The thing is, they know that other races would bet their futures on contacting those extragalactics. So even if the Qhigarians don’t have any personal interest in the information themselves, owning that information puts them in the perfect position to auction off the trajectory coordinates of the extragalactic visitors to the highest bidder.
Shrewd negotiators, the Qhigarians are compulsive traders. They seem to get extraordinary pleasure from buying or selling anything, even their own shadows. The Quim Molá affair was no isolated case: on more than a few occasions, human crews who have made Contact with their worldships with nothing new or valuable to offer them (aside from our precious DNA or our jealously guarded translation software, things that are simply not for trade) have ended up exchanging some useless trinket or doodad for another working Taraplin hyperengine.
Some condomnauts even suspect that the Qhigarian religion not only calls on them to honor and worship their vanished mentors, but also forbids them to let any group of other sentient creatures pass by one of their worldships without trying their hardest to trade with them.
So not all is lost yet. They’re tough negotiators, but it’s just a matter of combing the galaxy until we locate the first worldship full of Qhigarians, then immediately buying all the information about those extragalactic Aliens that they have (or wish to sell us). At whatever price they set. Which I’m afraid will be truly and terribly high.
After a brief pause to let us all reach these conclusions, Miquel Llul resumes speaking.
“The news of the Qhigarians’ recent Contact with extragalactics was brought to us by the hyperjump cruiser Salvador Dalí. Unfortunately, in spite of the magnificent Contact that their Specialist made with the Alien Drifters, the three thousand tons of nickel-titanium thermal memory alloy in the ship’s hold, which we gave them down to the last gram, wasn’t enough to purchase their exact trajectory coordinates. The Alien condomnaut did hint, however, that we might be in for an unpleasant surprise when we found the aliens from beyond the Milky Way.”
Wouldn’t you know, those greedy Unworthy Pupils. If they were private detectives and you hired them to find somebody, they’d probably charge you separately for first and last names. An article made from nickel-titanium alloy recovers its original shape when it’s heated, no matter how dinged up it gets. It’s useful, valuable stuff. And three thousand tons! That’s quite a fortune.
That hint about an “unpleasant surprise” smells too much like “don’t bother yourselves, leave this to us” to be taken seriously.
Now, did Miquel say it was the Salvador Dalí? I’ve heard the name. I don’t mean just the ship’s namesake, the great twentieth-century surrealist. Let me wrack my brains… Of course: that’s the latest, largest, best-armored cruiser in Nu Barsa’s booming space fleet. And its condomnaut is… who else, Jürgen Schmodt. And here he is, still smirking at me with his blue eyes, full of what I now know is pure, contemptuous self-satisfaction. So he’s the one who handled the “magnificent Contact” that Miquel mentioned.
Score a point for you, Kraut. But the race ain’t over yet. Not by half.
“The Department of Contacts, under pressure from the Ministry of Space Trade and the full Govern of Nu Barsa, has therefore decided that, beginning immediately, as a matter of top urgency that shall take priority over any other previously assigned trade or exploratory mission, all available ships and all available condomnauts operating out of this enclave shall actively search for any Qhigarian ships out there. All Nu Barsa ships shall fill their holds with the most valuable minerals and manufactures in the habitat, to be used as bargaining chips in order to obtain from the Qhigarians the specific coordinates of the extragalactic Alien ship’s trajectory through our Milky Way, and any other related data that may be of use, at any price. And, if possible, to carry out our First Contact with the extragalactics at once.
“That is all. All condomnauts: report to your respective ships as expeditiously as possible. Goodbye, and good luck.”
The uproar that followed Miquel Llul’s solemn declaration wouldn’t have sounded out of place in the Roman Coliseum.
But Plain-Spoken Miquel refuses to answer any questions, turns his back on our protests, and ignores whatever curses are hurled his way. He leaves the restive hall with the same long strides as when he entered, and no one dares get in his way.
One reason my colleagues have started shouting and complaining is that, after long weeks on deep space missions, many (such as myself) were hoping for a little R&R in the tourism and recreation zones of the great orbital archology.
Another is the sheer thrill of the hunt. We’ve always known that some condomnauts are better than others: more imaginative, more capable at making Contact, more skilled at “sleeping together,” better at negotiating, better at languages, more empathetic—or at any rate, luckier.
And whoever can manage now not only to get the trajectory coordinates for the extragalactic Aliens through skilled negotiations with the first Qhigarian worldship they find, but to make Contact with the visitors from beyond the Milky Way themselves…
Well, there’s a street in Nu Barsa named after Joaquim Molá, but it’s short, narrow, and very hard to find. The condomnaut who makes our First Intergalactic Contact, on the other hand, could seriously expect to have not only the greatest avenue in Nu Barsa, now known simply as the Grand Diagonal, named in their honor, but a whole section of moving walkways as well. (How does “Josué Valdés Avenue” or “Rambla Josué Valdés” sound?) Or even an entire city district.
Maybe they’ll even put their name on the first habitable planet discovered in another galaxy that Catalan ships find. Why not?
“It isn’t fair, Josué!” Nerys growls into my ear after slipping gracefully up to me on her antigrav platform. Thankfully she seems to have forgotten how upset she’d been about the Evita Entity, because if there’s anything I dislike in a woman, it’s retrospective regret. “I just got back from my mission two days ago! I’d been gone for three weeks! Like I’m going to want to go right back out and start traipsing around space looking for a bunch of Aliens from some other galaxy!”
I give her a hug to console her (and to squeeze her a little while I’m at it, mucus or no, now that things are better between us). And then I hear a voice with a certain unmistakable accent.
“Nein obligation to respect order of Llul, meine Fräulein.” Just as I feared. Gloating over his minor partial victory, Herr Schmodt can’t resist the temptation to twist the knife. “Also no point there is. Ich find Qhigarians, then Extragalaktischen find ich, und then… ”
“And then you’d better find a Catalan dictionary, or Spanish at least, and learn how to fucking speak a little, ass. You’re an insult to Cervantes and Marsé!” This from my friend Narcís Puigcorbé, butting in from behind my back.
Wow, did that ever hit the German where it hurt. His nanobot-ridden body might be the perfect instrument of his steely will, but the truth is that his brain still hasn’t found its way around the Spanish language, much less Catalan.
But like they say, people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. I really ought to take up Catalan classes again—it wouldn’t surprise me if my near-total ignorance of the language of Juan Marsé (whom I’ve only read in Spanish, though to be fair he won the Cervantes Prize for Spanish literature in the early 2000s) is one reason why they still haven’t given me my citizenship.