70: Competition

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Their expressions told me that my guess was right. Ella looked confused, but panic flashed across Fari’s face and Captain Red, if I was reading his body language right, looked defensive. That could mean a lot of things, but the way that both adults forced themselves to look calm after half a second told me everything.

Okay, now I might be putting myself in danger. I raised my hands. “I don’t care,” I told them. “It doesn’t have anything to do with me. But I don’t think that this capuchin thing is a big deal unless you give other ships a reason to hate you, and that could become a pretty big reason.”

“It’ll be fine,” Fari said. “Hexacorallia – ”

“Oh, Hexacorallia will be completely fine with it,” I agreed. “Everyone else? Might have a lot of different reactions.”

“What are you guys talking about?” Ella asked.

“Nothing half as dramatic as Taya is making it sound,” Fari said, as if that had ever stopped anyone from asking more questions.

I looked at Ella. “Hexacorallia has no use for your plants.”

“Yes, they do! Our plants are going to revolutionise mining and colonisation! They’ll change everything!”

“I’m sure they will. I don’t understand the science, really, but even I can tell that they’re going to be wonderful for all kinds of colonies. If we show up to some airless planet of ice and iron, seeding it with your plants will turn a really hard colony build into a much easier one and create whole new types of colonies. But it’s not half as useful for Hexacorallia as it would be for other colony designs in other situations. The two don’t fit together.”

“They were very excited to take on our plants,” Ella said indignantly.

“No,” I said, “they were very excited to take on your votes. Fitting your plants into their colony bid and agreeing to use them on the asteroids won their colony bid your support, the Arborea Celestia’s support, and probably the support of a bunch of other ships that are involved that I don’t know about. It’s like what you explained to me, with the colony paradox; you need to see these plants in a colony, for many decades, to have an idea of how they’ll work long-term, and Hexacorallia can do that here without actually depending on them; by the time we reach the next start, the Stalwart will had a lot of valuable data on them to put to use in future colonies, which they can get via radio communication with the colony. Oh, that’s why the Dish is supporting this! They’re massively understaffed and not getting enough recognition for it, and scientists needing the dish for this project would… never mind, that’s not important right now. My point is, Hexacorallia isn’t interested in the plants; that’s not what you’re giving them. You’re interested in the plants, and they’re taking them in exchange for bid support.”

I glanced at the adults, who obviously didn’t look surprised or confused about anything I’d said. They all knew this, of course. I kept explaining.

“But any ship with a colony bid would do the same; they all want votes. So I couldn’t figure out why you guys were working with one that won’t get much use out of your plants. I don’t know anything about the other bids, but there had to be others that would be a better fit, right? I just figured that you’d approached the closest ship that had a bid, because them being close by would make them easier to work with.” I looked to Captain Red. “But that’s not it, is it? It’s not about the plants for you, either. I mean, I’m sure it is; they’re going to be really useful in future colonies, and they’ll be a real mark of pride in your history. But that’s not all you care about. You want Hexacorallia, specifically, to win. Because Hexacorallia is going to be like the Stalwart; it’s going to be a combined human-capuchin colony.

“All that stuff about capuchins needing less food and air and space, and being better than humans in zero pull? That makes you much better than us at living in HEXes. And when I asked a Hexacorallian about whether he’d want capuchins on his ship, he seemed really excited by the idea. They love trying new and different things, and if anyone didn’t like capuchins, that wouldn’t matter, because they could just choose not to have anything to do with you. Their whole system is physically perfect for you and also socially and diplomatically perfect for you to easily get into. Fleet diplomacy won’t matter once the colony is established. Hexacorallia is planning on letting their treegrave die, so not being able to join a treegrave won’t matter, either. That’s always been the plan, hasn’t it? Your people haven’t been staying good and quiet and tamping down curious kids like Tikka for generations and generations expecting your whole species to live or die on this one ship forever. For survival for a few generations, sure, but there is no way that you were just going to pin your whole species on this one ship. Humans wouldn’t stand for that, and I don’t think you would, either. Capuchins would’ve gotten restless a long time ago if you weren’t working towards something. The same thing we are – spreading throughout the galaxy.”

Ella looked shocked and confused, but the adults, obviously, didn’t. They were still watching me carefully.

Oh, right. I was an experiment right now. I sighed.

