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Philippe had tried to learn
everyone’s name, but the use of nicknames was a bit confusing. The woman who
was not Shanti was always referred to as “Baby,” which Philippe thought was
probably a nickname. Patch’s real name was Pieter, but Philippe got the feeling
that most of the unit didn’t know that. Raoul Kim was one of the medics. Like
Philippe, he had a Western first name and Eastern last name—in his case because
he was a full-blooded Korean from Peru.

Philippe also met a Bi Zui, a Paco,
a Rojy, a Bubba, a T.R., a Thorpe, a Feo, and a Cheep, who along with someone
named Pinky would be piloting their ship to the alien station and (hopefully)
back again. The freckled man even had a nickname for his nickname—he was called
Five-Eighths, or Five, for short.

Five-Eighths had asked Philippe
where he was from, and upon hearing Alberta immediately said, “So you’re
Amish?”

Philippe had sighed. “Amish” was a
slang term that people sometimes used for individuals like his
parents—back-to-the-land types who had come to Alberta from various cities
(Paris, in his parents’ case) in the 70s. Apparently no one bothered to
fact-check news reports these days, because several of the profiles published
about Philippe had reported that he was an actual, bearded,
horse-and-buggy-driving Amish person. Such reports frequently included
laughably somber speculation on what it meant for the Amish that one of their
own was going into space.

“I know people use that term, but
the Amish are actually a religious group—” he began.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, I know what
the real Amish are,” said Five-Eighths. “I’m from fucking Pennsylvania.”

That sparked a discussion of the
real Amish versus the faux Amish, which then spun off into a discussion of
high-tech ways to kill people versus low-tech ways to kill people, and how the
use of lonjons affected that calculation. Patch’s contribution to the
discussion was a tale, told with evident nostalgia, of how as a child he had
blown up an abandoned warehouse using humble explosives he had devised entirely
on his own out of common household materials.

This defense of the old apparently
inflamed Baby, who suddenly turned to Philippe and said, “Do you know about
these lonjons? Look here.”

She pulled open her uniform
shirt—they all, like Philippe, were now wearing the lonjons under their
clothes—whipped out a knife from God knows where, and sliced the blade along
her collarbone.

“See, no cut, no nothing—that
didn’t even hurt none,” she said, pulling at the lonjons to better display
their wholeness. “That ain’t even hard mode. And this blade is sharp, too,
see.” Holding the knife in her right hand, Baby suddenly put out her bare left
palm, ready to slice it open in order to demonstrate the knife’s keenness.

“I believe you! You don’t have to
show me!” yelped Philippe.

Baby looked up at him, puzzled by
his agitation, and then pulled up the collar of her unfastened uniform toward
her mouth.

“No, no, no, I’m fine,” she said,
looking guilty. “No, there ain’t no emergency, it ain’t nothing—I was just
showing the diplomat guy how the lonjons work. I’m sorry. OK, I’m sorry about
that, doc, I didn’t mean to set off nothing. Next time I’ll be sure to tell you
first. OK, OK, I am sorry.”

That night as he lay in his
borrowed cubby, Philippe pondered those words. The Pax sisters had been
discovered years ago when he was an undergraduate at McGill, and although it
had been one of those unavoidable media sensations, Philippe had been a little
too preoccupied by his coursework to follow the story closely.

He remembered that the man who
cloned them was very wealthy, a brilliant scientist, and completely mad—they
were part of some nonsensical plot to take over the world, but eventually the
girls got old enough to realize that their “father” was utterly insane and
poisoned him. There was much hysterical debate in the media about what to do
with “the clones” and whether or not they could be rehabilitated, and it was
all very tiresome to a young man more interested in passing his finals.

But Philippe did remember the
video. There was a white sand beach—they were found on some private island in
the South Pacific or maybe the Caribbean—and the girls, who had signaled their
unconditional surrender to a completely unaware Union Police, were standing ramrod-straight
and in formation. They were big, Philippe remembered being surprised to hear
that they were just 14, and they were trying to be disciplined, but their faces
were those of frightened children.

So were they connected to the
livestock cloners? Philippe supposed it was possible. There were something like
50 Paxes, which certainly suggested the use of mass-cloning techniques like
those used on cattle and pigs. It would make sense that the man who mass-cloned
50 apparently functional and healthy human beings would have a lot of
experience doing it, since even mass-producing cloned livestock was tricky—they
tended to have neurological disorders and a shorter life span, not that the
average farmer cared.

If the Paxes’ “father” had been the
man who had perfected livestock cloning, he would have been very wealthy
indeed. Everyone used cloned livestock these days: It was cheaper for a farmer
to buy cloned livestock than to pay the stud fees and vet bills to get cows and
sheep the old-fashioned way. Only hobbyists and people with certain political
convictions, like Philippe’s parents, still did their own breeding.

Funny,
thought Philippe, as
he drifted off to sleep.
I’ve known Kelly for three years, and I’ve learned
more about the Paxes from her sister in two days.

Chapter
5

Philippe woke with a start at 4 a.m., instantly alert
despite the early hour.

Today was the day.

A little morning hygiene, and he
went to get a ration bar, deciding in advance not to have a social meal—he had too
much to check up on. He spotted a couple of SFers as he grabbed and wolfed down
the bar, but they all seemed distracted, too. He asked one of them, Bi Zui,
where he could find Shanti, and the soldier took him to her. She introduced him
to Sucre and Doug, both regular SFers, and the second medic, Gingko, who had
accompanied Patch on his earlier visit to the station.

“Are you in the twenty?” Philippe
asked Shanti.

“What do you mean?” she replied.

