Side Story - Help, I Need Somebody.
- Location
- The general area. Possibly behind you.
O'Make is still stumbling around singing. Someone grab him and get the bottle away from the fecker!
As the aircraft rumbled through the sky at nearly twice the speed of sound, Brendan sipped a cup of very good coffee while he watched the face of the man in the seat on the other side of the table from him.
It was, in its own way, quite funny. His expression was changing repeatedly, forming a shifting mix of incredulity, shock, disbelief, and mild horror as he turned the pages of the document he was reading.
Keith Prender wasn't someone Brendan had met before, but he'd heard of the man. A former US ambassador to Germany, he was very experienced in diplomatic work, had a security clearance about as high as it came outside Brendan's group, was very respected by people on all sides of the political divide, and was very smart. He had two degrees in linguistics and political science, spoke half a dozen languages with near-native fluency, and had almost single-handedly defused a potentially extremely damaging political upheaval in Europe before he'd hit forty.
He was also well known to be heavily interested in technology, knew a lot more about scientific fields than most non-scientists and especially people in his arena tended to, and had the complete trust of the current President and his three predecessors.
In other words, he was just about perfect for meeting the first representative of a genuine alien species on Earth.
Mind you, it still seemed to come as something of a shock to him…
When Brendan had got the call from Danny, he'd almost not been surprised. If anyone was going to meet aliens, it was always going to be Taylor Hebert. And of course having somehow detected a distress beacon from another universe never mind halfway across the entire galaxy, the girl would think it entirely reasonable to single-handedly open communications, somehow learn the language of her new friend, and then pretty much wholesale invent a portal device to retrieve said alien to her own workshop.
Because that was basically Taylor in a nutshell. See an impossible problem, fix it before breakfast, and move on to something more interesting.
He sighed inaudibly even as he smiled to himself. God, that girl was incredible. And had brought more fun to his life than he'd ever have expected in his wildest dreams, although that went along with far more stress than was entirely ideal.
Still worth it.
And now… what could they learn from her new friend? Her species apparently had functional faster than light travel aside from anything else and the alien woman was supposedly a very talented engineer, so if nothing else a trade of information seemed possible. The President, when he'd finally stopped waving his arms and shouting, had gone very thoughtful indeed for a while. Brendan pointed out, rather forcefully due to certain other people's opinions that if unchecked were likely to get them into a lot more trouble than anyone wanted, that there was no way in hell that Taylor was going to allow anyone to do anything… unpleasant… to this Tali'Zorah person. The girl looked after her friends, he knew that damn well, and he sure as fuck didn't want to piss her off.
Partly because he genuinely cared deeply for her, partly because that would risk the flow of insanely effective super science, but mostly because the thought of what a seriously motivated and angry Taylor Hebert could actually do terrified him to the depths of his soul.
She was bad enough when she was having fun and just doing her thing. If she got annoyed enough to actively cause trouble, he had no doubt whatsoever that the level of danger she could represent was far, far past anything anyone would find remotely pleasant.
He was also fairly convinced that it would be extremely hard to stop her if she decided to retrieve someone she valued should anyone make the idiotic decision to make that necessary. Certainly not by this point, as it seemed entirely likely that she'd built herself any amount of useful equipment that it could be very difficult to separate her from before something bad happened.
Not to mention that he was also completely sure that she would have a lot of help, in the form of her father, Professor Drekin, the entirety of Gravtec, and most likely everyone at the Dock Workers Association. Not to mention several members of New Wave…
Yeah. Best to avoid risking that. He'd explained this very slowly and carefully to a couple of people who seemed hard of understanding, and to his credit the President had also listened, agreed, and flatly ordered that nothing other than a friendly welcome be extended to their visitor.
Taylor Hebert vouched for her. That was good enough for him.
Brendan wondered with mild amusement if she actually knew how much the US owed her, and how much regard she was held in. It wasn't out of character that she'd never really thought about it, she didn't seem to care all that much as long as she got to invent things and her friends and family were well looked after.
In any case, the end result was that an entirely new department of the US government was set up in haste and secrecy. Extraterrestrial Relations wasn't something he'd ever expected to see, but it now existed, very secretly but very officially, and the man in the other seat was the person who was going to be the face of it.
Which had come as rather a surprise to the poor guy.
Prender lowered the document and stared blankly at Brendan for a few seconds, then turned his head to look out the window at the brightly sunlit clouds far below. "This is impossible," he said faintly. "One person is responsible for pushing our technology in half a dozen fields ahead by fifty years? And she's fifteen years old!?"
"More like a hundred years at least, yes, and she did that when she was fourteen," Brendan chuckled. Prender met his eyes with a stunned gaze.
"And now she's got an alien in her house."
He sounded like he was having trouble speaking.
Brendan nodded with a shrug. "So I'm told. I have no reason to disbelieve it, many reasons to take it as complete truth, and knowing the girl, am not really as shocked as I probably should be."
He picked up the tablet that was sitting between them and held it out, showing his companion the photo on the screen once more. Taylor was standing next to Amy Dallon and a person who was clearly not human, and somehow didn't look like one of the unusual Parahumans with differing body makeup. He couldn't put his finger on just why he got that impression, but he did.
