Chapter 55

"Governor! How nice to hear from you again. That bag of diamonds set me up with a new house, a car, and some cash invested for the future; and my experience with you has got me a consultant post with the university. If I can do anything for you, fire away!"

"Terence, We are looking at another new planet that has a huge amount of forests covering the land. The Personalia have taken samples for us of all the tree species, so we need appropriate experts to examine these samples and tell us what value they have as commercial timber. Some might be like balsa wood, some might be like lignum vitae, others like pine, or oak, or whatever. The other things is, there might be insects or diseases within the wood samples, so they need to be examined under sealed laboratory conditions. It seemed to me that forestry students might have fun examining these, and advancing their knowledge at the same time."

"I am with you, Governor. Very sensible approach. Do you mind if I ask several universities if they would be interested in that sort of research, under secrecy conditions. I will ask them for a consultancy fee for making the exotic specimens available to them. How many specimens are we talking about?"

"According to my information, one of each species. The total is five hundred and sixty-three unique samples, so either each student gets one sample to work on, or several, depending on how effectively they can work. What do you think, Terence?"

"Hmm. My personal preference would be to work with a hundred or so students. We give them one sample, on the understanding that if they produce a satisfactory report on it, they will get a second sample to investigate. We don't tell them there will be more, until we get a good second report. By that time we will have an idea of how well they can do the examination, and those that are not good enough, we drop. Those that show excellent work, we give another sample with the information that there may be yet another if we are happy with their continuing work.

That way, we keep them working at their best, and we continue to get high quality research. How about it, Governor? Would you go along with my ideas?"

"I am impressed, Terence. Proceed as suggested. I will have The Personalia deliver the samples to an agreed storage facility, to which only you will have access. They will be your responsibility while on Earth, and you can make whatever contractual deal you want with the universities involved. I expect you will get a better financial return if you can negotiate all the research being done in one country."

"Quite correct, Governor. That was my own thought, so you are a smart cookie, sir. You are clearly not just a placeman, but a talented leader of your colony. I will see what storage facility I can obtain, and let you know. At the same number you are phoning from, I presume?"

"Yes, Terence. Oh, Terence, I never was told your surname. Perhaps I should ask what it is?"

Oh, of course, sir. It is Rattigan. I have the same name as the playwright, which is why I just call myself Terence where possible. I am no playwright!"

"I see. Very well, Terence. I shall not mention your surname, unless necessary. Goodbye for now."

"George! George Montford!" The Governor's voice could be heard calling, within the confines of the box making company's offices.

"Over here, Governor!" he shouted back. Bob Kempe made his way through to where George was seated at the office computer. "There you are. You are a hard man to find, apart from phoning you, George."

"Like yourself, I am a busy man, Governor. What can I do for you today?"

"The Certification Scheme, George. I haven't heard anything from you about it. I presume you ARE working on that scheme, and haven't forgotten about it?"

"Indeed I am, sir. I will get to you when it is ready to roll. I never realised how many hoops we would have to jump through, to get this scheme off the ground."

"Why is that, George?"

"The standards people on Earth: they have their established ways of doing things, and keep trying to maintain these ways of working. I wanted to go direct to database operation, but they insist that we should have hard copy of all the national standards, so that they can be referred to at any time, even if there is a power cut, and the computers cannot run. It is archaic thinking. All their records are already digitised, so there is no necessity for them to hang on to the hard copy. Printed copies of almost all standards are out in the hands of companies and organisations to which they have relevance. In contrast, when some legal deposit libraries digitised their runs of old newspapers, they wanted to ditch them, even though other bodies wanted to keep them as a physical archive, on the basis of not losing people's heritage; being able to handle the original newspapers.

This lot are of the "Keep everything" persuasion. I pointed out to them that we didn't have any hard copies to start with, and so we wanted all of the records in digital format. They were horrified, and said we ought to obtain our own hard copies. When I said that we planned to have digital copies of standards from all over the world, they replied, "So?", as if we could collect hard copies from every country on Earth.

I became quite nasty, eventually, and said, "Well, in that case we shall simply start from scratch, and every time we needed to check on the basis for each Earth standard, we will send someone into your store to examine your physical records. That should keep researchers busy for years to come, if we have to look back at hard copy material."

