by Patty Jansen
There went my rest.
I went after him into the hub. After we sat down on the bench, he pulled up a document.
“The translator reported that some of the language use was very unconventional.”
“If it came from where I think it came from, I bet it would be.” I dragged the projection over to the part of the bench where I sat.
It was indeed the transcript of a conversation. At the top, the translator had made a note that according to word use, one of the participants in the conversation was contemporary and the other was aberrant in the use of language, and she described aberrant as being formal, with the use of new and unknown phrases. The text was coloured in blue or green according to who was speaking. She had added the comment, The difference in idiom, word use and pronunciation is very pronounced.
The beginning of the document went like this:
Green, contemporary: This is a very sensitive issue at the moment. There is another group that has submitted a claim.
Blue: Were you not in contact with this group?
Green: We had no idea of their existence.
The green speaker went into some detail describing the zeyshi, their history and what their living conditions had been.
Blue: So you have mistreated this group often, then?
Green: Not us, the Coldi. They have systematically denied them rights, pushed them to the margins of society and disowned them. We have absorbed a fair few of them into our group.
Blue: Then why are you not working in conjunction with them to stop this abuse?
Green: We’re a new group. We haven’t been formed long, but I assure you that if we’d existed back then and had the means, we would have tried to stop them.
Blue: You would call yourself champions of all our people?
Green: We are the reason that Aghyrians still exist in our society.
Blue: You have the right to speak for all of them?
Green: We do indeed. Our leader is one of us. She will look favourably upon your request.
I stared at that last line. Was this person really talking about Chief Delegate Akhtari? What request?
The rest of the document went on in the same fashion. The person from the ship asking ever more pointed questions and seeming to obtain from the answers more information than the speaker wanted to divulge.
They hadn’t travelled for four hundred ship years, the speaker said, to become involved in petty bickering.
The local Aghyrian wanted to know if the captain of the ship was really still Kando Luczon, and the prickly reply was that if, in the past fifty thousand years, the local Aghyrians hadn’t been able to extend their technology to lengthen their lifetimes to four hundred years, just what had they been doing instead?
I read, with growing, albeit reluctant, appreciation for Marin Federza. He had seen the belittling and bullying, even if the local speaker had not. He had wanted to warn gamra about this.
I looked at Devlin. “This is a straight betrayal.”
“What is?” This was Veyada at the door.
“I thought you were going to rest.” Although now I was glad he hadn’t yet gone to bed.
“I thought the same about you.” He grinned.
Point taken.
I gestured at the projection. “Come and have a look at this.”
He crossed the room and sat next to me on the bench. The scent of Coldi sweat enveloped me. I noticed a second person at the door. Veyada had brought Reida, wearing a clean tunic in my house colours. That was an improvement.
I gestured for him to come inside. He did so while looking at the ground in the fully submissive position. Amazingly, Thayu’s belting had left no visible signs on him, and clearly the med post had found nothing wrong with him. Maybe I was the one overreacting. Maybe Coldi were even tougher than I had thought. Actually, scratch the maybe.
“Sit down,” I said.
He did, clamping his hands between his knees. He said in a soft voice. “I have to apologise.”
“It’s all right. We’ll talk more about it later.”
He nodded, still not looking at me. “I want to make you understand that I am grateful to be accepted into your association. I’ll do my best to serve the group as well as I can.”
“I accept your apology.”
“Thank you.”
I touched his shoulder in the superior greeting, because he would expect me to do this, and he seemed relieved about it.
“We got the material you obtained translated. It’s quite shocking. Veyada seems to think that your stealing the information might fall under the morality clause, which means you won’t be charged.”
“Thank you,” he said again.
“Read the text,” I told him. “This association of mine hangs together with politics. I hope you like politics.”
“I don’t mind it.” He started reading.
Veyada was also still reading. I covered my mouth with my hand when I yawned. My eyes were gritty with the lack of sleep.
Veyada finished and met my eyes. For an intense moment, he said nothing.
“So, this ship is live, occupied, and they’re trying to make deals with people here?”
“This comes from Federza’s office. Somewhere in that arrogant mind of his, Federza realised that keeping this conversation from the assembly was not the right thing to do. So he copied this with the intention to . . . I don’t know.” Why hadn’t Federza simply sent this material to all gamra delegates? He could have done so with one message. Maybe he didn’t want to ruin his own career by incriminating himself.
“Shit.” He stared.
“Reida stole this data. Delegate Ayanu was after it. We have the Asto military up there who are probably aware of it. And I don’t think any of these people want this to become public knowledge.”
Reida’s face looked drawn.
Veyada said again, “Shit.” And then, “Why? I could buy it if the Aghyrians wanted to keep the conversation secret, but why everyone else?”
“Think of it this way—and understand that this is my theory. These people left at the time of the meteorite strike. This was the time that the Aghyrian civilisation on Asto was at its zenith. They have been away for a long time. For us, an impossibly long time. They have obviously travelled at near-lightspeed and for them only four hundred years have passed.”
