Ambassador 4: Coming Home Read online

  I was just a stupid human and I was not really feeling the vibe at the moment.

  Chapter 3

  * * *

  IN THE SHORT TIME that I’d dealt with him, I’d learned that Kando Luczon loved to keep people waiting. One day, when the many issues between us had been settled, I’d turn up really late and let him wait. I would put up some bugs so that I could see him looking out the window, opening the door and checking if I was there yet, doing everything to make sure that he was not the one standing out here waiting, but sitting in the apartment and waiting nevertheless.

  I doubted he’d learn anything or get the hint. It was immature and I’d probably never do it, but even thinking about it was fun.

  I was lucky to be working with people who were least likely to play the coming late tactic. Coldi were always early because they had curious natures and hated the thought that they might miss out on something.

  For now, the waiting was our job.

  We did so on the ground floor of the atrium, leaning against the wall that surrounded the water basin at the bottom of the waterfall. The air here was cool, laden with droplets of water. The apartment that had been allocated to Kando Luczon and his two companions was on the ground floor, next to the ground floor of mine. It was a guest apartment and could be use by whoever needed it in our building. I wondered if he got hungry with the smell from our kitchen.

  The covered courtyard with its trickling waterfall consisted of a central area with paving surrounded by a lush garden bed. We could see the front door of the apartment through a riot of bushes and vines and other potted greenery. It was still firmly shut.

  Thayu rolled her eyes. “I’m thinking about how well this guy is going to get on with Ezhya, when they finally meet.”

  “Yeah,” I said, and thought of the tense standoff around the Aghyrian ship that I’d helped resolve. “On the other hand, I’m not sure I want to know.” Patience was not the Coldi’s strong suit.

  Nicha yawned. “Why are we going to this place in town? Do you actually have any new data on this dig?”

  I said, “There was some news on the Barresh channel that the engineers managed to enclose the site by driving metal plates into the ground and sealing them, and have the pumps running full time to get the water out, so they can finally see the bottom and start digging. They found it easily enough. The captain saw the news coverage and now he wants to go there.”

  Nicha shrugged. “It’s his right. You know I still can’t quite comprehend that this guy saw that ship that they’re digging up. Most of it will be so far decayed that it won’t be more than a thin metal-rich layer in the soil. Imagine that. Going on a trip and coming back when all of this—” He gestured at the lush atrium. “—is buried under layers of mud, and some boorish folk have built ugly houses over the top. Imagine that.”

  “No thank you. Losing three weeks was bad enough.” Losing fifty thousand years . . . I couldn’t even begin to comprehend.

  Thayu said, “Don’t you two start as well. The man is an arsehole and the fact that he survived for whatever doesn’t make him any less an arsehole. Everyone looking at him in awe makes him more of an arsehole.”

  Yes, but that didn’t take away from the fact that he was special and I couldn’t see how that could not affect the way we dealt with him.

  Hmm, here was another assessment about the Coldi: their society might be highly structured, but in the scheme of things, the structure mattered more than the individuals who provided it. There were certain positions in the society, and it was important that those positions were filled. Who filled them was not so important. This contributed to the sense that Coldi lives were entirely disposable, because when a position became vacant, someone else would take it.

  Coldi had trouble getting their minds around the occasional people, like Kando Luczon, who—arseholes or not—were entirely not disposable or replaceable. Did such key individuals even exist in Coldi history? Any people I knew who were true trailblazing exceptions who thought and acted outside the rigidity of Coldi society had moved elsewhere. They were people like Xiya Ezmi, the founder of Hedron and its incredible mining wealth. And Dosha Vonayi, brilliant scholar and mathematician, who lived in London.

  We waited.

  Nicha and Thayu were looking at something on Nicha’s reader. Nicha had looked up the details that the Barresh Council had released about the dig site and he and Thayu were discussing the technical issues as they could deduce them from the images.

  “It seems pretty stupid to do any of the excavation with heavy machinery,” Thayu said. “These artefacts are usually extremely fragile. The soil is extremely soft. Why didn’t they ask for an expert to come from Asto? We’ve been dealing with Aghyrian artefacts for thousands of years.”

  Of course it was a rhetorical question. Asking Asto to take part was akin to giving them part ownership of the process, and heaven forbid if that happened.

  In fact, the whole ownership of the site and its associated history was still horribly muddled even if the Barresh Council was moving ahead with the excavation because they owned the land. Who had the first right to excavate this site? The original Aghyrians, who had no equipment or authority to do so, the Barresh Council, who had the equipment, was already digging and whose population was descended from the group of refugees that had come on the ship? Or the new Aghyrians, who were highly critical of the council’s methods and who would, all facts considered, probably do the most professional job?

  A door fell shut somewhere in the building, and finally there was activity at the ground floor unit. First out of the lush garden in between the square that surrounded the fountain and the apartment’s door was Lilona Shrakar, a tall woman who looked like she was in her forties, but I’d been informed she was probably closer to sixty. I had learned that she had spent much of her life in stasis and was bound to the ship, whatever that was supposed to mean—I guessed it meant she was flight crew.