Prender studied it again, shaking his head a little. The alien, a Quarian according to what Danny had told him, was smiling in a recognizable manner, looking quite comfortable and generally happy, as were the other two. They were apparently discussing something, and the alien woman was holding an orange in one three-fingered hand as if she was about to eat it.
"Absolutely incredible," he finally whispered.
"It's certainly not what I was expecting when I got up this morning," Brendan replied, sipping his coffee as he put the tablet down. "On the other hand, where Taylor is concerned, you never expect what happens. You just accept that it does and deal with the results." He smiled a little as Prender sighed, going back to the document he was holding.
"Fine. I suppose I can't argue with reality." The man turned the page. "Although I'm having trouble with it… Anyway. We have a genuine space alien, a friendly one, who is a refugee from literally another universe and far across the galaxy, rescued by a fifteen year old scientist because she thought it was the right thing to do."
"Indeed."
"And now we're going to officially welcome this Tali'Zorah to the US, arrange any required documentation for her, and find out if she's willing to work with us on a technology exchange among other things."
Brendan nodded, still smiling slightly at the tone of voice his companion had. "Basically, yes. Taylor… slightly jumped the gun, I'll admit, but it's done. And I understand her reasons. The young woman in question was apparently in a tricky spot, so it was not really that much of a stretch to rescue her. We can probably learn a lot from her and a fair trade of useful information seems one of the more effective methods to do that. And much easier and ethical than some of the other possibilities I'd prefer not to think about. Opening a relationship with her people through her is the medium-term goal, and the long term one could be… interesting."
"Effective and possibly cheap space travel, among other possibilities, does rather hint at some significant changes to our way of life," Prender agreed quietly.
"Her people, from the limited information we've learned so far from Taylor, appear to be refugees in their own universe, so there are also humanitarian issues at play, I think," Brendan added. "Combined with various other possible paths. Although that's not really my specialty. Politics isn't something I've had a lot of time for in the past."
"From what I know that doesn't mean you are unable to effectively handle such matters," the other man replied.
"I didn't say I couldn't do it," Brendan smiled. "I just don't have a lot of time for it." He looked up at the clock on the far bulkhead. "We'll be landing in ten minutes, and it will take about another twenty to get to the Hebert house after that. You should have enough time to finish the report."
With a nod Prender went back to reading, his eyebrows jumping around a little every now and then. Brendan finished his coffee, used the facilities, and visited the cockpit of the small and very fast business jet to talk to the pilot for a couple of minutes. By the time he buckled himself back into his seat, the diplomat had finished reading and the aircraft was descending towards the air force base fifteen miles outside Brockton Bay to the north-west.
Retrieving the paperwork, Brendan locked it into the high security case he had on the seat next to him, then leaned back.
"This should be interesting, Ambassador," he said with a grin.
Prender gave him a look and merely shook his head wordlessly, apparently still having trouble with the whole thing.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Tali stretched and enjoyed the almost unique sensation of cloth on her skin. Living as her people had been forced to do for centuries now meant that it was rare indeed that any of them could have said they'd slept in a bed without their environment suits on, and certainly not outside their own quarters. She owed Amy Dallon a lot for making it possible.
And of course Taylor for rescuing her in the first place, and her father for immediately agreeing that she was welcome to stay in their spare room for as long as she wished.
Sitting up, Tali looked around the place, smiling a little at the sheer difference of her current environment versus what she'd experienced in the past. The room wasn't enormous, but it was a reasonable size for one person, perhaps three meters square, and larger than many people in the Fleet got for themselves. The furniture and other aspects were a strange mix of something she'd almost think of as antique from her perspective, and luxurious, for the same reason. Only very rich people or very expensive hotels made this much use of wood and plant-based textiles these days.
So despite the overall low tech, it was also giving the impression of being a luxury room, which was an amusing dissonance.
The bed was also amazingly comfortable, and she'd had one of the best night's sleep she'd ever managed. It was so quiet that she'd initially had trouble falling asleep, there was no omnipresent background sound of air recirculators, machinery functioning in the walls, and the other noises that told someone who'd spent their entire lives on spacecraft that things were working properly. Even on the wrecked Klaatu there were such sounds, from the residual systems she'd got functioning.
A completely silent ship was a ship in trouble and cause for immediate alarm. That was something ingrained into her at a very deep level and had taken a while to overcome.
Here the sounds were far different; a distant combination of natural noises from animals of some sort outside, what she'd learned was traffic in the city this place was part of, wind over the roof and through the leaves of the big tree behind the house, and any number of other sources she couldn't pinpoint. But even with all that, it was still quiet, and much more organic and random than anything she was familiar with.
She found she rather liked it. The smells were intriguing too, nothing like the sterile air of her suit and the slight odors of synthetics and lubricants. She could smell something that Taylor had said was the ocean, as this place was very close to a huge body of water, growing things, hydrocarbon pollution which was not all that nice but also seemed fairly low key, and many other things she had no idea about. The mixture wasn't overwhelming but it was yet another instant indication that her circumstances had radically changed much faster than she'd have thought probable.
