The V'Dan (46 page)

“The list looks like there are at least forty things on here, maybe even fifty,” she added, flicking through the pages on the datapad. “. . . Here it is. We’ll be receiving a cross-commissioned Peacekeeper force within the next ten days, as all such crimes from this moment forth are to be considered punishable under the new system, though . . . anyone causing problems before the moment this is announced to everyone under my jurisdiction . . . will be tried under the old system. And I am ordered to report it immediately to everyone.”

“Like I said, Colonel,” Buraq told her. “The buck stops here. Sorry, sir.”

“Not your fault.” Jackie sighed.

“I’ve sent word for everyone—civilians included, since they also need to know all of this—to gather in the assembly room,” Jasmine told her. “I took the liberty of citing an emergency announcement for Terran personnel only, and used it to request the Elite Guard fill in at all our external checkpoints. One of Tes’rin’s night-watch officers is filling in the roster. Everyone should be assembled and ready or at least be at a private listening post within half an hour. That goes for all the ships on patrol. They’ll all be drifting insystem wherever they are, hyperarrays on and waiting for your speech.”

“Good call,” Jackie praised. She shook her head “This is . . . This is Mauna Kea waiting to explode—I’m sorry, Li’eth, I’m going to have to focus on this. You can still have breakfast here, if you want, though I know you have a schedule to keep.”

“Eh, get it to go,” Buraq told Li’eth. “It’s Southwest style; you could get a breakfast burrito, and eat it on your walk back to the Imperial Wing. Cheese, eggs, salsa, bacon crumbles, onions, you name it. Even fresh-picked, Terran-style spinach if you want it, since it’s finally big enough to harvest.”

“That . . . actually sounds good. I like your ‘salsa’ stuff,” he agreed. He glanced at Jackie, who was now deep into reading the tablet in her hands. “. . . Make sure she eats, will you?”

The lieutenant smiled. “Of course. Can you find your way out? I need to badger the colonel into her formal Dress Blacks. This isn’t something you reveal to the troops in casual clothes.”

Nodding, Li’eth opened the door and stepped out. (
I’d kiss you good-bye, but I want to be discreet,
) he told Jackie, striding for the elevator. (
I’ll see you later.
)

(
You bet your sweet, striped rump, you will,
) she returned, not so deep in thought that she didn’t hear him. (
I’d kiss you anyway, but I don’t have a lot of time to read all of this. I have to be ready to answer any and all questions about it.
)

(
Good luck, then,
) he wished her, and shielded his thoughts so that she could have the mental space to concentrate fully on the task ahead. Given what he knew of Terran politics and the Terran military, it seemed odd that they would choose such a
thing. On the other hand, if recruitment
was
up tenfold from what it normally was . . .
Then again, everywhere I went, people were under orders to have only two children, one for themselves and one for their partner to be each person’s designated heir . . . and any such thing as a third child was granted by a
lottery
process . . .

So yes, I can see why they’d be so enthusiastic about the possibility of literally fighting to win a plot of land on some colonyworld where—presumably—there won’t be any such family planning restrictions.

He hesitated a moment, then reached out to Jackie. When she gave him a wordless reply, letting him know she was paying attention, he asked, (
Should I tell my mother about this? Or keep it a secret?
)

(
Tell her, but ask her to be discreet until she can figure out how to
guarantee
those plots of land. I don’t want a backlash getting back to the United Planets from the Empire if the locals protest having a bunch of Terrans dropped in their backyard. Especially since most of these will be ground troops because it’ll be hard to get enough people trained in time as pilots—the facilities for training
that
are considerably more limited than for training infantry divisions.
)

(
But they’ll be far more effective in ground-based assaults, freeing up the V’Dan Army to join the Fleet. At least the Army has a baseline familiarity with our ships and how they function . . . oh Saints, we have to divert ships to Earth to pick up all those soldiers. How soon will they be done training?
) he asked her, stepping into the lift when it arrived. (
Does it say?
)

(
Standard training time is three months. Some types of training require extra classes, but . . . ah, here it is. The first wave of troops were recruited back last year. Most went into either pilot training, and they’re just getting out of that, noncom officer training and the same, or . . . specialist training. Munitions, sabotage, and preliminary training in survival techniques for space stations, dome colonies, and potentially hostile terrain. They’ll all need crash courses in local flora and fauna and V’Dan life-support tech . . .

