The Unscheduled Mission (11 page)

“You, Iris and Taodore,” Arn responded, “plus a Mer to be chosen by Terius.”

“Not sure you should have me in there,” Park told him. “I’m going to be needed outside with our hidden security.”

“I think we need you more inside,” Arn disagreed. “You can communicate with your men and women via your torc.”

“They don’t all have torcs, you know,” Park pointed out.

“Oh, forgot to tell you, we managed to integrate torc technology with our cellular system while you were away,” Arn told him. “You’ll have to call via conference mode of course.”

“I’d better get a group programmed in then,” Park decided. “I don’t even know all their numbers. Well, I can put Marisea on it, if I can pull her away from Cousin. Very well, but I may find the need to go out for fresh air from time to time.”

“Trouble with tight spaces?” Arn asked.

“No, just allergic to jerks,” Park retorted.

“Well, think of it this way,” Arn advised. “The room is large enough for the actual negotiator but not enough for the army we think he brought with him on those ships.”

“I suppose, but if trouble breaks out we’ll be firing on our own spaceport,” Park pointed out. “But do me a favor, move it to the larger conference room. It has a picture window that faces the hill and our men there will have a view of the proceedings as well as the only way in from the spaceport.”

“A few snipers armed with antiquated weapons are not going to over-power a large force if that’s what Jance has in those ships,” Arn pointed out.

“No,” Park responded, “but they will provide cover while the rest of us find a way to fight back.”

“If it comes to that,” Arn told him cautiously. “We don’t have any reason to suspect treachery, you know, and Terius isn’t going to like our preparations.”

“Don’t tell him, then.” Park advised. “Arn, we’ve reversed our usual roles here. Normally you’re the one for military solutions and I’m looking for alternative means of persuasion.”

“I’ve noticed,” Arn told him dryly. “I think it’s time I tried being a diplomat. Why are you so suspicious of Jance?”

“Partially, I’ve never really trusted him,” Park admitted. “All that useless doubletalk in space really got up my nose, but that warning from Tack is what’s really making me nervous.”

“The ant prophet made a prediction,” Arn replied flatly. “It was probably drug-induced, and you’re taking it seriously?”

“His other predictions have come true,” Park reminded Arn. “Naturally I’m hoping he’s wrong this time, but I really don’t want him saying, ‘I told you so,’ if all this goes sour and I didn’t at least try.”

Jance started making unreasonable demands the moment he sat down at the table the next morning. “Before anything else is accomplished here all Mer and Pirates must accept the Covenant in its entirety and agree to pay reparations to the Alliance for having broken that treaty. In return I will consider extending the boundaries of confinement to allow for the illegal satellites you have placed in synchronous orbit.”

“We told you once before,” Arn reminded him flatly. “There is no Covenant. And we will not stand for any confinement. We own all of Sol System. We also do not tolerate squatters. The
Alliance owes us back rent for its use of the Moon and any other installations we might not yet know about in our system. Furthermore, we will not tolerate any form of official confinement to this system. If we so choose to travel among your
Alliance worlds, we expect to be able to do so.”

“Only members of the
Alliance are allowed to travel freely between our systems,” Jance told him.

“May I see your passport, please,” Park cut in.

“What?” Jance asked uncertainly.

“Your passport,” Park repeated. “That document you show when entering a foreign system. I understand you use them even when landing on an
Alliance world, so you must have yours here and it occurs to me we have not yet stamped you in here on Earth.”

“What nonsense is this?” Jance demanded. “I am an official representative of the Alliance of Confederated Worlds and I have diplomatic immunity anywhere I go when performing my office.”

“I’ve no problem with that,” Park shrugged. “Show me your credentials. But even with those credentials you have not yet been officially entered into Sol System.”

“Of course I have,” Jance replied. “I came through customs at Lagina Base.”

