Making the Galaxy Great
A Bad Deal

“I see you completely ignored what I said about relationships,” said McCauley as they climbed into Jason’s car. Whoever had repaired it had done a thorough job. No signs of burned upholstery or smoldering glass. The interior and exterior had been thoroughly detailed.

“Says the woman who was on a date last night.”

“You mean dinner with Rolf? Were you jealous?”

Jealous?

It struck Jason as an odd comment. “Just observant. And my point is, you weren’t following your own advice.”

“We weren’t on a date, and there wasn’t any . . . I just don’t always like to eat alone.”

If McCauley was trying to make Jason feel sorry for her, it was working. “Okay, so maybe you weren’t violating your own rules. But the thing is, your advice may be fine for a real agent, but I’m not really an agent, am I? I’m just a poor schmuck who stumbled into something and now I have to do what you people tell me or you’ll erase part of my brain. In fact, I don’t even know why I’m here now.”

“You’re here in case we need some fancy driving,” she told him. “You seem to like that sort of thing. Plus, I’ll be busy. Being a real agent.”

Jason tightened his grip on the steering wheel. “Does that mean we’re doing something dangerous? I’m not going to get shot again am I? Because if I am, I think I should have one of the pulse guns.”

McCauley shook her head. “You’re just the driver, Fleming. I have to go drop in on a meeting. You’re just going to stay behind and record everything.”

“Record? Where is this meeting, anyway?”

“Beckman Forest.”

Jason did not like the sound of that. He pressed the ignition and listened to the gentle but powerful hum of the engine. His own brain was already humming in high gear.

“So, you’re going to a meeting in a nature preserve. At night. Nothing to worry about.” Jason had a bad feeling. And he had just left his daughter in the care of a young woman he barely knew, except in the Biblical sense.

As he drove away from town and toward Beckman Forest, he grew more tense, and also angry.

“How did you know I was at my house, anyway? Did you put a bug in my phone?”

“I prefer to call it a tracking app.”

Jason puzzled over that for a moment. “Isn’t that illegal?”

“We all have them, Fleming,” said McCauley. “Everyone who works at Area 69. At least we didn’t put a chip in your head.”

“Now you’re just trying to creep me out.”

McCauley didn’t respond, so Jason kept going. “I guess you screwed around with my phone while I was unconscious after getting shot. I mean, I hadn’t even agreed to work with you guys yet.”

“Fleming, what choice did you have? Once you learned about the off worlders — we couldn’t just turn you loose without any preparation.”

“Preparation? I still don’t understand why this is all secret. Why can’t the world know about this? You’re hiding technology that could save lives, and resources and . . . I don’t even know what else. It’s unbelievable. It’s unconscionable.”

Jason grunted loudly to express his disgust. Finally McCauley said: “Are you finished scolding me for things that are out of my hands?”

“Actually, no. I think at least you should tell me what the hell is going on with L’harra. What was on that thing that she put in my blazer? I mean, I saw but I don’t really know what I was looking at.”

McCauley’s face hardened even more than usual. “Weapons.”

“Alien weapons?”

“Weapons that the Haku are selling to the Chinese. L’harra found out about it.”

Jason gulped. “And you’re sure you can trust L’harra?”

McCauley shot him a flinty glance. “No, I don’t trust any of our alien friends. We always have to be careful when we’re dealing with them. We’re not idiots, Fleming.”

Satisfied, and chastened, Jason pressed on. “So why would they sell weapons to the Chinese? Are we buying weapons from them, too?”

“Not so far.”

McCauley then explained that in all the years that humans and aliens had traded together, none of them had ever shared any of their weapon technology with Earth. “It’s supposed to be some kind of basic principle for them,” she said.

“You mean like the prime directive,” said Jason.

“Which is . . . ?

McCauley clearly knew nothing about classic science fiction.

“Never mind. Keep going. Why are they suddenly selling this stuff? And why to the Chinese? That sounds like a very bad thing.”

“Of course it’s a bad thing, which is why we have to stop it. But actually, it’s sort of our fault,” said McCauley. “I mean, America’s fault. The aliens have always insisted on sharing any of their technology equally with the major powers on Earth. But our current President’s trying to change the rules.”

“What do you mean?” Jason felt he was finally learning something.

“When he took office and he was briefed on the whole alien thing,” she explained, “he got a little carried away. He decided we could get a better deal if we played the Haku and Yrreans off each other. So a few weeks ago, he told them that we want an exclusive deal with just one of them.”

Jason was silent. Sometimes, he'd learned over the years, trying to make too good a deal is a bad deal. He had exited the expressway and was driving on a two-lane road that wound through low hills which, from a distance, looked like a herd of lumbering dinosaurs along the horizon. The strobe effect from the sinking sunlight gleaming through the trees on one side of the road, along with the absolute bizarreness of what McCauley was saying, made him queasy.

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