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  A Committee meeting was held aboard the League One, three days after their arrival at Serenity. Alex was summonsed to appear before it with the usual legal document, a form of subpoena which commenced You are hereby required…

  It was not an invitation which could be refused, so Alex duly turned up at the specified time, smart in groundside rig, and was admitted to the Committee Chamber with due ceremony.

  The Committee room aboard the presidential transport was much smaller than those at the Senate, of course, but even so, they’d managed to create a venue of suitably official gravitas. There was nothing so plebeian as a conference table here. Instead, twelve plinths were set about in a circle around a central space which displayed the League emblem in a priceless mosaic. Eleven of the plinths had an ornate desk apiece with a high backed chair, with a compact work-space behind for support staff. Those occupied by full voting members of the committee had Senatorial panels at the front of their desks. Those of non-voting members – in this case, Dix Harangay and Ambassador Gerard – displayed the logos of their respective organisations.

  On the twelfth plinth, known as the Visitors’ Chair, was no desk, just a seat, where those summoned to appear before the committee were placed. Whether you saw it as a witness box or a dock depended largely on what you were there for. But this was, indeed, equivalent to a court, with powers to compel testimony.

  Alex took the oath, standing beside the chair, and having promised to tell the truth on his honour as an officer in the service of the League, took his seat.

  This was not the first time he’d appeared before Senatorial committees, and he knew what to expect. Or thought he knew what to expect. However bright-faced and glad-handy the senators might be in public, this session was security sealed and that meant they could be just as forthright as they liked. He was, Alex felt sure, in for a grilling.

  There were, after all, many aspects of the mission which could not have sat easy with the more conservative members of the Senate. Alex’s oh-so casual handing over of sovereignty of the Serenity system, for one, giving it to Silvie in a café, over dessert. The mixed-rank, mixed-gender nudity, too, in using quarian bathrooms, would have shocked many of them.

  Whatever might or might not have shocked them, however, they had quite a different focus – a brief burst of praise for his excellent work at Quarus morphed quickly into a discussion of the situation here at Serenity, seeking his opinion now that he had had the opportunity to see the provision and development himself.

  ‘I find it excellent,’ said Alex, without hesitation. The facilities built for the quarians were everything he could have asked for, with ocean-floor domes for them in a variety of habitats. Provision for tourism was building apace, too, with resorts springing up in the six locations chosen for them. Best of all, the authorities here had got things together amazingly well, basing the encounter zone provision on the phased environments the mission team had worked out together, at Quarus.

  That had been an important part of the mission. It had taken time for the quarians to learn that humans came in three varieties – goodwill ambassadors, officials and members of the public. The goodwill ambassadors at Quarus were primarily the Fourth, but it had been made clear that in order to be wearing that badge they had to meet high-bar criteria for language and culture skills, up to and including the ability to dive out of a shuttle into an ocean, by themselves, to swim down and visit a quarian city. Those with an officials badge were of the type they’d been dealing with up until then, members of the Diplomatic Corps, the regular Fleet and other branches of that mysterious thing the humans called authorities. These could be expected to speak quarian and have some basic understanding of culture but were liable to the kind of bizarre behaviour that had been so bewildering the quarians for decades. And those identified as members of the public had no formal training and were basically to be considered as totally nuts and completely incompetent.

  So, the encounter zone being developed here reflected that. It was a series of buildings and outdoor venues straddling a coastline, ranging from a visitor centre for tourists at the highest cliff-top point and going right down to a sub-sea zone only open to those with goodwill ambassador accreditation. Quarians could move around this network freely, aware that with every level they rose they would be meeting weirder and potentially more offensive humans.

  Silvie had walked through the encounter zone the previous day, giving it a test run all the way from the deep-six level to top-nine. The anti-stampede systems had worked very well at top-eight, but she’d be advising the others to stay below top-five for now, said Silvie, at least until there was less screaming and fewer people passing out. Alex, having done his own walk-through, agreed with her completely.

  ‘It is,’ Alex said, ‘really impressive, how quickly things are being built, and to such a high standard.’

  That caused a little ripple of amusement from the senators, with one of them commenting that it was amazing what could be achieved when money really was no object.

  They meant Andrei Delaney, of course. The man generally considered to be the wealthiest man in the League was funding development here, by agreement with the Diplomatic Corps. Ships were arriving every day, bringing in materials, supplies and installation teams.

  ‘And the multi-agency organisation,’ said Alex, ‘cannot be faulted.’

  He meant that, too. He’d been amazed to see not only how well the Diplomatic Corps had geared up for the arrival of the quarians, but how every other agency at the base had got involved as dynamic, innovative team players. The Fleet had taken on managing the system, providing traffic control and security in a role that went far beyond the traditional responsibilities of the port admiral’s office. The Exploration Corps had not only opened up their base here as a tourist attraction but were providing swim-dive lessons and escorted tours into the wilds. Even the university research centre had stepped up, every department at the campus keen to show off all the work that they were doing. Chief amongst them was the recently enlarged Terraforming Unit, now moving new species out as fast as the biodiversity enrichment team could process them. All of it, Alex had found, was working together under the direction of a multi-agency Project Steering Group led by the Ambassador. The buzz here, he’d discovered, was all about the A-Game. If it wasn’t A-Game, it wasn’t good enough.

