Excerpted from The Sirens of Space by Jeffrey Caminsky, available directly from the Publisher, or from Amazon
, or at a bookstore near you.
, or at a bookstore near you.from Chapter 12
This is ridiculous.”
“Problems?” asked Jeremy, entering the room, wondering what new problems faced them today. The captain seemed a font of boundless energy, but as nearly as Jeremy could tell, most of that energy was focused on sending the ship’s executive officer chasing in a dozen different directions.
“I haven’t been on Isis in fifteen years,” Cook complained. “Aside from an occasional reference to my Uncle Cornelius in letters from my parents, nobody tells me anything that’s going on there. What do I know about local politics? They don’t even tell me which district I vote in these days, for crying out loud.”
Baffled, Jeremy walked to the captain’s desk and took the paper from Cook’s hands. His eyes widened in surprise when it dropped to the floor and unfolded into a sheet nearly eight feet long. It was a ballot, sent him by the Northland Province Elections Commission. By law, everyone in the Cosmic Guard received an absentee ballot whenever his home planet held elections. Isis had the minimum number of senators—one fixed-termer, one special-termer elected whenever the president called for elections—and this was the year Isis selected her fixed-term senator. The Isitian ballot also presented a confusing array of candidates and ballot proposals and was taller than he was. The tiny printing on the ballot’s twelve columns did not seem designed to help anyone to make sense of it all, and apparently nobody thought to distribute the ballot by district. By the looks of it, every office on the planet was listed. Fortunately there only seemed to be two parties, and a brief scan of the top of the ticket revealed a name that even Jeremy recognized.
“There’s Irene McGinnis,” he said. “I remember her from the hearings on that big scandal a few years ago. She has quite a reputation, as I recall. I was quite impressed with her.”
“No, no, no,” Cook said, trying not to sound impatient. “That’s not the way we do things on Isis. She’s already had her turn. Besides, she’s the wrong party. She’s a Nuthatcher.”
Jeremy looked again. The only parties on the ballot were the Liberals and the Conservatives.
“Well, you see,” Cook tried to explain, “we don’t like to give anyone more than one turn in Covington. Politicians are like naughty children. They’re easily spoiled and must be constantly watched. Give them too much and it goes right to their heads. Makes them think they’re big shots. So tradition is quite specific. Nobody goes to the Senate more than once. Anything beyond that is simply not very Isitian.”
“But hasn’t she already served two terms? And what in God’s name is a nuthatcher?”
“On Isis, tradition is not carved in stone,” Cook said testily. “And the Cooks vote for Mugwumps, not Nuthatchers. Nuthatchers are a subspecies of unenlightened visigoths. Corneilius Cook would never let me hear the end of it.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“There is no problem.”
Cook voted straight Mugwump, too proud to admit that McInnis—Old Ironpanties, as she was known on Isis—was the only name apart from his uncle’s that he recognized as well. All the while, he grumbled about the fact that he didn’t know enough about the issues or candidates to vote for “None of the Above.” Like most Isitians, he also voted to reject all the proposals and initiatives, since voting for them only encouraged similar nonsense in the future. It made no difference anyway, he muttered to himself. In interplanetary politics everyone on Isis was a Federalist: they stuffed the last Tory and put him in a museum long ago. And it hardly mattered that the Mugwumps made a hash of things whenever they came to power. The Nuthatchers were just as bad, but at least this way they’d face a Mugwump mess in the end. Those messes were usually more convoluted, of course, but at least their hearts were in the right place. As he finished, he noticed that Jeremy was trying not to laugh, and doing a very poor job of it.
“All right, what’s so funny?” Cook snapped. Immediately, he felt a surge of guilt at his lack of good temper. He knew that Jeremy wouldn’t like his next assignment, but if there was one thing he’d learned on the Constantine, it was how to delegate assignments that he didn’t want to do himself.
Of course, some jobs were easier to delegate to people he didn’t like. Jeremy was such an improvement over his last first officer that Cook hated pushing the advantages of rank too far. That reluctance wouldn’t stop him from doing so, he admitted to himself. But at least he had the decency to feel guilty about it.
