The Unscheduled Mission (4 page)

“I did actually think of that,” Dannet admitted, “but I’m fairly certain I can trust any Dennseean to deliver a sealed note for me and that was my main reason for asking him in for dinner. Getting a bit of news from homes seemed like a good idea too.”

“Well, weigh how he presents that news carefully before handing him any secret assignments,” Iris advised.

“Oh, this won’t be all that secret,” Dannet admitted. “All I plan to do is write a letter to my father. I’ll tell him I’m fine and being treated well.”

“Is that some sort of code?” Park asked.

“Not the way you mean it,” Dannet smiled. “The hidden message will be the same as the overt one. ‘Having fun, wish you were here.’”

“I could have had postcards printed up for you,” Park commented.

“What are postcards?” Dannet asked.

“Never mind,” Park shrugged the matter off. “And what are you going to tell him about the negotiations?”

“Only that we have just started but that I am looking forward to a speedy and happy conclusion to them,” Dannet replied. “Then I figure to spend the rest of the letter asking about the harvest and how the family is and the usual sort of thing. Park, I fully expect that letter to be read several times between here and Dennsee. That was the first thing we all learned in military training. Expect your mail to be read.”

“And that’s legal?” Iris asked, shocked at the notion.

“Of course not,” Dannet replied instantly, “but it is done in the name of security.”

“Whose?” Park asked pointedly. “Yours or theirs? Well, never mind that one either. So you’re sending a letter home. I’m sure your Dad will be happy to hear from you, but why are you making such a big point of telling us?”

“I’m hoping father will understand why I’m sending it,” Dannet replied. “I’m hoping when he reads it, he’ll understand that I’m throwing you my full support. When he does, he’ll gather his allies in the Diet and try to have Jance sent orders to recognize you and your claims.”

“Isn’t that a bit of a long shot?” Park asked.

“I hope not,” Dannet replied, “but we do need time to allow the letter to get there and for Father to act. Jance will try to conclude these talks quickly.”

“So far it sounds like he expects us to accept the reinstatement of the Covenant,” Park pointed out. “That’s not likely to happen.”

“I’m concerned he might wear Colonel Theoday and Prime Terius down,” Dannet replied. “Next time he might not call it the Covenant, but bit by bit he’ll slip in all the important parts of the old Covenant into this new treaty. It’s happened before. Not here, but there have been rebel planets before. There are one or two every millennium; we learned about them in school. Until now, I thought it was always for the best. Now, I’m not so certain.

“Park,” Dannet continued earnestly. “You need to stall for time. Find an excuse to break off these talks.”

“Break them off?” Park asked. “We just finally got them started and Jance is the one who walked out today.”

“It was just a ploy,” Dannet told him. “He won’t give up that easily.”

“Hmm, possibly,” Park nodded, “but aren’t you the one who assured me that with the surrender of the moon base, we had already established our rights to the Moon and beyond?”

“I did,” Dannet admitted, “and it was true, but I forgot about people like Jance. Silly of me, I know. I grew up with politics all around me. You would think I’d be a little less naïve about them. The Moon and this system is yours by conquest, but it’s Jance’s job to get you to give it back.”

“Then he can’t be very good at it,” Iris laughed.

“What makes you say that?” Dannet asked. “I’ll admit he made a mistake this morning walking in and trying to pretend the Covenant was intact, but that was just the way he chose to start. I imagine after that, almost anything else will seem reasonable.”

“I’m, not sure you’re right about that,” Park told him. “He obviously still believes we’re just some adventurers from another world, pretending to have come from the past. And, really, why should he believe us? Your people don’t have stasis technology and when you get right down to it two hundred and fifty million years is a ridiculous amount of time. I doubt our own scientists believed our stasis equipment would last that long. A century, maybe two, was all we were expecting. Certainly no more than a millennium. I doubt I’d believe it in his case. I’m not sure why you do.”

“I’ve seen your base,” Dannet replied. “It’s like nothing anywhere else in the galaxy. You’re right, two hundred fifty million is a ridiculous number. It’s long enough for countless civilizations to rise and fall. And that’s my point. Your Van Winkle base is so different it can’t possibly be a hoax.”