  ‘So – there’s nothing here you’d want to see being done differently?’ Senator Terese Machet was Chair of the Committee – the obvious choice, since she was not only chair of the special Sub-Committee which supervised the Fourth, but also a member of the Exodiplomacy Committee, back at the Senate.

  ‘No ma’am,’ said Alex. Terese had not changed much since they’d last met. She was a trim, conventional figure in a neat business suit and neatly bobbed blonde hair. Alex was trying not to remember the time she’d spent as a guest on his ship, wearing shipboard rig and working as a rigger. She had taught him a lot, during that trip, and they had become friends. But right here, right now, she was Senator Machet, not his mate Terese.

  ‘No concerns about the handling of health and safety matters?’ Senator Twitchell enquired.

  Right, here we go, thought Alex. If anyone on that Committee was going to be going for his throat, it would be the ultra-conservative Senator Twitchell, who was on record as saying he did not see any need for the Fourth and objecting to the amount of money spent on them. He was also a personal friend and fellow clubman of the Third Lord of the Admiralty, Cerdan Jennar, who loathed Alex like poison.

  ‘No, sir.’ Alex said calmly. Health and safety was always going to be an issue with quarians coming into an unfamiliar environment, even with every conceivable precaution.

  And so it had proved. Even with extensive training and information, including an exhaustive list of every hazard which might be encountered in every location on the planet, the combination of qualities which quarians brought with them to exploring a new world made incidents inevitable.

  They were curious. They liked
to get close to interesting things like sheer cliffs, hurricanes and active volcanoes. They liked to interact with wildlife. They were physically incapable of feeling fear. They had no concept of imagining danger, no worry at all about what might happen. And they did not follow rules.

  Othol, the most curious and active of the group, had been on Serenity for just forty seven minutes before he’d fallen out of a tree. That was just the kind of thing which made exodiplomacy with quarians so difficult. They were significantly more intelligent than humans and technologically more advanced, but had no fear whatsoever and no common sense. Othol knew perfectly well that the trees on Serenity would not support his weight, as their trunks had to be flexible enough to survive the constant earthquakes. Quarians had no climbing skills, either, and were not physically adapted for hauling their own weight up in the air. Climbing of any kind was on the red list for do not activities, which Othol had agreed on the way here was perfectly reasonable and sensible. And yet, faced with real trees for the first time in his life, he had not been able to resist the temptation to see for himself whether he could climb up it a way.

  That was, indeed, the kind of thing which would have freaked the Diplomatic Corps out, before, triggering an immediate crisis-mode and frantic efforts to keep the quarians safe even if that meant surrounding them at all times with a close cordon of bodyguards.

  As they had had to accept, though, they could not do that here. Serenity belonged to Quarus now, this was their planet, the humans only here as leaseholders with use of specified land. And while the quarians were happy enough to be advised and assisted, they certainly would not tolerate being controlled. Othol, therefore, had been picked up and given first aid, and had gone on his way, perfectly happy.

  Alex was prepared to defend this low-key handling, and to spend however long it might take to get it across to the Senators that successful diplomacy here meant not imposing human expectations, however hard that might be. In the event, though, he found he didn’t have to. Senator Twitchell made a small grunting noise which might just have held a faint trace of disappointment, but Alex’s answer was accepted without protest.

  Further questions were the same, seeking his opinion in his capacity as Ambassador to Quarus on various points, but in no way critical or demanding that he justify decisions that he’d made. Even when it came to discussing the incidents with Trilopharus, they were quite astonishingly positive.

  Alex himself did not feel that he had acquitted himself well in that situation. On the way out to Quarus, midway across the Gulf, a blindingly bright angelic figure had appeared in his cabin along with an ear-splitting trumpet fanfare, announcing that its name was Trilopharus and that it wanted to be friends. Assuming that this was a prank, Alex had groaned ‘Oh, not now!’ and turned over to go back to sleep. Only then a lightning-crack of electrostatic discharge had set off the fire alarm, indicating that there was rather more to this than a silly holographic prank being pulled on the skipper.

  Investigations had been inconclusive. None of the ship’s sensors or the blind cameras filming routinely throughout the ship had recorded anything before the electrostatic flash. Only Alex himself had seen or heard the figure. And while he remained convinced that it had to be some kind of high-tech prank, Shion had put forward a plausible case for it to have been a genuine attempt at first contact.

  Alex had, therefore, agreed to responding to the figure in a rather more diplomatic manner if it appeared again. Which it duly had, materialising on the command deck this time not long after they’d embarked upon the Gulf crossing, returning from Quarus.

  Again, nobody else had been able to see or hear anything but Alex and the only thing recorded by the ship was the electrostatic flash when it vanished. So there was no evidence to support Alex’s account of what had been said. All that cameras had recorded had been Alex looking amazed, saying ‘Yes, of course’ and hastily tapping in a set of coordinates. Then, just as he’d been about to speak again, there’d been another flash.

