Ambassador 3: Changing Fate

1 I WAS PRETTY GOOD at making an i***t of myself, but this had to be one of the most embarrassing things I’d done in my life. The young man stood just inside the door, in my living room, not quite sure whether to hold his hands in front of him, behind his back or, heavens forbid, in his pockets. He seemed to settle on a little bit of each at different times, and never pulling off any of the positions with confidence. He looked and acted as awkward as I felt. His name was Menor Ezmi. He came from Hedron—how could he not with a name like that?—and was in Barresh working on a temporary security contract. He was well-groomed and quite handsome, as far as I could judge other men for handsomeness: a well-shaped face, typical full Coldi lips, well-defined cheekbones and clear, alert eyes. He was athletic and lacked the chubbiness of so many Coldi people and, as was fairly common amongst Hedron Coldi, his hair was curly. He wore it in a big, bushy ponytail. His education was impeccable; he was smart and articulate and had applied to my advertisement in the local news bulletin with the understanding that we would not be paying him, because this wasn’t about money. In short, he ticked all the right boxes—for becoming the father of our child. All the women in the house—and why were there so many of them all of a sudden?—stood or sat in the living room, looking at him, judging him as one judges a prize bull. My housekeeper Eirani had something to say about his clothing. It was too formal according to her. She spoke keihu and he probably couldn’t understand her, and I wondered what too formal meant anyway and why clothing mattered when we were judging what was underneath. Sheydu feigned disinterest from the couch, but I could see her give the man curious glances when she thought I wasn’t looking. It was hard to figure out what she thought at the best of times and this was not her favourite subject. With her greying hair and sun-spotted and wrinkled skin, under which her muscles rippled when she moved, she was easily the oldest person in the household, but I didn’t think she had much experience in the matter of choice of mate or relationships. I suspected that her response to any man who showed interest in her in that way was a knee in the groin. Sheydu did not canoodle. Xinanu was perhaps the biggest surprise of all the female members of my household. After we came back from our escapade on Asto, I had sent Nicha back there to find himself a pair of subordinate zhaymas to complete our association, since Thayu had taken on Sheydu and Veyada. He had done just that and brought two youngsters, but he had also come back with a woman with whom he had negotiated a contract for a child. Here she was on my couch, young, gorgeous, extremely sensual, seated next to Nicha, and very, very pregnant. She announced that our poor subject of interest had very nice muscles, but she disliked his hair. “Do you ever straighten it?” She was from the Azimi clan, First Circle, and according to habit, she used subordinate xayi pronouns. I wasn’t used to hearing that form in my apartment, and every time she used a xayi pronoun, as she did to the staff, I cringed a little. Menor handled the subtle belittling without any reaction. “I quite like my hair. What is wrong with it?” He used colloquial nyo pronouns, as was standard at Hedron. “Well . . .” Xinanu spread her hands. Her expression said, Do I really have to explain that? Then she said again, “Well. You’re from Hedron, so I guess it doesn’t matter.” Oh, those pronouns were really rubbing me up the wrong way. As if she were the font of wisdom on all things concerning fashion. As if that even mattered. As if she had any say in the decision at hand. I glanced at Thayu, who leaned against the doorframe with her arms crossed over her chest. Her face was very proper, unemotional. She hadn’t said much yet, even though she would be the one carrying this man’s child. Xinanu pushed herself from the couch with a groan and walked around the young man, eying him from top to bottom. If I hadn’t known that she had a good month to go still, I might have thought she’d be in danger of dropping the baby, but that was only the result of the fact that she liked wearing clothes at least two sizes too small. “Hmm,” she said, and looked first at Thayu, and then at me. “He’s a nice specimen. Apart from that horrible hair, he’s got nice shoulders, a good strong face, healthy legs and a butt to kill for, but tell me, why are you going for someone from outside?” Thayu gave her the dead-fish stare. Her gold-flecked eyes were the only thing moving in her otherwise impassive face. “Because,” she said in her cold dead-fish voice. “Because there are far too many Inner and First Circle people trying to get a foot in our household already.” She gave Xinanu a pointed look. Oooo-er. I waited for the return snipe, but Xinanu must have run out of pointed proverbs in this morning’s snipe-fest with Eirani. Maybe her pregnancy had finally slowed her down. Heavens be praised. “Apart from the hair, I don’t mind him,” Xinanu carried on. “Better than the other ones so far.” I cringed. That good old Coldi bluntness. “Thank you,” the young man said, and that only made her bluntness more cringe-worthy. “Tell me, Menor, why would you do this thing,” Sheydu asked him. She had twisted sideways on the couch and folded her legs under her. Sheydu had this uncanny