Gabe nodded. “She did. But then, after she left . . .” His voice failed him. He cleared his throat, tried again, and broke off when Ambassador Kaen pushed aside the sliding door and reentered the room.
“What’s wrong?” she asked when she saw Gabe’s face.
So much, he thought. And it’s all mixing together. Ca’tth is dead. Dad’s getting deported. My sister almost got kicked out of college before she could go. The twins are probably throwing mighty tantrums back and forth between them. Frankie’s mom hates pets. She might have eaten mine by now. Mom doesn’t know where I am, and not knowing probably stabs her in the stomach every single time she notices that I’m not there. These cakes are not tamales, not at all, and digesting them also feels like small stabs to the stomach. Many things are wrong.
He chose the largest and most immediate wrong to actually say out loud.
“Outlast just attacked the Centauri systems.”
Kaen nodded. She held her head high and stuck out her chin, just like she always did whenever she decided to be brave about something. “That’s close.”
“Yeah,” Gabe said.
“And heavily populated.”
“Yeah,” Gabe said. “Some ships evacuated during the attack. Others didn’t. Ambassador Ca’tth of the Unbroken Line is dead. He sent out a local distress signal right after you woke up. I was the only one with him when he died.”
And then I spoke with Omegan again, he thought. I did exactly what I’m not supposed to do. But he told me something important. Something I don’t understand yet. “The lanes recognize us. . . .”
Kaen moved closer to him. She leaned in and pressed her forehead against his. Then she moved away again. The gesture seemed formal rather than affectionate, but it was still close.
“I’ll let the captains know,” said Kaen. “They should be preparing the fleet to run again, and soon, but we’re still taking on supplies of ice. I’m not sure how quickly we can leave.”
“You’ll need to bring me home before you do leave,” Gabe reminded her.
Kaen hesitated. “Even if the Outlast are coming? Even if they’ve already reached the Centauri systems?”
“Yes,” Gabe said.
“Then I will,” she said. “It was part of our treaty. Now come and meet the Envoy. I mean my envoy.”
* * * *
Elevator doors closed behind them. Kaen traced their route on the pyramid illustration etched into the wall.
“We’ll have to pass through the academy,” she said. “And we won’t be able to talk along the way. The main floor lacks translation.”
That seemed backward to Gabe. “Isn’t translation a big part of our job?”
“Exactly,” she said. “We don’t want the little ambassadors-in-training to rely on it too much. Besides, everyone here is from the same fleet, whatever their ship and species of origin. We have a shared culture. They need to practice what it’s like to talk to alien civilizations, so we make it harder to talk to each other. No translations, no explanations, no adult supervision. Not in the central chamber, at least. The little tutoring rooms off to the side have translation nodes. Former ambassadors serve there sometimes, and offer help when asked—but they have to be asked. Our envoy lives and works in one of those smaller rooms. That’s where we’re going.”
“I have noticed that it doesn’t remain by your side,” Gabe’s envoy said. “I find that surprising. Selecting an ambassador is the beginning of my task, not the end.”
“No, it doesn’t follow me around,” said Kaen, also clearly surprised. “And it didn’t choose me.”
The Envoy turned shocked shades of purple. “But that selection is my primary responsibility.”
“It considers the academy its primary responsibility,” Kaen explained. “And the academy chose me. Our envoy met with every student and asked them to describe every other student, and whether or not they would make a good ambassador. It learned about us from what we said about each other. So we chose. It noticed that choice.”
The elevator stopped. The door opened. Kaen probably said something like, “Follow me,” but she said it in a language that Gabe couldn’t understand.
The academy looked like a maze and an arena. Bright colors covered the floor and separated out different areas. Gabe saw holographic spaceflight simulators, hovering four-dimensional puzzles, and kids of several different species gathered in a circle and singing—or at least he guessed that they were singing. None of the noise translated. None of the extraterrestrial Kaen looked human to him.
A long, narrow ball court took up the very center of the room. Players passed the ball back and forth by whacking it with sides, hips, and flanks rather than using more nimble, articulate limbs to catch or throw. They tried to knock the ball through mounted hoops, as in basketball, but the hoops were twisted sideways, more like tunnels than baskets.
Gabe recognized it. This is the oldest sport we know about. Mom just called it “the ball game.” The Mesoamerican ball game. People used to play it with thick rubber balls in stone courtyards.
“Hurry, Gabe,” the Envoy said. “Our companion is striding on ahead, and she hasn’t noticed how far we lag behind her.”
“You don’t sound like you want to hurry,” Gabe pointed out.
“I am feeling increasingly uncertain about meeting a colleague,” the Envoy admitted.
“I’m sorry you don’t have all of this,” Gabe said. “I’m sorry humans burned down your academies. But I’m also glad you stick around after you pick an ambassador.”
“That is how I interpret my role,” the Envoy said.
Kaen reached a door painted blue. She waited there for Gabe and his envoy before sliding it open. All three of them went in.
A dead alien lay sprawled across the center of the room.
