‘We will need further, scientific and independent evidence before we can accredit the presence of an alien ambassador,’ The Araki ambassador had sent a full highest quality holo, a significant action when it would blow a noticeable hole in that month’s comms budget. Ambassador Senoza was stick thin, with angular features and a smooth, soft-spoken manner which only an idiot would take at face value. ‘And we will require further clarification for the basis upon which the League government has sent the Fourth Fleet Irregulars here at this time, making these claims.’
Alex merely responded with courtesy, explaining that he was only here to support Lady Ursele in establishing her embassy and not undertaking any active diplomatic role in his own right. And there was, too, a stiff little message from the Samartian delegation, so recently arrived themselves that their own embassy was new on the system, asking if it might be possible to communicate privately with Jarlner and Bennet.
Alex responded in the affirmative of course and short, guarded, heavily coded communications began creeping to and fro between the ship and No 97, Embassy Avenue. But Alex himself was still trying to establish any kind of relationship with the League Ambassador.
Lundane, as he knew, was a peculiar assignment. On the one hand it had the tremendous prestige of being the only embassy the League had to the worlds beyond their borders, with the huge potential that had for building relationships. On the other, the reality was that anyone posted here was going to spend their time basically being called a ratfink and having doors slammed in their face.
It was, therefore, a post to which the Diplomatic Corps sent their most promising but as yet inexperienced ambassadors. Lundane was a baptism, if not of fire, then certainly of blistering heat. Ambassadors who came through their postings here would have acquired all the imperturbable dignity required to see them through the rest of their careers.
His Excellency Amraco Jilit-Defane-Taracalas, Ambassador to Lundane, wasn’t there yet. He was a career diplomat who had risen through the ranks on an entirely orthodox curve, serving as Cultural Attaché in three different embassies before rising to the grandeur of Excellency. He was forty two, young for his post and widely regarded as one of the Corps’ rising stars.
He had not, however, been having a good time of it in the eight months he’d been in post at Lundane. Even his name was a trial and a torment, deliberately mangled by his fellow ambassadors. And he had learned the hard way that their very gratifying acceptance of invitations to receptions and dinners was purely a preparatory move for failing to turn up. He was, he felt, already dealing with as much as any League official could be expected to cope with, out here, in horrible living conditions and extraordinarily difficult circumstances.
And now there was this. Now there was the Fourth. Now there was a Pirrellothian ambassador, stepping out of legend and moving in down the street.
Ambassador Jilit-Defane-Taracalas wasn’t happy. And even while they were waiting for a response to their invitation to a meeting, it became clear that the embassy was under orders to stonewall them.
‘I’m afraid we have a problem, skipper,’ their finance officer, Jonas Sartin, informed Alex and passed over a report which highlighted the nature of that problem.
Alex read it through. They knew before they arrived at Lundane that the local businesses would not accept League currency either in cashcard or bank based transactions. The only currency they would accept was Lundanian yill, which would have to be obtained via the League Embassy.
Alex had not imagined for one moment that that would be a problem, but it was. The Embassy had declined Commander Sartin’s request for currency exchange because, they said, their own reserves had to be kept for official purposes. And the Fourth had, so far, failed to provide evidence that they were acting under the orders of any legitimate authority, so were to be treated as any other visitors. They might, the Embassy said, exchange up to fifty ying each for personal use during their visit, but no more.
‘But that’s…’ Alex started, then saw the look on the Finance Officer’s face and recognised that he had already been through all the obvious arguments with the Embassy, himself. ‘I’ll discuss it with Ambassador Taracalas,’ he said, for which Jonas nodded thanks.
The Ambassador did eventually confirm that he would attend aboard ship as requested, though it was clear that it wasn’t going to go well even before he arrived. One of his aides made a point of calling ahead to clarify certain points, one of which was to tell them how the ambassador liked his tea and another was to request that they not address His Excellency as ‘Ambassador Taracalas’. His Excellency preferred his full hyphenated name to be used as a matter of courtesy.
