April 5: A Depth of Understanding (42 page)

"You weren't promised a reward for bringing that message to us?" Chen asked surprised.

"No, I'm still not sure it will even be safe for me to return. I'm prepared to make a life here if I need to. In fact I'm finding I like it here. If my direct commander doesn't survive this to testify to his verbal orders I may just be another deserter and no way to prove different. Do you think me stupid to risk that?" he asked, sheepishly.

"I think you a genuine patriot,  perhaps better than China deserved," Chen said.

Jason just looked down, embarrassed to be praised.

Jeff looked at the map, covered with all sorts of icons and dots. Every marker meant something bad happening. It was a much better display than they'd had when fighting North America.

"Earth's two most powerful nations are both under untried, possibly unstable rule. I'm glad we decided to move a little further away," Jeff said.

 "The neighbors of both countries are probably not too thrilled right now. They don't have the option to move and no idea what will spill over," Chen pointed out. "Like Taiwan."

"You know, I threatened I would make them understand us, but I've come to understand you can't
make
somebody understand you on an emotional level. If they haven't been taught empathy at their mother's knee all they can see are those like them and
others
. I was silly to think I could teach such a lesson," he admitted.

"It takes me longer to learn social things, I'm really not good at it and I fear I still have a ways to go in that department. Heather and April do try to help me. But you can still manage people with greed and fear, they are just cruder tools. I find
I'm
the one getting a depth of understanding instead of forcing it on them. Unfortunately understanding them better hasn't led to me having any more empathy or affection for the Earthies, just the opposite. Mostly I just want to stay away from them and as much as we can,
contain
them."

"Certainly the L1 doctrine makes that clear," Jason said.

"For now. But people chafe under restrictions. Sons resent the treaties their fathers were happy to sign. By the time they heal from these coups and start to get restive again I want us all over the solar system and too spread out and numerous to challenge," Jeff avowed.

"If one may make a suggestion," Chen said very diffidently, "Don't cut off the high value individuals. It's the state not the man who will try to cause you trouble. As long as the person who wants a frontier and opportunity can
leave
his Earth nation and come here, he will likely be your ally. If you bar him and make him resent you as exclusionary, then he can readily be a tool his nation will use against you."

"I knew that, but you expressed it better than I could. I'll speak to Jon Davis and Steve Lewis, Eduardo Muños and Eddie. I'd appreciate it if you would speak to them in support. If the matter of immigration comes up in the Assembly and people want to curtail it we can all speak against that. If those well known men can shape the discussion then it's likely public opinion on it can be directed."

"I'm honored you think I can persuade such a high powered crowd. I'd be happy to try."

"The idea stands on its own," Jeff said with a dismissive gesture. "It's just a matter of making them familiar with it, before somebody else presents an opposing meme that has to be removed for this one to be seen as superior."

"Are you trying to form a political party?" Chen asked. The idea didn't seem to make him particularly happy.

"No. We may differ on other things than immigration. I'd love to see some way to make anything like the traditional political parties Earthies are used to impossible. They're part of the problem. They require you to compromise, because their platforms never entirely conform to your thoughts and needs. Sometimes they serve just about nobody except the few who use them to acquire power and they represent concentrations of power that frighten me," Jeff said.

"Thus speaks the man who has enough nuclear weapons to hand to largely destroy my nation," Jason said, lifting his fist in a grip like you could hold such a thing.

"Ideas are much more dangerous things than any weapon," Jeff insisted. "I'm happy to see the idea of volunteer representatives to the Assembly for interest groups has largely died out already. They had too narrow a focus and people found they wanted to express their view with their own vote. The shipbuilders still have a Spox, but he is just that, a speaker to let them express
their
consensus on matters to cut down on unnecessary speech in Assembly. He in no way tells them what to think."

"But you said you want to see the whole solar system populated and I assume you mean full of economic activity too," Chen reminded him. "Do you picture Home controlling such a far-flung bunch with different interests?"

"Not at all. I expect in a few decades I will have interests in Home, the moon and out to Jupiter and beyond. There will be people who are more concerned with local issues say on Mars or among the Jovian moons. It would be as stupid to try to manage them to my benefit and their detriment,  just like Earth failed to stifle us. But there will be a lot of people like me who will have an interest there, as well as here on Home and I hope we can set a balance where I have a voice both places."

"Will you try to influence them to form a government
like
Home's?" Jason asked.

"No, we already have a monarchy on the moon. It's different, but it seems to be coexisting quite well. And see? It serves my interests quite nicely even though it is different. I think the best thing we can do to encourage the new governments to be more like us and less like Earth, is to
succeed
. All the propaganda and lobbying in the world won't have as much chance of influencing them to be more like us and less like Earth, than simply seeing that it is a horrid mess," he said, pointing at the huge map, "and what we do works."

Chapter 27

"April do you have a little time later I can demo something for you?" Jeff asked.

"After supper?" she asked.

"That would be fine. At my office? I have it set up there. It'll save me moving it."

"I meant, will you have supper
with
me and then we'll go look at it?"

"I'd like that. At the cafeteria?" he asked.

"Cafeteria if you want to eat first. If you want to eat at my cubic, we do the demo first, so I can stuff you and lounge around after in no hurry to go anywhere."

"Your place then," he agreed. "I need to relax a little."

"1830 hours. If you can show me in an hour, because dinner will be cooking."

"An hour is plenty," he agreed.

* * *

"Why are you frowning? Deloris demanded.

Barak knew her well enough now to realize there was a core of insecurity about her, likely with good reason and he didn't want to feed it.

"Jeff gave me this problem, of making a list of people qualified for a star ship, but the way we go about it is all wrong, it just doesn't work."

