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“So I’m told,” Park admitted,
“but then I don’t see how that is any different from intentional mutations or
gene splicing. Look, everyone here is staring at me, waiting for an answer.
I’ll let you know where to send the plans.” Park turned to Terius and told him,
“We can send the plans off as soon as you say where.”

“Good,” Terius nodded, “I want
these sensors installed as soon as possible. How long do you think it will take
to manufacture them?”

“That depends on how fast a
production line can be set up. Ronnie hand-cobbled our prototype in under a
day,” Park replied.

“Could she build another?” Terius
asked. “There will be a meeting of the Prime Council here day after tomorrow. I
want to scan everyone arriving at the port.”

“At the port and the meeting hall,”
Arn amended. “We’ll supply the original prototype as well.”

“That will leave Van Winkletown
unprotected,” Iris pointed out.

“It’s more important we keep
anything from happening right here,” Arn told her. “Besides, she can whip up
another fast enough or we can retrieve that one after the Council meeting.”

“I’ll take the second option,”
Park told him, “Maybe by then we’ll have the production models on their way.
Now you promised the newsboys and girls a press conference. Any plans to make
good on that promise?”

“We were discussing that while
you were talking to Ronnie,” Arn informed him. “We were just about to announce
the conference for
 
about two hours from
now.”

“I wish we could make it in six
hours,” Park told him. “We could have the prototype scanner here by then.”

“We’ll just have to leave
security up to Prime Terius’ people,” Arn replied, “so long as we have the port
and the council’s chamber covered before they convene.”

At previous conferences, Park had
found the press corps to be surprisingly respectful and courteous. That
civility, however, had apparently gone out the window with the news of the
recent assassination attempts. The ladies and gentlemen of the Press starting
shouting out question even before Prime Terius, Arn and the others could finish
entering the hall being used for the conference.

Marisea insisted on staying on
Park’s arm, which forced Park to carry Cousin once again. When Park asked her
about it, she replied in a whisper, “It’s my way of showing my solidarity with
you and everyone else in Van Winkletown. It seems to me that so long as I’m
hanging on to you it will show that Mers and humans, your sort of humans, are
friends.”

“It’s a heavy-handed way of making
that statement,” Park warned her, “and to some it may look like we’re forcing
you to do it. It could back-fire on us.”

“I don’t think it will, Park,”
Marisea told him. “You’re my
tamovir
.
It’s only natural for me to stand by you. Staying apart from you now might
really send the wrong message.”

“Interesting perspective,” Park
admitted. “You might even be right. Certainly, I ought to trust you to know
your own people better than I do. Just get ready to duck for cover if I turn
out to be correct.”

“Never!” Marisea told him
emphatically. “You’re my
tamovir
!
That’s at least as binding a relationship as marriage, Park. Probably more so.
You can’t divorce a
tamovir
.”

Taodore gave a speech to open the
conference. Its primary function was to introduce Prime Terius, but in it he
summarized what had been happening so far and much of what had been decided in
private. Terius then got up to make a statement that confirmed his friendship
and that of all Mers with the humans of Van Winkletown, reminding the reporters
and, by extension, all Mers how much they all owed to the alliance. It did not
stop one or two of the reporters from asking the usual obnoxiously aggressive
questions, but most of the corps seemed better behaved after the speeches and
most questions centered on the
 
security
measure that were being put in place.

The conference itself only lasted
a little over half an hour, but that was hardly the end of the questions for
any of them. It was considered unseemly for the Prime to appear on the three
dimensional holovision that was a staple of evening entertainment among the
Mer, unless making an official speech or happening to appear on the news. The
same applied to Arn, who was seen as the human equivalent of a prime, but that
left Park, Iris, Marisea and Taodore to appear on all the evening chat shows.

“Why are the green rooms always
so chilly?” Park started off the third such show they appeared on before the
host could get in his own question.

“Green rooms?” the host asked,
awash to the term.

