Floatpoint
by Emily Short (2006)
Genres: Science Fiction

It is night on this side of the planet. Settled areas are lit: a jagged crescent in the tropics, lining the inland sea. The bright splatter along the top of the curve is Tanhua, as bright from space as New York. The north continent is darker, sprinkled finely with small lights, where the failing climate makes it hard to survive a winter. And the northernmost point, almost lost on the slope of Mt. Cordia, is the original Aleheart Colony, where the first settlers from Earth landed. It is your destination as well.

action: %
response: Are you sure you want to quit? 

It is night on this side of the planet. Settled areas are lit: a jagged crescent in the tropics, lining the inland sea. The bright splatter along the top of the curve is Tanhua, as bright from space as New York. The north continent is darker, sprinkled finely with small lights, where the failing climate makes it hard to survive a winter. And the northernmost point, almost lost on the slope of Mt. Cordia, is the original Aleheart Colony, where the first settlers from Earth landed. It is your destination as well.

Altogether, the population comes to two hundred and thirty-seven million not-quite-humans, most likely doomed if they stay here. The ice comes faster every year. It would have been more convenient if they had had this crisis twenty years ago, but Earth can still use it.

Your job is to make an arrangement acceptable to both sides, to bring the Aleheart population home.

The shuttle drops.
action: Y.
response: Have you played interactive fiction before? >

When Aleheart Colony was choosing landing spots, Cordia Peak was deemed a good source of geothermal and hydroelectric energy. This lake, snug under the mountain, is the oldest manmade thing on the planet; you have a poster of it at home.

In the early pictures, the lake is whitish, silty water in a bowl of bare rock, fed by a trickle of glacial runoff, and dammed at the south end with concrete. Now it is deep blue. The glacier has progressed so far that it forms a wall across the north end of the lake, tall enough to block any view of Cordia Peak except the summit. Icebergs float on the water. Fine black grass, rippled like velvet, grows on the bank. At the south end, the concrete too is gone; the water simply seems to stop.

The arc of Aleheart's ring system crosses the southern sky, much the same pale white as the moon in daytime.

A narrow path climbs west through a low point in the ridge and continues along the face of the glacier towards town.
I beg your pardon?
action: You examine the glacier
response: Where the glacier moves over land, the leading edge crumbles into a slope; but here, where it is moving into water, icebergs are carried away, leaving a sheer cliff face. The ice is pale blue in cross-section, with striations of dirt, and, in a few layers, something blacker that looks like ash.
action: Inventory
response: You are carrying:
a comfortable outfit of chronometer, grey undersuit, shoes, and socks

You have a little time to look around, but you shouldn't drag this out for long: you're supposed to meet your predecessor, Ambassador Valenti, in the center of town, as soon as possible.
action: You examine the icebergs
response: Weathered into odd shapes, some small enough to pick up, some as large as a yacht. A few are implausibly top-heavy above water, having melted into a barbell shape.
action: You take the iceberg
response: You're too far away to do anything but look.

You've been warned you'll hate the ring come winter, when it forms a dusty shield between you and the sun, when the snow comes in sudden fierce storms and then refuses to melt, when there are no stars to be seen.

Now, in summer, it is a gleaming, moon-colored arc, the skeleton of a rainbow.

You remind yourself about the waiting Valenti.
action: You examine the rings
response: You've been warned you'll hate the ring come winter, when it forms a dusty shield between you and the sun, when the snow comes in sudden fierce storms and then refuses to melt, when there are no stars to be seen.

Now, in summer, it is a gleaming, moon-colored arc, the skeleton of a rainbow.

With a roar, a big chunk of the glacier calves off and falls into the lake -- it seems in slow motion -- and water sprays up around it, surprisingly high.
action: You examine the glacier
response: Where the glacier moves over land, the leading edge crumbles into a slope; but here, where it is moving into water, icebergs are carried away, leaving a sheer cliff face. The ice is pale blue in cross-section, with striations of dirt, and, in a few layers, something blacker that looks like ash.

The ripples from the far end of the lake reach your shore and die out.
action: Look around
response: You climb the gravel pathway. On Earth you would be struggling more with this slope; the lighter gravity and richer air are a great help. Even so, it's a trip of some minutes.

This is as far north as you can come without ice-climbing. The glacier is chunks and patches of ice at first, but soon solid beyond that. There are rocks on the face of it, and twisted metal, and scraps of buildings, which were formerly the northern part of town.

You can feel the frigid air coming off of it, and hear the rumble of breaking and shifting ice -- the danger is obvious -- but somehow it gives the impression you could start walking now and in an hour come to the summit; stand at the top of Cordia and turn around, and see the rings filling the sky and the visible curvature of the world, the western ocean green with engineered algae, the patches of land made fertile and those still barren rock.

From this direction the rings frame the outline of town, off toward the south.

A narrow path descends east along the side of the glacier towards the lakeshore.

This is as far north as you can come without ice-climbing. The glacier is chunks and patches of ice at first, but soon solid beyond that. There are rocks on the face of it, and twisted metal, and scraps of buildings, which were formerly the northern part of town.

You can feel the frigid air coming off of it, and hear the rumble of breaking and shifting ice. The initial inclination to climb the face of Cordia has worn off, but there's still something intriguing about it.

From this direction the rings frame the outline of town, off toward the south.

A narrow path descends east along the side of the glacier towards the lakeshore.
action: You examine the mountain
response: Cordia Peak dominates the northern horizon. The perfect symmetry reminds you of Fuji, though this mountain is wider, bulked out by the layers of glacial ice. But it could erupt at any time, turning all that ice into floodwater.

It was self-indulgence to have the shuttle set you down at the Lakeshore, since you wanted to have a look at the part of the Colony you would recognize from pictures, before going on to the part that would be strange to you. But you shouldn't drag this out.
action: You go south
response: You walk about half a mile. There are now some buildings along the east side of the street, though most of them are abandoned.

To the northwest is a public building with a deep portico; to the east, one with a conical roof. The others are private houses, but, except one or two, they don't look lived in. There is a general atmosphere of neglect.

The street continues south into the heart of town, or north towards the mountain and the glacier. A track for a floating train cuts southeast between the buildings.

The rings in the southern sky are partly obscured by the buildings on the horizon, but are still bright enough to catch the eye.
action: Go south
response: After a few minutes of walking, you reach an area with Colonists around. You carefully don't stare at them as they carefully do not stare at you. But from the sides of your eyes you watch how they float a few inches off the ground; how they do not touch things.

The street runs north/south, so that you have an uninterrupted view of Cordia Peak, and the leading edge of the glacier at the northern edge of town.

Both sides of the street are built up. A substantial building of metal and glass lies to the east, houses to the west.

The ring system is mostly obscured by the grand solarium to the south, accessible through the insulating doors. The solarium is a huge domed structure to keep in as much heat and warmth as possible; the Earth embassy is inside.

At the center of the open space here is a monument shaped like a tusk or tooth. This is the landmark: Ambassador Valenti is going to meet you here -- in fact, he was supposed to be waiting.

Mentally you check off "go to the Clearing to meet Valenti" on your list of remaining tasks. You run over the things you still need to get done before you can settle in:
find out what Valenti wanted
show up at the Embassy

(To stop receiving reminders of your schedule, try REMINDERS OFF. You may still view them manually with THINK.)
action: You examine the monument
response: It has look of force-grown bone, monolithic and taller than a man.

The symbolic lettering of the current language has been painted on the side, but the original carving is in Chinese and English: "To those who, in the name of the Company and for the advancement of knowledge, were killed, modified incorrectly, or born unfit."

A flash of memory: Kruger has turned his chair toward the window and was looking out over the water. "They want to send some colonists back to Earth," he says. "To repopulate. They're losing climate control, and they're afraid they can't turn it around. And we could use them, to be honest."

You start to comment, but he goes on. "And your future boss is insane and a genius and needs watching. I know you're too senior to be someone's lackey. But these are not normal circumstances."

What you heard on the way here was more worrying: anecdotes that Valenti had gone native; that he had stopped answering official mail; that he was in love with a native woman; that a native man was in love with him. That he abused his assistants. That he was concealing a sinister truth he had learned about the Colony. That he was not human. That he was human, but had been talking with a native scientist about a genetic retrofit.

Kruger's last message didn't reach you until you were in orbit here: that you were not to be a lackey after all; that you were to take over the job of ambassador yourself. "Valenti has been notified," he said.

So this is the man you're waiting to meet, and all you know of his character is that he is not punctual.
action: You look at the solarium
response: It's a huge dome and encloses not only gardens but also a good number of buildings. The Embassy is inside, you gather, but not visible from here.

Out of the doors to the south comes a short, balding man, walking briskly for someone so late. So this will be Valenti, then.

"Ambassador Moskin. Welcome to Aleheart," he says, shoving both hands deep in his pockets. Perhaps it would be uncouth to shake hands in public. "I read your file."
action: You greet Valenti
response: "Pleasure to meet you," you begin, but you get no further than that before he interrupts.

"You're out of your depth." He kicks a spray of gravel into the bushes. A young female coming along the path lifts her head in surprise and floats to the side before passing him. (A heressa: the female colonists are called heressa when they have reached the age of maturity.)

"Your previous assignment was New Zealand?" He bounces on the balls of his feet, getting in your face. "New Zealand has humans. Who speak English."
action: You look at Valenti
response: His eyes are black. His hair, if he had much, would be black. He reminds you of nothing so much as a plutonium ball: small, dense, packed with malignant energy.

"There's only one reason High Command would replace me with you," he says. "You'll do what they say." He takes something out of his pocket and tosses it to you. It is, you see, the size and shape of a skipping stone, a widget that can be turned on. "You'll need this."

"What is it?"

He laughs, waves, and begins walking swiftly down the gravel path. "Don't lose it!" he calls back. "You'd better hurry. My feckless assistant Liam is waiting for you. Your feckless assistant now, I suppose."

You consider chasing him, but it's obvious that he's in such a mood that he will be no help to you anyway. Instead you weigh the stone in your hand, frowning.
action: You look at the stone
response: A plain grey device, fitted to the shape of the hand, and turned off at the moment. There is an inscription on the back, and it is in English: To LV from A3205.

Mentally you check off "find out what Valenti wanted" on your list of remaining tasks. You run over the things you still need to get done before you can settle in:
show up at the Embassy
action: You turn the stone on
response: You tap the widget and it warms in your hand -- more waking up than being switched on, somehow. After a moment, three numbers appear on its... skin? The later digits flicker: SOC 15.7759, POW 20.00197, INT 11.2261. Below this, in smaller letters: SQUEEZE TO SUMMON AIDES.
action: You squeeze the stone
response: The surface has a give to it, and it squeaks once. Small regretful letters read: AIDE CURRENTLY OUT OF RANGE. Maybe in the embassy proper, then.

The chronometer chirps, indicating that you have a new message waiting to be read in the Embassy communications room. You should get inside and check your mail. This will be important.
action: You think
response: You run over the things you still need to get done before you can settle in:
check your messages
show up at the Embassy
action: You go to the south
response: The air inside is thicker, denser, more humid: more like Earth. The paths are crowded with people coming and going, brightly-clothed. As they glide around, their feet move, just a little, as though they were slowly treading water: not striding, not skating, not quite hovering either.

The Grand Solarium is an enormous dome with an oval roof of glass and grown metalwork. Inside is a botanical garden, which, on this planet, is a kind of art museum. Each plot displays some invented shrub that would be illegal on Earth.

The southern end of the dome, where they grow edible crops, is hidden by a decorative screen of hanging flowers. The garden also continues to the east; away to the west is the front of the Earth Embassy, now your home.

A double set of insulating doors leads north to the outdoors.
action: You examine the garden
response: Shrubs with fur. Shrubs with ears. Best not to think too hard about that.
action: You examine the flowers
response: Flowers with all the color bred out, translucent buds clustered on grey vines. They separate you from the southern part of the dome.

A heressa approaches the curtain. The air shimmers around her and her green gardening robe, and then the vines draw aside to let her through.
action: You go to the west
response: You wander between plots: what catches your eye this time is a grass that grows silver and then dies off, leaving an intricate metal fence.

You stand at the eastern end of a shallow rectangular pool -- no doubt part of the reason the air is softer and more humid here than it was outside. The Embassy is just west of here, at the far end of the pool.

If you look down, you catch the reflection in the surface, and a number of small red fish swimming around, in formation, making symbols which you cannot read.
action: You examine fish
response: They have red-gold scales and fat round bodies, and are about two inches long. The formations are symbols from the syllabary, but you can't read them.
action: You go to the west
response: The Embassy proper is directly west. The entrance is flanked by orange trees, familiar and earthly.

From the top of the Front Stairs you have an excellent view of the whole interior of the Solarium, the sunlight catching in the curved triangular panes of glass.

East, at the bottom of the stairs, is the mirror-glass of the pool. Beyond it the botanical garden has a structure invisible from the inside.
action: You examine garden
response: The paths are a knot-work, the plots arranged to diversify shape and unify color. If you stare long enough, you even start to get the impression that the movement of the colonists through the garden is itself choreographed so that groups meet and pass each other at the nodes -- but it's impossible to be sure.
action: You go to the west
response: Your first impression is of a large space, luxuriously built; of many textures of wood and metal and colored enamel; of four corner pillars with the shape and height of oak trunks. There is a staircase up, and some other exits north and west, which look more like things to investigate later.

At the south end is a door to what looks like a private room.

A young ayamet is waiting at the center of the room -- studiedly looking at something in his hand, trying to wait without seeming to do so. This will be Liam the assistant, then.

He turns: his face is elfin and slightly furred. "Greetings, ambassador. Welcome to Aleheart." His English is oddly accentuated, almost sung. He does not extend a hand, but you would not have expected him to touch you: some things are too much a taboo to overcome, even in deference to Earth manners.

"You've just been meeting Ambassador Valenti, I think?" he adds. "I hope it was a productive encounter. You must have had questions for him."

The smile is so bland. This might be a dart at your inexperience, or at Valenti for being naturally unhelpful. Or it might be nothing at all. But the grey widget trembles eagerly in your hand. It catches Liam's eye, and his expression grows, if anything, blander still.

Mentally you check off "show up at the Embassy" on your list of remaining tasks. You run over the things you still need to get done before you can settle in:
check your messages
action: You ask Liam about the widget
response: This is awkward.

Your assignment was sudden, and you have only the phrases you learned on the voyage by skulking outside the engine room. You are therefore restricted to a) insulting your listener's parentage, diet, and sexual practices, or b) suggesting that he is damaged in the antigravitic propulsion unit.

It would be dangerous to let on that Earth sent a diplomat who doesn't even know the language, so it is best to rely on gestures and silence until you can (quickly!) finish a linguistic hypnosis program.
action: Point at widget
response: Liam looks at it and then at you. He says something, which naturally is meaningless. Then he makes a gesture of hiding something in his sleeve. So maybe you're not supposed to be showing it off...?

It would be nice if you'd been properly trained for this assignment, instead of half-trained for the position of your own assistant. It would be nice if Valenti weren't using you in some power play. And it would be nice if you could work, privately, in your office for a while until you'd had a chance to figure out the situation here. But that's looking less and less likely.
action: You look at the widget
response: A plain grey device, fitted to the shape of the hand,  on whose surface are three constantly flickering numbers: SOC 15.26018, POW 20.26726, INT 11.14011. SQUEEZE TO SUMMON AIDES. There is an inscription on the back, and it is in English: To LV from A3205.
action: You check what you're carrying
response: You are carrying:
a grey widget saying SOC 15.99781, POW 20.45966, INT 11.3811
a comfortable outfit of chronometer, grey undersuit, shoes, and socks
action: You insult yourself
response: With concentration, you manage a tolerably accurate rendition of the chief engineer's favorite insult, complete with pitch and accent. A strange look crosses yourself's face; then open laughter.

Evidently you got it wrong.
action: You squeeze the stone
response: The surface has a give to it, and it squeaks once. Liam winces and puts a finger to his temple. Summoning him at short range is possibly a little unfair.
action: You go south
response: You approach the door; Liam watches you uncomfortably and speaks a few hesitant words of his own language. The phrase is unclear but the meaning is not: he is embarrassed to stop you, but he very much does not want you to go in there; it would be inappropriate. Probably this is his own private room, in fact.
action: Go upwards
response: At the top of the shallow stairs there is a spacious landing, with windows giving a view east across the Grand Solarium garden. Apparently past ambassadors have found this a pleasant place in which to read, because there is a small library of Earth books, otherwise impossible to get here.

The entry to your bedroom is to the north, and an office area to the south.

Liam follows you upstairs, floating without any apparent motion of the legs even on the incline. "This floor is the Earth Ambassador's," he says, as you reach the top. "The office--" and he points to the south door. "And the personal quarters." He indicates the north. "I believe Valenti left some clothing behind." He looks you up and down as though trying to guess whether it would fit you. "I do not know whether you will have a use for it, but I am sure that no one else will, so please..."

