Chapter Twenty-one
They were finishing the very good and large meal when the person from the testing office walked in, She looked like she was about to laugh.
"Oh, hello! This is the nice woman I told you about, Shel, the one who pointed me here."
"I came to... Ballin, a drink."
"I think you may actually need one, Geery."
"No, but I want one. What can I say? We found out what happened. We switched two tests. The woman testing for captain caught it about ten minutes in. Why didn't you?"
"Well, I thought it was a little strange, but I'd studied part of it."
"Geery?"
"Yes."
"Shelter, Shel. We went through this. Some of it's my fault. I said not a word about the tests, so he didn't ask Lola if she noticed they didn't seem to have studied the right things. I knew he was nervous, but I'd expected it, so I... 'radiated' expectation and confidence. Before I really started studying, I had Tal read me several sample tests and check my answers. I was looking for where I was weak. So he had covered the material, slightly. We talked about what we were studying over dinner, and we rebuilt the drives and control systems of our ships, though not alone. When he hit the hands-on part the second day, he would have realized it, except it was fix an operations control console. What can I tell you more than his name? He's our Talisman."
"I asked myself what Shelter would do a lot."
"You interested in starting a school for captains, Shelter? We're grading fast. We're sure he'll pass, but it has to be confirmed. We've been checking his answers to command decision questions against yours and Mandala's. They're all very much alike and very good, exceptional in fact. We don't think he's going to do quite as well as you two did, but it will be a lot better than average. Average don't finish the test. Li set a new record by almost forty minutes. Tommy tied the old one. You didn't set a record on time, but we haven't found an incorrect answer yet. We've only found two on Mandala's and we think she may have confused Diller and Dalmon. Lola came within fourteen minutes of the record for ops and made notes places she answered correctly, of how the procedures could be made more efficient without compromising any of the reason they are the correct procedures."
"None of us are surprised."
"Why deal with lag time three times when you could change the order and only have to deal with it once, Shel?"
"We're looking at the suggestions and thinking about submitting them. We want to know what you studied."
"The study guides published by the Imperial Fleet available through the Imperial Library. They were the most recent edition we found."
"I knew they put them out, but I think I should look at them. I don't think they really account for what you did though. In all, we have six phenomenal test results. I'm including Talisman's for the obvious reason. We'd like to tell everyone, but realize you probably don't wish us to. Everyone else thinks it's because you're Shadill."
"I see. Something odd is happening here. My cousin wants to know exactly what and why. We're sure it's not coming from here. We have a suspicion someone finds the organized crime humans have been trying to get rid of for millennia very gullible and useful."
"Well, I wanted to know. Something odd is happening here. The Brennemer Union wants to know what and why. If anyone else did, I wouldn't be looking."
"Raving idealists. I like them. Got a most probable for me?"
"No, I don't know enough about them, but I'm nervous."
"I gave Ballin an analogy. The Imperial Fleet is like the security people on the station. He doesn't notice them except when one walks by and waves a friendly hello, but that person notices everyone in here and if he looks tense or frazzled. The fleet is here. It's in every sector in the empire and there's always a wing in every sector. As one ends its patrol in the sector, one begins it. Maybe it should wave a friendly hello, twelve hours R and R for twenty on Silvern Docking with a trip down for a bit of sun for those who wish. Eight hours R and R on Asnear Station for some, the same on Gerridy. It would lengthen the patrols a bit, but not a great deal and the ranks and officers wouldn't mind because they'd get that little break to do a bit of shopping and wave a friendly hello."
"Do you want to tell people you think they're under threat?"
"People from other than Empire sector just aren't enlisting in either the fleet or marines. The fleet, the marines and the emperor have noticed. The ones who don't have good intentions are quite aware of its presence, but it's so discreet the ones who are being protected aren't. The empire isn't Empire Sector, but even Ballin was sure that's how the imperium thought of it. I think the attitude is being encouraged. No one even thinks about the fact it lifted the burden and expense of handling the Shadill records from Silvern and didn't raise taxes or charge a fee to do it. The treaty doesn't provide for tax increases. The imperium is a contracted service and no one notices it's doing the job it's paid to do. The empire is in Empire Sector and all it does here is require some records be sent so it can count people."
"I think you're right. Why the empire?"
