Ambassador 8: The Alabaster Army

1 A COUPLE OF WEEKS in the hospital, even if some of those were spent barely conscious, was far too long for me. But that was all behind me now, and I was on my way home. Thayu came to pick me up, uncharacteristically alone, and shortly we sat on the train, which barrelled its way from the main island of the city of Barresh to the gamra island, zooming low over the water. It was midafternoon, and the position of Ceren’s two suns made the water look like a bath of silver. People were out on boats, carrying big bags of lily bulbs and other produce on their way to the market. Some people were fishing with spears, Pengali style. The train carriage was full of chatter. There were groups of domestic servants going back home with items they had bought, as well as some of the delegates in gamra blue who had been to the city for lunch or for business meetings. Some of them gave me strange looks as if they wondered if they should say anything. I was not wearing blues. I hadn’t worked for almost a month. Thayu opened the window to let the fresh air come in. It wasn’t warm, although I had the feeling that it should be, because it was the middle of summer and the air was humid with the promise of a late thunderstorm. Sunlight on my skin, breeze in my hair. They were things I’d had to do without for far too long. “You’re not paying attention,” she said. “Aren’t I?” I was just so happy to be out of that horrible hospital where the air was always dry, heavy with obnoxious antiseptic smells and where everybody seemed continuously obsessed with my well-being. There had been very good reasons for this, but to be honest I was over it and wanted to go back to work. Thayu held up her reader and informed me—again, apparently—that she had finally set up the formalities for me to be initiated into Asto’s Domiri clan as her father, Commander of Asto’s air force and head of that clan, had urged me to do. I wanted it. Thayu wanted it, being Domiri herself. It was quite rare that a non-Coldi person was inducted into a Coldi clan, but not the first time by any means, and I’d had no idea that this would entail so much filling out of forms. It was almost worse than gamra bureaucracy. Neither had I imagined that I would need to choose a name. “What do you mean—a name?” I’d asked Thayu when she first told me. “A name. A proper Domiri name, to be entered into the register.” The naming of Coldi children was a subject that I was not terribly familiar with. By the time his son Ayshada was born, Thayu’s brother Nicha had already decided on his name. He had not spoken much about choosing the name, since there had been so many other things to talk about at the time. But because there were only thirty-six Coldi clans, people wanted to make sure that their first names were unique. So enter the hallowed register. Thayu proudly presented me her reader, which had a list of currently unused and available names that she’d pulled out of that register. All of which meant that I was left with the unenviable task of having to choose my own name. It was weird. I felt a bit uneasy about some of the names, because they sounded too much like the names of some of the people I knew and respected. I would never get away with Raya because that altogether sounded far too much like Daya, who had been one of the most hallowed citizens of Barresh, and naming myself after him would sound arrogant. I didn’t like Neida, because we already had a Reida in the household. In fact, none of the names on the list jumped out at me, and looking at the screen of Thayu’s reader made my eyes flash with annoying spots of light. “Let me think about it when we come home,” I said, handing the reader back to her. The flashings lights usually came with a sharp headache and blurred vision. I didn’t want to admit weakness to her. Damn it, I was supposed to be getting better. The sweat broke out over my back. Thayu went, on, oblivious to my discomfort. “We do have to decide about it fairly soon. I need to give notice and they will need to move all sorts of bureaucracy in order to let you come. The date hasn’t yet been set, but there are only certain dates that will work.” Despite the fact that Coldi were not religious, they attached a curious amount of superstition to the positions of the stars in relation to naming ceremonies. “Yes, I know, and I’ll decide within the next few days.” I leaned back in my seat, eyes closed. “Are you all right?” Thayu’s voice was concerned. “Fine. Just . . . the light bothers me a bit.” The breeze brought a whiff of her scent to me. It was distracting, because my nose had become so much more sensitive to smells. I could smell the fruit in the bag that the woman across the carriage had bought at the markets. I could smell the wet scent of the mud in the marshlands. I could smell the scent of the impending thunderstorm in the air. I could smell the overwhelming female scent that hung around Thayu, the scent that made my heart speed up and my breath catch in my throat, that made me want to draw her into my embrace and do all kinds of things that were inappropriate behaviour in a train carriage. It was disturbing. “We’re almost there,” she said. She sounded anxious. Unfortunately I didn’t remember much of my first week in hospital, but everyone had told me that they had feared for my survival. It was the end of a long story that began with our desire to have a child. Aghyrian scientist Lilona Shrakar, who had abandoned the Aghyrian ship to stay with us, had outlined several methods she could try to make it work. They all involved invasive genetic treatments for me, each more invasive than the last. First it was just the sperm. Thayu fell pregnant, but miscarried later. Buoyed by that initial success, we tried a different method to treat sperm, but that also didn’t