A Learning Experience 2: Hard Lessons (11 page)

“I was thinking a quiet dinner in a restaurant,” she said.  Her face reddened when he gave her an incredulous look.  “It’s just something my step-bitches would have done with their boyfriends, once they were going steady.  I always wanted to do it and I never could.”

Martin hesitated, on the verge of pointing out that Yolanda was exotic – and would always be exotic.  He stopped himself just in time.  Yolanda might be exotic, but she had also been isolated because of her parentage and appearance.  And then she’d been hurt, badly.  Maybe the Deniers had a point after all, he told himself.  Emotions certainly made it harder for people to get over traumatic events in their lives.

“We can pick a nice place and eat there, if you like,” he said.  The idea seemed absurd to him, but then there had been no real courting in the ghetto.  “Where would you like to go?”

He reviewed the local news through his implants while Yolanda searched for a suitable restaurant.  The political section stated that the Homeland Faction was on the verge of placing a bill before Congress that would call on the Solar Union to intervene on Earth, despite opposition from several other factions.  Martin had never followed politics on Earth – what did he care who parked his rump in the White House? – but politics in the Solar Union reminded him of a genteel catfight.  Everyone was both adamantly defending their corner while, at the same time, being painfully polite to one another.

The next piece of news concerned an attempt to ban cougars.  It puzzled him until he reviewed the links and discovered that cougars were older men and women – often in their later years – who chased partners who were barely out of their teens.  Martin frowned – he wouldn't have wanted to sleep with an eighty-year-old woman – and then remembered the nanotech.  A man of ninety could look sixteen – legal age in the Solar Union – if he wanted ... and then, with the advantage of seventy-four years of experience, seduce young girls who barely knew anything about the outside world.

Cheats
, he thought.  What could he offer a girl, apart from youth?  An older man with nanotech running through his body could offer her youth – at least the appearance of youth – and everything else besides. 
No wonder some people want to ban it
.

He skimmed the rest of the article with interest.  The pro-cougar faction defended it as a freedom of sexual activity; the younger parties weren't underage, so the cougars weren't actually committing a crime.  However, their opponents pointed out that such a relationship was monumentally unbalanced.  The younger partners would be immature and largely unable to cope with their older partners.  Martin had to admit they had a point.  The older men who’d married younger women in the ghettos had treated them as nothing more than arm-candy ...

“Here,” Yolanda said, breaking into his thoughts.  “This sounds like a nice place.”

Martin glanced at the link she sent him.  “A pizza place?”

“It sounds good,” Yolanda said.  “Besides, we should be careful with our money.”

Martin nodded and allowed her to lead him through the streets to the restaurant.  Something was missing, something that both reassured and puzzled him at the same time, but it took him several minutes to identify
what
was missing.  They were walking through a residential area, crammed with civilians ... and yet none of them were giving him sidelong glances, wondering what a black man was doing in their territory.  It struck him, suddenly, that he was looking at the very definition of a post-racial society.  No one gave a damn about him being black, any more than they cared about the multicoloured children or even the aliens.

The restaurant was a small building, built in a style that reminded him of the past.  Inside, there were a handful of occupied wooden tables, each one holding a glowing candlestick.  An old man greeted them at the door, then pointed to one of the empty tables beside the window, looking out onto the streets.  Yolanda took his hand, led Martin over to the table and sat down on the wooden chair.  The table was already laid with knives, forks and spoons.  Martin didn't want to
think
about how many charges the health and safety police would level at the owner, just for daring to leave his knives in plain sight.

“Tomorrow, we go back to work,” Yolanda said, as they skimmed the menu.  It all looked remarkably unhealthy, yet tempting.  “I’m going to miss here, I think.”

“Me too,” Martin said.  He shuddered.  Sergeant Bass had gone into great detail about just what he could expect at Boot Camp.  And to think he’d thought Recruit Induction was hard.  “But you’ll be flying starships!”

“I certainly hope so,” Yolanda said.  The waiter took their orders, then vanished into the kitchen again.  “I’m not the easiest of people to know, am I?”

Martin smiled.  “You could be worse.”

“I know,” Yolanda said.  “But I could be better too.”

“I think you’re fine as you are,” Martin said, slowly.  What had brought
this
on?  There were times when he genuinely believed that girls were an alien race in their own right.  Their merest word could mean something completely different to what he thought it meant.  “Why?”

“I like you,” Yolanda confessed.  “But I also have problems getting ... close to anyone.”

“I understand,” Martin said, too quickly.  He’d enjoyed the chance to meet girls on the asteroid, but Yolanda had stayed in her room.  “I don’t mind just being friends ...”

“Thank you,” Yolanda said.  “And I'm sorry.”

Martin let out a sigh of relief as their food arrived.  The conversation had become impossibly awkward.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, as he cut into the pizza.  “I can be your friend for the rest of your life.”

“Thank you,” Yolanda said.  “That means more to me than I can say.”

Chapter Eleven

Cohan Young, a rancher from Texas, was charged today with hate-speech on the internet, after a long screed about the damage caused to his crops and cattle by illegal immigrants crossing the border from Mexico.  Mr. Young’s farm has already been seized by Federal Authorities and is likely to be handed over to a Mexican family, as part of the reparations for the Mexican-American War (1846-48).  His family have already sought asylum in the Solar Union.

