Ambassador 6: The Enemy Within

1 THE DELEGATION from the Thousand Island tribe was definitely the strangest party to ever have graced the hall of my apartment. We’d been expecting them, even if they had never let us know what day and time they would come—lacking, as Sheydu would bluntly say, the means to tell the time with any measure of accuracy. Not that I believed for one moment that Pengali didn’t have an accurate timing scheme, but I suspected that they, being Pengali, didn’t think notifying us particularly important. Because there was always someone at the apartment, right? So they had arrived at a slightly inconvenient moment, when I’d been in the middle of a prearranged call that I couldn’t end based on the activity in my hall, and I’d spent the rest of the call—to my accountant at the Trader Ledger of all things—listening to the various sounds in the hall with one ear. I didn’t like talking money at the best of times—I’d put off doing the budget for long enough already—let alone when there was stuff going on in the house that I should attend instead. Admittedly, the budget was important, especially when it concerned over twenty people and provisions for off-world trips; and the bottom line made me cringe with its stark revelation that our household would go in the negative unless I found another source of income. Although I was no stranger to finding funds, it was one of my least favourite activities and one I had—wrongfully—assumed I’d been relieved of by signing on as a special envoy to gamra for Ezhya Palayi. But now our team had grown so much that expenses outpaced income and I was going to have to do something to get additional income, because shedding people was out of the question. That was what the accountant wanted me to do, but she was Kedrasi and had no concept of Coldi associations and their loyalty networks, and some of the other staff had been at the apartment longer than I had. Did she really expect me to toss them onto the street? When the call finally ended, and I came from the dark hub into the light-filled hall, I found the Pengali delegation in the middle of the pretty mosaic tiled floor. The group consisted of at least twenty Pengali, bunched together with the young males facing outward, ready to protect their elder who stood in the middle of the group. That elder was Abri. I knew her and was expecting her. I hadn’t quite expected so many others. All of them looked splendid, with intricate, traditional hairstyles with many plaits full of glass beads and little trinkets made from fish scales, teeth or lizard feet. The male guards’ torsos were naked, displaying the typical giraffe-like skin patterns of the Thousand Island tribe. They had even applied paint to their skin to bring the patterns out more. Their attire consisted of little more than a belt, on which most of them carried stonking great big knives of the type that would make the guards on the gamra island nervous. Two of those guards had come into the apartment with the group, and they stood near the front door, which was still open, and through which I could see my faithful guards Evi and Telaris on the walkway, both looking on in a bemused fashion—dare I say laughing? My eyes found another familiar face in the group: the young male Ynggi, who was going to be the group’s translator into Coldi. The Exchange would provide a certified Coldi to Isla translator. I remembered I should never bow to a Pengali, not even to greet someone, and I waggled my hand in front of me, lacking the tail that they used for signalling greetings. In fact, those black and white banded appendages were waving in and out of the group, signalling their feelings. The young men at the front appealed for calm. An older man behind them was unsure about the members of my team who stood in the hallway and looked very threatening. His tail waved at shoulder height. Abri—good old Abri—elder of the tribe, waved her tail around her knees and the younger woman next to her, who had to be her daughter, made zigzag patterns in the air, whatever that meant. And that thin, wildly waving tail from the arms of the daughter, was that really a young child? What was a child doing here in this group? The Pengali were here because we were going to a court hearing, on Earth no less. For that matter, why had they brought all these fighters with knives that made the gamra guards nervous? That was not part of our agreement. We’d agreed on Abri, her daughter and Ynggi. As I approached, Abri came out of the group. She carried a low basket made from seaweed holding a glistening, smooth fish. She held this out to me. Behind her, the young male fighters took up positions in two lines so that they all faced me. Their faces were very serious. The offering of food was a traditional Pengali custom. As traditional custodians of the islands and the land around Barresh, the Pengali had welcomed several waves of newcomers—and had usually become worse off for it to the point where one rarely saw tribal Pengali in the city anymore. Yet they continued doggedly with this custom. Thousand Island Pengali were very traditional, scoffed at even by their own kinsfolk who lived in the poorer parts of the city and who had adopted notions like wearing clothes and working during the day. I took the fish from her. It was quite heavy and didn’t yet have the fishy smell that always hung around the markets. “Welcome to my house,” I said to Abri. Thousand Island Pengali were more likely to speak Coldi than the local keihu language, because they had never been welcome in town and, in times past, their settlement had dealt directly with Coldi visitors from Asto who came to buy their products. Abri looked at the high vaulted ceiling in the hall to my apartment. “Your house is very big.” “Thank you. I hope you had a nice trip.” These were all formalities that were part of a Pengali greeting. You were meant to reply with honesty, not with empty platitudes. Abri lifted her tail to eye level and wriggled the tip. “The fishing was favourable.” And