Chapter 3: Range Safety

Dawson set two objectives for herself the following morning; gather up any remaining info on Falmart's Meteorology and Astronomy, and determine objectively what the reaction to a space program might be.

For the first, she stopped in to check on Professor Shirai.

Hitoshi Shirai was an older man, easily distracted, but clear and focused enough once she got him on topic.

"Their solar system is similar to our own, if perhaps a little smaller," he said, patting a large, wheeled refractor telescope that sat by his desk. "Their sun is slightly larger than our own, but the planets are proportionately further out, so we remain within the habitable zone. This means that the year is about twenty days longer than Earth's. The planet's axial tilt isn't as major either, which means that seasonal changes are more mild…none of those monsoons or Nor'easters that you see on Earth. They may have something like our Typhoons and Hurricanes, but we won't know with certainty until we deploy more sensors or get an observation satellite in orbit."

He smiled at that last point. While most of the other soldiers Carol had talked to, Americans and Japanese both, had responded to the idea of a Special Region space program with a hefty helping of sarcasm, the Professor was one of the rare few (outside of the aircraft pilots) to enjoy the idea.

"So they have a proportionate sun, and a proportionate moon. Beyond these, the people of Falmart are aware of four planets which they simply refer to as the Yellow Planet, Red Planet, White Planet, and Blue Planet. Yellow and Red are Venus and Mars analogs, while White is a gas giant, and is much like Saturn without the rings. That last one has at least three interesting moons, but it will be some time before we ever learn about their surface conditions. Finally, the fourth one, Blue, is a ringed Ice giant like Uranus… yet its close proximity to the parent star has many of my colleagues at the National Astronomical Observatory puzzled."

"That's wonderful," Carol said. "How many people have you met that know about them?"

He thought about it for a moment, then replied, "Two."

"Two?"

"Actually, that's inaccurate. I met two that knew about the planets. Neither of them knew about the moons around The White Planet, and refused to believe that they were there." He smirked. "I wonder if I will be allowed to name one, since I seem to have discovered them first."

Carol slumped back in her chair. "And next, I suppose, you will tell me that the two that did know about the planets were either aristocrats or high-tier academics."

"Correct!"

"So there is no interest in space here?"

"I wouldn't say there isn't an interest," Shirai said. "The Special Region is a heavily agrarian culture, and, like most other agrarian cultures, they used the sky to establish a calendar. They have constellations and a zodiac, and they have identified and named a pole star. So there is an interest, just a lack of organized education."

Carol frowned. "Colonel Mullan wants to launch in one week. I'll be lucky if I can demonstrate and explain what a rocket is in one week, to say nothing of what a rocket does."

Shirai shrugged. "It's business as usual, a farce of science to keep the politicians happy at home."

The NASA consultant stood and said, "I'm not giving up. If they don't understand the concept, I'll have to give demonstrations and present it in a way that they will understand. Is there a bookstore around here? Somewhere where I can get a better picture of their culture and thoughts about the universe?"

"I think that I passed one in the settlement last week," the Professor said. "Takagi-chan, may I see your map?"

The interpreter produced a sizeable folding map and Shirai marked a location, then marked two other locations saying, "I think that you should visit these places too. The one on the far side is a public amphitheater, and would make a good stage for your demonstration."

"And the other?"

"The best tavern I've found in Alnus. You will need a drink, I suspect, before the day is over."

Colonel Mullan welcomed the idea of letting Dr. Dawson loose, but refused to allow her to travel without additional protection. First, he demanded that she wear a bulletproof vest and helmet while outside the fence. When Dawson protested, Mullan replied, "Hazama has some cute blue sets with 'UN' and 'PRESS' written on the front if it makes you feel better, but almost none of the Falmart natives read English, and even those that can would attempt to stab you if they're so inclined. Hell, Hazama tells me that one of their Red Cross people was almost murdered out there. Humanitarianism is a new concept to these people, so if you go outside the walls, you go armored. Are we clear?"

