Date Point: 14Y 3M 2D AV
Capitol Building, Washington DC, United States
Esther Blum
The five Members of Congress sitting in the room with her represented key decision-makers from both the majority and minority parties. They were seated in the outer office of the Majority Whip, one of the Representatives from the State of Georgia, who was the one the rest of the leadership turned to for a passing vote on anything controversial.
Which…this probably was.
“Ms. Blum, please. Go ahead. I’ve had Sandy make up copies for everyone,” the man at the other end of the table said genially. “Would anyone like coffee?” Several raised hands, as copies of a moderately thick proposal made its way around the table.
“Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, what is in front of you is essentially a skeleton outline for a formal aid package to the Gao that are coming to Cimbrean. Two of my colleagues today are putting this before the United Kingdom Parliament and the Israeli Knesset; the latter is a formality, as it’s already government policy, but for it to really work, well…” she paused.
“You need the buy-in from the US Government.” finished one of the Representatives to Esther’s left, looking over his reading glasses at her.
“Yes. We need, particularly, the tax foundation for it that you’ll see on page four.” The group in unison flipped several pages, and there was a moment of silence while they all read.
“A complete tax writeoff for any and all expenditures related to humanitarian relief efforts off-world, with a tax reduction in gross receipts…” read another of them, this one the ranking Representative from Montana if she remembered correctly. “Young lady, are you out of your mind?”
“No, sir, I don’t believe I am,” she returned evenly. “You’ll see the overall estimated fiscal impact in the first appendix at the back.”
“We are not at a point in this country’s history that we can afford to give anything away, Ms. Blum. The requirements of the AEC and supporting the Gao on Cimbrean are getting expensive, very, very quickly. I have constituents that are making a lot of noise about it already, and there’s a long way to go,” said another. There was a general murmur of agreement around the table.
“Representatives…please, hear me out. We are at a point in history right now to make very long-term investments in relations with other space-faring races who are literally centuries ahead of us in technology. They need our help now.” She looked around the room.
“This isn’t an opportunity that is going to come again in my lifetime or yours. It’ll be expensive, yes, but the virtually certain payoff of securing the future of an entire species’ breeding population is not something to overlook lightly.”
“What is this about long-term tax shelters for corporations committing to aid and who maintain a corporate presence?” asked the Representative from Montana again.
“We’re a construction company. We’re talking about a very motivated population with no practical construction experience—this is an incentive to maintain that support once things have stabilized.”
There was another long silence as the various grey heads around the table bent again, most of them making notations in the margins. Several minutes went by. Esther sat without speaking, content to let them read and ask what they wanted to know. Finally, the ranking member at the end of the table looked back up.
“Thank you for coming, Ms. Blum. We’ll be in touch.”
Date Point: 14Y 3M 2D AV
Folctha, Cimbrean
Mother-Supreme Yulna
The group of six Mothers stepped from the platforms to find Guard-Captain Myun waiting for them with several Guard Sisters. She duck-nodded.
“Mother-Supreme, welcome back to Cimbrean.” By now, all of them had travelled via jump portal between worlds often enough to be used to the routine head-scan. No-one wanted to be droned or encounter one here, and everyone had seen the sense in the Human precaution about it. Myun checked each in turn. Everyone passed, to no-one’s surprise.
“Daughter. Thank you for being so prompt.”
“I took the liberty of telling Sir Jeremy that the Mothers might be asking him for a meeting this afternoon, Mother. I wasn’t sure whether you would be coming back with them or not, but there are some things I need to discuss too.”
Yulna took no notice, leading the way for the rest of the group. “Talk with me as we walk, Myun.”
“First, Mother—some good news. The Human additional relief effort has expanded their operation. The Mothers, and the Human government, believe there is room for another ten thousand refugees immediately, as long as they are not all at once—staged over a day or two should be fine.”
“That is good news. The Great Father wants to send people through as fast as is possible,” Yulna said. “And we have millions of Females and cubs to send.”
“We will need to build quickly, Mother,” Myun said. “The other thing is related. I want to begin much more intensive self-defense training for all cubs, much earlier than we do now.”
Yulna had a definitely amused tilt to her ears. “I’m surprised you even asked before actually beginning, Daughter.” She chittered softly as Myun’s expression made it very clear that she hadn’t waited at all.
“I did have some competition for time, Mother,” she said, finally. “A very …enterprising… pair of cubs organized a large group of other cubs in one of the camps to do trash removal with some kind of vague promises about notice from Whitecrest taking notice of them.” The Mothers all chittered.