This speech is halting enough to suggest that he memorized all these remarks.
action: You go south
response: You take in perfunctorily the Earthish surroundings: two paintings, a plain floor, a shipment crate that probably arrived on the same vessel as your own.

Valenti has of course left you his handheld computer -- useful, though not able to send and receive messages. The secure mail line must be in the next room, off to the west.

Liam is out of sight, though you can presumably summon him back at need, or find him again.
action: You get the computer
response: Taken.
action: You examine it
response: The computer is portable, and is able to scan and interpret the meaning of the colonists' symbolic writing. It has also been programmed to respond to search terms, to sift through data files and the personal logs of the ambassadors before you, assuming all the relevant disks are loaded. At the moment the slot for adding an extra data disk is empty, which looks ominous.
action: You go to the west
response: With all the machinery in here, the space remaining for you is little larger than a closet, except that the room extends upward a good fifteen or so feet, widening at the top into a bell of tinted glass.

The comm terminal itself could be an invention out of Jules Verne. The keypad is arranged in the standard way, except that all the keys are slightly too small for the fingers of a normal human, and the pad itself stands up from the floor on a metal stalk.

The comm screen, meanwhile, is round and surrounded by a copper ring, porthole-like. The whole arrangement is aesthetically pleasing and completely inconvenient.
action: You check the messages
response: You key in your pass-code to activate the terminal.

The following messages are available for you to read or reply to:

11:21 am: Instructions
10:02 am: Hello From Ivory Coast
9:34 am: Shuttle Departure Plans
action: You read the instructions
response: You select the message and read:

Greetings, ambassador. Sorry for the sudden change of plan. One day I'll tell you the whole story with Valenti, it'd be a good read. For now, you've got to do the Gift Day ritual, which means receiving their ambassador and handing over a present. There are two main points here -- what you give her and what you wear. Get the gift box that we shipped. It should have come in a crate, on the same ship as you. You're going to want to give them a vaccine sample; there should be one among Earth artifacts in our Museum in the Embassy.

Wear something red and keep the rest of your clothes (if any) neutral. Black and white are also meaningful to them, so avoid those. Grey is fine.

If you can get a float unit, get one: you'll want it for the meeting, so you can be as tall as the others.

That's it. Don't give offense, don't look weak, and remember that they need us. -- Kruger.

Mentally you check off "check your messages" on your list of remaining tasks. You run over the things you still need to get done:
acquire a gift box from the goods shipped
acquire vaccine from the Museum (HC's orders)
prepare gift for Ambassador Aylene
wear something red(dish) (High Command's instruction)
find a working float unit
action: You read hello
response: Seeing this message makes you almost too impatient to read it.

Your situation with Jane is odd. She is not much older than yourself, but prematurely grey, with mannish features. Her braying laugh is a liability in quiet restaurants. But she is smart and dependable, and sensitive to the times when you're best left alone. In the past year you've rarely been out of message contact for more than a week, and during the voyage over you missed her correspondence intensely.

You were beginning to wonder about your feelings toward her -- a worrying idea that can be put aside now. She would probably be as appalled by the thought as you are.
action: You read hello
response: You select the message and read:

Trust you're settled into UNDESERVED post with minimum fuss/maximum floating handmaidens. Wish I were there. Ivory Coast still rustic. Marsh risen two feet in floods. Cannot leave research post. Cannot buy liquor. Cannot reach you on transport ship. About to kill self from tedium and bug bites. Write at once. Jane.
action: You read the shuttle plans
response: You select the message and read:

Ship scheduled for departure 9:30 PM -- pls advise if any further shuttle contact is needed before that time.
action: Reply to Jane
response: You try to rest your hands on the odd keypad and type normally, but the keys are too small for that to feel right, and the keypad bounces on its stupid metal stalk with every stroke. Eventually you settle on a vicious two-fingered approach.

Dear Jane,

Arrived to news Kruger assigning me as Valenti's replacement rather than assistant. Understood mystery when I met Valenti, who has less diplomatic skill than bowl of chopped liver.

Am thus ambassador without language training. Would be content to switch places, if you wish. No liquor here, nor any floating handmaidens either. Understand through channels that I will be living on diet of tan ration bars fabricated in vat. Disgusting.
action: Y.
response: You fire it off. Soon she will write back, and be sane and not related to all of this mess.
action: Look around
response: With all the machinery in here, the space remaining for you is little larger than a closet, except that the room extends upward a good fifteen or so feet, widening at the top into a bell of tinted glass.

The comm terminal itself could be an invention out of Jules Verne. The keypad is arranged in the standard way, except that all the keys are slightly too small for the fingers of a normal human, and the pad itself stands up from the floor on a metal stalk.

The comm screen, meanwhile, is round and surrounded by a copper ring, porthole-like. The whole arrangement is aesthetically pleasing and completely inconvenient.
action: You leave
response: Adjusted by your predecessors, and more like an Earth room than any other you've seen here. There are two paintings, a serious tax on someone's luggage limit. There is a plain floor that doesn't assume you can hover in midair. The foyer is back out to the north, and there's a child-sized Communications Room west of here.

A crate, marked with shipping and import seals from Earth, sits in the middle of the room. It is still sealed.
action: Examine crate
response: It is scuffed from its time in the cargo bay, but otherwise uncompromised.
action: Open crate
response: You open the shipment crate, revealing a quantity of packing material, a mail packet, and a gift box.
action: Packet
response: gift box: Taken.
mail packet: Taken.

Mentally you check off "acquire a gift box from the goods shipped" on your list of remaining tasks. You run over the things you still need to get done:
acquire vaccine from the Museum (HC's orders)
prepare gift for Ambassador Aylene
wear something red(dish) (High Command's instruction)
find a working float unit
action: You look at the mail
response: (first heading for the communications room)

With all the machinery in here, the space remaining for you is little larger than a closet, except that the room extends upward a good fifteen or so feet, widening at the top into a bell of tinted glass.

The comm terminal itself could be an invention out of Jules Verne. The keypad is arranged in the standard way, except that all the keys are slightly too small for the fingers of a normal human, and the pad itself stands up from the floor on a metal stalk.

The comm screen, meanwhile, is round and surrounded by a copper ring, porthole-like. The whole arrangement is aesthetically pleasing and completely inconvenient.

The following messages are available for you to read or reply to:

11:21 am: Instructions
10:02 am: Hello From Ivory Coast (R)
9:34 am: Shuttle Departure Plans
action: You look at the packet
response: It's mail meant for Valenti.

You read it anyway.

Unsurprisingly, there's nothing to hint at close ties back on Earth. But there are a number of demands from people who wanted Valenti to research what happened to some family member who came over in the colony ships. Apparently these people don't understand how much time has passed in Aleheart terms. One or two even threaten to sue the Aleheart Colony at large for damages for "illegal exploitation of genetic material" from their relatives -- a claim viable only on Earth, and only where High Command has something to say about it.
action: You examine the gift box
response: A decorative box, obviously made on Earth, enameled like a Faberge piece. The exterior is covered in a design of leaves and morning glories.
action: You open it
response: You tilt open the lid of the gift box, but it's tantalizingly empty.
action: You look at the packing material
response: Soft and tightly-wadded.
action: You eat it
response: (first taking the quantity of packing material)
It would leave little fuzzy bits everywhere. You've done enough.
action: You examine the paintings
response: They are not restful paintings, and look as though they were created by Van Gogh's angrier, more demented relation. As near as you can tell, one is of a circus performer about to fall off his unicycle, and the other is an extremely severe rainstorm. But still.
action: Go north
response: At the top of the shallow stairs there is a spacious landing, with windows giving a view east across the Grand Solarium garden. Apparently past ambassadors have found this a pleasant place in which to read, because there is a small library of Earth books, otherwise impossible to get here.

The entry to your bedroom is to the north, and an office area to the south.
action: You go to the north
response: Everything is on a smaller scale in the private quarters. There's no real bed, only a stone platform, too short to accommodate your full height, in the center of the room. The sole gesture towards comfort is a pillow of Earth style, perhaps left here by Valenti. A rich person's bedroom. People who paid for space would tuck the bed against the wall, and not let it waste the whole room.

A refreshment room is visible to the west, and the hallway is back to the south.

Your suitcase sits on the floor.
action: You open suitcase
response: You open the suitcase and experience a sudden deflation. There used to be a dozen new undersuits in different colors (or shades of grey, anyway); two carefully pressed jackets; hats and gloves for the cold climate; a parka; another pair of shoes.

Now there're only few things, and one of them is a yellow paper, the kind you get when it's made of multiply-recycled fibers. Someone has written on it by hand. The letters have sunk in and blurred, but they're still legible.
action: You read the yellow paper
response: DUE TO MASS LIMITATIONS ON THIS TRIP ITEMS DEEMED TO BE OF LESSER VALUE OR PERSONAL SIGNIFICANCE WERE RECYCLED TO EARTHBOUND CHARITY. HAVE A NICE TRIP! DOCKWORKER 175.

Which is funny, because with labor shortages you wouldn't have guessed there were a whole 175 people working at the space dock.
action: You look in suitcase
response: Out of all you couldn't bear to give away when you left Earth -- the Bach cello suites recorded by your great-grandfather, seven years of your parents' love letters while your father died in quarantine, your school medal for life-saving action -- here's what they deemed to be of personal significance: a yellow paper note, some fuzzy bunny slippers, and a silver kiddush cup.
action: You look at the slippers
response: They have rabbit ears and are a collector's item from before the plague years. They are also pink. Your friend Jane gave them to you, motivated by inscrutable Jane-like humor; they still bear the stamp of Salvage and Reclamation on the soles. Presumably your felonious dockworker recognized their worth and decided it was better not to steal them, but under the circumstances you'd rather have some of the clothing you actually intended to wear.

It occurs to you that you left your old black sweater aboard the shuttle. Irritating.
action: You examine the cup
response: Your mother's silver kiddush cup. Most likely the only reason you got to keep it is the Star of David on the base, alerting the dockworker to its significance.

Much of your time, the last days before departure, was spent getting rid of things. Jane helped, though no longer officially employed by Salvage and Reclamation. ("If you don't want to take the slippers with you, I won't be offended," she said, standing over a cardboard box, hands on hips. "It was just a present for fun." But you insisted on keeping them.)

Getting rid of Katie: you hadn't been dating long, and neither of you pretended to consider maintaining a relationship at long distance. "It's been nice getting to know you, David," she said, before she hung up.

Getting rid of obligations: you will not be home when your mother's yahrzeit comes around, and there is no one else. You have no brothers and no sisters. You had to look up the right words online; went to her grave with a flimsy print-off, and sang the Kaddish in a thin rain, though no one was listening to your prayers but a groundskeeper in a flap-eared hat. He watched with his arms folded from the next plot. When you were two-thirds through, he snorted and went away.

So you still have the cup, at least. But you rarely use it, and what would it mean to do so here? Your music would have been more use.
action: Look around
response: There's no real bed, only a stone platform, too short to accommodate your full height, in the center of the room. The sole gesture towards comfort is a pillow of Earth style, perhaps left here by Valenti. Aside from this, the place is unfurnished.

A refreshment room is visible to the west, and the hallway is back to the south.

Your suitcase lies open on the floor, displaying a yellow paper note, some fuzzy bunny slippers, and a silver kiddush cup.
action: You examine the bed
response: It is deep red stone, decorated with bands of small colorful tiles. There's no attempt to accommodate a body either human or otherwise. And no sheets or blankets, which is discouraging.
action: You go to the west
response: Divided into several sections for hygienic purposes. To one side are the toilet facilities; on the other side, the food cabinet. Eating is considered a disgusting bodily function, here: something to be done out of sight and only when necessary.

A long scarlet robe in the native style hangs from a clothing stand.

Slightly raised from the floor by the door is a round grate, evidently the output vent for something-or-other.
action: You look at the robe
response: The purpose of clothes here is to keep a person warm while disguising as much as possible the presence of a solid body. They're made of light but tightly-woven material, generously cut, and studded with floatpins, allowing the cloth to hover, drift, and swirl perpetually without coming into indecent contact with the flesh.

The robe is designed to drape from the shoulders, with several shorter layers of floatpinned cape at the back. It must billow magnificently when a person walks, and double as a sail in a strong wind.
action: You look at the grate
response: A pipe comes up an inch or two from the floor and, like a trunk sawn off near the ground, ends in a round brass-colored grating about nine inches in diameter. The only reasonable thing for it to be in this climate is a heating outlet. It is ideally placed for stubbing the toes of sensitive, non-floating Earth feet, so you'll have to keep an eye out when you go by.
action: You open it
response: The grate is secured in place.
action: You open the food
response: You open the food cabinet, revealing a squashed unripe seed and some ration bars.
action: You look at the seed
response: Once upon a time, this appears to have been a partially ripe seed or fruit. The skin is streaked in orange and green, like an unready tomato. Then someone squashed it, and now it's gooey and possibly fermenting.
action: Examine bar
response: High Command provided example ration bars to show the locals what nutrition was required. Apparently they took these instructions literally, and now all Embassy food comes in tasteless tan squares.
action: You take the seed
response: You pick up the seed by the least drippy part.
action: You take the robe
response: It is disorienting to pick up something you can't touch: you pull on the air around the long scarlet robe, but never come in contact with the surface because of the floatpoints.

Taken.

The chronometer chirps, indicating that you have a new message waiting to be read.
action: Go east
response: There's no real bed, only a stone platform, too short to accommodate your full height, in the center of the room. The sole gesture towards comfort is a pillow of Earth style, perhaps left here by Valenti. Aside from this, the place is unfurnished.

A refreshment room is visible to the west, and the hallway is back to the south.

Your suitcase lies open on the floor, displaying a yellow paper note, some fuzzy bunny slippers, and a silver kiddush cup.
action: Close suitcase
response: You close the suitcase.
action: You take it
response: It's too large and unwieldy to carry around casually -- as a matter of fact, you probably spent a considerable amount of your mass allowance on the suitcase itself.
action: You take all from the suitcase
response: yellow paper note: Taken.
fuzzy bunny slippers: Taken.
silver kiddush cup: Taken.
action: You go south
response: At the top of the shallow stairs there is a spacious landing, with windows giving a view east across the Grand Solarium garden. Apparently past ambassadors have found this a pleasant place in which to read, because there is a small library of Earth books, otherwise impossible to get here.

The other interesting item is a chute in the wall, looking (like everything else here) as though it had grown as metal or bone into the wall.

The entry to your bedroom is to the north, and an office area to the south.
action: You examine the chute
response: It leads down into darkness, possibly meant for laundry or garbage, possibly for something else.
action: You go to the south
response: Adjusted by your predecessors, and more like an Earth room than any other you've seen here. There are two paintings, a serious tax on someone's luggage limit. There is a plain floor that doesn't assume you can hover in midair. The foyer is back out to the north, and there's a child-sized Communications Room west of here.

A crate, marked with shipping and import seals from Earth, sits in the middle of the room. It has been broken open.
action: You read the mail
response: The following messages are available for you to read or reply to:

12:19 pm: RE Hello
11:21 am: Instructions
10:02 am: Hello From Ivory Coast (R)
9:34 am: Shuttle Departure Plans
action: You read re
response: You select the message and read:

Sorry to hear about Valenti. Sounds bad. Congrats on the promotion, though.

To point: rumors say High Command has issued orders for you to negotiate, colonists are returning, will be given Africa under terms. You MUST NOT DO THAT. Human population gone, rain forest beginning to recover. Better than expected. Gene-splicers would ruin it. If they want a laboratory, let them stay there, fix existing planet. Was a reason they went away in the first place. Survived plague without them (sort of), don't need them now. Unless they can RESURRECT dead, it won't do any good.

Didn't think so.

That is all. Return to delicious ration bar, ruminate. Jane.
action: Taste bar
response: You chew and chew and with difficulty swallow a small corner thereof, which will now probably keep you nourished until next month.

Somewhere on this planet there is probably something worth eating, but you could no more ask for details than you could inquire into favorite forms of contraception.
action: You think
response: You run over the things you still need to get done:
acquire vaccine from the Museum (HC's orders)
prepare gift for Ambassador Aylene
wear something red(dish) (High Command's instruction)
find a working float unit
action: You wear the robe
response: You settle the robe around your shoulders, where it is much lighter than it has any right to be considering the amount of material. Still, it lends you a sense of authority, of moral weight.

Or possibly makes you look like Little Red Riding Hood.

Mentally you check off "wear something red(dish) (High Command's instruction)" on your list of remaining tasks. You run over the things you still need to get done:
acquire vaccine from the Museum (HC's orders)
prepare gift for Ambassador Aylene
find a working float unit
action: You put the cup in the box
response: You put the cup into the box -- luckily it is just short enough to fit, though it rolls back and forth slightly inside.

A flash of memory: Your mother is sitting up in bed. "Your father wanted another child," she says to you abruptly. "But I told him, no. If we had another, we couldn't afford to send both to a quarantined school. One, we could afford to keep safe. Two would both be in danger and might both die."