“Ah!” Park breathed, “Well, back
in the old days… Heh! I sound like an old-timer, don’t I? Well, anyway, back
before I went into stasis, Green Room was what we called a waiting room for performers
before they went on stage.”

“And why was it called a Green
Room?” the host asked interestedly.

“I haven’t the foggiest,” Park
admitted. “Maybe it was traditional to paint them green for some reason.”

“Actually,” Iris cut in, “there
were quite a few explanations for that. A lot of them conflicted with each
other. Some people say that actors in an even earlier day than ours would
prefer to warm up in a room full of plants, believing the moisture from the
plants was beneficial to their voices. Others say it is a corruption of an
earlier term “Scene Room” or a shortening of “Greengage Room,” which may or may
not have been earlier terms for the same thing. In some theaters, the stage was
referred to as “The Green,” and I guess the term may have eventually shifted to
the warm-up area instead.”

“Interesting,” the host admitted,
uncertain how to segue into his own list of questions, “and you say they’re
always cold?”

“The ones we were in this evening
seem to have been,” Park told him. “I suppose it’s just the climate control in
them, possibly due to the fact these have been just off-stage where it is quite
warm in the lights. I don’t know, but it was chilly back there. Good thing you
had a pot of coffee backstage.” Then he had to explain what he meant by
“coffee.” The Mers in Van Winkletown had quickly grown used to calling the dark
caffeinated beverage they drank by the human name for it, but elsewhere it was
still called by the Mer term. It was not really coffee as the humans had known
it, but it was close enough and it kept them awake – some even preferred it to
true coffee of which they had run out years earlier.

They were nearly out of their
allotted time when the host finally got the interview under control and asked
about the Premm and the new security measures. “We’re doing everything we can
to protect the populace,” Park assured him. He noticed the stage manager
signaling franticly that they were due to go to commercial so he added hastily,
“It may be a little inconvenient at first while there will only be a few
scanners, but once we have enough of them, we hope that travelers will hardly
notice them.”

“Just another part of going from
one place to another then?” the host asked, ignoring his own manager.

“Right,” Park nodded, “it should
seem like a short corridor to pass through on your way to the gate.”

“Last time I traveled,” the host
laughed, “I step-hopped down a lot of very long corridors. If you could shorten
one or two of those, it will be worthwhile.” The manager was hopping up and
down now as well as waving.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Park
chuckled just as the indicator lamp on the camera went out.

“Are we off the air?” the host
asked his stage manager. The manager just threw up his hands in exasperation.
“I guess we went over a little. So you all have been on several shows today?”

“One more before we can get
dinner,” Park told him.

“You can always eat something in
the next, uh, green room was it?” the host ended as a question.

“By this time of day I need
something besides coffee and pastries,” Park told him.

“We’d better get going, Park,”
Marisea told him. “The next show starts in fifteen minutes and it’s broadcast
live.”

“Aren’t they all live?” Park
asked, starting to get up.

“Of course not,” the young Mer
laughed. “This one doesn’t air for another three hours.”

They made their farewells and
were gone before the show came out of commercial.

Finally, after their fourth chat
show, they were allowed to eat dinner, but even that was interrupted by news
that two scanners had arrived at the aerospaceport. “No, Park,” Iris stopped
him, when he instinctively got out of his chair. “The scanners are early. Finish
dinner first.”

When dinner was over Park rushed
out to the port to supervise the installation of the first scanner. Then he
went to the hall where the Prime Council were to meet and helped to install the
other scanner there. “Let’s put it just inside the visitor’s entrance,” Park
told his fellows. “It will be unobtrusive and well away from the Primes’ entry
way.”

“I wish we could scan folks
before they even entered the building,” one of the men commented. Park
recognized him as one of Ronnie’s crew. His name was Dave something.

“Well, I don’t imagine there will
be many humans coming here tomorrow,” Park replied. “There are only a few of us
and so many more Mer and it is their government, you know.”

“I know,” Dave nodded. “Oh, I
forgot to mention. Ronnie says she can have two more of these here on the
morning flight.”

