Ambassador 9: Red Crystal Desert

Chapter 2-2

“He can, but to me, it seems strange that he wants us out of the house. On one hand, this is a military settlement and we don’t belong here.”

“That would be an understatement. Ayshada is getting on people’s nerves.”

“But certain people do have children here. I’ve seen them.”

“They are all children of military people.”

“Yeah, and? They’re still children. They’re noisy and you can’t always keep them quiet. And they don’t always do as you say.”

She shrugged, spreading her hands. I always found it hard to talk about aspects of her father’s behaviour that puzzled me or grated on me. I didn’t want to talk him down in front of her. He was obviously a capable man in his society, but I failed to understand him, and her answer to my questions about him would often be so indifferent that I’d been convinced she had a poor relationship with her father, only to find out later that I was completely wrong about that.

I breathed in deeply, trying to formulate what I found disturbing. “Part of me thinks that he wants us to be comfortable—”

“Rest assured, comfort has nothing to do with it. If he were concerned about our comfort, he would have left all this until after the little one was born. The initiation ceremony can be held a few times a year, and there is no reason that we needed to come to this one. You’ve deferred this a couple of times already.”

That was another issue that had given me pause. He’d been very insistent that we should come to this particular ceremony.

“So why does he want us in this remote house?”

“I don’t know. We can only go and find out.” That was a typically Coldi attitude. Dive headlong into a troublesome situation, to find out what shape the trouble would take.

“But I don’t really want to risk you in your situation.”

“I’m perfectly fine.” In a don’t-go-there tone.

Yes, we’d had endless discussions about the cruelty of some Coldi birth rituals. At least I thought it was cruel for a young mother to stumble into the desert, give birth alone and cover the child with sand while it was still wet from the womb.

Thayu said it was a very old custom that had become popular again with women in the army. She said it was powerful and symbolised the strength of women. I suspected we’d never agree.

“I just don’t like all the continued travel and disruption,” I said.

“It doesn’t take long to get out there.”

But it was very isolated. The hand of panic clamped around my heart. I didn’t want Thayu to be some sort of martyr giving birth in between reloading her weapon in a fight, or alone in some cave where she was hiding because of something stupid I’d done.

Because, from all I had heard about it, Taysha Palayi, the father’s brother, had locked her in a room in his house after an argument, probably about how and when his brother’s contracted baby would appear, and Thayu, being Thayu, had been stubborn because she hated the brothers who had never stopped humiliating her. And crashing the birth party by refusing to perform had been her only power. So after the guests were gone and there was still no baby, they locked her in a room without food or light. Coldi women could delay the birth, but not indefinitely, and the longer they waited, the more uncomfortable they grew.

She had told me that, sitting there in the dark, she had contemplated killing the child but, although this often happened, she realised that it would put herself and her father in a lot of trouble. And that was an admirable level of clear-headedness for a young and frightened woman in pain. So she had held out as long as she could, and when biology dictated that the child could no longer wait, had given birth and had painted insults with her bloodied hands on the walls. Then she had climbed out through a window, leaving the child on the floor in the room.

I couldn’t even get my mind around the cruelty.

I wanted to avoid all reasons for her to compare this birth with that terrible situation. I wanted to be there with her, although the thought that no one else—like doctors—would be there terrified me.

“It all happens by itself,” Sheydu had said to me when I voiced this concern. “Nothing you men can do anyway.”

And she, being Sheydu, had probably given birth to Veyada in between reloading her gun.

I didn’t think any of my association realised how deeply traumatised Thayu was by her previous experience. I didn’t even think I’d realised quite how bad it was until it was too late, when she woke up with nightmares, clamping her hands around her stomach, pleading with someone not to take her child.

She had only been seventeen that first time.

Why had she given herself to that family, I wanted to know.

Because she wanted to be independent from her father, who was a hard taskmaster, something I could understand. Because a lot of powerful men leered at her, she needed money and a place to live, and had crudely sold her virginity to the highest bidder.

Because she wanted to be a spy, and the household of Athyl’s lewdest and most corrupt official was a rich ground for information that had eventually launched her career, even though, to make reparations—apparently the insults written in blood on the walls had been too much—she would be required to give the family a second child.

I had paid out that contract. She cried the day I showed her the official declaration that he ceded all claim to her. But whenever mention of her son came up, her eyes misted over.

I would do better, much better.

Change of subject. “Deyu told me that she brought a message to you.”

“Oh yeah, she did. Wait.”

With a groan, she heaved herself from the couch and reached for a reader on the cabinet against the wall.

I jumped up. “I could have gotten that.”