“I suspect Whitecrest certainly did notice those two,” Yulna said wryly. “Tell me about this plan of yours to increase the level of training with our cubs.”
“I have some ideas, Mother. The Humans have something they call “Boy Scouts” that Lieutenant Costello from the SOR suggested yesterday I look into. He was able to find the number for one of their leaders, and I have an appointment to meet with him next week. I’ll have to look at their curriculum and adapt it.”
“Mmmm.” Yulna grunted. “Humans have lots of ideas.” She gave Myun a knowing look. “Now. Let’s see what the Human Governor has to say about this colony idea.”
Date Point: 14Y 3M 6D AV….evening, local time
Refugee Camp, Folctha, Cimbrean
Father Gyotin, Clan Starmind
In months, and weeks, of long, terrible days, Gyotin often consoled himself at the close of each day with a long walk through the camp. It often helped, seeing cubs playing, demonstrating their resiliency in the face of overwhelming tragedy. Then again, he reflected, it’s entirely possible they don’t understand.
His wanderings often took him past a particular hilltop, partly from force of habit, and partly because it was a really nice view from the top. Most of the camp spread out below, and a mile away the lights of the city with its municipal forcefield overhead gave the landscape between a soft pseudo-glow.
The increasingly-emplaced Israeli Forward Operating Base, as they called it, was also visible. Usually, around this time, things there started winding down, but today seemed different somehow. He squinted a little, and his still-sharp ears picked up some kind of alien music he couldn’t quite make out.
Mindful of the aftereffects of the last Human concert he’d been to, he decided to wander down that way and see what was going on.
It didn’t take long. In the distance, he could hear cheering, laughing, chittering, and some kind of strange, throbbing bootsandpantsandbootsandpantsandbootsandpants sort of beat with bass and drums, and….
He came around a final corner, and was, even forewarned, utterly unprepared for the sight. Following his conversation with Rabbi Aaron, Gyotin had done some reading into Judaism, which was a deep rabbit hole he hadn’t nearly plumbed the depths of.
A half-dozen Humans wearing normal street clothes, but with pom-pommed hats he belatedly recognized as kippot were at the head of a line, moving with that uniquely Human coordination in every direction at once. Arms flailing, feet moving, all of it in time to the thumping techno beat being produced from a converted medical litter bearing a gene rator, a ton of bright LED lights, and several large speakers lashed to it.
The line behind them was entirely formed of gyrating cubs, every last one of them with a white kippah of their own, in a crazy sort of bouncing fuzzy conga-line hundreds of cubs long. Every so often, another Human danced along, and at least a few of them were from the base, going by their uniforms. He watched, dazed by the sight, when abruptly, his friend Aaron came bouncing up.
“Gyotin! Come, dance with us!” The Human’s face was lit up with exertion and some kind of fervent glee.
“Aaron, what is all of this?” Gyotin had to shout over the pandemonium.
They had to wait a bit until the litter bearing the music system was a bit further before either of them could really hear each other…not that that stopped the cubs, of course, many of whom were dancing because everybody else was. Several Mothers followed along, vainly trying to reestablish some kind of order, and all with the same kind of poleaxed expression.
“Come, we can meet them back at the base,” Aaron said, having regained his breath and wiping his forehead. “I’ll tell you about the Na Nachs Hasidics on the way.”
Aaron and Gyotin moved along a cross-trail in the direction of the Israeli base, and before long, Gyotin’s sharp ears could hear more music ahead.
“They’re followers of a particular Jewish sect,” Aaron explained. “To put it really simply, they believe that the highest religious duty is to spread joy, and the method they choose for that is music and dancing.”
“This kind of thing happens on Earth?”
“Oh yes. They regularly do exactly this kind of thing while parading through the street in the larger Israeli cities, dancing on top of, around, in front of, and behind vans that have enormous speakers and lights affixed to the top. They pass out literature, give out kippahs to anyone that wants one. They’re very serious about it!” Aaron went on.
Gyotin pondered that. Every time he thought perhaps, just possibly, he’d seen enough of Human spirituality, something came along that upended his whole understanding of the concept.
“What else do they do?”
“Well….here. We’re almost to the base, and you’ll see. They do this a lot with deployed troops, as a morale booster.”
They came out of the trees, and stopped. In the main “road” area that the Israeli construction crews had “paved” with gravel, an enormous mixed crowd of both races was dancing, rhythmically bouncing to the throbbing beat of music coming out of gigantic speakers on the back of some kind of car.
