Nomad

by William Alexander

  “But how can I mediate when I don’t know what they’re arguing about?”

  Sapi patted the side of his head. “In this situation your ignorance is probably your strength. Have fun. Bye!”

  Kaen and Sapi swam off, hand in hand.

  Gabe floated down to stand on the lake floor.

  “Hello,” he said. “I am Ambassador Gabe of Terra.”

  Both Aza of the Ven and Aza of the Gnole tried to introduce themselves at once. Then the yelling started up again.

  * * * *

  During the next few hours Gabe heard grievances, complaints, and accusations while Aza and Aza shifted shapes to become angular and toothy, or gelatinous and spiny, or massive and intimidating, or small and darting. Gabe’s senses kept trying to translate their appearance into something he could recognize and understand, but they kept right on shifting and never looked human for long.

  He did his best to keep them calm. He searched for the source of their shared animosity. He asked them to tell stories about an imaginary future in which they didn’t hate each other. He told them to transform into shapes that would make the other laugh. Nothing worked.

  Eventually Aza and Aza yelled themselves awake and both disappeared.

  Gabe slumped down in the sand. Well. That was an epic tantrum. His whole body felt clenched, just exactly the way he felt after coaxing his twin toddler siblings through a solid hour of screaming and woe.

  He wondered where Andrés and Noemi were, thirty thousand light-years away from the Embassy. He wondered who was watching them, taking care of them right at that moment. Then he stopped wondering, because it made breathing underwater much more difficult.

  Sapi and Kaen found him there.

  “How’d it go?” Sapi asked, her voice perfectly cheerful.

  “Badly,” Gabe said. He didn’t feel much like a qualified diplomat.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Sapi told him. “Those two don’t want to stop fighting. Not even a time-out down here in the cold and the dark could make them quit it. But there’s still progress. Generations ago they were constantly trying to kill each other. Now they’re constantly trying to humiliate each other. Maybe in another few generations they’ll be the kind of buddies who constantly make fun of each other. Who knows?”

  Gabe sat up and changed the subject. “I hope you two had a more useful chat than I did.”

  Kaen looked just like Gabe felt. Probably not, then, he thought. The other two sat beside him.

  “Not very useful, no,” Sapi admitted. “But it was still interesting. My people have studied the lanes and the Machinae for more than a thousand years. We’re pretty sure the Machinae are artificial, or at least that they used to be machines, way down in the deep, dark days of their origins, before they went off on their own to become something else. Hence their name. And we’ve also bounced ships, sensors, and probes off the lanes to check out their strange, sneaky gravity. We think the lanes might be made out of gravitational bleed from another, adjacent universe, which is neat. That bleed might also be why our universe is speeding up as it expands, because otherwise it really should be slowing down by now. Also neat.”

  Kaen made an impatient noise.

  Sapi spoke even faster. “But navigating through that overlapping space? Flying into the lanes? Nope. No idea how to do that. I’d say it isn’t possible, except that Kaen here saw someone else accomplish it. So it must be possible. But we don’t know how.”

  “Not even after a thousand years of study,” said Kaen. Her voice sounded like a desert with no water anywhere, even while speaking at the bottom of a lake. She sounded empty of hope.

  Sapi tried to throw a clump of sand at her, but the sand only scattered and floated away. “You make that seem like such a failure. It’s not as though we weren’t also doing other things at the same time. And curiosity narrowed down to one specific, practical goal misses out on all the good stuff.”

  “Right now I need to be practical minded,” said Kaen.

  “Of course you do,” Sapi said. “I’m sorry. I can share all the details we’ve learned so far. Maybe you’ll see something in it that we never did.”

  “Has anyone else studied the lanes?” Gabe asked. “We could compare notes.”

  Kaen shook her head. “We’re not speaking of this openly. People have died for knowing what we know.”

  “People have also died for not knowing it,” Gabe pointed out.

  “We need to be cautious,” Kaen insisted. “We need to keep this close. And I need to report back to the captains and reassure them that you’re capable of keeping your head down, keeping quiet, and not putting the fleet in more danger than we already enjoy.”