-Solar News Network, Year 52

“This never fails to impress me,” Captain Jean Vanern said, very quietly. 

Kevin couldn't help, but agree.  The Varnar had been space-faring for centuries, long before they’d been brought under Tokomak sway, and their star system showed it.  There were large settlements on every rocky planet, giant structures in orbit around every gas giant and thousands of starships moving in and out of the system.  The sheer scale of activity dwarfed the Sol System, even after fifty years of near-constant expansion into outer space.  It was a thoroughly intimidating sight.

He sucked in a breath as three new icons – gravity points – popped into existence on the holographic display.  The keys to cheap interstellar travel, allowing starships to move instantly from one system to another, they gave the Varnar the chance to become the masters of the local sector.  If the Tokomak had never existed, the Varnar might have become much more than an interstellar version of Cuba, a Banana Republic used by far greater powers to fight proxy wars and keep the other smaller nations under control.  But it was not to be.

And if Earth had had gravity points
, he thought,
we would have been occupied long ago
.

The Galactics didn't have anything resembling a Prime Directive, at least where most civilian-grade technology was concerned.  There was no shortage of races – like the Hordesmen - whose natural development had been cut short by contact with their superiors, resulting in their forcible assimilation into Galactic society.  Some of them did well, but others seemed doomed to permanent cultural inferiority.  The Horde had been spacefaring for hundreds of years and yet a band of primitives from Earth had been able to take a starship off their hands, then use it to build an interstellar society of their own.  But then, the Hordesmen had never really understood their own technology.

“We’ve just been pinged by local system command,” Jean said.  They’d become friendly – if not
too
friendly – on the voyage to Varnar.  “They want ID and GalStar credit balance.”

“How very human,” Kevin said.  “Send it to them, please.”

There was a long pause before the reply – a vector directing them into high orbit – appeared in the display.  Jean barked orders to her crew, while Kevin used his implants to study the live feed from the starship’s sensors.  Varnar, one of the ultimate targets of the endless war, was surrounded by heavy defences, making Earth’s look flimsy in comparison.  There were over a hundred orbital battlestations, thousands of automated weapons platforms and dozens of heavily-armed starships in the system.  On the ground, he knew, there would be giant Planetary Defence Centres dug into mountains, ready to engage anyone who dared enter orbit without permission.  The Varnar took their homeworld’s safety very seriously and it showed.

And if they dared cut loose a few squadrons of starships
, he thought,
they could do real damage to the Solar System.

It wasn't a pleasant thought.  The Solar Navy had spent fifty years learning everything it could about the Galactics, then building a fleet that might be able to stand up to them when they finally noticed Earth.  But the Varnar had hundreds of years of experience in fighting interstellar wars, even if their technology had never really advanced since they’d made contact with the Tokomak.  That puzzled Kevin more than he cared to admit; he knew that societies could stagnate, but even the Taliban had managed to adapt to threats posed by outside forces.  The Galactics, it seemed, reached a certain point and stopped dead.

But new technology would prove immensely disruptive
, he thought, recalling the struggle to introduce even minimal levels of Galactic technology on Earth. 
The Tokomak may force them to refrain from developing anything new.

“We have an orbital slot,” Jean informed him.  “I’ve paid for two weeks, but I think they’d suspect something if we didn't bug out before then.”

Kevin nodded.  Interstellar freighters only made money when they were actually in operation, moving from one system to another.  There was nothing to earn and a great deal to lose just by hanging around in orbit, particularly when the crew had to pay a hundred GalStars per day just to remain in the orbital slot.  Someone would eventually realise that the ship was paying out money without earning a rusty cent and start wondering why.

“Try and sell our wares,” he advised.  They’d picked the cargo carefully, including a handful of items that wouldn't sell very quickly, if at all.  Jean would seem to have gambled and lost, if someone took a closer look at her ship.  “My team and I will be down on the planet.”

“Just be careful,” Jean advised.  “We don’t have a hope of getting out of here if they realise we’re up to something.”

Kevin nodded, then walked through the hatch and into the small intelligence-collection compartment.  James and Mindy had already started to tap into the giant datanet surrounding the planet, drawing vast streams of data into the starship’s computer cores.  The RIs hidden within the system were already analysing the data, trying to locate the sealed cores that would require more careful approaches, while the humans were looking for interesting patterns.  Behind them, Julian and Mandy were looking for potential contacts, including information brokers.  It was quite possible, if human intelligence had realised there was a potential threat, that the planet’s freelance information brokers knew it too.

The thought made him smile.  Varnar was just like Washington DC, in many ways.  There were countless missions from countless planets, all begging for favours; countless spies, all trying to pick up what they could for their masters ... and countless people trying to make a fast buck catering to them all.  A list of adverts popped up in his display, offering concubines or sexbots from a hundred different worlds.  Enough humans had been through interstellar space, as traders, mercenaries or slaves, for the Galactic businessmen to try to entice them into their lairs.

