by E. M. Foner
Ronald thumped the top of the expensive desk. “Nice office furniture for a broad outline.”
“My wife paid for it out of her own pocket.”
“Then I believe the first thing we need to clear up is this misconception of yours that you don’t represent us,” the Wanderer said. “I just finished discussing the details with my colleagues and we’ve agreed to declare the Miklat a sovereign human community.”
“You can’t,” Samuel said, resisting the urge to bury his face in his hands. “Humans make up less than two percent of the Miklat’s population.”
“As is the case on many open worlds with sovereign human communities.”
“That’s different. Those are planets. The Miklat is just a ship.”
Ronald’s aide, who had been thumbing her way through something on a tab during this exchange, showed the results to her principle, who broke into a wide smile. “Actually, under the Wanderer Exclusion Amendment to the tunnel network treaty, our mobs were granted the status of rogue planets.”
“Doesn’t change a thing,” Samuel insisted. “Even Flower had to go through an application process to become a member of the Conference of Sovereign Human Communities, and currently, that’s the only path to getting on the Human Empire list. Besides, I don’t believe for a minute that you really want to join our empire, or any other empire. You’re just grasping at straws that will make it harder to kick you off Flower.”
“So you admit you want to evict us from our rightful refuge,” Ronald said triumphantly.
“Of course we want you to leave, that’s what this is all about. Did you think I was trying to sell you a subscription to the Galactic Free Press?”
“I already get the free edition with the advertising, thank you very much. So now that you’ve finally shown your cards—”
“Which you’ve known all along,” Vivian interjected.
“—let me tell you the minimum I’m willing to accept to return to the Miklat.”
“Please do,” Samuel said.
The door slid open and Lume stuck his head in the office. “Pizza’s here and it’s going fast. Do you want me to grab you anything?”
“There should be a party-sized Mediterranean Special earmarked for the negotiating room,” Ronald said. “Unless one of you objects?” he added, looking at Samuel, Vivian, and Bill in turn. “Excellent. Let’s take a brief lunch break, and I’m sure everything will look brighter on a full stomach.”
Somebody handed Lume a pizza box the size of a small table, and he relayed it to Ronald’s aide, who placed it on Samuel’s desk. She opened the box, removed slices for her boss and herself, and then closed the lid, keeping her free hand on the top.
“What are you trying to pull now?” Vivian demanded. “We know you charged that pizza to the Human Empire, and there’s enough in that box for ten people.”
“Wait a sec, Viv,” Samuel said, and placed his own hand on top of the box, next to the aide’s. “I think we agreed to make an effort to wrap this negotiation up before lunch. I realize that you are a master storyteller, Ronald, and I concede that you can talk us all into a coma, but I don’t see how that moves things forward. As one human being to another, I’m asking you, please, just tell me what you want.”
“Isn’t it obvious?” the old man said. “A storyteller is judged by the size of his audience, and humans were so outnumbered by the other species on the Miklat that my place was permanently at the foot of the table.”
“So you want a way to show the aliens that people respect your abilities,” Samuel said. “I’m sure we could come up with something. How would a theatre with an audience of five thousand strike you?”
“I was thinking more along the lines of publishing contracts for all of the senior story tellers,” he said with a sly glance in Vivian’s direction.
“Oh, no,” she responded. “I don’t know where you’re getting your information from, but my mother only publishes alien romances in translation.”
“Then I guess I’ll have to bore you into a coma, assuming you don’t starve first.”
“Wait,” Bill said, his eyes on the pizza box. “My fiancée is apprenticed to a famous author who helped start a writers colony on board. I’ll bet they know lots of publishers.”
“I’ve heard of engagements that drag on forever and nothing ever comes of them,” Ronald said dismissively. “How do I know this alleged fiancée is committed enough to use her connections to help you?”
“Help me? She’d be helping you. I’m going to spend the rest of my life with Julie and the only reason we aren’t already married is because I just started at the Open University and she has a new job working for Flower full time.”
“I’m not interested in some deal where I maybe hear back from you next week. When will you talk to her?”
“As soon as I get home. Julie lives across the hall from me, and if she’s working late and I fall asleep, the worst case is that I’ll see her for our morning calisthenics.”
“If you moved in together I wouldn’t be stuck waiting,” Roland grumbled. He lifted his chin at his assistant, who took her hand off the top of the box and lifted the lid. “I believe we’re finally making progress.”
Seventeen
“Could you give me a hand with this, Jack?” Maureen asked the president of the independent living cooperative. “These overhead compartments were designed for Dollnicks and I can’t even reach the touch panel.”
Jack jumped up from his seat and stood on his toes to trigger the overhead compartment to open. Maureen handed him the flat, rectangular parcel, and he slid it in, hoping he’d be able to reach the edge to pull it out again.
“Seems like a lot of work to go to for a three-minute trip,” Harry commented from his seat on the other side of the shuttle’s aisle. “You couldn’t fold whatever it is and fit it under the seat? That’s where Irene stows the camera she borrows from the Grenouthian director to document our trips.”