© 2009 by Jeffrey Caminsky
This is ridiculous.”Cook exhaled loudly. He was leaning back in his chair, feet propped up on his desk and holding a folded sheet of paper. Untouched on a tray on a side table was a breakfast of reconstituted eggs and toast, and a cup of lukewarm coffee. A digital scanner was on the work table next to the wall, and display disks were evenly divided between the floor and the half-open binder box on the floor. He woke up in a foul mood. Insomnia kept him up reading half the night, and that usually meant a rough day for anyone he was around the next morning. The mail that greeted him had not helped his disposition.
“Problems?” asked Jeremy, entering the room, wondering what new problems faced them today. The captain seemed a font of boundless energy, but as nearly as Jeremy could tell, most of that energy was focused on sending the ship’s executive officer chasing in a dozen different directions.
“I haven’t been on Isis in fifteen years,” Cook complained. “Aside from an occasional reference to my Uncle Cornelius in letters from my parents, nobody tells me anything that’s going on there. What do I know about local politics? They don’t even tell me which district I vote in these days, for crying out loud.”
Baffled, Jeremy walked to the captain’s desk and took the paper from Cook’s hands. His eyes widened in surprise when it dropped to the floor and unfolded into a sheet nearly eight feet long. It was a ballot, sent him by the Northland Province Elections Commission. By law, everyone in the Cosmic Guard received an absentee ballot whenever his home planet held elections. Isis had the minimum number of senators—one fixed-termer, one special-termer elected whenever the president called for elections—and this was the year Isis selected her fixed-term senator. The Isitian ballot also presented a confusing array of candidates and ballot proposals and was taller than he was. The tiny printing on the ballot’s twelve columns did not seem designed to help anyone to make sense of it all, and apparently nobody thought to distribute the ballot by district. By the looks of it, every office on the planet was listed. Fortunately there only seemed to be two parties, and a brief scan of the top of the ticket revealed a name that even Jeremy recognized.
“There’s Irene McGinnis,” he said. “I remember her from the hearings on that big scandal a few years ago. She has quite a reputation, as I recall. I was quite impressed with her.”
“No, no, no,” Cook said, trying not to sound impatient. “That’s not the way we do things on Isis. She’s already had her turn. Besides, she’s the wrong party. She’s a Nuthatcher.”
Jeremy looked again. The only parties on the ballot were the Liberals and the Conservatives.
“Well, you see,” Cook tried to explain, “we don’t like to give anyone more than one turn in Covington. Politicians are like naughty children. They’re easily spoiled and must be constantly watched. Give them too much and it goes right to their heads. Makes them think they’re big shots. So tradition is quite specific. Nobody goes to the Senate more than once. Anything beyond that is simply not very Isitian.”
“But hasn’t she already served two terms? And what in God’s name is a nuthatcher?”
“On Isis, tradition is not carved in stone,” Cook said testily. “And the Cooks vote for Mugwumps, not Nuthatchers. Nuthatchers are a subspecies of unenlightened visigoths. Corneilius Cook would never let me hear the end of it.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“There is no problem.”
Cook voted straight Mugwump, too proud to admit that McInnis—Old Ironpanties, as she was known on Isis—was the only name apart from his uncle’s that he recognized as well. All the while, he grumbled about the fact that he didn’t know enough about the issues or candidates to vote for “None of the Above.” Like most Isitians, he also voted to reject all the proposals and initiatives, since voting for them only encouraged similar nonsense in the future. It made no difference anyway, he muttered to himself. In interplanetary politics everyone on Isis was a Federalist: they stuffed the last Tory and put him in a museum long ago. And it hardly mattered that the Mugwumps made a hash of things whenever they came to power. The Nuthatchers were just as bad, but at least this way they’d face a Mugwump mess in the end. Those messes were usually more convoluted, of course, but at least their hearts were in the right place. As he finished, he noticed that Jeremy was trying not to laugh, and doing a very poor job of it.
“All right, what’s so funny?” Cook snapped. Immediately, he felt a surge of guilt at his lack of good temper. He knew that Jeremy wouldn’t like his next assignment, but if there was one thing he’d learned on the Constantine, it was how to delegate assignments that he didn’t want to do himself.
Of course, some jobs were easier to delegate to people he didn’t like. Jeremy was such an improvement over his last first officer that Cook hated pushing the advantages of rank too far. That reluctance wouldn’t stop him from doing so, he admitted to himself. But at least he had the decency to feel guilty about it.
© 2009 by Jeffrey Caminsky
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