They thought about that, then announced that it would be too much of an inconvenience to them, and that we should just check the digital copies instead. I said, "That is the idea we started with, and you objected to."

That set them back on their heels, and they then decided that, purely because we were on another planet, digital referencing would be satisfactory. Nothing to do with their previous arguments, of course!"

The Governor laughed. "So, what then, George?"

"To get our own digital copies of their patent files, I asked the Personalia if they could kindly connect to each of these national standards departments – some countries have several departments that look after standards – and download a complete file of their holdings, for us to have as a reference database.

They said, "No bother. When do you want it, and where?"

Well, Governor, that made me think. The Personalia are based on computers, and they have loads of data storage space, so I asked if they could act as the storage space for the standards data, and look up standards as and when we asked them; for a small fee, of course. This idea tickled their humour button, and they agreed. We spent more time haggling over the fee to be paid per lookup, then we did on the previous discussion. They are hard bargainers, and we eventually settled on a dollar per lookup. I hope that is o.k. with you, sir. We intend to recoup the outlay through charging companies and organisations for accessing the standards they would have to work to."

"If it won't cost us in the end, then I am O.K. with whatever fee you agree with them, George. Did this mean we are up and running?"

"Nope. Now comes the difficult bit. We have to look at all the existing standards, as and when we see a need here, and at that point we decide if the standards are satisfactory for Rehome. If we find we have anything which is unique to Rehome; that is, with no counterpart on Earth, we have to draw up our own new standard, in cooperation with the indigenous industry and any bodies connected with the industry. That means that by the time we issue a new standard, everyone affected has agreed to apply it."

The Governor grumbled at this statement. "This sounds as if it will take forever, George."

"Not at all, Governor. Everything will be in digital format, so we can ask everyone who has an input, to do so in the agreed digital format for submissions, then we compare all the received submissions and see if we have an immediate agreement. If there is a clash, we send out all the inconsistent offerings to everyone, and ask them to resubmit in the light of these. I would expect the parties to discuss it among themselves, and come to an agreement, which would then be submitted and added to the standards documentation. Once everyone gets the hang of it, I expect most standards to have been pre-agreed before submission, and it is just a matter of being consistent across an entire industry, both as to the actual standards and the underlying assumptions that bolster these standards. We will try to be as consistent with Earth standards as possible, even with unique Rehome material. That will make it more palatable to the earth authorities."

"So, it is just a matter of time?"

"Not really. I am not so sure about plant material. Do we have to do a chemical breakdown of the plant item, should it be a DNA profile, or do we simply compare it to a reference sample held by us? Or do we concentrate on the active ingredient? That assumes 1) that there is an active ingredient and 2) that there is only one active ingredient. It may be a combination which produces the activity that the plant is used for.

Alternatively, the Standard may refer to the process of production where it is grown, and how it is treated before export, with another body certifying that the biological material is as described, i.e. a specific variety of carrot or potato. Anything grown here from Earth-derived seeds, tubers, etc., is straightforward.

However, our two main plant exports, the fungi and the herb have no formal identity on Earth, so can we get away with just giving them a name of our own? The herb Comfort is already known by the name used by the producers, but I don't know if the fungi has a specific identifying name. It may be that the Colony, as the legislative authority, signs off the items: certifies them as approved plant products as defined by Rehome Colony Administration. Your name would be appended to that certification, just as you would sign a new law."

The Governor applauded George's work. "Well done indeed, George. You are doing exactly what I hoped you would do: establishing a basis for our products to be regarded as reliable and trustworthy. I'll leave it with you again. Let me know when you are about to announce the Standards Authority, and I will add my own little bit about how great it is for our Colony; a sign of our growing maturity."

The video recording was in the can. Steve Nicholas was pleased. He spoke to the ladies and thanked them for their cooperation in the shoot. "I was quite taken by your lullaby. Why don't you try for a follow-up song? It doesn't have to be a lullaby, as long as it has a good tune and good words."

Dinah was lapping up the praise, and saw an opportunity to take things a step further. "Actually, I have the words for another song, but I don't have a tune for it yet."