"Mother, you shouldn't have--"

"Of course," she says, with the dry little chuckle of her last days. "I thought you would grow up to have Jewish sons and daughters, later, when it was safe. I thought the number of my grandchildren would make up for the number of my children."

There is nothing to say. Coming out of the room, you run smack into Jane. "That was completely unfair," she whispers to you. "You shouldn't let her make you feel--"

"You were listening?" you say.

"I was in the hall and overheard part and it didn't seem like the right time to walk in," Jane answers, putting something cold into your hand. "I brought you more pain meds."

"I know you get curious, but don't ever listen at the door again," you say.

The blood creeps up her cheek. "It was hard to avoid hearing," she says, which is probably a legitimate point. You look down at the bottles and say nothing.

Mentally you check off "prepare gift for Ambassador Aylene" on your list of remaining tasks. You run over the things you still need to get done:
acquire vaccine from the Museum (HC's orders)
find a working float unit
action: Look around
response: With all the machinery in here, the space remaining for you is little larger than a closet, except that the room extends upward a good fifteen or so feet, widening at the top into a bell of tinted glass.

The comm terminal itself could be an invention out of Jules Verne. The keypad is arranged in the standard way, except that all the keys are slightly too small for the fingers of a normal human, and the pad itself stands up from the floor on a metal stalk.

The comm screen, meanwhile, is round and surrounded by a copper ring, porthole-like. The whole arrangement is aesthetically pleasing and completely inconvenient.
action: You put the packing material in the gift box
response: The quantity of packing material will not fit in the gift box.

The chronometer chirps, indicating that you have a new message waiting to be read.
action: You read the mail
response: (first heading for the communications room)

With all the machinery in here, the space remaining for you is little larger than a closet, except that the room extends upward a good fifteen or so feet, widening at the top into a bell of tinted glass.

The comm terminal itself could be an invention out of Jules Verne. The keypad is arranged in the standard way, except that all the keys are slightly too small for the fingers of a normal human, and the pad itself stands up from the floor on a metal stalk.

The comm screen, meanwhile, is round and surrounded by a copper ring, porthole-like. The whole arrangement is aesthetically pleasing and completely inconvenient.

The following messages are available for you to read or reply to:

12:37 pm: Apology
12:19 pm: RE Hello
11:21 am: Instructions
10:02 am: Hello From Ivory Coast (R)
9:34 am: Shuttle Departure Plans
action: You read the apology
response: You select the message and read:

My dear unfortunate successor:

Possibly Kruger didn't tell you the importance of Gift Day. What you offer shows our intentions towards the colony. To date, Earth has made inappropriate or deceptive gestures thirteen times. They do employment here by running vote, and Ambassador Aylene is about to be removed because she hasn't gotten a good result out of us. You guess whose fault that is.

Fate of negotiations is now in your hands. Ultimate responsibility: yours. Kruger can't control what you do from Earth.

He's probably told you to wear red. This is a mistake: it would allow the colonists to come to Earth as our adoptees and put us in a position of power over them. This is neither morally nor pragmatically defensible.

Recommend that you wear white -- it is a color associated with equality. I have a white jacket; it's possible Liam has taken it away, in which case you should get it back from him. I threw out the receipt, but it may still be in the recycling chute, if that helps communicate your needs.

Do not know what Kruger will have told you to give in the gift box, but if you haven't already done so, recommend you look up "gifts" in the computer. It has an etiquette guide. This should give some idea what he's getting you into.

When you are ready to present your gift, summon Liam and show him the gift box. He will arrange the meeting for you.

Yours in haste, Valenti

Mentally you check off "check your messages again" on your list of remaining tasks. You run over the things various people have decided you ought to do:
find jacket receipt in the recycling chute (Valenti's suggestion) acquire vaccine from the Museum (HC's orders)
wear white jacket (Valenti's idea)
look up gifts in the computer (Valenti's suggestion)
find a working float unit
summon Liam and show him the gift box
meet with Ambassador Aylene to present your gift
action: You reply to apology
response: Dear Honored Former Ambassador Valenti,

Thank you very much for your valuable advice. It is, of course, somewhat unlikely that I will disobey orders merely on the basis of your uncertain instructions. If you had tried more persuasion and less condescension, I might be more inclined to listen.
Yours, etc...
action: Yes
response: Send message? Y/N>
You press the send button sharply.
action: Search chute
response: The chute descends into darkness.
action: You look at the books
response: An illustrated cookbook, useless here except as an object of fantasy. A few volumes in Japanese: you can't read them, but at least they're a familiar kind of foreign. A custom-printed poetry anthology.
action: You examine the poetry
response: You expect possibly a collection of lyrics from popular hits, but the names come up Donne, Hopkins, Christopher Smart. It is all religious, imagery of divinity and the soul's subordination, and very alien. The plague years brought in plenty of reactionary movements, plenty of scourging and prayer, but they didn't look like this.
action: You consult computer about the gifts
response: You turn on the computer. It starts up a screen inviting you to look up some search term of your choosing.

You key in your request and wait hopefully...

Your search turns up the following articles:

Gift day: Three times per local year you are expected to exchange gifts with a representative of the Aleheart government. These days are keyed to the anniversary of first Earth contact and are not celebrated by the rest of the population in general.

gift symbolism: draft proposal: According to the etiquette files, those proposing marriage or cooperative scientific ventures may do so by creating a sample of the kind of project they hope to undertake. In the case of marriage, these are usually representations of the offspring that might be engineered from the two parents; for purely business relationships, other kinds of model, sample, or technical proposal are appropriate. A superior looking to employ or adopt an inferior may give a sample of the kind of work the inferior will be expected to produce as a condition of the employment.

gift symbolism: personal token: Etiquette files reveal that an object personally significant to the giver is an appropriate gift when establishing a relationship of friendship in which no joint work or project is intended. Also sometimes used for marriages not intended to produce offspring.

gift symbolism: knife: Apparently, according to the etiquette files, any edged instrument is a symbol of restrictions, living under strict controls imposed by someone else, and dating back to clinical trials in which new genetic lines deemed to be failing their intended purpose were slaughtered with a knife. This practice is now called flushing and does not require a blade, but the associations remain.

There isn't any personal data available from logs or annotations.

Mentally you check off "look up gifts in the computer (Valenti's suggestion)" on your list of remaining tasks. You run over the things various people have decided you ought to do:
find jacket receipt in the recycling chute (Valenti's suggestion) acquire vaccine from the Museum (HC's orders)
wear white jacket (Valenti's idea)
find a working float unit
summon Liam and show him the gift box
meet with Ambassador Aylene to present your gift
action: You take the cup
response: Taken.
action: You consult the computer about the float
response: The computer beeps irritably: NO RESULTS FOUND. PLEASE REPHRASE AND TRY AGAIN.
action: You consult the computer about the floatpoint
response: Your search turns up the following articles:

Float technology: After extended scrutiny, you decide the complicated jargon means Earth scientists don't understand floatpoints at all. There is some handwaving about a force that weakly attracts things at a distance and strongly repels those close up.

There isn't any personal data available from logs or annotations.
action: You consult computer about the food
response: Your search turns up the following articles:

Aleheart eating habits: Little or no information is available about Aleheart eating habits, since this eating apparently takes place entirely in private.

There isn't any personal data available from logs or annotations.

The chronometer chirps, indicating that you have a new message waiting to be read.
action: You examine computer
response: The computer is portable, and is able to scan and interpret the meaning of the colonists' symbolic writing. It has also been programmed to respond to search terms, to sift through data files and the personal logs of the ambassadors before you, assuming all the relevant disks are loaded. At the moment the slot for adding an extra data disk is empty, which looks ominous.
action: You read the mail
response: (first heading for the communications room)
You hurry toward the office, and then the communications room.

With all the machinery in here, the space remaining for you is little larger than a closet, except that the room extends upward a good fifteen or so feet, widening at the top into a bell of tinted glass.

The comm terminal itself could be an invention out of Jules Verne. The keypad is arranged in the standard way, except that all the keys are slightly too small for the fingers of a normal human, and the pad itself stands up from the floor on a metal stalk.

The comm screen, meanwhile, is round and surrounded by a copper ring, porthole-like. The whole arrangement is aesthetically pleasing and completely inconvenient.

The following messages are available for you to read or reply to:

12:50 pm: Undeliverable Mail
12:37 pm: Apology (R)
12:19 pm: RE Hello
11:21 am: Instructions
10:02 am: Hello From Ivory Coast (R)
9:34 am: Shuttle Departure Plans
action: You read undeliverable
response: You select the message and read:

The message you sent to EARTH AMBASSADOR L VALENTI is currently undeliverable because service does not reach ships in transit. Your message will be held and delivered when HE arrives at HIS destination EARTH in approximately TWENTY-SIX days.

This is an automated response program. Do not reply.
action: Time
response: It is 12:54 pm -- here, anyhow.
action: Go downwards
response: Like most buildings here, the Embassy is built with an eye for organic color and form: windows and doorways framed with curved ironwork, accents of bright enamel, wooden floors grown in place. All conspicuously wasteful of both materials and labor. It might be intended to make Earth representatives uncomfortable, or it might be meant as an honor, or it might be an advertisement for a standard of living that Earth lost some time ago. Too hard to tell.

There's a large Receiving Room to the west. Less prominent rooms lie north and south -- the south with a locked private door, the north an archway. Shallow stairs, almost a ramp, rise to a second story.
action: You go to the north
response: The Museum is a presentation on Earth -- geography, culture, and everything else. The selection is idiosyncratic, but apparently compelling, to judge by the healthy crowd currently looking it over.

To one side there is a ramp leading down. The studious way the crowd ignores this ramp suggests that they consider it private space.

A map of Earth covers the east wall, so large that you can barely reach across South America with both arms outstretched. It has attracted several groups of interested visitors, who are pointing out to each other details of the topography of Mongolia and making excited gestures at the Sahara.

There is a display case in the middle of the room.

There's a most peculiar noise, like TOK TOK TOK TOK TOK, coming from all around. You eventually work out that it's a clicking or clucking they're making with their mouths because, what, you have food in public? A few of these fine folks should ride a subway one day. Ideally the Manhattan/Brooklyn train nicknamed Charnel Line.

The widget readout changes to SOC 13.02265, POW 20.7061, INT 11.8837.
action: Go south
response: Like most buildings here, the Embassy is built with an eye for organic color and form: windows and doorways framed with curved ironwork, accents of bright enamel, wooden floors grown in place. All conspicuously wasteful of both materials and labor. It might be intended to make Earth representatives uncomfortable, or it might be meant as an honor, or it might be an advertisement for a standard of living that Earth lost some time ago. Too hard to tell.

There's a large Receiving Room to the west. Less prominent rooms lie north and south -- the south with a locked private door, the north an archway offering a mercifully limited view of the "Museum". Shallow stairs, almost a ramp, rise to a second story.
action: You drop the seed
response: Dropped.
action: Inventory
response: You are carrying:
a silver kiddush cup
some fuzzy bunny slippers
a yellow paper note
some ration bars
a mail packet
an empty gift box
a handheld computer (data slot currently empty)
a grey widget saying SOC 13.6234, POW 20.52288, INT 11.92473
a magnificent ensemble of flowing scarlet robe, chronometer, grey undersuit, shoes, and socks
action: You go north
response: The Museum is a presentation on Earth -- geography, culture, and everything else. The selection is idiosyncratic, but apparently compelling, to judge by the healthy crowd currently looking it over.

To one side there is a ramp leading down. The studious way the crowd ignores this ramp suggests that they consider it private space.

A map of Earth covers the east wall, so large that you can barely reach across South America with both arms outstretched. It has attracted several groups of interested visitors, who are pointing out to each other details of the topography of Mongolia and making excited gestures at the Sahara.

There is a display case in the middle of the room.
action: You examine the map
response: A detailed geographical map which omits political boundaries of any kind. While High Command doesn't lie about the political situation, it tends towards discretion -- as Kruger puts it, "You don't talk about ex-girlfriends on the first date."
action: You look at the case
response: Designed for a viewer with an Earth-average eye level, which is to say, several inches lower than is ideal. It contains only a pink card.
action: You examine the pink card
response: The pink card appears to say cure/serum fatal-sickness primitive borrowed -- research center room 58 -- card-that-grants-access.

With a great deal of luck, that will mean that you can go to this research facility and collect the vaccine without too much hassle. That is, assuming Colonist scientists are less fussy about interrupting their experiments than the Earth scientists you've met.
action: Go downward
response: Unlike the upper levels of the Embassy, the basement is built for practical purposes, and resembles the inside of a concrete cigar box. It continues to the south, dimly lit and cold.

Along the west wall, a chute from above empties into a large metal container.
action: Search container
response: You push up the lid to reveal a receipt and a data disk. Well, well, well. Valenti may have been a criminal and an ass, but at least he was incompetent.

Very interesting.
action: Disk
response: receipt: Taken.
data disk: Taken.
action: You look at the receipt
response: The receipt appears to say disguise/costume/funny clothing for proposal-of-marriage white large.

Mentally you check off "find jacket receipt in the recycling chute (Valenti's suggestion)" on your list of remaining tasks. You run over the things various people have decided you ought to do:
give the jacket receipt to Liam
acquire vaccine from the research facility (HC's orders)
wear white jacket (Valenti's idea)
find a working float unit
summon Liam and show him the gift box
meet with Ambassador Aylene to present your gift
action: You examine disk
response: An Earth-style computer disk an inch and a half on a side, and labeled "JOURNAL, TRANSLATIONS" in spiky unfriendly handwriting.
action: You put the disk in the computer
response: You put the data disk into the spare data slot.
action: You consult computer about the journal
response: Your search turns up the following entries from Valenti's personal log:

--: Valenti's data disk contains a variety of data entries, article annotations, translations of this and that, etc., and is more easily approached by trying to extract a single topic of information than by straight reading. Hence the need to look things up.
action: You consult the computer about the gifts
response: Your search turns up the following articles:

Gift day: Three times per local year you are expected to exchange gifts with a representative of the Aleheart government. These days are keyed to the anniversary of first Earth contact and are not celebrated by the rest of the population in general.

gift symbolism: draft proposal: According to the etiquette files, those proposing marriage or cooperative scientific ventures may do so by creating a sample of the kind of project they hope to undertake. In the case of marriage, these are usually representations of the offspring that might be engineered from the two parents; for purely business relationships, other kinds of model, sample, or technical proposal are appropriate. A superior looking to employ or adopt an inferior may give a sample of the kind of work the inferior will be expected to produce as a condition of the employment.

gift symbolism: personal token: Etiquette files reveal that an object personally significant to the giver is an appropriate gift when establishing a relationship of friendship in which no joint work or project is intended. Also sometimes used for marriages not intended to produce offspring.

gift symbolism: knife: Apparently, according to the etiquette files, any edged instrument is a symbol of restrictions, living under strict controls imposed by someone else, and dating back to clinical trials in which new genetic lines deemed to be failing their intended purpose were slaughtered with a knife. This practice is now called flushing and does not require a blade, but the associations remain.

Your search turns up the following entries from Valenti's personal log:

six months ago: ...Mealy-mouthed third-rate translation of a traditional courtship greeting. Not sure whether High Command is so dumb that they don't know this, or so dumb that they don't tell their emissaries. Not sure which would be dumber. What do they think Gift Day is about? Hostess presents?
action: You consult the computer about the red
response: Your search turns up the following articles:

color symbolism: red: Red is the color of superior power, requiring relatively expensive dyes. It is worn by parties offering conditional adoption.

Conditional adoption: An agreement by which one party becomes responsible for the needs of another party, in exchange for some concessions -- usually part or all of that party's work. Somewhere between hiring and slavery. Usually offered with red clothing and a token of the sort of work required. Cannot seriously be offered by someone without the credible appearance of power, however.

There isn't any personal data available from logs or annotations.
action: You consult the computer about the white
response: Your search turns up the following articles:

color symbolism: white: White is the color of balance, being the color of the rings in summer sky. It is worn to offer marriage, equitable business, or cohabitation in shared house under non-hierarchical terms.

Your search turns up the following entries from Valenti's personal log:

15 days ago: Got suited for white jacket today for wedding proposal. Not quite sure what the tailor thought. Charged it to personal funds since do not want it on HC bill.
action: You consult the computer about the black
response: Your search turns up the following articles:

color symbolism: black: The color of termination, worn to refuse an agreement; to propose corporate splits or divorce.

There isn't any personal data available from logs or annotations.
action: You consult the computer about grey
response: Your search turns up the following articles:

color symbolism: grey: Grey is considered neutral and signifies a lack of decision.