“Ando is still here,” Julian said, slowly.  “He might be the best person to contact, for starters.”

Kevin took a moment to review the file.  Ando’s race had been one of the few to adapt reasonably well to the shock of discovering the towering interstellar civilisation beyond their atmosphere.  It helped, he suspected, that they were both naturally long-lived and strikingly peaceful.  Some of them worked as diplomats, but others had gone into the business of brokering information to the highest bidder.  Ando had served as a trustworthy source for the SIA in the past.

And he has humans working for him
, he thought. 
Why ...
?

“Servants,” Julian explained, when he asked.  “There are quite a number of human servants out here, sir.”

“I know,” Kevin said.  Quite a few humans – some working for the SIA – had sought long-term service contacts with the Galactics, rather than serving as mercenaries.  They were highly-prized by their masters, if only because they were more adaptable than most primitive races and yet posed no discernible threat.  “Are any of them on the lists?”

“Two of them are,” Julian confirmed.  “But we would be better approaching Ando openly, first.”

“Then set up the meeting,” Kevin said.  He couldn't help a thrill of excitement.  It had been far too long since he’d done anything apart from push paper.  “And then let us go down to the planet.”

“Yes, sir,” Julian said.  “You’ll need your skinsuit and protective gear.”

Kevin had seen alien worlds before; hell, he'd been the first human to set foot on an alien world, over fifty years ago.  But Varnar was different, a thriving metropolis that made every human city on Earth look small.  He found himself looking around in awe as soon as the teleport field let go of him, glancing up at towering skyscrapers that seemed to reach all the way to orbit, then down at smaller buildings and walkways crammed with thousands upon thousands of sentient beings.  The Varnar were the majority, of course, but they were far from alone.  He even caught sight of a handful of humans, either working for the aliens or traders themselves.  They were often among the SIA’s best source of intelligence.

The air smelt faintly unpleasant, even though the skinsuit filter.  Kevin forced himself to breath normally, then followed Julian as he led the way along a crowded road and through a marketplace.  It was crammed with goods, ranging from foodstuffs from a hundred worlds to pieces of technology he couldn't even begin to identify.  His implants kept up a running commentary as he looked from stall to stall, marking food that was edible by humans and food that would be poisonous, if he hadn't had nanotech running through his blood.  One stall caught his eye and he stared in puzzlement.  It was selling nothing more than white playing cards, completely unmarked.

Pornography
, his implants informed him. 
Species #362 is blind, by human standards.  They rely on smell to recognise their potential mates.  The aroma on the cards arouses them ...

“Thank you,” Kevin grunted.  He hadn't wanted to know that, not really.  There were countless humans who were fascinated by the endless variety of alien life, but he wasn't one of them.  It was far more important to devise ways to prevent the aliens from ending
human
life.  “I don’t suppose they have human porn here, do they?”

His implants offered no answer.  He shook his head, dismissing the thought, then walked past a pair of aliens wrapped in all-concealing armoured suits.  For religious reasons, his implants reminded him, they kept themselves hidden from all, but their families.  Behind them, a four-legged alien female walked past, followed by five males of her species.  His implants informed him that the males were nothing more than dumb animals, while the females alone possessed intelligence.  There were other races where the reverse was true, or where the breeders were unintelligent and only developed intelligence after they reached an age where they could no longer breed.  Or races that laid eggs, like chickens ...

Remain calm
, his implants advised, as they reached a large office. 
This is not a place to show weakness
.

Chester waited outside, his maniples clicking impatiently, as the three humans stepped into the office.  Inside, it was pleasantly cool.  A human girl sat at a desk, reading from a terminal; her eyes went wide as she looked up and saw the humans.  Kevin smiled at her, knowing she would be very alone.  There simply weren’t more than a few hundred of her compatriots on Varnar at any one time, hardly enough to get a ghetto of their own.  The chances were that the girl rarely saw other humans.

“Good afternoon,” Julian said, briskly.  He held up an ID block, allowing the office processors to scan it.  “We have an appointment with Ando.”

“So you do,” the girl said.  She gave Julian a charming smile.  “My name is Sally, by the way.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Julian said.  “We’re just passing through.”

“Everyone is just passing through,” Sally said.  “How long will you be staying here?”

“Maybe a week,” Kevin said.  He cocked his head, then lied through his teeth.  “It’s my first time on a non-human world.  Would you be able to show me some of the sights, later?”

“I might,” Sally said.  His implants blinked up an alert; she’d sent him a contact code, along with her address details.  “But for the moment, I can only show you into Mr. Ando’s office.”

“Thank you,” Kevin said.

Julian gave him a mischievous look as they stepped through a large hatch and into a darkened room.  There were three chairs, all designed for humans, placed in the middle of the compartment, facing a shrouded form.  Kevin had to resist the urge to reach for his weapon as the alien loomed forward, slowly coming into view.  Ando’s race might be intelligent and largely peaceful – the file claimed they could never deliberately start a fight – but they were monstrously ugly.  He looked like a strange cross between a human and a frog.

“Humans,” Ando said.  He was using a voder, which erased all traces of emotion from his voice.  “Humans seeking information, I assume.”