His eyes widened. If you were like Earth and couldn’t use the Exchange network, and were dependent on natural anpar lines, time dilation due to travel speeds could still be important. Every Earth child was taught about time dilation at school. The Coldi used the Exchange and had had not been taught to take it into consideration.
“In any case, however long they’ve been away, they’ve only started upsetting our system since that burst that caused the Exchange outage. That disturbance was caused by their anpar sling which they used to return from outside the galaxy. If that’s what they can do, I would absolutely hate to think of all the technology that they’ve developed while they’ve been away. Not even to speak of anything they may have learned from other civilisations. They are likely to have all sorts of things we don’t and know much that we haven’t even scratched the surface of. Divided as we are, everyone is now trying to get into these people’s pockets to see if they can get a favoured status. They don’t appear hostile and appear to be open to talk to everyone. As long as it remains a secret. Don’t tell anyone and we’ll give you some of our incredible technology.”
Veyada said, “Shit. The army.”
Well, yes, there was that, too. “All these people have figured out that the ship will eventually turn up here and want to get a piece of whatever loot they have to divide. Even if these people give us insignificant trinkets, their technology will make them superior trinkets. So everyone is hanging around here, pretending to negotiate while as soon as that ship turns up, all our negotiations will have been a waste of time. If these people want to resettle on Asto, they will just push us aside and do it.”
Devlin asked, “You think the Asto army
won’t have anything to say about that?”
“Oh, yes of course they will. That’s where the real action is. Our negotiations are just for show.”
“Is that ship armed?”
“I don’t know, but I’m guessing a hyper-powerful anpar sling is a pretty good weapon. You can unilaterally fling someone out of the galaxy, from where they can never return to bother you again. Wasn’t that the main reason the Exchange requires bilateral input?”
“Shit.”
I showed him the images of the ship that had been in Reida’s information. His dark eyes roamed the lines of the projection.
“It’s huge. I’ve never seen anything this big.”
“More than three thousand on board.”
“But we are many more than that. Surely we can contain them.”
“If it came to a conflict, maybe, depending on what sort of weaponry they have, but right now they’re talking. These are the people who built the Exchange. They’re not going to be stupid enough to turn up here and start a war. I suspect they’re more dangerous when talking than they are when shooting.” Aghyrians had a reputation for their ability to sow discord. Look at what they had already done to the negotiations.
“Then what do they want from us?”
I shrugged and added another question. “How many have they left behind where they’ve come from?”
Devlin said, “What have they learned while they were there?”
Veyada asked, “Who did they meet while they were there?”
We looked at each other. Veyada was not easily shaken, but the look in his eyes disturbed me. Academics often spoke of potential alien civilisations. So far, every civilisation the Coldi had found in their explorations, no matter how remote, had been traceable back to Aghyrian space travel. There had been a couple of waves of Aghyrian colonisation. At first they sent only seeding probes. The Pengali were part of that wave, as well as some of the highland folk of the Mirani mountains. And the Kedrasi. Earth even fitted in that time period. Later, they had sent people. Indrahui was a colony from this era. Ceren had been hit in all of the waves.
But what about truly alien civilisations?
Thayu came into the hub. “Why are you two still sitting here? I thought you’d come to bed.”
“I can’t really sleep with this going on.”
We showed her the image and the text. She stared at the projection. “Fuck.”
“Yes, you can say that again.”
She sighed. Spread her hands, let them fall again.
Thayu didn’t swear often. She came into the hub and sat next to Veyada. “Well, what are we going to do now?”
We were silent for quite some time, thinking, considering all the options. There wouldn’t be much time left before we’d need to go for the next round of talks with the zeyshi delegation.
I said, “I’m thinking we should probably create a very large fuss.”
Thayu gave me her uh-oh, it looks like you have a plan look.
“I’m going to call an emergency meeting of the assembly.”
“You can’t do that.”
“No. But Ezhya can. He will call an emergency meeting once I show him this. He’s on his way here.”
“No, Cory. He’s a party in this negotiation. If he calls a meeting, the claim will be judged to be invalid. You should go to Delegate Akhtari.”
“And she is not a party?”
She said nothing. Raised her hand to her mouth. Breathed in deeply.
Eventually, she said, “This is going to be huge.”
“Yes.”
Veyada said, “To be absolutely correct about it, we should go to see Delegate Ethvos or Delegate Namion.” From Kedras or Damarq respectively. They also held veto rights, and Delegate Namion was a right pompous arse, but the perfect person for this sort of thing. “I’m sure we’ll have no trouble getting either of them to call an emergency sitting.”
As usual, Veyada to the rescue. “All right, let’s go right now then.”
But even “right now” required some preparation. I copied the translation to my reader, and while Veyada was getting ready, went to speak to Eirani, who was coming up the stairs carrying a blue shirt. “No, no, Muri, you’re not leaving the apartment in this state. People would think you were a beggar. You have to change that smelly shirt, and your hair is a right mess.”