There isn't any personal data available from logs or annotations.
action: You consult the computer about the purple
response: The computer beeps irritably: NO RESULTS FOUND. PLEASE REPHRASE AND TRY AGAIN.
action: You consult the computer about the widget
response: Your search turns up the following entries from Valenti's personal log:

six months ago: Aylene gave me a live rock! Which, in theory, calculates what everyone thinks of me, to many decimal places of accuracy (!). Don't think she realized what negative reinforcement this would be. Can't help experimenting with ways to make numbers go up and down. Bet I could crash all three to zero if I ran through the Solarium bareassed. Apparently the thing corresponds to a portion of the alien brain. I admit (if only to myself) that I find the concept disgusting. But I admit a lot to myself lately. I gather my predecessor talked to herself as well. I need some recordings of human speech or may go insane...

three months ago: I tried asking her whether she can factor in my thoughts the same way her little live rock tracks everyone else's. She said no, I don't broadcast. She looked tremendously uncomfortable. I cannot say how smug this makes me.
action: You consult the computer about Aylene
response: Your search turns up the following entries from Valenti's personal log:

eight months ago: Met my counterpart, the ambassador Aylene, today. Frankly, High Command should have left Yamashita here -- they probably did wonderfully having tea parties together and comparing fashion notes. Have never met another human -- no, strike that, because she isn't human. Have never met any person with so little emotional affect in speech and behavior. Not sure what gene modifications they made to her, but it is frightening.

five months ago: Coming to terms with the bowing. When Aylene bows, when she smiles, when she says polite formulas, the etiquette system doesn't seem stupid. She's not bowing to show how well-bred she is. It's a liturgy of respect. You bow to show that you respect someone but also to remind yourself of this fact. Sincerity can work inward as well as outward. You don't have to like someone to treat them well. If you practice this sometimes leads to liking.

Then again, sometimes not.

five weeks ago: Is it possible that Liam is jealous of me because of Aylene? I find him lurking around after she's been here, looking sniffy and grim. Naturally Aylene's live rock doesn't offer any sort of data analysis function. That might be dangerously useful.

four weeks ago: Another long, long talk with Aylene. She may be coming around on the cohabitation idea, of shared resources and an integrated society. But there are concessions involved on both sides, and she is more afraid of her people than I am of mine. There's no way they're going to be able to live on Earth and preserve their daintiness about eating, for instance. Which in my opinion would be no bad thing, but one can hardly say that...

28 days ago: Naturally after I read that I asked Aylene about it (if we're modeling our alliance on a marriage I'd rather not have "marriage" mean "eugenics program"). She says in practice there's hardly any "flushing". I still have some serious questions about this, but I think inasmuch as it applies to the current occasion we're looking rather at a joint stewardship of the resources available to both planets. HC should be able to live with that. I don't know whether the general population would be so enthusiastic, but the general population seems to think it's a point of principle not to make any concessions or in fact live in the real world in any way.

25 days ago: And, well, the personal component of all this. I very nearly put it to Aylene as an offer based on symbolism and political expediency. She would have understood that, but... I would like to marry her, in truth, and not simply as a means to an end. She was silent after I raised the possibility. I think I went about it wrong, but it's damned difficult to know what "right" looks like here. How the hell would I know?

24 days ago: She won't talk to me today.

23 days ago: They voted her out. I cannot believe they voted her out. What kind of employment system is that, anyway?

5 days ago: News from Kruger: I am out. No explanation. Replacement already en route. Pack bags, prepare to leave. Can't bring myself to contact Aylene.
action: You consult the computer about the SOC
response: Your search turns up the following entries from Valenti's personal log:

six months ago: Aylene gave me a live rock! Which, in theory, calculates what everyone thinks of me, to many decimal places of accuracy (!). Don't think she realized what negative reinforcement this would be. Can't help experimenting with ways to make numbers go up and down. Bet I could crash all three to zero if I ran through the Solarium bareassed. Apparently the thing corresponds to a portion of the alien brain. I admit (if only to myself) that I find the concept disgusting. But I admit a lot to myself lately. I gather my predecessor talked to herself as well. I need some recordings of human speech or may go insane...
action: You go to the west
response: The floor of the Receiving Room is decorated with broken glass. It's not conducive to strolling around without a float unit.
action: Time
response: It is 1:31 pm -- here, anyhow.
action: Go east
response: You stand at the western end of a shallow rectangular pool -- no doubt part of the reason the air is softer and more humid here than it was outside. The garden paths open at the east end of the pool; the Embassy is west, at your back.

If you look down, you catch the reflection in the surface, and a number of small red fish swimming around, in formation, making symbols which you cannot read.
action: Go east
response: You wander between plots: what catches your eye this time is a writing-desk-tree, spreading to a flat surface at about three feet.

The Grand Solarium is an enormous dome with an oval roof of glass and grown metalwork. Inside is a botanical garden, which, on this planet, is a kind of art museum. Each plot displays some invented shrub that would be illegal on Earth.

The southern end of the dome, where they grow edible crops, is hidden by a decorative screen of hanging flowers. The garden also continues to the east; away to the west is the front of the Earth Embassy, now your home.

A double set of insulating doors leads north to the outdoors.
action: Go north
response: You head out of the Solarium and down a brief slope, into the clearing at the center of town.

The street runs north/south, so that you have an uninterrupted view of Cordia Peak, and the leading edge of the glacier at the northern edge of town.

Both sides of the street are built up. A substantial building of metal and glass lies to the east, houses to the west.

The ring system is mostly obscured by the grand solarium to the south, accessible through the insulating doors. The solarium is a huge domed structure to keep in as much heat and warmth as possible; the Earth embassy is inside.

At the center of the open space here is a monument shaped like a tusk or tooth.
action: You look at the monument
response: It has look of force-grown bone, monolithic and taller than a man.

The symbolic lettering of the current language has been painted on the side, but the original carving is in Chinese and English: "To those who, in the name of the Company and for the advancement of knowledge, were killed, modified incorrectly, or born unfit."
action: Go east
response: A repulsion field prevents you from entering the building without the proper security device.
action: You go south
response: The Grand Solarium is an enormous dome with an oval roof of glass and grown metalwork. Inside is a botanical garden, which, on this planet, is a kind of art museum. Each plot displays some invented shrub that would be illegal on Earth.

The southern end of the dome, where they grow edible crops, is hidden by a decorative screen of hanging flowers. The garden also continues to the east; away to the west is the front of the Earth Embassy, now your home.

A double set of insulating doors leads north to the outdoors.
action: Go south
response: You approach the curtain of vine; it draws away, then begins to repel you. Your face feels hot, as though sunburnt. You step away.
action: You examine the vine
response: Flowers with all the color bred out, translucent buds clustered on grey vines. They separate you from the southern part of the dome.
action: You think
response: You run over the things various people have decided you ought to do: give the jacket receipt to Liam
acquire vaccine from the research facility (HC's orders)
wear white jacket (Valenti's idea)
find a working float unit
summon Liam and show him the gift box
meet with Ambassador Aylene to present your gift
action: You squeeze the rock
response: The surface has a give to it, and it squeaks once. Small regretful letters read: AIDE CURRENTLY OUT OF RANGE. Maybe in the embassy proper, then.
action: You go west
response: You wander between plots: what catches your eye this time is a wispy groundcover exuding fog.

You stand at the eastern end of a shallow rectangular pool -- no doubt part of the reason the air is softer and more humid here than it was outside. The Embassy is just west of here, at the far end of the pool.

If you look down, you catch the reflection in the surface, and a number of small red fish swimming around, in formation, making symbols which you cannot read.
action: You squeeze the rock
response: The surface has a give to it, and it squeaks once. COMING, reads the skin lettering tersely.

Liam slips through the locked barrier from the south.
action: You show the receipt to Liam
response: Liam takes the receipt numbly and looks at it, then back at you. "You are... seeking this apparel?" he asks. You nod curtly in a manner you hope suggests decisiveness rather than an inability to speak his language.

The silence becomes uncomfortable. You realize after a moment what has changed: he is now floating at the same height as you, looking you in the eye directly. For some reason he is not at all pleased with this request.

Mentally you check off "give the jacket receipt to Liam" on your list of remaining tasks. You run over the things various people have decided you ought to do:
acquire vaccine from the research facility (HC's orders)
wear white jacket (Valenti's idea)
find a working float unit
summon Liam and show him the gift box
meet with Ambassador Aylene to present your gift

A moment later -- more quickly than you expected -- he returns with the white jacket, and something else: a pale pink fruit. He puts the fruit into your hand firmly so that it is squeezed.
action: You examine the fruit
response: It is one of those recording fruits into which information is put.

The pink fruit hisses sparks and juice, but then it begins to play, a projection hovering in the middle of the air:

Liam is standing in the foyer next to Aylene. The Ambassador has ordered a white jacket, he says.

It is not a surprise. Her hands are clasped in front of her, the sleeves almost covering them. We are discussing a treaty of cohabitation.

Liam frowns. It pleases me that they admit they are wrong to exile us from Earth...

But you prefer not to mix cultures, Aylene finishes.

I would prefer that they beg us to return and we refuse.

She smiles affectionately. Like an angry lover! But Valenti has not guessed how you felt toward him when he arrived here.
action: You show the fruit to Liam
response: Liam is entirely occupied with the recording he wants to show you, and you find you have a hard time looking away either.

In the recording, Liam turns pink. Unlikely that he would guess any social thing that is not told to him three times in English! And I only admired -- he seemed to have energy, much purpose.

He has. Her own tone is wistful. But I know you, Liam. You are not unjust to the Earth folk because Valenti disappoints you. If the right thing is cohabitation, you judge the possibility fairly.

What good will come of it? he asks. They are not-- The subtitling flickers here, flashing through a half-dozen words: social nice adjusted sane-minded obedient easily-understood. They do not design new lines. They will probably forbid us designing ourselves.

Aylene answers: In a year ice will break the dam and the Solarium wall. We will all take the train to Tanhua to be retired. We have few choices.
action: You examine the fruit
response: It is one of those recording fruits into which information is put.

The TY line are bred for winter survival. Fur, hibernation, slow metabolism. He runs a finger over the fuzz on the backs of his wrists.

I've followed your designer's experiments, Aylene says. They move too slowly.

We wasted time on Earth compatibility, he replies, bitter. I commented this on design proposals, but everyone is mad with wanting to go Home. Earth songs sung again, the Sanctuary of Earth plants restored, people laugh with teeth showing. Does Valenti like the almost-humans? No, he takes no interest. And if we do not go to Earth, they are trouble -- retrograde stock, badly socialized, expensive to feed.
action: You examine the fruit
response: It is one of those recording fruits into which information is put.

She turns to him abruptly. Be careful. When I am removed after Gift Day, you will be Ambassador.

His mouth opens, but he recovers. Then let Earth also send a different speaker. Valenti has no respect for us. I cannot talk to him.

He has no respect for groups, only individuals. You see the bad; there is also good. He does not expect us to sacrifice any lines of stock--

If we go to Earth, the TY are useless. If we stay, the Earth-compatibles...

She puts up a hand, hushing him. Valenti is at the door. His eyes go to Aylene; he moves towards her, barely sparing a glance for Liam, who smiles wryly.

The recording flickers out.

The images over, Liam seems to feel that you have seen whatever he wanted you to see, so he puts the white jacket you demanded over your arm.
action: You check what you're carrying
response: You are carrying:
a puffy white jacket
a pale pink fruit
a silver kiddush cup
some fuzzy bunny slippers
a yellow paper note
a mail packet
an empty gift box
a handheld computer (in which is a data disk)
a grey widget saying SOC 13.08113, POW 20.7639, INT 11.61016
a magnificent ensemble of flowing scarlet robe, chronometer, grey undersuit, shoes, and socks

Liam waits for your instructions, though with a faint air of impatience.
action: You look at the white jacket
response: The jacket is loosely cut, as you would expect, with floatpins throughout. The cuffs have two narrow stripes of gold and red, like a uniform. It looks very fresh and crisp. Possibly Valenti never wore it, and that's why he didn't bother to keep it. It looks as though you might be able to wear it, though you may look strange.

Liam waits for your instructions, though with a faint air of impatience.
action: You look at the slippers
response: They have rabbit ears and are a collector's item from before the plague years. They are also pink. Your friend Jane gave them to you, motivated by inscrutable Jane-like humor; they still bear the stamp of Salvage and Reclamation on the soles. Presumably your felonious dockworker recognized their worth and decided it was better not to steal them, but under the circumstances you'd rather have some of the clothing you actually intended to wear.

Liam slips through the locked barrier to the south.
action: You consult the computer about the research center
response: The computer shows you how to go to the research facility. You'd start with east, from here.
action: You consult the computer about the symbols
response: Your search turns up the following articles:

gift symbolism: draft proposal: According to the etiquette files, those proposing marriage or cooperative scientific ventures may do so by creating a sample of the kind of project they hope to undertake. In the case of marriage, these are usually representations of the offspring that might be engineered from the two parents; for purely business relationships, other kinds of model, sample, or technical proposal are appropriate. A superior looking to employ or adopt an inferior may give a sample of the kind of work the inferior will be expected to produce as a condition of the employment.

gift symbolism: personal token: Etiquette files reveal that an object personally significant to the giver is an appropriate gift when establishing a relationship of friendship in which no joint work or project is intended. Also sometimes used for marriages not intended to produce offspring.

gift symbolism: knife: Apparently, according to the etiquette files, any edged instrument is a symbol of restrictions, living under strict controls imposed by someone else, and dating back to clinical trials in which new genetic lines deemed to be failing their intended purpose were slaughtered with a knife. This practice is now called flushing and does not require a blade, but the associations remain.

Your search turns up the following entries from Valenti's personal log:

six months ago: Have been making progress with the translations of etiquette guide... much appears to center upon proposals of various kinds. I have gathered the formal proposal system they're using on us is not (contrary to what they might say) a frequent feature of daily life for them either, but is rather some archaic bit of hazing they got out of mothballs. As a test, maybe. Or maybe because the symbols and terms of it are actually, God help us, simpler than communicating all the nuances in their language.

seven weeks ago: Liam told me about the flint knife in the Earth Sanctuary. Turns out it wasn't brought by us (always thought that a really odd thing to send) but they brought it here from Earth themselves. There's some sort of gloomy symbolism there which, as usual, he couldn't bring himself to explain directly. A less useful assistant would be difficult to find.

25 days ago: And, well, the personal component of all this. I very nearly put it to Aylene as an offer based on symbolism and political expediency. She would have understood that, but... I would like to marry her, in truth, and not simply as a means to an end. She was silent after I raised the possibility. I think I went about it wrong, but it's damned difficult to know what "right" looks like here. How the hell would I know?
action: You look at the symbols
response: They have red-gold scales and fat round bodies, and are about two inches long. The formations are symbols from the syllabary, but you can't read them.
action: You translate the symbols
response: With a computer, you can read the writing system here, but that is about all.
action: You go to the east
response: You wander between plots: what catches your eye this time is a thorn-tree with black fruit smelling of oil.

The Grand Solarium is an enormous dome with an oval roof of glass and grown metalwork. Inside is a botanical garden, which, on this planet, is a kind of art museum. Each plot displays some invented shrub that would be illegal on Earth.

The southern end of the dome, where they grow edible crops, is hidden by a decorative screen of hanging flowers. The garden also continues to the east; away to the west is the front of the Earth Embassy, now your home.

A double set of insulating doors leads north to the outdoors.
action: You consult computer about research center
response: The computer shows you how to go to the research facility. You'd start with north, from here.
action: Go north
response: You head out of the Solarium and down a brief slope, into the clearing at the center of town.

The street runs north/south, so that you have an uninterrupted view of Cordia Peak, and the leading edge of the glacier at the northern edge of town.

Both sides of the street are built up. A substantial building of metal and glass lies to the east, houses to the west.

The ring system is mostly obscured by the grand solarium to the south, accessible through the insulating doors. The solarium is a huge domed structure to keep in as much heat and warmth as possible; the Earth embassy is inside.

At the center of the open space here is a monument shaped like a tusk or tooth.
action: You look at the building
response: Which do you mean, the substantial building or the houses?
action: You look at the substantial building
response: Large enough to contain hundreds of apartment dwellings, or to provide considerable office space. There is a sign on the wall.
action: You go north
response: You walk along the crunching gravel for some time, noticing here and there a few gravel walkways off to the east and west, but nothing open to visitors. There are fewer Colonists at this end of town.

To the northwest is a public building with a deep portico; to the east, one with a conical roof. The others are private houses, but, except one or two, they don't look lived in. There is a general atmosphere of neglect.

The street continues south into the heart of town, or north towards the mountain and the glacier. A track for a floating train cuts southeast between the buildings.

The rings in the southern sky are partly obscured by the buildings on the horizon, but are still bright enough to catch the eye.
action: You go to the north-west
response: Once this was a kind of hothouse, but the glacier has knocked out loadbearing portions of the north wall. The roof is buckled at that end and gives a view of patchy sky; only a steel scaffold prevents it from falling in completely. Gusts of warm air from the wall vents quickly turn to cloud.

A pamphlet lies discarded near kiosks that line the west wall. The bulk of the area, though, is full of plant lines, growing on frames as in a vineyard.
action: You read pamphlet
response: The pamphlet appears to say Greetings noble companion. Welcome to data compression and storage tree! Designed by (long string of letters and numbers, constituting some colonist's unique personal identification).

