An Accidental Alliance (15 page)

     
“You must be going through satellites at a horrendous rate,” Arn remarked. “Six hundred miles is not all that high up as I recall.”

     
“We send our satellites up with fuel tanks,” Taodore replied. “They can generally correct their orbits for several years before we have to refuel them.”

     
“Even so,” Arn told him, “you would do better to place them in geosynchronous orbit.”

     
When Taodore looked confused at the term, Park explained, “High enough up over the equator so that they are always over the same spot on earth. But, Arn, that means well over twenty-two thousand miles up. Just a little higher than what the treaty demands,” he added with gross understatement.

     
“That high?” Arn asked. He looked to Tina Linea for confirmation and she nodded. “Well, heck. We have three satellites in storage and a rocket to launch them with. And they’re meant to be in geosynchronous orbit.”

     
“According to the Covenant,” Taodore warned him, “they can be destroyed by the Galactics.”

     
“I didn’t sign any treaty,” Arn growled. “What do they have against you anyway? You and your daughter seem nice enough and the ant is well behaved. Gives me the creeps, but I have to admit he’s well behaved. Where is the ant, anyway?”

     
“Tack,” Iris told him, stressing the name in rebuke, “is outside praying down the sun.”

     
“Praying down the sun?” Arn asked, disbelievingly. “Does he think it won’t set without his help?”

     
“That is precisely what he thinks, Arn,” Iris told him seriously. Since the impromptu wedding ceremony, Iris had grown quite fond of the insect shaman. In spite of his odd form, he seemed like a nice person. He was very quiet and rarely spoke first, but that was part of what she liked about him. “More accurately, the Atackack believe that if a sufficient number of worthies do not pray for the sun to rise and then set, then it will not and the Earth will freeze in its tracks.”

     
“Its orbit, you mean?” Tina Linea asked.

     
“Well, they believe the earth is a living creature that walks through the stars,” Taodore informed them, “So I think Iris has it right. And, yes, they do, indeed, believe the sun only rises and sets because of prayer. In all fairness, Tack does not know if he is actually worthy of the task, and in fact he confesses that he doubts he is, but he prays just in case he is one of the ten worthies that keep the world in motion. Just between you and me, if Tack isn’t worthy, I doubt there’s an Atackack who is.”

     
“In any case,” Iris cut in, “I’d suggest giving him the same respect you would the Pope regardless of your own religion.”

     
“All right!” Arn held his hands up against the verbal assault. “All right. I’ll be nice to him. Taodore, what about the first question. Why do the Galactics want your people confined to the Earth?”

     
“Arn,” Park interrupted, “I already told you that.”

     
“You also said I should ask Taodore,” Arn reminded him. Arn turned to the merman. “So?”

     
“We are an artificial species,” Taodore explained. “We were created by someone in the distant past, although even the Galactic records don’t go that far back and they claim the Covenant was forged almost one million years ago, although the oldest Mer record is less than half that age.”

     
“You say they claim the Covenant is that old,” Arn observed. “I take it you don’t agree?”

     
“One million years is a suspiciously round number,” Taodore replied. “However we have been under the Covenant for as long as anyone can remember. It is our oldest historic record.”

     
“Why were you created?” Patty Zinco asked.

     
“The reason has been lost,” Taodore admitted, “We have three religions that differ on that answer, but I think that we were created because whoever did it needed a group of people who could live in the shallows of the coasts. Whoever it was no longer exists and neither we nor the Galactics have any notion of who they were. We are not water breathers, although on the average a Mer can hold his breath for fifteen to twenty minutes. With adequate preparation – super-oxygenating our blood - that can be extended to maybe half an hour, but my point is we were born to swim, but not stay submerged. Our scientists believe we may have been bred to conduct aquaculture. We are very good at that, but we might have been created stupid, non-sentient. Instead, we are as intelligent as any other sentient population, so whatever we were created for, we have transcended our original purpose and created a civilization of our own.”

     
“So you were artificially created,” Arn summed up, “and Park already told me you were gene-locked, which as I understand means that your species will never evolve. That still doesn’t tell me why you are under the restrictions of the Covenant.”

     
“We are under the Covenant because we have been forced to agree to it,” Taodore replied.

     
“Are the Atackack bound by the Covenant?” Arn asked.

     
“Don’t be silly,” Taodore shook his head. “The Atackack can’t build a spaceship.”

     
“But if they could?” Arn pressed.

     
“I’m not sure,” Taodore replied. “They are a natural species. More natural than any of the suprahuman Galactics can claim to be. None of them evolved naturally, they adapted themselves to the planets they settled. Some adaptations were more extreme than others, but the difference between them and us is they can and have evolved over the course of time.”

     
“I don’t get it,” Patty admitted. “What’s the big deal about being gene-locked?”

     
Taodore sighed and shrugged, “We are given a number of reasons, but none of them make sense to us.”

     
“Try us,” Arn told him bluntly.

     
“More often than not, the replies have been that it makes us unfit for civilized society,” Taodore told them sadly, “or that without evolution we can never grow and thus are sort of permanent children. Still others have called us anathema and should not be allowed to live, but we understand they are in the minority, which is why we have the Covenant.”

     
“What are they afraid of?” Arn demanded. “Cooties?”

     
“No, Arn,” Park cut in. “It sounds more like a religious argument; “And God did speak to Moses on the mountain, and lo, He commanded, ‘Thou shalt not create man in your own image.’ Only in this case, it was, ‘You will not create life that cannot evolve.’ It doesn’t have to make sense to the victim, it doesn’t even have to make sense to the believer, really, so long as they obey. It’s possible the Galactics will deny this is part of their religion, but as a prejudice it is certainly as ingrained as though it was.