“Have you even listened to what’s been said here?” Park asked. “We do not recognize Lagina Base as belonging to the
Alliance. Officially we do not even recognize your Alliance yet, I suppose, but even if we are, indeed, confined to this one world, it is still not a part of the Alliance and therefore you are on foreign territory and must be formally admitted or else suffer deportation.”

“I have diplomatic immunity!” Jance stormed.

“Not yet, you don’t,” Park snapped back. “We really should have settled this in space, but we only have your word for who you are. How do we know you aren’t some sort of scam artist merely pretending to be who you claim to be?”

“No pretender could command three military vessels,” Jance told him coldly.

“We don’t know that,” Park replied stubbornly. “Show us your passport, show us your diplomatic credentials.”

“They’re on my ship,” Jance told him.

“Then run along and get them,” Park replied. “Because until you do, there really isn’t anything to talk about here.”

“I’ll get them tomorrow,” Jance offered.

“Now, or better yet,” Park responded, “send one of your flunkies. We’ll wait.”

Jance stood up and as he had so many times before, left the room without a word, followed by his staff.

“What are you up to?” Terius asked just ahead of Arn.

“I’m showing him he can’t push us around,” Park replied. “But I did mean all that about the credentials. I’m not a career diplomat and politician and neither is Arn, or at least we weren’t back in the old days, so we tend to forget some of the official necessities that Jance has been skipping over in his eagerness to insult us.”

“I am a professional politician,” Terius pointed out, “and I didn’t think to question his identity.”

“No offense intended, Prime,” Park told him, “but your people have become so used to getting stomped on by the Galactics, that it’s understandable you wouldn’t think to question Jance on that matter.”

“You think he’s an impostor?” Terius asked.

“Not at all,” Park laughed, “but he annoyed me from the moment he started talking. And I notice he still calls us Pirates.”

“He can hardly call you humans,” Terius pointed out, “it’s what most people in the
Alliance call themselves.”

“He could ask what word we use in our native tongue,” Park argued. “No, it’s his arrogance. He wants to set all the terms and make us accept them and I’m not going to let him. I’m especially not going to allow him to reimpose the Covenant. We’ve been through too much to allow that. Dannet might have been a bit idealistic, but he was right. The Moon at the very least is ours by right of conquest and it was the acting governor there who recognized our claims. Jance is trying to cow us into giving them up and spending the rest of eternity paying restitution we don’t owe.”

“I agree there, but why question his identity?” Terius asked.

“He questioned ours up in space,” Park retorted. “He refused to believe we were Originals and insisted we were con artists of some sort from another world. This time he has tacitly admitted we are from Earth, but is still trying to reinstate the Covenant. That was not why we agreed to meet him and he knows it. So the best way to start is to show he can’t push us around. Let him do this by the book and present himself officially before we start talking.”

A few minutes later a young man with red and yellow hair, an obvious suprahuman, arrived with a message. “I am sorry, sirs, but Ambassador Jance is feeling indisposed and requests we meet again in the morning.”

Park laughed out loud, “Can’t find his papers, can he? Very well, please convey our regards and hope that he will be feeling better in the morning. Well, that frees me up to do some real work today. I’m supposed to be meeting the
Alliance scientists at my earliest convenience. Sounds like I just got an opening in my schedule.”

Taodore had arranged with Arn to have the scientists housed in Van Winkle Base during their stay. There were no security issues involved since the few locations in the old base Arn wanted to protect were behind heavy locked bulkheads that only opened to a handful of retina scans. The base had, in fact, served well as housing to the refugees from the space battle that culminated in Luna’s surrender to the Earth Fleet and now was both comfortable and interesting to the scientists.

“The architecture of this installation is fascinating,” an elderly archaeologist enthused. He was a short man with a powerful build that he explained was an adaptation to a heavy-gravity world. “I have never seen anything like it, and you say it is two hundred and fifty millions years old?”

“As best we can estimate,” Park admitted. “We were in stasis during that time so an estimate is the best we can do, but we’re confident it is accurate to within one million years.”

