18 hours later, I had convinced Dix to let Admiral Triefield come along to see the whole tapestry of sorts from which the picture had come.
“Wait a minute – time out – you're dating Vlarian Triefield?”
“Yes, Dix.”
“The Vlarian Triefield who is more than twice our age?”
“Yes, Dix … she's a quarter-Vulcan, quiet as it is kept, so, her physical age is more like 30-35.”
“You're stone-cold crazy, my friend, but you're still not stupid. Of all the fleet admirals, you had to fall in love with her … but she's trustworthy and all – all right, bring her along.”
So there we were in the cargo hold of the main vessel we used for shipping, with the tapestry from which the picture had been taken spread out onto the floor. It was asymmetrical with a split in the middle, with strips extending out from it in various places. No damage had been done to it, so this was its original appearance.
The remains of the Piranha, the little vessel from which the tapestry had been salvaged, were also there. V.T. was able to tell us that compared to the other 1,498 ships that had perished similarly, this particular wreck was extra mangled – so that was confirmed. However, the capsule that had been holding the tapestry had not been so much as dented, although it had some strange markings very similar to those on the tapestry.
I got into telling Dix about the history of the wreck and the shady characters that had run it, and he got into telling me about his translation efforts – frustrating, because just as soon as he was making progress, the odd markings defied any sense he was trying to get in understanding the alphabet.
“I mean, I have three possible different translations for this part here, but take that understanding over here, and you have a mess: 'Blue sleeps faster than Tuesday' and such … .”
It took us half an hour to realize V.T. wasn't saying anything. She had knelt down and touched the tapestry, and then had taken off her shoes and socks to walk barefoot across it, inch by inch. We noticed her when she had picked up two corners and brought them together and examined them.
“What's up, V.T.?” I said.
She looked across at me and Dix with a thoughtful expression on her face.
“May I have a large piece of paper, please, and a pen?” she said.
“I can replicate those really quick,” I said, and went to do that for her.
I handed the admiral what she wanted, and then she got down on the floor and began to draw on the paper like a child coloring – I thought she was imitating what she was seeing on the tapestry, just using English letters.
“On either side of the Rigamarole Belt,” she said as she was working away, “they practice a craft very similar to the origami of Japanese culture on Earth. Two very different cultures, but they have practiced this craft for nine or ten centuries – ever since that second star started shedding.”
She sat up and took the paper into her hands and started folding it up in all these different ways … .
“Today it is just craft, but if you read back into the legends of both cultures far enough, you'll find out that in the legends, the people who brought the craft to them didn't practice it as an art and craft as we think of it, but craft in the old sense: great skill, to the point of being called magic. Folding was magic and did magical things.”
She then spread it out flat again and left the paper on the floor with all its texture from the different folds and started to get up by herself, but then saw me rushing over and waited.
“Thank you, my darling,” she said when I reached down to help her. “I can do it, but it certainly is easier and more enjoyable when you help me.”
I just couldn't help but hold on to her a little longer … she knew how to turn a man on in all kinds of different ways, including getting away from him and leaving him wanting more.
“I have to go home now, gentlemen, for three reasons,” she said. “The first is professional: I have my oaths as a fleet officer. If I solve this, the solution immediately belongs to the fleet, which, given the gravity of matters of transportation safety across this region of the galaxy, will have the powers that be invoke eminent domain over this tapestry. You will be thanked for bringing it to our attention, and that is all the compensation you will ever receive.
“The second is personal. If I solve this for you gentlemen, you will start looking at me as a mother figure … and I can't have that because I want you to see me as a partner, Captain Kirk, in an even more intimate way than you see Captain Dixon as such. Mothering a man kills the romance, and I am not going to do that.
“The third is practical. You two gentlemen are running a business – you have to solve your problems to advance your business so that you also advance and build yourselves up as young men. Nothing builds confidence and trust like solving problems together, and I won't rob you of that.
“Finally, a question – I've left you several clues, and here is one more: Why is that in 1,499 ships, the Piranha, which had this tapestry on board, fared so differently than the others? Why? And, how? Here is the last clue: some things translate into actions better than they do into words.”
She paused, and then smiled.
“Good night, Captain Dixon. A pleasure to meet you. Good night, my darling.”
“Good night, Admiral,” I said. “Call me so I know you made it home.”
“I will.”
She left, and Dix shook his head.
“She is gorgeous,” he said. “She is as intelligent as her reputation makes out. And she thinks we are as smart as she is.”
“You see why I had to do it, Dix? I just couldn't let her get away … the instant she showed she would respond to my advances, I had to take the chance.”
Dix shook his head.
“It's a big chance,” he said, “but, it is what we do out here.”
And he sat down and started taking off his shoes and socks while I walked across the floor to pick up the paper she had left there, flat, but still showing all the signs of her folding.
“Hey, I think I know what Admiral Triefield's feet were picking up,” Dix said after a few minutes. “This thing looks flat, but it's not … it was creased, heavily, at one time, and you can feel the creasing in certain places.”
I followed the creasing in the paper the admiral had left on the floor, and by the time I finished folding, I had a pine branch in shape, across which all the disjointed letters had come together into a sentence: “I love you – you've got this!”
Folding was magic. I felt it at that moment, and then …
“Dix, look at this – not the message so much, but … .”
“Oh, you've got her sprung too – but I get it, Kirk – that's why she was picking up parts and looking at them together, like she was reading or something!”