‘An ambassador so sensitive about his name?’ Davie picked up on that at once, as they gathered in Alex’s daycabin for the meeting. ‘They’, in this instance, meant Alex himself, Davie, Buzz, Jonas Sartin and Cultural Attaché Jermane Taerling. ‘Not, I’m guessing, the toughest kid in the playground.’
It was an accurate assessment. Toughness was not a quality that sprang to mind on meeting Ambassador Jilit-Defane-Taracalas. The first word that crossed Alex’s mind as he summed him up at first meeting was fussy. He was not really a little man but he gave the impression of being so, with his finicking movements and prim demeanour.
‘Ambassador … thank you so much for coming,’ Alex was attempting a smile but he knew that it was not one of his better efforts. ‘Please, come and sit down – may we offer you some refreshment?’
‘Thank you, no.’ The ambassador came to the table, sitting down with prim care.
Fussy and prim, however, did not mean that he was weak. The third word to emerge as Alex was evaluating him was stubborn. The man had duralloy tenacity in clinging to what he saw as his duty and there would be no budging him from it.
Still, Alex had to try. So, having established that the embassy would not be forthcoming with anything more than the pitiful amount allowed for personal use, Alex played the only card he had left.
‘You are aware, I suppose,’ he said, ‘that I carry the accreditation of a Presidential Envoy.’
He hated doing that, pulling rank with a status he had never wanted in the first place and which he felt, often, to be more compromising than advantageous. But it did mean that he outranked Ambassador Jilit-Defane-Taracalas. Protocol, in fact, required that the ambassador treat him in every respect as if Alex was a visiting head of state.
‘Indeed, Commodore.’ Ambassador Jilit-Defane-Taracalas looked apologetic, but the mulish note in his voice said otherwise. ‘However, it must also be observed that you have no brief in that capacity, here.’
He was right, of course he was right. Alex’s mission orders had always contained the necessary official introduction to the ambassadors at the worlds where he was visiting – a formality the Diplomatic Corps insisted on after an embarrassing incident in their history in which a con artist had enjoyed an extremely lucrative stay at one of their Embassies by pretending to be just such a visitor. The letter of introduction also required the ambassador, specifically, to give Presidential Envoy von Strada every possible assistance, including unlimited access to funding.
He did not have that letter of introduction here, because nobody had envisaged that he would end up at Lundane.
‘True,’ Alex said. ‘But I am, I do assure you, operating on a brief which I have no doubt whatsoever will be fully ratified by central authorities – I would not and could not have agreed to courier her grace unless I was so assured. So although we are, I recognise, somewhat in advance of our paperwork…’ this was a Diplomatic Corps joke, but raised not a flicker of amusement in His Excellency the League Ambassador to Lundane.
‘I am very sorry, Commodore,’ he said, ‘but no can do. I can’t, simply can’t, release funding to anyone without the necessary documentation authorising me to do so.’
‘The circumstances,’ Alex observed, ‘are extraordinary…’
But the ambassador was shaking his head. ‘There is no provis
ion in my own brief here for breaching protocols under extraordinary circumstance,’ he said. ‘On the contrary, Commodore, my instructions are to uphold the dignity and due procedure of the Embassy under any and all circumstances, however extraordinary. I do regret and sympathise with your predicament, but I am unable to be of any assistance to you in this matter.’
‘But you can’t refuse us!’ Jermane Taerling was outraged and battling to keep it down, otherwise he would have flown at the outrageously obstructive ambassador with language unbecoming to his own diplomatic rank.