(
The second and consecutive waves are mostly infantry, with specialists being pulled out for intensive training once they’ve shown aptitude. Officers . . . that takes a bit more
training. We still won’t have enough officers for another four, five months, and they’ll be spread thin. Ah! Here it is . . .
Shakk.
Tell your mother to send each wave of ships headed
to
Earth filled with tanks of whatever fuel you need. We’ll store them in orbit for refueling because you’re going to have about three hundred thousand ground forces ready to go in one month’s time, inoculated, provisioned,
jungen
-dosed, and waiting.
)

(
More like
explosive
shit, but yes, that’s . . . as you Terrans say,
wow
. I’ll tell her right away,
) he decided. (
I’ll have to tell the Elite to let V’kol into my quarters while I change; otherwise, I’ll never get his report heard at this rate. I will rejoin you later, my love.
) The endearment slipped out of his thoughts and into hers without any hesitation or censorship. After last night, there was no doubt in his mind that they were meant to be together. Not the lovemaking, though that was fine, but the
togetherness
of the two of them, free at last to spend hours just . . . being . . . together.

(
And I, you,
ke aloha
,
) she replied, warming him with the Hawai’ian words for
beloved
. Li’eth knew she used the language for all the things she held personally dear. For those moments when she felt Terranglo—or V’Dan, or any other language—just was not enough.

(
You’ll have to teach me to speak your grandmother’s language someday,
) he told her. (
Your words of love and whenever you’re talking passionately about something, they are very musical-sounding.
)

(
I’ll make some time later this week, then. Oh! Ask your parents if Te-los can have that language transfer he wanted, and ask them which one of us should do it. For several reasons, I’d suggest myself,
) she added, (
since I’m doubly trained for discretion in politics as well as psychic situations, but it’s entirely up to them.
)

(
I will. Go study,
) he ordered, nodding to the Terran guards at the checkpoint for the innermost lifts. No Elite Guards would be posted here, but they would be found at the three entry points to the Terran zone of the North Embassy Wing. Their brown uniforms reminded him of something, though. (
Jackie, you said that there would be a Peacekeeper contingent sent from Earth for this . . . caning thing. Why Peacekeepers? Aren’t your Marines handling internal policing matters?
)

(
Oh! Right, that’s an easy one to answer. The Peacekeepers have been using caning as a disciplinary measure for years. There was a huge problem with corruption among the various police forces until they borrowed the tradition from a couple of the nations in Southeast Asia and applied it strictly to the Peacekeeper groups—civilians get other punishments, but the Peacekeepers are supposed to be
examples
of proper legal behavior. When a Peacekeeper goes off the rails, they
have
to be punished for it; the world won’t put up with another Vladistad and its cultist regime ending with millions dead or dying, or the earlier troubles, with thousands of people outright murdered by law enforcement officials just because of their skin color—we are
never
going back to skin-based prejudices again.

(
Anyway, they already have a whole list of rules and regulations for how it is carried out; only female corrections officers may strike female prisoners, and males with males—physiological or posthormone replacement therapy, on the grounds that the strength being gauged and used will be what the body can take. Blows are to be made in very specific locations only, starting from a very specific height, everything is to be monitored by medical professionals . . .

(
Since we’re basically on our own, days of travel from Earth, they’ll be sending a specialist group to work with us in case we have any infractions big enough to warrant a caning. I only glanced through, but it looks like there’s a mandatory viewing session for all personnel within range of witnessing a caning—public shaming on top of a graphic reminder not to break the laws; this is actually brilliant from a slightly twisted pointed view.

(
Until the military can get its own corps of trained individuals up and running—and this includes mandatory psychological testing and telepathic screening to ensure no sociopaths or psychopaths get into that kind of power and position—we have to rely upon the civilian side. Most likely, they’ll be former military officers who are having their own commissions reinstated, like mine was . . .