“Probably matching the odd marks – like the picture of the portal itself – the odd key matches the odd marks described on the portal!”
“And that's why the sections nearest to each other don't necessarily read well together – they are meant to be matched to another part!”
Dix and I started his translation work over again, and began to find sections that matched … and thus, as we worked, we learned the history of the Uppaaimar civilization, from its creation to its end when the second star adjacent to the Rigamarole Belt – later to be renamed the Uppaaimar Belt – had started its shedding. We documented, we read, and we folded some more, until the second-to-last fold gave us this statement: “We are long since no more, but we found rest among those civilizations beside us that gave us refuge, and we have left enough evidence so that you, kind witness, have read and may share our story – behold, and witness our thanks to you!”
“That folds this way,” Dix said, and then we dropped the whole thing as it shimmered and transformed into the missing key, the picture on the portal now in its proper place on where Dix and I picked up the key.
“That was why the Piranha didn't make it,” I said. “They were trying to use this as a map. The portal recognized the key, but also that the requirements had not been fulfilled, so it destroyed that ship.”
“Meanwhile, everybody else was just running into the sides of the Uppaaimar Warp-Canal,” Dix said, shaking his head. “That's how they got around without dealing with the belt, and how they got out of there with the quickness when that second star started shedding.”
“Oh, snap – I haven't checked my comm and I asked the woman to call me when she got home!”
“I knew you were busy,” she said, her tone kind when I called back. “I'm safely home.”
“Great – and you were right! We –.”
“Wait a minute,” she said, gently interrupting me. “I'm not the person you want to tell. This is what you do; get everything documented and backed up, and then contact Captain Chimham of the Earth-side rescue post of the Rigamarole Belt and let him know: you did a little salvage on a wrecked ship, found a tapestry in a capsule, and that you think it has some bearing on getting across the belt. Send him photographs of the tapestry, the capsule, and the key, and offer to bring him everything on the condition that he put you in contact with fleet procurement first, and send a sample contract: upon successful testing of what you found, you want to lease the technology and the research to the fleet for five years, for one percent of the value of the traffic passing through the belt per year.
“The fleet budget is equivalent to twenty percent of the traffic; they will have no problem offering you one percent this week for how much more both percentages are going to be in real terms next week if the key works. Get the contract signed off, and then take everything to Captain Chimham and let him use a fleet ship to test it. It's a fleet kind of job and since there is only one key, the fleet will have to operate the portal, so let the fleet pay you for the privilege.
“Oh: add a rider to the contract: five years, evergreen – that is, if the fleet is not successful in replicating the technology in five years so that everyone can have it as a call sign, have them roll it over for another five years and another five years until they do. This gives your business guaranteed income for five-year blocks at a time, and increases its value dramatically in every five-year period.”
Dix and I did all that with the quickness, and Captain Chimham had this to say when it was all done: “Whoever you have giving you legal and business advice, keep him. Procurement rips off young guys like you two every day, and they were none too pleased with your contract, but you see they took it and signed it! Come on out to the belt – I'll go through and check it out, and if I get through safely, I'll take you on the Avalon with me on the second trip!”
Dix and I got that ride on the Avalon!
The Uppaaimar Warp-Canal is still fully operational to this day, removing all the rigamarole from having to travel through or to key locations within the Uppaaimar Belt (their homeworld is now the site of several anthropological projects). What used to take a month now takes two and one-half minutes. The canal is now managed and maintained by the fleet. They never could replicate the key, so that five-year lease became a permanent income stream to my business.
My adviser and I made the trip on the weekend the canal was opened to public traffic and shipping … I took her with me on the aluminum-plated vessel I had been to the Cnidaria Nebula in.
“Now, I think I can afford a wedding fit for an admiral,” I said to her.
“Young man, it will cost you one hundred times the cost of doing that to do that,” she said. “First of all, I don't need all that. Second of all, you are going to make yourself a target to other people who aren't rolling like you and Captain Dixon are.”.
“If I don't bring anything else of value into your life, my Kirk, let it be this: your business is not your cousin's business. Your cousin the fleet captain provides you your business by being loud in spreading the word on what he finds. That starts and keeps the engines of exploration, science, and commerce revving hard. That's his role, and he understands and plays it well.
“You are in a different position. I don't think it has hit you yet that you and Captain Dixon have solved two problems in a week that have changed the course of near-Earth travel and commerce for the better permanently. But even before that: new exploration by non-fleet personnel requires regular supplies and infrastructure, and you positioned yourself to solve the problem created by the fact that the fleet is overextended on exploration and can't keep up with the rush of people moving in its wake.
“That's who you are, my Captain Kirk, and so is Captain Dixon: you two are problem-solvers, and as you mature in that, people will pay you not to haul cargo, but to just come and work out solutions that are win-win. This contract you have concerning this canal is the first of many like it, with one caveat: you can't make yourself a target for all the people there are whose money and prestige rides on creating and managing problems. This is why Captain Dixon is so nervous about you and me. He understands the danger, and doesn't know that I truly love you and would never jeopardize either of your chances in life for some big show, just because I'm an admiral... after all, I'm already 'admired' enough!”
“I think you're worth the biggest wedding in the galaxy,” I said.
“Because I know you feel that way, and because I am already secure in knowing my worth, that's precisely why I don't need all that … I'll enjoy watching you get more resources to solve more problems, and watch the galaxy become better around us from my front-row seat!”
She's still enjoying the view, 25 years later.