Next, he demanded that she be escorted at all times by a pair of airmen from the 794th Security Squadron. "No offense to Specialist Takagi, but I imagine that interpreting is difficult enough without having to watch for enemies at all times. I would rather add two more men with proper equipment than risk your health. It would be difficult to find someone else with your qualifications."

When Carol met them, the two guards in question were decked out in the tan combat gear that Dawson was used to seeing from news reports of soldiers overseas. At first glance, the one key difference was the patch with the letters SF stitched on each one's left shoulder. Since she was still not used to the sight, it took her an extra few seconds to drag her eyes from the leading man's M4 and examine each of them as people.

The first one, Staff Sergeant Foster, appeared to be in his mid-twenties, was short and lanky—about an inch shorter than her—and had a New England accent when he talked, which he did often. "Well, sure, miss, we've been waiting for you to show since we got here, and the Wi-Fi today's at a fucking snail's pace…"

The other airman, Technical Sergeant Schumer, a tall and heavily built man in his mid-30s, acknowledged Carol with a fast nod and, "Don't mind him, ma'am. You do your thing, we'll do ours."

This left one last thing: to actually step beyond the security gate, and make the short drive out to the Alnus settlement.

"A few more things," Takagi said as their Humvee pulled to a stop, "The people at the Alnus Settlement don't have much experience with foreigners, outside a few foreign officers that we had in a while back. We told them a few days ago that Americans would be here, but I don't think that any of them fully understand who or what you are. Please be patient with them, especially the demi-humans. They seem to be more skittish."

"Demi-what?" Carol said.

"You'll see."

Carol had visited London once, long ago, as part of a college program. During the trip, she'd had a chance to visit a number of locations that either mimicked or preserved old Elizabethan architecture, with white plaster walls, wood cross-boards, and buildings packed side to side with second floors that jutted out over the street. The houses and shops at the Alnus settlement, Carol thought, looked remarkably similar. If not for the signs in the strangely blocky language used by the people of Falmart, she would have thought she was back in some part of the U.K.

As for the people themselves, the clothes they wore spanned a scope of styles fitting somewhere between 16th and 17th century Earth. Some more wealthy individuals—or so Carol supposed by the addition of gold to their clothes—sported stylized armor, togas, or dresses that had a distinct flair that reminded her of depictions of ancient Rome. Some trudged along on foot, while others took horse-drawn carts or coaches. As she watched, a JSDF MP raced by on a bicycle, and many of the passers-by stopped and turned to watch the contraption as it went on its way… which was when it struck her: the concept of a bicycle was still new to these people.

Curious, she glanced back at her two guards. Schumer hardly reacted at all, but Foster had a bemused grin on his face. Noticing her looking at him, he told Carol, "Crowded streets, overhanging houses… should we go back for more guys?"

"The town is thoroughly canvassed by Military and Volunteer police," Takagi said. "And the citizens realize that the JSDF can throw out or execute troublemakers, depending on the amount of trouble. The handful of attacks have been lone wolf incidents, and each is investigated. Yanagida-san's stabbing was the worst incident on record and he's still alive, if that makes you feel better."

As they made their way to the bookstore, Takagi's prediction came true—they drew lots of stares, and after a while, murmurs. Eventually, Carol found herself picking out a word being repeated often by the locals, and she asked Takagi what it meant.

"It means Tan," she said. "Those who don't know of the JSDF by their name or nationality often refer to them as the Men in Green. Between your vest and the airmen's uniforms, the line you keep hearing is Men in Tan."

Foster snorted. "Men in Green, what is this, Ukraine—"

Schumer cut him off with a poke to the side, then nodded at an alleyway ahead. "Thug activity, you got eyes on them?"

