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“Dannet and Melise,” Park
supplied the names. “Dannet, you may recall is the ambassador from Dennsee.”

“I know that,” Arn replied just a
little defensively. Park chuckled, but privately know that Arn, for all his
political aspirations had trouble remembering names. Fortunately he had several
aides who were normally on hand to keep him informed. “Anyway, we’ve named that
area Dennsee Park. In a few generations, I imagine there will be all sorts of
apochryphal tales as to why it has that name.”

“It was named after old Jebediah
Dennsee,” Park drawled, “the inventor of the flannel plaid shirt.”

“That’ll confuse the young
whippersnappers,” Arn laughed. “We don’t have any flannel in stores here and
now.”

“We probably should have,” Park
replied. “If you consider no one knew what sort of climate we would be waking
up to. A good flannel shirt in the middle of a nuclear winter might have been
essential.”

“Even now the stuff could have
been used for rags and been more useful than those two helicopters,” Arn
admitted. “One is collecting dust out in a corner of Hanger One and the other
was destroyed when that so-called Alliance negotiator, Jance, decided to attack
the spaceport.”

“What with the Mer-built buggies
we haven’t needed either of them lately,” Park admitted. “I doubt there’s any
useable fuel after all this time for that matter.”

“I kept a few tanks full in
stasis,” Arn admitted. “You never know and there’s a museum in Ristro that’s
been hinting they might like the old bird for their collection.”

“So what else is new since I
left?” Park asked.

“That wing on your house,” Arn
chuckled.

“Hah! That took me by surprise,”
Park laughed. “Marisea wanted her own place but also didn’t want to move away,
so Iris built on the extension, though she didn’t tell me about it. It just
slipped her mind.”

“It nearly doubled the size of
the place,” Arn observed, looking over his shoulder at Park’s house, which
still stood well away from the other residences of Van Winkletown.

“I asked about that,” Park
replied, “and all Iris would say was that Marisea liked to entertain in private
sometimes. At first I thought Iris was speaking in euphemisms and I wondered
how many boys Marisea had sleeping over, but then I realized that Marisea had
been on Owatino with me except for a few short vacations and the new wing was
as much of a surprise to her.”

“So why so much space?” Arn
asked.

“Iris figured that if Marisea had
her own place, she should have a complete apartment with bath, kitchen and so
forth,” Park told him. There’s an adjoining door that she can close and lock
for privacy if she wants. So far she doesn’t see much need for that. time will
tell; she may change her mind. But you’re avoiding my question. What else is
new here?”

“Well, you can see all the new
buildings,” Arn gestured, “and you’ll note that the new runways and the repairs
to the old one were finished at the port.”

“And the VTOL pads are in place,”
Park added. “I see one is even in use.”

“Merchant ship from Gallsee, I
think,” Arn commented. “She comes in about once every other month. Getting back
to the Atackack students, I really don’t know why we haven’t had any
inter-tribal incidents. Sure these bugs are shaman class and trained to
overcome their warlike instincts, but…”

“Very few females here,” Park
answered, “and don’t call them bugs, Arn. It’s like calling us monkeys or
apes.”

“I’ve been called a big ape often
enough,” Arn shrugged.

“By someone of a different
species?” Park countered. “Anyway, their territorial instincts are brought out
by pheromones only the females emit. When I first learned about it, I thought
Taodore was only talking about their queens, but apparently even the warriors,
who are mostly female as well, do the same thing. I suppose it holds an army,
or even a whole settlement, together. Away from the females, the males are not
biologically driven to fight with members of different tribes.”

“We do have some female Atackack
here,” Arn noted.

“They’re shaman-class too,” Park
pointed out. “Different. I’m told they are trained not to emit the pheromones
although some of them cannot in any case. It might be the Atackack version of
homosexuality. The males are trained to ignore the pheromones when they can
too, but that’s easier if not in one’s home settlement, so it is actually rare
for any shaman to spend much time in his or her birth settlement.”

“The male shamans are trained
that way?” Arn asked. “Maybe I misunderstood but that Teller the mystic, Tack,
brought here… what was his name?”

“Kractitoc,” Park supplied. “At
least if he’s the same Teller I met in Africa.”

