Ambassador 4: Coming Home (16 page)

“Oh Thay’, you know there is very little chance that they can change anything in our situation, and you do understand that this is not the aim of the exercise?”

“I do.” She wiped her eyes. “But if there is any question left to ask about our chances, I want it asked.”

The Coldi mind continued to find ways to surprise me. Somehow, I seemed never to have understood that the only emotion the Coldi truly lacked was that of embarrassment.

W
E MADE A PLAN.

Thayu and I would go to the apartment together. We would wear no uniforms and take no guards, although they would stay in close proximity, of course. We would ask for advice on a personal issue in an informal, almost secretive way.

Our past experience indicated that Kando Luczon was thoroughly uninterested in people’s private struggles, so we guessed that he would listen for a bit and then withdraw himself from the conversation.

Hopefully the woman Lilona would continue.

If it looked like we were having success in drawing her away from the captain, we would try to make her leave the apartment. She might want blood samples taken or need to use certain equipment. We would offer to do that at the hospital. We would pounce and ask her some forceful questions about the ship and their intentions once we had her out of the apartment.
After
we asked the questions about fertility, Thayu insisted.

Sheydu and Veyada took the speculation a lot further than I liked, talking about making direct threats to her, and to the captain, and about taking her as a hostage.

I so very much wanted to tell them that this sort of thing was not on, but I couldn’t.

All the planning brought us to lunchtime, and while lunch wasn’t much of a feature in our house, certainly not on the scale it was in town, I didn’t want anyone fainting on the job, so I asked Eirani to supply us with a good meal. We sat at the table in the living room, a big varied and noisy team.

Ayshada had decided that he’d behaved well enough for today, and demanded noisily that he be fed. This was done by Nicha, and when he had to eat, by Sheydu. Ayshada remained very much awake after he finished his milk, and Sheydu proceeded to tickle him, to which he responded by making gurgling noises. It was the oddest sight ever, a fierce killing machine cooing at a two-day-old baby. But she had given birth at least once, and obviously cared enough about Veyada to pair up with him. The fact that he lived with her also meant that it had been
her
contract and her decision to have him.

It occurred to me that Xinanu’s departure was the best thing that had happened this week—no, make that this year—and that I would be utterly happy to withdraw my claim against the Azimi clan so that I never had to deal with them again. I wasn’t going to ask Devlin if they had responded yet. It would be great if that issue could stay out of my hair until after the Aghyrian crisis was settled.

When lunch was done, we went to the bedroom to change. We would wear informal clothes. We would not carry weapons in visible places. I didn’t want to take any at all, but knew that was a battle I’d never win.

“Light armour,” Thayu said, tossing the rigid body-hugging vest onto the bed.

I picked it up. It was heavy and hot. “Is that necessary? These people have thousands of ways to kill us that don’t involve shooting a projectile or charge at high speed.”

She just glared at me. Like the gun, I knew this was a losing battle as well. Her plain tunic and loose trousers hid her armour well. The pockets and folds of the garments probably also held all manner of guns.

I got dressed and we met up with the others in the hall.

While we went to talk, Evi and Telaris would casually hang around the fountain in the atrium a few steps from the door of Kando Luczon’s apartment. They often relaxed there, but this time they would be ready to take action if necessary.

I felt sweaty and shivery when walking up to the apartment’s door. Probably an aftereffect of last night; but with every step we took, I became less sure that it was such a good idea to exploit our painful personal situation to get what we wanted. Thayu might say she had no trouble with it, but I had a hard time believing that.

Thayu knocked on the door.

It took a while before it was opened by the young man Tayron. He raised his eyebrows, looking from me to Thayu. “You didn’t let us know that a visit was planned.”

It was hard to discern any kind of emotion from his voice. He could be annoyed, or happy or surprised.

“We’re not on official business. We have a deeply personal issue we like your advice on.”

He looked over his shoulder where Kando Luczon came into the hallway and eyed us with his usual hawkish suspicious look. He wore the loose robe that he had also worn on the ship, complete with the broad armbands that seemed to have some sort of electronic function, but probably wouldn’t work here. Not for the first time, I wondered what the three of them did when they were by themselves in the apartment.

I nodded to him. “Excuse us for disturbing you without notice. As I told your companion, we’re here for personal reasons. We have a question that I hope you or your staff can help us with.” Thayu had been happy to let me do the talking. She said that she would likely be too rude.

I could see hostility warring with curiosity on his face. No, I hadn’t messaged him as I usually did. I didn’t want to advertise my actions to Delegate Namion.

Then he glanced at Tayron, who stepped back, opening the door further. “Come in and ask your question.”

We followed him to the living room on the far side of the apartment. I went first and Thayu behind me. The broad hallway bisected the apartment, with all the rooms to either side. The ones on the left backed onto my downstairs storeroom and staff office. The apartment’s main living room was at the end of the corridor. The windows, overlooking a neatly maintained garden, were on the western side, which made it quite hot, like my own living room and our bedroom. Yet he seemed to have all the vents that brought cool air from the atrium closed and the window and garden doors were closed as well.

They had moved the furniture around: the dining table now stood at the far end of the room, the couch and one of the armchairs against the wall. A second armchair stood in the middle of the room, like a captain’s chair on a ship. This was where Kando Luczon took his place, leaving us to find seats at the table. The woman Lilona already sat at the table. She met my eyes, but said nothing. She didn’t greet us. She didn’t get up to offer us drinks.

Not that I really wanted any, just having had lunch, but in any other house, a visitor would be offered refreshments.

It seemed that along with the sense of living in the open air, these people had lost their sense of civility. Was that what happened when you lived cooped up in a ship with the same people for generations?

