Worth Saving
“The last and least important to be summoned. We’re obviously down a few notches on the evolutionary scale; the Oreanian evolutionary scale, that is,” Gillis complained to his fellow travelers, the highly made-up Brennan Vela and First Deputy Ambassador Lee. Fidgeting with his dress uniform collar, Gillis continued, “The bottom of the barrel. Surprised they’re allowing us to breathe their air, to sully their surroundings.” Lee nodded along in agreement with the ambassador’s sentiments; he was generally in sync with Gillis, taking his side in staff arguments—a company man, dedicated to ISEA’s mission. The trio was standing outside the Eridanus shuttlecraft hangar deck, waiting for it to pressurize.
“Wonder what the captain’s reception was like,” Lee said as he pondered what their own would be. “Hope he can extract Ms. Neiswender from their grip. He could run the risk . . .”
Gillis interrupted, “Risk? Of what? Chipman understands, or he better. Any risk taken has to be commensurate with the worth obtained. How many games have we played here already? The girl better appreciate it.” After a brief introspective period following the Pargysonian spy fiasco, the ambassador had reverted to his natural temperament.
This time, the First Deputy pushed back. “Just concerned for her . . . the signing . . .”
“Maybe she doesn’t want to return with us; maybe she wants to stay,” Brennan suggested. She was wearing a garish double wing-shaped brooch of mercurochrome red and yellowish-silver Altruzian IV stones, pinned onto the left side of her V-neck top. Whether her intent in wearing this particular piece of jewelry was to honor the Oreanians, or whether it was to mock them was unclear.
The panel lights to the side of the flight deck entry flashed green and the doors slid open. Gillis, Lee, and Brennan walked across the bay and arranged themselves inside the Europa VI shuttlecraft, lacking only their pilot, one Lieutenant Netsky, to continue on their way. Brennan at that moment received a message from Lt. Commander Samuel that his briefing with Netsky had concluded. The pilot would join them within the next five minutes, she informed the other two.
Gillis sighed and stared at Brennan’s brooch. ‘Goddamn ugly,’ he thought. Nostalgia for his younger days, for his once unshakable confidence in the ISEA hierarchy, rose up within him. And so, he began his lecture: “Others [by others, he meant Chipman] may discover things; we give meaning and structure to those discoveries; incorporating new knowledge into the whole.”
“Not everything or everyone may want to be in that whole,” Brennan murmured.
“Thank you, Ms. Vela, for your usual contrarian contribution. I misspoke. Not incorporation, but harmony, grace. The older I get, the less I see of it, and the more I desire it.
“The Oreanians are too flippant about the need for cooperation with ISEA for their own protection; they take it for granted and seem to think they will continue to exist on this gold mine of vouronium uncontested, just because they see themselves as so wonderful, so fine.” Gillis laid out their weaknesses: their isolationist bent, their arrogance, their lack of curiosity.
“They were curious about Joanni,” Brennan offered.
Gillis ignored this remark and continued on. “We are building things, building upon our past and for our future. Our work has meaning, it’s not self-satisfied preening, it’s not scattershot . . . "
The hangar doors opened. Lt. Netsky had arrived to pilot the Europa VI’s passengers to their space station rendezvous, a portal to a great many unknowns, but also a gateway to accomplishing their mission of expanding the whole as they understood it.
Image: Port of entry. Source: Detail of “The Wanderings of a Comet,” from J. J. Grandville's Un Autre Monde (Another World), published in 1844. The Public Domain Review. Edited by J. Weigley