Inaru.
How had I wanted her to share my life, but she had honoured the contract her parents had brokered for her instead. A man twenty years her senior, who was paying her to give him two children. I couldn’t live with that. She said of course she would honour a lucrative contract, that didn’t mean I couldn’t see her anymore. We could never have children anyway, so why did it matter?
It mattered to me. I couldn’t stand the thought of another man putting his hands on her, sleeping next to her at night. It mattered because at that time, I didn’t really understand how the network, imayu, tied Coldi to one another. I thought I did, but I didn’t. So I had given her a choice she couldn’t understand: me or him.
For the next six months I’d struggled to keep myself away from the edge of that cliff, from the abyss of work-until-you-drop, of far too much alcohol at night, of sleep medication, yes, even dark contemplations that my life was worthless without her and that I might as well end it. I had sworn never in my life to become ensnared by a Coldi woman again. Coldi didn’t marry; I should have known better; I should not have let my heart rule.
Thayu’s voice scattered my thoughts. “Hungry?”
A couple of dishes stood on the table. One of the young boys from the kitchen waited to serve.
Thayu walked to the far side and I settled opposite her. My stomach grumbled. “Is this going to be safe for me to eat?”
Thayu pointed at the dishes. “You can eat that, and that, but I would stay clear of the mushrooms.”
Yes. Mushrooms were always a bad idea, especially those Nicha favoured. Some of them would kill me three times over.
I let the boy scoop some food out of the bowls onto a plate. Silence lingered as we ate. My memories were harder to dispel. The food was interesting—crisp and colourful. The idea was to pick up the salad with the bread and dip the lot in sauce. Strong and unfamiliar tastes made my ears glow.
Thayu finished quickly and used a bland-looking fruit to mop the remains of the sauce from a bowl. Like Nicha, she ate much more than I did.
She turned her perfect eyes on me. “I believe you don’t have a feeder?”
“It was taken from me and not returned.” I cringed at the subject.
“We should look into getting you a new one.” That was a polite-we, the form that meant I’m really doing this by myself, but I’m pretending it’s a group effort.
“We should.” And that was the we-form that could mean almost anything, most often used by bureaucracy.
This was an argument fought in pronouns.
I didn’t want to think of sharing a feeder.
Yet my job required one, otherwise how could I confer with her in meetings, and—let her in on my memories of Inaru?
I stared at my plate, my appetite gone.
“You want a drink?” Before I could answer, Thayu rose and turned to the back wall, where she yanked at a handle to a cupboard door. “Oops—wrong one.”
Inside the cupboard’s darkness blinked lights in rows. Just a second she held the door open before slamming it shut.
The next cupboard she opened contained a variety of jars and bottles. She took out one, unstoppered it and poured a yellowish liquid in the cups.
Without a word, she sat down, giving me an intense look. I needed no explanation for what I had seen: everything said in this room, or maybe even in the entire apartment, was recorded.
10
FIRE.
Everything was on fire. The stone walls, the marble floor.
A woman sat in the middle of the room, hands tied to the back of her chair.
Her voice rasped in an eerie whisper, the pained words just outside my hearing. An orange glow bathed her face, which glistened with sweat.
I stood at the door, stroked by a breeze of cool air. I could run to safety, but I couldn’t leave her behind. I wanted to scream, Inaru! but my voice wouldn’t work. The flames licked the legs of the chair, crawling up her feet. Inaru!
I reached out for her . . . and hit my hand on something.
Ouch . . . What the fuck?
A sweaty sheet wrapped around my shoulders.
A crumpled pillow.
I blinked against the glare of light to my left. A triangular window. Thin curtains. Benches along whitewashed walls. There was a wooden cupboard, a table, a chair and opposite the window, an arched door.
I pushed myself up, the nightmare slowly subsiding. My arm was wet and so was my cheek, from my own drool. I sat on a hard mattress in an oval bed made from woven reeds—like a giant dog basket. I remembered how I had stumbled into the dark room last night, after almost falling off my chair at the table, how I had intended to sleep only for a bit.
I needed to check my mail, find out what had been happening at Nations of Earth and send a message to Eva, and now it was . . . I scanned a bedside shelf for my reader, only to realise I’d left it on the table in the other room. I groaned. My first day, and I started it by doing downright stupid things. My entire life was on that reader. The staff would be operating all that listening equipment; the staff couldn’t be trusted.
I jumped out of bed and stumbled a few dizzy steps over the tiles, almost tripping over a longhaired rug, looking as if someone had flattened a shaggy possum on the floor.
A pile of clothes lay neatly folded on a bench against the wall. Not mine—but the clothes I had been wearing last night. Someone had been in here; I definitely hadn’t left them like that. When I tried to pick up the shirt, pain seared through my palms. Oh shit, my hands. Yellowish ooze had seeped through the tape.
I stood there, feeling sick and dizzy, dazed and helpless, with no idea how I was going to do up the fiddly fastening hooks of my shirt without bending my fingers.
At that moment, the door rolled open, the slats clattering against each other, and Eirani burst in.
“Ah, the Delegate is awake.”
