“Sounds like you’ve had a hard time here,” I said commiseratingly. A little sucking up never hurts.
“You don’t know the half of it.” He let out a put upon, self-pitying sigh. “Still, this is where I was assigned, and I have to stay in this foul bedlam until my mission is considered a success. My mandate is, of course, to broker a trade treaty.”
“Of course,” I agreed in a man-of-the-world tone. Trade as in You get these nice shiny beads, and in exchange we’ll merely glom vast amounts of whatever it is you have that we want. While the ETDS is constrained by a complex set of regulations governing such transactions, few alien races have proved a match for the species who spawned EZ Payment Plans, pyramid schemes, home shopping, plagueads, service contracts, and insurance.
“But I have not been able to strike any sort of deal with these monstrous creatures.” Another consoling slug from his glass.
Maire looked up from threeding her nails cryptozoid style, making it look like weevils and centipedes were chewing their way out from her cuticles. “What is it they have we want?” she asked. When Dork looked her way and saw her handiwork he went a bud green around the gills.
“Mrr’bhg.”
“Excuse me?” I asked, thinking it might have been a gastrointestinal reaction to her artwork.
“Mrr’hhg. They’re the fuzzy, crablike creatures the sk’rrli eat. Ugly little monsters, really, and quite prone to biting. The Embassy would be crawling with the damned things, except we found that they don’t like the smell of disinfectant.” That explained why the open-air structure smelled like a public toilet.
“The sk’rrli eat the mrr’hhg, and the mrr’hhg eat, among other things, the sk’rrli’s, ah, wastes. This disgusting habit is the reason the sk’rrli are totally immune to disease. The ETDS want the vile scuttling things because they secrete a substance which I’m told is a nearly universal antibiotic.”
I knew it had to be something. It wasn’t like the ETDS contacted and embassified other races out of altruism. “I assume that ‘scientific samples’ were collected and sent to the labs on the initial covert survey.” The ETDS usually went the Trade Mission route only after filching failed.
He scowled and nodded. “That’s why I was sent. The antibiotic can’t be replicated or synthesized, and the mrr’hhg they took all died. They can’t survive without the stuff, urn, produced by the sk’rrli.”
“Who don’t want to share their lunch with their new friends.” I glanced at my troupe. Maire was probably finding this stuff fascinating, though you’d never be able to tell by looking at her. Rube had begun squirming around restlessly, showing the classic signs of the onset of the urge to play “Torment the ambassador.” I figured I’d better wrap this up.
“I’m sure you will be able to work something out, sir,” I continued, trying hard to sound like I cared. “So why have you brought us here? Morale raiser for the staff?” From what we’d seen they needed one.
“Hardly.” That word and the sniff he let out told me everything I needed to know about his concerns for staff morale, and why it was so low. “As I said, the sk’rrli are quite barbaric. They’re a brutish lot, highly excitable, absolutely impossible to bargain with, and completely bereft of any cultural achievements one would recognize as such.” He made a dismissive gesture. “Oh, they do have a rude sort of music. Dreadful stuff, even worse than the crudest gutter-class thumping and howling one would hear on Earth. Still, one must start somewhere, and I had the thought that exposure to something finer than their raucous noise would give them a civilized ideal they might emulate.”
I had heard that sort of uberkultural teach the wogs opera sort of thinking before. It’s more or less SOT (Standard Operating Thinking) in a disheartening percentage of the ETDS. Giving the natives a chance to experience our music is fine. Thumping them over the heads with it is an insult to both the audience and the music. We do what we can to soften the blow.
“OK,” I said, “We get the picture. When, where, and what do you want us to play?”
Dork brightened at my no-nonsense attitude. He’d probably been expecting arty arguments against cultural imperialism. The thing is, we love music in general and our chosen repertoire even more. We think it’s valid, valuable, and worthy of dissemination. We would present it for the audience to either like, or find not to their taste. You can’t know when art will leap the gulf between cultures and worlds. When by chance you do connect, it’s a rush better than any drug. I know, I’ve tried them all.
“We will set you up using one side of the Embassy itself as a stage. Can you be ready to perform tomorrow night?”
“We could play tonight if you wanted.” And be gone tomorrow, hopefully with some plus points notched in our instrument cases.
He shook his head. “No, tomorrow night. This must be staged most carefully for proper effect. I want these creatures awed.”
I shrugged. “It’s your party. All we need are three chairs and a platform to hold them, us, and our music stands.”
He nodded, that lemon-sucker’s twist coming back to his mouth as he gave us each a critical eyeballing. “I do hope you have proper attire.”
I held back a sigh. “Orchestra drag? Cutaway jackets, boiled shirts, cummerbunds and black shoes?”
“And pants,” he added, glaring at us like he thought we were the type who wouldn’t wear any unless ordered to.
“And pants,” I promised, making it sound like a major concession. “Now did you have any particular programme in mind?”
He rubbed his soft hands together in delight, eager to demonstrate the depths of his taste. “Oh yes. I want music that is sweet and soothing, light and uplifting. So I want you to play—”
“The Four Seasons,” I finished for him.
He looked startled, then beamed in delight that I was so simpatico. “That’s it exactly! You must have read my mind!”
What there was of it. I swallowed another sigh. Sometimes a musician in my line of work has to swallow sighs the way a diplomat swallows slights. This guy was giving me a surfeit of sighs. “Anything else? Something a bit more challenging? Do you know Saint Saëns’s Danse Macabre? How about some Sibelius? Some Copland? Bach or Bartok? Or—”
“No no no,” he chided. “I want to soothe these savage beasts. Seduce them with one of Earth’s finer things.”
Or bonk them with chestnuts. Now don’t get me wrong, the Vivaldi is a wonderful piece of music, a masterpiece. But nine times out of ten the diplomats who requisition us know only three pure classical pieces by name, and The Four Seasons is two of them so it’s requested ten to one over anything else. Not that any of them could whistle it. Its name is recognizable, easily memorizable, and it doesn’t have any slippery opus numbers to remember or mispronouncable German or Italian or Russian names to mangle and thereby make them look like a nulkulturny boob. But the manglers are at least trying to reach a little more deeply into the repertoire; I will always fondly remember the poor guy who wanted us to play Whiner Miner Nacho Music.
The third piece? The Blue Danube waltzes away with that honor, of course.
You have to bear in mind that your average ETDS ambassador is basically a pirate who has gone to the Right Schools, knows a few People Who Matter, and flies a lace-trimmed Jolly Roger. Their one act of imagination—thinking that life as an envoy would be easy, glamorous, and make them rich—is long behind them. Their concepts of culture and style and good taste are a caviar-crusted, champagne-soaked hash of cliche served on a tarnished silver salver.