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When I was young and in love, my best friend and business partner Rufus Dixon held down Kirk and Dixon Shipping while I was frankly running around the galaxy quite out of my mind, trying to make life work with a whole full fleet admiral of a woman.
When, later, I was severely injured, Dix held things down again.
So, when he met the love of his life, Cmdr. Khadijah Biles, and began to move toward marriage, I came back to work to hold things down for 18 months. I owed him that and much more besides.
The thing is – and as a Kirk, he knew I would make these kinds of mistakes – I had no idea what I was signing up for.
Dix is an engineer – a planner by mindset. If it doesn't make sense, he doesn't do it and he doesn't let anyone else under his authority do it. He has saved my and the company's bacon many times because of this.
I am more of a visionary, more of a “pantser” – that is, I tend to fly more by the seat of my pants. I can improvise brilliantly, which is how I ended up getting the admiral and five children and all the rest. That wasn't planned – that was just worked out on the fly.
But the thing is, complements attract. Dix and Mrs. V.T. Kirk – still Admiral Vlarian Triefield at work – are the calm planners, balancing my more improvisational style out.
Not until I made it out to hold down the company's frontier outpost on Ventana 5 did I realize how completely over my head I was going to get if I wasn't careful and attentive in a way I had never been before.
Something I learned sooner than my Cousin J.T., who nearly lost his ship and crew many times and is not ashamed to advise younger men differently now: the galaxy is not out there waiting for humanity to take it over. Earth was made for man, but in the galaxy, it pays to be a good guest in other people's spaces. We are on their turf, trying to see where we can get a piece of what, frankly, they are not interested in.
Humanity does not care for being on the weak side of all negotiations, but, the farther we get from Earth and near-Earth outposts, that is more and more our situation, and trust and believe, the galaxy's business sentients know it.
I did not say people because it is important not to be insulting. The above are closer to sentient business flowers than anything else – clearly of the same type, but again, complements attract.
Te Flroana, as they referred to themselves, controlled a market that was becoming important to the consortium's human settlers … those who used homeopathic remedies to adjust to allergies on different planets found that the pollen produced by Te Flroana's actual floral life was the most helpful across a number of star systems.
Te Flroana were known on the frontier as business flowers that drew a hard bargain, and they had to that point utterly refused to allow a human-led shipping company to travel to their planets and ship the product directly.
Kirk and Dixon Shipping got a seat at the negotiating table because we said we would meet them halfway and promise that we would do no processing or reverse engineering of their source materials.
Te Flroana decided to send two representatives to negotiate, and Ventana 4 was close enough to their home to come to our outpost.
I prepared myself for the negotiations, and marveled at the legwork Dix had already done … it would have been too much for me to do alone.
And then, he materialized, the day before the negotiations.
“Dix, I wasn't going to ask you to come all the way out here,” I said.
“Mark, I realized something I didn't put into my notes,” he said. “You're not going to be able to do that negotiation alone. The Te Flroana don't believe in that – these business bigshots keep getting shot down because they forget the complementary principle.”
“No rugged individualism out here, huh?” I said.
“No … and also, not enough human diversity, but look at us.”
“Brown and not-so-brown – or, in the old terms, Black and White,” I said.
“Exactly – different enough in phenotype so that Te Flroana will see that we understand the complementary principle. One more thing – as we speak to them, I'm going to be finishing your sentences a lot, and I know you're up on all the details, so, finish my sentences as well. Eventually, if all goes well, we will reach accord and be finishing their sentences and vice versa.”
I can see why humanity and frankly sentient life on the frontier had a hard time with Te Flroana – the two business representatives they sent were on top of things like a key to a lock. Intellect on 100, each one filling in the gaps the other may have left out. This was also the day I truly realized how much more academic Rufus Dixon is than I am – but I was able to improvise and keep the conversation going in a way he was not as good at. We too were like a key to a lock, and this, in the end, is what got us the contract, and all of us finishing each other's sentences and saying the same thing.
Afterwards, Dix and I sat in our boardroom, mopping our sweaty brows in exhaustion.
“Well, that was different,” I said.
“Welcome to the frontier, Mark,” he said. “Out here, we are going to sweat for every inch.”
“I'm going to sweat for the next 18 months – go on back and get settled in with Khadijah and enjoy your life,” I said. “I'm not going to sit up here and go into rugged individual mode like 'I got this' because I would have dropped the ball today, but if you can recommend someone who is a good planner that you like in the company to be an assistant to me, you can relax.”
Dix smiled.
“I'll get back to you on that tonight, Mark, and thank you. I really appreciate you stepping up. Khadijah is going through changes resigning her commission, and I'm getting everything ready for us to be married, and it's a lot because you know I'm the same everywhere – it's gotta be detailed and it's gotta be right. But we have plenty of people in the company that deserve to be brought up anyhow, so I'll get back to you.”