"The Brennemer Union wouldn't yell they wanted to join, copy a treaty, inserting world and sector name, and sigh in relief when the empire signed and sent the fleet to watch over them, but a lot would if they're frightened. They do notice the fleet watches over all of it. The Union might sign a treaty of friendship and mutual aid. The empire has never made an effort to grow larger. People have asked to become part of it and always for that reason. It's very obvious to all those worlds out there that the imperium isn't going to tell them how to run their worlds. You get the protection of the fleet and the rules are you don't oppress your people and you educate your children, in carefully defined terms. The price isn't bad, at all and it doesn't go up even if the value of the credit goes down, hasn't in eight hundred years, not a bad deal at all."
"No, it's not and the attitude is the gov sends money so the nobles can have lovely balls."
"The society newscasters don't consider who paid for the ball good copy. The only ones the imperium pays for are the ones hosted by the emperor and they are rare. They may be at the palace, but unless he's host, someone else is paying for the orchestra. In Empire Sector, 'hosted by' means 'paid for by.' Ninety-three percent of all the adult nobility work for a living and the other seven percent inherited money from those who did. Some of them do work for the imperium, but they get paid about the same as they would working at the same type of job for someone else and those who aren't nobility, who work for it, get paid the same they do. The empire pays for the staff, sixty-three people, lunch for those there on business if they're there more than a half-day, not often, utilities in the palace and maintaining the offices of planetary representatives to the court. If those reps have staffs, they pay them. No one looks to see how their tax money is being spent. Can you imagine that happening here?"
"No. The budget watchers are extremely numerous and all very vocal."
"Do you know Silvern doesn't send a planetary rep and hasn't for three hundred-odd years because there was no reason to pay one? Very few worlds outside Empire Sector do. They didn't ask for fleet bases, so sending a rep to pitch for their world as the place to build a base, because a city needs the place a very old base is beginning to fall down faster than maintenance can shore it up, just seems silly. Imperial Records employs a lot of people and requires space. Pitch for your people and your space if Silvern asks them to keep more. That's the imperium. Security guards and records kept for worlds, who don't think about the fact they'd have to keep all those records themselves and pay for the facilities and people to do it, and it's almost all paid for by the interest on the taxes deposited in the first three hundred years of the empire. If the fleet, marines and Imperial Records didn't need the money, it was banked for the time they would. Money value would go down. Taxes would never go up. Worlds outside the empire are astounded that the imperium does just what it said it would and d
oesn't expand every time there's a slight excess over the required budget. Worlds inside it don't notice the fleet is exactly as big as it needs to be to patrol the empire and the marines are exactly as many as the fleet would need to defend two sectors. There's no one out there who could mount an attack on more than that, so that's how many there are. If someone said they wanted to be a sector, their taxes would go to expand the fleet enough to patrol their sector and keep their records. Any left over would be banked for the time the value of money went down because taxes would never go up. They weren't raised when a large amount was spent on the effort to rebuild Nunture. That's in the contract for services. The service is paid for. That, by the way, was a superb plan to set an example of withdrawal from the empire that was messed up by greedy men who thought they saw an opportunity to get the power and money now, instead of in about twenty years, when they would no longer be the ones at the top. The plan didn't come from Nunture. They were running for Yarrow sector, where they'd already moved a great deal of credit, when I shot down their lifting ship with an avalanche prevention shell. It was the only weapon we had big enough to knock down a door."
"There's a new plan just being put into practice. Find greedy speculators to create housing shortages near rural university campuses with spaceports within fifty k. Deal drugs out of cheap overpriced apartment complexes and speculators won't dare say anything because they used the money offered to pay for creating the shortage. The ones financing think they're working for themselves to expand their markets. In ten years, the attitude will be drugs don't hurt anyone else and everybody does them. The ones who built another plan with a high probability of success add a bit to the drug and make suggestions that people can't resist. We're sure the drug exists, because nine worlds in Yarrow and Forester sectors are far too average, just as Nunture was, and do more trade with each other than the worlds near them. They're also all of one classification, independent colonial, agrarian semi-tech, moderately-populated social democracies. I know the drug can exist because I broke into a research lab and took proof it was being developed and who intended to use it how to a judge, when I was nine. The who was a relative by marriage and made my skin crawl from the time he married into the family, when I was two. By the time I was fourteen, I'd handed the judge four very well-kept dirty secrets. Needless to say, I made people nervous and I was a very lonely kid. Now I'm a very happily married man. My family loves, wants and needs all I am."