Data compression tree analyzes/presses recording and finds correspondences/similarities/relations to known/studied narrative/story structures! Content re-expressed as combination of known/studied structures! Output significantly more compact than original!

SCIENTIFIC mode best suited for compacting very long meetings with scientific content into brief precis; STORY mode captures plot events; SOCIAL mode includes both dialogue and emotion-projection data. More advanced version of Data compression tree available for large projects -- contact designer!

(Output fruit has similar function to other recording fruits. Squeeze output fruit to display content!).
action: You examine the frames
response: They're recordings: the fruits store data. Or they did. The skins are frosted over now.
action: You get the fruits
response: That's fixed in place.
action: You squeeze the fruits
response: You pinch one of the fruits at random. A tiny woman appears in hologram, singing a soprano part. Her voice is staticky and broken. The flesh of the fruit is bruised from being pinched when it was half-frozen.
action: You enter the kiosk
response: The kiosk is no larger than a contamination testing booth back on Earth. It briefly evokes the old fear that somehow, despite every reasonable precaution, this time you will turn out to be infected, and you'd have to tell your mother, and she would be so upset. That would be the worst thing: having to tell your mother.

The only thing of note here is a metal box, mounted on the wall at about shoulder-height, with a bonzai-sized tree growing out of the top.
action: You examine the tree
response: (the tree machine)
A machine titled DATA COMPRESSION AND STORAGE. There is a miniature tree growing out of the top, naked of foliage. On the front of the metal box are green and blue push-knobs, and a movable bronze pointer.

On the left side of the machine there is a funnel, the right size for inserting a recording fruit.
action: You examine the pointer
response: The four settings of the pointer are ORIGINAL, SCIENTIFIC, STORY, SOCIAL.

The pointer is currently set to original.
action: You put the pink fruit in the funnel
response: The pale pink fruit rolls down inside the machine. There is a whirr like your mother's juicer on the first day of a new diet.
action: You set the pointer to the story
response: The pointer turns with a heavy click. The selector now points to story.
action: You set the pointer to scientific
response: The pointer turns with a heavy click. The selector now points to scientific.
action: You set the pointer to social
response: The pointer turns with a heavy click. The selector now points to social.
action: You get the kumquat
response: Taken.
action: You examine it
response: There is a symbol reading STORY COMPRESSION on the skin of the kumquat.
action: Exit
response: (heading east, since that is the only direction available)

Once this was a kind of hothouse, but the glacier has knocked out loadbearing portions of the north wall. The roof is buckled at that end and gives a view of patchy sky; only a steel scaffold prevents it from falling in completely. Gusts of warm air from the wall vents quickly turn to cloud.

A pamphlet lies discarded near kiosks that line the west wall. The bulk of the area, though, is full of plant lines, growing on frames as in a vineyard.
action: You go outside
response: You will have to be more specific about which direction you want to go. From here, you can head southeast and west.
action: You squeeze the kumquat
response: The projection plays, bringing on stage Aylene and Liam in similar, bright-colored costumes.

Aylene sings: I AM PLEASED TO TELL YOU I AM BEING WED.

Liam: MY DEAR FRIEND, IT IS THE PUREST DELIGHT TO HEAR IT. WHO IS THE FORTUNATE GROOM?

Aylene: IT IS VALENTI! THE HANDSOME AND MOST ADMIRABLE VALENTI! THE HONORABLE AND WELL-GROOMED VALENTI OF SUPERIOR GENETIC INHERITANCE! (And so on in this mode for some stanzas, endowing Valenti with such virtues as reinforced femurs and multiple rows of sharklike teeth.)

Liam: THIS CANNOT BE!

Aylene: WHY NOT?

Liam: THIS CANNOT BE!

Aylene: I ASK AGAIN: WHY NOT?

Liam: HE WAS PROMISED TO ME! OH PERFIDIOUS WRETCHED MAN, OH WRETCHED LYING MAN, OH (etc. for a number of verses), AND WHAT IS MORE I WOULD BE DELIGHTED TO LIVE WITHOUT HIM, AND I WISH YOU JOY OF HIM, AND MAY YOU BOTH PERISH OF THE POX

Then the compression system gave up, apparently, because the music splutters out and the antagonists stand glaring at one another, their sequined sleeves glittering in the faux light, until the projection stops.
action: You go to the south-east
response: To the northwest is a public building with a deep portico; to the east, one with a conical roof. The others are private houses, but, except one or two, they don't look lived in. There is a general atmosphere of neglect.

The street continues south into the heart of town, or north towards the mountain and the glacier. A track for a floating train cuts southeast between the buildings.

The rings in the southern sky are partly obscured by the buildings on the horizon, but are still bright enough to catch the eye.
action: You go to the east
response: A grand, hexagonal room with a tiled floor of intricate design. Around the outside of the room runs a bench, divided by carving into seats -- perhaps ten seats on a side -- and there is a label on each seat, except for a few blank ones left at the south-east side of the room.

But it can't have been used for some time. The glass is knocked out of the windows, the tiles broken.
action: You read the labels
response: The seating label appears to say A3 representative... TY representative... RA....
action: You consult the computer about Liam
response: Your search turns up the following articles:

Liam: All that's available is a brief dossier about Liam's former employment and job rankings, which are cryptic in format and convey almost nothing to you.

Your search turns up the following entries from Valenti's personal log:

seven months ago: God. Where to begin? Liam would not be assigned this -- as I discover -- extremely low-ranking position as my assistant if he had turned out to be good at any of the traditional skills, such as manufacturing birds that fly backwards, or engineering climatic disasters. He is sensitive, petty, and desperate for my approval, since only my approval will improve his rank and get him out of here. He has some good points, such as tolerance for boredom, but this is not enough to prevent me wanting to strangle him.

seven weeks ago: Liam told me about the flint knife in the Earth Sanctuary. Turns out it wasn't brought by us (always thought that a really odd thing to send) but they brought it here from Earth themselves. There's some sort of gloomy symbolism there which, as usual, he couldn't bring himself to explain directly. A less useful assistant would be difficult to find.

five weeks ago: Is it possible that Liam is jealous of me because of Aylene? I find him lurking around after she's been here, looking sniffy and grim. Naturally Aylene's live rock doesn't offer any sort of data analysis function. That might be dangerously useful.

22 days ago: Fight with Liam. Not my finest hour. Sometimes am almost glad they're getting me out of here. Filched the recording, that not being something I want anyone else to have a copy of. And I used to have such high ideas about what diplomacy could be.
action: You consult the computer about the lines
response: Your search turns up the following entries from Valenti's personal log:

two months ago: Funny sort of personal conversation with A. Turns out that she is descended from Peter and Charla herself -- the whole A line is. This is such a strange thought to me. Apparently they're among the most human-like of the remaining lines (though with certain obligatory modifications, of course), which I suppose is why she was assigned to deal with us.
action: Exit
response: (heading west, since that is the only direction available)

To the northwest is a public building with a deep portico; to the east, one with a conical roof. The others are private houses, but, except one or two, they don't look lived in. There is a general atmosphere of neglect.

The street continues south into the heart of town, or north towards the mountain and the glacier. A track for a floating train cuts southeast between the buildings.

The rings in the southern sky are partly obscured by the buildings on the horizon, but are still bright enough to catch the eye.
action: You look at the track
response: The tracks run away between the houses, heading southeast towards southern settlements and eventually to Tanhua. They stop at the edge of Broad Street, so this must be the end of the line for any supplies or visitors being brought up from the south -- though presumably there is a larger station and a proper loading and unloading dock elsewhere.
action: You go to the south
response: After a few minutes of walking, you reach an area with Colonists around. You carefully don't stare at them as they carefully do not stare at you. But from the sides of your eyes you watch how they float a few inches off the ground; how they do not touch things.

The street runs north/south, so that you have an uninterrupted view of Cordia Peak, and the leading edge of the glacier at the northern edge of town.

Both sides of the street are built up. A substantial building of metal and glass lies to the east, houses to the west.

The ring system is mostly obscured by the grand solarium to the south, accessible through the insulating doors. The solarium is a huge domed structure to keep in as much heat and warmth as possible; the Earth embassy is inside.

At the center of the open space here is a monument shaped like a tusk or tooth.
action: You go south
response: The Grand Solarium is an enormous dome with an oval roof of glass and grown metalwork. Inside is a botanical garden, which, on this planet, is a kind of art museum. Each plot displays some invented shrub that would be illegal on Earth.

The southern end of the dome, where they grow edible crops, is hidden by a decorative screen of hanging flowers. The garden also continues to the east; away to the west is the front of the Earth Embassy, now your home.

A double set of insulating doors leads north to the outdoors.
action: Go east
response: This area is set aside from the rest of the Solarium by a stone wall. There are no engineered plants that you recognize, only green grass. It smells like the Chicago suburbs in August.

At the center of the grass is a hexagonal stone dais large enough to elevate one person above the crowd.

A few Colonists stand facing the center with the silent attitude of worshippers.
action: You examine the dais
response: It is carved. It's also old. Along one edge of the hexagon it reads (in English): "RIP Peter Long, Director of High-Risk Research".
action: You consult computer about Peter
response: Your search turns up the following entries from Valenti's personal log:

four months ago: More research. My Charla seems to have been married to Peter Long. Wish I had a clearer idea of what Peter Long was up to.

four months ago: So. Put together the archive files on Charla and her companion Peter Long here. I have what appear to be six versions of the same events, recorded in distinctly stylized and different forms -- including what looks like an opera. (Or some perversion thereof.) I'd say they were literary reworkings but no, they seem actually to be a convention-based compression of some original, now-lost data recording. The weird thing is that they don't all end the same way -- apparently the conventions of recording are allowed to override, for instance, matters of fact.

four months ago: Oh my. Cross-comparing the data and the compression algorithm information I could find I think I have worked my way to a fuzzy but more-accurate version of the original. Spent a good while in the archive building messing with the kiosks. Got to talk to A about this, find out if it is really true. If it is, we may end scuttling the whole treaty if I report what I found on Charla and Peter Long. Long is really the issue; it's just our bad bad bad bad bad luck that Charla's relatives are still alive and, worse, pushy about finding out what became of her.

four months ago: Amazing it never occurred to me to wonder exactly what happened when they lost Earth contact here. Peter Long's solution seems obvious. In retrospect.

three months ago: Long talk with A, and she essentially confirmed for me what I had already pieced together, though with some bits that I hadn't quite understood about Peter and Charla. And then I got rid of the recordings. The destruction of data, a slippery slope. This was much bigger than getting rid of Yamashita's correspondence disc but it felt less awful, somehow. This is something I cannot, cannot report back if I want these people saved. And increasingly I do. Even my infuriating assistant.

two months ago: Funny sort of personal conversation with A. Turns out that she is descended from Peter and Charla herself -- the whole A line is. This is such a strange thought to me. Apparently they're among the most human-like of the remaining lines (though with certain obligatory modifications, of course), which I suppose is why she was assigned to deal with us.

27 days ago: Went to the Earth Sanctuary and heard a few songs. Strangely moving. One of them was in fact about old Peter. Felt like it was the play to catch the conscience, etc., except of course in this case I'm not the murderer and it's everyone else's conscience that really ought to be bothered, not mine. It was a good song, though. They got out the flint knife at the end -- it's a prop of this performance, I gather.
action: You consult the computer about Charla
response: Your search turns up the following entries from Valenti's personal log:

seven months ago: Huge wad of demands from Earth that I do research to find people's missing ancestors. In my spare time from carving out a treaty, I am to look for someone's great-aunt Charla.

five months ago: More background research. Think I found the files on this Charla character, but they're very strange. All their historical data is preserved in severely lossy formats.

four months ago: More research. My Charla seems to have been married to Peter Long. Wish I had a clearer idea of what Peter Long was up to.

four months ago: So. Put together the archive files on Charla and her companion Peter Long here. I have what appear to be six versions of the same events, recorded in distinctly stylized and different forms -- including what looks like an opera. (Or some perversion thereof.) I'd say they were literary reworkings but no, they seem actually to be a convention-based compression of some original, now-lost data recording. The weird thing is that they don't all end the same way -- apparently the conventions of recording are allowed to override, for instance, matters of fact.

four months ago: Oh my. Cross-comparing the data and the compression algorithm information I could find I think I have worked my way to a fuzzy but more-accurate version of the original. Spent a good while in the archive building messing with the kiosks. Got to talk to A about this, find out if it is really true. If it is, we may end scuttling the whole treaty if I report what I found on Charla and Peter Long. Long is really the issue; it's just our bad bad bad bad bad luck that Charla's relatives are still alive and, worse, pushy about finding out what became of her.

three months ago: Long talk with A, and she essentially confirmed for me what I had already pieced together, though with some bits that I hadn't quite understood about Peter and Charla. And then I got rid of the recordings. The destruction of data, a slippery slope. This was much bigger than getting rid of Yamashita's correspondence disc but it felt less awful, somehow. This is something I cannot, cannot report back if I want these people saved. And increasingly I do. Even my infuriating assistant.

two months ago: Funny sort of personal conversation with A. Turns out that she is descended from Peter and Charla herself -- the whole A line is. This is such a strange thought to me. Apparently they're among the most human-like of the remaining lines (though with certain obligatory modifications, of course), which I suppose is why she was assigned to deal with us.
action: You consult the computer about the knife
response: Your search turns up the following articles:

gift symbolism: knife: Apparently, according to the etiquette files, any edged instrument is a symbol of restrictions, living under strict controls imposed by someone else, and dating back to clinical trials in which new genetic lines deemed to be failing their intended purpose were slaughtered with a knife. This practice is now called flushing and does not require a blade, but the associations remain.

Your search turns up the following entries from Valenti's personal log:

seven weeks ago: Liam told me about the flint knife in the Earth Sanctuary. Turns out it wasn't brought by us (always thought that a really odd thing to send) but they brought it here from Earth themselves. There's some sort of gloomy symbolism there which, as usual, he couldn't bring himself to explain directly. A less useful assistant would be difficult to find.

27 days ago: Went to the Earth Sanctuary and heard a few songs. Strangely moving. One of them was in fact about old Peter. Felt like it was the play to catch the conscience, etc., except of course in this case I'm not the murderer and it's everyone else's conscience that really ought to be bothered, not mine. It was a good song, though. They got out the flint knife at the end -- it's a prop of this performance, I gather.
action: You look at the colonists
response: Quiet and thoughtful.
action: Go east
response: From here, you can go west (to grand solarium).
action: Go west
response: The Grand Solarium is an enormous dome with an oval roof of glass and grown metalwork. Inside is a botanical garden, which, on this planet, is a kind of art museum. Each plot displays some invented shrub that would be illegal on Earth.

The southern end of the dome, where they grow edible crops, is hidden by a decorative screen of hanging flowers. The garden also continues to the east; away to the west is the front of the Earth Embassy, now your home.

A double set of insulating doors leads north to the outdoors.
action: Go west
response: You wander between plots: what catches your eye this time is vines growing tablet-like medicinal berries.

You stand at the eastern end of a shallow rectangular pool -- no doubt part of the reason the air is softer and more humid here than it was outside. The Embassy is just west of here, at the far end of the pool.

If you look down, you catch the reflection in the surface, and a number of small red fish swimming around, in formation, making symbols which you cannot read.
action: Go south
response: From here, you can go west (to the front stairs) or east (to grand solarium).
action: You look at the orange
response: Short orange trees growing in tubs next to the staircase. They have glossy dark leaves and orange fruit.
action: You consult the computer about the float unit
response: Your search turns up the following articles:

Float technology and human adaptation: The article describes, with pictures, the float units built for humans who want to replicate the colonists' natural floating abilities. A supply of these were apparently built for the use of ambassadors and stored in the basement of the Embassy, since it was observed that humans tended to break them at a high rate.

There isn't any personal data available from logs or annotations.
action: You go to the south
response: Little more than a chilly concrete box. It continues some distance to the north.

Something resembling the root system of Yggdrasil covers the south wall; from close up it appears to be a complex heating system with pipes and tubes.

A personal float unit hovers three inches off the floor at the middle of the room.

Mentally you check off "find a working float unit" on your list of remaining tasks. You run over the things various people have decided you ought to do:
acquire vaccine from the research facility (HC's orders)
wear white jacket (Valenti's idea)
summon Liam and show him the gift box
meet with Ambassador Aylene to present your gift
action: You get the unit
response: It is not designed to be lifted, only ridden. The outer shell is extremely dense.
action: Ride unit
response: Reminding yourself that you have never yet broken your neck on one of these things, you put your left foot onto the float unit and attempt to take your right foot off the floor.

Naturally, being frictionless, it glides away, and you fall into a painful split.

The good thing about this, remember, is that you're alone down here. Plenty of opportunity to try again.
action: Ride unit
response: You circle the float unit a few times, sizing it up. When it looks most helpless and unsuspecting, you hop on.

