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“Morning, Jules. How are things in the north?”
She opened with a familiar exchange of theirs, a running joke that extended all the way back to college, when they had been more than just friends.

“About as well as can be expected,” Julian replied. “And how are things in the south?”

“Could be better...”
That was a different response than usual, which told Julian all he needed to know about the seriousness of the situation.
“I understand President Lambert made it up to you before the flight restrictions grounded everyone.”

“I just got out of a meeting with him, as a matter of fact,” Julian admitted. “Nice guy. Wouldn’t want to be in his shoes right now.”

“I wouldn’t want to be in yours, hosting him. I bet I know what you talked about.”

“You’d win the bet,” Julian nodded. The subject of satellite immigration quotas never seemed to go away, even in relatively good times—though Julian was not so sure they’d actually had any of those since the first sats had been finished—and were not likely to go away now. “Have you been getting any renewed pressure from the ground lately?”

On the screen, Evelyn nodded sadly.
“For the past two days… from seven countries and too many vendors to count. Mostly leaders and Ceos, arguing for ‘their people,’ but you can tell it’s mainly for themselves. We’re monitoring a lot of ground talk about coming up here, whether we like it or not.”

“We’re hearing that, too,” Julian said.

“You’re not giving in, are you?”
The concern in Evelyn’s voice was genuine, but it was not simply concern for Verdant: If Verdant admitted more immigrants, others would use it as precedent to force the issue with the other sats.

“We’re standing firm,” Julian told her. “My people are preparing reports to present to the U.N., to counter a report the U.S. sent to them arguing for increased quotas…”

“They didn’t.”

“Oh, yes, they did. There’s nothing to it, of course… it’s a PR document. But we have some good PR people up here, too… like Calvin Rios.”

“The
Universe 3
host?”
Evelyn’s mouth opened in surprise.
“I wondered what happened to that guy! He’s been on Verdant?”

“He and his family moved here in ‘21,” Julian replied. “We’ve had him on retainer as science advisor since ‘26. He’s working on the counter-report with our Dr. Silver. I’ll be glad to send you a copy when it’s done.”

“Please,”
Evelyn nodded.
“Every little bit helps. I don’t know about you, Jules… but I don’t expect this to turn out well.”

“Right now,” Julian admitted, “I’m not optimistic, either.”

“Have you seen the latest data from Qing? Their air quality is down to 88 percent already. But they can’t stop the Mainland from sending people up there.”

“They’re insane,” Julian said, referring to their host country, China, as opposed to the satellite. Qing, Chinese for “Lush,” was the third satellite, commissioned and built strictly by the Chinese, for the Chinese. Unlike Verdant and Tranquil, which were constructed under a U.N. charter, Qing was considered property of China, essentially an orbital nation-state of their own. And despite data that told them otherwise, the Chinese government was well on its way to packing its citizens in there as tightly as they were packed on the ground. No one could see any outcome for Qing other than disaster… Julian did not look forward to the day he woke up and heard that the population of that sat had suffocated overnight.

“Nothing new from Fertile?” Fertile was the fourth satellite, the last that Earth could afford, financed primarily by the last riches of the Arab oil barons, and populated mostly by Africans and Middle-Easterners. “I understand they’re still holding their own.”

“As far as we can tell… we don’t get much news from them.”
Neither did Verdant, Qing, nor the U.N.; Julian hoped that was not a bad sign of their future. As high as the international hopes for the satellite project had been originally, it was disappointing to see where reality had taken them.

As Julian mused, Evelyn went on:
“Does Verdant have any defensive capabilities?”

“You know we don’t,” Julian replied. “It’s against the treaty.”

“So is invasion,”
Evelyn pointed out.
“But I sincerely doubt most countries will let a little treaty stand in their way. As long as we’re sending documents back and forth, I’ll send you one… a study our people have prepared on this situation. Perhaps it’ll help.”

“Every little bit,” Julian smiled. He caught something in Evelyn’s eye… something that perhaps only an old friend would have seen. “Do me a favor, and send it encrypted to me. I wouldn’t want any civilians intercepting it to be concerned.”

