Ambassador 1A: The Sahara Conspiracy

Chapter 2

2

I GATHERED ALL MY electronic gear and stuffed it in my bag, hoping that whatever Danziger had to tell me wasn’t going to divert us for too long, or I’d need to buy some clothes. I was sure that even if they didn’t show it, Thayu and Nicha were similarly unprepared for a long delay.

And Nicha was none too happy with the situation.

“Danziger? Why the hell do you listen to that disloyal piece of crap?” Nicha asked me with his hand on the doorknob, about to go into the corridor. “You’re independent now. You’re Ezhya’s. You don’t have to listen to Danziger anymore.”

“Yeah, I agree with him,” Thayu said. She still sounded cranky from being woken up. Hell, we were all cranky. “Anyone who pulled on me what he did to you would get the big FU from me.”

In my heart I agreed with them, but unfortunately that was not a feeling I could act on. If I was Coldi, oh yes, I could. By stalling on my salary payments and cutting off my communication with Nations of Earth, and by keeping Nicha under arrest for much longer than necessary, Danziger had broken his commitment to me big-time in their eyes. But this wasn’t Asto, and Coldi style networks did not operate here. I had to contend with politics and democracy. Which in practice meant you could treat your subordinates like s**t and still expect them to crawl for you, as long as most people still voted for you. Because you were the president. Welcome to Earth.

I told them, “You know how we discovered that Mizha paid for favours from some African countries? We only discovered that because some people in those countries were not careful with their data. Who knows which other countries were paid, where else money went and what was done with it?”

“That was all so long ago. Why does anyone get upset about it now?”

Another cultural issue reared its ugly head: Coldi lived much more in the present than people on Earth did.

“Because these are some of the poorest countries on Earth, because the people in those countries are susceptible to someone coming in and buying their way into their loyalty.”

“You can’t buy loyalty.”

“No, on Asto, you can’t.” Loyalty networks were physiological. “On Earth, you can buy the support of people, especially if they’re desperate. There are a lot of desperate people in Africa.”

I thought of the scenes I’d seen when I was younger, of crammed refugee camps on the eastern shore, of people driven out of their homelands because of drought, and unable to enter any of the protected enclaves where the locals still had crops to harvest. Of refugees selling their children to pirates and slavers.

In places like Djibouti, where everyone came together in their plight to get out, there was no food, no water. Infrastructures had collapsed under the sheer weight of human despair. People just died, and everyone was too busy surviving to care. I’d never forgotten the images of the “skeleton fields” to the west of Djibouti: dusty remains of refugee campsites littered with bleached bones. There was a lot of scope for trouble in Africa. It only needed one crazy despot to light the fire.

I said, “If this is about some Coldi people trying to revive the colony plan, all of gamra is likely to be affected by this. If it is about Mizha and this money, Ezhya would want it solved. In this situation, I’m as much Ezhya’s representative as Danziger’s. I need to know what he has to say. If it’s about something else, we’ll listen and go home.”

Nicha gave me a hard, grumpy look. “Do you even listen to your own bullshit? You’re not Danziger’s pawn.”

“Actually, my contract with Nations of Earth doesn’t expire until the end of the month.”

“Ah.” He pressed his lips together. “You could have told me that first.”

Coldi: painfully blunt and honest.

The young woman had waited for us in the corridor. For some reason, it was quite busy in the residential part of the Exchange complex, and most of the apartment doors were shut because the apartments were occupied. The names of the occupants were listed on the doors. I read the clan names as we passed: Palayi, Lingui, Palayi, Azimi, Domiri—all the usual suspects. Those were the clans with money and power.

Our footsteps sounded loud on the lino floor. Many of these guests would fly out some time during the night, because the Exchange operated only at night, so there were soft sounds of people talking.

The woman accompanied us to the lift. Because the Exchange was in operation, the large hall on the ground floor was as busy as an airport terminal. People with cases and bags lined up at check-in counters and others used their passes to enter the departure and arrival part of the building.

Of course the vast majority of the passengers were Coldi, with their metallic-sheened, dark hair, and the destinations were not displayed anywhere except on people’s readers, but they were all off-world.