“It’s a bronze plaque,” Maureen explained. “We’ll take a group picture when we’re done and put it in next year’s brochure for Flower’s Paradise. Maybe even on the cover.”
“Where did you get a bronze plaque made?” Harry asked.
“Razood, the blacksmith in Colonial Jeevesburg, did it for the cost of materials. He said he hadn’t worked in bronze since the Frunge equivalent of high school and it brought back memories.” She sat down next to Harry, raised the footrest intended for Dollnick children, and fastened her safety restraints. “It seems like months since we went on a group outing.”
“That’s because everywhere we’ve stopped this circuit has been refusing to let us land for fear that some Wanderers would sneak onto their worlds or habitats,” Jack said. “I’m just glad that our new members see the humor of the situation rather than accusing us of false advertising.”
“Welcome to Flower’s Transportation Services,” the Dollnick AI announced over the shuttle’s public address system. “Our trip to the Miklat today will take two minutes and fourteen seconds. I will be accelerating all the way, except for the time it takes me to flip at the midpoint, but weightlessness will last for less than five seconds. Please remain in your seats for the duration.”
“Why do I always feel like I need to use the bathroom when she makes one of those announcements?” Harry whispered to his wife as the shuttle left the docking bay at Flower’s core.
“It’s psychological,” Irene said. “Just be glad it’s not like taking a suborbital flight back on Earth where we had to sit in the plane on the tarmac forever before taking off or after landing. I never understood why they do that.”
“We only flew the two times, for our honeymoon and on our twentieth anniversary, so maybe we just got unlucky,” Harry said. He leaned forward a bit to speak around his wife. “Dave. You used to fly all the time. Was sitting on the ground for hours before the flight normal?”
“A few decades ago, we probably spent more time on the ground than in the air, though it depended on the ai
rport,” the former salesman replied. “Sometimes there were mechanical problems or issues with the catering or cleaning crews, but a lot of delays were caused by weather. When planes are coming from all over, a thunderstorm a thousand miles away can mess up everybody’s flight schedules because disruptions cascade through the whole system. These days delays of any kind are really rare.”
“What changed?” Irene asked.
“Alien technology,” Dave explained. “The airports started buying the same sorts of systems that the advanced species use for their suborbital flights, and then somebody told me they contracted with the AI who handles the tunnel network traffic for Earth to do all of the flight scheduling for the whole planet.”
“A Stryx is scheduling Earth’s air traffic?” Harry asked in disbelief.
“Not a Stryx, one of the AI’s that works for them managing tunnel network exits,” Dave said. “You know that artificial intelligences have to earn a living just like everybody else, at least if they want spending money.”
“Wooooo-hooooo!” a chorus of voices cried during the brief Zero-G flip, the unofficial battle cry of independent living cooperative outings.
“I talked to Dewey about it once, and he said that traffic control is considered a plum assignment by AI because it combines responsibility with problem-solving,” Dave continued. “The more complicated the job, the more they enjoy it.”
“You seem very chipper today,” Irene observed. “Didn’t you say something at breakfast about Flower insisting that you get a check-up before letting you come on this field trip?”
“M793qK says that thanks to him, I now have the body of a sixty-nine-year-old,” Dave said proudly. “When I had my first evaluation when I joined the cooperative, he said I had the body of an eighty-six-year-old.”
“And you’re what? Seventy-eight?” Harry asked.
“I’m going with sixty-nine from now on. The doc says that birthdays are irrelevant, he doesn’t even know his. The important thing is the age of your body and I’m going to start using the new number. If I stick with the diet and the exercise, I might even get back to being middle-aged.”
“Did M793qK tell you that?” Irene asked.
“No, and he said I was old and foolish if I thought that was the case, but I’ve always believed it’s important to set goals.”
“Thank you for choosing Flower’s Transportation Services,” the Dollnick AI announced over the public address system. “We hope you had a pleasant trip and that you enjoy your outing. Please remember that the Miklat is undergoing repairs, so no jumping in the lift tube capsules.”
“That sounded a bit ominous,” Irene said to Harry as they undid their safety restraints and folded up the footrests. “Do you need to use the bathroom before we disembark?”
“No, I’m fine now. You were right, it’s psychological.”
Jack stood by the shuttle’s front exit with his hands raised and called out, “All right, everybody. You know the drill. We’ll be handing out location bracelets as you disembark so that Flower will be able to find you if you wander off and get lost, but please practice the buddy system and it won’t become an issue. The Zarents have asked us to limit the number of passengers per lift tube capsule to eight, so it’s going to take a while for all three hundred and twenty-four of us to get up to the ag deck. If you have any problems finding the right place, Flower is monitoring the lift tube system, so just ask for her by name and she’ll take over from the Miklat’s speech recognition controller.”
“Do we get gloves?” somebody called out. “I didn’t bring any.”
“Everything we need is already waiting for us on the ag deck,” Jack told them. “And make sure your magnetic cleats are enabled because we weigh even less here than on Flower’s docking deck.”
After all of the cooperative members filed out of the shuttle, took a bracelet, and headed for the lift tubes, Jack found Maureen waiting with Nancy.