“No problem,”
Evelyn replied, and smiled a confident smile.
They knew each other well.
Perhaps there was hope after all.
“Let me know if your situation changes, Jules.”

“And you,” Julian said. “Keep us posted. Watch your back, Lynn.”

“Don’t turn your back on the south,”
Evelyn told him.
“‘Bye, Jules.”

“‘Bye.” She allowed him to break the connection. For a moment, Julian could clearly see the ghost of Evelyn’s image on the screen. Despite the fact that the years had not been as kind to her as they had perhaps been to him, part of him wished he had the luxury of staring at her face all day… maybe in another reality, he did exactly that. But in this reality, they were separated by their jobs, almost thirty years, and a few thousand miles of empty space… and he simply did not have the time to dwell on it.

A beep on his desktop signaled the intercom. Reya’s voice spoke:
“We have a document coming in from Tranquil, encrypted to you.”

“Yeah,” Julian said, “send it to this station.” The intercom clicked off, and a moment later, the document icon appeared on his desktop. Julian used his thumbprint on the desk’s scanner to open the document, and began reading. His eyes narrowed perceptively.
Lynn was right to encrypt this.

The question is: What can I do with it?

~

There were various ways one could use to get from CnC to Dr. Silver’s office. When faced with multiple choices like that, Aaron Hardy often allowed the fates to decide which route he would take. Today, fate stepped up in the guise of a girl, one of the scientists in his department, stepping out of an adjacent office ahead of him and heading for the sciences sections. Aaron sighted in on her, his eyes locking in on her rear end, and automatically altered his course to follow hers as long as he could.

Although he was behind her, Aaron was almost sure he knew who she was. This was because he generally took careful note of the female form, and he’d seen this one before: Medium height, with a wonderfully-sculpted ass and sinfully-curvaceous legs (as quite intentionally displayed by her close-fitting slacks and tall heels); narrow waist and wide hips, which she was very good at switching left and right as she walked; and a chest that would cause men’s knees to sag in their presence (which he’d caught a glimpse of as she’d exited the office earlier, and every time she took a corner ahead of him); and topped off with a shoulder-length cut that danced playfully as she moved. Her walk was a bit exaggerated to capture men’s attention, but with her equipment, she had a right to strut.

Beverly Deely, from the solar monitoring department. Single, beautiful, and popular.
I mean, look at her… how could she not be popular?
Aaron knew her well—at least, knew
of
her well—and would’ve given anything to spend a night with her in his arms. Hell, he’d pay good money just to watch that walk all day. But he had never been able to muster the courage to speak to her in anything but an official capacity, much less ask her out.

Aaron had always had trouble with girls. Not being blessed with enough good looks to make up for his inherent shyness around the ladies, he’d spent most of his life being the “coulda, woulda, shoulda” guy, failing to muster up the courage to ask girls out, or even say hello, watching the good-looking girls go for the other guy instead of him, feeling the female sex must have had it in for him. Even the power and notoriety of reaching the level of Chief Operations Officer aboard a U.N. satellite had earned him little success with women: Yes, occasionally a girl approached him, and his credentials got him a date, even the rare occasion of sex; but they never stayed, it never lasted, it never worked. As a result, he’d developed an odd schizophrenic viewpoint about women, alternating seemingly at random between wanting them, dismissing them, and hating them for ignoring him.

At that particular moment, the
want
was ascendant as he watched Beverly Deely’s ass swishing back and forth ahead of him. Aaron knew he had a lot to offer a woman… and she was the kind of gorgeous woman to whom he knew he’d willingly offer it all… if he could just get her attention past all the other guys that usually orbited her like bees around a honeypot.

But now, there were no orbiting hunks around her as she paraded down the corridor. Now would be the time, Aaron told himself… if you could do it. Unsure whether he could or not, he at least sped up his pace, closing the distance to her as he tried to imagine what in God’s Earth he could say to open up a conversation…

She took a right around a corner, and Aaron was only six steps behind her. But as he rounded the corner, he saw her disappearing into a lab just beyond. He caught a last glimpse of her incredible profile, before it disappeared behind a rapidly-shuttering door. A riot of emotions washed through him in an instant—
God, I was so close!—I can still find her—ah, she wouldn’t have said “yes” to—hell, she wouldn’t have even spoken to me—well, it had been a great show
—finally bringing Aaron back down to frustrated, solitary ground.