"We're going to see what we can do about your suggestion of a way others could form a group marriage, for the financial stability it provides their children. Shel's going to talk to the Toscan church and see if they could marry marriages too, so several couples could join together to do the same. There's nothing wrong with homosexuals. It's just the way they are. A group marriage with people who aren't would give them a way to share the love and joy of raising children, without the stupidity of massive investigation and probable rejection if they apply to adopt. I know women can go to clinics, but they pay a huge amount for private and heterosexual women pay a third on average and answer a tenth the questions on income, family background, health history and so on. This sector is one of the worst. There's discrimination here that was considered ignorant and ridiculous three thousand years ago. I looked some things up while Ballin fixed my first helping of lunch. Silvern is the least bigoted planet in the sector. I think the reason is probably the Shadill, but as they move off Silvern, record by record, the bigotry is moving in. I think you all feel threatened and anything and anyone who's different might be the source of it. Someone is using that to make the imperium 'them' very effectively."
"That's good, Li, and it's recent or Tori would have known about it."
"There are some very ugly city ordinances that have been passed in the last twenty years several places, Shel. Because they're not planetary laws, merely local ordinances, they aren't sent to Imperial Records. This sector is under attack. I think the drug Tommy was talking about is being very carefully and selectively used on people who sway opinion. An attitude of 'ick, homosexual' doesn't have to be stated. It can be seen. So-and-so is sure there's something wrong with them. I've watched so-and-so's career for twenty years. I trust their judgment. I don't want them close to my kids. There's something wrong with them. The empire collects taxes so nobles can have parties. I could hear it in so-and-so's voice. Some of the most idealistic young people elected to office the first time ten to fifteen years ago are passing those ordinances and the district reps to the planetary governments don't notice the trend because it's 'ick homosexuals,' or several others, and they completely understand."
"I'm feeling blind."
"It's hard to see the whole picture when you're standing in the middle of it. Nice work, Li."
"I used your cross-reference keyword method, Lola. The number of local ordinances with the word 'homosexual' in them, just on Silvern, was disgusting because none of them were to protect their rights, but I wouldn't have looked if she hadn't told me her friends went to the Toscan chapel on Gerridy to get married, because none of the secular agencies asked them if they wished to give vows to each other and they did heterosexual couples. She's probably considered a bit odd because she has homosexual friends and they're probably careful about comm calls and visits so they don't damage her by the association. The Shadill are working very hard to promote understanding because they are different, but I think the trend toward acceptance is slowing, and at this rate, they could be a ship-dwelling race, not culture, because they are forced to be, and people who join their marriages miscegenists, within fifty years in this sector."
"I wasn't ready for that time frame, Li."
"It's the estimate Tori gave us, Mandy, as the beginning of a true ship-dwelling culture if the Shadill spawned one."
"Miscegeny, Turons who married Nunceons were guilty of it. There just weren't any laws against it. It was a very dangerous thing to do."
"And you'd be in gov housing very soon, if you weren't to start with. No Turon would employ or do business with you. That was enforced. If you did, the gov discovered you owed back taxes and the interest on them."
"Yes, Lola. Having sex with one was all right as long as you were male and used a sheathe, so there weren't any crossbreeds and you didn't catch anything you might give to nice Turon girls. The prostitutes thought it was funny. The way to get medical treatment for any disease was state you were a prostitute with Turon clients. There were a lot of Nunceon prostitutes. Most of them had never sold sex. But that was before they put up the fences and made us one people, the oppressed, the Nunturi."
"I'd give odds no one in this sector paid much attention to what happened there. It was a thirty-second bit on the empire news update for five days total, max. It was enough to associate the names of the three of us because we're physically unusual, the names aren't real common and we're all together. You said everyone else thought it was because we're Shadill."
"You'd win your bet on the news, Mandy. I've used my excuse to talk to you. More would attract attention to you or me and you have a big job to do. Mine is watch and wish you very well. Find an excuse to go to the union. Buy a pair of shoes from a man with a shop on Frescetti Station. It's a handy refueling stop and they accept all credit at current exchange rates. He has big ears, literally. Ask him if he's ever heard of Jugs, a clown. Those big ears converted nicely to credit enough to buy that shop and use them where his union needed him most. He'll know the resemblance is not coincidence when you ask. Everyone knows he's always looking for anyone who might be interested in listening to him talk about being a clown. People on the station are delighted someone else is listening and they're not hearing the same stories, again. They remind each other the stories are very funny the first several times and don't lean in close. Make sure he tells you the one about the costume change that was a bit too quick. Now, I'm going to call the captain's lounge here on the station and giggle we owe you a party.
