Not everything was going so well, however.
‘Sorry, dear boy…’ Buzz touched Alex on the arm in a rare moment when there were no comms coming at him and drew his attention to a report transferred over from his own screens.
Alex took it in with a glance and grimaced.
Getting rid of Mister was not going to be as easy as he’d hoped. Though they had realised it would not be straightforward, even before their arrival. The LIA did not even admit they existed, so contacting them was always problematical – you had to be given a specific call code for a contact at a given location, a call code unique to you and to the allocated place and time period only.
And none of them, of course, had that for Lundane. Mister himself had reacted angrily when asked if he could call someone in the Firm when they got here. How could he do that? He had no contact here. Nobody had ever imagined than an agent sent aboard a ship at Serenity for a mission out in the Gulf would turn up at Lundane six months later. Pressed as to whether there was some absolute emergency code or procedure he could use to let them know that he was on the ship and wanted to be collected, he said flatly that no, there was not and even if there had been he certainly wouldn’t tell it to them.
The Fourth, therefore, had expected to have to take a long arc with this and had put their hopes on contacting their own Fleet Intelligence people here. Luce had been put in charge of that, as she had friends in the Lundanian unit and could solicit their help to at least pass a message on to the LIA on the Fourth’s behalf.
No go, though, as Luce had reported, all her contacts had come back with the same thing. The LIA would not give anyone points of contact here, least of all Fleet Intel, whom they regarded as unreliable and amateur. Nobody at the Embassy would admit to having any knowledge of them either and delicate enquiries amongst the spacer community had failed to turn up the slightest trace of any method they could use to tell the LIA to come and get their agent.
And they could not, tempting as it might be, simply take him down to the spaceport and leave him there. The Fourth themselves would not be going to the planet, not yet and perhaps not at all. Anyone isolated there, unprotected, would immediately be the focus of intense interest to the intelligence community. Even if they had no idea that he was LIA himself, the opportunity to question anyone from the Venturi about what was really going on there was just too valuable to pass up. So the LIA might pick him up at the spaceport, yes, but they’d have to race the PDA, the Federals and Lundane’s own intelligence agency, too, known simply as I6. On the whole, most bets would be on I6, as the team with the home-turf advantage.
Perhaps understandably, Mister was not keen to be left at the spaceport like a goat being dropped into a tiger pen. And after three days of intensive effort had failed to find anyone with contacts to the LIA, the Fourth was running out of options. They had even resorted to having someone put Mister on the Wall at the biggest of the spacer hangouts, identified only as a package the Fourth wanted to be transported to Chartsey, but with a coded reference they hoped the LIA would recognise as meaning that the package was one of their agents. They’d had quite a few humorous responses, but none had offered any kind of LIA identifier, nor responded to those offered by the Fourth.
Now, Buzz was showing him a report which shut down on even their final fallback. Fleet Intel had ships running between here and Sentinel and there was a large LIA contingent at Sentinel. Would Fleet Intel be so kind as to take him to Sentinel for them?
No, Fleet Intel responded, emphatically, they would not. Their ships were not equipped for carrying prisoners of any kind, least of all the kind of prisoner the Fourth themselves had deemed to be an E6 security risk. If he was in stasis and nailed into a crate, possibly. Otherwise, no.
Trusting that the ‘in stasis and nailed in a crate’ was a joke, Buzz had had to accept that there was nobody in that system willing to take Mister off their hands. Nobody, obviously, other than the intelligence agencies who’d race him away for interrogation.
And what Buzz was saying, there, in that report, was that he was as sure as it was possible to be that the LIA did know that they had Mister aboard and that they had ditched him.
‘But – the information he could give…’ Alex said. He knew better than to imagine that the LIA would come to the aid of one of their own simply because he was one of their own, but he had expected that they’d be extremely keen to get their hands on him for a thorough debriefing.
Buzz looked resigned, giving a helpless gesture with his hands.