“Sounds right,” Arn admitted. “I
hate to admit it, but most of those Atackack names sound alike to me.”

“Me too,” Park nodded. “We can’t
really pronounce their names, any of their native languages really, with much
accuracy. The Mer cannot either when you get right down to it, but they use
their torcs to translate for them. Atackack languages have all sorts of
subsonic and hypersonic tones we can’t hear. When speaking directly, the Atackack
are amazingly forgiving with how we must butcher their names.”

“They are more forgiving about it
than most of us are,” Arn nodded, “but Kractitoc told me that shamans cannot
respond to the pheromones. Well, he didn’t call them pheromones… darned if I
can recall what he called them. I didn’t know what he was talking about at the
time, but he said they did not affect those of the shaman class, or I thought
he did,” he added uncertainly.

“Just as some females cannot emit
the pheromones, there are some males who do not react to them,” Park replied.
“But Tack tells me that it is mostly a matter of training. It’s possible that
Kractitoc is one of those who is simply not affected and he was talking about
himself only, or maybe all the Tellers are like that. They are the shamans who
wander from town to town the most, so that would make a lot of sense.”

“Interesting,” Arn admitted.
“Well, I think you’ll find the biggest change is downstairs in Ronnie’s ‘Toy Shop.’”

“I haven’t seen Ronnie yet,” Park
noticed. “She wasn’t at the reception last night.”

“She doesn’t get out of the
dungeon very often lately,” Arn replied. “She’s too busy with all her projects.
I’m a bit worried about her, in fact. She needs to see the light of day more
often. Even when Velvet Blair is in town they don’t get out much.”

“I’ll see what Iris and I can do
to coax her out then,” Park nodded. “Hopefully, she won’t shriek and shrivel up
in the sunlight. What’s she up to these days?”

“Why don’t you go and see for
yourself,” Arn suggested. “We give her full autonomy, but, technically, most of
her research is under your wing. You have a few hours before the Mer primes
assemble to hear your stories.”

“I thought you wanted a private
debriefing,” Park commented.

“I’ve been reading the reports,”
Arn responded, “and I know you well enough to understand they’re complete. I’ll
be at the conference, but I don’t expect to hear much I don’t already know.”

“What about the reappearance of
that Dark Ship?” Park countered.

“I know about that now too,” Arn
shrugged. “The details can wait until then. Go see Ronnie. I’m sure she’s
waiting to show her latest creations off.”

Park nodded at Arn’s suggestion and,
after finishing his morning coffee, took the base elevator down to the second
lowest level, where Veronica Sheetz kept her living quarters and drafting
table. She wasn’t in her suite and the office looked like she hadn’t been using
it much. There was a blueprint on the table, but it was the same small carrier
ship that had been in production for over a year in Questo. Shrugging, Park
walked down the stairs to the lowermost level and found Ronnie supervising the
installation of mounting brackets on a new ship of a design Park had never seen
before.

“No,” she was saying
thoughtfully, “I think we need to set these under the wing.”

“That’s going to disrupt the lift
capabilities, boss,” a Mer engineer commented.

“You could be right,” Ronnie
allowed. “Yeah, okay. Let’s take this back to the tunnels and see how the smoke
flows over it.”

“Didn’t we dismantle the model?”
the Mer asked.

“So let’s make a new model. We’ll
try it in both configurations and maybe a couple more. Hmm, maybe these could
be on a track of some sort? You know, move them close to the body while in the
atmosphere but out on the wings in space?”

“That adds complexity to the
design, boss,” the Mer pointed out, “and you always say…”

“Keep it simple, stupid,” Ronnie
finished for him. “Yeah, I’ve heard myself sayin it. Oh! Hi, Park! When did you
get in?”

“Last night,” Park replied. “We
had a party. I thought you were invited.”

“I probably was,” Ronnie shrugged.
“I don’t have time to read the e-mail these days.”