Far too cheerful. She put down the basket she carried and eased the shirt from my hands. “Let me put that on.”
Grateful, I spread out my arms and let her slip the shirt over my shoulders. Her experienced hands dealt with the fastenings. Broad hands, with thick fingers and unusually long thumbs. Her hair, coarse and parted in the middle, smelled of spicy soap.
She bustled to my back, flicked my hair from under the collar. Then she put a chair in the middle of the flattened-possum rug. “Sit down, Delegate.”
I sat, my bare feet in the hair. “Eirani, is there any news, from anyone?”
Like Danziger, like Delia, Nicha or Eva.
“The staff doesn’t know. The staff looks after the house. The Delegate will have to ask the young lady.”
With a wide-tooth comb, more gel and liberal amounts of tut-tutting she forced my hair back into the sleek ponytail. A dash of perfume on the back of my neck and she declared me ready to go . . .
Into an empty hall.
I stared. Eirani came up from behind, carrying more washing. “Delegate?”
“What has happened to my luggage?”
“The staff has unpacked it and put everything away.”
While I was asleep? The staff take liberties. A brief moment of panic rose in me. “Where is my reader?”
“On the table in the sitting room, Delegate.”
Where I had left it. Phew. I took a moment to compose myself. Surely, I was expecting treason where there wasn’t any. Apartments of high-profile delegates would be routinely bugged, both to listen in and to protect the inhabitant. Little was ever a secret at gamra headquarters. Loyalty went both ways. Spying did, too. Nothing unusual.
“Where is Thayu?”
Eirani gestured to the sitting room.
I entered. The two couches that yesterday had stood in a v-formation now faced each other neatly, positioned exactly the same distance from the edge of the carpet, a typically Coldi arrangement.
Thayu sat at the table, in the same spot she had taken yesterday, her back to the cabinet with the spying equipment. A half-smile crossed her face. “Good m
orning.”
I almost groaned—she looked so incredibly awake. “Any news from anyone? I meant to . . . I’m sorry about falling asleep last night.”
“You were dead on your feet.”
“Where’s my reader?” But I had already noticed it on the cabinet against the wall.
“Sit down.”
“But I need to know what’s been going on.”
“After breakfast.”
An extensive choice of food waited on the table. Slices of bread of some kind lay on a tray, arranged in an intricate pattern whereby every slice overlapped the one to its right. Orange tea steamed in cups. There were salads, and fruit, and a jar of juice.
I pulled a chair back, noting that none of the food had been touched. “You waited for me?”
“It seemed only polite.”
A fleeting memory crossed my mind. Summer breakfasts. Christmas, Boxing Day, New Year. The summer holidays from school. Lazy times, my mother in the kitchen. Cory, don’t bring half the beach into the kitchen. Have you washed your hands? Wait until Daddy sits down.
No one had waited for me for years. I don’t know why it suddenly choked me up.
“Thank you.”
She inclined her head.
Wincing, I picked up my cup and sipped the hot tea, which tasted heavy and sweet.
Eirani bustled in with another tray, stopped a few paces inside the door, staring at the new arrangement of the couches on the carpet. Glared at Thayu, redness rising in her cheeks.
To her credit, she said nothing, but came to the table and bowed.
“Everything is to the Delegate’s taste?”
“It is. Thank you, Eirani.”
She pointedly positioned herself so that Thayu was forced to look at her large behind. “The staff will be going to markets this morning. Is there anything the Delegate desires?”
I hesitated, knowing that what I was going to say would make matters worse. “Would the markets have manazhu, or is there any in the house?”
The you-drink-that-revolting-stuff look she gave me in response was answer enough.
“You can make it here, can’t you?”
“If the Delegate wants.”
“Yes, I think I would want it.” I used the intimate-I, to indicate it was my private wish, and that she was entitled to think of it what she wanted without feeling embarrassed.
“The staff will have to buy powder and filters.”
“You can buy those in town, can’t you?”
“If the Delegate wants.”
“Yes, I do.”
She nodded, her face stiff, and left the room.
Thayu took a slice of bread from the tray, upsetting the roof-tile arrangement.
“You like manazhu?” An amused look danced in her eyes.
She used the friendly-you pronoun, not quite the one I used to speak to Nicha, but the one for speaking to someone who is more friend than colleague.
“It awakens the mind.”
“Not many non-Coldi people like it.”
With morning light glittering in her eyelashes, she resembled Nicha, in the way she ripped the bread, in the way she looked at what she ate before putting it in her mouth. I wondered if it was a Coldi thing.
“I know,” I said, and forced myself to speak in a more professional tone; she wasn’t Nicha and I couldn’t have a similar relationship with her. “I have a pressing need to use the communication hub after breakfast.”
“I will show you how it works.”
“Thank you. I also need to speak to the office staff.”
“They are already waiting downstairs.”
There was a clock on the wall with a triple face. The gamra clock on the left showed late afternoon, and I guessed that was not the time the staff adhered to. The clock on the right probably ran at Trader time, which I could safely ignore. But the middle one had the local five-point notation, according to which we were in the second fifth of the day. Midmorning.
