by John Scalzi
“No,” Phipps said. “He said it’s someone he gave a job to, but that’s about half of the State Department at this point.”
“You should have him watched. Discreetly,” Schroeder said. “And you should probably start your own search for any sheep with the Android’s Dream DNA. Just in case. I can get you a sample.”
“It amazes me how little you think I know about my job,” Phipps said.
“I’m just advising,” Schroeder said.
“Like you advised Moeller to kill that trade representative,” Phipps said.
“He wasn’t supposed to kill him,” Schroeder said. “Just enrage him enough that negotiations came to a screeching halt.”
“Well, they did,” Phipps said. “And then he did.”
“That’s a shame, too,” Schroeder said. “I had other plans for him.”
“Real torn up about Moeller, aren’t you?”
Schroeder shrugged. “He was my father’s project, not mine,” he said. “I was friendly to him because he was useful. And he made good barbeque. Pope’s still unaware of my relationship with Moeller and my participation in this event, I assume.”
Phipps pointed at the transcript. “That makes it pretty obvious it wasn’t an accident, doesn’t it. He knows Moeller’s history and that he worked for your dad. But at this point, he figures Moeller was freelancing for his own reasons.”
“He was,” Schroeder said. “I just helped in the implementation.”
“Whatever,” Phipps said. “Short story is that you’re unsuspected. As am I. In fact, Pope suggested I contact you, seeing as you’ve been helpful with off-the-book investigations before. I’m actually supposed to be here this time. We might need your help.”
“I love it when a plan comes together,” Schroeder said.
“That makes it sound like you planned it to go like this,” Phipps said.
“Oh, no,” Schroeder admitted. “We’re way off track from where I thought we’d be. But maybe it’s better this way. We had only expected to derail the talks and the coronation. Now we might actually get a revolution.”
“Unless they find the sheep,” Phipps said.
“They’re not going to find the sheep,” Schroeder said. “They’ve got a billion sheep to sift through in a week. And they’d have to find the sheep before we do. They might do one, but not the other. No matter how good Javna’s friend is, no one is that good.”
chapter 3
Harris Creek sat across from Lingo Tudena, the Kathungi Cultural Attaché, and performed his role for the State Department: He delivered the bad news.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Tudena,” Creek said. “But I’m afraid we can’t let your spouse on planet.”
Tudena’s vestigial shoulder wings, which had been fluttering excitedly in anticipation of his wife’s visa, halted mid-flutter. “Begging pardon?” he said, through his vocoder.
“Your wife, Mr. Tudena,” Creek said. “Her visa has been denied.”
“But why?” Tudena asked. “I was assured by the Art Council that her visa would be no problem at all. Just a few routine checks. No problem.”
“Normally there isn’t a problem,” Creek said. “But something popped up in your wife’s case.”
“What?”
Creek hesitated for a minute, then realized that there was no gentle way out of it for either of himself or Tudena. “Your wife, Mr. Tudena,” Creek said. “She’s entered her fertility cycle.”
Tudena twitched his head in the Kathungi physiological equivalent of a surprised blink. “Impossible. I’m not there to initiate it. You must be in error.”
Creek reached into his portfolio and slid the doctor’s report over to Tudena. Tudena grabbed it with one of his forearms and held it up to one of the simple eyes the Kathungi used for near objects. After a few seconds, his vestigial shoulder wings began to jerk chaotically. Physiologically the Kathungi have no need of tears but by any emotional standard it was clear he was crying.
The Kathungi were a people with a beautiful and artistic culture and a procreation process that utterly disgusted every other sentient species they had come in contact with. After a nearly month-long phase in which the female Kathungi was enticed into a fertility cycle by her mate, both male and female Kathungi were pheremonally trapped into an uncontrolled “spew” phase: The female Kathungi would be randomly seized by a contraction of her egg sac, which would spew a milky, rancid-smelling fluid embedded with hundreds of thousands of eggs onto anything in the vicinity.