“I’m not incapacitated, just slow.”

I touched her stomach, the skin hard and stretched under the loose shirt that she wore.

She handed the reader to me.

The moment I saw it, the sleek style, the message on the screen to hold my finger against the screen, I knew where this came from, and why there was so much security related to this message: when we were in Barresh, Chief Coordinator of Asto Ezhya Palayi could walk into my office and enjoy a meal with us. In fact, he very much enjoyed the freedom of doing so. When he was on Asto, he had to justify each move, because each of his interactions with other people had potential consequences.

The huge webs of loyalty that held society in check only worked in one direction: upwards. For the person, or people, at the top—Ezhya, Asha, Natanu and most of the Inner Circle—interacting with those in the outer parts of their loyalty webs was fraught with danger. Because if they spoke to a worker on the street, that worker’s status might increase as a result of the interaction, causing an instability in the worker’s environment that had the potential to work its way up the chain.

When I was in Barresh, Ezhya could easily speak to me. On Asto, every one of his moves was scrutinised. So he contacted me in secret. I’d been expecting this for some days.

I sat on the chair by the window that looked out over a dusty yard with a couple of vehicles. I put my finger on the screen. The message made room for a few lines of text.

Ezhya’s message was short—very short.

It said,

Welcome to Athyl. I hope you find your accommodation to your liking and the ceremony pleasing.

I stared at it.

What?

No reply to any of the questions I had formulated so carefully before leaving for Asto?

“Anything wrong?” Thayu asked.

“Everything is wrong. Why did he even bother sending this? He’s not even telling me whether he will be at the ceremony. No reply to my questions about seeing him.” I spread my hands.

And I’d wanted to see him. He’d entrusted me with an important function at Tamer. There was so much I needed to tell him about the alternate exchange movement of the Tamer Collective and the people who advocated it. In particular that sneaky, extremely smart Minke Kluysters. I needed to tell him about the last days of the great Aghyrian captain Kando Luczon and the direction of the remaining Aghyrians. All those things that weren’t easily discussed via messages.

And instead he sent me this?

“Is he so scared that someone will read what he says and, heaven forbid, might think I’m trying to take their positions?”

“You don’t understand.”

“Obviously not.”

“He sent you this message because he knows you expect a message, because that’s what you’ve been taught to expect.”

“Just to please me?” This was getting really strange.

“He is being polite.” She used the Isla word, because there was no Coldi word that captured the same sentiment.

“He doesn’t need to be polite to me.”

“Yes, he does, and your reaction proves it.”

“I want a real reply from him, that he will meet with me, or come to the ceremony and talk with me afterwards. You saw the things that are going on at Tamer. You’ve met Minke Kluysters. You know about all the data Jasper Carlson has been collecting. You’ve seen the Aghyrian ship. You heard their stories about a civilisation left behind in another galaxy. You know that these people have the capability to come back one day. He needs to know this, and not the filtered, sanitised version he’d get through gamra.”

“Yes.”

And then she left one of those infuriating silences where I wondered what she knew and was or wasn’t able to tell me.

Eventually, she added, “There will be a time to talk about these things.”

“And that time isn’t now, when I’ve made an effort to come here?”

“I don’t know what goes through Ezhya’s mind. I honestly don’t know.”

And Coldi trusted their leader to make the right decisions at the appropriate time, always. This was one thing—possibly the only thing—that I’d have grave trouble accepting. I might have developed some of the sheya instinct that placed me in their society and caused people to have dominance or subservience reactions to me, but the transformation only went so far. It could not erase years of experience with people at Nations of Earth and gamra. There would always be the little voice inside me that said, “But, hang on. . . .”

The door to the room opened, and Veyada strode in. He stopped and looked from me to Thayu and back. “Am I disturbing anything?”

“No, we were just talking,” I said.

But Thayu said, “Yes. He is still worried that Ezhya has not made a commitment to talk to him.”

“Oh.” Veyada turned to me. His eyes were very dark, with a few gold flecks. He looked healthy and relaxed. “Ezhya will be here.”

“That’s what I said,” Thayu said.

“No, you said that he’d make up his own mind.”

“And why would you think that he won’t come to see you?” Thayu asked.

Yes, why indeed? Because I hadn’t heard anything from him for a long time. Because I was supposed to work for him and had things to tell him. Because some communication would be nice.

But he clearly didn’t see the need.

He never spoke of his plans anyway, that was not his style.

And I should banish those last shards of Earth manners to the place where they belonged: in the past. Ezhya valued me, because if he didn’t, I would have noticed.