Ambassador 4: Coming Home

Chapter 2

2

I WOULD NORMALLY have left the room in search of Thayu, but I was hesitant to brave the situation outside, so I sent her a message instead. She came into the room not much later, again letting in a wave of yelling.

“Seriously, does that woman ever get tired of it?”

Thayu shrugged while she sat down. “She’s very stressed.”

“Really? I hadn’t noticed.”

She gave me her famous cold dead fish look.

“What? She’s been behaving terribly ever since we came back. I can’t find any good excuse for it, especially not when most of the abuse is directed at Eirani and the staff who have been going out of their way—”

“It’s not unusual for Coldi mothers to become extremely stressed just before the birth. Their bodies are telling them that they should seek safe places and make everything perfect before they go into labour.”

Oh. Variation number six thousand and fifty-nine of putting my foot in it. Thayu had given birth. Thayu wanted another child. Despite having no love for Xinanu, Thayu understood what she was going through, about to bring a child into the world in an essentially hostile household.

I sighed. Boy, I was an arse. “Well then let’s hope it all happens speedily and safely.”

She looked out the window.

I sighed and put my hand over hers on her knee. She didn’t respond at first, but then turned her hand palm up and squeezed.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I guess we’re all stressed. We just seem to be going from monumental f**k-up to monumental f**k-up.”

“What happened now?”

I showed her Kando Luczon’s message.

Her eyes widened. “He broke into security?”

“It seems so.”

“Have you let security know?”

“I will, unless something else f***s up in the next few minutes.”

She was still frowning at the message. “What is this thing that we’re supposed to have found?”

“He’s talking about the location of the old ship that brought the first Aghyrian refugees here.”

“Didn’t they find it even before we left? I mean, we did go to that site on the other side of the island and people were walking around with scanners. And somebody’s back wall had collapsed from the sound waves. We knew it was there.”

“We knew where the wreck was likely to be. Apparently the Barresh historians have now uncovered the precise site. I saw it on the news channels yesterday.”

“Oh. Would there be anything left of the ship for us to look at? I mean, it’s been submerged in marshland all that time.”

“I doubt much of the main structure of the ship will have survived, but something obviously has, because it responded to the signal that the main ship sent out.”

“He seems really keen to see it.”

“Yeah.” The captain had asked to see the site of the ship as soon as we had told him that it was there.

“Wouldn’t you be keen, in his situation?”

“Keen? I don’t know. Would I be keen to see the site where people I knew and used to work with, or who were my friends, landed, spent the rest of their lives watching the ruin of our planet become enveloped in a cloud of dust? To know that those people died fifty thousand years ago while by some fluke of physics, I was still alive? I don’t know how keen I’d be.”

Thayu pressed her lips together. No, she couldn’t have followed that train of thought.

Coldi were absolutely never sentimental about their roots or history. I had gotten the impression that the Aghyrians were a lot more like Earth people. Sometimes, they were disturbingly like humans, down to the nasty, vindictive streak.

Thayu gestured at the screen, which still displayed Kando Luczon’s message from the security account. “So, do you want me to go to security and give them the bad news?”

“We’ll go downstairs with a detour via security.”

“Downstairs?”

“I have to address his questions. He came with us on the basis of our willingness to show him the old sites and ruins. Judging by his efforts, he’s clearly getting impatient.”

“I thought you were going to let him cool his heels after that assembly meeting.”

I shuddered at the memory. I’d taken the captain to attend a plenary session. The assembly had honoured him by allowing him to use the title Primary Delegate.

And what had he done?

The speech he’d given had to go down as the single most offensive address ever held in the history of gamra. He’d called the Coldi a substitute race that could be retired now that the original inhabitants of Asto were back. He’d called all non-Coldi backwards because they couldn’t possibly understand the intricacy of Aghyrian thoughts. He said that the very institution of gamra was an exercise in mediocrity because it would never be smarter than its dumbest member entity.

And so on and so forth.

Every time I thought we’d run out of toes that he could step on, he’d found another big foot of them. It was a wonder that he managed to get out of the building alive.