She leaned against the pillows and looked through the gap in the coverings over the window across the room, seeing that it was a sunny day with only a few clouds in the sky. Apparently the current season was the start of summer, when the temperature would rise considerably and one could expect months of this sort of thing. Overall it felt quite comfortable to her, being around what she'd normally expect on a Quarian ship, although from what Taylor had said this planet had what to Tali's knowledge was an unusually wide temperature range.
Most inhabited worlds in Council space didn't simultaneously extend from below the freezing point of carbon dioxide to two thirds of the way to the boiling point of water, but this place could demonstrate both extremes depending on where you looked and the season. And the swing between summer and winter in a lot of areas was far more than most planets she knew about that were classed as garden worlds.
Her current locality, though, was at the lower end of the possible variation, being fairly cold in winter and quite warm in summer, but neither arctic or tropical at either end of the scale. Presumably the climate was moderated to some extent by the large bay the city was built around, she knew that bodies of water could have that effect by acting as heat-sinks although she had no practical experience of this.
It didn't really matter right now, though, as it was entirely acceptable at the moment. As she didn't yet know how long she was going to be here, she'd worry about ridiculous temperatures only if it became necessary.
Getting out of bed, she wandered over to the window and looked out, not pulling the covering back too far to avoid exposing her presence. The scene outside seemed calm and generally placid, with a few wheeled vehicles moving on the streets and Humans walking around doing whatever it was they were up to. No one looked at the house or her window, apparently content with minding their own business. Raising her eyes from ground level she looked up at the sky, seeing a number of contrails from aircraft far overhead. She studied them for a little while, watching one tiny dot slide through the air a few kilometers up, apparently slowing for a landing. What she could see showed, again, technology that was quite old by her standards, but still well done and effective in its own way.
Looking lower, she peered between buildings to see blue-silver water not that far away, with small ships moving around on it as they went about their business. Just visible off to one side was a structure some distance out in the bay which had a faintly glowing bubble of energy surrounding it, a manifestation that stood out as it was far higher tech than everything else she was looking at. It appeared to be a force field of some variety, something she was aware of from fiction but had never seen in real life. And it certainly wasn't a kinetic barrier, as she was used to.
It, along with the things she'd experienced in Taylor's lab, stood out as the exceptions to what was overall a lower tech level than she'd grown up with. And they were severe exceptions… No one had literal force fields, no one had teleportation machines, and no one could build in minutes a device to teach someone an entirely new language via neural induction.
The only problem with that conclusion was that it at all happened to her in the last day.
She had the sudden thought that her father was going to go insane when she was able to tell him all this. It made her wince and smile at the same time. And abruptly miss her parents very strongly.
Stepping back from the window she allowed the covering over it to swing back into place, then spent a while putting her environment suit back on and adjusting it. She left the helmet on her bed, as she didn't need it now, but the suit was a point of familiarity in a very different world as well as being the only item of actual clothing she had at the moment. Making sure her outer covering was neatly presented, but leaving her hood down, she left the room and walked down the hallway to the stairs, seeing that Taylor's room and Danny's were both empty. She could hear voices downstairs so she descended to meet her hosts.
Both father and daughter were in the kitchen, the former cooking something that was the source of the enticing scent she'd detected upstairs, while the latter was sitting at the table reading an electronic screen and talking about whatever it was with interest. They looked around as she came in, greeting her with smiles, Taylor's wide and happy, Danny's still showing slight confusion but acceptance.
"Hi, Tali," Taylor said brightly. "Did you sleep well?"
"I did, thank you," the young woman replied. Taylor pushed out a chair with her foot and she sat down at the implied invitation. "The bed was very comfortable. I've never experienced anything quite like that. We don't really do the same thing on our ships."
Taylor chuckled quietly. "It's probably a shock coming to our world like you did. Hopefully you won't have any trouble with it until we can get you back home again."
Tali laughed. "It's very different in some ways, and surprisingly familiar in others. So far I like it. Although compared to what was facing me, almost anything would be an improvement."
The girl's face fell for a moment. "Yeah, I can imagine," she said in a low voice. "What happened to you is horrible. And all the other people on your ship. Someone needs to do something about those Batarians..." Her expression went oddly cold and blank for a second or two, making Tali feel somewhat uncomfortable, but perked up again almost immediately. "Something for later. Right now, breakfast is more important. Amy said you could eat anything a human can now, the only issue is personal taste. So we thought we'd try a few things and see if you like them."
"I like oranges," Tali replied hopefully. Danny snorted with laughter as he turned to look at them.
"We noticed. I'll buy some more later today. We don't seem to have any left right now." He seemed amused at how Tali looked embarrassed. "Don't worry, I don't mind. They're intended for eating and you certainly seemed to enjoy them."
"They're amazing," Tali said vehemently, remembering the taste, unlike anything she'd ever had. "I can promise you that the Fleet would love to trade for just those. We have so few staples in our diet these days..." She sighed. "The Live Ships are incredible but they're a long way from perfect, and are only just large enough to keep us alive. We don't have the space or the energy for luxuries."
