Ambassador 6: The Enemy Within

Chapter 2-1

2

ONE COULD SAY that it put quite a damper on what was otherwise an excellent meal taken with all the members of my association, as well as Evi and Telaris and the Pengali.

When Eirani brought in the fish, there was further ceremony to be performed.

The Pengali came in full tribal gear, with painted patterns on their skin and elaborate ornaments in their hair that included the famed blue diamonds that were the start of this whole affair.

Eirani brought the fish on a platter, steamed with a tangy sauce made from lily flowers. The meat was pure white, divested of the tough skin and drizzled with bright orange berry pulp.

I, the official householder, needed to cut the fish and divide it into equal portions for all the members of our group. The fact that they were all Coldi and that Coldi on Asto grew up not eating the meat of any animal higher than a slug did not compute with them. Veyada had developed a taste for fish. Having lived on Earth, Nicha would eat oysters and prawns, but was iffy about vertebrate animals, but the others were staunchly vegetarian. Reida looked like he might want to try it, but he was unsure if Nicha, his superior, agreed with it. His zhayma companion Deyu had tried fish on a previous occasion, but didn’t like the taste nor the thought of eating an animal. She was interested in animals, but not in that way. Being pregnant, Thayu was definitely not going to try it. She was in general not particularly adventurous about food. Sheydu had spent most of her sixty years in a rigid military environment and would probably eat the fish if I told her and would never tell me how much she hated it, but she would hate it, so I wasn’t going to. I appreciated Sheydu very much.

So we were left with the slightly awkward situation of having far more bowls than people who were actually going to eat this fish.

First, I was meant to taste it. I cut a piece of the pure white flesh and put it in my mouth.

The creamy taste was heavenly.

“It’s a very good fish.”

This was met with waving tails and serene, slightly smug expressions from Abri, Ynggi and Kita. The little child sat on a high table that normally stood in the corner with a vase on top. Ayshada occupied the apartment’s only high chair, and he eyed this little intruder in his domain with curiosity.

Now that I had approved of the fish, everyone could start eating it. Veyada did not see the fact that so many of our association were vegetarian as a problem. Neither did Evi and Telaris, who were from Indrahui and had no reservations whatsoever about eating fish. Fortunately, the three of them were big muscled guys, with healthy appetites. The Pengali also seemed capable of devouring much larger quantities of food than their size suggested.

The little Pengali toddler Idda got a bowl and ate with both fists. Strapped in his chair, Ayshada protested loudly that Nicha would not let him eat fish. While everyone ate, Idda picked up her bowl, slid down one of the legs of the tall table, ran across the floor holding the bowl under one arm and climbed up Ayshada’s chair. She slapped a piece of fish on his table and scampered off again.

Ayshada put it in his mouth but spent the rest of the meal rolling it into a ball with his tongue, dribbling sauce down his chin.

He always did this with his food, and I didn’t think Nicha noticed.

After the official part of the meal, the Pengali retreated to the room we had allocated them downstairs. I thought they were getting changed out of their official gear, but they did not resurface. I asked Eirani what they were doing when she came in to collect the plates and bring fruit, and she said they had gone out, presumably to look around and get breakfast, or maybe see fellow Pengali, or whatever it was that Pengali did.

This gave us the opportunity to talk about the interpreter situation. We moved to the hub, where I sat between Thayu and Nicha, with Veyada on the other bench. The only light in this room came from the circular bench of communication equipment in the middle. It would normally display a holographic projection of whatever Devlin, who was in charge of the hub, was doing.

But Devlin had stopped work for the day. He was nervous about travelling with us tomorrow, and had gone into town to pick up additional items that his mother thought he might need.

We sat down, looking at each other in the semidarkness.

Thayu said, “Surely Nations of Earth wouldn’t be so dumb to cancel the case over such a trivial technicality.”

“You don’t know Nations of Earth,” I said, and Nicha nodded. “We absolutely have to find someone, or we will lose a lot more time and effort and we’ll all have wasted a lot of resources.”

Would the trial even go ahead if Ezhya said I needed to do something for him here and I couldn’t go at a later date and therefore Abri wouldn’t go?

But where could we find an acceptable interpreter? The Pengali office had already let me know that I would find many local Pengali unwilling to translate for people from the Thousand Islands tribe.

I thought the whole issue was petty and childish but, apparently, the feud between the Washing Stones and Thousand Islands tribe was about a lot more than rivalry and fishing grounds, although I couldn’t claim to understand the source of the conflict. Each Pengali tribe seemed to be like this with all other tribes. There was a third tribe in the area, the Whitesand Creek tribe. They lived mostly in the forest and were equally hated by both the Washing Stones and the Thousand Islanders.

As translator, a Pengali person from any other tribe wasn’t going to work. But Nations of Earth insisted that the interpreter couldn’t be from the same tribe.

Thayu asked, “Would there be any non-Pengali? The keihu families have Pengali housekeepers and cooks. Surely some of their kids have grown up speaking Pengali?”

