Fiction River: Moonscapes (24 page)

The forensic lab was the most important part of the ship. In fact, a well-stocked lab had become one of the most important parts of
all
FSS ships. Often the problems that marshals ran into could be resolved with the right kind of forensic analysis. Or they could at least be understood.

The Peyti was in the forensic lab, along with Lashante Simiaar, the best forensic director in the entire FSS. Together, they watched the last of the corpse removal on a gigantic flat screen. The Peyti wore a human-style business suit, which had the effect of making it look like a child wearing its parents clothing.

The illusion wasn’t helped by Simiaar’s presence. She looked large next to the Peyti. She was a tall, broad woman with extra flesh that held a surprising amount of muscle. She could lift and move and carry better than almost anyone on the team, but she was no good in a fight, and she probably hadn’t run anywhere in the past fifteen years.

“What a mess,” she said to Gomez without looking at her.

“Yeah,” Gomez said, knowing that neither of them was referring to the corpses. Both women knew that something was amiss here, something they didn’t understand yet. “May I borrow Uzven now?”

Simiaar sighed. “I guess. But when those corpses get in here, I’m going to need Uzven back. I don’t know what they got contaminated with, and so I need to ask the Eaufasse a lot of questions.”

She had already set up part of the forensic wing as a quarantined area, just in case the dead had contracted something or been infected with something that wasn’t obvious to the collection team.

Gomez beckoned Uzven to move with her to a different part of the lab. Gomez wanted to keep Uzven here in case Collection had more questions for it.

“First,” Gomez said, “I assume you understand the Eaufasse since you speak their language. Maybe you can answer a question for me.”

Uzven put two fingers against the breathing mask that covered the lower part of its face. It adjusted the mask as if the mask were uncomfortable, then said, “The assumption isn’t a good one. We have just begun to understand the Eaufasse. Our language is more compatible with theirs than yours is. That is why I am somewhat fluent.”

“Somewhat fluent?” Gomez didn’t like the sound of that. She had asked for someone fluent.

“I am as fluent as anyone in the Earth Alliance,” Uzven said. “But that is not saying much. I understand quite a bit of Fasse, the Eaufasse language, but I do not have much jargon for technical details.”

“Like murder?”

“Death is a universal,” Uzven said. “However, I am not entirely sure of what constitutes murder to the Eaufasse. Not that it matters here. We do not have Eaufasse corpses. We have human ones. I will keep the discussion focused on the human side of the equation as much as I can.”

“I don’t want you to make unilateral decisions,” Gomez said. “If I have a question that needs an answer, I expect you to ask it. And if you cannot get an answer from the Eaufasse, I don’t want you trying to find a way to force one. I want to know that they didn’t answer my question. This isn’t a court of law, so I don’t necessarily need something on the record. I need information, and if we can’t get that information without a cadre of diplomats working the case, then I need to know that as well.”

“I understand,” Uzven said. “I am at your service.”

Gomez thought she heard sarcasm. It wouldn’t surprise her. Peyti always thought themselves superior to humans. Working for one had to be difficult at best. But Uzven had signed up to work with the Earth Alliance, so it didn’t get to choose who its boss was on any particular job.

“We will be speaking to my initial contact with the Eaufasse,” Gomez said. “If we need to speak to someone of higher rank or with different knowledge, then we’ll do that.”

Uzven nodded, always a strange movement from a Peyti. The mask didn’t really bend, so the head moved without any mask movement.

With Uzven’s help, Gomez contacted the Eaufasse. She did not have this conversation through an audio link, but used both audio and visual tools, so that the Eaufasse could examine her body movements. She didn’t move a lot, though, just in case some movement might be offensive.

Still, the Eaufasse had had interactions with humans before, so they were somewhat familiar with the way that humans did things. She stood as casually as she could when she began the conversation.

The Eaufasse had blacked out the area behind it, so she couldn’t see where it was standing. The Eaufasse looked like it floated against a black background, unmoored by anything. Privacy concerns? An unwillingness to let humans or the Earth Alliance see what the interior of Eaufasse offices looked like? Or something else entirely?

It didn’t matter, since the interior of an Eaufasse building or even the exterior of an Eaufasse street was not her concern. She didn’t care where the Eaufasse was so long as it talked with her.

She thanked the Eaufasse for the initial contact, and confirmed that she would be removing the enclave. She also told them that it would take time, since the enclave was so big she couldn’t do it without a larger force. She asked for permission to bring a larger group of humans onto Epriccom for the sole purpose of removing the human enclave. She promised that the force would leave as soon as the enclave left.

The Eaufasse said it understood and had been expecting such a thing. It did not offer any help from its own people which, Gomez knew, was a good thing. She had no idea what that enclave would do if it saw a group of Eaufasse approaching it. She certainly didn’t want weaponry fired at the Eaufasse on their own land, which—she knew—was a possibility. That enclave was defended against the outside, including those branch things. The enclave would probably defend itself against any intruders as well.

She didn’t want to be the person who inadvertently started a war between some humans and the Eaufasse.

After dancing around the topic for a while, she finally asked the question that had been the real point behind this conversation. She always began pointed and possibly offensive questions with an apology first, having learned the hard way that translators did not add politeness in the cultures that required it, but always subtracted politeness when it didn’t serve the needed purpose.

“Please forgive the intrusive nature of the remainder of the conversation,” she said. “But I need information to help my people understand what has happened here, so that we might remove this enclave quickly and easily.”

Uzven translated, its fingers tapping against its suit jacket.

“It seems like the enclave has been on Epriccom for quite a while,” Gomez said. “Did something recently bring it to your attention?”

