Date Point: 16y3m AV
USS Robert A. Heinlein, Akyawentuo Orbit, the Ten’Gewek Protectorate, Near 3Kpc Arm
Third Director Tran
Some of the other Directors had expressed reservations when Tran had informed them he was taking Nofl along to the meeting with the Ten’Gewek. He’d invested some of their trust and patience by reassuring them that Nofl, who was only saved from being entirely untouchable by his frankly stellar contributions to Directorate science, would be a valuable asset for this meeting.
He remained confident that it hadn’t been a mistake, but there really were times when the odd scientist grated on his sense of propriety. For instance the way that, the moment the jump array fired and delivered them directly from Folctha to the deck of the USS Robert A. Heinlein, Nofl greeted a nearby crew member with a certain mischievous glee and a lavishly extravagant cry of “Helloooo sailor!”
Apparently the peculiar outburst meant something to the Humans, several of whom did a poor job of pretending not to be amused.
It didn’t go down well with all of them, though. Their escort on this trip was Master Sergeant Coombes from the SOR, who shot Nofl a look that should have snap-frozen him, stopped the two Corti from disembarking the jump platform, then turned one way and saluted a flag hanging on one wall. That done, he turned the other way and held a salute toward a fellow Human.
“Party of three, request permission to come aboard.”
The Human thus saluted returned the gesture. “Permission granted.”
Coombes returned his hand to his side, then gestured the two Corti off the jump platform. Humans had their strange ways, but Tran was glad of the reminder that Nofl was stranger still even by their unique standards, and that his strangeness was not always appreciated.
“I hope you do not intend to do that with the Ten’Gewek,” Tran muttered to him.
“No, no, no!” Nofl assured him. “I get the message, this is a time to be very serious.”
“Tradition, Nofl,” Coombes said. “It’s about respect, to the ship, to the history of the service, and to all the people who’ve died upholding its ideals.”
“Consider me appropriately chastised.”
They were welcomed out of the jump compartment by Ambassador Rockefeller and Robert A. Heinlein’s captain, Nate Ruprecht. Both were looking suitably imposing in what Tran knew to be formal clothing, though Ruprecht’s was a good deal more decorated than the ambassador’s. Where Rockefeller was wearing a simple black suit with a wine-colored tie, the captain’s was a rich blue so dark it was almost black, with golden trim and a large multicolored patch over his left chest.
To Tran, clothing was something of an alien novelty, but in this case he could see the utility. Quite aside from the at-a-glance communication of rank, the protective benefits were obvious. Even with the gravity adjusted for their benefit, the deck was still hard and cold, and packed with exposed systems, ducts, piping and assorted emergency equipment.
They were met with commendable poise and formality. There were careful handshakes, and Ruprecht’s greeting was an efficient “Welcome aboard.”
“Thank you for hosting this meeting,” Tran replied.
“It’s our pleasure. The Ten’Gewek delegates are already waiting in my in-port cabin. Corporal Turner here will escort you. I understand both you and the Ten’Gewek wish for this meeting to be quick and to-the-point, and unfortunately your very different dietary needs would make entertaining you properly a serious challenge, so I hope you won’t think I’m rude if I just leave you in the ambassador’s capable hands.”
“Not at all,” Tran assured him. “Thank you for your welcome.”
Fortunately, the captain’s “in-port cabin” was much more comfortable. It was actually two rooms, an office with a folding bunk above the desk, and a sitting room which was apparently where they would be meeting with the primitives. The floor was polished wood with the ship’s crest in the center, the walls were painted a neutral off-white, and there were several couches around a low table plus a bookshelf and some framed decorative images.
It would have been spacious and luxurious, if not for the four enormously physical beings already occupying it. The three males were outright hulking, including a particularly well-scu lpted Human, who was both an impressive expression of his species’ genetic potential, and one of Nofl’s more successful patients.
