Ambassador 6: The Enemy Within

by Patty Jansen

  I put my hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry. Amarru insisted we add him to the team.” I should have suspected it. Veyada had no love for Reya’s Azimi clan, especially since they had attempted to infiltrate our group several times in the past few years and had managed to get Ayshada into our household.

  “Come, greet each other and agree on where you stand.” This was a formulaic expression that I’d heard leaders use for the purpose of resolving tension in their associations.

  Reya came forward, head down, his arms by his side, with his palm facing backwards. That surprised me. I had expected him to be the source of the trouble, but he was completely demure.

  I said to the rest of my team, “These are Reya and Mereeni, lawyers with knowledge of local laws as they relate to us.” Us being our Coldi association.

  Veyada touched Reya’s shoulder. Reya looked up to the level of Veyada’s chest, making sure not to meet Veyada’s eyes.

  “Well met,” Veyada said.

  Reya nodded, still looking at the ground.

  Both of them ignored Mereeni, so did this mean that she was not part of this silent working of Coldi instincts? I wished I knew. I wished I could feel it like they did.

  “Make sure you eat something,” I said.

  Reya bowed, and sat down at the table. Veyada sat down, too. He didn’t seem entirely happy.

  My heart was thudding. Phew. Did this mean that the danger was now over?

  “Let’s have breakfast, then, if there is any left.” I hope I didn’t sound as fake-cheerful as I felt.

  I found a seat in between Thayu and Nicha. A waiter was already on the way to bring a new tray with fruit and rice balls. I pulled over the jug and filled a glass with orange juice. My hands were shaking.

  Mereeni had sat down opposite us. “Well, let’s just work together then. I’m ready.” Her Hedron dialect was very strong.

  What was more, she acted innocent, but I didn’t think for one moment that she didn’t know what had happened. She probably understood it better than I had.

  “What business is that to you?” Veyada asked, glaring across the table. And oh, that was a downright denigrating pronoun form. “Who are you, anyway?”

  “I’m a lawyer.” Hedron didn’t have as many pronoun intricacies. The form they used was the colloquial type. It sounded wrong to my ears in every aspect. “I’m trained in local law and I’m here to assist you.”

  “Is that right?” Veyada breathed in deeply, nostrils flaring. He glanced at me, his cheeks red, as if he suddenly realised that I was there. Looked down. “I’m sorry, I . . .” Breathed in deeply. “I’m sorry.”

  Sheydu, next to him, put her hand on his upper arm. “Come on, knock it off. She’s not worth the trouble.”

  Veyada’s shoulders slumped.

  Mereeni snorted.

  I knew better than to apologise to her. Rude as that exchange had seemed, it was a completely normal Coldi interaction between two people who were not linked through loyalties. The only troubling issue was that, because Mereeni didn’t have the instinct, the matter of superiority would never be settled.

  Great.

  Why couldn’t Amarru have included a proper Coldi lawyer? She knew who was in my association and would have known that including her would create friction.

  My reader buzzed with the message that a bus had arrived for us downstairs. I grabbed a handful of rice balls and gulped my juice before letting the team know that it was time to go.

  The whole party moved to the ground floor. The Pengali wanted to try the lift, and those who didn’t fit in the lift, including me, walked.

  Our luggage had arrived in the main hall and stood behind the reception desk, two trolleys full of bags and one trolley with the components of the irrka drum.

  The latter drew some strange looks from fellow travellers.

  Nations of Earth had sent a minibus to take us from the Exchange to the airport. It was a regular taxi, with a civilian driver rather than a military employee, so it was allowed into the grounds and up the long driveway to the entrance of the building.

  Someone at Nations of Earth had obviously had an optimistic view of how many people their bus could take, and how much luggage it held. Or they had not been notified of the extra people Amarru had added to our group, in itself a rare slip in her usual impeccable organisation.

  Indeed, all these people with all their luggage wouldn’t fit in the bus, no matter how we tried.

  I told the driver, “Just get a second bus.”

  But there was some reason that he couldn’t. His Isla left a lot to be desired and none in our party spoke Greek, so I wasn’t sure of the issue there.

  I proposed, “How about we just order another taxi for the people who don’t fit?”

  But he couldn’t do that either. I didn’t understand the issue. Maybe the problem related to taxi companies and how they carved up their business?

  The driver then began an argument with the Exchange guard about moving the bus away from the entrance, where it was blocking traffic during our futile efforts to stack our luggage in the luggage compartment. It was really the irrka drum causing most of the problems.

  Could we put some of the luggage in the cabin?

  Apparently not. Also the bus didn’t have the required number of seat belts. In addition, our group included two children who needed special restraints, and he had only one of those.

  The guard at the front door told him repeatedly to shift the vehicle. I asked why the driver couldn’t take us anyway, or if he really was that fussed about road rules, take half of us and come back for the rest later?

  The driver spread his hands in frustration. “The hover jet is waiting. Do you know how much fuel those things go through when they idle?”

