by Patty Jansen
Not much later, the train slowed and slid into the airport station.
Because the train lines between the islands of Barresh went over the water and never crossed the land, we had to make our way up the slight incline—truly the only hill in Barresh—and around the side of the complex.
I walked at the front with Thayu and Nicha, but the rest of the party spread out over a long distance. I could see Idda trying to climb the fence behind us.
“I don’t know how we’re going to manage to keep that one out of mischief,” I muttered.
“I still don’t see why she should come, Pengali habits or no.”
“But then we wouldn’t have been able to take Ayshada.” And he was part of the family.
But the Pengali were also a family, and apparently, Thousand Islands tribe law said that if a senior tribe member were consulted, all generations under her should also be involved. Hence the daughter and the daughter’s daughter.
We finally entered the building when everyone, including the toddlers, had caught up with us or had been retrieved from the bushes. Idda didn’t like being restrained. I wondered if Pengali babies ever slept.
We lined up for the security point, where a cheerless guard in a black uniform checked our passes and bags.
Someone shouted behind me. I turned around. Idda had escaped from the nanny’s arms. She ran past the line, climbed up the guard’s leg like a monkey and perched on his shoulder for a split second before he yelled out. She jumped—onto the luggage conveyor belt, up on somebody’s bag, which was at that very moment hoisted to the ceiling rails by a mechanical arm. Idda hung on, squealing her lungs out.
“Stop the conveyor!” Nicha yelled. The guard seemed too stunned to do anything. Of course one could never find the emergency switch when looking for it, and so as not to waste time, I jumped up on the belt—an alarm started ringing—and ran over it, while all around me, bags and cases were being picked up by automatic arms. One missed my legs by a hair’s width.
I got to Idda, couldn’t quite reach her, and pulled her by the tail—the worst thing you could do to a Pengali, but it was the only part of her within my reach. Thankfully, she let go. I jumped off the belt, meeting a couple of guards who came running to help me.
The belt and the automatic arms stopped moving. The alarm fell quiet. Everyone in the hall was looking at me with a Pengali youngster clinging onto my shirt.
I said, “Move along, nothing to see. It’s all good.”
I rejoined my group, muttering to Nicha, “That starts well.”
Nicha grinned. “I think she likes you.”
I unpeeled the youngster’s little hands from my shirt and lifted her up. “How about you join your mother and keep out of the way for a while?”
Her huge dark eyes blinked at me. Pengali eyes had almost no whites. They reminded me most of the eyes of the possums that would sometimes sleep in the tree in our back yard when I was a kid in New Zealand. During the day the irises would be brown, but at night their eyes would be almost entirely black, and the eyes would flash like a cat’s when you shone light into them.
I didn’t know if she understood what I said, but when I set her on the ground, she scurried to her mother’s chair and hid underneath.
Maybe there was hope yet.
I also sat down with the rest of the group. I met Veyada’s eyes across a pile of luggage. He restrained a chuckle. Coldi were equally free with the raising of children and he probably found my efforts very amusing.
This was an important work trip, not a family holiday.
“Calm down,” Thayu said. “If this is the worst we face . . .”
I knew, and I shrugged. I didn’t think it was the worst we faced. I worried much more that the youngster would be harmed than that she would embarrass anyone. Because by taking Abri, her daughter and granddaughter, I had the obligation to the Thousand Island tribe to bring them back safely. And, because none of them ever travelled, that wasn’t a responsibility I took easily.
A man called behind us, “Delegate, the vehicle is here for you and your party.”
He was a stiff-faced airport guard, no doubt glad to see us go.
The bus stood outside the building. We filed out the door and into the cabin, more closely resembling a family trip than a diplomatic mission. I waited outside with Thayu while Nicha and Ayshada took the bench in front of the bus. The Pengali went to the back.
I was about to get in when a man came running up. He was dressed in the carmine red of the Trader Guild employees. A courier.
“Delegate Cory Wilson?” He held out a red envelope which bore my name in official Coldi, handwritten by one of the Guild’s calligraphers.
Well . . . that was unusual.
I took the envelope from him. It was highly unusual to get a message delivered through the Trader Guild couriers, and I honestly couldn’t think of anyone who would have needed to talk to me with this urgency.
But when I opened the envelope and glanced inside, I knew.
President of Nations of Earth, Margarethe Ollund.
One time when I had seen her, I had warned her never to send anything through the Exchange that she wanted to keep absolutely confidential. The Exchange staff could see your correspondence, and they did sometimes listen in. Others could listen in, too.
I had told her of the only method of delivery that guaranteed that no one else would see what you’d written: the trader Guild couriers who would deliver a written message on paper. I’d given her an account with enough credits to get a message to me. For emergencies, I’d said, because I didn’t want to end up as I had earlier in my time in Barresh, when obstructionist elements at Nations of Earth prevented me from accessing information I needed, and were blocking my accounts.
This was clearly an emergency. And I should probably not open it right here but wait until I was on the bus.
Chapter 4
* * *
I TUCKED THE ENVELOPE under my arm and climbed into the bus, where laughter and chatter filled the air.