Uzven continued to translate, then looked at Gomez, clearly waiting. Then the Uzven bowed its head and closed its eyes, listening.

It had not been doing a simultaneous translation from the beginning of the conversation. Uzven did not think itself fluent enough, which worried Gomez.

This entire situation worried Gomez.

Uzven translated after the Eaufasse finished. Gomez wondered how much Uzven missed just by waiting.

“The ambassador said the enclave applied for permission to build on the land sixteen years ago. Permission was granted with minimal fuss. This is a remote part of the Eaufasse nation, and so the Eaufasse do not pay it much mind. In fact, they did not hear anything more from the enclave until it started attacking itself.”

Gomez cursed silently. She wished she spoke Fasse. There were so many areas that could be misinterpreted in just that one little reply.

But she was a veteran at this. She’d had more first- or second- or third-contacts than most diplomats in the Earth Alliance.

“Okay,” she said. “Before you translate for me, answer me a few questions. Tell them that’s what you’ll be doing, for clarification.”

Uzven spoke rapidly to the Eaufasse. It raised its arms and wrapped them over its shoulders, which made Gomez look away. She had no idea if that was a relaxed position or if it was the same as nodding in her culture.

“Proceed,” Uzven said to her.

Proceed
.
Jeez
. She didn’t like its tone, but Uzven was all she had. “The Eaufasse I’m speaking with is an ambassador?”

“That is how it identifies itself,” Uzven said.

Crap. That created all kinds of problems for her. Technically, she was supposed to interact with a counterpart, someone of equal rank—if, of course, the alien/native culture had a ranked system. Conversations with ambassadors were supposed to be conducted by diplomats.

Still, this ambassador was her contact, so she could argue that she had no choice about who she talked to. And of course, the argument would be true.

“Do you understand the governmental rankings within the Eaufasse?” she asked.

“Not entirely, no,” Uzven said. “If you are asking me if you are conducting an inquiry above your pay grade, then I cannot answer that. For all I know, all Eaufasse who deal with non-Eaufasse in minor matters are called ‘ambassador.’ Remember that we are filtering through two languages here, one imperfectly known.”

Two. It took her a moment to understand what Uzven meant. It meant that it was translating into Peytin first before translating into Standard. Just great. Yet another way to add in misunderstandings.

“I want to double-check the number,” she said. “Sixteen years? Not six?”

“Sixteen,” Uzven said in a tone that definitely showed it was insulted that she checked.

“Because the Epriccom had just applied for Earth Alliance membership sixteen years ago. We hadn’t had much contact with any of the species here before that,” she said.

She knew this because she had checked it before she had gotten here. It took a minimum of twenty-five years from application to approval to become a full Earth Alliance member. And that was if everything ran smoothly.

“Sixteen,” Uzven said again.

“Damn,” Gomez muttered. This group of humans was even more private than she imagined.

Uzven did not move, and neither did the Eaufasse on her screen. The ambassador. If it was a real, high-ranking ambassador, then she was screwing up by holding it up—at least under Earth Alliance protocol.

“All right,” she said softly to Uzven. “Let’s continue.”

Uzven bowed a little, then turned slightly.

“Forgive me, Mr. Ambassador,” she said. “Mister” and “Sir” in Standard had become gender-neutral. She hoped Uzven translated them that way. “I still need clarifications of some of what you’ve told me. Did the enclave predate your application to the Earth Alliance?”

Uzven dutifully translated. The Eaufasse’s arms came down to the position they had been in before. Its eyes shone whitely for a moment. Gomez had no idea what that meant.

“Why is that important?” The Eaufasse asked. The question sounded defensive, but she wasn’t sure if that was the Eaufasse’s defensiveness or Uzven’s.

She was going to act as if every emotion belonged to the Eaufasse. “Sir, I am trying to understand the enclave from a human-to-human perspective. If the enclave’s arrival predates our contact with you, this tells me that the enclave was looking for some place not affiliated with the Alliance to form its community.”

That whiteness flared, then disappeared. The ambassador’s arms flopped over its shoulders again, elbows—if that’s what they were—pointing at her. She wasn’t even going to try to understand the body language. It unsettled her, and she didn’t want to be unsettled.

“Their arrival predates the application by six months,” Uzven said. “And before you ask me, the ambassador is referring to months as the Earth Alliance calculates them.”

“Thank you,” Gomez said, and before she could ask her next question, the ambassador continued.

“It was their arrival that made the Eaufasse and the others on Epriccom aware of the Earth Alliance. It was in the researching of the humans that Epriccom decided that joining the Alliance would be a good idea.”

That was interesting.

“Why?” she asked.

“The Earth Alliance is a trade and protection organization, facilitating business throughout several sectors. It would bring much needed revenue to Epriccom while providing many opportunities to the various local groups here.”

Gomez almost laughed in surprise and relief. The ambassador was selling her on Epriccom’s final entry into the Earth Alliance. As she realized that, she relaxed slightly.

“So,” she said, “the enclave have been good neighbors until they—as you said—started attacking themselves.”

“Slang,” Uzven muttered loud enough for her to hear. Then it tilted its head slightly—a Peyti sign of disgust—and translated for her. Apparently it didn’t approve of “good neighbors,” which she didn’t consider slang at all.

The Eaufasse ambassador brought its arms down again. She wished now that she had left this on audio. The movements were distracting. It turned its head away from her for just a moment, and she suddenly wished she could see if it was alone. She doubted it was. She wondered if it had another translator or if it had someone of higher rank just off camera.

Then it turned toward her and spoke.

“They needed supervision in their first year as they built their enclave,” Uzven translated. Then it added in a more confidential tone, “You should know that the ambassador may have used the word ‘crafted’ here. I chose ‘built.’”