But they were not attacked, and they proceeded through the streets of the settlement in safety. The bookstore, when they found it, was as Carol pictured a bookstore should be. Small, dense, and quiet. Within, leather-bound books lined the shelves and were piled up into stacks on tables, each one individual, each one without a copy, each one with the meticulous style attributed to a media form that was, in the Special Region, still done entirely by hand. This only made her more nervous about her prospects as an old high school history lesson surfaced in her mind. Before the invention of the printing press, knowledge was slow to spread, and books themselves were the domain of the affluent. Even then, someone must have written about astronomy, and its history with regards to Falmart.

The shopkeeper was a large, bespeckled man who looked up at them with some suspicion as they entered. "I've never had the Men in Green enter my shop before," he said in practiced (but still rough) Japanese. "What are you looking for today?"

"Do you have any books on Astronomy?" Carol asked.

He appeared to be confused for a moment, before Takagi stepped in with the regional word for the same. At that, his scowl deepened. "I have precisely the person for you to talk to. Greta!"

At the command, Carol heard a commotion from the back of the shop, followed by a gasp and a collection of thuds as a stack of tomes collapsed.

The girl who charged out of the back of the store didn't look much older than nineteen or twenty with walnut-brown hair and deep green eyes, but as she made her way to the front of the shop and into the light, Carol noticed the ears… or, to be more precise, the way they were positioned further up the sides of her head and shaped like… like…

"You're seeing this, right?" Foster whispered to Schumer. "She's a fucking cat—"

The other airman shot him a look and Foster stopped, shook his head and added, "When we get home, no one, and I mean no one is going to believe this."

By this point the girl was closer and cowering under some extended berating in that not-quite-Latin/not-quite-Greek language that made up the Imperial native tongue. Takagi backed up a few steps and whispered a brief summary in English. "Apparently she is a freeloader, and has been spending most of her mornings here doing organizational work—poorly—for just enough for meals, but spends all time not spent on customers with her nose in a book. The only reason why the shopkeeper hasn't thrown her on the street is because she knows more about some books than just their names and titles."

Rant over, the manager turned back to Takagi and said, "This ungrateful wench is Greta La Sareteian. She will find your books on Astronomy."

The girl gave them an awkward curtsey, and Carol noticed that Greta's dress was worn and patched in many places, as if she'd traveled some distance in it. "This way," she said in Japanese, and waved them to follow her to the back of the room.

The two airmen stayed near the front of the store, and while Carol and Takagi followed the demihuman—that's what she had to be—towards a partially-buried stack in the far corner. "Is there a particular topic in Astronomy you're looking for?" she asked.

As Takagi started to speak, Carol cut her off and said, "I was hoping that you, personally, might tell us your own thoughts on Astronomy first."

"Mine?" Greta brought a hand to her mouth in shock, and Carol found herself looking for claws in place of fingernails… but was satisfied to see that Greta's hands, at least, seemed perfectly human. "But—no. I barely know anything. If you want an expert, I would suggest reading Passol's Calculations and Optics, or—or if you're feeling adventurous and don't mind questionable theory we do have one work by Mochrie—"

Carol bent over so that she was eye-level with the girl, then said, "Greta, I already know quite a lot about astronomy, but what I think you can tell me is more valuable than what I can learn about in those books. Can you tell me how you first learned about astronomy? How much you learned and where you learned it?"

She looked away and clasped her shoulders, seemingly embarrassed to go any further.

"It's…embarrassing. I'm not a scholar, and I've never known any wealth of my own—"

The shopkeeper snapped at Greta in Native Imperial again. She shrank away from his voice and her ears drooped. "Um, I really should be encouraging you to buy a book or two…"

Irritated at the treatment, Carol declared, loud enough so that he shopkeeper could hear, "She's not doing anything wrong."

At which point the shopkeeper began shouting at Carol instead, still in that incomprehensible regional language, prompting Takagi to step in, firmly addressing the owner with her own string of rapid-fire Imperial. They argued briefly before the interpreter turned back to Carol and said, "He claims that price of the books is one Sinku… 80% off provided that we take Greta away."