  I was tired and didn’t have the energy for this. My team was tired of travelling as well, and I still had to make that meeting with Margarethe before I could go to sleep. “Look, either your bosses want us to come, or they do not. Take your pick and act accordingly. We know our way around here and we can make our own way to the court. I would much prefer to go on the train anyway. If you can’t take us, we’ll go back inside and arrange transport to the station ourselves.”

  He gave me a wide-eyed look. Yes, that was my past ten years of living with Coldi speaking. Bluntness was catching. Us getting on the train was clearly not part of his orders. He relented and let us into the bus.

  It was very cramped indeed. The Pengali, with little Idda, all sat on one bench that was meant to hold two people. Amarru’s two security guards, very black and very Indrahui, sat on the back bench with Reya and Mereeni and with Jemiro jammed in the middle, looking very put out about being squished. Evi and Telaris had to sit on the floor in the aisle, both using their backs to hold in place a stack of luggage, including the bag with the Pengali irrka pipes inside.

  I was one of the last into the bus, and found there was no room to sit other than on the steps next to the driver, until Reida decided that was not on, and gave me his seat next to Deyu.

  The driver was packing as many of our bags in the luggage compartment as he could, but when that was full, several extra bags had to be stacked in the aisle, handed to Evi by Reida, and added to the heap between them.

  Idda was bouncing off the seats. Nicha held Ayshada, who was out cold with his little face scrunched into Nicha’s chest, mouth open and drooling onto Nicha’s shirt. Seriously, did those Pengali youngsters ever sleep?

  Finally all the bags were in, the driver slammed shut the door and we were off.

  By now it was midmorning, and there were a lot of buses on the road, as well as taxis. Deyu stared out the window. She had been here before, very briefly, at night. To someone not used to road traffic, this place must seem like absolute chaos.

  I tried to think if I’d seen any private traffic in Athyl, but I’d been so stressed out by the heat that I didn’t remember. Certainly the place was too crowded for most regular citizens to own private vehicles.

  Ma
ny cities on Earth had gone that way, but there was still a lot of commercial traffic.

  To Deyu’s great delight, a man with a donkey cart toddled along the side of the road. He was one of the tourist taxis that you could hire for a day and he would take you to all the good spots, the ancient sites, the restaurants, the shops, wherever you wanted.

  The animal pulling the cart was a horse, Deyu was convinced, having put some study into the subject of Earth animals. I had to explain the difference between a donkey and a horse, and then it turned out she had apparently seen some images from Africa as well, and I had to explain that those “black-and-white striped horses” were not the same as either of them, and that you could ride a horse and use a donkey to pull a cart, but that a zebra was good for none of those things. Her eyes were wide. “So many creatures.”

  When the meteorite had struck Asto fifty thousand years ago, only plants and lower creatures had survived, and a limited subsection of those at that. I’d heard, now that the climate on Asto was becoming cooler and wetter, that people were considering reintroducing larger animals, especially those from Ceren, since many of those had originally come from Asto anyway.

  We hit a really busy patch of traffic where progress halted completely. From my position behind the driver, I couldn’t see what the holdup was, but there seemed to be some people on the road, directing the traffic into a single lane.

  Sure enough, a couple of police had blocked off the road and flagged vehicles, taxis, buses and driverless cars to the side.

  We inched up to the roadblock, and of course the bus was taken aside.

  The driver was muttering in Greek. Swear words, I guessed. A police officer knocked on the door and the driver opened it. A bout of yelling in Greek ensued.

  “Is this it?” Deyu asked. She glanced at the monotony of blocks of apartments that lined the road.

  “No, we’re not at the airport yet.”

  The police officer came into the bus. He glanced over all of us squished into the seats, counting. Oh, crap, it was a traffic cop. Seriously?

  He spoke to the driver, but my limited knowledge of Greek did not cover the subject of traffic infringements. There was a lot of waving of hands involved.

  Thayu gave me a sideways glance. “What’s going on?”

  The others in my party were also looking on with suspicious glances.

  I said, “Some sort of problem. I think he doesn’t like that we have too many people in the vehicle.” The notion of police roaming the streets pulling up citizens for minor infringements was abhorrent to a native of Asto.

  “Do you mean they make these silly rules and then send people into the streets to check if others obey those rules and charge them money if they don’t?” Sheydu had asked when I’d tried to explain.

  And when I said that was the gist of it, she started laughing.

  Veyada, who had studied various kinds of law, had said that it was similar to the Damarcian code of behaviour.

  Sheydu had objected. “Yes, but that applies to a person’s standing. It’s not a money-making scheme.”

  So it was a fair statement that most people in my party were not favourably disposed towards police officers, especially those of the traffic variety. And here was one arguing with our driver, and people on the bus were becoming impatient.

  I rose because we couldn’t afford this little issue to become a bigger problem than necessary. I stepped over Reida, who sat in the aisle. “Is there a problem?”

  The police officer met my eyes. He seemed almost glad.

  The issue was, as I had already suspected, that we had too many passengers on the bus, and that many of us weren’t wearing seat belts, and that our luggage was not secured, unless you counted those items weighed down by the sheer bulk of Evi and Telaris. Fortunately, Idda appeared to have finally run out of energy and sat quietly on her mother’s lap, cuddling her tail. She was not in a child seat. Ayshada was not in a child seat either.

