Ambassador 7: The Last Frontier

1 MY FATHER’S KELPIE, Fred, was getting old. Where once he would have bounced along the beach, chasing seagulls, dipping in and out of the surf to bark at the dolphins that would come in close to the shore, he was now kind of limping along, finding it hard to keep up with retrieving his stick, especially if Thayu threw it. He would hobble after the stick stiff-legged, and would bring it back, carrying it in his mouth, where the hair around his snout had gone light grey. His ears would still twitch and perk up, but he no longer had the breath to bark much. After three weeks at my father’s house, Thayu was no longer afraid of him; and it was a good thing for me to see her playing with poor old Fred, even if afterwards he was so worn out that he spent the rest of the day sleeping on the rug in the living room in front of the heater. Poor Fred had gotten a gruelling workout during our visit. The visit had been very nice, and, for once, most people had been respecting my vacation rather than inundating me with messages. I was almost beginning to wonder how things were going. I had spoken to Dharma Yuwono a few times in the past three weeks. Dharma was smart, agile, from the Blue class, angry and keen to make things better for himself and his community. His priority was to get the Blue class interested in registering to vote and voting in the referendum, preferably for Earth to join gamra, without actually mentioning the referendum, because it hadn’t been called yet. Dharma had imposed a gruelling schedule on himself to travel to the major cities where influential Blue class groups of people resided: Delhi, Jakarta, Cairo, Bogotá, Lima, Caracas, Mexico City and Los Angeles, to name a few. There were far more of the Blues than there were Whites, and a very high proportion of Blues had neither voted in previous elections nor even registered. Dharma was putting in a lot of groundwork, travelling to the corners of his extensive community, speaking to people in poor parts of the world and giving his local contacts information to pass around. I’d gotten one message from him a couple of weeks ago with vids of rooms full of men and women showing off stamps on their hands and their registration confirmation on whatever devices they used for communication. Dharma had also crafted a number of vids, from documents and recorded speeches—for those who couldn’t read—that set out the reasons why the status quo wasn’t working, what companies owned by the Pretoria Cartel were doing to their workers and why joining gamra would undermine the cycle of abuse. We had one chance and this was it. I’d also seen in the news that Robert Davidson’s trial had ended a week ago with a most unsatisfactory fizzle. Judge Hermans had convicted him of being a leading cause of Gusamo Sahardjo’s death, and he had been sentenced to house arrest for five years, to be reduced based on good behaviour. I was not happy with that. I suspected few people were happy. Good behaviour! Men like Robert bought good behaviour. He’d be free to do whatever he wanted in no time, and no doubt we’d soon see him back in Barresh, up to his old tricks. If that happened I couldn’t guarantee that none of the Thousand Island Pengali were going to stick a knife in him, unhappy as they had every right to be with this lame excuse for a justice system. In an effort to ameliorate a bad situation, I’d sought to communicate with Robert. I had told him that Barresh would look more kindly on his presence if he let us know which contacts the Pretoria Cartel used in Barresh. So far the lack of response had been deafening. He probably realised, just as well as I did, that I couldn’t promise him any favours because they weren’t mine to give. Until Margarethe Ollund, President of Nations of Earth, announced the referendum and, in doing so, officially opened the voter hunting season—which was unlikely to happen until August—I’d done all I could do. I did think it was a bit strange that I’d heard nothing more from Margarethe about that process, but I assumed that she, like most other people, respected my holiday. And over the last three weeks, we’d picked up a variety of tasks to help my father or Erith or the little community of twelve families who lived in Rocky Bay, along the coastal road that skirted Parekura Bay in the Bay of Islands. Nicha and Reida helped one of my father’s neighbours put a new fence around his horse paddock. Eirani and Karana learned to make jam with berries and apples that Erith had grown, collected or traded. Devlin took an interest in the small community’s power supplies: the solar installation, the windmills, the geo heat and gas installations. He spent days fine-tuning the electricity and gas hub so that different processes happened based on the sun, the wind, the rain and the fullness of the water or recycling tanks. He also helped put up a new satellite receiver. Although we got busier, even in this very isolated pocket of the world, every morning Thayu and I made the time to walk on the beach and let ourselves be guided by Fred. Right now, he had the stick in his mouth and had turned away from the water, usually a sign that he’d had enough. Which was just as well, because it was cold this morning. It would be a beautiful day later, but right now the mist hung over the headlands, cascading into the ocean like a waterfall made of cloud. I’d forgotten that the clouds did that. “Let’s go for breakfast,” I said. “Yes, I think he’s tired.” Thayu had jammed her hands deep in her pockets. Her cheeks were rosy. Her breath steamed in the chill air. I took her arm. She smiled at me. She had fully recovered from her miscarriage and was ready to try again once we got back to Barresh and I could—oh joy—be poked with more needles. Fred had put down his stick and was sniffing at a basket-like thing that had washed up on the beach overnight. I called out, “Come on, Fred. Breakfast!” He raised