(
Anyway, I’m done changing, and headed to my office to do a lot of reading in a very short time. I’m sending Jasmine to pick up a burrito for me. I’ll see you later, my love.
)

Stepping into the next elevator, Li’eth nodded and smiled to himself, grateful the lift was empty. (
And I, you.
Ke aloha.)

He felt her smiling back through the link. (
Very good pronunciation, Your Highness. We’ll make you a proper
kane
, a Hawai’ian man, eventually. That, and we’ll need to get you a proper surfer’s tan.
)

JUNE 4, 2287 C.E.

JANVA 28, 9508 V.D.S.

“Groceries?” Her Eternal Empress, Hana’ka V’Daania, repeated dubiously.

She paused her cup of
mo’klah
halfway to her mouth in order to frown at Jackie. The two were enjoying the
caffen
-flavored hot chocolate in private, no husband or Gestalt partner or anyone else. It was supposed to be a moment of privacy so that the most sensitive of topics could be broached between the two governments.

“You want to talk about groceries? The selection and purchasing of food?” Her Eternity repeated.

“Yes,” Jackie confirmed.

“Two scheduled hours of being alone with me to talk about anything you found important yet sensitive . . . and instead of talking about integrating Terran troops into the V’Dan military’s needs . . . you want to talk about shopping for
food
?”

“Yes.”

Those gray eyes stared at her, so very like her son’s left eye, though she at least didn’t have any
jungen
marks coloring the right one like he did. Hana’ka blinked, digesting the unusual topic, and finally took a sip of her drink. When she had swallowed, she spoke. “Very well. Let us discuss shopping. Is this a Terran cultural thing?”

“It’s a V’Dan cultural thing, Hana’ka,” Jackie stated. They had given each other leave to use their first names during this
early-afternoon meeting. Reaching for the display pad she had brought in earlier, she activated it, selected what she wanted to display, then propped it up on its built-in stand so that the Empress could see it. Jackie didn’t need to see it; she had
been
on a couple of these trips. “These are shopping expeditions undertaken by the Terran embassy quartermaster and her staff, using the expense accounts your government has generously loaned to us.

“Most of it has been for food, some of it for clothing, some of it for supplies. But mostly food. The most basic, frequently made purchase required to sustain life. Among those items purchased were attempts to garner samples of the local versions of alcohol—a vice both our cultures share. Despite having V’Dan government-issued identification paperwork, despite sending people with
graying hair
to these establishments . . . the reactions of the liquor sales staff have been distressingly consistent.”

Peering over the device, she found and pressed the
PLAY
button. The tableau that had been recorded scrolled to life. It wasn’t very long, and the sound was a little tinny, but it was distinctly a V’Dan male clerk eyeing a large set of boxes that had been brought to the sales counter.
“Do your parents know you’re spending this much money?”

“Liquor
is
a semicontrolled substance,” Hana’ka stated. “No one under the age of twenty-two may purchase it. Without
jungen
marks . . .”

“
That
video shows the purchase of Terran-analogous and V’Dan native fruits that have been packed in crates,” Jackie countered. “Ripe, unprocessed fruit, not fermented. The next video shows an attempt to purchase clothes.”

On cue, just seconds after she fell silent, they both heard the next clerk say, “
These clothes are a little bit too mature for you, don’t you think?”
The one after that, the employee shook his head—Jackie could see the motion of it even at her steep viewing angle—and said,
“I’m sorry, but I can’t in good conscience sell any of this to you. How do I know you’re actually going to take all this meat to your parents to cook? You could be a Rite of Spring cultist, for all I know.”

“We’re not sure what the Rite of Spring cult is,” Jackie said quietly, “but we can infer it isn’t something polite people do in public. The next one is the typical liquor-sales reaction.”

“I’m sorry, but you cannot be in this facility. You are all underage, and I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

“But we
are
of age. We’re Terrans—see our ident cards?”

“Identities can be faked. Get out now, or I’ll call the city guard to arrest you.”

Another break, another scene.
“Sorry, but I can’t sell that to you. The Empress would pull my liquor license herself if she knew. And don’t think you can come back here with fake tattoos, either. You’ll have to bring actual authorization letters of the courts permitting you to be tattooed as legal adults. Now get out of here!”