At the sight and smell of the eruption, the male Kathungi would follow suit with a greenish and even more foul-smelling milt that would coat the egg spray. The two substances would then congeal into a gelatinous mass whose purpose would be to protect and nourish the fertilized eggs until they hatched. By which time the Kathungi parents would be gone; rare among sentient species, the Kathungi were not nurturers. Kathungi eggs hatched into voracious, cricketlike larvae that ate everything in their path (including other larvae); it wasn’t until a much later phase that members of the vastly thinned ranks of surviving larvae entered a pupae phase in which they grew the brains required for sentience.
The particulars and repercussions of Kathungi reproduction were visited upon Earth not long after the UNE allowed nondiplomatic Kathungians to visit Earth on tourist visas. One young Kathungian couple decided to drive across the United States on a road trip and got as far as Ogallala, Nebraska, before they were overcome by the spew phase. The two rented a room at the Sav-U-Lot Motel off of Interstate 80 and spent the next day and a half with the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door, coating the interior of the room with goo more than an inch thick in places. The cleaning crew quit rather than touch it; the manager ended up scooping up the goo with a dustpan, depositing it into the bathtub, and running the shower head to dilute the stuff enough to let it slip down the drain.
One week later, guests of the Sav-U-Lot ran screaming from their rooms as millions of larval Kathungi, who had consumed the contents of the Sav-U-Lot’s massive and poorly maintained septic tank, migrated en masse through the plumbing in search of food. The manager rushed into one of the rooms armed with a flyswatter and a can of Raid Ant & Roach Killer. The Kathungi larvae ate everything but the plastic zipper on his pants and the metal grommets of his shoes; seven guests were never found at all. After consuming every organic morsel the Sav-U-Lot had to offer, the larvae, with their natural predators far away on the Kathungi home planet, set on the town of Ogallala like a Biblical plague.
The Nebraska governor imposed martial law and sent in the National Guard to eradicate the larvae. After it was discovered that the insects were in fact Kathungi larvae, the governor was hauled into CC court on the charge of xenocide and hundreds of thousands of individual counts of murder of a sentient species member. The bewildered governor served out the remainder of his term of office from the federal prison located (gallingly for a Nebraskan) in Leavenworth, Kansas. Shortly thereafter the UNE changed its visa policy to require that Kathungi females visiting Earth to be on birth control; under no circumstances would a female Kathungi who had begun her fertility cycle ever be allowed to set foot on planet again.
The fact that the cultural attaché’s wife was fertile doomed her chances of coming to Earth. The fact that the cultural attaché’s wife had begun her fertility cycle while her husband was away was going to doom her marriage. One simply does not enter a fertility cycle randomly. And one definitely doesn’t enter a fertility cycle without one’s spouse.
Creek gently took back the medical file from the cultural attaché, whose wings were still jerking up and down. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“She always said she wanted to come to visit Earth,” Tudena said. His vocoder, tuned to be sensitive to its wearer’s emotions, inserted sad, gulping sounds.
“She didn’t know you were trying to get her a visa?” Creek asked.
Tudena shook his head. “It was going to be a surprise,” he said. “I was going to take her to Disneyland. I’ve been tol
d that it is the happiest place on Earth.” His shoulder wings began to shake violently, and he buried his head in his forelimbs. Creek reached over and patted Tudena on his chitinous husk; Tudena shoved back from the desk and stumbled out the door. After several minutes one of Tudena’s assistants came to collect Creek, thank him for his time, and escort him to the door of the embassy.
Creek’s official title with the State Department was “Xenosapient Facilitator,” which meant absolutely nothing to anyone but the State Department bursar, who could tell you that a Xenosapient Facilitator got the GS-10 pay grade. Creek’s unofficial title, which was more accurate and descriptive, was “Bearer of Bad News.” Whenever the State Department had bad news to deliver to a member of the alien diplomatic corps who was significant enough to require a personal response but not significant enough to rate someone who actually mattered, he, she, or it got Creek.
It was the proverbial dirty job. But equally proverbially, someone had to do it, and Harris Creek was surprisingly good at it. It took a special human to look various members of various alien species in whatever organ it was that passed for their eye and tell them that a visa request was denied, or that the State Department was aware that assassins were plotting to kill them on their trip back to their home world, or that due to a memorable bout of public drunkenness on the Union Station carousel, which resulted in the alien projectile vomiting on terrified human children there for a birthday party, their diplomatic status was this close to being revoked. In his time, Creek had done all of these among many others.