“Didn’t you forget something?” Maureen asked.
“Oh, sorry,” Jack said and reentered the shuttle to retrieve the plaque. After opening the overhead bin, he couldn’t reach the package, which had slid further back. He took a quick look around to make sure nobody was watching and then carefully climbed onto the seat and reclaimed the prize.
“Thank you,” Maureen said, accepting the package back from Jack. “The plaque is lighter here than it was on Flower, but I don’t understand why. I thought the two ships were spinning at the same rate.”
“They are, but the Miklat’s interior dimensions are all smaller than Flower’s,” Nancy explained. “A smaller core radius means less angular acceleration and lower weight.”
“So even at the outermost deck, there won’t be anywhere near Earth’s gravity?”
“The Miklat’s inhabitants are practically all aliens,” Jack said. “Earth weight isn’t their ideal, though most of the tunnel network species are comfortable within a fairly close range. Both of the Dollnick ag worlds I worked on were around ninety percent of Earth normal, but I’ve heard that the Verlocks prefer something closer to a hundred and twenty percent.”
“And the Zarents will increase the rotation rate after Flower cuts them loose,” Nancy added as they joined the line for the lift tubes. “That the two ships are spinning at the same speed is just an artifact of the Dollnick towing system.”
“I know that you were a teacher, but how do you understand so much about space engineering?” Maureen asked.
“I was curious, so I checked with Flower,” Nancy said. “Learning is all about curiosity in the end. My favorite students were the ones who asked the questions I couldn’t answer.”
“That’s one of the things that attracted me to her,” Jack said, placing an arm around his petite wife and pulling her closer. “There’s not a hint of insecurity about Nancy.”
It took nearly twenty minutes for the group from Flower’s Paradise to reassemble on the ag deck where a Zarent on a floating sled guided them to a freshly plowed area. Long tubes of a black material that might have been plastic ran in straight lines, like furrows, their lengths broken at regular intervals by a loop. Several of Flower’s maintenance bots were just finishing breaking out what looked like a forest of seedlings from shipping containers, along with large boxes of gloves and trowels.
Irene guided the floating immersive camera with the practiced hand motions she had developed in over a year of acting as the cooperative’s cameraman. In addition to capturing images of all of the retirees who had volunteered to plant trees for the Wanderers, she made sure to get a good shot of the Zarent who introduced herself as Chief Agronomist Miklat.
Supervising a crew planting seedlings was a job that Jack was eminently qualified for, though he had never before dealt with a group of laborers whose minimum age was sixty-five. Flower had supplied five thousand seedlings, including apples, peaches, pears, plums, and oranges, and despite the occasional complaint about creaky knees, it took less than four hours for the three hundred plus volunteers to get the little trees all planted and the pots stacked up for return.
“Don’t we have to water them right away?” somebody asked.
“Those loops in the tubing where we planted all the seedlings aren’t just there for spacing, it’s Dollnick drip irrigation,” Jack explained. “The reason I had you position the seedlings all the way to the side of the loop near the main is because there’s a secondary system optimized for watering new plants. As they grow into trees, the trunks will self-center the loops, and the main system that pumps through the large outer tube will take over.”
“Everybody gather together around the plaque so Irene can get some good images of us,” Maureen called out in a loud voice. “No, don’t take your gloves off or straighten up your clothes. It’s better that we all look like we’ve been working. And remember to smile.”
“What’s it say on that plaque anyway?” Harry called from the edge of the group where he’d ended up.
“This orchard planted by the volunteers from Fl
ower’s Paradise with fruit tree seedlings donated by Flower Agricultural Services as a gift to the Miklat,” Maureen recited from memory.
“Come on everybody, smile,” Irene coaxed them.
“We could all say ‘cheese,’” Jack suggested.
“Or ‘catering,’” Harry said, pointing to where Flower’s maintenance bots were now setting up tables.
“Isn’t it going to take years before these trees produce any fruit?” one of the volunteers asked Jack. “What are the Wanderers going to eat until then, and what have they been living on until now?”
“You’re right that fruit trees take a few years to mature, but keep in mind that we can only see a tiny fraction of this ag deck from where we’re standing, and there may be more than one,” Jack said.
“And there were only twenty thousand Wanderers on the Miklat when they abandoned ship,” Nancy added. “According to Flower, the capacity of this generation of colony ships was a tenth of her own, but that’s still a half a million Dollnicks, so they were running under four percent capacity. That means if just four percent of the ag deck space was producing, they could have gotten by without problems.”
Under Maureen’s direction, Irene captured enough video for a whole series of commercials, and then the hungry retirees all descended on the picnic lunch. Bill arrived and began setting up a table at the end of the row with test products from the All Species Cookbook, and some of the more adventurous retirees who had already eaten their fill of sandwiches and fresh fruit queued up to see what was on offer.
“Why do you have nose plugs in?” Harry asked his assistant, whose nostrils were clearly stuffed with filtering devices.
“The smell made me sick,” Bill admitted in a nasal tone. “I don’t understand how people can eat this stuff.”