“You used to wear a torc and do
it on the fly like I do,” Park commented. The Torcs, so named for their
resemblance to the ancient Celtic adornment, were a Mer technological invention
that combined the best features of a smart phone and a computer terminal and
were worn around the neck, therefore avoiding the bother of carrying them
around in one’s hands or in a bag or pocket of some sort. They could be set to provide
holographic displays both of callers and of files accessed from any linked
database in the world. They had both vocal and finger-worked controls, although
Park had chosen to frequently use his in conjunction with the customized
computer pad he had brought with him from the Twenty-first century.

“I left that thing in Questo a
few months ago,” Ronnie shrugged. “I get a lot more accomplished without the interruptions,
so I didn’t bother to get another.”

“What if Velvet’s trying to call
you?” Park asked.

“She leaves a message on the
answer machine in my office,” Ronnie replied, “and I get back to her in a day
or so. She teases me about it, of course.”

“I’m sure she does,” Park nodded.
“So what do you have here? Half a spaceship?”

“New carrier craft,” Ronnie
replied. “As you can see, she’s too large to fit in here in one piece, but
she’s a vast improvement on the old model. Still not as large as most Alliance
carriers, but she has docks for five fighter craft and those are new too. I’ll
show you the prints later, but they are already in production at Questo.
They’re bigger too. They carry two phasers each, a gravity cannon and a
half-sized rack of missiles. The only hitch is that they have to launch
independently and dock with the carrier in space, but they hold a crew of two,
one pilot and one gunner.”

“Still spacewalking to get in and
out of the carrier?” Park asked.

“No!” Ronnie told him
enthusiastically. “Each fighter docks with an airlock. It’s a small airlock and
a tight fit for anyone trying to get through it, but it beats having to float
around the outside of the ship with enemy craft headed your way.”

“And you’re sure it will work?”
Park asked. “I mean, if this is the prototype…”

“Oh, the airlocks will work,”
Ronnie shrugged, “and so will the docking bays. The problem we’re dealing with
is the weight of the mother craft. In space it won’t matter worth a darn, but
getting her off the ground… Well, that’s why the fighters will have to
rendezvous in space rather than take off as a single unit. Even so, I don’t
know if this baby will fly with all the weapons, but she has to be armed.”

“Does it have to launch more than
once?” Park asked.

“We don’t have an orbital
shipyard,” Ronnie replied, “nor do we have sufficient ships to protect one if
we were to build it. I looked up what it takes to build carriers like the rest
of the Alliance has. Did you know there are only three shipyards in the entire
Alliance capable of building a carrier? Two years ago there were five more, but
they were primary targets of the Dark Ships. We can’t afford to put such a
pretty target in our skies. If the Dark Ship aliens return…”

“They already have,” Park
informed her. “We chased one out to Iztapel, but it got away from us while we
were negotiating with the Iztapellians for the right to even be there.”

“I’ve heard about that lot,”
Ronnie commented. “Not particularly hospitable are they?”

“They are if they think of you as
a friend,” Park replied. “The trick is in making friends. It took a bit of fast
talking and a lot of luck. The captain who hailed us was related to the former
Iztapellian ambassador. I doubt we would have been in real danger in any case,
the Iztapellians usually just extract huge fines from those caught violating
their territory, but I didn’t feel like paying them, especially since the Dark
Ship was playing ‘Follow the Leader.’”

“And Arn wouldn’t have thanked
you for dipping into his budget,” Ronnie laughed.

“Arn has a budget?” Park asked.
“I never did understand Mer economics and the only Alliance money we have were
awards from my actions.”

“That money was credited to Earth
in general,” Ronnie commented, “and I don’t understand what makes the Mer
economy go round any more than you do. It works somehow, though without even
digital cash, I don’t see how.”

“I asked an economist about it
once,” Park admitted. “It sounded like quantum mechanics except I understand
that.”

“And do they have the economic
version of Schrödinger’s cat?” Ronnie asked, with an uncharacteristic giggle,
“Neither sold nor on the remainder shelf until you happen to look?”

“I didn’t think to ask,” Park
shrugged. “So what’s the problem you were working on when I got here? Something
about tracks?”

“That was an oddball notion. I
want to place a couple big phasers on the wings of the mother ship,” Ronnie
explained. “Research has shown us that converging phasers of the right
frequencies can achieve results that multiply what both can do individually.”