Members of alien species had differing ways of showing anger and grief, from the sad, silent shaking of Mr. Tudena to the ritually approved destruction of property. Most people, regardless of their training in diplomacy, were simply not psychologically equipped to deal with a member of an alien species freaking out in front of them. The reptile portions of the brain, nestled down close to the brain stem, would too often override the gray matter and send the puny human bolting away, leaking fluids as the “eject the ballast” portion of the “fight or flight” response kicked in.
Harris Creek did not have anywhere near the diplomatic training of his peers—in fact, he had none when he took the job. But he also didn’t run when the furniture stated flying. For his particular job, that was enough. It was easier to learn about diplomacy than it was learn to control one’s bladder in front of a rampaging member of the alien diplomatic corps. Most people wouldn’t think so, but it’s true.
Outside the Kathungi Embassy, Creek fired up his communicator to locate his next appointment; it was at the Larrn Institute over on K Street. Creek was going to have to tell a new Tang lobbyist that while the State Department was willing to regard one threat to eat a UNE Representative’s children if she didn’t vote the way he wanted her to as a cultural misunderstanding, doing it a second time would have impressively negative repercussions.
“Hello, Harry,” Creek heard someone say. He looked up and saw Ben Javna, leaning against a marble pillar.
“Howdy, Ben,” Creek said. “Fancy meeting you here.”
“I happened to be walking by and saw you there,” Javna said, and then nodded in the direction of the door Creek had come out of. “Bad news for the Kathungi?”
“One of them,” Creek said, and started walking. Javna followed. “Actually, two of them, at least. But only one of whom is here on Earth. That’s part of the problem, I think.”
“So you’re still enjoying your job,” Javna said.
“I don’t know if enjoy is the word I’d use,” Creek said. “That’d imply a certain level of sadism, enjoying giving people bad news. I find it interesting. But I don’t know how much longer I can keep doing it.”
“Giving bad news to people would get to anyone,” Javna said.
“It’s not that,” Creek said. “That part is fine. It’s that people are beginning to know who I am. I went to the Phlenbahn embassy yesterday, and the guy I was supposed to see wouldn’t let his assistant show me in. I could hear him screaming on the other side of the door in Phlenbahni. My communicator translated it. He was calling me ‘the angel of death.’ I thought that was pretty harsh.”
“Why were you there?” Javna asked.
“Well, in that particular case it was to inform him that a car with diplomatic plates assigned to the Phlenbahni embassy had been linked to a fatal hit-and-run in Silver Spring,” Creek admitted. “Even so. He didn’t know that’s why I was there before I said anything. It’s a strange thing to make aliens twitchy just by existing. Sooner or later I’m sure they’re all going to bar me from getting through the embassy door. State’s not exactly an efficient department, but eventually someone would notice. Maybe I should start looking for another job.”
Javna laughed. “Funny you should mention that, Harry,” he said. “I have a job that needs doing. One that could use your skill set.”
“You need me to break some bad news to someone?” Creek asked. “You and Jill doing okay, Ben?”
“We’re happy like newlyweds, Harry,” Javna said. “Not those skills. Your other skills. The one’s you’re not paid to use at the moment.”
Harry stopped and looked at Javna. “I have a lot of skills I’m not paid to use at the moment, Ben. Some of which I’m not really interested in using again.”
“Relax,” Javna said. “It’s nothing like that.”
“What is it?”
“Well, let’s not talk about it right now,” Javna said. “Why don’t you and I get together this evening. Say, around six-thirty.”
“I’m free,” Creek said. “You want to get a drink?”
“I was thinking maybe we could meet at Brian’s place. I haven’t been there for a while.”
“Brian’s place,” Creek said.
“Sure. Should be quiet there. Six-thirty?”
“Six-thirty,” said Creek. Javna smiled, saluted jauntily, and walked off without looking back. Creek watched him go for a long moment, then hurried off to the Larnn Institute.