"Well, that's one of the things we're going to have to fix," Taylor stated firmly. "That's what I do. I invent stuff to fix things. I'm making a list." She tapped the side of her head as she smiled. Tali nodded, smiling back, and feeling that the girl was probably being entirely truthful based on what she'd seen so far.
"All right, let's see how this works." Danny brought some plates to the table, putting them in the middle, then went back for more. He spent a few minutes getting various dishes out of the oven as well, and soon Tali was looking at more food than she'd seen for a long time. "OK. We have meat, as well as vegetables and fruit, so there's quite a choice. That's bacon, I've never met anyone who doesn't like it," he said as he sat down, indicating one plate full of strips of some sort of cooked meat that looked crisp and oddly delicious. "Then we have fried eggs, hash browns, pancakes, fried tomatoes, fresh tomatoes, toasted bread, sausages, baked beans, and a salad. Along with various sauces and syrups, as well as the usual condiments." He pointed at each item as he named it.
Tali felt her stomach rumble, apparently liking the display. "It's a lot more than we would normally have for breakfast, but hopefully you'll find something you like."
"Thank you, you're very generous," Tali assured him. She peered at the food, wondering what to try first. After a few questions which were answered by both of them, she had a plate full of a little bit of everything. All of them started eating, the two Humans watching Tali curiously as she cautiously tried the bacon first.
"Ancestors, that's good," she breathed, after swallowing. "I hardly ever get to try meat, and it has to be liquidized normally for us to eat. I had no idea the texture was so… crunchy."
"Not all meats are cooked like that, bacon is sort of special, and not everyone likes it crisp, but it's got to be better than a steak smoothie," Taylor commented with a grin. She herself appeared to be quite determined to make the bacon disappear rapidly. Tali laughed, then applied herself to the food with a will, discovering that almost everything was delicious even if nothing like anything she'd tasted before. The sole exception was the fried tomatoes, which she didn't care for.
To her delight, there was also orange juice available, which she rapidly decided was her favorite drink ever. It was nearly as good as a fresh orange. Better in some ways in fact.
If nothing else, she was going to enjoy the food while she was here if this was what it was like.
When they finally finished she sat back feeling full and in a good mood. "That was very nice indeed, Danny," she said gratefully. "Thank you for going to all that effort."
"It was my pleasure, Tali," he replied. Looking at the mechanical timepiece on his wrist, something that in Council terms would have been an incredibly valuable antique for the sheer rarity and age, he nodded. "Brendan and his people will be here in about half an hour, so I've got time to clean up." He looked at her as she felt a bit worried. The day before after Taylor had explained the entire sequence of events to her father, and he'd spent a while sighing and trying to get to grips with it, he'd disappeared into another room and apparently taken close to an hour talking on the local communications system to this 'Brendan' man, who Taylor had told her was a high ranked government official and a friend. He'd returned saying that the next day the government would be sending people to interview her.
She was a little worried about this, but it seemed entirely reasonable from their point of view as she was undoubtedly a potential problem they hadn't seen coming, and so far everyone had been friendly and helpful. Astoundingly so, in fact, under the odd circumstances. She doubted very much than any of the species she knew about would have been so nice to a stranded Quarian. Or any Quarian, stranded or not, should they come to the attention of the government.
Possibly that was her paranoia talking, but the last few centuries had taught her people that paranoia wasn't necessarily either bad or misplaced when it came to their interactions with others.
She hoped that this adventure would be the start of something much happier. It seemed entirely possible, based if nothing else on the young Human who was looking at her with a gaze that was far too knowing for someone her age.
"It'll be fine, Tali," Taylor assured her. "I won't let anything bad happen, I promise."
Oddly enough Tali believed her, and that she could keep her word. And would no matter what.
"My people haven't had entirely… friendly… receptions in the past," she replied sadly. "We're galactic pariahs, in fact. It's partly our fault, but..."
"What other people think of you isn't something I care about," Taylor said firmly. "We make up our own minds. And you're not even in your own galaxy so that's not important right now anyway."
Tali nodded a little, still stunned about what Taylor had told her the day before. Not only had the girl managed to literally teleport her across half the galaxy in milliseconds with something she'd designed and built in hours, but she'd added to that ridiculousness by retrieving her from an entirely different universe! It seemed utterly crazy, but she'd shown Tali enough proof that in the end she'd had to accept it.
'Subspace,' whatever it really was, apparently allowed some very peculiar things to be done that normal physics would deem impossible. Normal physics seemed to be rather incorrect, as it turned out. And Taylor Hebert was certainly not interested in its opinion, instead going her own way and making it move out of the way and stare in horror…
"I still find the very concept incredible," Tali admitted. "I've read about theories of quantum parallel worlds, but no one has really managed to prove any of them, not to the point of showing a real tangible method to access another level of reality. Quantum computing shows some evidence for the idea but… actually visiting another plane of existence or a parallel world or whatever this is best described as is so far from anything I know about that I'm having trouble understanding it."
"We've known it was real for many years," Danny put in, listening to them both with interest. "As Taylor explained last night, we're in contact with at least one other parallel world in the form of Earth Aleph, although these days it's technically illegal to duplicate the work that led to that connection." He frowned at his daughter, who grinned at him. "Which may cause problems..."