“I was going to let him cool his heels.” Even if only for the reason that someone would pull a gun on him if he kept going this way, and I couldn’t guarantee that this someone wouldn’t be me. “But if he’s getting into the security systems, we need another plan. When he goes back to that ship, we don’t want him to do so with schematics of our entire security operation and goodness knows what else he can get his hands on if we don’t keep him busy.”

Thayu said, her voice low. “I don’t understand why people are still talking about letting him return to the ship.”

“You think he shouldn’t?”

“Of course not. As soon as we allow him to go back, that ship will attack the military vessels that guard it. I do not particularly look forward to my father’s sling being fired in anger.”

No, having seen the equipment in question, I didn’t, either. And of course I should have realised that, apart from a means of transportation, the military sling was also a weapon. “What if the ship wakes up and comes after the captain if he’s not back by a certain time?”

“The military will destroy it.”

I huffed. “You don’t destroy something that old.”

“That is the problem with gamra and this whole situation. People go stupid over this issue of preserving history at all costs. That’s rubbish. If the ship is a threat, it should be addressed. People crawl at this man’s feet not because of what he’s said or done, but because of who he is. He knows that. The guy is arrogant enough to have had people crawl at his feet since he was born. People are hanging off his lips, watching his every move.”

I was going to protest, but she was right as usual. In all truth we still knew little of the captain’s motivations. I’d randomly selected his two companions for the sole reason of finding out what I could about the ship and its occupants. Better the devil you know, my mother used to say. But so far both companions had been quieter than the proverbial corpse.

“Don’t trust him, Cory. This is the guy who refused to take on extra passengers in the days before the meteorite hit. How much effort would it have been to pick up a couple of thousand people from Asto? He could have dropped them on Ceren, if he was that concerned about the ecosystem of his ship.”

“It was a long time ago—”

“It’s the same guy. He’s a first class arsehole. And he’s had four hundred years’ ship time to cultivate his arseholery. We need to make sure that we keep him harmless.”

“That’s what I’m doing. Keeping him busy with stuff that interests him. Make sure he keeps out of the f*****g security systems.” I spread my hands in frustration.

A deep silence followed my comment, in which the sound of the argument in the hall drifted through the door. Someone slammed a door, and opened it again, and Xinanu yelled, “Suit yourself!” Someone replied. I wasn’t sure if it was Nicha, but I felt so incredibly sorry for him right now. Xinanu had torn a strip off him when he returned after three weeks.

“Seriously, Thay’, is all we can do in this house lately yell at each other?”

“We do plenty of other things.” She pulled me close and kissed me. For a moment, I hovered in blissful oblivion. Then she withdrew. “So. What’s the plan?”

“Well, clearly the captain is getting bored, so I was going to visit him to see if we can go to the dig site and show him what we found. I have no doubt that he has a fair bit of information that historians would kill for.”

“If they believe him.” The impostor rumours were all still going strong.

Probably because they couldn’t get their mind around how someone who left over fifty thousand years ago could still be alive today. Or if they believed that it might be possible because the ship had travelled at near lightspeed and there had been serious time dilation, they might have trouble believing that someone could live for four hundred years. “They will, once they hear his stories.”

“I hope you’re right,” Thayu said.

Yes, I hoped so, too. If he got involved with the dig, that would alleviate my worries about what he might do when bored. “And we urgently have to notify security about this breach.”

“Yes.” And then she chuckled. “I can just about hear what Sheydu will say about it.”

Sheydu rarely had a good word to say about gamra security. “I also need to do something about the hub storage situation.”

She frowned at me.

“Apparently a lot of people have contacted me about the Aghyrian ship in preference to contacting Delegate Namion. Devlin came to tell me that the hub storage was full.”

“Ah.” A look of understanding came over her face. “I was wondering why I got these impatient messages about stuff that I never heard of before.”

It affected all of us. I rose from my desk. “We better get dressed.” I took my jacket from the cupboard.

“We’re going out now?” Thayu asked. “Into town, I mean?”

“If the captain wants to come.”

“All right.” She pointed at the cupboard. “Gun. Armour.”