They'll love it. We'll deliver your credentials there. Ballin will hear me arrange it. He'll think it's a great idea. The person we were giving the wrong test, who caught it, will be done soon enough we'll send her there to laugh with us for not checking why she had an ops test in front of her. A switch was pretty obvious to not have occurred to us. I plan on telling her all about it. She's about my age. The cruise liner company she works for likes that little silver star on the credential of the operations and executive officers they're sure should be promoted to captain. They pay for it."
"I didn't think about being able to go in."
"You haven't been to Gerridy Station yet, Captain Shelter Hadlain. It's a cruise ship maintenance and shopping stop and they treat the captains very well. That captain's lounge has a ballroom. Several cruise companies include attendance for thirty as the captain's guest in their ultra-deluxe packages. Several have drawings for it. People pay the ultra-deluxe price to make sure they get to attend that one and not the one at the hotel. Gerridy is the place one buys formal wear and they make nice money on it. Any captain, by the way, can attend, but more than one guest requires a reservation. The rest of the lounge is standard, no more than six guests and no more than two each without prior notice. I'm a captain. Getting into the lounge is about the only time I use my credential, but I use it often and everywhere. Never been to one that didn't have good food at a terrific price. See you there. Ballin! I need the comm. We're going to foot the bill for a bit of a party for them in the captain's lounge. I'd like people to know they're laughing with us. I'll get them in and deliver credentials there. Doesn't look like you'll be upset with me for taking your customers elsewhere."
"I have definitely profited by them being here already, Geery. I think it's a great idea and you're right about 'with' instead of 'at.' Sure is handy being close when starving people stumble out of the testing center."
"If the food wasn't terrific, the prices good and you nice, we'd steer them elsewhere instead of point them here. Comm captain's lounge. Keniddy if available."
"Keniddy."
"Hi, Ken. The joke's on us and we're giggling and paying for snacks and a champagne toast for the kid we gave the wrong test, the whole four-day bank. He thought it looked a bit odd, but the senior member of the married group present said no talk about period. So you understand how fate conspired in this, the second morning hands-on was rebuilding an ops console. Talisman is going to be a captain in about an hour and we're sure you can help relieve the disappointment he's not getting his ops license. I'm sending the Hadlains; Talisman, Shelter and Mandala, all soon to be captains; Linlola, soon to be ops officer, and Thomin and Angeli, about to become chief engineers. Angeli set a new time record, thirteen-twelve."
"What?!"
"Wait'll you see her. She's under one hundred fifty cens and just moved things out of her way to work. We got the name of the study guides they used. They all did very well. The kid had read questions and checked answers on sample tests for the one who knew most and was figuring out what to study. They said they also talked about what they studied over dinner. I'll be up to hand them their credentials in less than an hour, I think. We're grading them in a bit less time than is usual because we're all working on them. Not a great deal less though because we keep stopping to giggle."
"He got done six hours under and passed it?"
"He said he asked himself what Shelter would do a lot. He's not going to do as well as the other two, but he's definitely going to pass. We'll send up the Harmony Lines exec, about to be captain, who noticed we gave her the wrong one ten minutes after she started."
"You didn't check to see if you'd switched two?"
"No."
"You deserve the teasing you're going to get."
"We do know it. We expect giggle relapses for days. Let them in?"
"When I tell this one, the caps will be hunting them to bring them up, some of them."
"Fomeerty is there."
"Yes."
"Tell him I said he's a bigot and I'll announce my opinion if he's still there when I get there."
"That's going a bit far, Geery."
"No, Ken, it's not. Carrying on a hate campaign against anyone is more than 'a bit too far.' It's all he does. Who's paying for it? His retirement isn't enough for a shuttle up and down three days out of five, or lunch and dinner in the captain's lounge, certainly not enough to spend about thirty credits every time he comes up, buying people drinks. I checked. I'll announce that, too. Out."
"Thank you, Geery. I've been wanting to deny him service awhile. Telling a customer I'll be glad to fix a drink but he's not buying it appeals to me. Telling the customer it's because my other customers are disgusted with the way he uses it to get people to listen to the bigoted filth someone pays him to spread appeals even more. I'll know exactly how much his retirement is when I do. Joskimmer considers their retirement plan public information and I know how long he worked for them at what. He's said it often enough."
"That's how I found out. Must only spend it up here or the tax service would have noticed. Send their ship bags with them. The caps will see they all have them when they leave. We will be teased. It'll be much friendlier if we blush, giggle and admit we deserve it."
"Very true."