“Well, I’ve met the doctor, one of
the two pilots, you, your second, and 18 soldiers, two of whom are medics. I
had agreed to an entourage of 20 soldiers, and I guess they don’t count the
pilots or George, but I was wondering if they count you and Patch and the
medics, or if there’s more.”

“Are you sure you met eighteen?”
Shanti asked.

Philippe counted on his fingers.
“Baby, Bi Zui, Bubba, Cut, Doug, Feo, Five-Eighths, Gingko, Mo, Ofay, Paco,
Raoul, Rojy, Sucre, Thorpe, T.R., Vijay, Vip. Eighteen.”

“Good,” said Philippe, thinking,
I’m
glad there aren’t more.
“Do you mind if I address everyone before we go?
I’d like to give them some pointers on diplomacy.”

“Sounds good,” said Shanti. “Hey,
here’s your suits.”

Vip walked up with Philippe’s dress
suits, which he had taken off to mike up the day before. “Do you need a
tutorial?” he asked, brusquely.

“They just slap on and off, right?”
replied Philippe.

“Sort of,” said Vip. “You hit it,
you start talking, and it transmits to everyone. But if you want to talk to a
specific person, then you hit it and say the name, like this.”

He hit his own mike and said
“Trang. Got it?” The question echoed in Philippe’s earplant.

“Yes,” said Philippe.

Vip slapped his mike off. “You can
also transmit to groups. ‘Medic’ will get you all the medical personnel, ‘outer
guards’ will get you the perimeter guards, ‘soldiers’ will get you—well, it
will get you everyone except you, so I guess you won’t need that one very
often. There are some advanced features as well, but you probably won’t need to
use them—if you do, Thorpe or I can show you how.”

“Thank you,” said Philippe, gently
feeling the fabric for any unexpected stiffness that could indicate additional
gear. “I’m not carrying surveillance equipment, am I? Diplomats aren’t allowed
to.”

Vip shook his head. “Only the
soldiers do—you and the doctor are camera-free.”

Eventually the unit, outfitted in
space suits, gathered in a room near the docking area. Shanti instructed them
to “shut the fuck up and listen good” because “the illustrious Philippe Trang
is hoping to teach you assholes some manners.”

“Thank you,” said Philippe, walking
up to the front of the room. “Of course, no one knows for certain what we
should do when we get to the alien station, because with the exception of Patch
and Gingko, we’ll be the first human beings to actually set foot there and deal
with the aliens face-to-face. We’re pioneers, both from a security and a
diplomatic standpoint, and we’re working without a blueprint. So we’re going to
be winging it, at least to a degree, and it’s quite likely that we will make mistakes
or have some kind of disagreement with the aliens at some point. I’m hoping we
can minimize any conflicts, and I have some experience doing so on Earth—”

“Such as?” Shanti interrupted. She
made an encouraging gesture with her hand.

Philippe took the opportunity to
recite his resumé for any SFer who hadn’t bothered to look it up—which, to be
honest, was probably most of them. “I’ve been involved in conflict-resolution
negotiations in a number of Union and non-Union countries, including the Sudan,
Kurdistan, Indonesia, Palestine, and Macedonia. In most of these cases, there
were multiple parties involved who either had not engaged in negotiations
previously or had a history of bad-faith agreements, so there was a strong
atmosphere of suspicion.”

The SFers stared at him
blankly—Philippe had no idea if they were impressed and simply being stoic, or
if they were too nervous to care, or if the notion of
minimizing
conflict
was so far out of their professional experience that they simply couldn’t
process it.

He decided to return to his main
thrust. “I’m glad to say that in the five years since our presence became known
to the aliens, they have never behaved in a hostile or threatening
manner—indeed, we would not be on this mission had they done so. But we are,
nonetheless, a new and strange species for them—an unknown quantity, if you
will. Likewise, we know very little about them. For example, I have been
receiving briefings about the various alien species for the past six months,
and I can assure you that until Patch made his visit two days ago, no one had
the least idea that there was one aquatic species on that station, much less
two. No one even knew that there were nine species on that station—everyone
thought there were only seven.”

Patch grinned and pumped his fists
in the air.

“I’d like us to do all we can to
keep relations positive,” Philippe continued, smiling at the large soldier. “If
there are problems, I want the aliens to feel like they can come to us and have
a chance at a fair resolution. I want them to view us, if not as friends, at
least as unthreatening.

“To that end, I’d like you to do a
little more than make sure your weapons are concealed when you’re in the common
areas—although I’d like you to do that, too.” They chuckled. “I’d like you to
be aware of your language, be aware of how it sounds to someone who doesn’t
understand the context and doesn’t know you. When you say, ‘I’m going to gouge
your eyes out, dog-fucker,’ that’s something that will probably translate
fairly accurately and could be easily misconstrued either as a sincere threat
or a terrible insult.”

They were all looking a little
uneasy now, in part, Philippe knew, because his example was a direct quote of
something Shanti had said at dinner. It was a bit risky, but often the best way
to change a culture was to take on the leader who set the tone.

“Another thing to bear in mind is
that there are nine species here, and we don’t know how they relate to each
other—they could all be very close allies, they could have already split into
distinct alliances that compete with each other, they could all have a history
of conflict. We have no idea. So please don’t talk about the aliens in front of
the aliens. Any questions?”

Thorpe raised his hand. “What’s
your position on surveillance?”

“As you know, all the relevant
agencies agree that covert surveillance at this time is inappropriate,”
Philippe replied. “We don’t know who to spy on; we don’t know what to look for.
We also don’t know what they could detect. It’s entirely possible that some of
the aliens can hear our broadcast frequencies, for example.