work. Tantalisingly, those attempts had resulted in three short pregnancies and miscarriages, and this had given us the hope that it would be possible. The third possible treatment had not been tried before. The doctors were interested. They wanted to do it. About fifty thousand years ago, Aghyrians on Asto had artificially created the Coldi race by grafting modified genes onto the large sections of junk DNA in the basic human genetic code. They had done this because they wanted to produce a race that was hardy and suited to the worlds that they planned to colonise. That Coldi toughness had been a boon to their ability to survive when the Aghyrian—and Coldi—homeworld Asto had been hit by a meteorite that had wiped out all the Aghyrians but spared a group of Coldi people who were being prepared for colonisation projects. Because Coldi DNA had been grafted directly onto Aghyrian genes, the theory was that this graft should work for all humans who were descended from Aghyrians—and people on Earth branched off the Aghyrian main branch well over a hundred thousand years ago, but were still clearly related. Supposedly, this gene treatment could be localised to fast-growing areas in an adult body, like reproductive functions, but this was where the experiment had become interesting. I’d gone into the hospital and received the treatment—painful, but so far, so good. Initial tests on my sperm looked promising. I’d gone home a day after the treatment, and then things went downhill fast. Light started flashing in my eyes. My temperature spiked. Two days after the treatment I collapsed in the hall. I didn’t remember anything of the frantic rush back to the hospital and the week I’d spent in coma, apparently bleeding out of my eyes amongst other fun things. The verdict: the graft was spreading throughout my body. The Coldi genes were taking over. We were in uncharted territory. No one knew what it would mean for me, but I had recovered for now, albeit without hair and with some added new sensations. The train slowed and slid into the tunnel underneath the artificial gamra island. To my eyes, the darkness was almost complete. I knew there were lights in the carriage, because I had seen them many times before. But the only reason I knew that they had come on was that no one else complained about darkness. Right now I could not see them and I could not see the people who were getting up from their seats in order to get out. I could feel the train slowing down and coming to a stop. I could feel Thayu next to me, getting up. She took me by the elbow. “Come on, we’re there.” I protested. “I can’t see anything.” I held out my hands, hitting the back of the seat in front of me. I could see the faint glow of the ceiling lights in the carriage, but that was it. “Welcome to the club.” She must see more than I did, because she guided me out of the carriage. I bumped my leg a few times and hoped that I was not going to get some more of those horrible bruises I had acquired last week from bumping into a table at the hospital. I was turning into an old man. She helped me down the step onto the platform. I could hear the voices echo in the hall. I could hear the hissing of air out of the train’s pressure pads. And I could still see little more beyond shapes moving about. I stumbled with Thayu up the stairs, because I sort of knew where the stairs were. Only when we came out into the daylight, in the middle of the square that was the centre of the island, could I see again. Thayu laughed when I breathed out a sigh of relief. “Now you understand what it’s like to try to do things at night.” I asked her, “Do you really see that little?” “We know where everything is. And we usually wear the eyepieces that allow us to see a little bit more.” Yes, they usually wore infrared eyepieces. Damn. I thought of all the times we’d gone out at night, and they’d actually shot at people—while seeing as little as this? That was somewhat . . . disturbing. We walked through the leafy avenues of the island. Several people gave me strange looks. Yes, my long hair was all gone. There was only one reason men from most gamra worlds cut their hair: when they spent time in jail. Mine was now barely a fingernail width in length, and in combination with the fact that I had lost a lot of weight, I probably made quite a sight, or, should I say, a convincing ex-prisoner. I was keen to get home, but I wasn’t quite up to normal strength yet. I was fading, feeling alternately hot or cold, which, I had learned, was a sign of fatigue. I struggled with the sharp differences between sunlight and shadows. Judging distances was hard. But finally, we made it into the large atrium of the building. The first thing I noticed was the sheer humidity of the air in here. Then the scent of the flowers that bloomed on the wall next to the artificial waterfall that kept this room . . . almost cold. I’d never experienced any part of this building as cold. The scent of flowers, of the water constantly rushing over the mossy rocks, the scent of water almost overwhelmed me. I’d never known that water had a scent. It was disturbing. Eirani and the others were waiting on the balcony in the atrium of our building. They had seen me before—as soon as I could receive visitors, they had frequented my room in the hospital. Still Eirani rushed down the stairs, faster than I had ever seen her move, fleshy hips and voluminous bosom wiggling. “Oh, Muri, you’re home!” I had a feeling that she wanted to give me a hug. People at the gamra complex didn’t hug, and her keihu family didn’t hug either, but she had learned some things from her trip to Earth, including hugs. Eirani was a very hug type of person. She took my other arm, and helped me up the stairs, which was still quite an exhausting endeavour, all the while commenting about how thin I was.