Ambassador Kaelen had walked to the center of the hall with the measured, heavy stride of a Siberian winter. The veteran Eurasian diplomat had spread his broad hands across the thick parchment, his voice ringing through the sound baffles with total clarity:
“The Eurasian Coalition brings one hundred and twenty agricultural academies, four hundred regional trauma clinics. The entirety of our underground seed archives in the Baikal frozen ground into this promise. We declare that no genetic patent filed by ApexBio or House Vance shall ever be recognized on Eurasian soil. We commit our heavy-duty foundries to the mass manufacture of open-source centrifuge equipment and zinc-sulfur neutralizer. The northern plains belong to the beasts and the tamers who guide them.”
Kaelen had pressed his heavy signet ring into the first pool of crimson wax, sealing the agreement with the roaring bear emblem of Eurasia.
The ink of Ambassador Kaelen’s signed name was still wet upon the thick parchment when Delegate Osei of the Pan-African Union stepped forward to the center aisle.
The tall, broad-shouldered diplomat wore a ritual tunic of woven gold and indigo silk over his formal gray coalition suit. He carried a heavy bronze seal bearing the soaring hornbill crest of the Rift Valley Agricultural Compact.