"Nah, it'll be fine, Dad, I did it completely differently," she assured him. "Anyway, I was answering a distress call. I had an ethical requirement to provide any aid I could. Just like at sea."
He sighed faintly. "You've been listening to too many tall tales at the Union," he muttered, shaking his head. Taylor hid a smile but Tali could see she was amused. And that he wasn't actually upset or annoyed. They clearly had a healthy parent/child relationship and could indulge in mild teasing, in a way that made her homesick again for an instant.
"Hopefully the government will see it that way," he added. "We'll find out soon." Standing up he started clearing the table, Taylor helping. Soon everything was back in its place, clean and dry. Tali arranged the chairs neatly, feeling that she should do something to help, which made Taylor smile at her.
As they were finishing up, the girl looked around, the chiming sound of the door annunciator coming moments later. "That's Brendan and his friend," she said. "I'll get it." She disappeared out of the room and Tali heard the door open and low voices. Glancing at Danny, she tried to suppress her apprehension.
He obviously picked up on this as he put his hand on her shoulder for a moment in a calming gesture. "It will work out fine, Tali," he said softly. "We're on your side, and everything will be good."
Gesturing to the doorway, he added, "Let's go in the living room, it's more comfortable, and see what happens next."
She followed as he led the way across the hall into the larger room, and sat down on a chair that he pointed to. Shortly afterwards Taylor came in with two other Humans accompanying her, both males older than Danny. The pair stopped and stared at her as soon as they laid eyes on her, which caused her to swallow a little nervously.
"This is my friend Tali'Zorah, a Quarian I rescued," Taylor said casually as she dropped into the chair next to Tali. "Please be nice to her, I like her." She grinned at Tali as she spoke.
"Good lord," one of the two new arrivals said under his breath, before he stepped forward and introduced himself.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Brendan kept his startlement to himself, although his companion muttered an exclamation of shock, having not really been as ready for this as he'd thought he was. On the drive from the airbase they'd discussed how the meeting with Taylor's new friend would go, which depended to some extent on how both Taylor and Tali'Zorah responded to the proposals that had been authorized. Now, faced with a literal alien from another world, Keith Prender seemed almost to have forgotten those plans for a moment.
"My apologies," the man finally said as he stepped forward and held out his hand after a visibly confused second or two. The Quarian glanced at Taylor, who nodded, then stood up and carefully shook the offered appendage, with the air of someone to whom this was not familiar at all but was willing to try it. "Your appearance was a little surprising, I'm afraid, even though I was warned. I had very little time to get used to the concept of meeting someone from… elsewhere." Prender smiled a little unevenly, although he quickly pulled himself together. "It's not something I ever expected to do."
"I understand," Tali replied as she sat down again. "I can imagine it's a shock." Her voice seemed, to Brendan, to exhibit a certain amount of nervousness and apprehension, although she was hiding it well as far as a human viewpoint went. It was a surprisingly normal voice too, he noted, nothing really present to distinguish it from that of any woman, although she had a faint accent unlike anything he'd ever heard.
It struck him that she was, in fact, speaking incredibly fluent English, for that matter. Looking at Taylor he wondered how the devil the girl had managed that little trick. And so fast too.
Something else he suspected he was going to get a long and very bizarre report on in due course…
"Have a seat, gentlemen," Danny said, waving to the chairs on the other side of the coffee table. "Would either of you like drinks?"
"Some coffee would be nice, thanks, Danny," Brendan replied as he sat. Danny nodded, looking at Prender, who indicated he'd like the same. The elder Hebert went into the kitchen for a couple of minutes during which everyone was silent, Prender obviously thinking hard about how to proceed, Brendan waiting to see what happened, and Tali just waiting. Taylor seemed curious but unworried and met his eyes with a look of mild amusement in her own.
When Danny came back he handed out drinks from the tray he was carrying, Tali and Taylor both getting orange juice, while he and the other pair had coffee. Everyone took their beverages, Prender drinking a couple of swallows before he put his cup down and nodded to himself.
"All right. Before we begin, I would also like to record this interview for later study," he added, opening his briefcase and pulling out a small omnidirectional camera, which he put on the table on the legs that folded out from the bottom. "Does anyone have any objections to that?" No one seemed to, so he turned it on. "I am Keith Prender, newly appointed Ambassador to the Quarian species on behalf of the Department of Extraterrestrial Relations of the United States of America. A department, I must point out, that didn't exist twenty four hours ago, and an appointment that was not something I expected in the slightest." He smiled a little ruefully as Taylor grinned. Tali seemed slightly embarrassed if Brendan was reading her expression correctly. While quite different from a human face, it wasn't so different that such things were unrecognizable.