"Why not? After a year and a half or two all sealed up with us you will should know us like siblings. What could be better?"

"
You
I'll know like a sibling. Our captain and XO I won't have traded a hundred words with between them. Maybe that's the secret to getting along on a long voyage. Stagger the shifts and avoid seeing most of the other crew as much as possible."

"You'll have to work pretty close with him putting the plasma jets out on the snowball."

"That's true. Maybe by the time we get that done we'll have had out fill of each other and be happy to ignore each other again all the way home," he said amused.

"But what Jeff is asking me to do is an anomaly. Jeff trusts
me
because we are very close, but I'm a very junior member of the crew and this is only going to happen for the first star ship and probably just for part of that crew. Normally I wouldn't be trusted to do this and even this time he'll need more people than I know and can evaluate. Even if I make other voyages to the outer system and build up a bigger list before he starts to build a starship, some of them will be chosen based on the same old style of interviews and psychological evaluations that picked Harold Hanson for this ship. Worse yet, April's grandpa told me some stories about projects where the person doing the hiring was a warped personality and when that happens he tends to hire people like him, so then you have a whole
crew
of misfits that can't get along with each other."

"Well, as I said, they didn't get a ton of applications and he does do his job. He just happens to be irritating as hell when he isn't doing his job."

"I don't see Alice much more than you see Harold. Is she OK to work with?"

"Well, she clicks her tongue and isn't aware she does it. In a year I may go berserk and cut it out. Other than that I have no big problems. I'm grateful it's mostly you with Harold. He'd find ways to be slimy with me if we were together all day long, stimulating his imagination."

"I can take him for a year and a half. Although his impact on me is less than on you ladies. But consider, if we were going to the Centauri System and the first time would be fifteen years both ways and a couple years in system exploring. Even if we had a crew of a hundred and if there is a match and partner for everybody,
somebody
is going to get stuck with a Harold, or nobody, for a very long time."

"With a hundred people I think you will always have one or two who are single and even if they hired all married couples the same pairs wouldn't all come home that started. You'd have some shuffling of the deck so to speak. I don't think anybody has the
tools
to eliminate Harolds," Deloris declared. "I don't think psychology, or psychiatry, is advanced enough to sort them out."

"I agree," Barak told her. "That's why we need new tools that will tell us who are flaming jackasses with who we don't want to be locked in a little can for decades."

"You could have a few extra and change the rules to let us pitch them out the airlock when we find they are insufferable," she suggested.

"Would you sign up knowing the crew could do that to you?" he asked.

She shrugged. She wanted to go so badly, maybe she would.

"I'm working on it still, but I'm leaning right now toward using a game. To get a berth you'd have to be in a role playing game for an extended period of time. Maybe a year or two even and it would require interacting with all the other players and everybody would be evaluated by
all
the other players, not just a supervisor or a human resources executive. Instead of a professional evaluation we'd sort of crowd source a consensus about their personality. If somebody is a horrible argumentative person who makes others unhappy it will show up, even if it is the passive aggression that some love to do. They can't just put on a false face for a few days to get on board and them show their true colors when it's too late...to apply your solution."

"You don't think they can fake it in the game?" she asked, a little skeptical still.

"Have you ever know anybody in an online group or interest forum to go months without revealing it if they are a troll or sociopath?"

"Hmm. You may have something there. Most of them can't keep from making off color snarky remarks or going into a big rant for a
day
, much less a year. Online seems even harder to control than face to face. Would you like some help with this? You pointed out I'm a little older than you and I can bring the feminine view, because people like Harold are obnoxious differently to me than to you."

"I'd be very glad of the help," he told her honestly.

* * *

"Might you spare me a few minutes to speak with you on a break, or at the end of your shift?" Chen asked Ruby as she was servicing the coffee pots.

Ruby definitely gave him a fish eye. "Should I call my husband to come speak with us too?"

"That's up to you. I don't know if he is informed about what I'd ask, but he is welcome to listen. I've been told he has, competencies. How is he at assessing personnel?"

"Depends. If you are hiring an executive chef or a pianist I'll likely have more to say. If you are looking for a combat pilot, assassin, or a spy like yourself, he'll know more."

Chen resisted the urge to take a step back. He was quite used to people taking a step back away from
him
, but he consciously invaded their space sometimes to intimidate people, especially North Americans. Ruby hadn't really stepped toward him. He had come so close she couldn't without bumping him. But she'd turned with one foot at the base of the counter and she'd taken the handle of the full carafe of coffee like she was going to move it, but she didn't.  She looked relaxed, not braced, but she was positioned to push off the counter base and the pot of scalding hot coffee suddenly seemed a potential weapon. Chen remembered Papa-san saying when the Chinese had tried to assassinate April, the man had been shot and Tasered, but Ruby had been wiping the counter about where they were standing and still managed to stick a knife through the fellow's kidney before he had time to fall. He looked over at the tables. They seemed a long way away, compared to where he was right now.

"Please, invite him then," Chen agreed, completely ignoring the crack about his being a spy. "I want to ask you about Gabriel," he said, which he hadn't intended to reveal just yet.

"He's an excellent young man," Ruby informed him. "My husband is very fond of him, as I am. We'd be very upset of anything that... interfered with him."

Damn, this wasn't going well, nor where he wanted it to go. "That is exactly what Jeff Singh indicated, that he is a promising young man and suggested I might look at recruiting him in Jeff's service. But he said you could give me insight on whether that was appropriate."

"Ah, that's interesting. I haven't seen anybody suffer for dealing with Singh, but I don't want to discuss that here. You come to our cubic, two hours after shift change and I'll tell my husband to expect a guest for dinner. After being here all day I don't stay here and eat supper too usually."