“We could have just found it,” Park pointed out. “then adapted it to our needs.”

“And built all those ancient artifacts?” Dannet asked. “Your power generators alone are incomprehensible to me, the style of furniture, your forms of entertainment all beyond foreign to me. It’s too much to believe it’s a fake and without your basic claim of stasis, it would all fall apart. Those ancient devices would have crumbled long ago. Am I wrong?”

“You’re using logic,” Park accused. “I doubt Jance is.”

“Don’t count on it,” Dannet laughed. “His job isn’t to make a treaty with you, it’s to impose one on the Mer. Like you said, he doesn’t believe your story. I just met with his deputy who tried to get me to open my eyes about you. Well, she did, but not the way she intended.”

“We can’t just break off these talks after coming all this way,” Park insisted. “It would be as phony as Jance’s little tantrum this morning.”

“No, you need to wait for the right time,” Dannet admitted. “Don’t let Jance talk you into anything.”

“It might be better if we draft our own treaty and shove it at Jance,” Iris considered.

“You can do that, but it will take time,” Dannet told her.

“And we should hold that in reserve,” Park decided. “Well, this is not my decision to make. I’ll go talk to Arn and Terius and see how they feel about it.”

As Park had expected, neither Arn nor Terius were disposed toward breaking off the talks regardless of how arrogant Harat Jance was. Dannet’s predictions that Jance would try to sound reasonable failed to materialize on schedule and rather than attempting to guide them all toward a hasty agreement, Jance seemed more disposed toward delay tactics.

For the next week the talks consisted entirely of Jance reading out various clauses from the Covenant and Arn and Terius pointing out that it no longer applied. It was not until the second week that Jance finally tried to discuss drafting a new treaty, although even then he refused to recognize the Humans’ claims that they were who they were. It was Sartena who finally discovered the truth behind that ploy, however.

“I don’t think he actually disbelieves you personally, but it wouldn’t be the first time a group of people claimed to be unchanged Originals,” She explained to Iris. “People like my ancestors and those of Captain Nrenth were obviously modified to live on their specific worlds, but not all adaptations are as outwardly visible as my skin, hair and antennae, Danet’s skin or Jance’s fur and no one really knows what the Originals looked like exactly. The scientists argue about it all the time. When you get right down to it, no one is even certain Earth is the original home world.”

“I’m certain of it,” Iris remarked.

“If all humans are descended from the people of a single world, then you’re right,” Sartena told her, “but even that is debated in many circles. There are so many different sorts of humans now, some people think we may have originated on a group of worlds in this sector of the galaxy. They believe our ancestors met after they traveled from world to world and then interbred.”

“That’s impossible,” Iris told her. “Evolution is random. There is no way compatible species could have developed so independently of each other.”

“Well, a lot of religious belief comes into that hypothesis,” Sartena admitted. “Ideas like evolution being the tool of a Creator or Creators, who guided it to their own purposes. It’s not always religious. Some believe that an earlier species planted humans on a number of worlds.”

“Interstellar gardening?” Iris
 
asked. “No, it doesn’t fit Earth’s fossil record. There’s a clear trail of ancient hominids that obviously show we diverged from the Pongids or maybe earlier apes. The only argument in my time was over which paleo-species were direct ancestors and which were evolutionary dead ends. Further back we are obviously related to the other primates who diverged from the insectivores and while there are a few gaps here and there, we could trace our evolution even further back into the sinapsids, tetrapods and, for that matter, anything with a notochord. I refuse to believe that would have happened similarly on multiple worlds that compatible species would have evolved.”

“But you don’t know for certain because your own people had not yet traveled to those worlds,” Sartena pressed. “You are going on belief there every bit as much as those who believe in the multi-world theory.”

“Not just belief, but logic,” Iris maintained.

“But not absolute proof,” Sartena argued. “You were never on those other worlds so you can’t know for certain.”

“There are a lot of things I can’t know for certain,” Iris pointed out. “I can’t know for certain that pigs didn’t spontaneously develop wings and start flying after I went into stasis, but the likelihood of that is too slim to take seriously.”