He mused on the idea that Parahumans, especially Case 53s, quite likely had reduced the impact meeting someone not fully, or in this case, even slightly human would have on most people. It seemed probable that if Tali'Zorah was to walk down the street in the middle of Brockton Bay, almost everyone would just think Parahuman and go no further than that, unlike the confusion that would have occurred only forty years ago. Her garb, which was much less bizarre than many cape costumes were, only added to that impression. While quite divergent from the human norm in many ways, she was actually closer to what one would expect than a number of Parahumans he was aware of in fact. Even in this city there were at least two he could think of that looked less human…
"It is a pleasure to meet you, Mr Prender," Tali replied. "I am Tali'Zorah vas Klaatu, although considering my ship is essentially destroyed, I suppose I'm only Tali'Zorah nar Rayya again."
"I… am unfamiliar with your naming system," Prender admitted, sounding curious. "From context the suffix is… the name of a ship?"
"Yes." She nodded. "Nar is used to denote the ship one is born on. When one matures and becomes a crew-member of another ship, the Vas designates the ship name. I was a member of the crew of the Klaatu, a Salarian science and research vessel, and undergoing my Pilgrimage." She sighed quietly, seeming depressed. "Unfortunately my ship was attacked by pirates, Batarian bosh'tets who slaughtered most of the crew and captured the few who were left alive when they boarded us. I was working in the secondary reactor compartment when they attacked and was able to hide well enough they couldn't find me. Partly luck, partly the fact that they were in a hurry and badly trained." She made a gesture Brendan couldn't decipher. "Although after a couple of days I wasn't sure escaping from them was actually a good thing..."
"It was," Taylor put in with a sympathetic expression, as the Quarian woman looked at the floor and radiated sadness enough to make Brendan feel very angry on her behalf. "Because you managed to survive despite the odds, improvise your distress beacon, and attract my attention. It worked out well in the end."
"That's true, I suppose," Tali replied with a nod, looking at the girl, then smiling a little bitterly. "I do wish my friends had made it, but..." She shook her head as she took a deep breath. "One cannot change the past, all one can do is change the future."
"All too true," Prender agreed. He also seemed somewhat annoyed, but not at her. "I take it these Batarian pirates are not uncommon in your space?"
"Unfortunately not, they are a scourge that I wish someone would wipe from existence," Tali replied with a note of anger in her expressive voice. "But the Council does nothing, has never done anything, but simply allows them to continue raiding people all over the galaxy. Yes, if they are caught in the act, the result is usually less pirates, but they're sneaky and are most certainly connected to the Batarian leadership at a high enough level that far too many of them avoid what they deserve." She went quiet for a moment, then added less vehemently, "I'm sorry. I still have bad memories, and those… creatures… have preyed on my people for far too long."
Prender nodded, his gaze assessing. "I believe that the politics of where you came from are, by the sound of it, at least as complicated as they are here. I will be interested in learning about them."
"That may take some time, Mr Prender," Tali said with a small smile. "And I am hardly an expert on politics, I'm an engineer. But I'll do what I can, and I have access to a large amount of data on many subjects relating to the Council and the other species associated with it." She lifted her left arm and indicated the device that was wrapped around her forearm. "My omnitool contains all sorts of information that should help me tell you what you need to know."
"It's sort of like a phone combined with a massive database, scanners, a tool kit, and all sorts of other cool stuff," Taylor commented, making them all look at her. "I can download the contents of one and put it into a format that our computers can handle easily enough."
"I have a number of spares salvaged from the ship's crew," Tali nodded. "I can't see a reason not to give you one, under the circumstances."
"That would certainly be interesting, and probably helpful," Prender replied with a glance at Brendan, who was wondering what would come of an alien database with a certain amount of worry. He had a shrewd idea that Taylor might well have already downloaded such data, and quite possibly looked at it and been annoyed that it wasn't sufficiently advanced in many places.
"Perhaps Tali should tell her story and how she ended up where she was when Taylor found her," Danny suggested. "In her own words. It would probably be the best way to begin."
Everyone regarded Tali, who looked around then nodded, putting her half-empty glass of orange juice down on the table and sitting more upright. "Of course." She thought for a moment, then began, "My people, the Quarians, are the few remaining survivors of a devastating war nearly three centuries ago. A war that we quite literally engineered our way into, by accident and stupidity, and one that is still reverberating through our civilization to this day..."
The next three hours were filled with a story that left Brendan by turns impressed, appalled, furious, and horrified. The civilization Tali came from, and the 'Council' that ruled most of it from the giant space station known as the Citadel, appeared in some ways very advanced, as he'd have expected, but in other ways was oddly familiar and quite unpleasant in a number of places. An entire species practiced slavery to a level that was even worse than the history of his own country could show, and the supposed leaders of the inter-species alliance did nothing about it even when their own citizens fell victim to that fate. The same Council had deliberately raised a non-aligned and less advanced species to their level to fight a war they'd started and were losing on their behalf, then committed slow genocide on their saviors when the inevitable blowback occurred. Having allied with another militaristic species to fight the first one and come close to losing in the process.
The most powerful faction, the Asari, were clearly running a long term goal of slowly subverting all the other factions by literally out breeding them, while the Salarians as the second most powerful one seemed to be primarily involved in spying on everyone else all the time. The Turians were the de facto military and appeared to be perfectly content with annexing less advanced species and relegating them to the status of 'client' species, which sounded a lot like an empire being built to him, and this was apparently completely acceptable. Add to that the way only the top three species got a seat on the Council itself, everyone else being subordinate to that group, and it didn't sound particularly fair or equitable to him in any way.