  Gabe felt one bright flash of anger. “Don’t threaten me. I’ve just heard two stubborn shape-shifters threaten each other, over and over again, for hours. Threats are just meaningless noise to me now.”

  “I didn’t mean to threaten,” Kaen said, her voice softer. “But the captains will ask. And I am a bad liar.”

  “I’m surprised,” Gabe said. “You do have an excellent poker face. That’s an expression for someone who hides secrets well.”

  “Good,” said Kaen. “I’ve practiced that.”

  Gabe laughed and flopped onto his back in the sand. He watched lights and colors move across the upper surface of the lake.

  “I should be going,” Sapi said. “Now that Aza and Aza finally woke up I don’t have anything else keeping me down here. And I don’t like it down here very much. Hopefully I’ll see you both next time I nap.”

  “We should be leaving too,” said Kaen. “Lots to do, awake and asleep.”

  “Okay,” Gabe said. He sat up.

  The other two were already gone.

  “I don’t know how to wake on command yet,” he said to the empty water where they used to be. He thought Kaen might physically wake him up after crawling out of her own nook, but that didn’t seem to be happening. Instead he sat alone, surrounded by dark, cold water. Then he heard a low, gong-like noise.

  Gabe recognized it as a summons. He swam for the surface and followed the sound.

  10

  The summons led Gabe to the surface of the lake. It led him across the beach and into the forest of silver leaves and oddly angular branches. His clothes dried quickly while he walked.

  None of the other ambassadors seemed to notice the sound. He wondered if anyone else could hear it.

  The summons ceased when he stepped into a small clearing and found his three neighbors there: Jir of the Builders and the Yards, Ca’tth of the Unbroken Line, and Ripe-fruit-dropped-in-sun-baked-mud-and-left-to-sit-content.

  Ca’tth stood in the center with his shimmering eyes unfocused. He picked up a stick and used it to draw lines and circles in the dirt. The other two stood close by, tense and watching.

  This looks like a private game, Gabe thought, unsure whether or not to intrude. He drew closer. Jir noticed him.

  “Get out,” she said, her voice flat and wanting to flatten him. “You put us in danger. To play catch. You aren’t welcome here. Not now.” Her long hair snapped and cracked against the air.

  “Noxious thing,” Ripe agreed.

  “No, no, no,” Ca’tth told them, calm and quiet. All of his earlier, twitchy anxiety had fallen away from him. “Let the Gabe stay. The Gabe should know what’s coming. Late, late, much too late to keep this hidden from his innocence.”

  He scratched out the drawings and then scribbled new ones in their place.

  “Here and here,” Ca’tth said.

  Ripe shook his head several times.

  “Are you sure?” Jir asked.

  “Yes, yes, yes,” Ca’tth insisted. “Go, go, go, go, go. My world has many hunting things. I know how to be hunted. I speak that language. Move your ships here, and also here.”

  Gabe felt a sinking feeling in his insides. They aren’t playing a game.

  “But they’ll follow us,” Jir said, her voice low.

  Ca’tth tapped the scribb
led drawing again. “They’ll focus on the planet and the larger ships. That’s their pattern, one they always keep. You can slip away, both of you. Now, now, now, now, now.”

  Jir knelt down beside Ca’tth to be the same height. “But you’re in one of the larger ships.”

  Ca’tth smiled. Gabe had never seen him smile before. “Go. This way and that way. Tell your ships which way to run.”

  Jir’s hair lashed back and forth. “I’ll have to wake up to do that. I can’t daydream my way here like you can.”

  “Burning,” Ripe said. “I smell burning in the air, in groundwater, in the ashes buried bitter in the dirt.”

  “You’re getting older, Ripe,” Ca’tth told him. “Your translations are slipping. Go find another world to put down roots.” His ears fluttered. His eyes grew distant again. “The gaps are closing. Almost too late now. Wake up and be gone. Go very fast.”

  Ripe folded in on himself. He wrapped his arms around his legs and disappeared.

  Jir looked at Gabe. He expected her to tell him to leave again. Go. Get out. Not welcome.