     
“Taodore,” Park continued, “since we do not know the origins of your people, all this is speculation, but my guess is that you were originally created to be a class of servants. Why is anyone’s guess, but your theory of having been aquacultural farmers sounds reasonable. The thing is, even if you don’t remember… Heck, even if they don’t remember either, the belief you are not as good as they are remains. I think the whole gene-locked thing is just a latter-day justification for keeping you all penned up on Earth.”

     
“That could be,” Taodore allowed, “but it doesn’t change the fact that we are bound by the Covenant and have renewed that Covenant every one hundred years by the insistence of the Galactic Council.”

     
“Well, we didn’t sign any Covenant,” Arn repeated. “It can’t bind us.”

     
“I am not sure the Galactics would agree,” Taodore told him, “All those reasons may be nothing but gratuitous insults. They also claim they see all Earth as a sort of nature preserve and that the Covenant serves to protect our world. However, I have not studied the Covenant in detail. Perhaps you should take that up with the leaders of my government when you meet them.”

     
In spite of an official reticence, the Mer government was secretly anxious to meet with the humans, but there was a matter of transportation to be worked out first. Arn, not feeling the need to bring the jet they had online, had pushed the priority of building a runway down to the bottom of the stack. Now, however, it became more urgent because whether they went to visit the Mer or vice versa, the jet was the only reasonable way to travel and the Mer vehicles would need a runway as well.

     
“Cheer up,” Park told Arn as they watched the bulldozer starting to prepare the new airport. They had taken to meeting at the top of the hill under which Van Winkle Base sat. From beside the stumpy remains of the old elevator tower, they could see the entire exterior of the establishment. The project leader had a tendency to become irritable when he had to change his plans. Arn was a careful and deliberate planner and preferred not to be rushed. Having shelved the need for a runway, he was annoyed to have to order the construction of one now. “The Mer don’t require as long a strip as we do.”

     
“Maybe not,” Arn grumbled. “But if we’re going to do the job, we may as well do it all at once.” Then he smiled. “If there’s any asphalt left over I’ll have them redo the basketball courts. Packed dirt is working out for tennis, but the guys who play basketball have been complaining their courts are dead.”

     
Paving the roads and paths we’re wearing into the dirt around here would be a good idea too,” Park pointed out. “Especially with the wet season coming on.”

     
“We have enough concrete to do that with,” Arn told him. “We only have enough asphalt for the strip with a small safety margin. After that all we have are instructions for how to make more, but that could be years away. Concrete, on the other hand, we have plenty of even after using it as the base beneath the runway.”

     
“And for that we have instructions on how to make concrete as well,” Park added. “Of course we have to find limestone and other materials for all that. The Mer should be able to help there, they have their own building materials. Some may be better than ours, although it is probably better if we keep our colony self-sufficient.

     
“I’m not sure if colony is the right word for what this is,” Arn told him.

     
“Are you planning to go back to the Twenty-first Century?” Park asked pointedly. “Because unless you have a way to do that, we’re a colony whether we call it that or not. We probably ought to allow people to build houses outside the original establishment. I understand we have the building materials.”

     
“We were never intended to make Van Winkle Base a permanent residence,” Arn admitted. “but there are only so many pre-fabricated buildings in storage and not much to build new ones out of around here.”

     
“Sod houses, I suppose,” Park suggested, “although we just chopped up some prime sod in the name of building our airport.”

     
“How many of our people would want to live in a sod house?” Arn asked.

     
“Don’t know,” Park admitted. “I understand they can be fairly comfortable, though. Cool in the summer, warm in the winter, not that we’ll get much winter at this latitude. Of course we do not have a means of building air conditioning units yet, so maybe that’s not such a good idea. You know, I don’t really know what would be best in this climate. Perhaps we should experiment. If we want wood to build with, though, there are some nice looking forests on the slopes of the Atlantic mountains. The wood samples our teams brought back are very good too. We’ll have a time figuring out what to call them all, well maybe not. The Mer may have names we can use, but the thing is it is a nice mixture of hard and softwoods so we’ll be able to get all we want from the same place.

     
“Of course,” Park continued, “has anyone actually said they wanted to move out of the base?”

     
“A few people have,” Arn admitted. “Most seem to take comfort in the modern conveniences the base affords, but some want more space. The agriculturalists and biologists especially seem eager to get outside.”

     
“Makes sense to me,” Park nodded. “That’s where their work is. And we’re already running power from the main base for the airport. We should plan a community and run the wires out to where they’ll be needed. If we do them first they can be underground and less subject to weather damage.”

     
“Also we have a shortage of poles, but not conduit,” Arn added thoughtfully. “Can you put together a proposal?”

     
“Iris is more suited to that sort of work,” Park told him.

     
“Iris is on your team,” Arn countered. “All right, ask her to work with Terry Lefavre. He’s our only remaining civil engineer. The other two were kept in those rooms we found empty. See if they can come up with something between them.”

     
“I’m sure they will, although right now she’s working with Taodore to build a link up between our computer network and that of the Mer. They have evidently torn Taodore’s boat apart to get the inboard computer and satellite link out and are rebuilding it into an interface between the two systems. We’ll have to give him and Marisea a ride home eventually.”

     
“The mermaid?” Arn mused. “You know, I’ve come to like her.”

     
“She’s a very likeable person,” Park admitted.

     
“And very intelligent and inquisitive,” Arn added. “She’s been a delight, helping out everyone where she can and learning as much as possible too.”