It dips, wobbles, tries to dodge -- but you master it. Yes. You are aboard.
action: You examine unit
response: The purpose of the float unit is to allow you to do awkwardly what the natives do well: hover a few inches off the ground (or water). It consists of an oval platform four or five inches thick and made of dense material, with a reservoir for floatpoints inside. There is also a dial on one side. The unit currently hovers three inches off the floor.
action: You examine dial
response: A small dial, unlabeled but presumably meant to control the floatation of the unit.
action: Look around
response: Utility Room (on the personal float unit)
Little more than a chilly concrete box. It continues some distance to the north.

Something resembling the root system of Yggdrasil covers the south wall; from close up it appears to be a complex heating system with pipes and tubes.
action: You examine the system
response: A curious combination of metal and organics. A potbellied brass shell contains a living organism with pinkish, sparsely-furred flesh visible at the openings. Metal pipes lead out of the shell into the walls, and a metal switch controls whether it is on or off. There's an intake gill along the front, also made of metal.

The only thing not protected by metalwork is the heater's mouth, which has a black beak as long as your hand.
action: You go north
response: Basement (on the personal float unit)
Unlike the upper levels of the Embassy, the basement is built for practical purposes, and resembles the inside of a concrete cigar box. It continues to the south, dimly lit and cold.

Along the west wall, a chute from above empties into a large metal container.
action: Go upwards
response: Museum (on the personal float unit)
The Museum is a presentation on Earth -- geography, culture, and everything else. The selection is idiosyncratic, but apparently compelling, to judge by the healthy crowd currently looking it over.

To one side there is a ramp leading down. The studious way the crowd ignores this ramp suggests that they consider it private space.

A map of Earth covers the east wall, so large that you can barely reach across South America with both arms outstretched. It has attracted several groups of interested visitors, who are pointing out to each other details of the topography of Mongolia and making excited gestures at the Sahara.

There is a display case in the middle of the room.

The widget readout changes to SOC 15.8891, POW 20.19617, INT 12.0329.
action: You go south
response: Embassy Foyer (on the personal float unit)
Like most buildings here, the Embassy is built with an eye for organic color and form: windows and doorways framed with curved ironwork, accents of bright enamel, wooden floors grown in place. All conspicuously wasteful of both materials and labor. It might be intended to make Earth representatives uncomfortable, or it might be meant as an honor, or it might be an advertisement for a standard of living that Earth lost some time ago. Too hard to tell.

There's a large Receiving Room to the west. Less prominent rooms lie north and south -- the south with a locked private door, the north an archway offering a mercifully limited view of the "Museum". Shallow stairs, almost a ramp, rise to a second story.
action: You go to the west
response: Receiving Room (on the personal float unit)
None of the rooms of the Embassy are ordinary, but this one is spectacular: the floor glittering with blue and gold glass, the vault a basketry of interwoven branches of interwoven branches. The lower half of the wall is covered with feathers, yellow and deep blue, like a parrot's.

Something like a glass flower grows from the wall, a disguised bracket for holding a recording machine.
action: You look at the flower
response: It looks like a glass tulip with a round red seed in it.
action: You look at the seed
response: It looks like a round red seed. You've seen these before, on the ship over: they're recording devices that mature as they fill up with data, and will show their contents when squeezed. It is around the size of an apricot pit.
action: You examine the feathers
response: They have the gloss of real feathers, and that doesn't change the complete strangeness of having them there. The whole room seems like a thematic allusion to a lost Amazonian jungle, as interpreted by aesthetes with no experience of a natural biome of any kind. Which is true.
action: You think
response: You run over the things various people have decided you ought to do: acquire vaccine from the research facility (HC's orders)
wear white jacket (Valenti's idea)
summon Liam and show him the gift box
meet with Ambassador Aylene to present your gift
action: You go north
response: Museum (on the personal float unit)
The Museum is a presentation on Earth -- geography, culture, and everything else. The selection is idiosyncratic, but apparently compelling, to judge by the healthy crowd currently looking it over.

To one side there is a ramp leading down. The studious way the crowd ignores this ramp suggests that they consider it private space.

A map of Earth covers the east wall, so large that you can barely reach across South America with both arms outstretched. It has attracted several groups of interested visitors, who are pointing out to each other details of the topography of Mongolia and making excited gestures at the Sahara.

There is a display case in the middle of the room.
action: Open case
response: You open the display case.
action: You get the card
response: Picking the pink card up is challenging because, you discover, it's embedded with a couple of floatpoints -- probably a security-override device. You can grasp it by the edges, though.
action: You look at it
response: The pink card appears to say cure/serum fatal-sickness primitive borrowed -- research center room 58 -- card-that-grants-access.
action: Inventory
response: You are carrying:
a pink card
a kumquat
a puffy white jacket
a silver kiddush cup
some fuzzy bunny slippers
a yellow paper note
a mail packet
an empty gift box
a handheld computer (in which is a data disk)
a grey widget saying SOC 15.6347, POW 20.42796, INT 12.0493
a magnificent ensemble of flowing scarlet robe, chronometer, grey undersuit, shoes, and socks
action: Go east
response: Front Stairs (on the personal float unit)
The Embassy proper is directly west. The entrance is flanked by orange trees, familiar and earthly.

From the top of the Front Stairs you have an excellent view of the whole interior of the Solarium, the sunlight catching in the curved triangular panes of glass.

East, at the bottom of the stairs, is the mirror-glass of the pool. Beyond it the botanical garden has a structure invisible from the inside.
action: Go east
response: You urge the float unit east down the stairs: quickly it gathers speed and sends you shooting across into the middle of...

Reflecting Pool (on the personal float unit)
On the float unit, you are able to float above the water. The water underneath the float unit goes flat. The fish bump into the surface and bounce off as if from a sheet of aquarium glassthe western end of a shallow rectangular pool -- no doubt part of the reason the air is softer and more humid here than it was outside. The garden paths open at the east end of the pool; the Embassy is west, at your back.

If you look down, you catch the reflection in the surface, and a number of small red fish swimming around, in formation, making symbols which you cannot read.
action: Go east
response: You wander between plots: what catches your eye this time is purplish moss several inches deep but with no identifiable purpose.

Grand Solarium (on the personal float unit)
The Grand Solarium is an enormous dome with an oval roof of glass and grown metalwork. Inside is a botanical garden, which, on this planet, is a kind of art museum. Each plot displays some invented shrub that would be illegal on Earth.

The southern end of the dome, where they grow edible crops, is hidden by a decorative screen of hanging flowers. The garden also continues to the east; away to the west is the front of the Earth Embassy, now your home.

A double set of insulating doors leads north to the outdoors.
action: You go north
response: You head out of the Solarium and down a brief slope, into the clearing at the center of town.

Clearing (on the personal float unit)
The street runs north/south, so that you have an uninterrupted view of Cordia Peak, and the leading edge of the glacier at the northern edge of town.

Both sides of the street are built up. A substantial building of metal and glass lies to the east, houses to the west.

The rings in the southern sky are partly obscured by the buildings on the horizon, but are still bright enough to catch the eye.

A double set of insulating doors leads south into a huge glass and metal dome, a greenhouse and Solarium where most of the local population now lives; the Embassy is inside.

At the center of the open space here is a monument shaped like a tusk or tooth.
action: Go east
response: Research Facility (on the personal float unit)
The lobby of the building is surprisingly open: you would have expected security and a receptionist. But there are no industrial secrets to protect.

Mounted on the east wall are colorful project proposals.

A baffling number of doors lead out to smaller rooms around the perimeter of the central space. They are all protected by security fields, so that you can't even approach them without a way to breach the barrier.

A glance around reveals a Door 58 to the northeast.
action: You examine the proposals
response: Several different proposals of varying complexity: at one end, in childlike handwriting, is a proposal with sketches of fish; at the other, something about colonist eye color and brain function, with many pages of additional notes. You also note one with what looks like a map of Africa.
action: You go downwards
response: The float unit lets you hover off the ground. It does not let you pass through walls or give you access to restricted areas. From here, you can go west (to the clearing) or northeast.
action: You go to the northeast
response: You walk to the door and hesitate. The etiquette of the situation is unclear. On the one hand, it's impolite to knock. On the other, you do have a card which grants you the right to enter, and which deactivates the security field. So it must be all right...

You step through the field, which here is translucent grey...

Private Laboratory (on the personal float unit)
A room outfitted with lab desk, lab drawer, a recycling chute, and assorted equipment. It's immediately obvious what kind of experimentation that takes place here. The walls are a shrine to humans -- and not to the human genome, which would be comprehensible, but to human society. Some still shots from Chinese television, a sketch of Stonehenge, a landscape recognizably New Zealand...

The door out leads southwest.

Beside the lab desk is a female scientist, perhaps in her teens.

She greets you with a stream of words you don't understand, and bows deep.

She greets you with a stream of words you don't understand, and bows deep.

She greets you with a stream of words you don't understand, and bows deep.

She greets you with a stream of words you don't understand, and bows deep.

She greets you with a stream of words you don't understand, and bows deep.

She greets you with a stream of words you don't understand, and bows deep.
>--> The scene change machinery is stuck.

She greets you with a stream of words you don't understand, and bows deep.

She greets you with a stream of words you don't understand, and bows deep.

She greets you with a stream of words you don't understand, and bows deep.

She greets you with a stream of words you don't understand, and bows deep.

She greets you with a stream of words you don't understand, and bows deep.

She greets you with a stream of words you don't understand, and bows deep.
>--> The scene change machinery is stuck.
action: You get off
response: You get off the personal float unit.

The lobby is an open oval room, with no security or reception desk.

Mounted on the east wall are colorful project proposals.

A baffling number of doors lead out to smaller rooms around the perimeter of the central space. They are all protected by security fields, so that you can't even approach them without a way to breach the barrier.

A glance around reveals a Door 58 to the northeast.

A personal float unit hovers three inches off the floor at the middle of the room.
action: Go northeast
response: You walk to the door and hesitate. The etiquette of the situation is unclear. On the one hand, it's impolite to knock. On the other, you do have a card which grants you the right to enter, and which deactivates the security field. So it must be all right...

You step through the field, which here is translucent grey...

A room outfitted with lab desk, lab drawer, a recycling chute, and assorted equipment. It's immediately obvious what kind of experimentation that takes place here. The walls are a shrine to humans -- and not to the human genome, which would be comprehensible, but to human society. Some still shots from Chinese television, a sketch of Stonehenge, a landscape recognizably New Zealand...

The door out leads southwest.

Beside the lab desk is a female scientist, perhaps in her teens.

She greets you with a stream of words you don't understand, and bows deep.
action: You show the pink card to the scientist
response: Someone, someone must have made this creature on purpose to attract humans. It is what makes sense. Perhaps because they knew that it would be that much harder to refuse help to a colonist who looked like this... Ignoring your less respectable urges, you hand the pink card over to her.

She holds up a finger as though to say: wait. And reaching into her cleavage, she removes a tiny man, whom she sets down on the desk. It looks alive, after a fashion. You have heard of these things, little living models with almost no intelligence -- but you'd never seen one before.

She gets out some small ration bars and feeds them to the tiny man, who eats ravenously, making faces. "See?" her expression seems to say. "It is just like one of you people."

But of course it isn't: it is like a human who has been a bit modified. He floats a bit over the table, for all that he looks like a little person.
action: You look at the scientist
response: Lolita is your first thought. She has the long sweet limbs, the faunlike brown eyes that meet yours and dart away. The most alien features of the Colonists are subdued in her, leaving only a subtle exoticism you can hardly stop looking at. And the longer you look, the less sure you are whether she's really that young, or just some perfectly tuned ideal of innocence.

They made her like that on purpose.

Having eaten to the point where his stomach is distended, the model man lies down, curls up, and begins to snore a tiny, insect-like snore.

The girl -- no, scientist -- turns to you and says something long-winded. Though you can't understand the words, the gist is plain enough: do you like it? Are you interested? Do you want one of your very own? How about we install some floatpoints in your kind?

An offer of what they might do if you let them come back to Earth, perhaps -- if a very naive one.
action: Look around
response: A room outfitted with lab desk, lab drawer, a recycling chute, and assorted equipment. It's immediately obvious what kind of experimentation that takes place here. The walls are a shrine to humans -- and not to the human genome, which would be comprehensible, but to human society. Some still shots from Chinese television, a sketch of Stonehenge, a landscape recognizably New Zealand...

The door out leads southwest.

Beside the lab desk is a female scientist, perhaps in her teens.

On the lab desk is a tiny man.
action: You look at the tiny man
response: A small man, only about six inches tall. He looks uncannily like Valenti. He also has tiny floatpoints in his hands and feet, like a Colonist.
action: You point at the pink card
response: You hand the pink card over to her.
action: You check your inventory
response: You are carrying:
a kumquat
a puffy white jacket
a silver kiddush cup
some fuzzy bunny slippers
a yellow paper note
a mail packet
an empty gift box
a handheld computer (in which is a data disk)
a grey widget saying SOC 15.1968, POW 20.3036, INT 12.83424
a magnificent ensemble of flowing scarlet robe, chronometer, grey undersuit, shoes, and socks
action: Inventory
response: You are carrying:
a kumquat
a puffy white jacket
a silver kiddush cup
some fuzzy bunny slippers
a yellow paper note
a mail packet
an empty gift box
a handheld computer (in which is a data disk)
a grey widget saying SOC 15.4096, POW 20.55699, INT 12.5532
a magnificent ensemble of flowing scarlet robe, chronometer, grey undersuit, shoes, and socks
action: You check what you're carrying
response: You are carrying:
a kumquat
a puffy white jacket
a silver kiddush cup
some fuzzy bunny slippers
a yellow paper note
a mail packet
an empty gift box
a handheld computer (in which is a data disk)
a grey widget saying SOC 15.62523, POW 20.2845, INT 12.8258
a magnificent ensemble of flowing scarlet robe, chronometer, grey undersuit, shoes, and socks
action: You check your inventory
response: You are carrying:
a kumquat
a puffy white jacket
a silver kiddush cup
some fuzzy bunny slippers
a yellow paper note
a mail packet
an empty gift box
a handheld computer (in which is a data disk)
a grey widget saying SOC 15.45731, POW 20.5972, INT 12.7031
a magnificent ensemble of flowing scarlet robe, chronometer, grey undersuit, shoes, and socks
action: You check your inventory
response: You are carrying:
a kumquat
a puffy white jacket
a silver kiddush cup
some fuzzy bunny slippers
a yellow paper note
a mail packet
an empty gift box
a handheld computer (in which is a data disk)
a grey widget saying SOC 15.0602, POW 20.42245, INT 12.39727
a magnificent ensemble of flowing scarlet robe, chronometer, grey undersuit, shoes, and socks
action: Look around
response: A room outfitted with lab desk, lab drawer, a recycling chute, and assorted equipment. It's immediately obvious what kind of experimentation that takes place here. The walls are a shrine to humans -- and not to the human genome, which would be comprehensible, but to human society. Some still shots from Chinese television, a sketch of Stonehenge, a landscape recognizably New Zealand...

The door out leads southwest.

Beside the lab desk is a female scientist, perhaps in her teens.

On the lab desk is a tiny man.
action: You take the pink card
response: That seems to belong to the female scientist.
action: You look at the drawer
response: You can't get it open. No authorization.
action: You examine the chute
response: A chute for the disposal of wastes from the lab.
action: You ask the scientist for the pink card
response: Anything you might say in English -- or any other language you know, for that matter -- would be pretty much incomprehensible here. Unless you found a scholar of ancient languages, but as far as you can tell, they don't go in for that.
action: You think
response: You run over the things various people have decided you ought to do: acquire vaccine from the research facility (HC's orders)
wear white jacket (Valenti's idea)
summon Liam and show him the gift box
meet with Ambassador Aylene to present your gift
action: You consult the computer about the vaccine
response: Your search turns up the following articles:

High Command: An extremely circumspect article describing how, in the later years of the plague, the international quarantine authority in North America became a de facto government and managed the distribution not only of vaccine (once available) but also of other essential resources. All hints of controversy are omitted.

plague: Billions of deaths, infection rates most severe in the less developed countries; revolutions and crumbling infrastructure; the regress of technology. This is why High Command wants back the Aleheart population. Fear of contaminating the environment with engineered flora and fauna seems insignificant now in the face of such medical sophistication -- an insurance against the same ever happening again. The vaccine exists, of course, and is produced in great quantity still, though it is very expensive to make.

There isn't any personal data available from logs or annotations.
action: You take the tiny man
response: You gingerly pick up the tiny man, thinking that Kruger would have an aneurysm if he saw this thing. The girl seems to read this as encouragement, though. Perhaps this is her research project, her final thesis. Depressing thought.

The little man is warm in the palm of your hand, like a hamster.

Evidently feeling that she need not keep you any longer, she also gets out the vaccine sample and hands it over to you.

