66: Incongruity

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“Why,” I asked Plia and Tima, “are the Stalwart even working with Hexacorallia?”

We were meeting in a vast field of flowers. Well, actually, we were meeting in a relaxation room, but so long as I only paced back and forth a small distance and didn’t run into any walls, it was good enough. Plia and Tima were sitting down, which was probably more sensible. I’d learned, after some asking around, that the relaxation rooms and the bedrooms had no cameras and only used microphones if you used the low literacy settings in the computer system, so they were good places for conversations.

“It seems like a good technology for colonising an asteroid belt to me,” Tima shrugged.

“I’m sure it is! Ella talks about how they can get way more mining done with way less people, and that’s probably really important in a young colony, especially when the asteroids are so spread out; if you have to travel between them to mine them then you want some system where nature does most of the work for you and you hardly ever have to go there. And maybe, after a couple of centuries of the plants being in the asteroid belt, the colony scientists will have made them good enough to live in, to just have houses made of space plants without needing to build metal hulls and stuff. It’ll probably be really cool, if it actually works. But what I don’t get is, why Hexacorallia? If the Stalwart was staying at Dragonseye, then this would make sense; they could create more space outside their tiny ship and expand and it’d all be very efficient. And I get why they want to make an important colony technology and get themselves some fame and recognition; they’re a young ship without much influence and they’re full of great scientists and engineers, it’s a good move for them. I get why the Arborea is involved; this is exactly the kind of thing that they love to do. If they could do this to their own ship then they probably would. But it just… why does Hexacorallia care? This doesn’t fit in with them at all! When we were there, everyone was talking about independence and moving fast and trying new stuff and people like Miya are always one accident away from dying in space in their tiny rickety HEXes. And sure, we met people who were into doing council work and making making sure that the community could fairly share resources, but so many people didn’t care about that. It was like they worked together just because they had to for everyone’s benefit, and most of them were trying to be as independent as possible.”

“Can’t argue with that,” Plia said. “Take the Jamons out of that ship and the whole place would collapse within five years.”

“Right, and the HEXes would be great at colonising an asteroid belt, but in a very different way to these plants. HEXes can spread out and do what they want, and an asteroid belt is so big and so full of asteroids that are all basically the same that they’ll be able to do that for centuries. I’m sure there’ll be problems if they win the bid, of people wanting asteroids that are close or building a mining setup and then some other group of HEXes wanting the asteroid that it’s on, but there won’t be very many serious ones for generations. Hexacorallia won’t need really serious, really complicated territory laws until then, with they way they’ve designed their ship. But with these plants, they will! If some of the HEXes are going around planting these things, then it matters a lot that they own that asteroid; nobody wants to plant something like this, spend time and energy looking after it, then waiting ten years only for some other group of HEXes to come swooping in once the plant is mature. Which is fine, they obviously have rules for shared and private property already, but why are they going out of their way to make that more important to themselves for no reason when their whole structure is based around the opposite? They’re perfectly set up to spread out and mine asteroid the fast, old-fashioned way. So why do they want these plants so much?”

Plia and Tima gave each other that really annoying look that adults share when you use terms that they thought you were too young to know. Then Tima spoke, using that smug, annoying voice that they use when they know the answer to something but aren’t going to tell you because they want to see you figure it out, for some reason.

“That’s a good question,” she said. “What do you think?”

I crossed my arms. I wasn’t in the mood for this game. Plia seemed to take that as a sign that I was too stupid to figure it out, because she decided to help. “Maybe,” she said, “the plants aren’t what Hexacorallia wants.”

I wanted to ask what she meant, but now I was mad that she thought I was too stupid to figure that out. I mean, I guess it was my fault for asking, but still. If she wanted to help, she could’ve just answered my question properly.

The Stalwart wanted the plants. The Arborea wanted the plants. Even the Dish wanted the plants, at least according to Gara, though I had no idea how they fit in. Maybe it wasn’t that the plants had a practical use to Hexacorallia; maybe it was that Hexacorallia had agreed to include them in their bid in exchange for something else.

“Tech,” I said. “The Stalwart and the Arborea and their other allies probably offered the plants to any bidding ship that might consider them, and Hexacorallia took them not because they were interested in the plants, but because they were interested in the Stalwart. The Stalwart is very small of its population and designed to be as efficient with space and mass as it can; they probably have all kinds of technology and design rules and stuff that Hexacorallia would be really interested in for building their HEXes and figuring out the best ways to join them. Taking the plants gives them a good relationship with the Stalwart, and Stalwart scientists and designers can give them perspective on other projects of their own. They’re probably hoping that a lot of the plant scientists will join Hexacorallia and stay with the colony to work with the plants; they’d be useful in so many other areas.”

“Huh,” Tima said. “I hadn’t even considered that possibility. That probably does help.”

I frowned. “Well what do you think is going on, then?”

“Probably a lot of things, including that. But to be honest, I think the big deciding factor is proximity. Hexacorallia is the only ship making a colony bid in this part of the fleet; all the others are pretty far away. So they’re the obvious one to tag the plants onto, even if it’s not a perfect fit. I imagine that any ship making a bid would’ve been hungering to include the plants, and Hexacorallia probably snapped them up before any other ship even got a chance, because their proximity means that they’d have been approached first.”

Huh? Why would any ship have wanted them? They weren’t really practical for Hexacorallia, and other more traditional colony types had no real need for the Stalwart’s tech, so unless they wanted something from the Arborea or –

Oh. I was being stupid.