I chose a spot towards the back and sat right next to the window. Thayu sat next to me. While the rest of the team chatted, I opened the envelope again, took out the inside envelope with Margarethe’s writing, ripped it open and unfolded the single sheet inside. The very plain sheet gave no sign that it came from Margarethe’s office. There were only a few lines on the page.
It said,
Cory,
You are probably on your way here by the time this note reaches you, but I am not sure in whatever way it will be delivered. I want to warn you that you will be coming into a volatile political situation too intricate to be explained in a few words. As soon as you arrive here, before you see anyone else, insist on having a meeting with me.
Margarethe
I stared at the text and that loopy signature that had become quite well-known over the past few years.
Well, that confirmed all my suspicions. This trip was not about the court case. Through a roundabout way, she was paying for it, and I wouldn’t hear what the real issue was until I faced her in her office.
Ezhya would pull that sort of stuff on me. She must have learned from him.
My frazzled senses registered that the bus had stopped, but not in the usual spot.
What was going on?
I’d been under the impression that we were to travel on the regular shuttle. That craft, however, used a different part of the airport. I could see it there, in the distance, and it hadn’t opened its doors yet. The craft in front of the bus was smaller, one of the private variety.
Someone had sent and paid for a craft just for us.
Definitely something going on.
And here I was, with a huge entourage, which Nations of Earth had encouraged me to bring, because I needed to look official, but which included people with no political, weapons or travel experience who were on a holiday, my pregnant wife and two children.
Well, damn it.
The door had opened. A crewmember in the un
iform of the Pilot’s Guild stood at the door. Everyone was getting up and leaving the bus, and I was sitting there, not sure what to do. I was starting to get that ominous bad feeling about this. Who was I to lead all these people, mostly defenceless and innocent, into what might be a dangerous situation?
They—the Pengali, Eirani, Devlin, Karana, Jemiro—thought they were going on a work trip that might even be fun, and I should know better and stop this, while I could—
On what grounds?
Just because Margarethe wanted to see me?
“What does it say?” Thayu said in a low voice, indicating the envelope.
I showed her the letter.
She read—she understood Isla quite well these days—and frowned. “Maybe she wants to tell you what Abri should say at the trial.”
“I don’t think so. Or if she did, it would be wrong. The court is separate from the assembly. Margarethe has no power over the court.”
Her frown deepened.
It was so easy to think of Ezhya Palayi as a friend, but the truth was that people on Earth would use only one word to describe his rule on Asto: that of an absolute dictator. Ezhya had a huge hub which he used to control every aspect of the huge network that could be described as “government” on Asto. Not that it looked anything like the form of government on Earth, or, for that matter, most other worlds. It was a vast informal spider, controlled by the instinct Coldi called sheya that, when two unfamiliar people met for the first time, determined which of them was superior. In Asto, there could only be one person at the top. That person was Ezhya. There was nothing on Asto that he didn’t have a say over.
Coldi didn’t use trials. They served legal writs, to which the accused party had to give a satisfactory response within the given time frame or risk an assassination squad. They did have mitigation hearings, where the accused party could ask witnesses to explain the situation.
If this were Asto and any of us had to appear in a such a hearing—which might be against a challenger or a minor leader who might make a challenge—Ezhya would call me in and tell me what to say. I would be required to do as he told me, and the hearing would go the way he wanted, or, if it didn’t, the accused would face severe retributions, frequently including the dispatch of a death squad.
Someone at the door of the bus called, “Delegate, the craft is ready.”
Yes, yes, they were waiting for us. The pilot had a departure slot that needed to be filled. Having come this far, I didn’t have an option but to go ahead with it, and given the information I had, that was the choice my association would want me to make. Plunge in, see what was going on, but remain alert.
I pushed myself up, still looking at Thayu.
“Well, you’ll just have to go and see her to ask her what it’s about then,” she said.
“Yes.” And that was a sort-of-definite reply, a “What else can we do?”
Thayu gave the letter back to me. I folded it and inserted it back into the envelope, which I tucked into my shoulder bag. I handed the red Trader Guild courier envelope to the driver on my way out of the bus. It would somehow make its way back to the Guild office.
Then I was out of the bus and up the ramp into the craft.
The rest of the group had already settled on the craft’s plush seats. I didn’t have to look hard for the Pengali. They sat towards the rear end of the craft. The little brat had climbed on the backrest of her mother’s seat and reached for the luggage rack. I thought of the power of the engines on take-off and those moments of weightlessness prior to transfer, when loose items became projectiles. People needed to be wearing a harness, absolutely.
“Don’t,” I said when walking past her, and to my surprise, she scurried down and sat on the seat next to her mother, eying me.
“Make sure you strap her in,” I told Kita, who gave me a hard look. Apparently, one did not strap in little ones.
“For her safety. You don’t want her flying around the cabin when we take off. Please do it, because I don’t want her to get badly hurt.”
“Yes, Delegate.”