When I just started training, I’d often been baffled by Coldi customs, but I didn’t recall ever having felt like I was floundering as much as this. They looked like people, they moved like people, but in their behaviour they might as well have been lions.

In the awkward and unfriendly silence, I started out explaining why we had come. That we were lovers, that we were, obviously, from different races, and that we would love to hear if there was any chance at all that we could have a child.

Kando Luczon’s face showed intense dislike. “She is from the all-purpose colonising race. I do not know why they were ever allowed to keep their fertility. I certainly didn’t agree with it. It was that idiot Waller Herza whose idea this was. And look at this place today! I was right.” He spread his hands.

I had no idea what was wrong with Barresh and its varied population, and after getting a taste of his opinions on it, couldn’t say I was highly interested in finding out.

In the further tense silence, I then outlined some of the known genetic connections. That the Coldi and Mirani Endri sometimes interbred. That a famous research project by a scientist on Earth called Richard Morton had proven that humans from Earth had Aghyrian roots.

While I was speaking, Lilona’s expression had pricked up. She asked me some questions in a timid voice. She knew what Thayu was—and that earned her some disapproving looks from Thayu—but didn’t know about me. Earth was not a place they were overly familiar with, but after some cross-referencing, expressions cleared.

“We seeded a population there, a long time ago,” Kando Luczon said.

He eyed me up and down, as if seeing me in a different light. He said something to Lilona, who took one of their screens and pulled up a diagram. I could see her screen, but didn’t read Aghyrian very well and this variety was even less familiar to me. Tayron came to sit next to her. They spoke quietly, pointing at various places in the diagram.

Kando Luczon sat in his chair and supported his chin in his hand. He stared at Thayu, already looking bored with the discussion.

Thayu stared back. If the daggers in her eyes were real, he would have been dead a hundred times over.

“We need to know certain things,” Lilona said eventually.

“You need blood samples?’ I asked.

“We do. We don’t have any equipment to take them.”

“The hospital does,” I offered without trying to sound too keen.

“We also need equipment to analyse.”

“They might have that as well. I’m sorry, I know nothing about medical things, but I can take you to the hospital and you can see what they have and you can ask the lab staff. Many of them are Aghyrian.” My heart was hammering in my chest. It did sound like an innocent enough proposition, didn’t it?

She said something to the captain, but he said nothing and didn’t react. Then she spoke to Tayron. He replied, his tone flat.

Lilona got up from the table and disappeared into the hallway. I frowned at Thayu. What was going on?

The feeder told me that she wasn’t sure either.
They really don’t show any emotions
. Coming from a Coldi person—who were often accused of not showing emotions—this was a major statement. It confirmed the unease I had felt about these Aghyrians.

The captain sat staring into the distance, and Tayron looked out the window.

With any other person, I might have chatted about the weather, but all previous attempts to chat had fallen into a black hole. Not only were they unfamiliar with the concept of weather, they were uninterested in it, or, for that matter, in other harmless subjects, like the scenery or clothing.

You couldn’t chat with them, because they didn’t know how to chat.

These people were not super-humans. Well, they might possess the genetic base from which all humans were descended, but as a society, they seemed incredibly broken.

Lilona came back to the door. She had put on the shirt with the blue piping that we had supplied for the
gamra
meeting they attended a few days ago. This wasn’t the right shirt for a trip into town, but I let it rest. They didn’t understand “appropriate” either.

The captain and Tayron seemed happy to let her go—and I felt guilty because they possessed a healthy dose of suspicion in some areas and seemed naïve and trusting in others, and we were going to betray what little trust they had.

We left the apartment. It was now the middle of the afternoon, and, being the dry season, sunlight was at its hottest. I was pleased to see that thunderclouds were building up over the top of the escarpment in the east, although it would probably take a few weeks until they were big enough to roll over the city every afternoon. The sky directly above was cloudless, if a bit hazy, but still clear enough to show double-edged shadows, although the suns were very close together and would go fully behind each other later this week for the occultation festival and the crazy parades that accompanied it.

I explained all this to Lilona on our way to the station, and it met with the usual reaction: indifference and silence.

Thayu rolled her eyes at me several times.

Through her feeder, she asked me why I kept trying. I truly didn’t know. I guessed our different brands of humanity couldn’t stand continued silence when in the company of others. That was the point of company: that some form of communication took place. Otherwise you might as well live alone in the jungle.

We’re communicating
Thayu said through the feeder.
We’re not making any sound
.

That was true. Did the Aghyrians have a similar type of communication? There were rumours that some were telepathic, but if they were, their processes didn’t work on us.

The train arrived and we got in.

I could see Evi and Telaris at the end of the wagon, pretending to be travelling by themselves. I looked around for others, most importantly Coldi in unmarked non-uniform clothing, but none were obvious to me.

I sat opposite Lilona. If she was really in her sixties, she looked remarkably young. We had wondered if they used some type of rejuvenation treatment or if her younger looks were a function of conditions in the ship.

I had asked about this before, but as with most things, had received at best an inconclusive reply. I guessed it was hard for people who travelled across galaxies to understand the concept of age and time—both planet-bound concepts—but their inability to relate to anything that mattered to us was profoundly disturbing.

She was, however, more forthcoming when I asked her about her work on the ship, which was to prepare the pods and their occupants for long jumps. Normally the stasis pods would contain gas, but for jumps they would be filled with gel that would slowly be frozen over what I guessed was a period of days before the jump. Once the jump was completed, the reverse process would take twice as long.

“So when you jump, you freeze the entire crew?”

“Everyone who isn’t needed for the operation of the ship.” And apparently they could run that behemoth ship with a crew of about twenty.

“What do
you
do for the jump?”

She frowned at me.

“It sounds like jumping these kinds of distances is dangerous enough that you protect most people by freezing them. What about you and the other crew?”