13
The corpse was long, thin, and very pale. It had large, dark eyes and a small mouth, all open. Its two arms and hands looked similar to human limbs, though longer and with more joints. The rest looked far less human. Its torso ended in dozens of tentacles rather than legs.
“This was an Outlast,” said Kaen, her words hard and sharp. “They boarded us in the last attack. We fought them off. Eventually.”
Gabe stared. Then he almost laughed, and hiccupped instead.
Tentacles, he thought. The Outlast have tentacles. Of course they do. Tentacled invaders on a flying saucer. All of our dreams and nightmares about space are true.
“Why is there is a dead Outlast in your envoy’s room?” Gabe asked.
“Because it’s performing an autopsy,” Kaen told him. “Look. Here it comes. Look away instead if you’re feeling squeamish.”
An envoy oozed from a hole in the back of the Outlast skull. It was blue, bright blue, like turquoise or the Caribbean Sea, and its skin was covered in small, icky pieces of the corpse.
Blue Envoy oozed into a bowl of disinfectant sand and flopped around to scrub itself. Then it emerged and made a mouth. It didn’t extend any sort of puppet-shaped limb, or take the time to mimic human vocal cords. Instead it just opened a mouth across its side. That made it look like a blue Pac-Man, or a beach ball slashed open. When it spoke it sounded like a toad.
“Welcome, Ambassador Gabriel Sandro Fuentes,” it croaked. “I do apologize for the assassination attempts. It was I who sabotaged your device of entanglement from afar. The council of captains requested this of me, but my actions are my own and I must beg your pardon for them. I’m so very pleased that these efforts failed—due in no small part to brilliant engineering by your own envoy. I really don’t know how it managed to maintain a stasis field around that tiny black hole for so long. Well done. Very well done.”
“Thank you,” said Purple Envoy, half-outraged and half-flattered.
“Consider yourself forgiven,” Gabe said. “And you still have a smear of Outlast brains on your side. Over there.” He pointed.
Blue Envoy scrubbed in the sand again. “Much obliged,” it said. “Fascinating brain struct
ure. The Outlast seem to have evolved a kind of cognitive entanglement, naturally occurring and shared throughout the species. Practically telepathic. Absolutely fascinating. But I would rather not carry accidental samples of brain tissue with me all over the place.”
Purple Envoy scooted cautiously closer. “May I?”
“Yes, yes, of course!” Blue Envoy said, and oozed aside.
Purple Envoy peered into the skull cavity. It remained on the outside, looking in.
Something tickled in Gabe’s own brain. Linked as we are, in the way that we are . . .
“What else did you learn about them?” Kaen asked, her voice still hard and sharp.
“A great deal,” Blue Envoy said, “though I don’t know how much will prove useful to us. The Outlast were aquatic in their recent ancestry. Now amphibious, they can move through many environments with ease.”
It oozed around the edge of the room and adjusted a row of small and abstract figurines, each one carved of turquoise stone. Blue Envoy swallowed one of them, changed its shape by digesting part of it, and then spit the thing back out and carefully returned it to its place.
Maybe all envoys are sculptors, Gabe thought. Mine made clay out of moon dust while stranded at Zvezda.
“I can’t tell if they are, or were, primarily a predator or prey species,” Blue Envoy went on. “Likely both. And the workings and articulations of their limb joints are very interesting. I would like to describe those at length, but that would be indulgent and impose too much on your time. I didn’t ask for your company in order to lecture you about Outlast wrist bones. I asked you here in order to introduce myself, and to apologize for my part in your attempted murder, which I’ve already done—and which I’ll probably continue to do.”
It’s babbling, Gabe thought. Maybe all envoys babble when they’re nervous.
“And you are still pardoned,” he said aloud.
“Thank you,” Blue Envoy said. “So very gracious. But I must also make some small amends for my actions by offering you . . . by making available to you . . .” It trailed off, embarrassed.
Purple Envoy broke the awkward silence. “You are repeating the Great Speaker’s offer to make this academy and its tutors available to him. Because he has had no prior training, and very little instruction before the current crisis. None at all, really. But you fear that this invitation reflects poorly on me.”
“Yes,” Blue Envoy admitted. “And yes. But I don’t want to cast any doubts or imply any criticisms of your work, I truly don’t.”
Purple Envoy bowed its head. “No offense taken. Truly. I have failed to maintain a proper academy on Earth, but that failure is not wholly my own. Human society has not tolerated any such institution so far. I am pleased to see that human ambassadors fare better here.”
“Mostly,” said Kaen. “But you’ve already seen that our society doesn’t always respect us, either.”
The two envoys huddled together and spoke of founding different academies. They paid less and less attention to anyone else.
Gabe and Kaen considered the dead Outlast and its broken skull. Kaen looked like she wanted to kill it again.
“Were you there?” Gabe asked. “When they attacked and boarded, were you there?” It felt dangerous to ask. Just asking might bring up wounds of blood and loss.
“No,” said Kaen. “I was here. We sealed up the whole pyramid. Then we waited for a very long time without knowing much of anything about the fight, or about the rest of the fleet. We lost contact with each other. Ships scattered. And we couldn’t find all of them when we gathered ourselves back together. We still don’t know what happened to those missing ships. But we can guess.”