And another.
“You really should be buying looser clothes than those, meioa-o. You put on something that tight and revealing, you’ll be mistaken for a Maruto.”

Jackie reached over and paused the recordings. “Your son, when he took grave offense at Countess Shi’ol Nanu’oc calling me a Charuta—to the point of nearly causing a diplomatic incident by using his holy gifts to attack her in his outrage—explained that the story of the underaged Charuta included her enlisting her younger brother, Maruto, in their attempts to seduce and ruin the adults around them with their pederastic efforts. This was
not
a compliment, Hana’ka.”

“Well, a few shops with unworldly staff members . . .” Hana’ka tried to point out. Jackie shook her head, cutting off the older woman.

“This has been a consistent reaction for over two hundred shop visits, Hana’ka,” she told her hostess. “Including five shopping expeditions I myself joined to ascertain the truth in person. The rate for those who treat us as
customers
, not children, is around 17 percent. That means roughly 83 percent of all such visits result in being called children, up to and including the use of culturally serious insults like this one. In all of the liquor shops, my people have been turned down. Every single one.
Even
when they presented their imperially certified identification papers proving we Terrans are to be accounted full legal adults in the eyes of the law.

“So yes, I do need to discuss the problem my people have had in buying food. And clothes. And anything else,” Jackie asserted. “We have been lucky so far, in that your people have been supplying the vehicles
and
drivers we need to get around, but
eventually we
will
need to take the appropriate classes and get our own driving certificates. And there are
three hundred thousand
soldiers, men and women, all of them legal adults by both our age standards, who are going to come to fight for your people in the next few months . . . and they will run into
this
cultural attitude problem, over and over again.”

Hana’ka stared at the display screen a long moment, shaking her head slowly. She finally flipped her hand at it while Jackie was taking a sip of the rich mocha-like drink. “Why bring this to me? I may be the Empress, but this is just the way my culture is. This is the way our culture has been for ninety-five hundred years!”

“And this is not the way
Earth’s
entire culture has been for over one hundred thousand years . . . with the exception of an idiotic period of skin-based prejudice that ran for about five hundred years or so,” she allowed. “More than that, an entire culture
can
change within a single generation. Entire clusters of cultures can
be
changed, with hard work and full official support. So please don’t play the ‘this is the way my culture has always been’ game. It won’t work with me.”

Jackie knew she was hedging a very fine line with that statement. Various tribes and factions and nations on Earth had gone to war in various locations over differences in ethnicities, religious beliefs, cultural clashes, and so forth—including skin color—but never as a problem for the entire world. Until, of course, the period between the Age of Colonization and the Age of Insystem Travel.

Hana’ka studied the image on the tablet, and sighed. “Over 80 percent, you say?”

“It’s a very widespread problem,” Jackie said. “Even someone I thought had been
trained
to avoid making that sort of mistake—as in their job would be on the line if I told you who it was—made the mistake of reacting to my people as if we were children at one point recently.”

Hana’ka narrowed her eyes. “One of the Elite assigned to your embassy zone?”

“Your Highness is perceptive, but I will not mention who, as they apologized quickly enough when I chastised them for it . . . and they have not made that mistake since,” she added. “I will not have anyone punished for making a mistake if they
are willing to admit to it when called out and are willing to apologize and put some effort into not making that same mistake again. I do not ask for perfection, but I do ask for your
understanding
of just how deep this problem is.”

“What do you want me to do about it?” Hana’ka asked. “Make a public announcement? Make it a
law
that all Terrans who claim to be adults should be treated as adults?”

“I do not think such a law would catch on—that is to say, be seen as enforceable, even participated in—unless and until you can put some real feeling into why it is
necessary
to treat Terrans differently,” Jackie told her. “I had an idea, watching your son shave this morning.”

That made his mother roll her eyes. Her cheeks turned slightly pink. “I thought we were not going to discuss that.”