Not to mention the Quarians had very definitely got the shitty end of the stick. Yes, they'd made a bad mistake, but from what he could see it was genuinely a mistake and one that couldn't have been predicted, one they'd already paid an horrific price for. To then have the survivors rejected by everyone else and forced into a nomadic lifestyle that was obviously slowly leading to inevitable extinction, since they apparently couldn't even settle on another planet without risking military action against them, was just the icing on a very unpleasant cake.
Even assuming that Tali'Zorah's testimony was obviously biased by her own experiences, there was more than enough evidence that she showed them from her omnitool's database to prove that her people had been badly let down by the body that liked to think it was in charge of the entire galaxy. A group that only had the status it did by virtue of using technology they'd basically reverse engineered, or simply found, the detritus from the long extinct species who'd actually designed it in the first place.
From both a scientific and a military background he found himself wondering just how foolish one had to be to end up basing one's entire civilization on hardware you didn't completely understand, made by people who had mysteriously vanished for reasons you couldn't work out. It seemed… suboptimal and incautious.
Something about the whole setup seemed off to him.
He was also puzzled about how this accidentally created AI species, the Geth, had basically been completely ignored once the Quarians had left their home world. It seemed a little strange that apparently none of the other species had thought it might be a good idea to deal with the problem permanently before it grew past the point of that being possible. But they seemed to have just decided to pretend there wasn't a whole solar system full of rogue hyper-advanced and provably dangerous AIs sitting out there for the last three centuries. Who knew what they were like now?
He certainly wouldn't have just walked off and forgotten about such a thing. That was how you ended up with a very nasty surprise when you least expected it. The Quarians could be forgiven for acting like that, there weren't enough of them left to do much other than risk their existence, but as far as he was concerned it was extremely irresponsible for the Council to have done what they had. Or had not, in this case.
The entire story left him feeling that the Citadel species were by and large not people it would necessarily be a good idea to get involved with. They seemed to be rather bad friends at best. And in some fairly important ways none too bright.
On the other hand, from what he'd heard so far, he had a lot of sympathy for the Quarians despite past mistakes, and it seemed viable to open further contact with them sooner or later. One way or another a mutually beneficial arrangement might well be possible.
Tali finally finished giving her side of what had happened. When she stopped, Taylor took over for a while, explaining without going into technical details what she'd done and how the Quarian woman had ended up finding herself on Earth Bet, which seemed to have come as a considerable surprise to her. He sympathized, Taylor tended to have that effect on most people sooner or later.
Prender had asked a lot of questions, good ones, as the time had progressed, and when Tali's recounting of events finished, he sat and thought for a while. Taylor got up and retrieved some more juice for both her and her friend, the alien woman taking it with a smile of gratitude, then she sat down again and waited patiently. Danny refilled their coffee cups for the third time and went back to listening quietly as he'd been doing the entire time.
Eventually the diplomat stirred and said, "Thank you for the background information and your story, Miss Tali'Zorah. It puts the current situation into a helpful context, and gives my department and the US government a point to start in working out how we deal with all this in the longer term."
"You're welcome, Mr Prender," Tali replied politely.
"Now, as far as the immediate future goes, I have a wide remit to make your stay here as comfortable as we can manage, until such time as we can return you to your people, and hopefully open a larger relationship with them. We are taking the view that, despite your somewhat unexpected arrival and the circumstances, that we will treat you as a representative of the Quarian people, an ambassador in essence, even if not one officially recognized by your own government." He smiled at her as she looked surprised.
"That allows us to shortcut a number of potential problems regarding your position, and my orders are to do what I can to make things work out for all of us." He produced a thick folder from his case, one that wasn't the data that Brendan had shared with him on the plane. "The President, our highest elected official, after considerable discussion last night with his closest advisers when they were informed of your presence and the background to your arrival here, and who facilitated that, has agreed to grant you refugee status in this country in addition to everything else. We will arrange suitable paperwork and identity documents to that end."
He shook his head a little while Tali kept staring at him in visible shock. "As you are the first extraterrestrial visitor we've ever encountered, that does present some potential issues, as we're not particularly keen on broadcasting that fact to the world just yet. There are elements of our society, and others, that could and most likely would cause significant problems should it become widely know, unfortunately."
Tali nodded slowly, seeming to understand the problem.
"However, we are lucky that, unlike the situation up until quite recently in historical terms, these days there is a convenient way around aspects of the problem."
"This… Parahuman… phenomenon your civilization has," Tali said as he stopped, looking intrigued and enlightened. "Taylor has told me a number of things about that, and her friends Amy and Vicky explained other aspects of it. It seems very strange to me, I have to admit. There's nothing quite like it back home."
"Precisely," Prender nodded. "Your appearance is sufficiently unlike a human to make it clear that you're different, but because the public is now used to the occasional non-human-appearing Parahuman, you won't stand out nearly as much as you once would have done. We can leverage that fact to minimize any public attention beyond that which a Parahuman attracts merely by existing. Being seen to associate with members of New Wave in the form of the Dallon sisters, for example, would tend to reinforce that assumption. Until such time as we are ready to admit to the truth, we feel that's probably the best approach."
