Starfist: FlashFire by David Sherman & Dan Cragg Read Free Book Online Page A

worlds? We ain’t the only ones with problems like that.”
    “We understand that,” Pieters replied, “but there is the problem with Mylex and their failure to protect the intellectual properties of the Confederation’s member worlds, their massive violations of the copyright laws, and the very profitable trade they have built up selling cut-rate bootlegged books, vids, all kinds of entertainment media that are protected elsewhere in the Confederation. Why, the Mylex representative isn’t even with us today!” He glanced at the three negotiators who’d accompanied Stutz, all of whom shook their heads.
    “Naw,” Stutz grinned, “ol’ Jenks Moody. He couldn’t make it, had a bit too much of our fine Hobcaw bourbon last night.” The members of his delegation guffawed.
    Wellington-Humphreys couldn’t help but admire the way the negotiators were laying it on, pretending to be a bunch of “cracker-barrel” cronies. She glanced out of the side of her eye at Pieters, who really did think these people were hicks, and winked. “Well, Mr. Stutz, there is also the situation on Embata, with the use of slave labor in the mines there. That sort of practice doesn’t sit well with our ideas of human rights.”
    “Oh, yeah, Miz Wellington-Humpfriz? Those people are felons, ma’am, they don’t have no rights. But you ever hear of a place called Darkside, eh? How does your highfalutin’ ‘human rights’ ideas justify that?” Darkside was the highly secret penal colony the Confederation operated for the incarceration of its worst criminals. Often they were sent there without benefit of a trial.
    “Touché,” Wellington-Humphreys replied.
    “I’ll ‘touché’ you sumptin’ else, ma’am.” Stutz leaned back, narrowing his eyes. In her mind Wellington-Humphreys imagined him snapping his galluses. “You remember a scribbler, someone from Carhart’s World, I recall, he visited Embata about a hundred years ago and wrote a book about the place? His name was Oldlaw, Frederic Oldlaw. He became famous as a city planner back in the last century. He wrote about his travels through Embata but he really meant everywhere in our quadrant. He wrote the Embatans they were all a collection of lazy ignorant folks who’d rather hunt and run with dawgs in the woods than work for a living, lived off their pregnant wimmen’s labor, ate a diet that’d puke a hound off a gut wagon, ’n got fallin’-down drunk just to relax. He reported a conversation he had with one fella at a roadhouse on a back road somewheres. The man was braggin’ about how he was gonna get drunk ’n go home ’n beat up his wife and kids. ‘How much do you weigh?’ this Oldlaw fella asked. ‘Oh, ’bout a hunner fifty kilos,’ the guy answered. ‘Wall, how much do your kids weigh?’ Oldlaw wanted to know. You see where he was drivin’ at? ‘Nuttin’, when they’s flyin’ thru th’ air,’ the man replied.” Stutz laughed and slapped his palm on the table.

“Now, Miz Humpfriz, Mr. Pieters,” Stutz continued, “that’s a good ol’ story, but it’s pure hogwash, pure hogwash. That writer fella was so stupid he never realized that’s just how the Embata people get their fun, leadin’ strangers on that way. That’s what happens when you don’t stay someplace long enough to get to know the folks there. Wall, how do you think trash like that set with the folks who read it but never visited Embata themselves? And that attitude is at the bottom of the problems we are having today with your Confederation of Human Worlds. You people think you’re so much better’n we are ’n we don’t like it, not one damn bit. Our differences have been growin’ us apart for two hundred years now and we want out of this Confederation, ma’am.”
    Wellington-Humphreys suppressed a sigh. She’d had enough for one day. “Mr. Stutz, I think Dr. Pieters would agree, this meeting has been very fruitful. Can we adjourn until tomorrow, say around ten? Perhaps