ability to make the room go quiet when she spoke. “If there is to be no benefit to yourself and if, as you say, there will be no claims from you in regards to parentage of the child, even if it turns out to be a girl.” In most Coldi societies, boys inherited from their mothers and girls from their fathers, but I wasn’t sure if Hedron adhered to this custom. “I like to help other people.” “Hmph. Hedron isn’t known for its soft heart.” “We’re not at Hedron.” “No, well . . .” “Maybe I left for a reason.” He looked straight into her eyes. Not being from Asto, he could do that, and everything I’d seen so far confirmed that he completely lacked the sheya instinct requiring Coldi people to establish their rankings in relation to each other the first time they met another person. I was beginning to quite like this young man. Polite, smart, with a healthy hint of sarcasm. Thayu’s sheya instinct was not hugely strong, and any child of theirs would have it further watered down. From my personal point of view, the less sheya in my house, the better. It was one of those irrational things that truly baffled me about Coldi people. Xinanu was right in that he was a lot better than any of the previous candidates, one of whom had expressed open disappointment that having his genetic material used for a child didn’t mean that he was going to get any action in bed. “Why are you in Barresh?” I asked him. “We live in a very isolated community at Hedron. I wanted to see other places and understand the ways that people live there.” “Are you familiar with the Coldi contracts for parentage of children?” “I am. I understand that the child will not be mine, and I have no right to claim it as mine for any purpose, be it legal or for the purpose of inheritance.” “You seem well prepared.” “Thank you, Delegate.” “I think we’ve exhausted our questions. Unless you have any . . .” Thayu made a no hand signal. “I will be in contact later.” “I’m looking forward to it, Delegate.” “I will let the young master out then,” Eirani said. He bowed politely to me before following Eirani out of the room. There were footsteps in the hall, and the sound of the front door opening and closing. “So, what do you think?” I asked Thayu. “I don’t know. . . .” Thayu looked down. Xinanu said, “I liked him better than the previous one. He was much too cocky and sleazy.” I gave her a Shut up, woman, I didn’t ask you anything glare, knowing that the chance that she would get the message was slim. “It’s not about their behaviour,” Thayu said primly. She didn’t even look at Xinanu— —who totally failed to get the message. “Of course it is. Do you want a child from a man who is a slob or who will be happy to settle for a spot in Eighth Circle?” When speaking to Thayu, she used the more respectful chya pronouns. “And the state of curliness of his hair determines his suitability?” Thayu used nyo pronouns back at her. “It determines whether he’s a slob or not.” “He’s from Hedron. They don’t care about curly hair.” “It doesn’t look good. It shows that he doesn’t care about his appearance.” “How often do we have to yell at you: he’s from Hedron. Things are different there.” “Since he’s here, he has to live by our rules.” “And his status stands or falls by the curliness of his hair?” I shouted, “Stop it!” They did. There was a moment of intense silence in which Thayu glared daggers at Xinanu and Xinanu returned a haughty look across the room and the couch where the other last two women in my household watched the proceedings with wide eyes. Deyu sat on the couch closest to the window, watching in her typical timid fashion. She was also new to my household, but unlike Xinanu, she came from a poor family in the Outer Circle. She and her zhayma, a young zeyshi man called Reida, had been Nicha’s selection as subordinates. Both were still in that stage in life where they watched the world with wide eyes. As yet, she lacked confidence to speak to most people in the household, especially Xinanu. Raanu, on the other hand, sat next to Deyu with her back straight, no doubt drinking in all the detail of the discussions. She was extremely smart and knew very well that as soon as she said something, someone would send her out of the room, where proper eight-year-olds belonged. I still had no idea why Ezhya had sent us his daughter to look after with virtually no prior notice. After the embarrassing incident in the zeyshi warren, I had tried to keep her away from things that Ezhya might judge inappropriate for his daughter, such as graphic details of relationships between men and women. I assumed that she had asked Deyu to take her into the living room when we were interviewing the applicant, and that, despite being twice Raanu’s age, Deyu was distinctly subordinate in that relationship. Now that the object of curiosity was gone from the room, the domestic staff went back to work. Xinanu waddled to the door. Nicha offered her his arm and gave me a sorry about that look over her shoulder, although I wasn’t sure why he should be sorry. Having a child was his right, and Xinanu would not stay for long. But yes, I disliked her. I just tried not to let it show. But she made it hard at times. Very hard. Thayu finally left her spot at the doorpost and joined me on the couch. “You don’t seem entirely happy,” I said, closing her in my arms. “I think this was the best candidate I’ve seen so far. In fact, I’d be happy to use him.” She sighed. “You