  “Stay with him,” she insisted.

  Gabe nodded once.

  Jir vanished.

  Gabe and Ca’tth stood alone in the center of the clearing.

  “What’s happening?” Gabe whispered, even though he already knew. What he really meant to say was, “Here. I’m right here.”

  “Outlast,” Ca’tth said simply.

  This is what he was so terrified of, before, Gabe thought. But he doesn’t look scared now that it’s happening. He’s somewhere on the other side of scared.

  “I understand a hunt,” Ca’tth told him. He kept his eyes closed now, focused on the things he saw while awake. “Hunters fixate, obsessed with just one thing at a time. I can work with that. Draw their focus. Demand attention. I can move as prey and make them follow me. No one else here knows what I’m doing. My shipmates think I’m using secret ambassador knowledge to plot our own escape. But I’m not. I’m plotting everyone else’s escape.”

  Gabe tried to think of something comforting to do. Hold Ca’tth’s hand, pat his shoulder, something, anything. He did none of those things. He had forgotten how.

  “If the others reach my system, we’ll welcome them,” Gabe promised. “Help them hide.”

  “Thank you,” Ca’tth said. “They might reach you, but it would take years. Outlast are more likely to find you first. I wish you a good hunt if they do. Be swift and clever.”

  “What can I do now?” Gabe whispered. “Is there anything I can do?” Please give me something to do.

  “Stay right there,” Ca’tth said. “Bear witness. Please don’t go.”

  His stick still tapped in the dirt, but with less urgency.

  “Now here,” he said to himself, his thoughts very far away. “Now here.” Then he dropped the stick. “Now.”

  Ca’tth’s entangled self scattered and faded.

  Gabe stood alone in the clearing, in the forest, in the Embassy, in the center of the galaxy.

  “My fault,” he said to himself. He had called them all together for a local game of catch. He invited predatory attention down on his closest neighbors. Now their homeworlds burned. Gabe would have thrown up if he had brought his stomach with him. “My fault.”

  “It is not,” Omegan told him.

  The Outlast ambassador stood at the edge of the trees. Gabe stared. He didn’t know whether to attack him or run.

  “We would have come for their worlds anyway, without that ball game,” Omegan went on. “We had already fixed our attention there. You are not culpable in this.”

  Gabe did not find this comforting. Ca’tth was still dead.

  “You are.”

  Omegan turned to go. “And for this reason you should not be speaking to me.”

  “How do you move through the lanes?” Gabe blurted out.

  Sometimes the best way to know is just to ask, he thought.

  Kaen is going to throw me out an airlock, he also thought.

  Omegan turned slowly back around. “The lanes.”

  “The Machinae lanes,” Gabe clarified. If you really are sorry for this, then make some attempt to show it. Tell us what we need to know.

  “They recognize us,” Omegan told him. “They let us pass.”

  I’m going to need more detail than that, Gabe thought.

  “How? How did you make that happen? Did you speak to the Machinae?”

  “No.” Omegan struggled to find the words. “The lanes let us pass through. We did nothing to make that happen. Linked as we are, in the way that we are, in the way that we speak to each other, in the way that they recognized, the lanes let us pass.”

  I don’t know what he’s talking about, Gabe thought, frustrated and furious. Is this a translation glitch? Maybe not. Maybe he just doesn’t know how to say what he means.

  “How do the Outlast speak to each other?” Gabe asked.

  “All at once,” Omegan told him.

  Gabe understood the danger then. Inside the privacy of his own head he said several scalding phrases he had learned from Lupe.

  “Thanks,” he said aloud, and then he woke up.

  11

  Omegan tried to hide what he knew. This was difficult. His species had always shared thought and experience with each other, each mind linked and entangled. They did not understand that other kinds of thought and experience had worth. They did not recognize anyone else’s right to exist.

  Omegan knew better. He was an ambassador. But ambassadors are juveniles, and easily ignored.

  He hoped that everyone else would ignore him now.

  The bond between Outlast grew stronger with age and maturity. Omegan was still young. He could still set his mind apart from their shared awareness. He tried to hide what he knew.