Nofl Immediately perked up. “Julian! How is your foot, darling?”
The Human chuckled and stood tall to meet them. “Perfect, as always.”
“Third Director, this is Mister Julian Etsicitty, our Special Envoy to the Ten’Gewek.”
“Howdy.” Julian approached and offered a massive paw-like hand, which completely encircled Tran’s like an untightened vice. “My friends here are the leaders of their people. The big one is Yan Given-Man, Chief of the Lodge.”
Yan stood and stalked over with a deck-shakingly weighty and almost innately predatory prowl, then offered up his own gigantic parody of a hand. Tran observed Yan’s motion with a clinical eye. The enormous chieftain was, it was reasonable to say, physically and anatomically ideal. Yan had a body whose every vast shape and sharp line neatly illustrated why he was the leader of his primitive kind; his raw strength was reportedly equaled only by the other two Deathworlder exemplars, and his sheer robustness and gymnastic athleticism was said to exceed theirs.
If his ridiculously perfect physique was any indication of the goods on offer, this could prove to be a profitable exchange indeed. The Ten’Gewek would need to be extensively evaluated, of course, but there was something…Tran was hesitant to admit it, but Yan’s sheer presence was triggering some ancient, rarely-felt instincts. As the chieftain approached, Tran had found himself resisting the urge to recoil, or flee, or simply hide.
They shook. Tran’s little hand was completely lost in Yan’s vast paw. Fortunately, he had the sense to moderate his strength, and kept his grip to just shy of bone-shatteringly tight. Nor did he smell offensive, much to Tran’s surprise. He’d been worried about the scent of tanned leather and unwashed primitive, but it seemed the Ten’Gewek had discovered bathing at least. All that remained was a clean yet potent underlying musky note, much like every Deathworlder had in one form or another.
Yan’s body language and expression were utterly unreadable on first contact, but the room seemed to have a built-in translator function that rendered the native language into Corti Standard without issue. He smiled, bearing two bright-white pairs of truly enormous fangs. Again Tran’s instincts wanted nothing more than to recoil, but he had remembered that grins were often a friendly gesture among the Humans and the Gao.
“Well met.”
The translator gave his words a politely serious tone, but that failed to convey the rumbling avalanche that was his voice. Tran could quite literally feel Yan’s voice in his chest. He spoke so powerfully, the translator’s voice cancellation function could not fully suppress the sound.
Etsicitty introduced the other two as well. “This is Vemik Sky-Thinker, the People’s most experienced smith and inventor, and the Singer here is best thought of as a rather important community leader and healer. She is most concerned with medicine, well-being, running the villages, that sort of thing. Formally, she has no name.”
Both were also prime examples of the potential of Deathworlder biology, especially Vemik. He was every bit as exceptional as Yan, merely scaled down and younger. The Directorate had cursory genetic samples from both of them in the Ark’s library. It was obvious with only a glance across their bodies that they both greatly exceeded their predicted genomic modeling. Singer, too, was impressive. Sexual dimorphism was clearly quite pronounced in their species, but she was just as flawlessly well-formed as the males.
There was strategy at play, here. Julian’s presence was a not-so-subtle reminder of who the Humans counted as kindred, and undoubtedly of what Humans were capable of achieving if they so desired. Tran suspected that inviting all four of them was a deliberate ploy on the Deathworlder’s part to drive up the asking price, as it were. Negotiations with the Humans had…stalled, as of late. The Directorate has deduced the reason was they were waiting to see how talks with the Ten’Gewek developed. If that was the case, then Julian was exactly the type of reminder they would use.
He might even be aware he was being used in this manner, too.
It was an obvious ploy. Nevertheless, if this was the quality of stock the Corti could gain access to, along with further cooperation from the Humans…it was a well-considered and effective tactic.
