The whole next week was interesting, particularly if you are interested in perpetual motion. Allan and Ian kicked the Universal Distributing mechanisms into high gear, and we started finding and hiring people, and buying stuff.
I hadn't really thought about it previously, but it became obvious that Universal Distributing was a lot larger than I'd first thought. This led me to wonder exactly how long they'd been setting this all up, and Mike immediately informed me that they'd been at it for eleven months. The initial plan had been to hire me a month later than they did, and to have another six months to get everything into place before they announced their appearance to the world. The Comet Watchers had shot that plan full of holes.
If someone were to focus the Hubble or Chandra on the ship, it was going to be fairly obvious that it wasn't just a rock that someone hadn't seen before. The whole plan pretty much assumed that the arrival of the ship would be a surprise, and I concurred with that idea completely. The arrival of the aliens from Outer Space wasn't going to create nearly as much awe and wonder if they saw us coming in advance.
I made a trip back home on Saturday and came back on Sunday evening. I got my wife lined out on getting her stuff together to temporarily relocate out to Wyoming. She handled it all well, but the dog was sorely miffed at me for not being home more. I speculated about the possibility of bringing the dog along with me, and dismissed the idea as being too much trouble for both of us. Mike, as usual, was auditing things that I was thinking about loudly enough for him to pick up on them and stuck an oar in.
“You need to have her along. She's a symbiote, you know.”
“Well, actually, no. I did not know that. Rover is my dog, but she's a dog. Our relationship is personal, not symbiotic.”
“That's what you think. I'm seeing you two as the product of at least 30,000 years of parallel evolution that has created a necessity. Think about what you have often expressed as being the three things you have to have in order to be able to function properly.”
“Yeah. A place to build a fire, a weapon, and a Dog. But that's just what I want around to keep my survival instincts behaving themselves properly, I don't get nearly as paranoid if I've got those available.”
“And so. You need the dog. Symbiosis. You are proving my point.”
“Still can't bring her along. We're talking about 70 pounds of Staffordshire-Boxer cross here, not a purse dog. I can't just shut her up alone somewhere for hours or days when I'd have to do that, and she doesn't take well to strangers as a rule, so I can hardly keep her with me all the time. Additionally, I'm going to be going back and forth to the Ship a couple more times before we break cover, and what good is a minder going to do then? The dog is better off at home that being abandoned with a stranger for several days.”
“You are being afraid to spend a few pounds of iron ore here again. Funding is not an issue at this level. You simply have to hire a minder for her. I'm going to put a proposal together on the whole thing. I'll message it to Allan and Ian, and I'll let you know what they say. I have some ideas here.”
I got distracted with something else then. There was a lot of that going on at my house at that point. I went back to other rat killing and pretty much forgot about the whole issue until Sunday morning. Being back home, I woke up at my usual time, which was about ten after four in the morning. Mike informed me that I had 57 messages regarding action items that I needed to review.
These were a constant string, but I took care of them when they came up if I was awake. It seemed that someone had been busy overnight. The fact that it wasn't the same overnight on the ship probably accounted for a lot of it. It was pushing their version of noon up there. I'd done some mental number crunching and concluded that they were either on UCT or about an hour ahead of it. The differences in their time system and ours made it difficult to nail down exactly, but that was close enough to keep me aware that when it was bedtime local, they were probably close to getting up and diving back into things.
Half of the stuff was just pro forma approvals, so that whoever was suggesting doing this or that had the proper authorizations to go ahead. Everyone wanted me to approve their purchase of options to buy or lease property on the outskirts of Moscow, or Tel-Aviv, Hamburg, Buenos Aires, Irwindale, or wherever else. I looked at what we were thinking of doing with the property, and normally agreed. I did have to ask why we were optioning a brewery in Milwaukee, and found out that someone on the ship had concluded that Earth type beer might be popular, and planned on taking a run at making it for export. I agreed with that one, too.
The only ones that were difficult were some things that didn't translate well between our culture and the Karn. They were, just for instance, planning on buying up all sorts of high-priced goodies as “gifts” for various Heads of State and other luminaries. My bland comment that we didn't do bribery was met with some serious disagreement. All the information they had available said that humans did things that way. I finally just threw my hands up and instructed that any gifts were to be procured through Environmental Control and would consist of Karn manufactured cultural items. In other words, Art. For gifts to individuals, foodstuffs or alcoholic beverages from the ship would suffice, and nobody was to do anything other than that without my specific authorization in each individual case.
I didn't doubt that we'd be expected to bribe a lot of folks, but I wasn't going to do so unless it was totally vital, and I sure wasn't going to make it obvious, or we'd have all the hogs lining up for their turn at the trough.
I was working on my fourth cup of coffee when I got to item number 46, which was from Allan. “Bring the dog.”
I just kind of snorted to myself, and went on down the list. Item 53 was from Ian. “Bring the dog. We'll get a minder. We're taking another 20 or so humans back to the ship with us anyway, and adding one will not be a problem. They won't be able to tell any tales out of school. Our presence will be known when they get back here in a week or ten days, anyway.”
I was firmly convinced that I was going to regret doing it, but when I went back to Rock Springs on Sunday afternoon, I brought along a spare carry-on full of dog food and treats, a couple of dog toys, three cans of tennis balls, and one happy dog. She is not a really happy traveler, but she is not inclined to act out over it. She took to flying about the same way she does to riding in a car, which means that looking out the window is interesting for about five minutes, and then she wants to know if we are there yet.
She didn't do anything anyone found particularly objectionable, other than hurt Paul's feelings by moving to put me between him and herself when he came by and patted her on the head for the third time. She knows that she has to be civil, but I've never made any effort to teach her to be friendly. She can pick her own friends.
