Ambassador 1: Seeing Red

Chapter 2-2

“Delegate, mashara apologises.” More forcefully.

Embarrassed. Severely so. And I’d do well not to push them. “Then I shall accept the apology.”

After an awkward silence, the other guard, the one with the sunglasses said, “The Delegate became injured?”

“It’s nothing serious, thank you.” I felt bad for these two young men, was itching to ask them how they had made their way here, but one just didn’t, did not, ask one’s security those sorts of questions. One also didn’t ask their names. I was already causing raised eyebrows with my borderline informality. Pronouns, Delegate, pronouns. Hundreds of ways to say “you”, and only the most formal would be appropriate.

“Have mashara heard anything regarding my zhayma?”

The man with the dyed black hair inclined his head, still not meeting my eyes. “Mashara regrets not.” More embarrassment.

“The Delegate would appreciate if mashara would keep trying.”

He bowed. “Certainly, Delegate.”

I slid the access key through the slot next to the door and let myself into the room. Lights flickered on.

I let out a tension-filled breath. This half-baked delegate had certainly not handled his bodyguards too well.

The room’s control panel, triggered by my body heat, asked me, in a disembodied male voice, if I wanted to watch a show or a movie. I told it I wanted the power connected to the recharge sockets, and had to repeat that three times before the infernal piece of technology understood me.

Cosla, the New Colonist’s dialect fast on its way to becoming a language in its own right. Where Isla, International Standard Language, was an amalgamate of what used to be English, Chinese, Spanish and new words related to technology, Cosla had adopted a good number of Coldi words and the Damarcian tendency to speak of oneself in third person in formal conversation. I had spoken it since I was ten and went with my father and Damarcian stepmother to Midway Space Station. I had perfected it as a teenager at Taurus Grammar, and tried to escape it, in vain, during my years as a student at Pavola, on Mars. I wasn’t a child of this Earth, had never been. That’s why I was suited to this position, and I was determined that people would come to appreciate it.

I plugged in my comm unit and rang the security post at the Nations of Earth complex. It was busy, not once, but all five times I tried. While I redialled and listened to the busy recording, please log your message at the following ID, I wriggled my bag open and extracted the infusor band, managed to loop it around my arm, tighten the strap with my teeth, and find the box of canisters.

I tipped them on the bed and slotted one into the receptacle. Click. A faint hissing sound. White powder whirled behind the glass as the infusor shot nanoscale dust into my arm. It tickled and a patch of cold spread out over my skin. I knew the treatment didn’t work that fast, but I already felt a lot better.

Then I rang the hotel’s reception. Could I please have something to eat; I didn’t care what.

They could order a take-away, they said, and I told them yes, please. Then I tried to connect to security again while I waited for the food to turn up. My stomach rumbled.

This time, the call was answered by a man whose gravelly voice sounded like he had one hell of a hangover.

I cringed, but pushed ahead with my question. “I believe you took a man in custody at the president’s office tonight.”

“Sorry, Mister, I can’t comment about that.”

“But I’ve been—”

“Look, I’ve had about a hundred calls from the press—”

“I’m not from the press—”

“That’s what they all say.”

“But I’m Cory Wilson, his employer!” I almost screamed. I was losing it. Definitely not coping very well. Tired, sore. Out of patience. Out of ideas.

“Mr Wilson? Cory Wilson who was in the office with the president?”

“Yes.”

“Can I have your ID please?”

Pain spiking through my bandaged palms, I dug out my Nations of Earth identity chip, and patched him the number, flooding with relief, until he said, “He’s at the police station.”

So I called the police station. Same story. We don’t talk to the press. Hundreds of people have already called today. Please get off the line in case of a real emergency.

Fortunately, I didn’t have to scream this time to get myself believed. I didn’t think I could have. All I could see was Nicha pacing around a concrete cell. Coldi hated being alone; their need to be with their associates was pathological. If he could only hear my voice . . .

But the senior officer who came on the line said, “No, you can’t talk to anyone who’s in custody.”

“Nicha Palayi is a gamra citizen. He has the right to speak to the nearest gamra representative, which is me. And I don’t even know why he’s in custody.” And damn it, my voice wasn’t holding up.

“A reason which shall be heard in court.”