Mentally you check off "acquire vaccine from the research facility (HC's orders)" on your list of remaining tasks. You run over the things various people have decided you ought to do:
wear white jacket (Valenti's idea)
summon Liam and show him the gift box
meet with Ambassador Aylene to present your gift
action: You examine the vaccine
response: You recognize this -- and how could one not? The writing on the outside of the glass bottle has faded, and the contents perhaps degenerated with time, but the bulbous bottle shape, the sigil of High Command on the cap, the blue-black tint of the liquid like ink, all are iconic now.
action: Leave
response: (heading southwest, since that is the only direction available)

The lobby is an open oval room, with no security or reception desk.

Mounted on the east wall are colorful project proposals.

A baffling number of doors lead out to smaller rooms around the perimeter of the central space. They are all protected by security fields, so that you can't even approach them without a way to breach the barrier.

A glance around reveals a Door 58 to the northeast.

A personal float unit hovers three inches off the floor at the middle of the room.
action: Ride unit
response: You climb back on the float unit, increasingly confident.
action: Go west
response: Clearing (on the personal float unit)
The street runs north/south, so that you have an uninterrupted view of Cordia Peak, and the leading edge of the glacier at the northern edge of town.

Both sides of the street are built up. A substantial building of metal and glass lies to the east, houses to the west.

The rings in the southern sky are partly obscured by the buildings on the horizon, but are still bright enough to catch the eye.

A double set of insulating doors leads south into a huge glass and metal dome, a greenhouse and Solarium where most of the local population now lives; the Embassy is inside.

At the center of the open space here is a monument shaped like a tusk or tooth.
action: Go south
response: Grand Solarium (on the personal float unit)
The Grand Solarium is an enormous dome with an oval roof of glass and grown metalwork. Inside is a botanical garden, which, on this planet, is a kind of art museum. Each plot displays some invented shrub that would be illegal on Earth.

The southern end of the dome, where they grow edible crops, is hidden by a decorative screen of hanging flowers. The garden also continues to the east; away to the west is the front of the Earth Embassy, now your home.

A double set of insulating doors leads north to the outdoors.
action: You go west
response: You wander between plots: what catches your eye this time is a writing-desk-tree, spreading to a flat surface at about three feet.

Reflecting Pool (on the personal float unit)
On the float unit, you are able to float above the water. The water underneath the float unit goes flat. The fish bump into the surface and bounce off as if from a sheet of aquarium glassthe eastern end of a shallow rectangular pool -- no doubt part of the reason the air is softer and more humid here than it was outside. The Embassy is just west of here, at the far end of the pool.

If you look down, you catch the reflection in the surface, and a number of small red fish swimming around, in formation, making symbols which you cannot read.
action: Go west
response: Front Stairs (on the personal float unit)
The Embassy proper is directly west. The entrance is flanked by orange trees, familiar and earthly.

From the top of the Front Stairs you have an excellent view of the whole interior of the Solarium, the sunlight catching in the curved triangular panes of glass.

East, at the bottom of the stairs, is the mirror-glass of the pool. Beyond it the botanical garden has a structure invisible from the inside.
action: You go west
response: Embassy Foyer (on the personal float unit)
Like most buildings here, the Embassy is built with an eye for organic color and form: windows and doorways framed with curved ironwork, accents of bright enamel, wooden floors grown in place. All conspicuously wasteful of both materials and labor. It might be intended to make Earth representatives uncomfortable, or it might be meant as an honor, or it might be an advertisement for a standard of living that Earth lost some time ago. Too hard to tell.

There's a large Receiving Room to the west. Less prominent rooms lie north and south -- the south with a locked private door, the north an archway offering a mercifully limited view of the "Museum". Shallow stairs, almost a ramp, rise to a second story.
action: Foobar
response: Enter saved game to store: Ok.
action: Time
response: It is 4:20 pm -- here, anyhow.
action: You remove the red robe
response: You take off the long scarlet robe.
action: You wear the white jacket
response: You pull Valenti's white jacket on. The effect could be more flattering: the float-pins make it stand out around your torso as though inflated. You can't see, but it feels as though all your chest hair is being forced to lie flat. Breathing in is a challenge.

Mentally you check off "wear white jacket (Valenti's idea)" on your list of remaining tasks. You run over the things various people have decided you ought to do:
summon Liam and show him the gift box
meet with Ambassador Aylene to present your gift
action: Inventory
response: You are carrying:
a vaccine sample
a tiny sleeping man
a kumquat
a silver kiddush cup
some fuzzy bunny slippers
a yellow paper note
a mail packet
an empty gift box
a handheld computer (in which is a data disk)
a grey widget saying SOC 15.14945, POW 20.9361, INT 12.9797
a flowing scarlet robe
a humiliating outfit of puffy white jacket, chronometer, grey undersuit, shoes, and socks
action: You put vaccine in the box
response: You tuck the vaccine into the box.

A flash of memory: A long line of people standing, closer together than strangers ever stand. Holding hands, sometimes kissing. Everyone wears their sleeves rolled up, their upper arms bare. Out in the middle of the square, two old men in drag are dancing a tango. A ring of girls has gathered to watch.

Your mother stands beside you, periodically squeezing your elbow. "Your father would have loved this," she says each time. She does not sound wistful, just overwhelmingly glad.

Far off at the front of the line is a white pavilion with a blue-black logo stitched into the roof.
action: You show the gift box to Liam
response: Liam takes in your clothing, then looks into the box. "Equal partnership, with a shared work in medical enterprises?" he says. "This is what you desire to propose to our Ambassador?"
action: Yes
response: Liam bows and departs to make a few arrangements. You wait, and cool your heels. People come and go. Messages are sent. When everything is ready, you gather...

Receiving Room (on the personal float unit)
None of the rooms of the Embassy are ordinary, but this one is spectacular: the floor glittering with blue and gold glass, the vault a basketry of interwoven branches of interwoven branches. The lower half of the wall is covered with feathers, yellow and deep blue, like a parrot's.

The heressa who must be Ambassador Aylene stands at the far end of the hall. The approach to her is flanked by two rows of witnesses. You hadn't anticipated that, somehow, though surely you should have. As for Liam, he is carefully in the corner, aligning himself neither with you nor with his own people.
action: You look at Aylene
response: You had been expecting someone slight and ephemeral-looking, but she is a tall woman and built proportionally, and reminds you of the pictures you have sometimes seen of proud African women from before the bad years. Only her eyes are wrong, not brown but something closer to golden.
action: You give the gift box to Aylene
response: Aylene receives the box and looks at the vaccine sample for a moment. She looks at you -- surprised, a little concerned, perhaps?

Then she faces her audience and begins to speak.

"

It's not unpleasant to see Kruger grilling Valenti for a bit, rather than you. Though there's plenty of grilling to go around.

"It was always a bad idea to invite them to Earth as our inferiors," says Valenti stolidly. "I would have arranged things differently if I had been the ambassador at the time, but I do believe this is the best thing David could have done with the options available to him."

"The idea that the Colonists work in collaboration with human scientists will not be received well at home," says Kruger.

"To understatement," Valenti replies, lifting his glass. He is drinking an anise liqueur he favors. You and Kruger watch him take another yellow sip. "Are you going to change the deal? I should warn you that alteration to a contract is viewed with extreme disfavor in their society."

"Which is why you and David should have followed my advice in the first place!" Kruger yells. "I pulled Yamashita because she expressed reservations of conscience about what I was asking her to do, and I pulled you because I didn't trust you to follow orders, but I never thought David would go native on his first day there. What's wrong with you?"

Valenti frowns into his glass, swirling the ice around. "With respect, sir, you a few hours on Aleheart itself would have been enough to change your plans."

Kruger's face gradually loses the beet color. "We gave the matter a great deal of thought," he says. "Thought, study, polls, moral consultations. Also prayer, meditation, even a tarot reading or two, I'm told. Those were off the meeting record and on a strictly individual basis. But there is a female member of the commission who claims that a good tarot spread focuses her thinking."

"There are things you cannot reason out," Valenti says. "When you're face-to-face with the colonists, you see how much they long to be back on Earth. They are afraid of our bad opinion, conscious that they are our descendants, and embarrassed by how primitive we seem to be. But they are also infatuated. There are some dissenters, but most would do whatever they could to be with us again. They will bend themselves to fit Earth. We do not have to force them to do anything."

Kruger glares out the window. He does not say anything.

Valenti catches your eye and raises his glass in a small salute.
action: Foobar
response: Enter saved game to load: Ok.
action: You ask the computer about the black
response: Your search turns up the following articles:

color symbolism: black: The color of termination, worn to refuse an agreement; to propose corporate splits or divorce.

There isn't any personal data available from logs or annotations.
action: You go to Receiving
response: Receiving Room (on the personal float unit)
None of the rooms of the Embassy are ordinary, but this one is spectacular: the floor glittering with blue and gold glass, the vault a basketry of interwoven branches of interwoven branches. The lower half of the wall is covered with feathers, yellow and deep blue, like a parrot's.

Something like a glass flower grows from the wall, a disguised bracket for holding a recording machine.
action: You take the seed
response: Taken.
action: You put the kumquat in the bracket
response: The bracket is precisely shaped to hold only a small round recording machine.
action: You go to the basement
response: You hurry toward embassy foyer, the museum, and then the basement.

Basement (on the personal float unit)
Unlike the upper levels of the Embassy, the basement is built for practical purposes, and resembles the inside of a concrete cigar box. It continues to the south, dimly lit and cold.

Along the west wall, a chute from above empties into a large metal container.
action: Go south
response: Utility Room (on the personal float unit)
Little more than a chilly concrete box. It continues some distance to the north.

Something resembling the root system of Yggdrasil covers the south wall; from close up it appears to be a complex heating system with pipes and tubes.
action: You give the seed to the beak
response: You can only do that to something animate.
action: You put the seed in the beak
response: The heater tentatively opens its beak to admit the recording machine. Then it begins to chomp away. There are at first some sparks, droplets of flying juice, abortive beginnings of projections, but soon it is thoroughly destroyed and reduced to pure food form.
action: You squeeze the seed
response: An image begins to play, projecting itself:

The room is a mess, bits of things scattered around. The camera begins on a heressa you assume must be Aylene, a beautiful woman of apparently African descent, who floats as still as if she were anchored.

"Things like this," says Valenti forcefully, "you don't predict. You choose without full knowledge, and make the choice good." He picks up a silvery streamer from the floor and plays at crumpling it.

She answers in her language, and the subtitle says: If it were me only.

He stuffs his hands into his pockets, streamer and all. "It could be you only. With or without the treaty of cohabitation, I would still marry you."

Your genes are bad. Why would I marry you?

"For pleasure."

The recording plays on: Valenti has stopped pacing and is watching her. She meets his eye and smiles a small smile. I do not know if I can walk all the rest of my life on dirt, even for you.

"It's mostly floors, really," Valenti says, fists held rigidly in pockets. "The once-popular custom of walking barefoot in the dirt is a few hundred years behind us."

Our greatest art is a disgusting offense on Earth. Do we go where we are despised?

"I know," he says. "There are concessions I cannot make. If I tried, they would not be honored."

He gives the tormented streamer another pull, and it breaks apart in his hands with a flash of grey light; here the recording ends.
action: You go to the bedroom
response: You hurry toward the basement, the museum, embassy foyer, the hall, and then the bedroom.

Bedroom (on the personal float unit)
There's no real bed, only a stone platform, too short to accommodate your full height, in the center of the room. The sole gesture towards comfort is a pillow of Earth style, perhaps left here by Valenti. Aside from this, the place is unfurnished.

A refreshment room is visible to the west, and the hallway is back to the south.

Your suitcase lies open on the floor.
action: You take the seed
response: You already have that.
action: You go to the south
response: Hall (on the personal float unit)
At the top of the shallow stairs there is a spacious landing, with windows giving a view east across the Grand Solarium garden. Apparently past ambassadors have found this a pleasant place in which to read, because there is a small library of Earth books, otherwise impossible to get here.

The other interesting item is a chute in the wall, looking (like everything else here) as though it had grown as metal or bone into the wall.

The entry to your bedroom is to the north, and an office area to the south.

There are some ration bars and a squashed unripe seed on the floor.
action: You go to Kiosk
response: You hurry toward embassy foyer, the front stairs, the reflecting pool, grand solarium, the clearing, the broad street, ruined vineyard, and then kiosk.

Kiosk (on the personal float unit)
The kiosk is no larger than a contamination testing booth back on Earth.

The only thing of note here is a metal box, mounted on the wall at about shoulder-height, with a bonzai-sized tree growing out of the top.
action: Examine box
response: (the empty gift box)
A decorative box, obviously made on Earth, enameled like a Faberge piece. The exterior is covered in a design of leaves and morning glories.
action: You look at the metal box
response: A machine titled DATA COMPRESSION AND STORAGE. There is a miniature tree growing out of the top, naked of foliage. On the front of the metal box are green and blue push-knobs, and a movable bronze pointer.

On the left side of the machine there is a funnel, the right size for inserting a recording fruit.
action: You look at the pointer
response: The green knob appears to say RECORD.

The four settings of the pointer are ORIGINAL, SCIENTIFIC, STORY, SOCIAL.

The pointer is currently set to story.
action: You put the unripe seed in the funnel
response: The damaged recorder rolls down inside the machine. There is a whirr like your mother's juicer on the first day of a new diet.
action: You set the pointer to the story
response: The bronze pointer is already aligned in that direction.
action: You set the pointer to scientific
response: The pointer turns with a heavy click. The selector now points to scientific.
action: You set the pointer to social
response: The pointer turns with a heavy click. The selector now points to social.
action: You set pointer to the blue
response: The pointer turns with a heavy click. The selector now points to original.
action: You set the pointer to the original
response: The bronze pointer is already aligned in that direction.
action: You examine the damaged fruit
response: It is evident (now) that this is one of those recorders that grows riper as it gets more full of information, and that something happened to it at a primitive stage of its growth. Probably Valenti could think of no place where people would be less likely to pry than his food cabinet.
action: You squeeze it
response: You squeeze the thing tentatively and it hisses sparks and juice, but then it begins to play, a projection hovering in the middle of the air:

Liam is standing in a group with some others, in the Receiving Room, when Valenti walks in. DID YOU VOTE IN THIS MATTER? say projected English subtitles shakily.

Liam shivers. Replacing the ambassador heressa? Everyone voted, my lord. We determined she does not make progress.

Then Valenti grabs him by the middle of his robes where there are no floatpoints, and shoves violently. Liam falls hard on the sharp floor, mortified and astonished. Progress, Valenti repeats, dusting his hands.

She stays until Gift Day,  Liam says, not trying to get up.

Valenti nods curtly and goes out; the other people in the group tactfully turn aside. Liam wipes the back of his mouth with his hand. After a moment he crawls to the corner and is sick.

The image flickers out, leaking warm juice from the recorder.
action: You put red seed in the funnel
response: The recording machine rolls down inside the machine. There is a whirr like your mother's juicer on the first day of a new diet.
action: You take kumquat
response: (the kumquat)
Taken.
action: Inventory
response: You are carrying:
two kumquats
a damaged recorder
a vaccine sample
a tiny sleeping man
a puffy white jacket
a silver kiddush cup
some fuzzy bunny slippers
a yellow paper note
a mail packet
an empty gift box
a handheld computer (in which is a data disk)
a grey widget saying SOC 15.79271, POW 20.83341, INT 12.5235
a magnificent ensemble of flowing scarlet robe, chronometer, grey undersuit, shoes, and socks
action: You look at the kumquats
response: There is a symbol reading SOCIAL COMPRESSION on the skin of the kumquat.
action: You examine the floatpoint
response: (first getting down so as not to kill yourself with foolish attempts at acrobatic prowess)
You get off the personal float unit.

The kiosk is no larger than a contamination testing booth back on Earth.

A personal float unit hovers three inches off the floor at the middle of the room.

The only thing of note here is a metal box, mounted on the wall at about shoulder-height, with a bonzai-sized tree growing out of the top.

The contents might come out, and that would make a real mess.
action: You turn the dial
response: You reach down and twiddle the dial on the side of the float unit, feeling very much the master even of the most alien technology.

This feeling passes, however, when the dial sticks in place without adjusting anything.
action: You turn dial left
response: You struggle with the dial, exerting the strength developed in the powerful Earthly gravity...

...and there is a snap like the shot of a gun, and the dial spins freely without effect.
action: You turn dial right
response: Whatever you did, it put an end to uses of the convenient dial. If you want to change the setting of the float unit, you'll have to do something with the contents of the reservoir by hand.
action: You look at the reservoir
response: (first getting down so as not to kill yourself with foolish attempts at acrobatic prowess)
You get off the personal float unit.

The kiosk is no larger than a contamination testing booth back on Earth.

A personal float unit hovers three inches off the floor at the middle of the room.

The only thing of note here is a metal box, mounted on the wall at about shoulder-height, with a bonzai-sized tree growing out of the top.