I hadn't really thought about it previously, but it became obvious that Universal Distributing was a lot larger than I'd first thought. This led me to wonder exactly how long they'd been setting this all up, and Mike immediately informed me that they'd been at it for eleven months. The initial plan had been to hire me a month later than they did, and to have another six months to get everything into place before they announced their appearance to the world. The Comet Watchers had shot that plan full of holes.
If someone were to focus the Hubble or Chandra on the ship, it was going to be fairly obvious that it wasn't just a rock that someone hadn't seen before. The whole plan pretty much assumed that the arrival of the ship would be a surprise, and I concurred with that idea completely. The arrival of the aliens from Outer Space wasn't going to create nearly as much awe and wonder if they saw us coming in advance.
I made a trip back home on Saturday and came back on Sunday evening. I got my wife lined out on getting her stuff together to temporarily relocate out to Wyoming. She handled it all well, but the dog was sorely miffed at me for not being home more. I speculated about the possibility of bringing the dog along with me, and dismissed the idea as being too much trouble for both of us. Mike, as usual, was auditing things that I was thinking about loudly enough for him to pick up on them and stuck an oar in.
“You need to have her along. She's a symbiote, you know.”
“Well, actually, no. I did not know that. Rover is my dog, but she's a dog. Our relationship is personal, not symbiotic.”
“That's what you think. I'm seeing you two as the product of at least 30,000 years of parallel evolution that has created a necessity. Think about what you have often expressed as being the three things you have to have in order to be able to function properly.”
“Yeah. A place to build a fire, a weapon, and a Dog. But that's just what I want around to keep my survival instincts behaving themselves properly, I don't get nearly as paranoid if I've got those available.”
“And so. You need the dog. Symbiosis. You are proving my point.”
“Still can't bring her along. We're talking about 70 pounds of Staffordshire-Boxer cross here, not a purse dog. I can't just shut her up alone somewhere for hours or days when I'd have to do that, and she doesn't take well to strangers as a rule, so I can hardly keep her with me all the time. Additionally, I'm going to be going back and forth to the Ship a couple more times before we break cover, and what good is a minder going to do then? The dog is better off at home that being abandoned with a stranger for several days.”
“You are being afraid to spend a few pounds of iron ore here again. Funding is not an issue at this level. You simply have to hire a minder for her. I'm going to put a proposal together on the whole thing. I'll message it to Allan and Ian, and I'll let you know what they say. I have some ideas here.”
I got distracted with something else then. There was a lot of that going on at my house at that point. I went back to other rat killing and pretty much forgot about the whole issue until Sunday morning. Being back home, I woke up at my usual time, which was about ten after four in the morning. Mike informed me that I had 57 messages regarding action items that I needed to review.
These were a constant string, but I took care of them when they came up if I was awake. It seemed that someone had been busy overnight. The fact that it wasn't the same overnight on the ship probably accounted for a lot of it. It was pushing their version of noon up there. I'd done some mental number crunching and concluded that they were either on UCT or about an hour ahead of it. The differences in their time system and ours made it difficult to nail down exactly, but that was close enough to keep me aware that when it was bedtime local, they were probably close to getting up and diving back into things.
Half of the stuff was just pro forma approvals, so that whoever was suggesting doing this or that had the proper authorizations to go ahead. Everyone wanted me to approve their purchase of options to buy or lease property on the outskirts of Moscow, or Tel-Aviv, Hamburg, Buenos Aires, Irwindale, or wherever else. I looked at what we were thinking of doing with the property, and normally agreed. I did have to ask why we were optioning a brewery in Milwaukee, and found out that someone on the ship had concluded that Earth type beer might be popular, and planned on taking a run at making it for export. I agreed with that one, too.
The only ones that were difficult were some things that didn't translate well between our culture and the Karn. They were, just for instance, planning on buying up all sorts of high-priced goodies as “gifts” for various Heads of State and other luminaries. My bland comment that we didn't do bribery was met with some serious disagreement. All the information they had available said that humans did things that way. I finally just threw my hands up and instructed that any gifts were to be procured through Environmental Control and would consist of Karn manufactured cultural items. In other words, Art. For gifts to individuals, foodstuffs or alcoholic beverages from the ship would suffice, and nobody was to do anything other than that without my specific authorization in each individual case.
I didn't doubt that we'd be expected to bribe a lot of folks, but I wasn't going to do so unless it was totally vital, and I sure wasn't going to make it obvious, or we'd have all the hogs lining up for their turn at the trough.
I was working on my fourth cup of coffee when I got to item number 46, which was from Allan. “Bring the dog.”
I just kind of snorted to myself, and went on down the list. Item 53 was from Ian. “Bring the dog. We'll get a minder. We're taking another 20 or so humans back to the ship with us anyway, and adding one will not be a problem. They won't be able to tell any tales out of school. Our presence will be known when they get back here in a week or ten days, anyway.”
I was firmly convinced that I was going to regret doing it, but when I went back to Rock Springs on Sunday afternoon, I brought along a spare carry-on full of dog food and treats, a couple of dog toys, three cans of tennis balls, and one happy dog. She is not a really happy traveler, but she is not inclined to act out over it. She took to flying about the same way she does to riding in a car, which means that looking out the window is interesting for about five minutes, and then she wants to know if we are there yet.
She didn't do anything anyone found particularly objectionable, other than hurt Paul's feelings by moving to put me between him and herself when he came by and patted her on the head for the third time. She knows that she has to be civil, but I've never made any effort to teach her to be friendly. She can pick her own friends.
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