know, I keep looking at these men wanting them to look like you.” “None of the Coldi will ever look like me.” Although he did have my curly hair, so that was a bonus. She shook her head. She was quiet for a while, with a far-off look in her eyes. If I had been wearing my feeder, I could have heard what she was thinking, but I only wore it when I absolutely had to. She sighed. “I just don’t think it’s fair for you.” “I told you not to worry about me.” She stroked my cheek. “But I worry. If we go ahead with this, you must promise me that you find a woman to have your child.” I laughed. I could just about see myself walking around the social scene of Nations of Earth with that mission. “The women who could do that for me don’t work like that.” I supposed I could find a surrogate if I really wanted, but I didn’t. “Yes, you told me, but I’ve also read that in your world you do have these services for people who can’t have children.” “Listen, Thayu. It’s not important to me. If you have this child, he or she will be mine as well. Nicha’s son will be mine because he’ll live with us. Heck, I even consider Raanu part of this family—” And I’d forgotten about the little rascal. She was watching us from the door opening into the hall, having worked out that adult things were much more interesting than her lessons. I glared at her, and where many Coldi would have cringed or avoided my eyes, she stared back unashamedly. Growing up with only adults in the Inner Circle, she was maturing fast, and would whup Ezhya’s backside very soon if he gave her half a chance. Why ever he had sent his daughter here, I couldn’t begin to guess—he knew we had the talks coming up. I put on my Serious Adult voice. “Raanu, can you go back to your work?” “But it’s boring.” “Boring?” Thayu snorted and pushed herself out of my arms. “If you think that learning about all the gamra entities is boring, you know nothing about boring. In fact, I might teach you something about boring, if you really want to know.” Raanu shook her head, wide-eyed. Thayu’s definition of boring was likely to be a thousand times more boring than hers. Thayu smiled and stroked the top of Raanu’s head. “Do your work, pebble, and I promise that if you can recite all the core gamra members and their representatives to me, I will take you for an interesting outing.” “Are we going to go on a boat?” “Yes, we can go on a boat—if you behave and are careful.” She was still from the generation that had been told to be afraid of open water. The saying went that the older Coldi people would drown in a teacup. The younger generation, however, considered regular rain, and even flooding, a normal thing. That was how quickly the planet was changing. “I want to see the eels.” Those rare, huge creatures that lived in the waters surrounding the islands that made up Barresh. “Do your work, and I’ll see what I can do. I can’t promise anything about the eels, though. Eels are wild creatures. We can go where they live, but I can’t make them turn up. But we can do all the other things, once you have done your work.” Raanu drooped off to the room down the hall where she slept. Thayu smiled after her. I said, “You still haven’t answered my question about our latest candidate. I’m happy to use him. The decision is up to you.” She looked at her hands. “Oh, I don’t know.” Then she sighed and looked up at me. “I would like to have your child.” And that, of course, was impossible, and it was the thing she always said. I didn’t push her because Thayu disliked being pushed. This was probably as much of a reply as I’d get from her now. She’d think about it and would probably come around to my point of view after a few days. I thought that she liked him. At least she hadn’t rolled her eyes as she had with the other candidates. I’d send the young man a message letting him know we’d be in contact later. It was probably better to let the matter rest until the negotiations about the zeyshi claim on Asto were over. I was going to need Thayu for however long that process would take. We had taken some time off to meet the young man, but now it was time to get back to serious work. Thayu went to the hub and I wandered down the hall. Last year, after I had saved Ezhya’s position, he had paid me a substantial amount of money. I’d used some of it to knock out a wall between two adjoining rooms at the very end of the top floor corridor, creating one big office space where I could work with a few other people. I’d replaced the outer wall with a huge window that overlooked the marshland. It had become a light-filled, open room with locally-made furniture, including a big desk of solid timber made by one of Eirani’s many cousins. At the moment, this desk was covered in electronic devices, bits of paper and various plates and cups. Before Devlin came to tell me that Menor had turned up, I’d been reading through the text of the zeyshi claim for Asto for the umpteenth time, and the document was still open on my reader. The full text of the document took up only ten pages. It listed a number of references to witness accounts and studies on the history of Asto’s treatment of the zeyshi people, who were, in short, people lacking the sheya association instinct that defined Coldi society. Studies had found that there was a spectrum of characteristics between Coldi and Aghyrian people, from muscular, broad-shouldered people with a strong sheya instinct, Coldi hair with its metallic