She seemed to weigh his words carefully, then made a gesture of acceptance. "It's your world, and I'm grateful for any help you're willing to give me. Allowing people to assume I'm one of these Parahumans seems a small price to pay."
He smiled. "Excellent. That will make our job much easier. Now, due to your contact with Miss Hebert, and your own background, we will also arrange a suitable level of security clearance to cover your interactions with her own technology. You've already learned one of the best-kept secrets in the country merely by meeting her, so there's little point pretending it didn't happen. And no one doubts that you also possess technological knowledge far in advance of what's current on our world." He watched her face, adding after a moment, "It's hoped that you would be amenable to trading information."
Tali looked at Taylor, who looked back, then turned to Prender. "I don't see why not," she replied quietly. "The entire point of my Pilgrimage, any Quarian's Pilgrimage, is to learn new things of use to our people, and we trade information all the time for that reason. Taylor's friend Amy has already given me the greatest gift any of us have ever received in the last three centuries, and can probably help my people in the same way from what she says. That alone would be a fair trade for everything I know."
"I'm pleased to hear that, and I expect Doctor Calhoun and the President will be as well," Prender smiled. "I expect that a joint effort between you and Taylor could produce some interesting results." He looked at Danny. "We were hoping that Gravtec would cooperate with such a thing. You have one of the, if not the, most concentrated assembly of highly intelligent scientists in the country. It would seem reasonable to leverage that with the goal of learning from Miss Tali'Zorah."
"I have no objection at all, personally," Danny replied immediately with a look at his daughter, then Tali. "I like Tali too, and from what she's said, she's a very good engineer. The only possible problem is precisely the assumption that she is a Parahuman. We've gone to significant effort to make certain that nothing we produce can be claimed to be of Parahuman origin specifically to keep aspects of the PRT at arm's length for a number of reasons."
"That's understood, and agreed with, Mr Hebert," Prender nodded. "Leave that to us. We'll make certain that the people who might desire to interfere are convinced that it's nothing to do with them. It's what I understand has been done up until now, against one or two particularly annoying sources of interference."
"In that case I can't see any reason not to work on that basis," Danny said. He looked at Taylor who was frowning thoughtfully and asked, "Do you have anything to add to that, Taylor?"
"No, Dad, it seems a good idea to me as long as the government can get the PRT to back off if they get pushy." She got a sort of an evil grin for a moment. "I'd hate to have to do it myself, I've got more important things to be getting on with."
Brendan couldn't help chuckling. "Please don't go to war with the PRT, Taylor," he said in good humor. "We'd never hear the end of it."
"I'll be good if they will," she assured him, grinning again in a much less worrying manner. "But if anyone hurts my friends, I'll be upset."
"That's well understood," he replied, smiling. Prender was looking back and forth between the both of them and seemed mildly confused but shrugged a little and moved on. Pulling out a small still camera he held it up.
"I'll take an ID photo of you, and we'll have a suitable backstory and documentation for public consumption here by the early afternoon. Until such time as we can allow the truth out, it would be appreciated if you stick to that backstory if anyone questions you. Hopefully they won't, and if they do we'll deal with it, but it will allow you to go about day to day business without too much trouble."
Tali nodded her understanding. He had her get up and stand against the wall, where Danny quickly hung a white sheet to provide a standard ID photo background. After a couple of minutes work he studied the results and looked pleased. "Excellent, this will do the job nicely." He put the camera away and turned off his video camera, that also going back into his case, which he closed. "I think that for the moment that concludes our business here. We'll want to ask more questions once our analysts have gone over these recordings, but you'll get plenty of notice so hopefully that won't be too much trouble on your side."
"Thank you, more than I can say, Mr Prender," Tali said gratefully.
"Please call me Keith, I think we're likely to be working associates for a while to come," he smiled.
"In that case, please call me Tali. And I think I'm actually looking forward to it." She looked around at them all. "Two days ago I was facing a slow death thousands of light-years from my family and friends. Now I'm safe and welcomed by new friends, and have found hope for my people unlike anything we've ever seen. Talking to your government seems a fair deal in return for all that." Her expression showed she was utterly sincere, and it made her look very young.
"I look forward to seeing how all this works out," Prender said with a nod of acknowledgment for her words.
"I'll convert the data on one of Tali's spare omnitools into a format normal computers can handle and let Brendan have it," Taylor commented from her chair. "It won't take too long. That should give your guys a lot more of the background data on this Council and that sort of thing. There's a huge amount of information stored on those things."
She sat up fully from where she'd been comfortably reclining while listening to Tali talk and turned her attention to Brendan. "There's also something else we should probably think about."
"Which is?" he asked curiously.
"There's a broken alien spaceship floating around out there full of all sorts of cool technology, and I know exactly where it is," she said with an impish grin. "And I can send things to it as well as bring them back..."
Brendan stared at her, then very slowly matched her grin tooth for tooth.
"Oh, dear," Danny sighed faintly. "Here we go."
Tali started laughing.
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