The details of all that were for later. With that introduction complete, Julian then addressed the natives. “Singer, this is the Honorable Ambassador Rockefeller of the United States. He’s here to represent Allied Extrasolar Command, and is the guarantor of these talks. He’s also my boss. Yan and Vemik have already met him.”
“Yes! Our previous encounter was highly entertaining!” Rockefeller smiled warmly, and shook the three Ten’Gewek hands.
“Thank you for agreeing to, and hosting, this meeting,” Tran said formally to all of them. “I am Tran, Gold Banner, Third-Tier Director and Dean of the College of Xenobiology. I believe most of you are already familiar with my associate Nofl, Steel Banner, independent researcher and inventor of the medicine known as Cruezzir.”
He heard the faint scratchy whisper of the translator tripping over the word ‘xenobiology’ for the native’s benefit, and Yan frowned at it.
“…The tran-slay-tor did not like that word he used,” he said to Julian after a moment.
Julian rubbed his chin. “I think the best way to say that would be, uh…” he thought for a moment, and then spoke a long and complex polysyllabic word which the translator rendered confusingly back to Tran as ‘Sky-Thinking-People-Under-Other-Skies-Bodies.’
Convoluted as that was, the natives moved their heads in ways that suggested to Tran they understood the idea at least.
“I think, in the circumstances, it might be best if we ask the translator to omit the Ten’Gewek language,” Rockefeller suggested. “If you are happy for Mister Etsicitty to translate instead?”
“Why is the translation function compromised?” Tran asked.
“Their language is complex. Fusing, agglutinative, three numbers, three genders and ten noun cases which all decline, constructed tense, affixed animate, mood, and aspect markings, and a few other things I’m forgetting, too. You just…know what to say.” Julian shrugged. “I’m not a linguist, sorry.”
“Very well, I have no objection.” Tran sat down at Rockefellers invitation. The Ten’Gewek sat opposite, ignoring the creaking objections of their couch, with Yan taking up most of it from the middle, and Vemik and Singer to either side.
“So.” The Ambassador took his own seat, and opened a slim black folder on the table in front of him. “The negotiation in front of us is that the Corti Directorate wish to take genetic and other biological samples from the Ten’Gewek for the purposes of study and future research. In return, the Ten’Gewek desire a guaranteed supply of medicines, including vaccines, appropriate to safeguard the health of their people…”
“And books.” Yan added.
“A cultural exchange,” Etsicitty clarified. “They believe that to all things, there must be balance. They are very much aware that what you desire to take is opaque to them. In return, they ask that you give something equally opaque. They want to learn about you.”
“We can respect the desire for equal exchange,” Tran agreed. “My concern is that no mention has been made yet of a time limit on this supply of medical assistance. How long will we be required to deliver vaccines to this world?”
Yan consulted Julian for a few translations of some words, then nodded sharply as soon as he was happy he understood. To Tran’s vague surprise, he turned out to speak perfectly passable, though simple, Human English.
“We, the People strong. Not much sickness in us. But what we have, kill many of our children every season. We must increase. To increase, our children must live.”
The Singer nodded, and chimed in. “We were brought close to, uh… eck-stink-shun over the last… how long?” she asked Julian.
“We think the Hierarchy’s extermination campaign on Akyawentuo lasted about sixty Dominion standardized years,” the Human explained. “It began with an antimatter strike on their most developed cities, followed by a surface sweep led by Abrogator drones. If we’d found the Ten’Gewek even a year later, it would have been too late. Only the previously uncontacted forest tribes are left.”
The Singer nodded. “There are only two ten thousands of us, maybe. One evil sickness could kill us all.”
“Two ten thousands is not many for you, I think,” Yan added. “But for us, is everyone.”
Tran calculated. Twenty thousand natives, give or take a ten percent margin of error, with an estimated maximum childbirth rate of one pregnancy per female per annum, and an average litter size of singleton. Lifetime supplies of species-tailored, Deathworld-class vaccines and antibiotics was well within the abilities of just one of the Directorate’s Agile Development Modules, especially if automated production could be installed locally. The natives really were not asking for much, in the grand scheme of things. The College of Particle Physics had been known to misplace funding on that scale in a sloppy audit.
