"In what way, Admiral?" Bernardus Van Dort asked, his blue eyes intent.
"They seem to be exceptionally . . . prickly," Khumalo said. "They're quick to take offense. In fact, it seems to Commander Denton that they're actively looking for opportunities to do just that. Or even manufacturing such opportunities."
"Allow me to interrupt for a moment before Admiral Khumalo goes any further," Medusa said. Everyone looked at her, and she smiled without much humor. "I'm sure it's going to occur to many of us that Commander Denton might just be sending us observations to that effect because he's managed to give the New Tuscans legitimate cause to take offense. Neither Admiral Khumalo nor I believe that to be the case, however. I can't say I know Commander Denton personally. I believe I was introduced to him on at least one occasion, shortly afterReprise was first assigned to Admiral Khumalo's command, but, to be perfectly frank, I really don't remember him very well at all. But I have perused his personnel file since the Admiral shared his dispatches with me. From his record, he doesn't strike me as the sort of officer who would antagonize merchant service officers just for his own entertainment. And he definitely doesn't strike me as the sort who would try to falsely imply that the New Tuscans were being hyper-sensitive as a means to cover himself against any sort of reasonable complaints they might make because of his own actions."
"Governor Medusa's right about that," Khumalo rumbled. "I know Denton better than she does, of course, and I didn't deploy him to Pequod because he's stupid. He's not going to be going around stepping on anyone, and even if he'd been tempted to cover himself for some reason, he'd know any sort of deceptive reports would be bound to come unglued, which would only make things worse for him in the long run. In other words, I don't think he'd screw up in the first place, or be dumb enough to think he could cover it up if he had."
"If both you and the Governor feel that way, I'm certainly prepared to accept your judgment," Van Dort said. "Why does Commander Denton feel the New Tuscans are acting in this fashion?"
"If you're asking if he has any explanation for why they're being 'prickly,' as the Admiral put it," Medusa said, "he doesn't. But if you're asking what evidence of their prickliness he's presented, there's quite a bit of it, actually, Bernardus."
Van Dort's expression was an unspoken question, and Medusa gave Khumalo a small, inviting gesture.
"The Commander's attention was originally drawn to this matter by the report of one of his junior officers," the vice admiral told Van Dort. "After checking with others of his officers who have been conducting customs inspections and generally backstopping the Pequod System's local forces in managing the expansion of their traffic, he found that many of them acknowledged similar experiences, although most of them hadn't reported them at the time."
"And the Pequod System's customs agents," Alquezar said intently. "Do we have similar reports from them?"
"No, Mr. Prime Minister, we don't," Khumalo replied, his tone acknowledging the significance of Alquezar's question. "In fact, Commander Denton specifically inquired of his Pequod counterparts before he sent his dispatch to Spindle. They confirmed his own impression that New Tuscan traffic to Pequod is up very substantially, especially over the last few T-weeks before the Commander sent off his dispatch. None of them, however, have experienced the same degree of touchiness out of the New Tuscans."
Alquezar nodded slowly, his frown thoughtful.
"According to Commander Denton's inquiries, almost all of the New Tuscan ships which his personnel had boarded in the last ten local days prior to his dispatch had demonstrated the same pattern of behavior. The ships' officers were confrontational, acted as if they were highly suspicious of our personnel's motivations, cooperated as grudgingly as possible with requests for documentation and inspection, and generally appeared to be attempting to deliberately provoke naval personnel into some sort of open incident. Not only that, but Commander Denton suspects that in at least several of these cases the New Tuscans were using shipboard surveillance systems to record the entire episode.
"Because of those suspicions, he arranged to surreptitiously record several of our inspection visits himself. Obviously, I haven't had the time yet to view those records in their entirety myself. I have, however, viewed several clips which he included with his official report, and he sent the full recordings with them. At the moment, Commander Chandler and Captain Shoupe are viewing those records but, to be honest, I don't expect the result of their examination to change my own impression, which is that Commander Denton has accurately summarized the situation. There's very little question in my mind that the New Tuscans, for whatever reason, are deliberately pushing our personnel—and specifically our naval personnel—in what I can only construe as an effort to provoke some sort of incident."
"Forgive me, Admiral," Lababibi put in, "but if this had only been happening for less than two T-weeks before the Commander became aware of it, how many such visits could there have been? I mean, I don't question your observations, I'm simply wondering how large a base we have for drawing conclusions?"
"As a matter of fact, Madam Secretary," it was obvious Khumalo hadn't taken any sort of offense from Lababibi's question, "that's one of the reasons I think Commander Denton may have put his finger on something important here. In the ten local days before he sent his dispatch, six New Tuscan-registered merchant ships visited Pequod."
"Six?" Bernardus Van Dort sat suddenly upright in his chair, and Khumalo nodded.
"Is that number significant, Bernardus?" Lababibi asked, looking at her colleague, and Van Dort snorted harshly.
"You might say that, Samiha," he replied. "I know we're all still in the process of really coming to have a good feel for the other star systems in the Quadrant with us, but, believe me, Pequod is not Spindle. As the Secretary of the Treasury, I'm sure you're aware that it's nowhere near as poverty-stricken as Nuncio, but it's a much, much poorer star system than Spindle. In fact, if Henri will forgive me, Pequod is probably almost as poor as Dresden was thirty or forty T-years ago."
Lababibi nodded slowly, watching Van Dort carefully. While Joachim Alquezar was intimately familiar with the internal workings of the Rembrandt Trade Union, Bernardus Van Dort had virtually single-handedly created the Trade Union. In many ways, Lababibi had thought from the beginning that Van Dort would have made a far better treasury secretary than she herself had, since no one in the entire galaxy had a better feel for the economic realities of the Talbott Cluster. Unfortunately, he was still too polarizing a figure in too many eyes for him to have been handed that particular cabinet post. And, Lababibi admitted, not without a certain degree of reason. She herself trusted him completely, but the RTU had been too unpopular with too many of the Cluster's inhabitants for far too long for Bernardus Van Dort to have been acceptable as the Quadrant's chief treasury official.
"What you may not—yet—fully realize is what that means in terms of interstellar trade, though," Van Dort continued. "I'd have to check with our central records back on Rembrandt to confirm this, but I'd be surprised if Pequod ever saw more than a couple of freighters a T-monthprior to the discovery of the Lynx Terminus. And if you glance at a star map, the system is hardly on a direct approach to Lynx. There's going to be a general upsurge in system visits by ships vectoring through the Terminus and looking for cargoes of opportunity, and Pequod will probably see at least some of it. But six ships from a single local star system in less than two T-weeks?" He shook his head. "No way. For that matter, the New Tuscan merchant marine isn't particularly huge. Six hyper-capable freighters represent a hefty percentage of their total merchant fleet, and probably two-thirds of its ships are registered elsewhere for tax purposes. That's what makes it significant that the Admiral mentioned New Tuscany-registered vessels, because there are only a relatively small handful of ships which are both owned and registered in New Tuscany. I can't conceive of any sound business reason that would send that many ships, out of such a limited pool, to a system like Pequod."