Duan considered the matter for a double handful of seconds before replying. “Sir, I don’t see anything in this plan that contravenes the Party’s instructions. But I feel I must register an objection to your actions at the planetoid. We had clear instructions not to engage with the Nixon.”
“Which, Mr. Duan, I followed to the letter. I did not engage the American ship directly in any fashion. I tested the waters… and their resolve. The verbal exchanges were meaningless theatrics. We learned what we needed to know without engaging.” He turned to Cui. “Mr. Cui, I want you to work up a list of personnel for the shuttle mission to the moonlet. I want everyone on that trip who could possibly be of any use in investigating the alien technology. If we’re fortunate, this won’t be the only opportunity to study their technology, but we can’t count on that. Assume the worst about the Americans: that is our one and only chance.”
He then turned and spoke directly with the camera that was recording and transmitting the conference. “To you experts in Beijing, I would suggest that the American commander was probably telling the truth, and that her assessment of the balance of power between our two ships was accurate. Therefore, I believe that the Nixon will be leaving in two days. I don’t believe that she was being entirely candid with us: there may be other issues here, but we can’t know what they are, unless there is some special intelligence of which I’m not aware. I believe that there would be some profit in investigating the moonlets, and perhaps some legal precedent would be set by doing such an investigation. However, I will suspend any further action from this ship until we have time to confer with you in Beijing. We have much work to do in repairing this ship, and we will do that, starting immediately. We await your counsel.”
48.
President Santeros: “The goddamn Chinese ought to learn how to speak proper English. I’ve got this Mandarin translator telling me what the chairman is saying, and I have no way of knowing if he’s getting the implications right, and the goddamn Chinese don’t speak in anything but implications.”
Out of sight, behind her, the chairwoman of the Joint Chiefs stuck the knuckles of her fist into her mouth, to keep from laughing. Santeros, who apparently had a monitoring screen in front of her, snapped, “I saw that, White…”
Crow, sitting in the conference room next to Fang-Castro, muttered, “Just tell us what they fuckin’ implied.”
Fang-Castro: “Shhh,” although nothing was outgoing at the moment. It was wall-to-wall Santeros, with a few advisers, from the Oval Office.
“Anyway,” Santeros said, “the Chinese are screaming at us and say that they will gather a coalition of other geopolitical entities to penalize us for this blatant violation of space law. They insist that their crew be given access to the alien primary, and say that they will begin immediate investigations into other alien vessels in the fleet around the primary. However, there’s a goddamn implication that they won’t act until they can get agreement from the other geopolitical entities, and that will take about, mmm, two days…”
Crow said, “All right. We won.”
“…But you better be prepared to get the hell out of the neighborhood. All that stuff about leaving trade points was fine, and helping with repairs, that’s good, but sooner or later, they’re going to find out about the memory modules, and the fact that we’re sneaking away like a thief in the night. Then, the shit’s gonna hit the fan. We gotta hope you can get out of range before that happens.”
Fang-Castro called Zhang. The Chinese comm said, “Our commander has been promoted. You may call him Admiral Zhang now. We will put you through.”
Crow, standing to one side, whispered, “They didn’t want him negotiating with a superior officer. They jumped him two ranks. If he’s a Chinese admiral, he technically outranks you now. He’ll have two stars.”
“I’m sure I can handle it,” Fang-Castro said. She smiled when Zhang came up on the screen. “Sir. First, congratulations on your promotion. Our intelligence people have kept me briefed on your personal background, and I have to say, I’m honored to be dealing with you.”
Zhang’s face crinkled with something that might have been embarrassment. “Thank you. It appears that my superiors will order me to make a landing under… any circumstances… when they have finished Earth-side negotiations with other nations that are as outraged by American actions as we are.”
“We understand,” Fang-Castro said, to a minute nod from Zhang.
And there it was: the deal was done. “We will be vacating the primary as soon as possible. In the meantime, is there anything we can do to help with your repairs?”
“Possibly. We understand from some of our astronauts that when the Nixon was a space station, you had on board three Mitsubishi Force 5 printers. If you still have these on board, we would wish to borrow one.”
“Stand by, Admiral, let me talk to our head of maintenance.” She lifted her slate, tapped it, got Martinez on-screen: “Joe, do we still use Mitsubishi Force 5 printers?”
“Yes, ma’am, we’ve got three of them.”
“Would it be possible to move one to the Celestial Odyssey in a timely way?”
“Uh, we’d have to figure out a way to isolate it, package it. We can’t just shove it out in space, you’d have some differential contraction among parts that wouldn’t be good. Probably put it on a bus… I’d have to make some measurements. Yeah, I could do it, given twenty-four hours. Be a lot quicker if you’d let them come over with their tug if it’s got a pressurized cargo hold. We could just push it in. We could do all that in a couple hours.”
“Stand by on that—I’ll let you know.”
“Do they need carbon fiber? We’ve got a ton of it we’ll never use. Actually several tons, we never took it out. They might be able to use it to repair their tanks, and not have to hitchhike back with us.”
“Good thought. I’ll ask.” Fang-Castro went back to the link to Zhang. “Admiral, uh, I don’t want to embarrass anyone, but how many people fit in one of your tugs?”
“Up to fifteen… why?”
“We’re still a little nervous about your military capability. My maintenance chief says that we do have that printer, as well as several tons of carbon fiber, and we could allot you some of that if you need it. The fastest and easiest way to get that to you would be for you to send a tug over. Our shuttles aren’t pressurized and the maintenance man is worried about differential contraction under temperature extremes. But if you sent a tug over with fifteen crew aboard… we would be inclined not to open the air lock.”
Zhang smiled. “You Americans are too paranoid. We will send the tug with the pilot and a copilot. Tell us when to come. And thank you. I will ask about the carbon fiber.”
When they finished talking, after more pleasantries, Crow said, “We need to get that video off to Earth right now. If this is a ploy…”
Fang-Castro said, “You must be one of those Americans who’s too paranoid.”
Crow: “The I/O’s got what, twenty-eight hours?”
“That’s what Wurly tells us… if nothing breaks. I just wish we had more bandwidth to Earth. We’re archiving most of it.”
Greenberg came up: “Ma’am, we’re ready to go. Everything looks nominal with the engines.”
The printer delivery went without incident, and the Chinese pilot seemed genuinely grateful, joking with Martinez’s men as they moved the massive piece of machinery into the Chinese tug, along with two tons of raw carbon-fiber stock.
Twenty-eight hours later, John Clover was interrogating the jukebox as the I/O stream was coming to its scheduled end. Direct vocal interrogation of the jukebox had slowed since the I/O link went up, simply because so much more critical information could be passed over the link.