  At this point, Sheydu rolled her eyes and muttered in Coldi that if we wanted to kill ourselves in an accident, it was our freedom to do so. I should have known that as Ezhya Palayi’s former guard, she had access to the best translating gear and could understand us.

  I apologised to the officer, but this fellow was a particularly petty individual, and in addition to a fine, he wouldn’t let us go on in an overcrowded bus. The driver agreed in Greek, which elicited a barrage of Greek comments from the officer.

  I could argue that we had a flight to catch, but at that point I remembered Amarru’s talk about a diversion. She had said, There will be a minor diversion along the way. Follow the suggestions made in the diversion.

  So this was the diversion?

  I wasn’t terribly keen on the hover jet, and it looked like she might not be, either. The suggestion seemed to be: split the party.

  Sheydu pushed herself up from her seat. She must have picked up what I thought through the feeder, although I wasn’t sure that my link was open far enough for her to listen in.

  She said to me, “If you want to reduce the size of the party . . . I’ve been here before and know my way around. I could take the youngsters and provide them with some more interesting training than being shuffled around by minders.”

  Her words were full of suggestion and belied her casual tone. For starters, Sheydu rarely offered to do something if there wasn’t some ulterior motive to it, so I guessed this was indeed the diversion, and she had received some communication about something that Amarru wanted her to do.

  I said, also casually, “Take Telaris, because otherwise we’ll still have too many people.”

  I told Sheydu to make an independent copy of all our meeting details and catch the train to Rotterdam. Veyada and Thayu shared a feeder with her, so would stay in contact.

  She agreed and went to gather the small group; and a moment later she, Reida, Deyu and Telaris left the bus, each carrying a small bag. Security staff always travelled like this, I realised, prepared to travel light when the necessity arose.

  To the bystander, this looked very casual, but there was nothing casual about it. Every moment of this operation, including the surly Greek policeman and the traffic holdup, had been planned, just like Nations of Earth had attempted to control our movements by sending vehicles to pick us up. Amarru inserted one snag: order a bus that was too small, or maybe she misreported our numbers.

  It would look like an honest mistake, but oh, no, the battle to control what we saw, heard, and who we spoke with had already started.

  For now, Amarru held the winning cards.

  Chapter 6

  * * *

  PREDICTABLY, ONCE SHEYDU, Reida, Deyu and Telaris had left, the police officer left the bus without imposing the fine, and we progressed to the airport without a further problem, which let me know that this had indeed been Amarru’s diversion and I felt happy to have reacted in the way she would have expected. Separate the party; spread the risk. Keep all the lines of information open.

  Sometimes I wondered how these people thought I could keep up with them. Amarru Palayi was one of the smartest and most powerful Coldi I knew besides Ezhya. Had she lived on Asto, she would definitely have occupied a position very close to him, possibly even in his primary association.

  You should ask her how she ended up here, Thayu said through the feeder where she was following my thoughts.

  I wasn’t sure if my position allowed me to do that.

  It does, rest assured.

  That was always quite frightening, when Coldi who possessed the sheya instinct told me that my position was different from how I would have perceived it. I would have thought that Amarru was in a much superior position to me.

  You are just being stubborn, Thayu said, through the feeder again. That’s the problem with you people. You are conditioned into behaving at a lower station than you really are, as if being low-ranked and powerless is a good image of yourself to project. You call it “humble”. She used the Isla word. Now that I thought of it, I
wasn’t even sure a proper translation for “humble” existed in Coldi. A word that both indicated lower station and positivity. You talk as if acting according to your position is “bragging” and is not good. You know that you can ask her. You’re Domiri, and Domiri clan does not invite people as members unless they’re highly ranked.

  Yes, I knew that, too, but it was frustrating not to feel it in a natural way as Coldi did. I always ran one step behind everyone else, because I needed to have these relationships explained and needed to be reminded that I should use this power, that I was even expected to use it.

  Insecure, one might call it, and yes, I would love to feel the instinct, but instead I had to resort to affirmations like this to make sure that I made the correct decisions.

  We reached the airport and went into the building through the usual VIP lounge entrance and the counter dedicated to people from the Exchange.

  The hover jet waited on the tarmac. When we climbed up the steps, the scent of lunch drifted from somewhere at the back of the craft. Abri, Kita and Ynggi had been rather quiet on the bus ride, and Idda had finally curled up on top of one of the bags and gone to sleep. She stirred a bit when her mother carried her into the plane and put her on a seat, but did not wake up.

  This craft was quite small and had a couple of groups of seating along the right-hand side—couches and soft leather chairs grouped around low tables—while the aisle and row of low cabinets ran along the left side.

  The Pengali chose the couches near the door. Ynggi looked around, sniffing the air.

  “Smells like fish,” he said.

  I joined Thayu, Nicha, Veyada and Evi at the next group of chairs, and Devlin, Eirani and Jemiro headed for the last group. They were talking in keihu about the weather, I thought. Just Eirani being her usual self, trying to talk. Jemiro had been very quiet during the trip. I didn’t think I’d heard his voice once.