that was all that mattered. That fish in the basket had probably been caught on the way in. “I can see that. It is a very good fish that will grace our gathering tonight.” She seemed pleased with that. Taking a meal together was another one of those formalities. With the formal part of the greetings now over, I asked, “Did you bring any luggage?” She gave me a puzzled look. I explained. “Packs? Shoes, warm clothes?” Or just clothes full stop, because they were only wearing their traditional belts, and this level of clothing, or the lack thereof, would raise eyebrows even in Barresh, where it was warm. “You know, any personal things you’d like to bring?” “We have that.” She gestured with her tail to a small bundle at the feet of one of her companions. It was a net, containing a couple of fishbone hoops with a thin gauze-like material, a carved box with a glass lid that contained hooks, and rolls of wire. Fishing gear. Sure, that made sense. That was all one needed on an interplanetary trip. Oh, well, I’d have to get Eirani to pack all the clothes we had fortunately prepared in advance, since in my past interactions with the tribe I’d had a feeling that it might be necessary. “I will ask the staff to show you your rooms.” I eyed the members of the entourage. We’d only prepared for Abri, her daughter Kita and the translator Ynggi. I didn’t understand what the rest of all these other people were doing here and whether Abri thought that they could stay here before going back to the tribe’s territory. On second thoughts, she didn’t assume that they were coming on the trip, did she? Did she even know how much the tickets through the Exchange cost? It wouldn’t surprise me if she thought they were coming, Thayu said through our feeder. I hadn’t seen her come into the hallway, but she had been in the office, and would have heard the commotion. She stood behind me and I could feel the bemusement dripping from her. She’d been teasing me about Pengali and their customs ever since we’d gotten the summons to turn up at the court. It was a playful teasing intended for my ears only, but I well understood the basis of it: the stiff formalities at the court and the Pengali customs that related to place, weather and items of food were not exactly compatible. Get this: we were going to take a bunch of tribal Pengali to a highly formal session of the Nations of Earth criminal court, where Abri was to be a witness. That was going to be, in Thayu’s words, interesting. I decided not to immediately press the issue of the extra numbers, hoping it would resolve by itself. Problems often did when dealing with Pengali, and it was never productive to press for an answer when they were not ready to give one. Frustrating, but true. Their thought processes were alien and opaque to many of us, but they were definitely not stupid. I invited the group into the living room, where Eirani stood at the entrance, looking slightly alarmed, probably by the increased numbers. In her eyes, I could see the protest: But I didn’t plan for so many for dinner! She became the recipient of the basket with the fish. An appreciative nod. It was a very good fish. “Will I cook this for dinner tonight, Muri?” she asked, glancing sideways at the group. “That would be a good idea.” “Are all these people staying here? We don’t have any—” “Shhh. It will sort itself out.” “But the room I set up is too small. We will have to move everything to—” “Shhh. Let’s wait and see. I very much doubt they’ll expect to stay.” A nod, still a bit uncertain. To be honest, I was by no means certain that they wouldn’t expect to stay either. Eirani had been somewhat conditioned to the presence of Pengali through a prior visit to my house by Ynggi, during which he had explained the concept of fish-giving. But I didn’t think Eirani either liked or understood them, and she probably had not been present when he gave his explanation. Wait and see was not her style. She wanted to get things ready, not run after everyone and panic about how she was going to feed and look after these people. She wanted to be prepared. In the old keihu families in town, like the one where she grew up, if keihu people worked with any Pengali it was in the capacity of being their boss. The Pengali in question were always from the Washing Stones tribe, many of whom lived in Barresh and were used to the requirements of living in a town, including the wearing of clothes and being awake during the daytime. But these were Thousand Island Pengali, alien, tribal, wild, and everyone knew that they were fierce, could be easily offended by the strangest things, and had very big and sharp knives. We went into the living room. The Pengali fighters solved the issue for us by staying at the door. “Do they not want to come in?” I asked Abri, because now was the time to raise the issue. “The tide is going out.” As it would be at this time of the day. “The fishing will be good.” “All right then. Tell them to take care. Tell them that they can come here to pick you up when we’re back.” Abri spoke to the men in Pengali, a rattling language with a distinct shortage of vowels. They snapped their tails and retreated into the hall. “Give them the parcel from the table in the hall,” I called after Evi, whose dark Indrahui figure I spotted through the doorway. Evi was partial to fish. He would give the Pengali the presents for the tribe—in this case a few sets of children’s toys and a box of Asian prawn chips which I’d gotten from the Chinese restaurant owner Huang Le and which he semi-legally imported from Earth for his restaurant. They were extremely popular with townsfolk, including Pengali, and there were always some kids watching through the window into Huang Le’s kitchen when he tossed the chips into hot oil and they grew into arm-length wavy sheets. You saw people nibbling on those everywhere in the streets. Some people even tried to make their own. That was a typically Pengali venture, because they always tried to figure out how to make the things they liked.