Nomad (17 page)

“You are in an unfamiliar sort of home, Ambassador,” the Envoy said. “Go carefully, and hurry back.”

The companions hiked down from the hills and into the city below. The air burned hot and dry around them, the same temperature as a Minnesotan summer day but with far less moisture.

Kaen kept glancing up at the sky.

*  *  *  *

The bus system turned out to be complicated. Each bus ticket cost six pesos, and the tickets didn't transfer, so when they switched buses they had to buy new tickets.

Once in town they passed La Minerva, a big, public statue of the Mediterranean goddess of wisdom and warriors. She looked like a soldier of the Kaen with shield and shock spear. Then they passed the statue again when they got lost, switched buses, and doubled back.

The ambassadors watched the world outside the bus window.

Gabe glanced sideways at Kaen.
I wonder what she sees. I wonder how strange this is to her. Probably not very strange. She knows how to move through alien worlds and civilizations. But this is the alien place that we both came from. And it's a little bit strange to me.

Crowds of people flowed on and off the bus like water unsure about which way was down. A sunburned tourist sat across the aisle. He wore a shirt with an old stone calendar drawn on the front. Kaen stared.

“Ese dibujo se parece a mi nave,” she said softly. Gabe heard the words in Spanish. He heard his own thoughts in Spanish here. “It looks like my ship and all the maps we make—maps of the whole galaxy with a massive black hole in the center, in the heart of the sky. We map out ourselves in that picture, suns and lives and generations.”

“The face in the center is supposed to be the sun,” Gabe said. “Our sun. The one in this system.”

“Suns do like to be the center of attention,” said Kaen. “Why is it sticking out its tongue?”

“Because it demands the constant sacrifice of blood and human hearts,” Gabe said, channeling his mother's knowledge of archaeology.

Kaen looked shocked and skeptical. “Are you joking? Did that translate properly? Is that the sort of thing you do here?”

“No,” Gabe said quickly. “Not anymore. It was an ancient Aztec thing. They added the face and the tongue to older Mayan calendars. And I'm pretty sure your ancestors left this system long before the Aztecs came conquering. Spaniards came conquering after that.”

“Which are
your
ancestors?” Kaen asked him. “Those who lived here before, or the conquerors?”

“Both,” Gabe said, uncomfortable.

The bus passed the Minerva statue one more time.

*  *  *  *

Gabe finally stood at the gate of his grandparents' house.

He peered through it at the paved courtyard embraced by the white-painted sides of a single-story house. The roof had a deck. He couldn't see anyone up on the deck or inside the courtyard.

“Your kin live here?” Kaen asked.

“Yes,” said Gabe. “I've seen pictures. Talked on the phone. But I've never been here before, and I've never met them in person. I guess I could have called first. We could have stopped at a pay phone on the way. But I'm not sure what I would have said. ‘Buenas días, Abuela. I just flew in from the asteroid belt. ¿Está mi papá aquí?' ”

“Eres un embajador,” Kaen reminded him. “You're an ambassador. Figure out what to say.”

“Right.” Gabe opened the gate, crossed the courtyard, and knocked on the door of la casa de sus abuelos.

His grandmother answered the door. She looked older than she did in pictures. “¿Sí?”

Gabe swallowed uncertainties. “Buenos días, Abuela. ¿Está mi papá aquí?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Gabriel?”

Gabe's grandmother sat them down in the kitchen, surrounded by bright pastel colors. She gave them each a cold soda in a glass with ice and a lemon wedge. Kaen wrinkled her nose at her first taste of the bubbly drink. Then Abuela put together cactus salad and ceviche. Her movements through the kitchen reminded Gabe of his father, who was not here.

“He's gone,” she said. “You missed him. He already left.”

Gabe felt his small and secret hope extinguish. “Where did he go?”

“He went north,” Abuela said. She turned away and cut vegetables with short, sharp chops of a very sharp knife. Her voice had a similar edge to it. “He hired a coyote and raced for the border.”

“Translation help?” Kaen whispered.

