Diplomatic service

His career was virtually over. He had screwed the things by the numbers - or, to be precise, he had screwed all too well the wife of his section's chief, Mirailla Defunes-Loeton.

A not small part of himself was satisfied, because the chief was a bastard and she was quite hot.

An even bigger part of him was ashamed, by the whole situation, because those were not excuses that an intelligent person would have ever considered.

He had allowed a childish corner of his personality to overtake his rational mind, and decided upon an almost idiotic spite against his chief, the never-to-be-outfoxed Lamis Defunes, to pursue the ouvertures that the older woman had let him glimpse.

Now, he had been ascended to a far higher place than what he used to have, and assigned out of planet - five years, minimum, among the barbarians in - what's the name of the place? -  New York.

He could resign, but then his family would probably get quite upset - mainly his father.

- "What, you want to resign? Are you crazy? I do not know how you managed to do it, but it almost never happens that someone is  promoted four pay grades at once. Be an adult and stand your ground, for once... five years are going to pass soon, son. Don't be stupid, keep the place and enjoy the pay."

Galgan thought, gloomily, that that was not a promotion but, rather, a well concealed exile.

Yet, his father was right... no matter what the reasons, no matter the fact that his new charge was probably the one with the highest chance to make a mess and being demoted and sacked from the civil service currently in existence, the post and its cushy paycheck were just too good to refuse.

Gargan Golefacehuggers, once an obscure analyst of xeno-cultures in the Ministry of Foreign Offices, recently promoted into the ranks of the Cultural Attachés, growled again, watching an old movie in his omni-book.

The travel to the orbit height takes around five days - Anipos Prime geostationary orbit is at 30000 km, and the climb rate is usually limited just at 250 km/h - which is just one of the reasons why the Anipos really do not like to go into space.

Anti-gravitaty climbers were used, nowadays, for fast ground-to-orbit travel, but Galgan didn't really want to go, so he chose a seat in the side cabin of one of the freight climbers that still made the bulk of the cargo movements, being way cheaper - in joules per tonne - than even the most advanced anti-gravity system.

In the Anipos culture, energy is literally money, and its productions system technologically stable since a couple of centuries.

This made a lot of the details of the culture that Galgan was expected to immerse himself in for the next five years, a lot more puzzling than they needed to be.

Gold? They used gold as tender, for centuries? What a bunch of suckers; the metal had some technological uses, but not so many.

It wasn't anywhere near as indispensable as platinum, indium or palladium... one of the worst possible choice, to base a tender upon.

A planet of small-headed gold lovers...

- "Maybe I should resign and look for a job in the private sector, or sign for the unemployment guaranteed salary." 

One last day to go, the climber went up to the orbital ring around the planet.

Another couple of days to reach his ship's berth (out-of system diplomatic ships had no cargo to load or unload, so they traditionally were lodged in the area between the climbers' poles), and then a two months subjective time while the ship accelerated out of the planetary system, went to hyperspace, and then back into normal space to decelerate entering the destination system.

It was no wonder that, aptly defined "astronomical" energy costs apart, the inhabitants of the Anipos system didn't like the idea of going to other planetary systems. 

Nothing out there was really worth the effort, the costs or the time to make the travel.

Little Galgan knew, of how wrong he was.