The Human Division Read Free Page B

and then spewed from their mouths seawater they had stored in their bodies’ ballast bladders, directly into the faces of the human diplomats. Every human diplomat was drenched with salty, Farnutian body-temperature water.
    “Thanks for that,” Wilson said to his opposite number on the Farnutian line. But the Farnutian had already turned away, making a hiccuping sound at another of its kind as it broke ranks. Wilson’s BrainPal translated the words.
    Thank God that’s over, it had said. When do we get lunch?
    *   *   *
    “You’re unusually quiet,” Schmidt said to Wilson, on the shuttle ride back to the Clarke .
    “I’m ruminating on my life, and karma,” Wilson said. “And what I must have done in a previous life to deserve being spit on by an alien species as part of a diplomatic ceremony.”
    “It’s because the Farnutian culture is so tied to the sea,” Schmidt said. “Exchanging the waters of their homeland is a symbolic way to say our fates are now tied together.”
    “It’s also an excellent way to spread the Farnutian equivalent of smallpox,” Wilson said.
    “That’s why we got shots,” Schmidt said.
    “I would at least like to have poured the flagon on someone’s head,” Wilson said.
    “That wouldn’t have been very diplomatic,” Schmidt said.
    “And spitting in our faces is?” Wilson’s voice rose slightly.
    “Yes, because that’s how they cement their deals,” Schmidt said. “And they also know that when humans spit in someone’s face, or pour water on someone’s head, it doesn’t mean the same thing. So we devised something that everyone agreed was symbolically acceptable. It took our advance team three weeks to hammer that out.”
    “They could have hammered out a deal where the Farnutians learn to shake hands, ” Wilson pointed out.
    “We could have,” Schmidt agreed. “Except for the little fact that we need this trade alliance a lot more than they do, so we have to play by their rules. It’s why the negotiations are on Farnut. It’s why Ambassador Abumwe accepted a deal that’s a short-term loser. It’s why we stood there and got spit on and said thank you.”
    Wilson looked toward the forward part of the shuttle, where the ambassador sat with her top aides. Schmidt didn’t rate inclusion; Wilson certainly didn’t. They sat in the back, in the cheap seats. “She got a bad deal?” he asked.
    “She was told to get a bad deal,” Schmidt said, looking toward the ambassador as well. “That defense shielding you trained their people on? We traded it for agricultural products. We traded it for fruit. We don’t need their fruit. We can’t eat their fruit. We’re probably going to end up taking everything they give us and stewing it down to ethanol or something pointless like that.”
    “Then why did we make the deal?” Wilson asked.
    “We were told to think of it as a ‘loss leader,’” Schmidt said. “Something that gets the Farnutians through the door so we can make better deals later.”
    “Fantastic,” Wilson said. “I can look forward to getting spit on again.”
    “No,” Schmidt said, and settled back into his chair. “It’s not us that will be coming back.”
    “Oh, right,” Wilson said. “You get all the crappy diplomatic missions, and once you’ve done the scut work, someone else comes in for the glory.”
    “You say it like you’re skeptical,” Schmidt said to Wilson. “Come on, Harry. You’ve been with us long enough now. You’ve seen what happens to us. The missions we get are either low-level or ones where if they fail, it’ll be easy enough to blame it on us, rather than our orders.”
    “Which kind was this one?” Wilson asked.
    “Both,” Schmidt said. “And so is the next one.”
    “This brings me back to my question about my karma,” Wilson said.
    “You probably set kittens on fire,” Schmidt said. “And the rest of us were probably there with you, with skewers.”
    “When I joined the CDF we probably