‘Either,’ he said, ‘they believe we’re trying to plant one of our own people on them, or if they do accept he’s one of theirs, that the information they might get is not worth the risk of exposure in coming forward to get him. If he’s out unprotected and they can pick him up, fine, but they’re not going to come out of their complete cover here and be in contact with us, of all people.’
Alex recognised the truth of that and sighed.
‘Well…’ he said, but two more incoming calls started flashing almost simultaneously, so all he could do was give Buzz a speaking look.
‘I’ll try the Embassy again,’ Buzz said, though the Diplomatic Corps had already made it known that they were not prepared to give sanctuary to that particular League citizen, thank you, since they had no facilities capable of containing an E6 category prisoner either. And even if they had, he was a hot coal they did not want in their hands. So Mister was, as they would tell Buzz even at his most persuasive, the Fourth’s problem. And then, just to put the total kybosh on things, the Lundanian police picked up rumours that the Fourth was trying to offload a maximum security prisoner onto their world and told them not to even think about bringing him groundside, no landing permit would ever be granted for him and if the Fourth tried to dump him on their world they would fire him straight back at them. And they too used the words nailed up in a crate, which Buzz said he could only hope was a local idiom and not to be taken literally.
Whether it was or not, though, it was apparent that they were stuck with Mister for the time being and probably for the duration of their stay there.
Alex let it go, recognising that there was no more they could do, at least for now. And he had other things to think about. The day after the contract was signed to supply Lundane with comms satellites, the first batches of supplies were delivered from the planet. Pleasure at having secured such supplies, however, did not last for long. Since they were unfamiliar, part of the security and screening process included analysis by sickbay. Simon came to the command deck himself to report their findings, bringing with him some samples of the food for Alex’s personal evaluation.
‘The nutritional value is a lot lower than we were told by the supplier,’ Simon told him, setting down a tray on which were four dishes. ‘Which turns out to be because the nutritional value, as declared, includes eating the packaging.’ He grinned as Alex gave him an incredulous look. ‘Seriously,’ he assured him. ‘Resources are very tight here and they don’t waste anything, so the packaging is formulated to disintegrate during cooking and form a component of the dish. Our ovens aren’t geared up to handle that routinely but Solly is going to make the necessary adjustments.’ Solly was the housekeeping Sub, a quiet but capable young officer. ‘The nutritional values, of course, are poor, even including the packaging,’ Simon said. ‘So I’ll be providing everyone with advice on dietary supplements.’ He fixed the commodore in one of his gimlet looks. ‘In which,’ he stated, ‘I am sure that you yourself will set an excellent example.’
‘Certainly,’ said Alex, with a cool look in return, though he couldn’t quite hide his dismay at the aromas rising from the tray before him. He’d been told that Lundanian food was basic and inclined to stodge, but neither look nor smell made the dishes appetising. They were all variations of lumps of stuff in thick sauce, set on a carbohydrate mush. The smell rising from them was strongly chemical, more like Alex would expect from cleaning products than food. ‘And these are…?’ he asked du
biously.
‘This is fish,’ Simon indicated the first dish, a greenish sauce with cuboid lumps on a pale orange stodge. ‘Species unspecified, it is simply ‘fish’, served in a seafood sauce with a wholegrain mash.’
Alex sampled a little of it, cautiously and stared at the medic with just a little suspicion. He couldn’t help but wonder whether this was some kind of wind-up by the medic. The cubes of alleged fish were spongy in texture and virtually tasteless, while the sauce was glutinous and mouth-puckering salty. The wholegrain mash turned out to be the source of the chemical odour, with a strong tang of something like pine cleaning fluid.