his head. “What has he got there?” Thayu asked. “No idea.” It looked like some sort of cage. A craypot, maybe. I went to have a look. The thing was indeed like a craypot except it had floaters attached around the bottom with pieces of rough string. Well, no one was going to catch many lobsters when it floated on the surface like that. At the top of the cage, strung with a snap tie, hung a little box. I stuck my fingers through the wire of the cage. A slippery layer of algae covered the smooth surface. “What is it?” Thayu asked. “I don’t know. It could be that the kids have been making rafts.” It was badly enough made, except for that box. I ran my nails over it, but couldn’t find anywhere to open it. Maybe it wasn’t a box. Maybe it was a solid piece of plastic, but I was curious. By now, Fred was making impatient whining noises. I yanked at the snap tie, but it wouldn’t break. “Wait.” Thayu took the cage from me and pulled the snap tie loose. “Here.” She gave the little black box to me. I studied it, but the algae-covered plastic surface revealed no secrets about its purpose. I stuck it in the inner pocket of my jacket. I’d give it to Devlin to dissect. It was time for breakfast. Fred limped ahead of us between the rocks, across the dew-covered grassy field, where several rabbits made a hasty retreat, white tails bobbing. We crossed the deserted road. My father’s house lay nestled at the bottom of a hill, where the lush green paddock met the forest. It was a low, single-storey building with a wide veranda and a rose garden at the front. My father had owned the beach house since before I was born, and parts of the house had barely changed since then. We used to spend Christmas here with the family. My mother, my grandparents, now all dead. Uncles and aunts and cousins, many of whom I hadn’t seen in years, and who I wasn’t sure wanted to see me anymore. Cory Wilson, betrayer of Earth, that was how many of them saw me. At the back of the house was a paddock with three horses, a camel and two llamas, a white one and a black one. All those animals were curiously standing along the fence, looking at the goings-on in the shed, where I spotted Deyu’s silhouette through the window in the hay loft, tossing down bales of hay into the cart below with big, dusty foomps. Deyu was growing more formidable by the day, and even through her jacket I could see her muscled shoulders. I had always suspected that in each high-level Coldi association, one of the women took hormonal supplements to develop into a fearsome fighter and that Deyu was destined to be that person for us. Sharp and strong as she was, Deyu had a gentle character, too patient and observing for her young age. She jumped down all the way from the loft, never mind the ladder, landing on the ground with an audible thud. She picked up one of the hay bales, tossed it over the fence as if it were an empty cardboard box and vaulted after it. The horses gathered around to nuzzle her pockets, pulling the fabric until she extracted the carrots she carried in there. She patted their hairy flanks and scratched between their twitching ears. Even the llamas came, and they were notoriously grumpy. It was a wonder to see. Most Coldi people were apprehensive around animals, especially those that were taller than a person. Their home world Asto had no large vertebrate animals. But it was as if Deyu had known that she would come to love animals, even before she had seen any. She seemed to have a rare and special talent. I mean, if I went in that paddock, those llamas would probably try to take a bite out of me. But every morning, Deyu, who had grown up in the desolate stone and concrete jungles of the Eighth Circle of Athyl, would put on her overalls and go to the paddock. She would feed the animals and clean out their sheds, refresh their water and groom them. Erith had been teaching her how to ride a horse and Deyu loved every bit of it. She had informed me that she thought a horse would be a great idea in Barresh, but I pointed out that it would probably be too hot and humid for horses. That was just aside from the fact that quarantine would have a heart attack if I proposed it. Besides, I didn’t think anyone had successfully brought any animals across. The large vertebrate animals on Ceren, the world of Barresh, were all dangerous enough for people to stay far away from them. In Barresh, they lived in the water. Beisili—plesiosaur-like creatures—and giant marsh eels were not suitable to be kept. All of them would enjoy people for breakfast. Thayu waited at the door while I held Fred by the collar and used an old broom head to brush the sand off him before letting him inside the house. While I was doing this, a white car came along the beach road. It slowed, and the single occupant—a man with blond hair, short down the sides and longer on top—turned his face in our direction. I held up my hand in greeting, because that was what people did in this quiet part of the world. He didn’t react and I didn’t recognise either the man or the vehicle. Probably a tourist, although it wasn’t the tourist season. He looked away. The car sped up and disappeared in the direction of the peninsula, where, after another twenty minutes’ drive, the road ended in a car park with a boat ramp surrounded by a few shops frequented by yachts. The yacht people usually didn’t drive and the permanent population of that settlement was about ten in total. I had a feeling I should know who this person was. Look at me—I was turning into my father, obsessed with what other people did in this tiny secluded corner of the world. “Veyada will get some information on him,” Thayu said. My association liked being obsessive about what other people around us were up to. My father had even taken Sheydu and Devlin for tours along all the little dirt roads and explained the purpose of all the fields, buildings and paths. They had wanted to know, for the sake of security.