“Okay,” Drummer said. Okoye-Sarkis took a drink of water from a bulb. The furrows in his forehead said he knew he was losing her. Hopefully it would make him tighten the presentation up, skip the boring parts, and get to what he wanted so she could say no and get back to her job.
“There has been a lot of speculation about what sort of beings built all the things we’ve found. Whether they were conscious individuals like us or some kind of hive mind. Whether they were one species in a community or a variety of interconnected species acting in concert. Whether—and I know this sounds weird—whether they had the same relationship to matter that we do. There’s been a lot of great thought. Great theory. What there hasn’t been is testing. The Chernev Institute wants to be the spearhead for a new generation of scientific research into the deepest questions that the ring gates embody. Who or what built them? What happened to those species between the time they launched Phoebe and the creation of the Sol gate? Did they leave records that we can translate and understand? Our belief is that somewhere in the systems on the far side of the gates or within the gates themselves, we will find something that acts like a kind of Rosetta stone. Something that places all the other discoveries in context. Our goal is to crack the present work in materials science, high- and low-energy physics, biology, botany, geology, even the philosophy of science wide open.”
Drummer leaned back in her chair, tilted her head. “So … you think the problem is that things aren’t changing fast enough?”
“Well, I think that progress is always better and more efficient when—”
“Because it seems to me,” Drummer interrupted, “like we’re on the ragged edge of being able to deal with what’s already on our plate. I don’t see how more growing pains are going to help us.”
“This is meant to help us with growing pains,” the man said. He delivered the line with a certainty and authority that Drummer respected as a performance. He was a charismatic little shit. She saw why they’d sent him. To her left, Emily Santos-Baca cleared her throat in a way that might have meant nothing, but if it meant anything, it meant a lot. Drummer was being an asshole. With a conscious effort, she pulled her irritation back.
“Fair enough,” she said. “And how does the union fit in with this?”
“There are several things that the Transport Union can do to help with the effort. The first being, of course, a contract to grant passage to Institute ships. We’ve got fieldwork proposals for sites on half a dozen planets whose preliminary surveys look most promising. But we have to get there first.” His grin was an invitation for her to smile back.
“That makes sense,” Drummer said. His grin lost its edge.
“The other thing that we’d like to open a conversation about … the Transport Union is in a singular position. The fruits of our work stand to benefit the union as much or more than anyone else in any system.”
“And so you’d like us to underwrite your work,” Drummer said. “Is that it?”
“I had some more preliminaries that help lay the groundwork for why,” Okoye-Sarkis said, “but yes.”
“You understand we aren’t a government,” Drummer said. “We’re a shipping union. We take things from one place to another and protect the infrastructure that lets us do that. Research contracts aren’t really in our line.”
Okoye-Sarkis looked around the table, searching for sympathetic eyes. Maybe he even found a few. Drummer knew that her reaction might have been different if the proposal had been made a day earlier. But Holden’s message from Freehold …
“The Institute respects that, ma’am,” Okoye-Sarkis said. “This is a very new project, but one I think has the potential to yield real benefits for everyone. I have a breakdown of our mission proposals I can leave with you and whoever in your staff wants to look at them.”
“All right,” Drummer said.
“And the passage agreement. I don’t mean to press, but we’re still getting our backers together, and the fees—”
“Give us your proposals,” Drummer said. “The board can go over them. Whatever conclusion they make about reducing or waiving the contract fees will be fine with me.”
“Thank you, Madam President. That’s wonderful. Thank you very much.”
The scientist practically bowed himself out of the room. Drummer ticked off the last entry in her morning agenda. The afternoon’s list looked just as long and at least equally irritating. Santos-Baca caught her eye and lifted an eyebrow.
“It’s an interesting proposal. It should make for a lively debate,” she said, meaning
“It’s important that the board be involved in any serious decisions,” Drummer said, meaning
