“You are a master of manifests, Ferro,” I said. “You ever think of colonizing?”
“Hell, no,” Ferro said. “I’ve seen enough of these new colonies go out to know that some of them don’t make it. I’m happy to load you up and load you out and then wave good-bye and come home to Phoenix to my wife and cat. No offense, Mr. Perry.”
“None taken,” I said, and nodded to his manifest. “So, you said you can tell from a manifest whether a colony is going to make it. How about us?”
“You’re loaded for bear,” Ferro said. “You’re going to be fine. But some of your stuff is a little weird. There’s stock on your manifest I haven’t seen shipped before. You’ve got containers full of obsolete equipment.” Ferro handed back the manifest to me. “Look, you have everything you need for a blacksmith’s shop. In 1850. I didn’t even think this stuff existed outside a period recreation fair.”
I looked at the manifest. “Some of our colonists are Mennonites,” I said. “They prefer not to use modern technology if they can avoid it. They think it’s a distraction.”
“How many of your colonists are whatever it is you just said?” Ferro asked.
“About two hundred, two hundred and fifty,” I said, handing back the PDA.
“Huh,” Ferro said. “Well, then, it seems you’re pretty much prepared for everything, up to and including time travel back to the Wild West. If the colony fails, you can’t blame it on the inventory.”
“So it’ll be all my fault,” I said.
“Probably,” Ferro said.
“I think the one thing we can all say is that we don’t want to see this colony fail,” said Manfred Trujillo. “I don’t think we’re in danger of that. But I do worry about some of the decisions that have been made. I think they make things more difficult.”
Around the conference table was a round of nods. At my right, I saw Savitri take notes, marking which heads were nodding. On the other end of the table, Jane sat impassively, but I knew she was counting heads, too. She was in intelligence. This is what she does.
We were coming to the close of the inaugural official meeting of the Roanoke Council, which consisted of me and Jane as the colony heads, and the ten representatives of the colonists themselves, one for each world, who would act as our deputies. Theoretically, at least. Here in the real word, the jockeying for power had already begun.
Manfred Trujillo was primary among them. Trujillo had started the push to allow colony worlds to seed a new colony several years earlier, from his perch as Erie’s representative to the CU legislature. He had been miffed when the Department of Colonization took his idea but neglected to install him as leader; he’d been even more miffed when the colony leaders turned out to be us, whom he did not know, and who did not seem to be especially impressed with him. But he was smart enough to mask his frustration in general terms, and spent most of the meeting trying to undermine Jane and me in the most complimentary way possible.
“For example, this council,” said Trujillo, and looked up and down the table. “Each of us is charged with representing the interests of our fellow colonists. I don’t doubt each of us will do that job admirably. But this council is an advisory council to the colony heads—advisory only. I wonder if that allows us to best represent the needs of the colony.”
We’re not even out of the dock and he’s already talking revolution, I thought. Back in the days when I still had a BrainPal, I could shoot that entire thought over to Jane; as it was she caught my glance to her, which told her well enough what I was thinking.
“New colonies are administered under Department of Colonization regulations,” Jane said. “The regulations require colony leaders to wield sole administrative and executive power. Things will be chaotic enough when we arrive that mustering a quorum for every decision is not ideal.”
“I’m not suggesting that you two not do your jobs,” Trujillo said. “Merely that our input should be more than symbolic. Many of us have been involved with this colony since the days it was only on the drawing board. We have a wealth of experience.”
“Whereas we only have a couple months of involvement,” I prompted.
“You are a recent and valuable addition to the process,” Trujillo said. Smooth. “I would hope you would see the advantages to our being part of the decision-making process.”
“It seems to me that the Colonization regulations are there for a reason,” I said. “The DoC has overseen the colonization of dozens of worlds. They might know how to do it.”
“Those colonists came from disadvantaged nations back on Earth,” Trujillo said. “They do not have many of the advantages that we have.”