THREE
Bry Sen came back to the conference room after conducting Bory to the hatch, his face stringently bland, his body language gracefully Liaden.
Jethri stood up, which was proper in a trader receiving his pilot, and waited.
Bry Sen bowed. It was a careful, well-enunciated bow in which he clearly aligned himself with Jethri in all of his necessities. Jethri figured he appreciated that, saving the part where he wasn’t certain what his necessities were, much less what they’d demand from the pilot of the ship he was expected to provide with a commercially successful route in short order.
He bowed in return, a simple acceptance of allegiance, saw the Liaden shell melt somewhat, and took the chance to smile in full Terran.
“Our visitor is gone, Trader, and with him two of his deck watchers, leaving three more within easy visual range of Genchi, though they may simply be posted one to a ship, watching the three ships here in a row—Balrog, Genchi, and Elsvair.”
Jethri bowed thanks. Freza nodded where she sat, looking less tense, as if Bory’s departure was as much a relief to her as it was to Jethri.
“He did say he was going to be watching Balrog because of the rock-pusher and his friends,” Jethri allowed, “but we don’t know now if he’s as much on our side of things as he wants us to feel. He admits that we’re a problem…”
“We’re a problem he wants to solve in a hurry,” Freza said, “and we’re going to have to watch out for the help he’s offered. We don’t want to argue by not talking to his help, but we’re not going to depend on them.”
She looked to Jethri, small hand movement asking a question, Jethri nodded.
“Yes, please, both of you feel free to say what you like in front of each other—I’m going to be depending on both of you. Bry Sen, you need to know that Freza’s been doing this work for—I guess it must be Standards, really.
“Freza, you need to know that Bry Sen’s had diplomatic training, was aimed at being culture officer on a Liaden tradeship, thought he’d got off easy, then Master Trader pin’Aker sent him to me.”
“A master trader’s whim, and a fortunate one, for me,” Bry Sen murmured in Liaden, and Jethri shot him a sharp look.
“Humor?” he asked in Terran.
“Somewhat, Trader.” Bry Sen said, following him. He bowed to Freza. “I beg pardon. I felt a need to relieve my feelings, now that the guest has departed.”
Freza grinned. “Understandable.”
“So, we already got people working on those motions, and other ones, too. Isn’t that what I was hearing at my lessons?”
Freza grinned at him. “I like a student pays attention. We’ve got five different sample statements complete with the proper motions—two were rough-written by Arin and you can work from them as you need—the names and dates are off, o’course. The others are what we drafted once we saw how the opposition was gonna try to target us. Bory showed you that—they’re trying to settle us with the hint that we’re being the amateurs messing with rules on short notice while they’re the full-time admins who are so smooth and careful for everybody. Bory’s not a bad man, Jethri, but he’s so built-in to the system he can’t see his own momentum.”
“Do you mean we don’t need his help?”
She shook her head.
“Not that. For one thing, we need help with details; what we have from Arin is dated—but we know what to watch out for from the helpers. They’ll have stuff they’ll call ordinary bill structure that’ll build in delays and studies. Arin saw that coming way back when, and you heard Bory trying to force us into that orbit like it was natural. We’ve been watching, and there’s some block language Combine admins have been adding to almost everything these last two or three congresses. Arin called ’em on it before he resigned. So we can expect Bory’s helpers’ll be putting that in first thing. And we’re sure we don’t want to put everything into study committees—we’ve gotta get this into action items, into local priority releases, get it added to piloting regulation updates. I got dozens of those things admitted to the rules committees already. Most of them ought to fly in pretty well—they’ve been sent to the standing committees over the last two Standards, and we’re not seeing resistance—all reasonable minor changes in case of shipping and arrival issues, with cited examples. Arin left us some timelines that are usable still.”
Freza glanced at her comm unit and sighed.
“And Brabham?” Jethri asked. “How’s he holding, really?”
“He got himself off the deck before he got too mad, and he’s prolly talked himself hoarse since he got back on board, catching as many people as he can to tell them the plan. Meanwhile, Bory thinks Brabham ran away—but, see, Bory went out expecting to have trouble on deck and we don’t know if he set it up or if he only meant to do what he tried to do—take charge of Brabham’s entry into the hall.”
She sighed.
“I think the greeting got out of his range. He didn’t expect Brabham to have a volunteer of young-uns with him, and that means the news is everywhere by now, that pro-Combine Loopers was pushing at Brabham and that Brabham held his own.”
“Was that why Bory came to me so fast? He did come to me, and people will know that, too. He wants Brabham out of the way?”
Freza glanced at Bry Sen.
“What do you think? We haven’t had time to go over this with Jethri—sorry, Jeth—but if we all need to know where we are, might as well go forward, right?”
Jethri saw her fingers move—a request for permission, and he nodded.
“Might as well tell everybody.”
That got him a grin before she turned back to Bry Sen.
“Our plan was to set Jethri up as full special ambassador—the committee has it as ‘an Extraordinary Interworld Envoy and Plenipotentiary Ambassador for dealing with Issues arising out of Arin’s Envidaria’—while we get the other offices into orbit.”