Seventy-five yards back and across the street Rod Acuna flipped open his communicator and rang up Dave Phipps. “Another street meeting,” he said when Phipps clicked on.
“Christ,” Phipps said. “That’s the fourth one in an hour and a half. He’s screwing with us. He knows you’re out there, Rod.”
“He hasn’t seen me,” Acuna said. “I guarantee it.”
“I’m not saying he has,” Phipps said. “I’m saying he knows we’d be having him watched.”
“Yeah, well, anyway, this one might be the real thing,” Acuna said. “Javna and the guy he just met are getting together tonight at six-thirty for a drink.”
“Did they say where?”
“Some bar called ‘Brian’s Place,’” Acuna said. “Although maybe that’s just the name of the owner.”
“Either way, we can find it,” Phipps said. “Keep on him, Rod. Call me if you learn anything new.”
Acuna flipped off and set after Javna.
Brian’s place was section 91, space 4088, Arlington National Cemetery. Javna was already there when Creek walked up.
“I’m remembering the day you and Brian tried to assassinate me,” Javna said, without turning. He had heard Creek walk up. “You know, with the model rocket.”
Creek grinned. “We weren’t trying to assassinate you, Ben,” he said. “Honest and truly.”
Javna looked over his shoulder. “You launched the rocket into my car, Harry.”
“It was just a small one,” Creek said. “And anyway, you had gotten out of the car.”
“Barely gotten out of the car,” Javna corrected. “And wish I had still been in the car. It might have kept the rocket from torching the seats.”
“Possibly,” Creek said. “Of course then you’d have had third-degree burns across your body.”
“Skin grafts would fix that,” Javna said. “But that was a classic car. Those seats were leather from an actual cow. You can’t get that anymore. I could have killed the two of you. I would h
ave had my lawyer stuff the jury with classic car enthusiasts. We’re talking acquittal in under an hour.”
Creek opened his hands wide, imploring. “I humbly ask your forgiveness, Ben. I’m sorry we torched your car. Our only excuse was that we were ten at the time and remarkably stupid for our age. Anyway, don’t be too hard on your brother. Launching the rocket was my idea.”
“That’s one of the reasons why I like you, Harry,” Javna said. “You still stick up for Brian even when it can’t possibly do him any good. Before the two of you shipped out, he told me he was the one who pointed the rocket at the car. He said you tried to talk him out of it.”
Creek grinned again. “Well, it was a classic car,” he said. “Seemed a shame to torch it.”
“I just wish you’d been more persuasive,” Javna said.
“You know Brian,” Creek said. “You couldn’t tell him anything.”
The two stood there in front of space 4088, section 91, for a minute, silently.
“You didn’t have me come out here to talk about something Brian and I did twenty years ago, Ben,” Creek said, gently.
“Right,” Javna said. He reached into his coat pocket and tossed something to Creek. It was a bracelet with a small metal disk on it. “Put that on and press the button,” Javna told Creek. Creek slipped on the bracelet with a little effort and pressed the red button in the center of the disk. He could feel a small vibration from the disc. He looked back over to Javna, who was wearing one as well. Javna was placing a small cube on Brian’s headstone, attaching it by the suction cup on one of the sides. He pressed the top.
“That should do it,” Javna said.
“Should do what?” Creek asked.
“I was being followed when I met up with you today,” Javna said. “I laid a few red herrings across my trail to confuse my tails and I’d be willing to guess that they’re thinking we’re meeting at a bar. But you can never be too careful.”
Javna pointed at the cube. “So, that little object does two things. It creates a sphere of white noise with a radius of thirty feet. Anyone trying to listen in more than thirty feet away is going to hear static, if they’re using conventional listening devices. It also vibrates the headstone, to confuse devices that can register sound conduction by bouncing lasers off of solid objects and processing how much the sound waves make them move. The little wrist doodads are doing the same thing to us. Not that they would have much chance with the lasers. Human bodies are poor sound conductors, and the headstone doesn’t give them much to work with. The whole outdoor thing really messes with laser detection. But better safe than sorry.”
