Like a pebble tossed in a still pool, the War had changed everything. The changes seemed good, but they destabilized things, and destabilization was risk. The Darhel managed trade, but the Tchpth, and the Indowy to a lesser extent, managed change. The Darhel groups were so competitive that any information that gave one group a competitive edge forced the others to change as well. The chaotic, imprudent, savage humans were like an information storm released into the heart of Galactic civilization. Certainly they had saved the civilized races from a greater disaster, but at what cost?
Falnae’s shipboard sensors registered the scheduled transit of an incoming freighter from Barwhon. They also registered an incoming transmission. There must be incoming messages for the crew, or the captain. The first message bore an urgent tag. He hit the play sequence.
“Freighter Fortunate Venture, you are diverted. You will rendezvous with the courier and take on the full Gistar currency reserve. You will proceed to the Prall System and sell your cargo. There is a Cnothgar cargo of ordered spare parts, scheduled to be carried on an Epetar vessel to Adenast repair docks. The Epetar vessel will be late, defaulting on the contract. You will inform Cnothgar. You will persuade them to allow you to load, committing to paying the costs of unloading and re-prepping the cargo if Epetar comes out of hyperspace on time. Since this is not a default of the standard carrying contract, they will be amenable. You will execute a conditional standard contract to become effective if Epetar defaults. When the Epetar vessel is late out of hyper, constituting default, you will carry out that contract. Our factor on Prall will provide you with our full currency reserves for the system. Combining the reserves together with the gross from the food you carry, you should be able to purchase Adenast cargo. How fortunate that we were on the verge of expansion. Others will ensure the Epetar vessel’s default. You have your instructions.”
He would not wake the captain. With six days to jump, the Darhel had plenty of time to finish his sleep before he began the process of changing plans and recalibrating the engines. Or, rather, before he instructed his AID to do so.
A trade war. This was yet another terrible disturbance. The clans would be centuries, or more, smoothing out all the ripples in these troubled waters. In the deep, still places of his own heart, Falnae feared that the Darhel had erred greatly when they assumed that reducing human numbers in the war, down to a mere one-sixth of their prewar numbers, would reduce the fury from stirring up that hoolna warren, Earth. The evolutionary forces that created sophonts rendered some primitive, developing sophont species capable of catastrophically destructive rages — but no less able to distinguish threats to their existence. What a chaotic mess. The civilized species had to divert the humans onto the Path, yes, but the Darhel effort had been a foolish, foolish blunder — haste in creation fouled the tank. The surviving humans were already well on their way to making up their losses, despite the Darhel’s best efforts.
He would never dream of doubting the wisdom of his clan head. Even though the breach between the main body of the Bane Sidhe and the humans split the humans off from their one positive, guiding force. Except for Clan Aelool and Clan Beilil, who he devoutly hoped would be steady in their efforts, and successful — for the sake of all the clans. But again, these were matters best left to wiser minds.
Michelle O’Neal was showing her newest apprentice some of the practical applications of material from his engineering classes. She was using her office because the lighting was a bit less wearing on her eyes. The tinted contact lenses she normally wore in Indowy areas of her complex — which was almost the whole megascraper — had been irritating her eyes today. She could have repaired the problem easily, but part of the discipline she enforced on herself was that she didn’t use her abilities for most routine problems. Sohon should come from trained, personal focus, not from cutting one’s self off from the ordinary issues of daily life.
Her office was a calm place. The walls were a softly luminous shade of blue, shading from sky blue at the bottom to deep indigo at the top. Instead of a water cooler, she had a running fountain in the corner. It was one of her own teenage art projects. The pebbles in the lower pool were strangely colored. She had let out some of her adolescent rebellion and angst in the coloration of her projects. There were a couple of freighters sailing around space with pink stabilizers in their containment rooms to this day.
She normally didn’t teach the apprentices herself, but in this case the personal lesson was a reward for outstanding diligence. Also, the apprentice was one of the Clan Ildaewl workers who were members of her manufacturing team. Clan O’Neal’s numbers on Adenast were far too small for a full team, and she owed a debt to Ildaewl for her own training when she had first come from Earth as a child, fleeing the Posleen War. Her own diligence and skill in managing her team and ensuring the progress of the team members under her, together with her own constant research of techniques which probed the boundaries of the Art, had converted her association with Ildaewl from mere debt to something more like an alliance. Ildaewl being the second largest of the Indowy clans, this was no small thing.
The apprentice, Aen, was barefoot. Indeed, he was completely bare except for the furlike leaf-green filaments that covered his body.
Michelle was also barefoot, as was her own habit in her office. Elsewhere in the building, she wore sandals. The soles of her feet were not nearly as tough as the Indowy pads, and like all manufacturing facilities everywhere, Indowy workshops inevitably had the risk of small, sharp objects that landed on the floor between sweepings. In her own office, she was a neat freak who wouldn’t dream of allowing a foreign object to land on her floor, which was a carpet of living grass whose original seed she had shipped up from Earth. She had grown her furniture as a practice drill in materials science. The seat cushions were a soft material like squishy suede, but the slight variances in the surface enhanced the effect of the lichen- and moss-covered Georgia granite pattern she had tuned into the surface. The surface was indistinguishable in appearance from the hard, structural portions of the tables and chairs, which she had sized to accommodate the members of the various of the Galactic races who might have occasion to meet with her here.
Truth be told, it was all an excellent excuse for the office to be indecently spacious. Everything, even the low table that served her in place of a desk, gave the appearance of having been carved from stone in a style that wouldn’t have been out of place if set down in the middle of Stonehenge — a touch of her own wry humor over the reputation of humanity. The corners and edges within the office were all beveled. Random clouds scudded across the ceiling. The airflow paired with potted plants on small tables along the walls gave the scent and feel of being outside on a pleasant, late spring day. Despite the alien origin of her vegetation, people of just about every race experienced a certain calmness in her office — which was, of course, the point.