Still. Even a request as cheap as that could become expensive if it went on for long enough.
“Nevertheless, all we are asking for is a single round of non-invasive samples. We will not in any sense be Taking anything permanent. If we give a single round of medicines—enough for all currently living Ten’Gewek, say—then the next generation will be unprotected. A practical, permanent solution to the problem as presented will cost us significantly more than the value of the samples being given. We cannot provide such a service indefinitely, especially if the goal is population growth.”
“Not as simple as just giving us medicine, then,” Yan surmised.
Julian shook his head. “No. One generation could take their medicine, and those babies would live and grow strong, but then you’d be back to the start. More people having more babies, but they would lose those babies just as often as you do now. Would the Directorate would be willing to ensure a regular supply?”
Tran made a negative gesture. “We would require a negotiated duration for such a service, after which the contract would need to be renegotiated, or else the Ten’Gewek would need to establish their own native pharmaceutical industry… which according to our projections, they will not have the technological basis to do for at least three thousand Standardized Years.”
“That projection may not be accurate,” Rockefeller interjected. “The Ten’Gewek are developing very rapidly, in no small part due to their regular contact with Human technology and culture. The usual roadmap for sophont development doesn’t apply in this situation.”
“Agreed,” Nofl murmured, for Tran’s benefit, then spoke a little louder. “Might I suggest that the ambassador’s observation means that putting a time limit on the deal may not be useful? Perhaps instead, we should attach it to absolute population, if that is the Ten’Gewek objective.”
“…You mean deal ends when there are many of us,” Yan checked.
“I can see the merit in that suggestion,” Tran agreed. “The more of you there are, the more it will cost us to aid the Ten’Gewek.”
“Why not tie it to infant mortality rate?” Julian suggested. “If you can guarantee, say… four generations at a mortality rate better than fifty percent?”
“Julian?” Yan asked. The four huddled, speaking quietly in the native language while Julian translated and made sure they understood what was being proposed. Some sort of significant Look was exchanged. The big Human reached toward the table and pressed the button activating their muting field.
Tran took the opportunity to consult with Nofl.
“Rapid pharmaceutical development is your speciality, I believe.”
“Among others,” Nofl agreed.
“Time frame?”
“Assuming the Ten’Gewek aren’t substantially different from the two other deathworlder species I’ve studied, it should go smoothly…. But until I have some samples and scans, I can’t be definite. For all I know, we’ll have to reinvent from first principles. Unlikely, but it has happened.”
“We can do much better than fifty percent, I hope.”
“We can do better than ten percent. Goodness, I’d be ashamed if we couldn’t get the infant mortality rate below one percent, with proper application.”
“I think you’re being excessively optimistic, but very well… four generations, hmm.” Tran called up his memorized data on the state of the Directorate’s industrial abilities, logistics capacity, and the pricing estimates of a project like the one being asked. Four generations was… a hard bargain, but not an entirely unfair one. Especially considering how valuable the Ten’Gewek samples would be to the Ark Program.
…Tran glanced back at Julian, who was talking animatedly with the delegation on his side. Watching Deathworlders in motion was…intimidating, even if all they were doing was waving their hands about or bouncing in place. Nevertheless, the implication was clear. He couldn’t hear what they were saying but he didn’t need to. It was clear both Human and Ten’Gewek were deeply invested in the outcome of these talks.
“…I’ll push for two generations,” he decided to Nofl. “And compromise on three.”
“Of course. Never accept the first offer.”
As they returned to the negotiation, The hitherto-silent one known as Vemik, who’d been watching and listening carefully rather than contributing, spoke up.
“I have a question. What will you do with these samples? What are they for?”
“To learn about your kind, of course.”
