Chris Moriarty - Spin Control

EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY WHITE PAPER Results of DISTRIBUTED VOLATILES INVENTORY performed for the Climate Change Baseline Project, authorized pursuant to Sec. 17 of the Beijing Addendum to the Kyoto Accords, May 15—April 3, 2017

“All Bella’s numbers are fluctuating within two points of this DVI,” Arkasha said flatly.

“Could, uh, this be a coincidence?” Laid-back Ahmed asked in a hollow tone that made Arkady quite sure he had understood what Arkasha was leaving unsaid.

“Not unless Novalis actually is Earth, complete with a two-hundred-year-old planet-spanning fossil-fuels economy and some serious CFC contamination.”

“I don’t have to take this!” Bella exclaimed, standing up.

“Sit down !” Laid-back Ahmed said in a tone that knocked Bella’s knees out from under her.

Don’t say it, Arkady pleaded with his sib. Just let the Ahmeds handle it. She’s not the kind of person you want to make into your enemy.

But Arkasha wasn’t going to let it go. He was going to try to be nice. And he was going to do it in a way that only deepened Bella’s humiliation.

“I don’t want to cast blame,” he said, keeping his dark eyes carefully fixed on the table. “This is a failure at the steering committee level, not the individual level. A great deal of early training in the sciences involves learning not to panic when your numbers look wrong. And the numbers often look wrong in complex systems work. Throwing someone with a purely technical background into this kind of situation without real supervision more or less guarantees panic. And someone without a really solid grasp of ecophysics might well look at the relatively advanced flora and fauna the landers picked up on Novalis and make the mistaken assumption that a planet so far along in the ecopoietic curve might look the same on the numbers as Earth did when it was on its way down.”

Arkasha had spoken deliberately, so that everyone around the table had time to understand what he was accusing Bella of: cribbing the numbers from the Earth DVI when her own readings didn’t look right.

Twelve pairs of eyes shifted furtively toward Bella, who sat staring at her hands and breathing hard.

Arkasha’s eyes flicked once toward Bella, then dropped away. “There’s no shame in not being perfect. As long as you’re honest. A lot of people’s lives could depend on our honesty. Starting with our own. We need to redo the DVI. We can do it with no questions asked. I think that’s the way we should do it. But it would be extremely helpful to have your notes of the original readings.”

No one spoke for a long moment. The two Banerjees both stared resolutely out the nearest viewport. By-the-Book Ahmed was fuming, while his sib had no readable expression at all on his handsome features. Arkady looked sideways just in time to see Aurelia glance back and forth significantly between him and Arkasha and raise an eyebrow at her own sib.

“Bella?” Laid-back Ahmed said. “Can we have your notes? Please?”

“I gave them to you!” she snapped. And pointed to the neat printout of her final measurements she had circulated at the beginning of the consult.

But those weren’t notes. Even the Aziz A’s knew enough to understand that.

Ahmed and Arkasha looked at each other, obviously reaching some kind of understanding.

“Okay,” Ahmed said, “I see the problem. If there was a problem, which I’m not saying there was. And I propose that we just, uh, decide how to handle the DVI on a forward-going basis.” Ahmed looked around the table but no one contested his analysis. “Any thoughts? Anyone?”

Everyone in the room knew what was supposed to happen next. They’d spent half their lives sitting around tables or in childhood crèche circles, mastering the slow, courtly, circular procedures of consensus decisionmaking. They all knew that the script called for a series of tentative summings up; carefully structured and only vaguely purposeful statements that would begin with self-effacing phrases like “If I understand what’s been said so far,” or “I’m hearing from Bella that…” or “We might consider investigating the possibility of…” and would allow the group to arrive at a decision without actually forcing any single person openly to declare his or her positions and allegiances.

But once again Arkasha wasn’t willing to follow the script.

“I say we land,” he announced, tossing the naked proposal out like a duelist flinging his glove at an opponent’s feet. “Enough probes and flybys and extrapolations. We need a good dose of ground truth. And trust me, if the question is whether or not Bella’s DVI numbers are right, we’ll know that the minute we open the airlock.”

“Unacceptable,” By-the-Book Ahmed snapped. Why did he always have to sound as if he were lecturing children when he was talking to the mission specialists? “Too much risk involved.”

“Too much risk to the mission?” Arkasha retorted, “or too much risk that you can’t cover your ass if things go wrong?”

“I’m responsible for the safety of this ship and crew,” Ahmed said sententiously. “I’m not willing to put us down on a planet you can’t even give me reliable numbers on.”

Arkasha opened his mouth and shut it again. He and the other Rostovs had all bridled under Ahmed’s heavy-handed assertions of authority ever since the mission started. But what could they do, really? The Ahmeds were the ship’s pilots. There might be arguments once they were all planetside about relative authority, but as long as they were in space they were essentially captives.

“I see Arkasha’s point though,” Laid-back Ahmed said, tactfully directing his comment as much to his sib as to Arkasha. “Perhaps we can find a middle ground? What if we agree to spend a predetermined amount of time check—uh, redoing the DVI, and then meet again and make a firm decision on how to proceed? That’ll give us a deadline for one thing, so the DVI doesn’t turn into too much of a time sink.”

Arkasha shrugged—but this time the movement had none of the dismissive quality with which he’d mocked By-the-Book Ahmed before.

“It’s just a question of minimizing the uncertainties, really. Does that make sense to everyone?”

Nods all around the table.

“Would a week be enough time to minimize the uncertainties? What do you all think? I know it’s a tight schedule for some of you, but does a week work for everyone?”

It seemed a week did work for everyone.

“Arkady, would you work with Arkasha and Aurelia to put together a plan of attack?”

“Absolutely.” Arkady accepted for all three of them before Arkasha or Aurelia could stir up any more trouble.

“Is tomorrow evening too soon for us to look over your plan together? No? Good. I’ll look to go over it with you tomorrow evening. And then I’ll go around and get feedback from the individual teams before we finalize the schedule.”

It was neatly done, Arkady realized, with a newfound admiration for the big Aziz A. A potential conflict had been avoided. Everyone’s opinion had been solicited, but in a way that gave no one the chance to complain about his or her colleagues or foment bad feeling. The main dissenter had been co-opted by being put in charge of administering the very decision that had been taken over his head. Arkady had been inserted into the vendetta between Arkasha and Bella so that there was no reason for the two of them to have to deal with each other until they cooled off a bit. And all potential for conflict had been siphoned off into “individual consultations” in which Ahmed’s considerable charm could be deployed to head off any potential acrimony.

But underneath the neat managerial tricks, Arkady had the sense that he’d just watched a tectonic realignment of continents. Bella, who had been jockeying with the equally assertive Aurelias for social dominance, had been publicly shamed. By-the-Book Ahmed had broken fast out of the gate, then fallen behind in the backstretch. Laid-back Ahmed, despite his easygoing affability, had emerged as the real leader of the expedition. And though he clearly neither wanted nor sought the role, Arkasha had replaced By-the-Book Ahmed as the unacknowledged second-in-command.