I’d shut the cupboard door and now reopened it, heaving a sigh. I hated wearing the armour and preferred not to carry a gun; she knew that. I slipped my shirt off over my head and pulled on the armour. There was a mirror inside the cupboard to help me do up the clips at the sides. Thayu helped me with the back. Her hands were strong and warm and made short work of the clips. Snap, snap, snap. She squeezed my shoulder. I turned around and pulled her into a kiss. The armour had a rigid front plate that went down in a v-shape at the bottom to give maximum protection to my soft parts while still allowing me to walk. It was not designed for certain—um—bodily functions. Ow, it got really tight down there.

Thayu grinned.

“We need to give Menor a reply soon,” I said.

Her expression sobered. “Do we? It’s our decision whether we use him or not. I presume his seed remains well-preserved. He can give us some any time.”

“Yes, but we should make that decision. I don’t like keeping him hanging.”

Thayu closed her eyes.

“It’s all right by me, really.” I’d said this many times before. I wasn’t sure why she hesitated so much. Maybe because Coldi didn’t have a strong culture of adoption. Children who grew up in someone else’s household, say because both parents had died, were often deliberately made to feel inferior. Maybe it was that, and the fear that any child from Menor’s seed would have curly hair. I said I didn’t mind. After all, I had curly hair, but curly hair was a very serious matter for Coldi.

More and more I feared that we would not end up using Menor at all, and Thayu would either stay with me and grow increasingly unhappy or she would leave me for a man who could give her what she wanted. Maybe she felt even now that she had an obligation to me because I’d paid a huge sum of money to Taysha to sever his contract with her. Even if I got my money back.

Finding a donor had been my idea and my initiative. Sometimes I would catch her looking for pictures of her son, who no longer lived in the Inner Circle, because I’d shot his uncle and the family had been ousted in the reshuffle following the big shakeup of power at Asto’s top.

We could adopt him, I’d said.

We could use Menor, I’d said.

I did not mind that the child wouldn’t be mine, I’d said.

Her replies were always inconclusive.

But the issue would just not go away. She said she wanted my child, but if there was some sort of secret process that made it possible, no one had informed me.

The whole thing was starting to give me nightmares. Most of them had Thayu walking out on me, leaving me the compete and utter wreck I had been when Inanu left me.

Memories of that time were a very hairy place to be, one of drinking too much and standing on a rooftop overlooking Athens holding a bottle of zixas and thinking I might just skull the lot and be done with it.

Damn, my eyes clouded over just thinking about it.

And here we were once again just going about our daily business, ignoring the issue. Getting dressed and getting ready for all eventualities, as long as it didn’t involve making a decision.

I wanted this solved, decided one way or another, but just like all the previous times, there was no time for an argument.

I went to the bedroom to put another shirt on, because the one I’d been wearing was too tight to be worn over body armour. The bracket with the gun went on my arm before putting the jacket over the top. This was not my gamra issue jacket but a security-style design with a lot of room in the upper sleeves so that one could retrieve the gun without taking off the jacket. Thayu had ordered it made recently, in gamra blue and all.

“Do you think Nich’ should come?” I asked while inspecting myself in the mirror. I would normally ask Eirani to do my hair, but I didn’t want to subject her once again to Xinanu’s ire by making her walk past the room where Xinanu stayed.

“You still ask that question?”

“I guess that’s a no?”

“Of course he should come. We’re a complete association.”

That balance between caring for one’s family and extreme callousness towards them was one I’d probably never get right. I was sure that on Earth, any young man who left his highly pregnant partner in pre-birth distress over some routine job would get clobbered over the ears by her. I didn’t comment further. I’d probably exhausted today’s supply of get-out-of-jail cards for failing to understand.

We went into the hallway, where it had gone relatively silent. The door to Nicha’s room was shut. Xinanu’s voice drifted from within. She was crying.

I cringed and knocked. “Nich’?”

The door opened a moment later and Nicha appeared in the door opening, looking harassed and tired.

“We’re going into town to take Captain Luczon to the dig site. I’m sorry if you don’t want to—”

“Give me a moment to get ready.”

He disappeared, leaving the door to the room open.

Xinanu sat on the couch by the window, her feet on a footstool. She wore a long dress of stretch fabric that sat snugly around her distended stomach.