‘I not only can, but I must,’ said the ambassador, with a look at Jermane which made it clear that he had noted the absence of a Your Excellency. Etiquette here was delicate, with three people in the room of ambassadorial rank, they would be ‘Mr’ and ‘Commodore’ to one another, but anyone else would be expected to use the proper honorific. ‘Diplomatic Corps policy…’
‘We understand that,’ Jonas Sartin was trying, now, a straight, professional, financial approach. ‘But if we might perhaps negotiate terms for a loan…’
‘No can do,’ said Ambassador Jilit-Defane-Taracalas. ‘The rules relating to the relief of distressed citizens are extremely clear. Citizens finding themselves without means of financial support on Lundane are entitled to a subsistence funding of standard grade hotel accommodation and meal vouchers until such time as a standard-class passage home can be arranged for them, such costs to be recouped at a later date by the Diplomatic Corps on their homeworld should it be determined that their financial distress was as a result of their own actions.’
And in turning up here, the ambassador was saying, without any yill funding and without any letters of introduction, their financial distress was their own fault and no responsibility of his.
They kept trying, but it was evident that they were not going to shift him, so Alex responded to a discreet signal from Davie and allowed him to take the lead.
Davie was not asking for money from the Embassy. Since they were refusing to allow him to do a currency exchange too, he was asking that they ratified his ID and stood guarantor, enabling him to negotiate a loan from Lundanian banks. The interest, of course, would be breathtaking, but Davie would make nothing of that. They needed petty cash, here, a million yill to cover their supplies and operational needs for the next three months. The difficulty was that they had left most of their ready-meals and nearly all their treat supplies at the weapons cache to provide for the crew they’d left there, along with a good safety margin. They’d relied on being able to obtain supplies here and without them, would be reduced to eating emergency rations.
And nobody, here, was willing to give them any credit. Many suppliers to the spacer market had already made it known that they would not sell to the League ship in any case – they would be ‘out of stock’ of anything the Fourth tried to order. But that was a problem they couldn’t even start to solve until they had some money to negotiate with. And as Ambassador Jilit-Defane-Taracalas was evidently already aware, none of the banks on Lundane would even consider a loan to a spacer unless their ID was confirmed and the debt guaranteed by their embassy.
And this, Ambassador Jilit-Defane-Taracalas also refused to do.
‘The rules relating to the relief of distressed citizens are extremely clear. Citizens finding themselves without means…’ he recited, clearly prepared to go on giving the official spiel for as many times as it took the Fourth to recognise a no when they heard it.
‘Distressed citizen?’ Davie exclaimed, incredulously. ‘Me?’
‘None of your personal wealth, however extensive it may be elsewhere, is of any value to you here,’ the ambassador said and Alex was almost sure he could detect just a hint of satisfaction in that, the ability to slap down an uber-wealthy citizen and treat them in just the same way as a traveller who’d blown all their money at the casinos.
‘It’s no use,’ Davie said, after several seconds staring at the man and he was talking to Alex now, ‘he’s tortoising.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Ambassador Jilit-Defane-Taracalas stiffened, not at all happy about being called a tortoise. Not, in fact, that he knew what a tortoise was, but it sounded derogatory and that was good enough for him to take official umbrage.
Alex gave a discreet code-assent to Davie. The Diplomatic Corps did have a tendency when under stress to draw in their vulnerabilities into the protective carapace of Following Procedure. And, as an organisation, it was of a material which did not flex when under pressure, but became more rigid. Ambassador Jilit-Defane-Taracalas, feeling himself entirely out of his depth in all this, was clinging to the safety of the Book. And the more pressure they put on him, the more immovable he would become.
‘All right,’ Alex said. ‘I recognise the difficulty of your situation. And…’ he would have tried a smile, but realised in time that it would come across as one of his more chilling efforts, so settled for as warm and conciliating a tone as he could contrive, ‘the irregularity of ours.’ This cut no ice at all, so Alex abandoned the rest of the joke which would have made more direct reference to their irregular status. Instead he moved on in a business-like manner. ‘I appreciate that it is asking too much of you, as a newly appointed first-time ambassador, to make such decisions on your own initiative, or to take on trust my assurance that central authorities will ratify our mission here and approve any assistance you are able to provide. But you will, I trust, be able to provide us at least with some office facilities at the Embassy and the use of…’
‘No,’ Ambassador Jilit-Defane-Taracalas did not even let him finish, ‘can,’ he said and looked Alex directly in the eyes, ‘do.’