Aaron slowed. He noted the door had an amber security banner on it, indicating access only to authorized personnel cleared for the project. Of course, that did not exclude the Chief Operations Officer… Aaron was within his authority to walk on in. But to do what? To amble in casually, ask a few random questions, try to look non-chalant, then get Beverly into a corner and surreptitiously ask her out with half the staff watching?
No way in Hell
—

And as this ran through his mind, the lab door started to open again. Aaron, suddenly desperate to avoid looking like he’d been following a piece of tail and about to walk into the lab looking for a date, recovered by picking his pace back up and shifting a few degrees… when he suddenly realized that Dr. Silver was walking out of the lab. She saw him almost immediately, probably before he’d managed to recover and attempt to hide his steps… but if she did, she said nothing about it.

Instead, Aaron allowed the frustration of his lost potential conquest to bolster his pride and spike his authority, and spoke first. “Doctor: I was looking for you,” he snapped quickly. “I just came from a meeting with the Ceo and the President of the United States, and Ceo Lenz wasn’t happy that my Science Director wasn’t there! Now what was so important that you couldn’t get out of it for that meeting?”

“I’m sorry, Coo,” Dr. Silver responded without hesitation. “We were reprogramming the Manche probe, and I was already inside the clean room when you called. By that time it was too late to seal the probe back up, they were too far into the job… we couldn’t open the clean room before that, or we’d have to replace half the optronics from contamination. That would have been millions in lost equipment. So I was stuck until they were done.”

Although Aaron was noticeably upset, he could not argue with her explanation. Despite his desire to dominate the situation, he found his domineering energy diffusing; and with an inward sigh, he let it go. “I see,” he said presently. “You did the right thing, of course,” he added needlessly. “No sense ruining valuable equipment, when Dr. Rios could pinch-hit for you. Rios is going to be working with you on a report to Geneva to counter the U.S. proposals. Make yourself available to his needs… we can’t afford to give the U.S. the upper hand on resource negotiations.”

“Understood,” Dr. Silver nodded. “I’ll await him in my office.” Aaron returned her nod, and she quickly turned and proceeded down the corridor to the main office suites.

Aaron watched her go, and suddenly remembered the tail that had led him to her in the first place. He glanced at the door, and didn’t even bother to consider the possibilities of pursuing Beverly Deely. “I’m having a bad enough day, already…”

~

The greenspace just outside of the CnC offices afforded a quiet place for Calvin to pause for a moment. He found an empty bench, in an area of the greenspace with relatively little traffic, and sat down on one end of it, turning his body so it faced away from the rest of the bench and towards a small copse of bushes. He hoped his obvious choice of position would warn off the strangers that his mild celebrity occasionally attracted… right now, he wanted the privacy. He keyed the connection to his home, and waited unhappily for his wife or daughter to answer.

He got Maria, and he was almost sorry he had. He actually would have felt better giving the news to Erin directly, rather than having Maria relay it to her. He was sure Erin would take it better from him. But he had no choice but to push on.

“Hi, Cal,”
Maria answered.
“How did the meeting go?”

“Not well,” Calvin replied. “I’ve been roped into a job I can’t get out of. Let Erin know, I have to cancel the camping trip. Tell her I’m so sorry.”

To her credit, Maria’s face fell.
“Oh, she’ll be so upset.”
No pretense that the cancellation bothered her personally… they all knew they were beyond that. But at least she still had some sympathy for Erin’s enjoyment of the parks.

“I know,” Calvin said. “Believe me, if there was any way I could get out of this, I would. But the situation between the sats and Earth is bad. Very bad. I need to work up a report that will keep us from getting inundated with planetary refugees, by morning.”

“Even I have to admit, that’s more than a good reason to cancel a camping trip,”
Maria said wryly.
“I’ll try to break it to her gently. Will you be home soon?”