‘I am not having you on,’ Simon promised, seeing that doubt on his face. ‘And they haven’t stiffed us, either. I checked and double-checked, this is in fact the highest quality food available on Lundane. This, honestly,’ he indicated the tray, ‘is as good as it gets.’ He moved the dishes around encouragingly. ‘Try this,’ he suggested. The dish indicated had smaller pyramidal lumps in a brown sauce on a grey stodge. ‘This is ‘meat’,’ Simon informed him. ‘Again, generic. In a fruit sauce, served with a vegetable mash.’ As Alex sampled it carefully, the medic told him in a helpful tone, ‘this is the most popular celebratory dish on Lundane, a meal to be enjoyed at family events and on special occasions.’
Alex put down his fork without comment. Both textures and tastes were crude, with that tang of chemical as if some sterilising fluid had been left in the cooking equipment. And this was the best that Lundane had to offer.
‘This,’ Simon told him, shuffling the dishes around again and bringing the third to Alex’s attention, ‘is the most popular amongst offworlders – actually formulated for small children and those with sensitive digestion. It is meat – minced, this time – in a vegetable sauce, served on husked grain mash.’
It was beige, served on off-white stodge. But it tasted better than the others, an inoffensive gloop. Alex nodded, eyeing the fourth dish uncertainly. It was the most virulently coloured of the offerings, consisting of thin, acid yellow and blood-red sticks heaped on a mound of green, grainy slush.
‘This is a sweet dish. Not a dessert, as such, since Lundanians don’t have any tradition of multi-course meals,’ Simon said. ‘But they sometimes eat sweet dishes as an alternative. This is top end, described as lemon and strawberry biscuits on a lime and icefruit curd.’
Alex could only imagine that the people who’d come up with those descriptions had only heard of those fruits third or fourth hand, had never seen them and certainly never tasted them. The sweetness was overwhelming, like eating concentrated sugar.
‘None of them are what I’d consider to be appropriate for a healthy diet,’ Simon said. ‘But I hardly feel able to kick up a protest over it given that the entire population of this planet subsists on this and worse. So I will approve it for consumption until such time as better quality can be obtained, subject, as I said, to compliance with dietary supplements.’
‘Thank you,’ Alex said and made the necessary log entry – adding, however, his own proviso. ‘If people really find these too unpalatable,’ he said, ‘they can opt to eat K-rations instead.’
The emergency rations – dense nutrient bars and soups – were generally considered to be the absolute rock bottom in Fleet catering. But there were many who would opt for them, at least for some meals, in the weeks to come. And Alex would be one of them, on days where he didn’t feel that he could face another plate of smelly, gloopy stodge.
For now, though, sampling the new supplies at least gave the ship’s company a lively topic for conversation.
And the next day they had another, as the Lundanian president came to see Lady Ursele. That was not, Alex recognised, a coincidence. She had been waiting until the Fourth were starting to find their feet here before making her own next move. He sometimes felt that they were playing a game of triplink together, as partners, but that she could see a lot more of the board than he could. And was thinking, too, a lot further ahead.
She was certainly ahead of him that day. Alex was having a productive exchange of correspondence with the Samartian ambassador when he was distracted by Coru coming quietly into the daycabin where he was working.
‘Can I…?’ he began and then recognised the significance of the scarf on her shoulder and that slow, stately, unstoppable walk. ‘Oh!’ He said. ‘I thought her grace was meeting with President Moffaret.’
He should have known better, he realised. She wasn’t going to have a conversation with him, not while she was on duty.
‘Sorry,’ he said and gave her his hand. ‘Yes, of course.’
Coru led him out of the daycabin and through the ship to the hatchway which was now the only link between the rest of the Venturi and the self-contained Embassy. It was an airlock hatch and they had to wait a moment between the hatch behind closing and the one in front opening, but Coru resumed her processional pace, leading him through the atrium where two security escorts looked wary but did not attempt to interfere.
Into the ante-room, shower, hand cream, hair brushing, a now-familiar ritual, and he followed the singer into the encounter room.
President Moffaret was already there, seated on one of two cushions which had been placed at the end of the pool.
‘Please be seated.’ Lady Ursele said, as Coru indicated the second cushion, and as Alex complied, ‘We will take a moment to compose our thoughts.’