“But—” I spread my hands, but Eirani had already gone into the bedroom. I slouched after her, heaving a sigh. Arguing against Eirani was useless and she was probably right.
“Just hurry up, right. There is not much time.”
“Time will wait for proper preparation. If you look improper, people will remember you for your poor appearance rather than your words.”
She was probably right about that, too.
So I sat on a chair and while she was untangling my plait, I snipped off the few stray hairs that still grew on my chin. After multiple treatments to kill off the hair follicles, there weren’t many left, but I would probably need to go back one last time before my face was as smooth and hairless as that of other gamra men.
When she was done, and I had changed into a fresh shirt, Eirani brought the jacket and ceremonial belt. “It will be a big day in meetings,” she said to my protests—the jacket was really hot.
And she was probably right about that, too. I rose and slipped my arms into the jacket while she held it up.
“There, that’s better.” She held up a mirror and I looked at myself, all ceremonial and proper, with my red Domiri earrings glittering in the light.
“Do be careful for Raanu,” I said. “There is going to be a lot of trouble in the assembly today and I can’t be certain that no one will shoot at the apartment again today.”
Her eyes widened. “But Muri, they’ve just replaced the window.”
“If that’s all that needs replacing, we’re doing fine. Seriously, though, keep Raanu away from balconies and windows, and stay off them yourself as well. I’d hate something to happen to you.”
She nodded, her face solemn. “Raanu likes helping me downstairs, so I’ll keep her there.”
“Evi and Telaris will stay here. Do ask them for any help, no matter how small. If you see something strange, tell them immediately. Oh, also, Raanu’s father is on his way here.”
She nodded again. “What about the lady? Does she need to come downstairs as well?”
Had she ever even mentioned Xinanu’s name? “Only if necessary. If she asks where we are, tell her that everyone is busy, which is true. She’ll know about the meeting. If there is a security situation, include her, but don’t give her any information that she doesn’t need to have.”
“Who is going out with you?”
“Everyone who can legitimately hold a gun, except Evi and Telaris.”
She nodded, her expression grave. “I don’t know what you’re doing, but sometimes you scare me, Muri.”
Thayu had come into the bedroom and she laughed. “Only sometimes?”
Chapter 15
* * *
DELEGATE ETHVOS lived in the same building as we did, so we decided to try him first. Veyada and I went to the door, while the others waited, and were briefed on security matters by Thayu. Sheydu looked relaxed and confident; Nicha, too, thank goodness, but Deyu and Reida looked out of sorts and nervous. Deyu kept checking the light duty gun that Thayu had given her, since they were not licenced to carry heavier weapons. Reida’s dark eyes kept following everything that happened in the group, as if he was determined not to make any more mistakes.
It was as if the pair of them had been kicked into realisation that this was it. If they behaved well and did a good job, they could stay for the rest of their lives.
The delegate was at home, and his housekeeper, an ancient Kedrasi man whose red hair had completely faded to pale pink, let us through into his office. I was glad to find the delegate home, because I liked him a lot better than Delegate Namion. Kedras tended to cycle their diplomats through the representative position
, and Delegate Ethvos had replaced the previous occupant of the position last year. He was, however, a veteran of gamra and considered in high regard.
The delegate was also an older man, and a fair bit of grey had crept into his red hair. While we settled at the table, the old servant shuffled around bringing juice and biscuits.
Delegate Ethvos took one look at our material, and especially the image of that huge ship, and said, “This needs to go before an emergency meeting of the general assembly.”
I didn’t even need to ask him to call it.
The look in his sand-coloured eyes was serious. “If I call the meeting, I’m going to ask you to present this material. No doubt you know a good deal more about it than I do.”
I nodded. “I’m fine with that.” I’d addressed the full assembly a few times. It was a bit nerve-wracking to see all those thousands in the stands, but if that was the worst thing that could happen to me, I’d be laughing.
“This is a very explosive issue. You should take extreme care with the wording of this speech. It could get nasty if you’re not careful.”
“I think it’s already nasty. We’ve got Tamerians running through town, and one has already been shot. No one knows who’s hiring them either.”
“I agree, but you do not want the fights to spill over into the general assembly.”
“Is there ever fighting in the general assembly?” The meetings were so formal, so formulaic that I could hardly believe that.
“Not often, but it does happen. The worst thing that could happen right now is if the assembly disintegrates. This discovery will bring a lot of pressure on Delegate Akhtari to resign. We do not want that to happen.”
“But I think—” she should resign over this. She should probably have resigned years ago.
He held up a tattooed hand. “Because when that happens, the assembly will remain paralysed for too long while elections are held. Asto will want to have a candidate. They’ve never held the position of Chief Delegate, because previously the seat of the assembly would move with the position of Chief Delegate.” And none of the non-Coldi delegates could visit Asto, so moving the assembly there was out of the question. “Since it has been decided that Barresh is a permanent seat of the assembly, that objection has been removed. The situation is perfect for Asto to push forward their choice, and they will. And you will understand why a lot of other people will object to that.”