The only wink to Earth was the giant television screen that hung at the back of the hall, and it displayed, as usual, the newscast from World Newspoint or something equally staid and boring, appropriate for the time of day. A man was reading financial news, I thought. The level of boredom from the announcer’s voice was reassuring.

At least Danziger didn’t want to see me because there had been some huge disaster.

That was good news, I hoped.

I wanted to go home. This morning I’d sat on the tiny balcony of the apartment at the Exchange, looking out over the hazy air that hung over Athens, thinking of the violent thunderstorms that would lash Barresh almost every night at this time of the year. The monsoon was about to start. From my balcony off the living room, you could see Ceren’s twin suns set under the blanket of ominous clouds that rolled in from the land every afternoon. The sky would go green and wind whip at the trees, carrying clouds of pink petals. The air would be humid and sticky, but we’d go to the baths and sit there in the rain, then walk back cool and refreshed.

Damn it, I longed for those times.

The young woman led us out of the hall through the glass doors into the coolness of the night. There were a few Exchange-owned taxis outside the entrance and their drivers gave us strange looks when we started walking under the starlight. Nobody walked that way, certainly not at this time of day.

It was early December, and even in Athens the nights acquired an unpleasant bite that I had become unused to while living in Barresh. Not only that, but my gamra blues were made of thin fabric, and I’d been taking adaptation medication that increased my body temperature in preparation for going back to Barresh.

It was cold.

Some time in the twentieth century the building that housed the Exchange had been constructed as a private hospital. It had a long driveway lined with date palms that cut across the lawn—green because it was winter. The driveway led to a set of gates which the Exchange drivers operated from their inside vehicles. The headlights of a vehicle shone through the metalwork of the gate, making the dew on the grass glitter. Only a non-gamra vehicle would have to wait outside.

“There he is,” the young woman said.

The car was a dark-coloured passenger vehicle, and the driver got out when he spotted us. He wore the grey uniform of the Nations of Earth general guard, and he was not a local. Not Coldi and not Greek.

The young woman tapped her pass to the gate. It rolled aside with some creaking and rumbling. We went through, into the glow of the car’s headlights.

“Mr Wilson?” said a male voice in the dark.

“Yes, it’s me.”

“Come with me, sir. The plane is waiting.” The driver took my bag, but gave Thayu and Nicha an odd look. “Um, Mr Wilson, sir? What about them?”

“They’re with me. They’re my zhaymas. I don’t travel without them.”

“Um, sir. Yes.” He went to shut the back door, and then stopped. Clearly had no idea what zhaymas were. “Do they carry arms, sir?”

“Yes. For our protection. So do you.” Why the hell did Nations of Earth insist on sending me these ignoramuses? It was almost as if they did it on purpose.

He fidgeted some more. “I’m not sure if . . .”

“I stand guarantee for them.” Seriously, when were these people going to get over their oh my god, it’s an alien hang-ups? “If it’s not all right, I’m not coming. If you want to call Danziger about that, I’m happy to wait.”

“Um. No, sir, it will be fine.”

We got into the car. As per security protocol, I got in the back. Thayu came with me and Nicha sat on the front seat bench. I didn’t think the driver was impressed with that situation. He must have been told to collect only me.

I didn’t care. He should have been informed that I didn’t travel alone, ever.

Nothing was said on the way to the regular airport where, ironically, I rarely came. I usually took the fast train to Rotterdam because it didn’t take much longer, and the border guards weren’t half as stupid as those at the airport.

Instead of dropping us at the main terminal, the driver went down a side road past the huge hangars. Bright flood lights spilled out of one hangar that faced the road, and maintenance personnel crawled over the solar suborbital plane inside, a giant delta shape with a top surface made of solar cells. We’d flown here from New Zealand in a similar craft.

Maintenance crew raised their heads and turned around at the approach of our car. They greeted the driver. The driver returned their greetings.

We plunged back into darkness past hangars where planes stood as dim silhouettes, waiting for daylight.

There was a spot of light on the tarmac to the left. By now we’d gone so far that we were almost on the other side of the airport.

The girl at the Exchange had been right. A hoverjet waited for us, lights already on, engine idling, ready for take-off.