Circles of Humans, most of which included at least a few Gaoians although their shoulders couldn’t stretch out the same way, moved in time, swaying back and forth. The Humans were, to a man, singing along with the song. Some of them actually could sing, fortunately. Most of the rest sounded like they probably couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket. Gyotin realized something else, suddenly.
Most of the Gaoians dancing were Mothers.
Almost subconsciously, almost unwillingly, he found his head starting to bob with the beat, and his tail twitched in time.
Human enthusiasm for celebration was contagious.
Date Point: 14Y 3M 1W 5D AV
Chiune Station, Folctha Colony, Cimbrean
Mother Deven
The reality of dropping one or two hundred thousand refugees into a camp just outside of Folctha was that, when one needed a relatively quiet place to make decisions, anywhere inside city limits or its vicinity was promptly ruled out. MBG’s Chiune Station, regardless of the fact that it was housing all of the adult male Gaoian refugees, was still far less crowded than anywhere within about a mile of town. To accommodate the Clan of Females’ quickly-approved request for aid in settling on Cimbrean long-term, Mother-Superior Yulna had sent several Females to meet with the Group’s small team.
Cimbrean had long since been mapped out, as a direct consequence of the infamous Skidmark. MBG had spent a considerable amount of capital, in fact, doing planetary ecology studies, cartography, studies on tidal currents and trade winds, ocean wildlife, and a wide array of similar disciplines that generally made xenobiologists drool. Most of the effort was aimed at targeting certain biomes for adapting to Terran flora and fauna, of course, but much had also been done to catalogue and preserve what was already there.
Likely-looking spots for colonial outposts, of course, had also been identified, and it was these that the Females had come to see. There had been recent talk at very high levels about which Human nations got to settle colonies on Cimbrean where, of course, but everyone was in agreement that it made sense to let the Females have an open field. They’d settle any resulting problems later. This was higher priority.
Mother Deven’s charge from Yulna had been very to the point. “Pick a good spot, with plenty of room for building as well as agriculture and supporting industries, and far enough away from any likely Human settlements that we can take precautions against that sort of thing,” she’d said, gesturing at a map that included an overlay of the Terran Microbial Action Zone. Deven’s attention kept coming back to one in particular.
She zoomed in on the map and looked through the various data-mapped overlays. Her Sisters congregated around her, independently looking at the same location on adjacent screens and comparing notes in low tones.
It looked good. On the northern side of the equator, just at the edge of the tropic zone, and right smack in the path of a southern-bound polar current where it met a northern-bound equatorial stream of water…the resulting marine life situation around the eastern and western sides of the island was noted as particularly rich. Southern facing long slopes, with two wide, flat river deltas, a forested, bony mountain ridge sideways across the middle, and a much drier and colder northern side in the rain shadow of those mountains. Mostly old volcanic basalt base. Even the trade winds blew towards anywhere Humans currently were on Cimbrean, rather than from them.
“I think this is the place, Sisters,” she said, finally. It met everything Yulna had said to watch for, and then some.
“It certainly looks big enough,” said Mother Tiya, who had been included at Mother Ginai’s recommendation, solely because of her vehement argument against this enterprise.
“Big enough for those already here, and big enough for the rest. I agree, Sister,” replied Mother Naydra, who had, following the brief trip back to Gao a few days before, almost forcefully interjected herself into the governance of the refugee population. Her efforts were generally appreciated, although there was some good natured chittering behind her back about whether she was trying to catch Someone’s attention.
“That’s it, then?” asked the Byron Group biologist that was running the Human survey team. “What will you name it?”
There was no hesitation at all.
“Tiritya Island,” Naydral said, a fervent set to her ears. “It’s Tiritya Island.”
Date Point: 14Y 3M 1W 6D AV
Office of the Mother-Supreme’s Captain of the Guard, Folctha Commune, Cimbrean
Toran and Tybal, Clanless Cubs
Since they’d been cut loose from their “punishment” as well as Whitecrest’s oversight, both Toran & Tybal had been given a watchful kind of freedom. They were technically free, but what it really meant was that an adult was typically watching over their shoulder full time. At the moment, for some reason that neither of them could fathom, that involved reporting to the office of the Mother-Supreme’s Guard-Captain and…waiting.
They’d decided they liked Mother Myun almost immediately. Whether it was the large Human-style fusion sword she carried, or the fact that she was the largest, toughest, baddest Female either had ever laid eyes on, or whether it was simply that she obviously only ever carried as many fucks with her as she was planning on personally needing, it was too hard to say. This Mother, they both agreed, was an ass-kicking goddess. And besides. She was hot.
