Loi, Eldlund, and Jessika were all awake and sharing a table for breakfast when I got up. At least they seemed to be bridging the deep ideological chasm between Yuri and Callum, but that’s youth for you.

Alik came in, his hair still damp from the shower. He sat down opposite me. “No gym,” he complained.

“Yeah. Really sorry about that.”

He laughed and ordered coffee and toast from the steward. “Quite a showdown your boss had last night. I felt like I had a front-row seat into some real history.”

“I knew the basic facts, but, yeah, some of the details they spilled were something else.”

“Surprised they’re both on this trip.”

“It’s important.”

“Sure, I get that. But do they maybe have a little extra data to go on?”

I raised an eyebrow, scanning that handsome face with its immobile flesh. Alik Monday would make the perfect poker player; he lacked the ability to produce a single tell. The voice, though—that could convey a lot of emotion. I’m guessing he must practice that. “Connexion didn’t play favorites here, Alik,” I chided. “The Utopials were extremely keen for representation on the assessment team.”

“And Callum is their prime troubleshooter.”

“He’s a grade-two citizen.”

“If you think he’s here to produce a technical assessment, you’re fooling yourself. He might have been technical back in the day, but he’s got his young acolytes for that now.” His hand waved discreetly at Eldlund and Jessika.

“What are you saying?”

“He reports directly to the Utopial Senior Council, and maybe not even that. I expect it’s going to be Jaru and Emilja themselves who’ll have first access to his opinion. And that opinion will be entirely political.”

“I concur,” I told him. “As does Ainsley. That’s one of the reasons he had me include representatives for all the truly important interested parties.”

“Really?” It came out a challenge—old interrogation technique. Back up what you just said.

“There’s an interesting parallel in history,” I explained.

“Go on.”

“When the original Space Age was underway back in the 1950s and ’60s, part of the ideological struggle was the hypothesis surrounding first contact. The Soviet Union postulated that any civilization advanced enough to travel between the stars would logically be socialist, and would therefore choose to deal only with Moscow. The battle for ideological supremacy would be over, the world would undergo conversion to enlightenment, and the age of capitalism would be at an end.”

“Aliens are all communists? Bunch of bull. The Olyix are savvy traders.”

“Maybe. But today, instead of the Soviet Union, we have the Utopial culture.” I glanced over at Eldlund and Jessika, still chatting happily with Loi. “Who will explain, at great and boring length, how their post-scarcity equality is not socialism, but a technology-driven evolution of egalitarian humanist society.”

“Jeez, you mean Callum’s here to confirm starfaring aliens will all be—”

“Good little Utopials? Yes. Beware, my son, the end days of capitalism are nigh.”

“He’ll swing contact their way?”