Gabe couldn't answer at first.
We're too late. He's not here. He's already gone.

Kaen asked again. Gabe answered on autopilot, without thinking. He still couldn't think in straight lines. “A coyote is a guide. A secret, smuggling sort of guide. The word also means a small, hunting mammal. And a trickster hero in old stories.” Part of him recognized the fact that he was babbling. “But she doesn't mean either of those things. She means guide. Someone who helps you walk north through the desert.”

Abuela continued to cut vegetables into smaller and smaller pieces.

“He was supposed to be here,” Gabe said, his voice louder—probably louder than he meant it to be. “We were going to come up with a plan.”

“Yes,” Abuela said. “He did plan to settle in here for a long visit and try to sort out his geographical troubles through more proper channels. But then
you
disappeared. Days ago. And he couldn't stay, not with you missing. So he set out for the border and the desert walk. Meanwhile you hopped a plane and came here? How old are you, little man? Seventeen? You couldn't have called first?”

I'm eleven
, he thought.
You're getting me mixed up with Lupe. Probably because we never came to visit. We couldn't
come to visit. We wouldn't have been able to cross the border to get back home.

“No,” he said. “I couldn't have called. I just had to come find him.”

Abuela shook her head. “Impulsive, dramatic idiots. Both of you, your father and yourself. Introduce me to your friend, and then call your father to explain this foolishness. He took a cell phone with him.” She dug a piece of paper from her pocket and set it on the table.

Gabe wasn't sure how to introduce his friend, but Kaen spoke first.

“I'm Citlalli,” she said. “Mucho gusto en conocerla. It's wonderful to meet you, and you have a beautiful home.” She soon coaxed Abuela into a long conversation without giving away otherworldly secrets.

Gabe took his father's new cell number to the landline in the next room. He picked up the phone and dialed. It rang several times. Gabe hung up and tried again. It rang and rang without voice mail, without the chance to leave a message, without his father on the other side. Gabe hung up. Then he phoned Lupe.

“Abuela?” his sister asked, whispering and hopeful. “¿Hay algunas noticias?”

“Hey,” Gabe said.

Silence.

“I'm at work,” Lupe said. “I need you to understand that I'm at work right now, at the restaurant, in the middle of the lunchtime rush. This is why I'm not roasting your eardrums with the most intensely violent profanity you have ever heard or will ever, ever hear. Where are you? Never mind. I know where you are. You're south of the border, because you used Grandma's phone to call me. How did you get there? Spaceship?”

“Yeah,” Gabe admitted.

“I'm going to stab that purple alien with my sword. You still have my sword, right?”

“Of course,” said Gabe. “Got it right here. The Envoy isn't an alien, though. And stabbing it won't do very much.”

“Then I'll settle for stabbing you. Where have you been? Never mind. I don't care. And I have to go. Just get home by whatever immediate means you can manage. The sooner you get here, the fewer times I'll have to stab you.”

“I miss you, too,” he said. “Is . . . is Dad there?”

“No,” she said. “I know that he might be . . .
on his way
 . . . but lots can happen between there and here.”

Those words had their own gravity. Gabe tried to steer clear of them. “How are Mom and the twins?”

“They'll be fine once you get home. They won't be fine
until then. So get yourself home.” Lupe paused. Gabe thought she had hung up, but she hadn't yet. “How's the planet?”

“Still here,” he told her.

“Good,” she said. “Try not to leave it again. Come home.”

This time she did hang up.

Gabe listened to the dial tone as though it were something he could understand.

*  *  *  *

Lunch was magnificent. Gabe barely noticed the food itself, though he did notice that Kaen seemed impressed by it.

Abuela softened when she saw how much pain he was in. “How long will you stay with us?” she asked.

“I have to leave again today,” Gabe told her. He expected her to argue with him, but she just shook her head and called him an impulsive and dramatic idiot several more times.
She thinks I'm much older than I actually am
, he thought.
That helps.

