“So tell me about the meeting,” he said instead. “How come you didn’t break for mess, and didn’t ‘cast any of the discussion?” Usually, although not always, the Council meetings were broadcast on a separate channel for any interested citizen to view through the data console.
“We were discussing … classified matters,” Illart said. “Why would the negotiations with Rushima be classified?”
-Market asked in his most innocent voice. “After all, everybody knows that’s what we’re here for.”
“They’re not going well,” Illart said.
“I’m not surprised. After I looked at Dr. Hoa’s weatherprediction model, I can see why they might not want to pay for it. Its not that much of an improvement on current systems.’
“Yes, but they don’t know that yet,” Illart said. “They haven’t seen the code … they just said no thank you, they’ve had three years of bad harvests planetwide and they owe so many back taxes to the Shenjemi Federation that they can’t even imagine throwing away their credits on high-tech frills. The wording,” he added dryly, “is Rushimese, not ours.”
“So it took two full shifts for them to turn us down?” “Oh, no. That happened about ten minutes after we opened negotiations. The rest of the meeting,” Illart said wearily, “concerned what we do next.”
“Try somewhere else ? ” Markel hazarded. “That seems to me our only option. But Nueva Fallona had another idea. You see, Hoa brought with him the results of some other research he’s been doing recently… I can’t tell you exactly what, you’re not cleared, but it has to do with actually modifying weather patterns rather than just predicting them. Nueva and some of the other Council members thought we might be able to use that research to convince the Rushimese that they needed our services.” Illart sighed again. “If Hoa’s work were accurate enough for us to guarantee a season’s worth of good growing weather, and if we could afford to wait around during that growing season, it might not be such a bad idea. But he doesn’t have that kind of control yet, as Nueva ought to know; she’s seen the abstracts Johnny Greene put together for all the Council members. I pointed out that we couldn’t predict what would happen if we started discharging pulsed energy into Rushimas ionosphere-we could cause terrible catastrophes on the surface-and do you know what that woman said?” Illart s voice rose in indignation. “That it didn’t matter what happened; if we could make their weather interesting enough, they’d be very happy to pay for our services. As if we’d stoop to running a ‘protection’ racket-pay us or we’ll destroy your climate! None of the original Starfarers would stoop to such a thing. Naturally, Andrezhuria and I quashed that idea. But it took forever. Some of the Council actually couldn’t see that Nueva was proposing to threaten Rushima until I spelled it out for them in plain language, over and over. The funny thing is,” Illart said, yawning hugely, “Nueva herself didn’t seem to be that unhappy when I made it clear that we’d never consider such an unethical procedure. The other Palomellese on the Council were griping and muttering, but Nueva actually seemed pleased that I wouldn’t even consider her proposal.”
In view of what Markel had learned about Nueva during his afternoon of hacking into Palomella’s secure data bases, this surprised him even more than it did Illart; but his father fell asleep before he had a chance to tell him what the Palomellese aboard ship had been tactfully not mentioning.
Later he thought that he might never forgive himself for that omission.
A dream of flashing lights, laser pulses calling lightning from the clouds, cities going up in silent waves of flame, resolved into the steady three-pulsed flash of the cabin lights that signaled an emergency alert. Markel half fell out of his sleep tube, rubbing his eyes, and turned to Illart for an explanation of this emergency.
Only Illart wasn’t there. He must already have gone to deal with the problem … but what sort of emergency could call the First Speaker out in the middle of his sleep shift? For engineering problems, Sengrat would have been called; for computer systems, Johnny Greene or one of the other hotshots who carried the CaN. Much as Markel respected his father, he knew that Illart’s high position on the Haven was due not to technical expertise but to his reputation for probity and plain speaking. Illart wasn’t even that much of a diplomat; when they needed somebody to weasel-word around some system’s regulations, Gerezan was the Speaker they called upon to phrase the careful sentences.