I didn’t know how much more Coldi she spoke than that, or even whether she had understood anything I’d said. All of my communication had been with Abri, who merely watched the conversation, but then said something quietly to her daughter after I’d continued down the aisle. Hopefully something was getting through to them.
I joined Thayu and Nicha at the front of the craft. Nicha had given Ayshada a little puzzle to solve. An old Kedrasi man sold these at the markets. They consisted of pieces of wood that you had to fit together to make a shape. Ayshada loved these and was far better at them than I’d expected a two-year-old to be. He babbled and cheered when he completed the cube, then pulled it apart again, dropped one of the pieces and squealed for Nicha to fish it up, because he was properly strapped in and couldn’t jump off the seat to get it himself.
Veyada and Sheydu sat on the other side of the aisle. Sheydu fixed her attention on the reader in her hand. I didn’t miss her pursed lips, which indicated her annoyance. Sometimes it was hard to believe that Sheydu had once had children. She usually ignored Ayshada or rolled her eyes when he made too much noise, so I could only imagine what she thought of the Pengali brat whom I couldn’t see anymore, but who was squealing at the top of her lungs.
While the crew loaded our luggage and prepared the craft—I lost count of how many times Idda escaped from her harness—I told Nicha, Veyada and Sheydu about Margarethe’s letter.
Like Thayu had done, they frowned.
Veyada asked me, since I said it probably didn’t have anything to do directly with the court, what I thought it was about.
I said, “I’m thinking it might have something to do with the fallout from the election.” I used the Isla word, because Coldi didn’t have elections. I could have used the Coldi word for voting, but it in no way captured the politicking and backstabbing that came with an election.
“Margarethe won, right?” Thayu said.
“Only by a very small margin.”
She spread her hands. “I don’t see any problem. She won. People chose their leader. Now they have to do what the leader says.” The whole concept of low-ranking people voting high-ranking people into power was alien to her.
Veyada said, “The political parties are like associations, except they fight with each other on all levels, and they fight within themselves for who will be the leader all the time.”
“So they’re nothing like associations. It’s a silly and wasteful system. They spend huge amounts of time and effort on making themselves look popular so that the low-ranking people, who have very little clue anyway, will vote for them.”
That was not entirely how the president was elected, because that was done by the assembly, but the assembly members were voted by the people in their respective countries. Thayu, and most Coldi, didn’t believe common people should vote, and Thayu had a very low tolerance for “idiotic systems” in her current state.
Nicha said, “Did Melissa mention anything about political issues in the assembly when you last visited her?”
I had to think about that. “Yes, but she always talks about lots of political issues. Melissa is a very political person.” Melissa had mentioned some of the issues that played in the assembly. The usual arguments about the divide between the poor and rich countries, and the allocation of the inadequate aid funds. Nothing that stood out to me as particularly unusual. But I admitted to not having followed Earth politics recently.
The crew finally finished all the preparations, the door shut and the pilot turned on the downward jets. The cabin pressure turned on with a hiss and popping of my ears. The floor vibrated with the low hum of the engines. The Pengali sat quietly in their seats, and I spotted no wayward children.
I glimpsed Deyu’s face, looking out the window. She had developed into a most loyal member of my association. So young, so utterly serious. She had been quietly excited about this trip for weeks—when she permitted herself to be,
which was mostly when she thought I wasn’t looking.
Somehow in all this mess, I had to make the time to show her some of the sights. Not cities—her native Asto did big cities much better than Earth—but animals. I’d promised horses and dogs and cats. It wouldn’t be too hard to rustle up some of those. If we managed to get to my father’s place—and I would do my utmost best to make that happen—there would be camels and ostriches as well.
Then the hum of the engines increased and increased, and grew into a whine. The craft lifted with a shudder. The ground and then the buildings slid from view. The pressure increased.
Veyada and Sheydu were looking at their readers, probably catching up on some work, but Reida sat stiff-faced, looking at the back of the seat in front of him.
Deyu touched his hand, and they exchanged that intimate look that could only be shared between zhaymas—equals, partners.
Everything was all right. And it would be. How exciting could a court case get, for crying out loud? I should stop worrying and enjoy the trip.
* * *
Exchange travel tended to mess with time. I’d never been able to accurately measure the time taken from Barresh to Earth, but I believed it to be about half a day; at least that’s what it felt like to me. It involved three or four anpar jumps, depending on how busy it was, but if you tried to take any kind of time-measuring device on board the craft, it usually went backwards between fifteen minutes and an hour.
The trip was quite uneventful, though it involved Idda escaping from the harness several times.
We arrived at the Exchange when the eastern sky was turning light blue. As the craft flew low over the hills behind Athens, and the city lay spread out before me, I couldn’t remember how long ago I had last been here for a visit that wasn’t work. Probably when Thayu and I had a mock wedding ceremony at my father’s beach house, but then that had turned into a work visit anyway.
The Exchange’s big circular arrival and departure hall was, as usual, a cacophony of light and noise. The Asto or Hedron-built craft favoured by transport companies were as noiseless as possible for craft of that size, but still, when a lot of them departed and arrived in that enclosed space, the whine of engines became deafening.
