“Mr. Cameron.” Kroger was seated at the table. They had not moved tables for the conference. They still had a bed in this room, but had moved in an additional chair, or had moved one out. There were four floor braces, three with chairs, and Bren found himself moderately curious whether the four ate together and interacted in this room, or whether it was routinely two and two. He rather suspected the latter.
“We’re attempting to secure tea,” Bren said lightly as he slid into the third chair. “Good day, Ms. Kroger. Ginny.”
“You’re up to something, Mr. Cameron.”
Lund swiveled a chair and sat down, the three of them at indecently close range at the little table, if they should lean forward. Bren did exactly that, arms on the table, and watched Kroger lean back.
“I’ve just sent to Mospheira and to the mainland, and I think things are going very well. Talks went very well yesterday, frighteningly well, in fact; and I have a proposal for you.”
“The nature of which, Mr. Cameron, if you please.”
“The nature of which is very commercial. The Pilots’ Guild wants a functioning station. Commerce of an atevi pattern is very dubiously suited to a human ship’s needs; they hardly want artworks or tea services. It does strike me, instead, that if we’re to set up this station to function as it might, according to the historical capacity of large commercial stations—”
“We’re talking about a war, Mr. Cameron, their war with these damned aliens.”
“Eventually. Perhaps even sooner than we wish.”
“We don’t wish, Mr. Cameron. We don’t ever wish!”
“Nor do we. But the commercial potential of this station…”
“We’re talking about invasion and murder and a damnable atevi tendency to settle their disputes by assassinating the opposition!”
He blinked several times, considering that forceful declaration of Kroger’s position. He did not retreat, rather leaned where he was.
And smiled. “Very precisely. War. Stupid, mistaken war. We don’t wantthat sort of thing, either, I assure you. Atevi have absolutely no interest in dockside concessions, entertainment, or other things that one human community can very readily provide another… do you know Mr. Kaplan out there had not a clue what a tea service is?” Jase had come down to the planet relatively ignorant of varieties of food, having experienced very little in the way of fresh produce. “The potential market, fellow humans, the extension of island companies to the station—do you know there’s not a single teashop, no paid entertainment, no payfor anyone on the ship, and no clothes that aren’t simply drawn from ship’s stores?” He had had the picture from Jase, and reckoned that Yolanda had likely explained that matter on the island fairly thoroughly. “Think of these yellow hallways endlessly extended, no commercial zone, no such thing, not even a soft drink dispenser? We could well do with a SunDrink stand.”
“You’re talking nonsense, Mr. Cameron.”
He didn’t let his smile vary. “They want us to build a ship.”
“Build a ship,” Kroger echoed, and blinked.
“The aiji’s effectively agreed.” It wasso, since the aiji had sent him to make agreements, and he had made them. “However… wherever there are increases in personnel, supply is a problem; franchises for station operation, for, say, SunDrink, Inc., would be a fairly valuable commodity. Atevi happen to like it moderately well. Especially given the difficulties of transporting fresh juice.”
“We’re not empowered to agree to human personnel up here. We’re against it.”
“Atevi, however, are interested in this shipbuilding. In mining. You don’t need to do these things. I believe we’ve tried to make that clear. But these halls filled with workers simply drawing uninspired rations from some ship’s store… atevi simply won’t put up with that sort of thing. Think rather of human industry supplying a vital commercial zone, withall interested companies selling goods and services tailored to crew and, of course, an increasing dockfront presence…”
“They don’t have currency.”
“Oh, but that, that can be solved. Think of Port Freedom carried into orbit, think of stores, shops… Isn’t that what the stations used to be? Isn’t that our historical image of the station?”
“We’ve got a damned alien menace out there!”
“I don’t think it’s arriving next week, or if it is, we’re absolutely hopeless. We’re not going to fold up shop and refuse to develop because we’re anticipating being blown to hell. I’m quite serious in this. Atevi prefer fruit juice to yeast cultures. There’s a thousand or so people in orbit who have never had a cup of tea. I’m told the food is no inspiration at all.”
“Understatement,” Lund said with a small twitch of the shoulders.
“A modern economy is not monofocused. You can see there’s a market for a widening humans-in-orbit population. Everyone who wants to go up, can go, so long as they have a job to do up here.”
“What side are you on, Mr. Cameron?” Ginny Kroger asked.
“The aiji’s. There’s not a single item of the aiji’s business that proposal interferes with. Pizza definitely has a future on the mainland, but atevi generally find the Mospheiran diet quite bland and far too heavy on the sugars. Not to mention their absolute rejection of the meat preservation industry, which they have absolutely no desire to emulate. It would be ethically and morally ruinous to them to try. There’s not going to be any objection whatsoever to Mospheiran companies expanding to in-orbit operations, small now, very small, but increasingly important as the population up here increases, and it will. I’m sure it will.”
“What do you get out of it? What does the aiji get?”
“What do the atevi get? A sizable orbital population of their own which they’llmaintain, in their own ways. We’re not going to crowd one another, not up here, not in this whole wide solar system. We can engineer our unique facilities, each do what we do best, both benefit.”
“And what about these aliens?”
“They haven’t shown up yet. They may never. They may come tomorrow. In the one instance we have no problem worth worrying about. In the other, our whole discussion may be moot, but in the eventuality we have time to do something, I suggest there’s a great deal we can do. First, take possession of our shared orbital space. We know how to do it. Our economies have been interlocked for two hundred years, increasingly so in the last several decades; it was a decision of several administrations to allow what we called independent but interlocked…”
“Not living interlocked.”
“Nor living interlocked here, either, not changing our ways of doing things. Respectingour separate ways. You noticed that rather substantial door out there…”
“You’re proposing to set doorsbetween our two populations.”
“As we reconstruct this station, yes. Two separate authorities; wedo the gross construction, and the mining, which atevi do very well. You do the interior refurbishment and start the cycle of light industry up here which can make the shipments to and from the planet profitable. The atevi economy can support more heavy construction below and provide a certain amount of raw materials supply; but the very part of the economy that serves dense, linear human populations, the food preservation and the mass-production approach to manufacturing… all that is completely alien to the atevi economy and hurtful to their psychology. We proved that in the War. We also proved over the last two hundred years that we can interlock our efforts up here, profitably, sensibly, and get that linear multiplication of population linked into a prosperous economy. I’ve had some very substantive agreements with Guild authorities; they’re willing to make gestures of goodwill on their side… I think there’s every opportunity for us both to make sensible agreements with the Guild.”