The trepidation of having to wait…and wait…and wait…though, by themselves in her outer office. That wasn’t easy.
Mother Myun came out, just as the door opened and another Mother came in from outside, along with a Human that looked rather more…normal-sized than some of those they’d been exposed to recently. The difference was palpable.
“Mother Lyla, Mr. Belman…thank you for coming,” Mother Myun said warmly. “I’d like you to meet your first two recruits.” She turned to regard the cubs. “These are Toran…and Tybal.” She indicated them in turn.
Recruits??? The cubs looked at each other, a little confused and suddenly hopeful. “Mother, what are we recruits for?”
“Gentlemen…you’re about to pioneer the creation of a new sport. We’re calling it Shalosh Frisbee, and it requires both Humans and Gaoians to play. I think you’ll like this.”
A new sport? That was unexpected.
“Come,” Myun said. “Let’s go outside.”
Riverfront Park, Folctha, Cimbrean
A large triangular field had been outlined in neat chalk lines, split into equal thirds with a goal at the furthest point back of each section. Mother Lyla and Mr. Belman explained the rules, having apparently spent some time modifying them.
“This is a modification of a popular Human game called ‘Ultimate Frisbee’,” Mr. Belman said with a big smile. “We had to change the rules to accommodate some Gaoian strengths too, though. So.” He took a deep breath, and let it out again as Mother Lyla continued.
“Three teams, two Human and one Gaoian. Each team has a frisbee, and the goal is to get the frisbees into an opponent’s goal.”
Toran’s ears flicked. This didn’t sound too difficult; it was a lot like that “football” game the Human kids had tried teaching them, only with a disc instead of a ball…
“The thing is, though,” Mother Lyla went on. “You have to get two frisbees into the same goal zone at the same time to score points, which means you have to take an opponent’s frisbee from their team, and use it to score with.”
“Humans can’t run with a frisbee,” said Mr. Belman. “Human teams have to stay stationary when they have it and can pivot, throwing it from player to player. Gaoians can run with it, but only on fourpaw, and only in one of the two Human zones—in the Gaoian zone, you have the same rule as Humans, where you can only throw from player to player.”
“Also,” said Mother Lyla, “If you have possession of two frisbees, and the third makes its way into your own goal, you can’t score until it’s removed.”
Myun placed a heavy paw on each cub’s shoulder. “I’m sure with the contacts you two have now, that you should have no trouble coming up with a team.”
“Yes, Mother,” they said in unison.
Date Point: 14Y 3M 2W 4D AV
Atlantic Ocean, Earth
Cargo Vessel Overloaded Perambulator
Like most cargo vessels, the Overloaded Perambulator didn’t so much sail as defiantly plow through the constantly-heaving ocean. It wasn’t a large ship, as cargo vessels went; it was big enough with enough mass to easily handle most things the ocean could throw at a ship, and yet small enough that serious storms got avoided. The North Atlantic remained infamous for its weather even in an age of space flight, digital genocidal aliens, and other such wonders. Everything still took a back seat when Mother Nature decided to get feisty.
The captain of Overloaded Perambulator was a seasoned ship-master with many years under his belt. He’d been nervous when leaving New York and its unusual cold snap, figuring that worse probably waited out in the open water, and so he was pleasantly surprised when it was almost like being becalmed the whole way. The sea was nearly still; there were almost no winds, head, tail or otherwise. Sighting Gibraltar a whole day and a half early was a welcome surprise.
They made their way steadily to the far side of the Mediterranean Sea, and for once it was nice not to have to stop at multiple ports along the way. His destination was Tel Aviv, where he was dropping off nearly everything that they were carrying, with an immediate return to New York. Stasis containers had somewhat changed the landscape of shipping; nothing spoiled in transport, and there was no need for refrigeration any more, just insulation and stasis gear that could be easily retrofitted to any container. The resulting worldwide drop in food prices also meant that more was being shipped off world, to newer and higher profits. Everybody won, it seemed, unless maybe one owned a company that manufactured refrigerators.
In record time, they offloaded at Tel Aviv and took on a return cargo to Atlanta and New York in turn. The captain hoped for such smooth sailing again, but he knew better than to expect it.
Now that the Tel Aviv portal had the option to be paired with the Gaoian one at Lavmuy, it was much easier to send things directly through. In due course, palletized goods of almost every shape and description were bundled through, one pallet after another.
The food, however, stayed in the stasis containers, and those were sent through together. Nobody wanted massive amounts of spoiled Deathworld food on Gao, so they were left with seals intact to protect the material inside from any contamination.