That was an option, albeit a far-fetched one, so I contacted anyone I knew who worked with Pengali. I even sent a message to Clovis Keneally, the tour guide whose falling out with Robert Davidson was the stitch that brought all of Robert’s secret diamond smuggling business undone.

Clovis and his wife had a lot of health problems these days, and lived as virtual recluses. They didn’t do tours anymore. I was sure that the affair with Robert had something to do with it.

His ferry company with all its inherent feuding over route rights was run by a manager. I didn’t think Clovis worked a lot with Pengali anymore. Maybe just the domestic staff. I couldn’t help but feel a bit sorry for him.

He got back to me quickly and said he knew no one. His reply suited the way I pictured him: reluctant, and always a bit shifty, even if he didn’t mean to be.

I contacted Huang Le, who had recently bought a second restaurant in Fountain Street, the overflow of the hugely popular shop near the airport. I had to admit that he made a mean stir-fry and that the local fresh produce in Barresh suited Chinese cooking well. Even Thayu and I ate there sometimes.

Never let your dislike of the cook get in the way of a good fish. If that wasn’t a Pengali proverb, it should be. Except Pengali didn’t do proverbs like Coldi.

Huang Le did not like Pengali. His kitchen staff and waiters were all keihu. His children had keihu names and spoke no Isla. I guess that showed us what he thought of Earth.

Predictably, he knew of no one either.

We put requests on notice boards and local employment markets and sent out messages to several people who had contacts in the Pengali community, hoping against better knowledge that they would send us back all these amazing offers tomorrow morning.

We found nothing. Decent interpreters had their schedules full. We were leaving tomorrow. Was this issue going to scuttle the entire expedition?

I leaned my head in my hands. “We’re not going to be able to find anyone.”

Veyada gestured wordlessly at his screen.

I looked as he held it up. It said, Hire any professional, any task. Guaranteed.

There was no name. Advertising business names was considered tacky in Barresh, but I thought I recognised where this was coming from: Jasper Carlson, shady figure extraordinaire. He was, like Clovis, like Huang Le, a refugee from Earth for all the wrong reasons. He differed from those two by being smarter, richer and much less transparent in his goals.

“Really?” I said to Veyada.

Veyada shrugged. “It’s your decision.”

But at the same time, signing a contract with one’s competitor to suss them out was very, very Coldi thing to do. He would jump at this opportunity.

I said, “I wonder what they can offer that the Pengali office can’t.”

“Maybe this is bluff. Maybe it isn’t. But we can try.” He was in favour, clearly.

“All right, then.”

“You were planning to take Ynggi anyway, weren’t you?”

“He at least knows the Thousand Island dialect and can translate it correctly.”

“So we’d be taking this extra person to appease Nations of Earth.”

“Yes.” And pay for an extra person, too. Grrr. I really needed to solve this budget issue. “Contact him at least. See what he can do.”

Veyada did. He would not use my name, but I had no doubt that Jasper would work out where it was coming from soon enough. I still didn’t like it, but it was not to be helped.

We received a message back almost immediately that a translator would be available for us in the morning. There was no information about who this person would be, just a price tag that made me gulp.

Well, if it solved the problem . . . and surely cancelling the trial now would be more expensive than the interpreter could be. Or would it?

Oh damn, I could already hear the complaints from my accountant.

But funding was primarily my problem. My association did as I said. I made sure they had all they needed, including money.

We moved from the hub into the living room to share some tea.

A pile of luggage and boxes was starting to appear in the hall. Boy, I would look like an i***t if I couldn’t find a new interpreter.

Deyu and Reida already sat in the living room. Sheydu was just coming out of the corridor, carrying two black bags with straps, her contribution to the pile of luggage. I bet they contained lots of weaponry. She came into the living room, too, and we all sat down on the carpet, where Thayu put out my projection sheet: a thin flexible screen that displayed a map of the Nations of Earth complex in Rotterdam.

Veyada shook his head, “Uh-uh. The court is in a different town, one called The Hague. It’s affiliated with the International Court which is one of the oldest official institutions that survived the wars.”

It always disturbed me to hear them using Isla words and knowing things about Earth, as if that part of my life was private, as if Veyada’s knowledge implied that Asto, including Ezhya and Asto’s secretive army also knew everything he knew. And yet I appreciated their knowledge.

Thayu pulled a face and swiped the map off the sheet. It was replaced by a question asking what she wanted to look at next. Veyada brought up another map of the town in question. It lay close to the ocean and, like Rotterdam, was surrounded by a sturdy dam that kept the water out. Beyond that lay seasonally inundated marshland dotted with agricultural communities, each also surrounded by dams and connected to each other by roads and train lines over further dams. Not dissimilar to Barresh, actually, if a lot colder.

Thayu looked at me. “Have you ever been to this place?”

“Not that I remember. I only lived at Nations of Earth as a child for less than two years.”

“Do we have any information on this place?” She sounded annoyed. As if someone should have told her that she had the wrong town, or as if she berated herself for not having realised. I hadn’t realised either. Coldi women had a reputation for being grumpy when pregnant. She was no exception.