the natural world, and how they may give rise to each other as they interrelate to one another.
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