It was about the votes. All the fleet ships would be voting on which bid would be the basis of the new colony, and just by including the mining plants, Hexacorallia had three guaranteed votes – the Arborea, the Stalwart, and the Dish. Probably even more guaranteed votes from other ships involved in the plants that I didn’t know about. And the Arborea, with its cultural influence, and the Stalwart, with all of its clever scientists, and the Dish, with its archives, probably swayed a lot of the votes of other ships, too. The plants didn’t have to matter to Hexacorallia, and the colony structure didn’t have to matter to the plant science ships. Why did anybody care that it was a bad match? They were getting what they wanted.

“I think,” I said slowly, “that I might hate politics.”

Tima laughed. “Don’t we all.”

“It’s such a bad match! If everyone would just care about building the most stable colony we can then these plants wouldn’t be in this bid!”

“And if most people did that, then the handful who didn’t would win the bid would be thinking politically and building a weaker colony,” Tima shrugged. “You don’t want to know some of the weird compromises we made in pushing our application to come out here to the front of various queues. I feel the same about people caring about the science.”

Remembering the whole thing about them keeping their work a secret for discovery sniping reasons, I very diplomatically didn’t answer that. Anyway, she wasn’t wrong. The politics mattered in a colony bid even when it was stupid, because without it, you couldn’t win the bid.

And if I wanted to help the capuchins, then I was going to have to learn how to use politics, too. How was I supposed to get anyone to consider changing the fleet charter? I didn’t have any status, or resources, or skills to use. People always told me I was smart, but they just meant because I was a kid. I would have to convince adults.

“You know a lot of important people, right?” I asked Tima.

“Always a question that only leads to good things. And the answer is ‘it depends’. If you want to move into a nice room or get a rare spot on a nice jaunt when we’re back on the Courageous, I can probably help. If you want anything more complicated than that, then no, you’ve been taking Hali’s jokes about me too seriously.”

A rare jaunt position, huh? “Do you know Yamin?”

“I don’t think so. Who’s Yamin?”

“Just a guy who works in Administration. Dresses boring, does something to do with coordinating different parts of Administration, I think?”

“Doesn’t sound familiar. Should I know them?”

“No, I just thought I’d check. But actually, I want help with the capuchins.”

“Oh, then I can’t give you much except for advice. I have practically no influence on this ship. I’m pretty sure you out-influence me.”

I laughed. “I don’t have any influence here, either.”

Tima, for some reason, looked unconvinced, but all she said was, “What do you need from the capuchins?”

“Nothing,” I said. “I want to help them. They should be protected by the fleet charter.”

The historians stared at me. I waited for them to finish their meaningful stare and say something, but they didn’t. They just kept silently staring.

I cleared my throat awkwardly. “I mean, they’re clearly people and all, no matter what you think about the drive to expand the Loop or whatever, Plia. And we’ve talked about how weird it is that they’re all only on one ship, and they don’t seem to talk to people outside it. And that’s definitely on purpose because Fari didn’t want me contacting Tikka – ”

“He’s the one who gave you Tikka’s contact details, right?”

“Yes, but were you looking at him when he did it? He didn’t want to. And I was talking to Tikka earlier today about the whole ‘mysteriously die on other planets’ thing, and she always avoids explaining. And when she was messaging me I just figured that that kind of thing happens with messages, topics get lost, but she’s definitely avoiding it and there’s no personal reason for her to do that. Either she doesn’t know why she can’t leave or she’s not allowed to say, or… or something. I don’t know. But it’s weird, right? Something is weird here. And the capuchins we’ve seen seem happy, but we haven’t seen most of them, not if they’re a third of the ship; they’re probably off working in their own tunnels and rooms that are too small for humans or whatever, because the one thing this ship loves to do is save space, so not seeing a lot of them isn’t weird but everything else is, right? I just… think that they deserve the same protections that everyone else has. Because I don’t know much about how they’re treated here yet, though I am going to find out. But I do know that they’d be a whole lot safer and have a whole lot more power over their own lives if they were allowed to leave.”

The two historians exchanged a glance.

“Taya,” Plia said, “do you understand just how massive a job an alteration to the fleet charter would be? Tima could be the best friend of every captain and head Administrator on the Courageous and it wouldn’t help you at all, because the Courageous is still only one ship in the fleet. I know you care about your friend, but making sure she’s safe on this ship will do a whole lot more than trying to change the charter, which is a waste of time to even attempt.”

My heart sank a little. I looked to Tima.

“I think,” Tima said, “that even in the best of circumstances, this is, frankly, none of our business. The capuchins I’ve seen all seem fine and I’m sure they can handle their own problems. I also think that even if you did want to interfere, this is absolutely the worst possible time to do it. Bringing this up right now would likely be taken as an attempt to politically attack the Stalwart in order to weaken Hexacorallia’s bid.”

“They can’t help themselves if they don’t know any better because they’re not allowed to experience any better! And just because we’re approaching a star doesn’t mean the capuchins should have to wait for Tikka’s grandchildren to instead be – ”

“I think it’s a terrible and pointless task,” Tima reiterated, “but that’s what everyone says about the Untethered Heart, so while I don’t plan to dirty my hands with any of this and expect you to keep my name completely out of whatever you end up doing, I won’t avoid discussing hypotheticals with friends about how change could be achieved. Pointlessly debating hypotheticals is what our little group does best, after all.” She put an arm around Plia and raised her eyebrows at me. “So, hypothetically, if I wanted to help the capuchins in that sort of way, I wouldn’t even bother with the fleet charter. That’s an impossible task and a fool’s errand.

“But there are other routes of attack that might very well work.”

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