The contents might come out, and that would make a real mess.
action: You examine the bonzai
response: A machine titled DATA COMPRESSION AND STORAGE. There is a miniature tree growing out of the top, naked of foliage. On the front of the metal box are green and blue push-knobs, and a movable bronze pointer.

On the left side of the machine there is a funnel, the right size for inserting a recording fruit.
action: You put tiny man in reservoir
response: The floatpoint reservoir is closed.
action: Open reservoir
response: The contents might come out, and that would make a real mess.
action: You put the little man in the funnel
response: You push the tiny sleeping man into the funnel. The machine fires it back out, as from a cannon.
action: You look at your surroundings
response: The kiosk is no larger than a contamination testing booth back on Earth.

A personal float unit hovers three inches off the floor at the middle of the room.

The only thing of note here is a metal box, mounted on the wall at about shoulder-height, with a bonzai-sized tree growing out of the top.
action: You check your inventory
response: You are carrying:
two kumquats
a damaged recorder
a vaccine sample
a tiny sleeping man
a puffy white jacket
a silver kiddush cup
some fuzzy bunny slippers
a yellow paper note
a mail packet
an empty gift box
a handheld computer (in which is a data disk)
a grey widget saying SOC 15.50803, POW 20.5871, INT 12.24329
a magnificent ensemble of flowing scarlet robe, chronometer, grey undersuit, shoes, and socks
action: You examine mail packet
response: Largely demands from people on Earth that Valenti pursue what happened to relatives long ago dead during the foundation of the Aleheart Colony. There's a particularly insistent batch about someone called Charla (the authors had apparently written to Valenti before, without satisfaction).
action: You consult the computer about the fruit
response: Your search turns up the following entries from Valenti's personal log:

four months ago: Appears that recording fruit retain everyone's social broadcasting as well as audio and visual -- the same stuff picked up by my live rock. Too bad it is not possible to read this off the recordings. Would be useful to record people and then study afterward what they really meant.
action: You consult computer about the rock
response: Your search turns up the following entries from Valenti's personal log:

six months ago: Aylene gave me a live rock! Which, in theory, calculates what everyone thinks of me, to many decimal places of accuracy (!). Don't think she realized what negative reinforcement this would be. Can't help experimenting with ways to make numbers go up and down. Bet I could crash all three to zero if I ran through the Solarium bareassed. Apparently the thing corresponds to a portion of the alien brain. I admit (if only to myself) that I find the concept disgusting. But I admit a lot to myself lately. I gather my predecessor talked to herself as well. I need some recordings of human speech or may go insane...

four months ago: Appears that recording fruit retain everyone's social broadcasting as well as audio and visual -- the same stuff picked up by my live rock. Too bad it is not possible to read this off the recordings. Would be useful to record people and then study afterward what they really meant.

three months ago: I tried asking her whether she can factor in my thoughts the same way her little live rock tracks everyone else's. She said no, I don't broadcast. She looked tremendously uncomfortable. I cannot say how smug this makes me.

five weeks ago: Is it possible that Liam is jealous of me because of Aylene? I find him lurking around after she's been here, looking sniffy and grim. Naturally Aylene's live rock doesn't offer any sort of data analysis function. That might be dangerously useful.

five weeks ago: Suppose I could feed recordings through social compression to get some idea what Feckless Assistant is thinking. Not sure I want to know, though. Despite live rock, this method feels a little like spying. Not to say I won't. Just that I'm not sure I will.
action: Examine widget
response: A plain grey device, fitted to the shape of the hand,  on whose surface are three constantly flickering numbers: SOC 15.9316, POW 20.12017, INT 12.8573. SQUEEZE TO SUMMON AIDES. There is an inscription on the back, and it is in English: To LV from A3205.
action: You check what you're carrying
response: You are carrying:
two kumquats
a damaged recorder
a vaccine sample
a tiny sleeping man
a puffy white jacket
a silver kiddush cup
some fuzzy bunny slippers
a yellow paper note
a mail packet
an empty gift box
a handheld computer (in which is a data disk)
a grey widget saying SOC 15.4806, POW 20.3531, INT 12.2608
a magnificent ensemble of flowing scarlet robe, chronometer, grey undersuit, shoes, and socks
action: You consult computer about Peter
response: Your search turns up the following entries from Valenti's personal log:

four months ago: More research. My Charla seems to have been married to Peter Long. Wish I had a clearer idea of what Peter Long was up to.

four months ago: So. Put together the archive files on Charla and her companion Peter Long here. I have what appear to be six versions of the same events, recorded in distinctly stylized and different forms -- including what looks like an opera. (Or some perversion thereof.) I'd say they were literary reworkings but no, they seem actually to be a convention-based compression of some original, now-lost data recording. The weird thing is that they don't all end the same way -- apparently the conventions of recording are allowed to override, for instance, matters of fact.

four months ago: Oh my. Cross-comparing the data and the compression algorithm information I could find I think I have worked my way to a fuzzy but more-accurate version of the original. Spent a good while in the archive building messing with the kiosks. Got to talk to A about this, find out if it is really true. If it is, we may end scuttling the whole treaty if I report what I found on Charla and Peter Long. Long is really the issue; it's just our bad bad bad bad bad luck that Charla's relatives are still alive and, worse, pushy about finding out what became of her.

four months ago: Amazing it never occurred to me to wonder exactly what happened when they lost Earth contact here. Peter Long's solution seems obvious. In retrospect.

three months ago: Long talk with A, and she essentially confirmed for me what I had already pieced together, though with some bits that I hadn't quite understood about Peter and Charla. And then I got rid of the recordings. The destruction of data, a slippery slope. This was much bigger than getting rid of Yamashita's correspondence disc but it felt less awful, somehow. This is something I cannot, cannot report back if I want these people saved. And increasingly I do. Even my infuriating assistant.

two months ago: Funny sort of personal conversation with A. Turns out that she is descended from Peter and Charla herself -- the whole A line is. This is such a strange thought to me. Apparently they're among the most human-like of the remaining lines (though with certain obligatory modifications, of course), which I suppose is why she was assigned to deal with us.

27 days ago: Went to the Earth Sanctuary and heard a few songs. Strangely moving. One of them was in fact about old Peter. Felt like it was the play to catch the conscience, etc., except of course in this case I'm not the murderer and it's everyone else's conscience that really ought to be bothered, not mine. It was a good song, though. They got out the flint knife at the end -- it's a prop of this performance, I gather.
action: You consult the computer about solution
response: Your search turns up the following entries from Valenti's personal log:

four months ago: Amazing it never occurred to me to wonder exactly what happened when they lost Earth contact here. Peter Long's solution seems obvious. In retrospect.
action: You consult the computer about the knife
response: Your search turns up the following articles:

gift symbolism: knife: Apparently, according to the etiquette files, any edged instrument is a symbol of restrictions, living under strict controls imposed by someone else, and dating back to clinical trials in which new genetic lines deemed to be failing their intended purpose were slaughtered with a knife. This practice is now called flushing and does not require a blade, but the associations remain.

Your search turns up the following entries from Valenti's personal log:

seven weeks ago: Liam told me about the flint knife in the Earth Sanctuary. Turns out it wasn't brought by us (always thought that a really odd thing to send) but they brought it here from Earth themselves. There's some sort of gloomy symbolism there which, as usual, he couldn't bring himself to explain directly. A less useful assistant would be difficult to find.

27 days ago: Went to the Earth Sanctuary and heard a few songs. Strangely moving. One of them was in fact about old Peter. Felt like it was the play to catch the conscience, etc., except of course in this case I'm not the murderer and it's everyone else's conscience that really ought to be bothered, not mine. It was a good song, though. They got out the flint knife at the end -- it's a prop of this performance, I gather.
action: You consult the computer about the contact
response: Your search turns up the following entries from Valenti's personal log:

five months ago: I wonder whether HC have done any psychological studies on the effects of isolating a single person without any human contact whatever. I can guess the outcome!

four months ago: Amazing it never occurred to me to wonder exactly what happened when they lost Earth contact here. Peter Long's solution seems obvious. In retrospect.
action: You consult the computer about flushing
response: Your search turns up the following articles:

Aleheart family structure: On Aleheart Colony marriage bears a strong resemblance to a corporate merger. Possessions, resources, and knowledge are pooled; the efficiency rating of the family unit is understood to be an average of the efficiency of all its members, with income determined accordingly, so that merger with a significantly less efficient partner is a sacrifice rarely made. Children are rated on a different scale, but their rating is also counted for the family starting at the age of four. This produces extra economic and social pressure towards flushing children who turn out to be lazy or ill-made.

gift symbolism: knife: Apparently, according to the etiquette files, any edged instrument is a symbol of restrictions, living under strict controls imposed by someone else, and dating back to clinical trials in which new genetic lines deemed to be failing their intended purpose were slaughtered with a knife. This practice is now called flushing and does not require a blade, but the associations remain.

Your search turns up the following entries from Valenti's personal log:

28 days ago: Naturally after I read that I asked Aylene about it (if we're modeling our alliance on a marriage I'd rather not have "marriage" mean "eugenics program"). She says in practice there's hardly any "flushing". I still have some serious questions about this, but I think inasmuch as it applies to the current occasion we're looking rather at a joint stewardship of the resources available to both planets. HC should be able to live with that. I don't know whether the general population would be so enthusiastic, but the general population seems to think it's a point of principle not to make any concessions or in fact live in the real world in any way.
action: You consult the computer about history
response: Your search turns up the following articles:

Europe: This could take a while to read, but as far as recent history is concerned, that territory is now mostly under the control of High Command, and still populated, though not nearly so thickly as it once was. There are a lot of crumbling suburbs all over the former first world, where no one wants to live any longer, because the lifestyle eats resources and the neighborhoods are lonely.

Earth history (general): The recent history of Earth is not light reading, and it's hard to scan through the encyclopedia article without some sense of irritation; but it was prepared with the understanding that the computer might be taken and read by the Aleheart colony. Perhaps that is why it is so coy about the plague years, the desolation of Africa, Chinese separatism...

Your search turns up the following entries from Valenti's personal log:

three months ago: I don't know why High Command likes this conditional adoption concept. For one thing, even if we do make them agree to do what we say for a while, we don't have the power to keep them in line by force, and if they resent us they'll eventually fight back. And second, segregating a minority culture and relegating it to some ghetto has a long history of being a horrible idea. HC does not think of these things?
action: You consult the computer about Aleheart
response: Your search turns up the following articles:

Aleheart Climate: The article is somewhat rough, since, though Earth has been running its own tests by probe and satellite on the viability of Aleheart's climate, most of its information comes from the statements of the Aleheart diplomatic structure. There are those paranoid enough to think that they might be fabricating the problem for unknown reasons.

Aleheart Colony: You've read the article before, but you refresh yourself on the major topics: how the Aleheart corporation grew large and powerful; how its forays into genetic experimentation came into conflict with many Earth laws; how Aleheart launched its own colony in order to have a place completely under its own jurisdiction. The rumors of human experimentation that trickled back to Earth made it difficult for Aleheart to continue operating at home at all, so instead the last employees were given a choice between layoff and emigration. Sometime after Aleheart Colony was established, it lost all contact with Earth, in the so-called Separation. The colony was picked up again only two years ago, orbiting a star in the wrong place, and so much changed that at first contact Earth-command thought it had heard from humanoid aliens.

human genetic experimentation: There's no question, of course, that Aleheart has done things illegal on Earth -- far more extensively after all Earth contact was lost. The current population is the product of those changes; they've been changed in appearance and body shape, and probably in an assortment of personality traits. It is an open question whether they are still human enough for interbreeding, or whether they should now be considered a different species.

Separation: The separation of Earth and Aleheart Colony occurred for reasons as yet undetermined. Contact was re-established when Aleheart sent a message to Earth requesting a meeting.

Your search turns up the following entries from Valenti's personal log:

six months ago: Oh, I feel I am losing touch. Don't know whether Kruger intends this: for a smart man he can be very stupid. What happens if you send to Aleheart someone with no living family or lovers on Earth, and no humans to talk to? Of course they're bound to go a little native: people are social.

five months ago: Have been doing the background research home people keep asking for, in attempt to stave off the suicidal gloom of winter, and because no one around here seems to want to do much in the mornings, when it is still so dark. Not that I blame them. But it turns out that the archives for Aleheart Corporation and the early days are terrible.
action: You consult the computer about Separation
response: Your search turns up the following articles:

Aleheart Colony: You've read the article before, but you refresh yourself on the major topics: how the Aleheart corporation grew large and powerful; how its forays into genetic experimentation came into conflict with many Earth laws; how Aleheart launched its own colony in order to have a place completely under its own jurisdiction. The rumors of human experimentation that trickled back to Earth made it difficult for Aleheart to continue operating at home at all, so instead the last employees were given a choice between layoff and emigration. Sometime after Aleheart Colony was established, it lost all contact with Earth, in the so-called Separation. The colony was picked up again only two years ago, orbiting a star in the wrong place, and so much changed that at first contact Earth-command thought it had heard from humanoid aliens.

Separation: The separation of Earth and Aleheart Colony occurred for reasons as yet undetermined. Contact was re-established when Aleheart sent a message to Earth requesting a meeting.

First contact: First contact between Earth and Aleheart Colony after separation was the result of an Aleheart ship coming within cautious hailing distance of Earth. It remained in the solar system for several days before approaching directly. The crew then sent a message in rather simple English and Chinese, requesting the right to meet "to get to know one another with an eye toward better friendship".

Your search turns up the following entries from Valenti's personal log:

seven months ago: If you ask me, the separation was the result of some kind of boneheaded physics experiment they did themselves. Who knows? Of course they wouldn't say, if so. But where do they get the floatpoints from anyway? Collective act of will so they'd never have to touch anything ever again?

three months ago: Weird sort of nobility about the separation story. Wish I could tell someone. God, god, god. I might ask for a human assistant or something. But of course what good would that do? Burdening a second person's conscience wouldn't really improve matters, and besides, he or she might not agree with me about what to do. No, I should avoid that.
action: You consult the computer about the conscience
response: Your search turns up the following entries from Valenti's personal log:

three months ago: Weird sort of nobility about the separation story. Wish I could tell someone. God, god, god. I might ask for a human assistant or something. But of course what good would that do? Burdening a second person's conscience wouldn't really improve matters, and besides, he or she might not agree with me about what to do. No, I should avoid that.

27 days ago: Went to the Earth Sanctuary and heard a few songs. Strangely moving. One of them was in fact about old Peter. Felt like it was the play to catch the conscience, etc., except of course in this case I'm not the murderer and it's everyone else's conscience that really ought to be bothered, not mine. It was a good song, though. They got out the flint knife at the end -- it's a prop of this performance, I gather.
action: You consult the computer about the nobility
response: Your search turns up the following entries from Valenti's personal log:

three months ago: Weird sort of nobility about the separation story. Wish I could tell someone. God, god, god. I might ask for a human assistant or something. But of course what good would that do? Burdening a second person's conscience wouldn't really improve matters, and besides, he or she might not agree with me about what to do. No, I should avoid that.
action: You consult the computer about Yamashita
response: Your search turns up the following articles:

Ambassador Yamashita: You met Yamashita a few times before coming out here, but didn't get a strong impression of her, and her computer record is as tediously laudatory as you would expect; you lack the context to read between the lines. She spent several years here before honorably returning to Earth, apparently without doing anything other than sending home reams of reports. But possibly that was all there was to do here at the time.

Your search turns up the following entries from Valenti's personal log:

eight months ago: Met my counterpart, the ambassador Aylene, today. Frankly, High Command should have left Yamashita here -- they probably did wonderfully having tea parties together and comparing fashion notes. Have never met another human -- no, strike that, because she isn't human. Have never met any person with so little emotional affect in speech and behavior. Not sure what gene modifications they made to her, but it is frightening.

eight months ago: Surprised and horrified by Yamashita's taste in office decor. Thought about donating hideous paintings to museum, but I worry this would lower us further in the opinion of the locals.

six months ago: Well. Have been going through Yamashita's correspondence disk. I have solved the mystery of the hideous paintings: they appear to be a gift from a lover back home, who painted them herself. I had not guessed Yamashita was interesting enough to have a secret lover Kruger doesn't know about.

Lover seems to be afflicted by residual plague nerve-degeneration too. I sense a conflict of interest! Wonder if Kruger did find out and yank Yamashita out for this reason? But since she doesn't seem to be languishing in disgrace, I don't know.

four months ago: Destroyed Yamashita's correspondence disk. Don't really want HC reprimanding her after the fact for relationship that was probably the one thing keeping her sane... Then again, when I look at the paintings... Oh well.

three months ago: Long talk with A, and she essentially confirmed for me what I had already pieced together, though with some bits that I hadn't quite understood about Peter and Charla. And then I got rid of the recordings. The destruction of data, a slippery slope. This was much bigger than getting rid of Yamashita's correspondence disc but it felt less awful, somehow. This is something I cannot, cannot report back if I want these people saved. And increasingly I do. Even my infuriating assistant.