She gave me a hard look. Her cheeks were wet with tears.

Like the stupid human I was, I felt like I had to say something. “I can ask the medico to come if you want.”

“What would I need her for? What do you think I am?”

“That is not how you speak to your host,” Thayu said, in a very snippy tone. “Even if he asks a question you don’t like.”

“Leave it, Thay’,” Nicha said from somewhere inside the room.

“No, I will not leave it,” Xinanu said. “He asks me a rude question. Am I supposed to simper just because he is in charge of paying the rent on this place?”

At the same time Nicha shouted, “Stop it, please,” and Thayu said, “Yes, you should. Because you don’t rule the world.”

Before it could get any worse, Nicha scurried out of the room with his shirt half done up and carrying his armour and gun bracket. He slammed the door behind him.

Xinanu yelled through the door. “That’s right! Leave me alone!”

Thayu pulled a face. “What a drama queen.”

“Let’s go,” Nicha said. In all the time Xinanu had been in his room, I’d not heard him say one bad word about her. He surprised me sometimes.

While he put on his gear, I ducked into the hub, where Devlin greeted me with a lopsided smile, a small oasis of mirth of someone who understood how I felt.

“Can you tell our captain that we’re coming to pick him up?” I asked. “And let the council know that we’re coming to the dig site.”

“I’m onto it.”

“Also, Devlin, I’ve had a look at all the messages and shifted the ones that are of immediate importance to my personal work area. Of the rest, you can ask the office downstairs to sort it in rough categories. Anything to do with the assembly goes straight to Delegate Namion. I don’t want to see it anymore. Everything else gets sorted into broad subjects. If it’s easy to deal with, deal with it. Use my stamp file. Try to sort everything else into stuff with some kind of time limit and non-urgent messages. Send all the non-urgent stuff to Delegate Namion, too. Sort the urgent and semi-urgent messages and put in my work area the stuff that you think I should absolutely deal with soon.”

He nodded. “Can I take time off from covering the negotiation?”

“The Aghyrian claim is dead, not that anyone has noticed yet, but I don’t expect there to be a lot of work associated with it in the near future. Do whatever you need to keep yourself out of trouble until the bureaucracy catches up with the truth on the front.”

“All right.”

I returned to Thayu and Nicha, now both fully dressed and ready to go. Telaris at the door asked if he should come, but Thayu said it wouldn’t be necessary.

We walked over the gallery to the part that went underneath the artificial waterfall to the other side of the atrium, where a set of stairs led down on the outside of the building.

The security station was in the space under the bottom of the staircase. Today, it was occupied by a single officer who sat yawning at his tiny workstation. The man was Damarcian and listened to my story with an expression of disinterest. He copied Kando Luczon’s message to me with all the relevant details and assured me that he would raise it with his boss. When, he didn’t say.

Oh well, at least if this all blew up, security couldn’t use the argument that they knew nothing and no one had told them.

“You want to check on Xinanu?” I asked Nicha when we’d left the office and were underway to Kando Luczon’s apartment.

“Not really.” He sounded quite flippant.

“But what if she has the baby while we’re gone?”

He and Thayu both frowned at me.

“Yes. What if?” Nicha said.

Thayu said, “Most Coldi children are born in the living rooms of their homes. Often the mother’s friends are there, but there is not always time for them to come.” Which, by the look on her face, there hadn’t been for her.

“What if something goes wrong?”

“If it takes a long time, then the family gets a medico.”

Nicha said, “You know how most Coldi are touchy when people remind them that they are ‘only artefacts made by the Aghyrians’?”

Yes, they were frequently more than a little bit touchy about this. I’d never even heard Nicha says those words. Coldi found them deeply offensive.

“Well, in this case we’re glad that we are just the way we are. Coldi women don’t gamble their lives when they fall pregnant. Birth is nowhere near as hard as it is for your people or for Aghyrians.”

So, I understood that they’d be happy for Xinanu to have the child by herself in Nicha’s room while we were gone.

All right. Whatever. Who was I to argue with them anyway?

I was just a stupid human and I was not really feeling the vibe at the moment.