“Court? On what basis? What proof?” My heart was thudding. Was there proof?

“I’m not authorised to discuss that, sir.”

“He has the right to one call.” Clutching at straws now.

“He’s already used it.”

That hurt. Nicha hadn’t called me. It also made sense. He would have called the Exchange. Maybe Nicha had tried to call me first when I was still at the hospital, where there was no reception. s**t. Besides, the Exchange would have been a better choice; that’s what I would have done. At the Exchange, in Athens, they had staff to help gamra citizens out of legal trouble.

It still hurt. “I’d like to give him a message. Can you pass it on for me?”

“No, I’m sorry.”

“Look, he’s Coldi. He needs to hear a familiar voice or he’ll start attacking the walls, or your personnel. I have to talk to him.”

“You can’t, I’m sorry.”

“But we’re leaving the day after tomorrow!” Frustration spiked.

That was no excuse and predictably got me nowhere. For as long as the police needed him, Nicha wouldn’t be going anywhere, least of all out of the country, never mind off-Earth. After a minute or so more arguing, I gave up. I would have to contact someone higher in the department tomorrow.

Oh, if only I hadn’t handed in my feeder.

While I had been talking, a black Indrahui shadow had snuck into my room to put a box on the table, where it sat exuding tantalising smells.

My stomach grumbling, I ripped the cardboard lid, but the contents didn’t look half as nice as they smelled. The chickpea pita had gone soft with tomato sauce and fell apart when I poked it with the fork. Bloody hell. I’d paid—how much—for this? I swore that every time I left the Exchange life outside became more expensive.

Still, I was hungry and I ate it, half-cold. Couldn’t stop thinking of how Nicha loved chickpea pita—not this bland stuff: he made his own in the unit we shared at the Exchange complex in Athens, which was like a gamra enclave on Earth. We would eat it on the balcony, looking at the city stretch out towards the hazy horizon, discussing some theoretical issue. Dip-length of Exchange anpar threads as a relationship to the distance from the galactic centre, things like that.

I wiped my eyes with the back of my bandaged hands. Damn Nicha.

I picked up my unit again and pressed the one-button shortkey for my office at the Exchange. The beeper rang, and rang, and changed tone several times before the call was answered by a young man at general reception who sounded like he hadn’t even heard the news about Sirkonen. Some of the people over there got so damned insular, like they were an island of civilisation on a barbarian world, populated with Neanderthals unable to hold a conversation—the Neanderthals being us.

Deep breath, Mr Wilson.

Anyway, the young man knew nothing. Leave a message and call back tomorrow.

I leaned my head in my hands, remembered too late that they hurt.

What was I going to do? Was there anyone else I could try?

Gamra people on Earth had a database: an extensive directory of local extraterrestrial contacts, people who would always help you if you were a gamra citizen, which I was, yes nosy journalists, having passed the exam three years ago.

I froze, staring at the opposite wall, horrified that the option had crossed my mind.

That gamra help me—against my own people, whom I was to represent?

Gamra loyalties, and Coldi ones, too, spread out like an interconnected web. There was no either/or. A person was the sum of his or her ties, often to wildly different and sometimes opposing camps. Always in pairs, always spreading outwards, reaching like little spider veins without regards for societal boundaries. Once there was a boundary, a break in the network, society fractured. Nations of Earth would never understand. Once I used gamra intelligence against them, I might as well resign.

One last option: the unofficial mantra amongst the bureaucrats of Nations of Earth was: if in trouble, send it to your boss. I didn’t like the attitude, but I was running out of ideas.

I selected another ID, which rang four times before it was answered with a muffled, “Hmph . . . whozzat?” A female voice.

“Delia, it’s Cory here.”

“Cory . . .” The sound of rustling. “What the f**k is the time?”

I glanced at the clock. It was 1:35 am. “Oh—I’m sorry, I was at the hospital . . .”

“f**k, Cory.” More rustling. Of sheets, I was sure by now. “How is Sirkonen?”

“I don’t know. No one’s saying.” How could she sleep while all this was going on?

A sigh. “f**k, Cory. Where are you?”