  He failed.

  Omegan woke. The clamor of all other Outlast voices echoed inside his head. They untangled in every direction. The loudest voices set the shape of all the words to follow.

  That one knows how we travel.

  That one speaks with the Kaen.

  Kaen survivors know how we travel, know and share the information.

  The lanes.

  The Machinae lanes.

  Closed to all others.

  Open to ourselves.

  Chosen.

  We forfeit all military advantage if we lose the lanes.

  We forfeit all advantage if any others gain the lanes.

  We forfeit the manifest certainty of our exclusive survival without the lanes.

  We need the lanes.

  We must keep the lanes.

  We must find the Kaen survivors.

  We must find those among them who share what they know.

  Omegan failed to hold himself apart. But he noticed something that he had not known before.

  Outlast had hidden themselves among the Kaen. Remnants of the last attack kept low and tried to discover their current location, the hiding place of all the Kaen survivors. These few Outlast had not learned it yet, but once they knew, all other Outlast would also know. The warships and raiders of the Outlast would come hunting for the Kaen.

  Omegan became aware of these hidden Outlast, and in that moment they became aware of him and what he knew. They shifted their priorities and shaped their choices with new urgency.

  The lanes.

  Protect the lanes.

  The Kaen must not learn how to travel the lanes.

  Omegan could not hide what he knew.

  I warned him, he thought, down in that part of himself where thoughts remained his own. I warned the Terran not to talk to me.

  PART THREE

  MESSENGERS

  12

  Gabe heard his mother’s voice.

  “Wake up.”

  He knew it wasn’t her, but he took one long, drowsy moment to remember why it wasn’t her.

  “I’m awake,” he told the Envoy.

  “Excellent,” it said. “We have breakfast to eat and business to atte
nd to.”

  Gabe awkwardly crawled out of the sleeping nook set into the chamber wall.

  He remembered the lake and the shifters, Sapi and Kaen, Ca’tth and Omegan. It still surprised him to remember his dreams. He never used to. Now he set these entangled memories gently aside.

  Not yet, he thought. Not yet. I can’t sort through all of that yet.

  Someone had set out a change of clothes for him. He put them on, relieved. His shorts and T-shirt had felt clammy ever since getting dunked in Minnehaha Falls. The Kaen tunic had far more dignity, and he was happy to borrow that dignity from them.

  A platter of cakes that were not tamales sat on the floor beside a drinking bowl of water. No one uses tables here, Gabe grumbled to himself. They have universal translators and artificial gravity, but no tables. Must be because the Kaen are all different species. Different heights. Waist high to me might be over someone else’s head. If they have heads. Some of the people I saw in the city crowds yesterday didn’t seem to have heads. Does the word yesterday still make sense when Night and Day are two constant, separate cities? Don’t worry about it. Stop thinking in small circles and eat your breakfast.

  He ate all the cakes, because he was hungry, but they still tasted dry and bland to him.

  “Where is everybody?” Gabe asked around an unsatisfying mouthful.

  “Nadia is taking her customary walk around the city with Dromidan the antisocial doctor.” When it spoke of Nadia, the Envoy slipped into a deeper, gruffer voice. “She has always enjoyed long walks. I hope she is well. I do hope so. Nadia is strong and stubborn enough to ignore her own injuries, which makes them unlikely to fully heal.”

  “Do you think her eyes will get better?” Gabe asked.

  “No,” the Envoy said. “And her eyes are not what I spoke of.” It shook itself and reclaimed Gabe’s mother’s voice. “I’m unsure where Ambassador Kaen is, but she told me that she would return soon. She means to bring us to her academy, which is housed somewhere inside this large, pyramidal structure. Underneath the Library, I think. Ambassador Kaen intends to introduce us to her own envoy.” It paused. Uncertain shades of purple flickered across its skin. “I have never met another envoy before. I’m not sure what this meeting will be like. Awkward, probably, given the fragile, tenuous levels of trust between ourselves and our hosts. I imagine Ambassador Kaen kept a very close watch on you in the Embassy.”