“The Outlast don’t ever lose contact with each other,” Gabe mused. The tickle in his brain became an itch. “Not if they’re all entangled. I wonder what that’s like. Talking to everyone you know, all at once.”
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.
“What is it?” Kaen asked. “You’re staring at an Outlast corpse with a huge, gleeful grin on your face, and I find that unsettling.”
Gabe felt like shouting. He spoke softly as though sharing a secret instead.
“I know how they move through the lanes.”
14
“You spoke to Omegan.”
Kaen stood in a wide, solid stance, both arms to her sides, both eyes locked onto Gabe as though preparing to shoot powerful lasers at his face.
“Yes,” Gabe admitted. “And he said—”
“You spoke to Omegan,” Kaen repeated, as though no other information could possibly matter.
“Yes,” Gabe said. “He spoke to me first.”
“And you didn’t leave? Run? Wake up immediately?”
“I didn’t run,” Gabe said. He didn’t back down now, either. “And I don’t know how to wake up immediately. Or how to fall asleep immediately. But I would like to learn, so if any academy tutors are available to show me, I’d be thrilled. I hear there’s a tree who teaches the trance.”
Kaen continued to glare at Gabe as though drilling ice out of his eyeballs. “So. You spoke to Omegan.”
“Yes,” Gabe said. “And he told me that the lanes recognize them. The lanes recognize the way Outlast communicate with each other. That’s how they get through.”
“You believe him.” She said it like an accusation, like she also accused him of falling through infinite depths of stupidity.
Gabe nodded. “I believe him. He was horrified when Ca’tth died. He tried to comfort me afterward. He tried to convince me that it wasn’t my fault.”
Which didn’t work, Gabe thought.
The two envoys abandoned their own conversation and moved to stand beside their respective ambassadors. Both kept silent.
Kaen shook her head. “The captains are going to kill us both. Or else force me to kill you while they watch.”
Gabe wondered whether or not she was joking, or if this was something the Kaen actually did. He decided that he’d rather not know.
“Just run with this idea for a bit,” Gabe said. “Please. Play along. You don’t have to believe it, you just have to pretend. He said recognize. The lanes recognize them.”
Kaen shifted her stance. It was slight. She just moved her weight between one foot and the other. But now the way she stood made her look less like a death-minded duelist and more like a ball player ready for a match. Okay, let’s do this, her stance said. We aren’t on the same team, but we’re in the same game. I’ll play along.
“If that’s true,” she said, establishing rules and boundaries, “and if the word recognize translated well, then Outlast passage through the lanes isn’t a trick of physics or engineering. They didn’t build a new kind of ship, one that can travel through different kinds of space. They didn’t do much of anything. The lanes decided to let them through because the Outlast are somehow familiar.”
She paused. Gabe picked up the ball and ran farther. “The way they speak to each other is familiar.”
Kaen caught his excitement. Her stance shifted again. Now maybe they could play on the same team.
“So the Machinae must communicate in similar ways. All together, all at once, all of them entangled.”
Gabe waved his arms around like a happy Muppet. “Yes. And if that’s true, if the Machinae do communicate, if the Machinae can communicate, then maybe we can figure out how to finally talk to them. Just like Nadia tried to do.”
Kaen held up a cautioning hand. “That’s still a huge leap to make. We can’t even get into the lanes to have this impossible conversation. We can’t pretend to be Outlast, or pretend to be Machinae. We won’t be recognized. Not if we need to have brains shaped like that.” She pointed at the broken Outlast cranium on the floor.
Purple Envoy tentatively raised its mouth. “And yet the both of you reshaped your neurology and perceptions in order to learn how to travel to the Embassy.”
“But she is not entangled like this.” Purple Envoy peered back into the Outlast skull. “Not in the way you described. Most forms of life communicate in a linear, sequential sort of way. Their words move in straight lines, marching after each other in single file. A written book puts down lines of ink across a page like a train rolling down one single track. A line of spoken conversation lets all other branching threads, all the things that we might have talked about, disappear unspoken. But it seems that the Outlast can communicate in many directions at once—though only with each other, entangled as they are.”
Blue Envoy started to bounce up and down. “We could further adjust the speech centers of an ambassador’s brain, one still young enough to have malleable neurology. If we used every other ambassador as fixed points of reference, and not merely the Embassy . . .”
“. . . then we might create a massive, galaxy-wide synaptic map for language and meaning to play in,” Purple Envoy added, finishing the thought. “The lanes might recognize such an expansively entangled ambassador. And the Machinae might speak with such an ambassador.”
“That’s a lot of may and might be,” Kaen pointed out.
“Very true,” Purple Envoy admitted. “All of this is wild conjecture and haphazard guesses, a number of mights fancifully piled on top of each other and teetering. It might be true and possible—but infinite numbers of things might be true.”
“Agreed,” said Blue Envoy. “We need evidence that this hypothesis is a coherent, workable theory before we risk tampering with anyone’s brain.”
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