“I’m at the hotel now, but I have a problem. Nicha hasn’t come back here. The police say he’s been held overnight and they won’t give me any information on why. I need to talk to him and I was wondering if you—”

“I? Cory, I’m a Nations of Earth employee. He’s Union. How am I supposed to do anything?”

“Because within Nations of Earth, you have far more authority than I.”

“Not to inquire about a Union citizen. I have no authority to do that. Cory, if the police say they have a reason to hold him overnight, then that’s what they will do. There is nothing, nothing, I can do about that.”

“But you know about the Coldi need to be with someone. He’ll go crazy alone.”

“Let his Union look after that.”

“I’m trying, but I’m not getting through!”

A small, awful silence. “At this time of the day? No, of course not. Go to bed.”

Thousands of swear words whirled through my mind, not all of them in Isla. But there was mahzu—a Coldi word meaning calm or pride. A person must maintain it, because to do otherwise would be embarrassing as well as counterproductive. So as calmly as I could, I said, “Good night.”

“Good night, Cory.” Oh, did the ice in her voice chill me.

I dropped my comm unit on the table and sat there, panting, hearing my own voice, I’m trying, but I’m not getting through. And then the little silence as Delia processed that sentence, and found it meaning, I’m in discussion with gamra. I am gamra before I’m Nations of Earth. And that was exactly the accusation oft levelled at me.

Oh damn, that was not smart.

Delia was right; there was nothing I could do, not to get to Nicha, nor to undo that horrible slip of the tongue.

Shit. s**t, s**t, s**t.

I went into the bathroom and turned on the tap in the bath. I sat under the gurgling stream, taking care not to wet my bandaged hands, until I’d used up the room’s daily hot water allowance. Steam rose from the surface of the water, warm and comfortable, but if I had hoped it would make me sleepy, I had been mistaken.

Thoughts whirled in my head. Nicha’s face as I went into the president’s office, his gold-flecked dark eyes, almost without whites, his hair tied traditionally in a ponytail. Sirkonen’s nervous talk, his sudden turn to the window and then—bang. Space-proof glass. That must have taken some explosion.

I knew there were hand-held, Coldi-produced weapons which could shatter walls, so I didn’t think they’d have trouble with glass, no matter how space-proof.

But why suspect Nicha? Just because he happened to be the only gamra person close to the president’s office? Nicha could never have done anything. He’d been waiting in the foyer. Even Sirkonen could confirm that. The secretary had been there. He could confirm it, too. They had to be f*****g kidding. Thoughts chased each other through my mind.

I heaved myself out of the bath, found something vile and strong in the minibar and downed it in a couple of gulps.

Talk about Sirkonen . . . I made a grab for my jacket, dug the datastick from the pocket—ouch—and slid it into the reader.

The first page was empty, as if title and author had been removed. I scrolled down. Text and diagrams flashed over the screen. There were maps, many of them, with coloured areas, and large blocks of text with longs words like “subequatorial jet stream”, “closed cell systems”. Pretty dry scientific stuff. This might be something of interest, but to me, it hardly looked dramatic.

I took the datastick out and slid it back in my pocket. I’d made the right decision not to make a fuss over it.

Then I settled in bed with my reader, flicking aimlessly through the world’s news services. No news about Sirkonen other than what I already knew. A terse statement prepared by Sirkonen’s chief of staff, peppered with words like “grave concern for his health.”

The weather. A low-pressure area moving over western Europe. Wind and rain expected. Nothing new there, either.

South Africa had cemented its unbeaten position in cricket.

Something about a scientist who had disappeared. I had no doubt the story would have made the headlines had it not been for the attack on Sirkonen.

I fiddled a bit with the puzzles, trying to solve the crossword; but by that time the effect of the drink kicked in, and I started to feel sleepy.

It took three attempts to get the room control to turn off the light, but finally I crawled into bed.

My head spun.

My palms throbbed.

It was too hot in the room.

Acid burned in my stomach.

I was not tired.

All the while I lay on the bed staring at strips of light moving over the ceiling as trams passed on the road outside, instead seeing the sails track lazily across the Bay of Islands, visible from my father’s spare bedroom window. Midday sun, wind in my hair. Nicha’s laughter.

Damn jet lag.

Oh, damn. I had completely forgotten to ring Eva. What sort of fiancé was I?