Alex inclined his head and prepared to just sit there quietly, but he was acutely aware of the man sitting just a metre away on his right.
President Moffaret was a burly man, with the kind of figure that always looks stuffed into a suit no matter how well tailored it might be. Not that his suit was doing him any favours, anyway – current business fashions on Lundane were for wide shoulders and big lapels in glossy contrast colours to the suit material. President Moffaret had padded shoulders which made him look even broader than he was and his lapels were shiny yellow, with a hologram motif of tumbling dice which became apparent when he moved.
President Moffaret, in fact, owned many of Darvo’s casinos, as well as several clubs and other night-life amenities. That made him a big man on Lundane. And that, together with a forceful personality and a modicum of threat, had got him elected by his fellow business leaders as chair of the Lundane business association.
And that made him president. The title went with the job of chairing the business association, because that effectively meant that you were running the economy anyway. There was no government, as such, no elected Senate. And no state-owned infrastructure, either. Everything here, housing, schools, traffic systems, comms, all of it was owned by companies. Davie had sold their satellites to the company which owned the rights to providing comms to shipping, not to the Lundanian authorities. Even the police force here was paid by the business association, like private security guards.
And that made President Moffaret more akin to a gangland boss than a head of state, at least in Alex’s opinion. The presidential business holdings were shady, no question of that, with pipe-clubs which sold drugs and others where your most intimate fantasies could be fulfilled. The fact that such businesses and no-limits casinos were not illegal here did not make them any the more morally acceptable to Alex. This was not a man he wanted to do business with, not a man he felt he could trust, not even a man he really wanted to shake hands with.
Yet Lady Ursele had called him into the meeting and she would not have done that without good reason. So Alex stilled all the moral indignation he felt against this ruthless exploiter of other people’s weakness and prepared to be a diplomat. He was, however, damned if he was even going to attempt a smile.
‘Commodore Ambassador Alexis Sean von Strada,’ Lady Ursele said. ‘I should like you to meet President of the Independent State of Lundane, Jilner Roll’em Moffaret.’
The Roll’em, Alex knew, was a nickname, as indicated by the dice motif on the presidential lapels.
The two of them eyed one another guardedly an
d both gave minimum courtesy nods. Then they looked back at Lady Ursele.
She just smiled, utterly tranquil.
Silence ensued. There was a long, long minute before Alex realised that she was waiting for them to behave like civilised people, that she was happy to wait for as long as that took and that nobody was going anywhere until they did as she wanted. He could, of course, have simply got up and left. But somehow that just did not feel like an option.
The two men looked back at one another and this time there was a momentary sharing of their mutual embarrassment.
‘Owduss.’ The president said and held out his hand, palm sideways.
‘Owduss,’ Alex responded and they slapped hands lightly in the formal Lundanian greeting. ‘Biminiscytha.’
‘Ay!’ the president looked startled. ‘Dustapridannian, kimdor?’
‘Sa.’ Alex acknowledged, wondering why people so very often asked if you could speak their language when you were already speaking it to them.
Though Lundanian, technically, had not yet acquired the status of becoming a separate language. Back in the day, this had been a League not-quite-colony and everyone had spoken Standard. Languages evolved though and this one had evolved as far as the Lundanians could take it away from speaking the language of the people who’d betrayed and abandoned them. So it was an odd combination of extremely archaic forms and an evolved idiom mixing bits of Prisosan, Terrin and Araki in with their own slang. They also slurred their words so tightly together that any sentence sounded just like one long word – a product, it had been suggested, of a culture where nobody kept their mouths open longer than they had to, losing valuable moisture. So ‘you’ in Lundanian argot was ‘tha’ and anything pleasurable was ‘bimin,’, a contraction of brimming, like a water container. What Alex had actually said there was ‘Bimin i scy tha’ – literally, ‘Brimming to set eyes on you’, actually ‘Pleasure to meet you’.
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