“I don’t care,” I told them again. “I think capuchins on Hexacorallia will be great. But if you’re sneaky about this and make more uptight or suspicious people feel cheated, then the Stalwart is going to get a reputation on other ships as a sneaky ship that cheats people and subverts the whole mission of the fleet. And that’s going to make problems for the capuchins and the humans that stay on the Stalwart, and it might even cause problems for you at the next colony depending on if people still care by then.”

They knew that too, of course. They probably had a whole big plan for how to introduce the capuchins as being super helpful and positive or the colony, like the plants. Which might backfire, because the capuchins wouldn’t be in charge of Hexacorallia by default, so if they were seen as useful tools instead of citizens then wouldn’t they just have the same problems as the Stalwart had when they’d first been made?

Probably not. These people knew way, way more than I did about their own history. They knew how to plan things properly. All I was was an example of how an outsider might react. They were probably putting my reactions into their plans right now.

“I don’t think any of that counts as stealing a colony,” Ella said.

“No, but a lot of people on other ships will, if they decide they don’t like capuchins, or decide they don’t like the Stalwart. And a lot more will when they hear about your history. Because once they learn about the revolution, they’ll start wondering about what would happen if there was a human-capuchin war in the colony. If capuchins are better at living in HEXes than humans and need less air and water than humans do, people will be worried.”

“Are you worried?”

I opened my mouth. Closed it again. Thought for a bit. “I… don’t know,” I admitted. “Why are you guys doing this, anyway? I understand why you’re here, Captain, but aren’t you two scientists?”

“Ella isn’t usually here,” Fari said. “It’s usually me and Sammo, since we’re the normal points of contact with the visiting scientists we usually have this conversation with. But you’ve spent a lot more time with Ella, so…”

Still, surely psychologists, or diplomats or Administrators or… well, it probably didn’t matter. There’d be cameras and microphones in this room, and probably other meeting rooms full of professionals analysing everything I said and did to learn just how kids from the Courageous would take this information, and plan from there.

I hoped they took my reactions way too seriously and came to a bunch of wrong conclusions about how everyone would react. They wouldn’t, of course; they’d know all the stuff that the historians kept ranting about, about relying too much on small bits of information and about how differently people from the same groups could react to stuff. They’d be fine, so it was safe for me to kind of hope that they wouldn’t. Serves them right for peeking at my bruises and pulling me into this meeting and making me wonder about the capuchins for months only to make me look like an idiot by explaining all of this after I thought I’d figured stuff out. They probably all knew what I had thought and were laughing about it.

“Any more questions?” Fari asked.

I shook my head.

“Fantastic. Thank you for your patience, Taya.” He smiled. “Oh, and if you want a tip on what to make Tikka? She gave you a common gift from her culture. I’m sure she’d appreciate one from yours.”

‘What business of it is yours?’ I wanted to snap, but I just thanked them and left. Something from my culture, huh? Well, I could…

Hmm.

We didn’t really have anything like that, did we?

There were lots of reasons to give people gifts. For birthdays, or anniversaries, or just because you saw something you thought they would like. But we didn’t do anything special like the haircharms. We did birthday eggs, but it felt weird to do that for something that wasn’t a birthday. Maybe the historians would be able to help. They were older, and maybe there were grown up celebrations and gifts and stuff that I’d never had to worry about.

I’d thought that the captain and the scientists would have warned me not to tell anyone about what happened in our meeting, but they hadn’t said anything. I guess I could just tell Plia and Tima all about the revolution and the capuchins being in charge, and even why the Stalwart was so invested in Hexacorallia’s bid. Why hadn’t I been told not to?

Well, I guess that the Stalwart had no way to stop me from telling the Courageous once I was back home, anyway. So they would’ve just taken that into account when deciding to tell me anything. And they’d said that they had already told some Arborean scientists. There was no point in trying to make me keep secrets here and not at home – actually, they probably wanted me to tell the historians right away. They were probably hoping I would, so that they could see how I’d explain it, and see how they would react, and learn even more about how other ships would take the news. That was probably the whole point. They didn’t just want to see how I’d react in the room, they wanted to see what I’d do with the information.

Well, too bad for them. I wasn’t giving them anything. I’d keep it all to myself until I was off their ship and away from their cameras.

Was I being petty? Yes. But too bad. They’d just have to learn from the other people they’d told instead. They were going to have lots more chances to watch foreigners react to the news as we got closer to orbit.

It wasn’t like any of it was going to be my problem.

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