When he’d left, some quarter of an hour later, a red faced Jermane Taerling apologised profusely on behalf of the Diplomatic Corps.
‘I have never been so embarrassed,’ he said and really was close to tears. ‘This is appalling.’
‘Regrettable,’ Alex agreed, but far more mildly than he felt. He too had felt, towards the end, a strong desire to start shouting at the man who could have done so much to help them but either would not or could not see that the circumstances over-rode his petty little rules. Some flexibility, there, some trust, even some willingness to put his own career on the line in the cause of helping with something so obviously amazing and things could have been so different. But they were stuck with Ambassador Jilit-Defane-Taracalas and nothing they could do about it. ‘But Ambassador JDT is within his rights, so we just have to deal with the situation as it is.’ He looked around the table. ‘So – any ideas?’
‘There is,’ Davie said, ‘a possibility.’ He was looking at Alex. ‘I have already tried sounding out the locals with the offer of a new comms system, which they clearly stand in need of. They’re interested – very interested – but unfortunately won’t advance so much as a yill on contract alone, no payment till the goods are delivered, so that’s of no immediate assistance. I do have an idea, though. The most valuable commodity here is water, right?’
Alex’s expression hardened. ‘We are not…’
‘Skipper, please,’ Davie interrupted. ‘I am not suggesting we start selling off our water - though we do have a surplus we might make use of, later. I’m looking at trade opportunities, here. This could not,’ he added, with rather derogatory implications for Alex’s grasp of business affairs, ‘be any more simple. The most valuable commodity in this system is water. Every drop of water in the system is already owned by companies which are making uber-profit, effectively holding the planet to ransom as they can charge whatever they like. Anyone with a source of water from outside the system, therefore, is in an excellent position to sell it at a good price – a fair and ethical price, if that needs saying. And with the current price of raw ice from the outer regions standing at 6.42 yill per litre, even selling at half that would only need 156 tonnes to get us petty cash – a million yill. Let’s say two hundred tonnes, to give us some wiggle room.’
‘And where,’ Alex asked, interested, ‘are we going
to get two hundred tonnes of ice, Mr North?’
It was a good question. Between them, the three water corporations owned the rights to every drop of water in the Lundane system, right out to the furthest icy comet.
Davie opened up a star chart and put his finger on one of the nearest solar systems to Lundane. It was another brown dwarf – there were a lot of them here, as if the nebula throughout this region had pupped a whole litter of runts.
‘There,’ he said.
Alex looked at the chart, considering the distance, the logistics, the resources that they had available. Two of their shuttles were powerful tugs, designed to be able to haul starships around. And they had grapnels, chains, cargo netting…
‘That,’ he said, ‘is a brilliant idea. Thank you, Mr North.’
‘Should have thought of it before,’ Davie said. ‘We should have brought some with us – but I never imagined that the Embassy here wouldn’t help us with finances.’ He shrugged that off with a brief grimace of contempt for the gutless wonder the Diplomatic Corps had put in post here, focussing on the action they could take rather than that they couldn’t. ‘Anyway,’ he said and tapped a finger on the star chart. ‘Are we going into the water business?’
Alex smiled.
‘We are,’ he agreed, ‘going into the water business.’
Twenty One
It took the Fourth’s shuttles three days to reach the brown dwarf, powering at twenty times the speed an ore carrier could have managed. They were there for another two days, selecting and securing the chunks of ice they were going to bring back. There were plenty to choose from, after all, millions of icy asteroids floating about in the comet cloud. It was just a case of looking for ones which were the right size, with strong density and the purest water content they could find.
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