Carol started into her mental math. There were four main denominations of coin in the special region, the gold Suwani and Sinku, the Silver Denari, and the copper Soruda. According to her guide, there were five Sinku in one Suwani, but each Suwani was used primarily in banking or large settlements, such as reparations with Japan, who had set the exchange rate at roughly 200,000 yen...based in no small part due to the fact that each coin contained something like 60 grams of gold. Based on recent exchange rates for 40,000 yen, the three-figure dollar value of each Sinku made Carol 's jaw clench. There were some people at NASA who were still waiting to upgrade from Windows XP, and this maniac was trying to get them to pay hundreds of dollars per book? If nothing else, it gave her a newfound appreciation for the modern printing press, and the much, much more reasonable prices of her local Barnes & Noble.

Either way, they would be playing into the manager's hands. Carol glanced back to the cat-girl, who looked like she was wishing that she could fade into the nearby shelves and made a call based on limited evidence—somehow, this down on her luck girl was citing local in academics on astronomy. If any Falmart native could give her a proper look at the local view of space, it was this girl—cat—girl. Turning to Greta, Carol told her, "Do you want to get out of this place? Your Japanese is superb, and I could use a local on my team."

She looked up at Carol with those deep, green eyes and gave a barely perceptible nod. The shopkeeper must have seen, for he muttered something else in Imperial.

"For that, we are buying nothing," Carol shouted back at him, then "Greta, grab your things, quickly."

A few uncomfortable minutes later, and they were back outside. "For now, let's go back to the Humvee," Carol said. "Then we can do lunch, talk, and come up with a showcase plan."

As Carol led the girl away, followed quickly after by Foster, she missed a scene occurring a few paces behind her; Takagi was hanging back several steps, and had caught Schumer's attention. "You alright?" he asked.

She thought for a moment, then asked, in English, "Were you deployed in the Middle East?"

Schumer nodded.

"Was it like this over there too?"

"What do you mean?"

"When we first came to Falmart, the people treated us like the best thing that had ever happened to them. Most of the people in this town came here because they heard of how amazing things were from the survivors of Coda… and here they still have a life far better than anything they left behind. Electric lights, Japanese imports, a guarantee of safety from Dragons or large armies… this would have been unthinkable for most of the people here.

"But now? It's like that man in the book store. The way they look at us is… bitter, like they don't want us here. Like they performed all of our victories themselves and don't want anything more from us other than money and trinkets. I told Dr. Dawson that there have been few assaults, but theft is very common. Sure, some of them are still nice, and they will all straighten up and smile if General Hazama or a hero like Itami Youji passes by, but the smiles are fake.

"What I mean to ask is… does it get any better?"

Schumer said nothing for a while, allowing the conversations of pedestrians and the shouts of stall owners to fill the space. It was only as they followed the other three into a fountain square that he said, "I was attached to the 447th Wing in Iraq for a while. I wasn't there during the invasion, but knew a few guys who were. They said something similar."

"And?"

Schumer shrugged. "And that's how people are."

Takagi nodded up towards the scientist. "Do you think she understands that?"

"Maybe a little. I can tell she doesn't get it about the armed forces, but NASA people have been given the cold shoulder by most Americans since Apollo ended. Challenger and Columbia probably didn't help. It wouldn't surprise me if she jumped at Greta just because she was the first person to take interest. Takagi, are cat people like Greta trustworthy?"

Takagi smiled, "About as much as any human. That reminds me, Yanagida-san wanted to know, why does Colonel Mullan wish to have the first rocket launch so quickly?"

The airman offered no reply.

Author's note: Details and names of the Special Region's planets are drawn from LN Volume 5 Chapter 6. The content of that section will be retreaded in a later chapter, but I thought that you should know that the existence of these planets, at least, is canon.