“At two hundred and fifty, and accuracy of plus or minus one is not too bad,” the archaeologist, Doctor Henim Farns, agreed. “I’m really here to do a preliminary study of your installation, if that is permitted, to see if a full expedition might be warranted. If your claims of antiquity are verified, this must be the oldest surviving human construction in the galaxy.”

“And we have records of ones that are older still,” Park told him. “We were just discussing some a couple of weeks ago, although I doubt they still exist, but our computer records have pictures and videos. I’ll have Marisea set up a computer account for you so you can look through the library for yourself, but I have to warn you that the languages used are all ancient, mostly English. We have not translated most of that material yet.”

“I understand,” Doctor Farns replied, “Perhaps the first thing I need to do is study your language.”

“Not a bad idea,” Park agreed. “The Mer have done a fair job of programming a study program for their torcs. Perhaps we can find one for you.”

“Torcs?” the little archaeologist laughed. “They are impressive devices in their own way, but a bit quaint and antiquated. I have implants that do all that for me. I’ll have to see if their language program is compatible with my system. It ought to be, but I’ve been caught by surprise a few times. Of course my implants can translate the spoken language once they learn it, but I still need to read for myself.”

“Well, if you really get stuck, ask Marisea,” Park advised. “She speaks ancient English almost as well as I do.”

“She does?” Doctor Farns asked. “Excellent!”

There were also a pair of anthropologists, or as they called themselves culturologists. Doctor Jiss Gravings had actually come to Sol System to study the Atackack and had been waiting up on Luna for almost a year for the chance to come down to Earth, but his graduate student assistant, Miss Deeni Vasson, was more interested in studying the emerging culture of the mixed Human, Mer and Atackack students in Van Winkle Town. Park caught them arguing with each other over which way to go and decided to let them work that out for themselves.

Beniala Morava looked like an anime cat girl who had grown up. The people of her world had chosen cat-like ears and large round eyes for some reason but were mostly human in appearance otherwise. Park thought the larger eyes might serve to enhance nightvision, but the cat ears were strictly cosmetic and he privately thought the tail looked silly and had to make sitting on conventional chairs uncomfortable. However Miss Morava was also a renowned historian who had come to Earth to collect Mer histories, but was also intrigued by the Humans’ histories and even more fascinated by their philosophy of history.

“You talk as if you don’t see history as a collection of facts, Doctor Holman,” Beniala remarked that afternoon.

“Call me Park, Miss Morava,” Park told her.

“Beniala,” she replied with a broad smile that exposed small, but cat-like fangs.

“Beniala,” he echoed. “But, yes, history is a collection of facts, but facts don’t make history what it is. It is how we interpret those facts that count. We used to have a saying that went, ‘History is written by the winners.’”

“Yes, we have a similar saying,” Beniala replied.

“I have some problems with that,” Park admitted. “Actually it is written by the survivors. I suppose the winners in a conflict are going to be survivors too, and in the short run, yes, their version of an incident will be the one that is told, but a generation later it might be the children of the defeated who write the history. It happens all the time, but my point is not over who is writing but that no matter who it is, they have a bias, their own way of interpreting the facts. One historian’s description of how a rebellion was crushed and the treacherous rebels brought to justice, can also be told as the valiant struggle of a collection of freedom fighters against incredible odds and a repressive dictator. It all depends on how you see it.”

“But the facts remain the same,” Beniala insisted.

“But their meaning and relative importance is fluid,” Park pointed out. “Another thing to keep in mind is that history should be viewed in the cultural context in which it was written. An historian cannot help seeing past events through his or her own life experiences. If you grow up in a vibrant culture with a growing economy you might see expansionism as a natural expression of the human spirit, but if you grow up in times that are less than affluent you may see that same expansionism as a waste of resources that might have benefited people in need.”

“Well, yes, I know that,” Beniala agreed, “but it is my job to cut through all the opinions and present just the facts.”

“And do you not then interpret those facts to determine which were most significant?” Park pressed.