Bry Sen blinked. Jethri gulped. When he’d first heard the basic idea just after his perhaps rash decision to release the Envidaria, it had sounded neat and tidy. The more he’d thought about it since, the less of that tidiness remained. Now just said out loud and matter-of-fact, it sounded lunatic, not to say terrifying.
“The basic idea’d been to really launch things here if we could, with a kind of meteor shower of motions, statements, action items, and precedents. An ambassador named, some basic rules of engagement for systems finding themselves in the worst of the clouds, getting more Jump rejection reporting in—we have it all outlined. By having Jethri up front—look, he’s Looper born and bred, comes from a name family, and he’s not really On Loop right now—he’s investigating for something new, just like a lot of Loopers will be. And since he’s not a Combine co-opt, not brought in from outside as an admin and then put in charge, not from a big finance group, he’s purer than they can be, and it’s got Bory worried.” She glanced at Jethri. “Well, he said as much, with that crack about trying to be purer than the Combine wasn’t no way to get cooperation.”
Jethri nodded.
Bry Sen bowed once, and then again, a flourish in fact, bowing to the ideas of an organization and plan not his own.
“So! There are many trajectories at work, not just one, and more than one source for the calculations. I am relieved to hear this. Thank you.”
Freza gave the pilot a nod.
“We need somebody young, mobile, able to be out and about. That’s the plan with Jethri. Where we’ll be exactly in five Standards we don’t know, but by then a lot more of the frameworks we need will’ve been built and put out there. But we gotta start now—that’s what Bory won’t see, or can’t. Truth is, he shoulda started when Arin put it to him, but that’s too many Jumps behind us to even count.”
She paused, apparently considering a spot of decking, or those back-Jumps, then shook her head and looked up.
“So Jethri’ll be asked, formal, to be ambassador—we have that all in sealed infovids we’ll distribute once things are really underway, then once we have Jethri in place officially we can see what else we can organize.
“We’ll need Jethri to agree to two Standards. Once that happens it would mean that Brabham would be ‘Interim Administrator of Envidaria Affairs for the Seventeen Worlds.’ He’ll give up the Combine Commissioner spot and his term will be two Standards to start. That’ll give us real back-up breathing.
“There’s more possible in the works, but we’ve come with the plans.”
Freza nodded to Jethri.
“We didn’t have time to go over it—was going to last night, but—well. What we really needed was for you not to get in a dock fight, and we needed not to let Combine outshine Brabham.”
Bry Sen let a smile slip out for a moment as he looked questioningly toward Jethri.
“Talk,” Jethri said.
Bry Sen inclined his head.
“I would that I’d had an opportunity to study this situation when I was schooled. We had in my study group a…a member of a trading family…who busily averred that Terran trade politics was a simple thing revolving around the desire to be unbothered. Unbothered to build big new ships, unbothered to expand trade routes, unbothered by the future.”
He laughed then, full Terran.
“I fear me the person in question has yet to earn a ring, and will be unhappy in the profession, if they’ve managed to not be elevated into administrator of an orchard. Clearly, they had no understanding of what organizations do, or can do. I salute you!” He did, or at least he produced an energetic bow.
Freza produced her own bow in turn—surely she’d been practicing!—this one very close to recognition of an ally.
“Yes,” said Bry Sen, “allies are good.”
“Speaking of which,” Freza said to Jethri, pulling a databar from a stealthy sleeve pocket, “Brabham sent you this. We’ve been working on it for a while, and the final comments just come in last night. I got ’em inserted, and compiled, so this is the latest news there is. Latest organizational charts, connections, and links to caches that have duplicates, along with our correspondents. It’s not absolutely set, ’cause there’s more coming in all the time, but it ought to get us through the congress.”
Jethri took the bar.
“You’ll want to have a safe back-up—there’s some surprising names in there! Otherwise—”
Her comm beeped. She flipped it up on her belt, sighed, and let it drop.
“So, here’s a note that another cousin’s got to talk to me tonight, so off I go.”
“Our plans?” he asked, softly.
Freza shook her head, and gave him a smile.
“You know how we was talking about how the pre-pre-congress was prep?”
“I remember.”
“Well, now things are speeding up for real. I gotta get this pinned down. Straight from Tradedesk—well. Straight from Doricky…she ’pologizes if she didn’t explain enough back when she saw you last and says I’m s’posed to pass on an extra three hugs for her since she can’t get here to deliver in person!”
He shook his head, allowed a smile—
“If it comes direct from Grandma Ricky, then it’s got to be attended. You’ll pass on that I miss her bad?”
Freza stood, smiling now. “That’s the kind of thing she likes to hear, I know— And look, we’ll reschedule soonest—promise!”
He stood, the bow coming unbidden, along with the rueful smile as their hands met for the transfer, lingering for a moment before she winked at him and let go.
He saw her to the hatch, and watched her walk away. She didn’t turn around this time, so she didn’t see the longing he felt. Once she’d reached Balrog, he turned back, sealed the hatch, and stood, considering the databar in his hand.
“Necessity exists,” he said to the air, and left for his office and its wall of data screens.