Constitution by Michael Jan Friedman

Author:Michael Jan Friedman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pocket Books/Star Trek
Published: 1999-12-26T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

VODIS VODANIS stood at the rail of his office’s wide, curved balcony and looked out over the capital city of his planet. It was an exhilarating experience, to say the least.

Elegant new buildings were rising everywhere, pristine pink and white towers and pale blue domes taking the place of the older, darker edifices that had been ravaged in the bad times five years earlier. Vodanis raised his face to the sun and smiled, basking in the knowledge that such a tragedy would never befall his people again.

Now their plentiful mineral resources would go toward the funding of more housing, more cultural programs, and more assistance for the needy. Their planet’s wealth wouldn’t be leached from it by pirates and plunderers, bringing misery and destruction to their civilization in the process.

And why would they be spared further hardships? Because he and his counselors had seen the wisdom of joining the United Federation of Planets, a union of many different species with a single worthwhile goal—the advancement of science, trade, and culture.

Some among his people had warned Vodanis not to place his trust in the aliens, no matter how benign they might seem. After all, no Sordinian had ever benefited from contact with offworlders.

But Vodanis, who had been elected his people’s Prime mere months before the Federation’s first overture, followed his instincts above all. He welcomed the organization’s diplomatic envoys with open arms. He came to understand them and helped them to understand the Sordinians. And in the end, he saw to it that his world became an equal partner in the alliance.

These days, no one challenged the wisdom of the Prime’s decision any longer. After all, the Federation had done everything it said it would do for Sordinia IV. Except for one thing, of course—it never sent combat vessels to rescue the planet from pirates.

But then, it had never needed to. Since Vodanis’s world was accepted into the Federation, it hadn’t received a single visit from an alien force bent on plundering. Clearly, such visitors had been daunted by the reputation of the Sordinians’ new friends.

The Prime smiled. His people’s situation had not been so stable, so promising, in a hundred years, and he had had a hand in making it that way. It was a gratifying thought, to say the least.

A hawk began circling one of the newest towers, as if looking for prey. Vodanis was studying it when he heard a short, shrill sound that originated inside his office. It was the sound of his communications device, alerting him to a caller.

Vodanis felt his pulse speed up as he went inside to respond. It had to be his daughter on the line, he told himself. She had reached the final stage of the capital’s annual visual-arts competition, and the winner was to be announced that morning.

The Prime hoped that his child had attained the top prize. She had worked so hard on her project, sometimes waking up in the middle of the night to make some small change or addition to it.

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