“Why do you want to learn about the People?” Vemik pressed. “You seem… practical. Like you do things for reasons, yes? Knowing things just to know them is fun, but knowing things to do things is even better, so…”
Never underestimate a deathworlder indeed. Tran was secretly quite pleased, in fact. It was good to know they were dealing with a species who were merely undeveloped rather than stupid. There were too many stupid species.
“…I’m not at liberty to disclose the exact reasons,” he admitted. “But suffice it to say… we are not satisfied with how we are now. In the past, the Corti wrongly believed that intellect and physicality were mutually exclusive. We now know differently, and wish to adapt accordingly.”
Vemik listened to Julian’s patient translation, then nodded. His tail twitched as he absorbed what he heard.
“So… you will write new body-words. Using ours.”
“Learning from yours. We are learning from Human and Gaoian genetics as well. The idea is to deduce what you have in common which can also be successfully integrated into the Corti genome.”
Vemik glanced at the Singer. Some form of communication passed between them, driven by twitches of the tail and ears, slight dilations and contractions of their square, slotted pupils, and a slight tilt of Vemik’s head and a twitch of the Singer’s. Then both of them turned to Yan. They gave the same almost imperceptible gesture, and Yan nodded sharply.
“The deal: You will give four gen-err-ay-shuns of less than half our children die,” he said, turning to Tran.
“I can offer a much better rate: At least nine out of every ten will live… for two generations. After that, our continued service can be negotiated further…” Tran returned. He saw Yan grin, scoot forward on the couch, and light up.
The negotiations began in earnest.
Date Point: 16y3m AV
“Stinkworld,” the Irujzen Reef
Meereo, Champion of Clan Longear
Meereo was reading a report that simply blew his mind. There was no other way to describe it.
Clan Highmountain had become involved in the Irujzen Relay investigation. Rather than send a ship to Stinkworld, though, they’d instead flown the deep-space explorer A Poem Written In Steel all the way out to the halo stars at the very edge of the galaxy.
The idea, as he understood it, was that the Humans had sent over some kind of field equations that might be useful in picking out the Relay’s unique quantum signature from the galactic background. The Highmountains had tested it first by flying way out into the fringes of the galactic disk, where the stars were small and cold and impoverished of the heavier elements necessary for life, and where nobody had ever found a temperate planet. The kind of place the Hierarchy would naturally have no interest in and therefore, presumably, didn’t bother to cover with relays.
Then they’d flown inwards, toward the Irujzen Reef on a course that took them between Sol and Barnard’s Star. And they’d watched carefully for the kind of quantum signatures that Scotch Creek had predicted.
Sure enough, about a kiloparsec out from Sol, they’d started picking up exactly the predicted signal. By the time they flashed through the twelve light-year radius around Earth legally recognized by the Dominion as Human territory, the signal was strong and steady.
The Irujzen Reef—known to Human science as the Sagittarius Star Cloud,Messier 24 and IC 4715—was ten kilolightyears from Sol. Meaning that the Irujzen Relay generated a field that encompassed approximately one twenty-eighth of the galactic cross-sectional area.
That was a fact Meereo could sink his teeth into, even though the scale of it made his brain ache. He’d opened one of his professional software tools and gone to work.
First, make some assumptions about what features of network design remained constant even in a system as exotic and high-tech as this. He’d used cellular networks for reference. Every sapient species known to him used basically the same approach, because it was the one that worked.
The questions in front of him were… well, there were a few. First, was he looking at a standard sort of cell, or a particularly large one for gap coverage and reliability coverage? Or maybe a small local one for high-density traffic?
Probably not. Traffic engineering may not even be a concern for a system like this, this wasn’t radio frequency. And across the kind of time scales that the Hierarchy operated in, there was no such thing as a static landscape. Ten thousand light years was a stupefying distance to an organic life form, but a star’s orbit would carry it that far in a “mere” twelve to fifteen million years. With billions of stars falling inside its coverage, the Relay would lose and gain hundreds every year.