“I’m not discussing
that
,” Jackie confirmed. She leaned forward, setting her cup down and bracing her forearms on the table, her hands lacing together. “I was looking at the patch of
jungen
-burgundy stubble on his cheek, at the base of the stripe that covers his right eye. When we found them, none of the three men had been able to shave for the entire length of their incarceration by the Salik.”

“Are you going to have the Terran males stop shaving?” Hana’ka asked her. “Beards
might
convince a few shopkeepers, since most males don’t grow proper beards until their twentieth year, but it won’t do anything for the female adults.”

Jackie shook her head. “No. Watching him shave reminded me that he
also
had most of that cheek stripe covered up. From just below his lower eyelid down into his stubble line, by some sort of flesh-adhering face paint that could only be removed by high-content alcohol.”

“Plasflesh, yes,” his mother confirmed. “The Imperial Family has been using it to disguise our facial markings since about a hundred years or so past the point we developed widespread distribution of photography, when every member of the Family became easily recognizable to the masses in the ranks. Before that point, we used face paints that had to be applied every day.”

“Well, I’m not going to ask you to use the old-fashioned paints,” Jackie told her. “Or maybe I will, depending on what you have available. No, I challenge you, Hana’ka, to try
something. For just
one full day
, I want you to cover up every single mark you have. Even your hair. Put on a markless blond wig, use blond paint on the burgundy strands, whatever it takes.
Hide your
jungen
for one day,
” she stressed while her hostess blushed and frowned, shaking her head. “Live
one day
as a Terran in appearance on this world. I think you will find it
very
enlightening.

“Oh, and feel free to tell your people in advance that you are doing this. I wouldn’t want you thrown out of the Winter Palace from an accusation of being an impostor,” she added, picking up her cup of
mo’klah
again. “I don’t have to take the reverse test to know that I would be treated
very
differently if I painted my skin in V’Dan stripes with your plasflesh stuff. My point is that your culture should not have to demand that
my billions of citizens
coat themselves in the stuff just to be treated with common courtesy and respect.

“I don’t think you can see it, just yet. I don’t think you can really
grasp
that problem until you have
lived
it. So I am challenging you. Remove all traces of your
jungen
from your appearance for twenty-four V’Dan Standard hours.”

Hana’ka studied Jackie for a long moment. She picked up her own cup, sipped at the slowly cooling beverage, and mulled it over. Finally, she asked, “What do I get if I go through with it?”

“Well, considering it’s a personal bet between you and me, I could be flippant and say ‘surfing lessons’ . . . but how about enough ceristeel plating to coat your personal transport here on V’Dan? Hovercar, aircar, ground car, whichever one you like, custom fitted. Your garage mechanics can get us the exact dimensions for replacing all panels and the undercarriage, and we’ll get you hull plating that’s far more laserproof than anything you currently have,” she offered. “That’s worth quite a lot of money, economically . . . and quite a lot of peace of mind.”

“Enough of your hull plating for every vehicle in the Winter Palace,” Hana’ka bartered.

That made Jackie wince. “I can’t authorize
that
much, meioa. In fact, I don’t think the entire Space Force has that much ceristeel to spare—I’ve
seen
how many hovercars fly into and out of all the hangars around this place, so no way. Nothing for anyone else’s use. Just for your personal use, or
your immediate family’s use. But how about . . . five cars, all with identical silhouettes?”

“. . . Twenty.”

“Deal.” Jackie offered her hand.

Hana’ka narrowed her eyes. “You accepted that deal too easily.”

“A deal is a deal. Twenty identical sets of ceristeel body paneling made to exact V’Dan specifications for twenty identical planetbound personal transport vehicles, either aircars or ground cars, but not both.” She wiggled her fingers a little.

Sighing, Hana’ka extended her arm as well, clasping Jackie’s forearm to forearm. “How soon must I do this?”

“Well, tomorrow is a holy day for the Winter Temple, right? The extra day of the month that only happens nine times a year?” Jackie asked. The Empress nodded. “Then within one or two days after that. How about Fevra Second? Make a public announcement on the First, or as close to the revelation time as possible, and do not try to rearrange your schedule in any way. Go through a regular day’s work looking like a Terran. Military meetings, budget meetings, diplomatic meetings, all of it.”