  Alex fully expected to be taken to task for dismissing what did now appear to be a genuine first contact approach, and was prepared to apologise, too, but the Senators amazed him by how understanding and even sympathetic they were about that.

  ‘If a giant angelic figure appeared in my bedroom in the middle of the night saying, ‘Hello, I want to be your friend.’ one of the Senators commented, drily, ‘I would have been yelling for security!’

  ‘Or grabbing for a weapon,’ another agreed, and there were sounds of consensus, all round, that responding with ‘Oh, not now,’ and going back to sleep was perfectly reasonable and admirably composed.

  What they wanted, really, was a rather more personal account from Alex of the second encounter than they’d got from his official report… basically, they just wanted to hear it from him. So Alex obliged.

  ‘At the second encounter,’ he explained, ‘I was on the command deck, playing triplink with Mr North.’

  He paused there, some part of him expecting that Senator Twitchell at least might question why the captain and the diplomat had been playing a board game on the frigate’s command deck. But even he merely nodded acknowledgement, evidently understanding that this was perfectly normal in the Fleet and signified nothing more than that it was a quiet watch.

  ‘When the fanfare sounded and Trilopharus appeared,’ Alex went on, ‘it was obvious that nobody else could see or hear anything. So I stood up, signalling for quiet on the command deck.’

  ‘Was that this…?’ One of the Senators was keen to show off how much he knew, and performed a grossly exaggerated version of Alex’s subtle finger-twist.

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Alex was walking them through this using dual footage – on one big screen was the actual recording taken from the ship’s log. On the other was the forensic reconstruction Alex had created, including the figure and the sound. It still wasn’t anywhere near as stunning as the real thing and no amount of work had reproduced the alien timbre of the figure’s voice, but it was the best Alex had been able to do. In both images, now paused, Alex could be seen glancing sideways at the watch officer as he got to his feet, and holding his hand so that the commander could see first and second fingers briefly entwined. When you watched it in super slo-mo it was obvious. When you watched it in real time it was anything but.

  ‘We use a range of coded signals for rapid, discreet communication,’ Alex said. ‘It can be helpful in complex situations.’

  Again, nobody cavilled at that, though secret sign language was very definitely not in the regular Fleet handbook. Someone, Alex recognised, had been putting in a lot of work here to ensure that the Senators really understood the context of what had happened in that footage. And he didn’t need to glance far to see who that must have been – Dix Harangay, sitting on his left, had been working with this Sub Committee since before they left Chartsey. No wonder he looked tired, thought Alex. But the mood in the room was expectant, so he let the footage run on a few more seconds. On the log-recording screen the watch commander tapped some control which signalled a request to everyone’s work screens that they remain very still and quiet. On the right, the figure barely discernible amidst a blinding glare greeted Alex cheerfully. ‘Is now a good time?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Alex, and was evidently about to go into rather more orthodox first contact greetings, but Trilopharus interrupted, speaking over him before he’d even got through those three words.

  ‘I won’t keep you long, we know you’re very busy.’ Trilopharus said. ‘But I bring greetings from the Chethari, okay? We would like to be friends. And if you’d like to meet, come to these coordinates, 39242693, 912427336, 243225923.’

  Alex paused the playback again.

  ‘I realised as they were speaking that the numbers wouldn’t be recorded so I tapped them down…’ he could be seen in the footage, already sweeping open a numeric pad on the datatable in front of him, fingers tapping in the coordinates as fast as humanly possible. Trilopharus was faster, though,
and Alex was still tapping when the Chethari gave a flourishing wave. ‘Anytime you’re ready,’ they said, and with that, they were gone.

  As a miniature lightning bolt struck the deck where the figure had been standing, fire alarms went off and the ship came automatically to alert. So there was no time, really, for Alex to register any kind of reaction to that.

  ‘You seemed to take the whole thing very calmly, Captain.’ There was a very slight hint of envy, there, from a Senator who’d been obliged to recognise that he was not that cool when flung into extraordinary situations. Later, Alex would hear about the reality-check exercise which Dix had pulled on the Senators, confronting them with an unexpected holographic alien so that they could evaluate their own reactions. ‘But you must have had some kind of emotional reaction, surely?’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Alex, at his coldest in a formal situation like this and so giving nothing away. Behind the granite mask, though, he was irritated. So many people assumed that because Novaterrans did not show their emotions readily in public, or at all in formal circumstances, that they didn’t have any deep or strong emotions. As anyone who knew Alex or any other Novaterran privately would confirm, though, they were just as emotive as anybody else. They simply held themselves to a high standard of self-control and courtesy in public. ‘It was,’ Alex stated, with all the warmth of an iceberg, ‘an overwhelming situation. We thought if Trilopharus reappeared at all, it would be in the same place on the return journey, and we were weeks away from that, so it was a shock. And it was…’ he gave a small, helpless little gesture, indicating that he found it hard to find the words, even now, to convey the intensity of that experience. ‘It was,’ he confided, ‘what Silvie calls a headspin, so many conflicting emotions at once that I hardly knew myself what I was feeling. There was delight, of course – Trilopharus identifying as Chethari was amazing, and just what Shion had predicted, too.’