Silly Delegate, staying in bed for so long. “Anything else on the agenda?”
“The uniform fitter is expecting you today. Zhamata meets in five days.”
Five days to prepare my speech. Five days to prevent disaster, unless I could convince Delegate Akhtari to write that statement earlier.
“We also need to arrange to replace your feeder.”
I nodded absently, sipping my tea, avoiding her eyes. Did I hope that if I showed no interest, she would forget about the feeder? It was a childish response, and not one that would work in the long run, but I really didn’t know what else to do.
Could I refuse a feeder? I didn’t think so. I would need to figure out how to limit access to certain subjects, if that was possible—and damn it—Nicha normally did that sort of thing.
In silence, I demolished the bread and gulped tea.
After breakfast, I followed Thayu across the hall to the dark maw of communication room. A few lights blinked in the dark; the glow gilded the edge of the control panel and a cushioned bench.
I stopped at the door.
What was I doing? I might be tired and sore, but that was no reason to be an idiot.
“Wait.”
Thayu frowned. “You wanted to know how to operate this?”
“I do, but let’s set this up properly. If someone is listening to us, I can listen to them.” I could still hear Amarru tell me, in perhaps the third week of my training, if you’re doing something important, there should always be witnesses.
I strode through the hall, into the corridor, past the bathroom and the bedrooms. Down the stairs and into the office. Employees straightened at their desks; wide-eyed glances met me.
“Work to do. Anyone here knows how to use the hub?”
One man, in the far corner near the window, raised his hand.
“Good. You can come with us.”
While the man rose from his chair, I strode into the room and stopped at the first desk to my left, occupied by another young man. “You will look after the accounts. There is to be a payment for me from Nations of Earth. Find out where it is. Look in my directive area. You will find a number of documents there. Put them through the translator. I want a summary within two days. Next . . .” I strode to the desk of a young woman who stared up at me as if I were a divine apparition. “My agenda and programs for the next few days.”
She nodded.
“You.” I turned around and stopped at the next desk. “You might want to help him.” I pointed at the man I had told to work on Delia’s files. “I think there is quite a lot of work. Let me know if it doesn’t look like you’ll get it done. Also, the gamra news bulletins. Find out what they’re saying and what the mood is about the attack on Perto Sirkonen and whatever has happened since. . . .” I hesitated. “Especially find out what’s happening with the refugee situation.” I still heard that woman’s voice, Azisha! If her son hadn’t been on our flight, he would have been left behind in Athens.
Wide-eyed, the staff packed away their other work—whatever they had been doing, whoever for.
I was probably totally out of order, and much too informal, but they would have to get used to that.
The staff take liberties.
Not anymore. As long as it lasted, before someone presented me with a bill, I’d make as much use of these people as I could.
“You two, come with us.” I gestured at the remaining men, both young and lean.
I turned and strode out again. Thayu stood at the door; I swore her face carried an amused expression.
In the hall, I opened the door and told the Indrahui guards to come inside. They protested, but I explained that I had brought two locals to take their places at the door. The young men perked up to be given that task. The guards didn’t like it, but I insisted. No one else understood Isla.
Then, finally, with the black forms of the guards, and the assistant from downstairs, I went into communication room.
Thayu slid behind the control panel, and the staff lined up, looking awkward, in a show
case of different gamra races.
I pointed the young man from the office to a control panel on a desk just inside the door. “What is your name again?”
“Devin, Delegate.” The light from the projection showed up the groove in the tip of his nose. A local, like Eirani.
“All right, Devin, I am going to contact some people. I want you to make sure everything, every word, every picture, every attempt to connect, even if all lines are busy, is logged into my work directive area. Do you know how to do that?”
“I do, Delegate.”
“When you’ve set that up, I want you to be an independent witness. Use the translator, and log it as well.”
Without a word, Devin tapped a command on one of the screens and then found a little box somewhere under the desk. He seemed to know what he was doing.
I turned to the two Indrahui. “Mashara, come over here and sit on this bench.” I gestured to the right of Thayu. “I want you to witness and use your experience with my world to interpret what’s going on. Make plenty of notes.” I hesitated. “The other thing is . . . your names, mashara. I know it’s not appropriate to ask, but this is my office, and it is not in my custom to speak to nameless people.”
The men glanced at each other.
“Anyone who doesn’t like it will be invited to share a cup of manazhu with the Delegate,” Thayu said.
Eyes widened.
I had to make an effort not to snort. “I believe my zhayma is joking.”
The corners of her eyes crinkled with laughter.
Oh, that dratted Coldi sense of humour. “Forget about the manazhu. If the staff is so good as to get it, I know it will be precious enough not to waste it on those who do not appreciate it. But, mashara, I would like your names.”
The guard with the dyed hair expelled a breath. “Evi.”
“Then you must be Telaris.”
The other man gave a small waggle with his fingers, a sign guards used for yes.
I hoped I hadn’t crossed too many boundaries. Indrahui expressions were hard to read and what little I knew about their culture indicated that they were intensely private people. I’d have to make this up to them in some way.
“Then let’s get to work.”
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