“I’ll be up in a bit,” he yelled from behind a pile of books.
She took the elevator up, thinking that when they moved, she’d really miss the creaky old elevator. It rather punctuated her days, creak in the morning, creak in the evening, creak when anyone came or went. She dropped her things on the couch and sat down by the phone and called Angelica.
“Hi, Mom. Sony to bother you, calling you at work, but I haven’t been able to reach Carlos. He hasn’t . . . reverted or anything, has he?”
“Angel, no. No, he’s on top of the world. He called me about three months ago to ask if I’d recommend him for a job with the Confederation. Evidently, he’d discussed it with Chiddy and Vess before they dropped him off in California after we got back from Pistach-home last year.”
“What Confederation job? He never mentioned it to me.”
“There are two Confederation jobs that have to be filled by Earthians. One is the Link job, that’s the one I’m doing. The other one they call the Pattern job. It only opened up a few months ago, after we met the preliminary requirements for membership.”
She smiled, thinking about it. American culture was indeed tasty and catching. What started in the U.S. had rapidly spread across the world. Conflict was down. Destruction of habitat was down. Incivility was down. All schools had classes on good citizenship and polite conduct, and if a student failed that class, they went to remedial school until they passed it, and if they acted out after passing it, they went back into class again. Freedom of speech was unabridged, but one could not yell in other people’s faces, harass them, or use easy-speak to cover up unpleasant facts. Food distribution systems had been worked out to minimize famines, a new pregnancy immunization process was being distributed worldwide, making women increasingly infertile the more pregnancies they had. Gender selection had been perfected, so everyone could have the gender child they wanted, which had made Chiddy exult. In many countries everyone would have boys, by preference, the number of boys would exceed the number of girls by up to a third, and that would really drop the population during the next generation. World human population was too high, everyone agreed, but individual choice had to be respected. The Inkleozese had petitioned formally for a meeting with the UN, during which they had said how gratified they were at the progress Earth had made and pointed out that in order to join the Confederation, Earth was required to provide two humans to work with the Confederation, and the first one had been selected, someone with intimate knowledge of and feelings of kinship for alien peoples, Benita Alvarez.
Previous to the announcement, Benita had been asked to take the job by the Confederation ambassador, another jolly Inkleozese, and after considering the requirements for a week or so, she had agreed. She had become quite uniquely qualified, after all. At least, so the Inkleozese had told her.
Now Carlos had been approved for the other position. “I’m surprised he didn’t talk to you before he left, Angelica.” “He left a message, but it was all garbled. And I’ve had finals. I guess I was too busy to worry about him until now.” “Well, you needn’t worry at all. He’s got the job.” Angelica asked, “What is the job? I don’t get it.” “The Confederation needs one of us to travel among the Confederation worlds for the other races to study. The rules provide that new planets shouldn’t submit anyone who has family because the job will take a large chunk of their lives. They like to have someone young, who isn’t involved in professional work or some long-planned career.”
‘Travel around the galaxy?” Angel said. “Carlos?” ‘That’s right. So that all the races out there can record our parameters so that our people won’t get into situations that are dangerous for them. If we have limited ability to withstand deterioration during long flights, the Confederation needs to know that. If our race has an adverse reaction to some botanical found on Vixbot, they need to know that.”