“When does that girl sleep?” Park
asked.

“Hah!” Dave laughed. “You’re a
fine one to talk about not sleeping. Here you are and it’s almost Five in the
morning.”

Park checked his watch. “It’s
only Two.”

“Local time, sure.” Dave laughed,
“but we’re both working on Van Winkle Standard Time. I work for Ronnie Sheetz,
so I’m used to not having a diurnally determined schedule, but you actually see
the sun often enough to have a tan. Besides, I don’t have to be awake first
thing in the morning. You do. Get some sleep, man!”

“We’re almost done here,” Park
told him stubbornly. “I need to know this darned thing will work before I can
sleep anyway.”

“You have a Premm we can test it
on?” Dave asked, amused. “Until we catch one in this electronic butterfly net,
I wouldn’t put money on it.”

“I’ll be just as happy if we
never catch a Premm,” Park retorted, “so long as it means there are none left
on Earth. But what I meant was that it would interface with the Mer computer
net. Has that been tested?”

“Not outside of Van Winkle,” Dave
admitted, “but we’ve never had a problem with that before.”

“We’ve never tried to remotely
program devices on the Mer net either,” Park shot back. ‘The updates are going
to be essential. There are just too many patterns we have yet to add and we may
have to fine tune the thermal sensors .”

“And the EEG and CT routines,”
Dave added.

“I thought those wouldn’t work,”
Park told him.

“Ronnie thinks they might,” Dave
shrugged, “so all but the original prototype are being fitted with the
appropriate transmitters and receptors. She thinks that if we can catch a live
Premm we can get specific readings we can program in to improve the accuracy of
the detectors.”

“I hope that works,” Park
replied. “I want these things as accurate and foolproof as possible. Well,
everything is hooked up. Let’s power it up and see if we can go to bed.”

“Got one!” Arn announced happily
on the morning before the Council of Primes was to convene. “We caught a Premm
at the airport.” Park and Iris were enjoying breakfast in the hotel’s
restaurant. Park signaled for Arn and patty to join them.

“Was he carrying a bomb or some
other weapon?” Park asked.

“No,” Arn admitted, “but he
didn’t land here legally.”

“Great,” Park shook his head, “We
only have him on illegal entry. The best we can do is kick him off the planet.”

“After we finish questioning
him,” Arn pointed out.

“The Premm are amazingly
stubborn,” Park pointed out. “I don’t think you’ll sweat a confession out of
him.”

“The people of the future have
ways of learning what they want from a criminal,” Arn told them.

“Arn,” Iris told him warningly,
“I will not be a party to torture.”

“It’s not torture,” Arn grinned,
“We’re going to make him feel really good instead.”

“Drugs?” Park asked, not sounding
pleased at the prospect.

“Not at all,” Arn shook his head.
“Dannet tells me the standard of interrogation these days involves stimulating
the pleasure center of the brain. The subject feels so good, he or she
 
has no resistance to questioning.”

“Sounds immoral,” Park decided.

“Would you prefer
water-boarding?” Arn countered.

“How sure are you that putting
the prisoner into a state of ecstasy will work?” Park pressed. “Seems to me,
some people might feel really good about staying silent.”

“It’s more like a carrot and
stick approach,” Arn explained, “They only feel good when the interviewer is
talking and when they are answering questions. Attempts to evade just result in
getting no happy juice.”

“And if they decided to answer
dishonestly?” Park countered. “Get it wrong and all you have is a bunch of
lies. And I still don’t like the idea. Turning off the pleasure is like
torture.”

“Not at all,” Arn maintained.
“There is a bit of discomfort when the pleasure is turned off,
 
but…”

“It sounds cruel,” Iris told him.
She caught the expression on Patty’s face. Arn’s wife obviously disagreed with
her husband, but was stubbornly keeping her mouth shut lest she be seen as
disloyal to Arn.

“It’s only lasts a few minutes,” Arn
replied, “and there are no long-lasting effects.”