“I've waited years upon years for a visit from my grandchildren,” Abuela told him. She built up a cathedral of guilt, stone by stone. “And now you stop by for lunch. I suppose I'll have to take what I can get. Bring your siblings and stay for more than one meal next time.”

“I'm sorry,” Gabe told her. “I'm so sorry. But I really do have to go. I have to . . . I have to fix this.”

Abuela uttered a long litany of complaints about stubborn sons and grandsons and their inability to ever hold still.

“Stay for siesta, at least,” she insisted. “Everything shuts down anyway. Come with me now and meet your grandfather.”

Abuelo sat on a white leather couch that wasn't really white anymore, watching television. He turned off the TV and took Gabe's hand with both of his own. His skin was spotted heavily, and he had an astonishing number of wrinkles when he smiled. He couldn't speak. Gabe wasn't sure how much Abuelo understood, or if he had the slightest notion who Gabe was. But his grandfather did seem happy to see him. And he held the cane for one long moment before he gave it back.

*  *  *  *

“Pick up the phone the instant you get home,” Abuela insisted at the door. She pressed cash into Gabe's hand. “I would drive you back to the airport, but we haven't owned a car in years. My eyes are bad. Traffic lights all look the same to me now. But you found your way here, so find your way back. Hurry. I'm sure your mother's hair has gone entirely gray by now. Call me when you
get home, and call the very instant you hear from your father.”

“I will,” Gabe promised.

Mom's parents live here too
, he thought.
I've never met them either. And I'm not going to meet them now. But I'll come back. I'll come back.

After several cheek kisses and several more stones stacked lovingly on Abuela's cathedral of guilt, Kaen and Gabe walked back to the closest bus stop and waited.

“Citlalli?” Gabe asked.

“That really is my name,” Kaen said. “You're welcome to know it, but don't use it much. And never in the Embassy. Not while I speak for the Kaen.”

They watched a bus approach from far down the street.

“I'm sorry that your uncle wasn't here,” she said.

“Father,” Gabe corrected. “And we're not done looking for him yet.”

*  *  *  *

The Envoy and the shuttlecraft computer had learned how to talk to each other while they fretted and waited for the two ambassadors to return. Now the Envoy and shuttle worked together and tried to track his father down.

“Here's his cell number,” Gabe said. “He'll have the phone with him. Can you use it to find him?”

“I'm sure we can,” the Envoy said with solemn confidence—though it became less and less confident as the day wore on.

Gabe paced and waited. Kaen suggested an Embassy visit, but Gabe found himself utterly unable to slip into the trance, so he took up pacing again.

“I am now sure we can't,” the Envoy confessed. “Either his phone is no longer working or it is somewhere remote and unable to exchange information with the network of satellites that cell phones use.”

“Then we should fly over the desert and search for him,” Gabe said.

Kaen made a skeptical noise.

“This is your fault,” he told her, voice louder than he meant it to be. “I wanted to come find him right away. We would have found him right away if you'd just brought me here like I asked. Like we
agreed
. If the captains hadn't kept me detained, then we could have gotten here sooner.”

Kaen gave him a long look. “It is a large desert. This is a small ship. And if what you've told me about the border is true, then armed and suspicious people patrol that area. I would rather not meet such people. It would probably lead to diplomatic complications.”

Gabe hated how right she was. He went back to pacing.

“You should return home and wait for him, as your grandmother suggested,” the Envoy said. “That would be the most prudent course of action.”

Gabe couldn't even imagine doing that. “He's missing because I went missing. He's lost because of me.” He shifted blame away from Kaen and back onto himself, where it belonged. “I have to do something about that.”

Kaen said nothing.

The Envoy and the shuttle spoke softly to each other.

Projections of translated information filled the floor and walls. Gabe barely noticed. He paced back and forth inside a towering cathedral of guilt until the Envoy cautiously scootched up to him.

“We may have found something,” it said. “Your father's name is Octavio Fuentes? Age thirty-six?”

“That's him!” Gabe said. “Where is he?”

The Envoy took in a long breath. “Detained in Arizona. We found mention of him in an arrest report.”