The Hierarchy therefore probably didn’t bother trying to anticipate where the galactic population would be distributed and fine-tune their network with larger and smaller cells. Far simpler and cheaper to make the relays a standard size and deploy enough of them to maintain reliable coverage no matter how the stars spun.
That was all speculation of course, but it didn’t seem like unreasonable speculation to Meereo and it fit the facts, so he kept calculating.
Twenty-eight relays the size of Irujzen would be enough to cover the whole galaxy on paper (overlapping circles problem aside), but of course life was not evenly distributed across the galaxy. There was none out in the halo due to the paucity of heavier elements, and none in the core due to intense radiation, frequent supernovae and an unknowable number of black holes crashing about.
Temperate, life-bearing worlds and the people who called them home occupied a fertile band between those two extremes that the Humans for some utterly bizarre reason called the ‘Golden Locks Zone.’ Gaoians called it the Green Belt. Whatever the name, twenty-eight relays, evenly spaced on planets with roughly equivalent Great Orbital periods would certainly cover…
He doodled, and calculated, and sketched.
….Most all of the Green Belt, most of the time.
He doodled, and calculated, and sketched some more.
It took him a few hours to find the minimum number and configuration that would reliably cover 100% of the green zone for, say, a million years. After that, it took another half hour before he arrived at a configuration that he was satisfied would provide effectively indefinite coverage and sufficient redundancy.
So. There were (probably) somewhere between twenty-eight and a hundred and twelve relays scattered all over the galaxy.
He took the geometric mean of those two numbers—fifty-six—and plugged it into his simulation. The result had occasional temporary gaps where a handful of planets might go without coverage for a few thousand years here and there, but across the kind of epochs the Hierarchy thought in, those gaps were at best a minor momentary nuisance that arose only in a vanishingly small number of cases.
Crucially, however, a significant minority of the Green Belt was covered only by a single relay. And if his assumptions about how the relays were spaced were correct, then the Border Stars—the territory between the fringes of Dominion and Alliance space which contained only one temperate planet of any significance—were one such minority.
The planet in question was Earth.
He stood up, sharply. Garl was briefing the senior Stoneback Father who’d been brought in to take over from him on this project, so Meereo scratched respectfully on his tent and waited to be called in rather than interrupt them.
Garl sniffed the air and peered at him. The old man’s vision was deteriorating alarmingly fast, now. “Champion Meereo. Something important?”
“I think so, Grandfather, yes.” Meereo didn’t bother to put down his tablet for the venerable ‘Back to read. Instead, he summarized what he’d been working on.
Garl might have been a common clay type, but there was a quick and perceptive brain under that shaggy pelt. He tilted his head as he absorbed Meereo’s conclusion, and then pant-grinned with a certain slow satisfaction.
“So ‘yer saying… if we were to destroy this relay…”
“Then the Hierarchy would completely lose contact with their operation in Sol.”
Garl duck-nodded, and stood up. He rounded the desk, and embraced Meereo in a tight hug “…Thank you. I actually get to hurt the bastards after all,” he said.
“It gets better!” Meereo managed to croak around the rib-crushing affection.
“What?”
“There’s another important planet this might effect too. Ugun…” he paused, raised the tablet, and read ponderously off it. “Ugun-du-vuronag-thureg-nu-burthuruv.”
Garl chittered darkly. “…A name like that could only belong to one group’a people.”
“Yes.”
“Well, that settles it. Tell erryone to pack their stuff, Meereo. We’re blowin’ this place ‘ta shit.”
Meereo pant-grinned. In truth, he would have liked to monitor the relay a little longer. One could always learn more from a running system than from relics and archived data… but this was a war. And sometimes a war demanded decisive action.
If it also meant getting an old Stoneback his one good hit in before the end… He was all for it.
“Yes, Warleader.”