sheen and gold-flecked eyes to taller people with dark eyes, dark hair, no sheya instinct. The most Aghyrian of all had even lost the Coldi ability to vary their body temperature. Most importantly, the distinction Coldi versus Aghyrian was not black and white and the document was written from that standpoint. In a nutshell, it said, These are your own people and you have treated them like crap for millennia. They have the right to establish their own legal entity where they see fit and claim ownership of the products of their labour. The trouble with all of this was, of course, that gamra would absolutely agree with the statement, that ownership of the products of their labour could be taken to mean that they would control the Exchange, and that wherever they see fit could mean the entire greater Athyl basin, the home of close to one billion native Coldi people. So we’d been testing the document for legal loopholes, of which there were many, and different interpretations, of which there were many as well. There were two paper copies of it on the desk, one annotated with Chief Delegate Akhtari’s notes, and the other full of legal references scribbled by Veyada. I put them side by side. If I’d learned anything about the claim document by going over it so many times in the last few months, it was that it had been written by a skilled lawyer and politician. The text was full of tricky wordings which could have different meanings depending on how you interpreted the surrounding text. Yet the delegation that the zeyshi had sent, and that had arrived a few days ago, didn’t match the calibre of the text, something Veyada and I had discussed a lot. It included the zeyshi leader Nayu Omi and the Aghyrian woman Evala Sadet Arwan, whose temper didn’t seem to have improved since I saw her in the zeyshi warren on Asto. The other delegation members, Chyana, Daranu and Emi, seemed little more than guards and scribes. I’d met the delegation briefly when taking them to their accommodation, and those three had barely said anything. “None of these people are capable of writing an intricate legal claim like this,” had been Veyada’s first observation. “They’re negotiators, not lawyers.” “I know, but I don’t think they even understand why the claim cannot so easily be dismissed. The sophistication is far beyond anything people without formal legal training could produce.” “Maybe it’s s fluke.” Veyada laughed. “You’re not a lawyer either, or you wouldn’t say this.” True. “That’s why I have you.” Veyada’s words struck a chord with me and served as warning for the negotiations yet to come: these people were a scouting party for the real deal, and I hadn’t a clue who these smart zeyshi lawyers could be. I suspected they had sent me the very people I had already met, presumably to make me feel at ease, and they clearly had some big guns kept under wraps until the real negotiations started. In the past I might have felt sorry for the zeyshi and the tales of their mistreatment, but this reminded me to never, ever trust them. The problem was that while I knew a fair bit about law, I wasn’t a lawyer either. Veyada had combed over the document and all his notes made my head spin. They dealt with Asto law, gamra law and a little bit of Barresh law. Some of his comments were in direct conflict with what Delegate Akhtari had said. She was probably three times his age, and had lifelong experience at gamra. Who did I trust? Her or him? She was Aghyrian; he was from Asto’s Inner Circle. They were on opposite ends of the debate over this claim and let no opportunity go wasted to inform me of that fact. It made for an interesting negotiation environment. And meanwhile, I was sitting here at my desk staring into the golden afternoon outside. A couple of lily harvesting boats returned from the fields with bulging nets of flowers. Some days, I would happily trade my position with theirs. My head was filled with worry, and I wasn’t doing much work on this damn document that, to put it mildly, baffled me. There was a small noise behind me. I turned around, expecting Eirani with tea. It was Eirani, but instead of tea, she had a you have to come sort this thing out expression on her face. Please, not another argument with Xinanu. But she said, “Muri, Devlin needs you to come.” Devlin? That likely had something to do with the hub. Please not another Exchange outage. Or something else that we really, really couldn’t use at the moment. I left the office and walked down the corridor to the hub, which was off the main hall opposite the living room. Devlin sat in the semidarkness on the main control bench, with the blue light from the screens and projections reflected over his oh-so-serious face. He nodded when I came in. He was keihu, young and not as rotund as many of his kinsmen. He wore the hair around his face in little plaits of different lengths adorned with beads and ribbons in the colour of his family—golden yellow. The loose curls at the back of his head fell to his shoulders. The staff had insisted that they needed a house uniform, and I’d let Eirani choose what it would look like. A simple light grey tunic stitched through with thread in gamra cobalt blue. That thread looked black in the low light. I sat on the bench next to him. “Is there a problem?” He was looking at something on one of the screens. An Exchange log, I thought. Devlin met my eyes with his dark brown ones. “It’s that boy again.”