“What are pigs?” Sartena asked curiously. Iris explained, adding in an explanation of the phrase “When pigs have wings.” “Oh,” Sartena nodded. “And for the record, I agree with you, but not everyone else does and it has been so long that there are at least a dozen worlds in this sector that have ruins old enough to be considered the world of the Originals, at least according to those who study such things. Maybe you should consult an archaeologist or a paleontologist.”

“We don’t seem to have any of them here,” Iris remarked, “but another time. In any case I guess that might explain why Jance thinks we’re trying to scam him.”

“I don’t think he cares whether you represent a scam or not,” Sartena told her. “His job is to get the Mers back under the Covenant or something like it.”

“That’s what Dannet told us too,” Iris noted.

“Really?” Sartenna asked. “Good. I wasn’t sure Captain Nrenth realized that. He’s a bit young, but then nobles get fast-tracked for command.”

“Wasn’t he your captain?” Iris asked.

“No, Dannet was captain of
Dilligent
,” Sartena replied. “I was on
Watcher
, the one you hit with your phaser.” She shivered at the memory. “I still don’t know how I survived. I guess three years of pressure suit drills must have worked better than I gave them credit for, especially since I couldn’t really see what I was doing at the time. Did you really have to use visible light on that thing?”

“It’s all we had to work with,” Iris admitted. “Would you like some tea?”

When Jance finally got around to agreeing to discuss a new Treaty, it was as though none of their previous meetings had taken place. “First of all we must come to an agreement as to who will be present at these negotiations,” Jance told them in his characteristic sneer.

“We are satisfied with the current arrangement,” Terius told him politely.

“No,” Jance disagreed. “These supposed ancient Humans of yours have not proven their bona fides. They can observe but not participate.”

“Have you been listening to anything we’ve said here?” Arn erupted. “We ‘supposed ancients’ here are the ones claiming the Earth and all of Sol System. We have agreed with the Mer that they have an equal claim and by extension so do the Atackack, although they are not represented yet. You are dealing with us whether you like it or not.”

“My people are investigating your origin,” Jance told him coldly. “And as soon as we trace you back to your real world I plan to have you expelled from these talks and your people arrested and transported.”

“You and whose army, Harry?” Arn tossed back challengingly.

“The armed forces of the Alliance of Confederated Worlds should do nicely,” Jance smiled frostily.

“Yeah, we’ve already seen how well they fight,” Arn grinned back. “That’s why you’re here.”

“Gentlemen,” Park cut in quickly, “why don’t we return to business? Mister Jance, our bona fides can be determined more readily by an archaeologist or a biologist, I imagine, than a bunch of politicians. Why don’t you send a few down to Earth to have a look for themselves? But in the meantime let’s proceed with the negotiations.”

“All right,” Jance conceded with the air of an adult placating an unruly child, “for now I will accept you, conditionally, but this is not to be considered official recognition.”

“Fine,” Park replied. “Next meeting we’ll all wear masks.”

Jance ignored him. “Next we must determine the scope of these talks.”

“The scope?” Arn asked incredulously. “The scope is the same as we’ve been discussing since we got here. Earth owns Sol System. The scope of these talks is to establish that in writing.”

“So we are in negotiation for the entirety of this system?” Jance asked.

“Well, I’m not sure what you, personally, are in negotiation for,” Arn shot back while Park kicked his foot, “but that’s why the rest of us are here.”

“Very well,” Jance nodded. “The
Alliance is not likely to make any such concessions, but I suppose we can talk about that and meet somewhere in the middle.”

Arn looked like he was about to say something in retort, but Park kicked him again and drew Arn’s glare instead. On Arn’s other side, Patty Zinco scribbled a note and passed it to him. Park glanced over and caught the words, “Calm down,” on it.

“Well, most important,” Jance went on, “is the location and timing of these proposed talks.”

“What?” Arn jumped to his feet.

“How about here and now,” Park asked and he and Patty, guided Arn back down. “We’re here and the discussion is on the table. The night is young, let’s get started.”

“That won’t do,” Jance insisted in an oily tone. “These are just preliminary discussions. We must set the terms before we can start to talk.” Then as he had in every other meeting, Jance got up without another word and left the room, followed by his staff.