  Then came the man himself: Captain Kando Luczon of the Aghyrian behemoth ship that still floated about in the middle of space with its huge crew in stasis, surrounded by an armada of ships from Asto’s armed forces. Like all Aghyrians, he was extremely tall. He liked to wear flowing, loose garments, and with his long white hair he resembled a wizard from the books my mother had read to me while I was growing up in New Zealand.

  The last one in the group was Tayron Kathraczi, a quiet young man about whom we had learned little but whose function seemed to be limited to bodyguard. From the way the captain treated him, he was definitely lower on the pecking order than Lilona.

  Both the captain’s companions acknowledged me with a nod of the head, but their master, as usual, did not greet me. I’d gotten to the point where I’d stopped being annoyed about this. There was so much more serious stuff to occupy me.

  I explained to him where we were going. He merely nodded in a cold, professional manner, but asked no questions, not even about his message and whether I had received it.

  It irritated me. This man irritated me with everything he did, from the way he moved to the way he looked at me and my association, or staff, or any one of the people dedicated to make his stay comfortable. He never thanked anyone or offered his help. He just assumed that stuff would appear and people would turn up.

  I had tried to make excuses—that he’d been cut off from normal people for so long and that space was very lonely and even more so with all his crew in stasis and blah, blah, blah. But Thayu was right. The man was a first-class arsehole.

  And I could think of a whole list of things I’d rather do than take him on an outing, and an even longer list of things I should be doing instead, like dealing with the correspondence.

  We left the building and set off in the direction of the station on the other side of the island.

  The main thoroughfare in that direction led from courtyard to courtyard bathed in the dappled shade of the giant trees that were coming into new leaves before the start of the wet season.

  Various
cricketlike creatures chirped in the branches. A soft breeze carried the ubiquitous scent of wet mud from the marshland, mingled with the smell of cooking, since it was almost lunchtime. None of us said anything, because there was nothing to be said. I’d covered all the subjects relating to the Aghyrian history of Barresh. Anyway, he’d had plenty of time to read up on this subject himself, and by now probably knew a lot more about it than I did.

  He wasn’t sharing any of it.

  He walked next to me like a silent ghost, with his two companions behind him. Thayu walked in front and Nicha bringing up the rear. They kept an eye on people we met and people who watched us from balconies or windows. We were a very odd and disharmonious group. Not a group at all, but two complete associations, each with a leader and two seconds. And the leaders barely tolerated each other and one pair of seconds did all the work while the other pair were passive. This situation would set Coldi teeth on edge.

  Hell, it set my teeth on edge.

  We were about to enter the underground passage that led to the station when Kando Luczon said to me, without preamble, “You have an interest in fertility.”

  It was not a question.

  “Well, um . . .” What the hell? Hell, he had gotten into a lot more systems than just security.

  He went on, “We designed the all-purpose colonising genome to be self-sustaining. Unlike ourselves, they do not interbreed.”

  By all-purpose colonising genome he meant Coldi, and he had so far refused to use that name. His every word seemed designed to throw barbs at those very Coldi people.

  “We have noticed the lack of interbreeding.” Why did I even discuss this with him? “But on the other hand, the Coldi sometimes do interbreed, on very rare occasions. The Barresh Aghyrians are descended from those rare occasions.”

  He snorted. “Throwbacks.” Spoken with callous disdain.

  I started wondering what Marin Federza would make of being called a throwback when I remembered how he had come to me, scared from having his apartment ransacked and then was shot at while in my apartment and, damn it, had I even seen him since I’d come back?

  His position as the Trader Guild representative to gamra had been taken by a Kedrasi Trader, and in amongst the plentiful correspondence that had been waiting for me, I’d been informed that a woman called Feylin Herza now spoke for the Barresh Aghyrians at the negotiations for the Aghyrian claim.

  But no one had said anything about Federza.

  Shit.

  I struggled to maintain the conversation. “Those you call throwbacks are people with lives, and job and families. They work for the community. They deserve to be treated with respect.”

  Kando Luczon went on, oblivious to my words. “Throwbacks were possible because some mistakes were made when handling the genome. The main perpetrator of these mistakes lends his name to some of these throwbacks you have here.”

  Waller Herza, his enemy, the scientist who had developed the Coldi. I understood that the Barresh Aghyrians had only started using the Herza name recently.

  “What you call throwbacks, we prefer to call people like everyone else.”

  “The mistakes weaken the genome.”

  “Regardless of these supposed mistakes, the Coldi people have done well enough for themselves.” Coldi society was strong, mature, with enormous depth of talent and determination. What did he mean—weakens the genome?

  He didn’t reply, his standard reaction when the matter discussed was beyond argument. I glanced at his two companions, but their faces were as impassive and haughty as their master’s. Sometimes I wondered if they even listened.

  Thayu shot me a sharp look. I might have pulled a face had Kando Luczon not been with us. Seriously, it was not my idea to discuss the subject of Coldi fertility in the company of a couple of Coldi people and speak over their heads, all right?

  We’d arrived on the platform where a good number of people stood or sat on benches. The train was yet to arrive, but a screen on the wall showed that it was not far off.

  We waited.

  I talked a bit about the location of the dig site, to fill the awkward silence between us. It was talk for the sake of talk. He would have read all of this already. He would probably tell me so soon, to shut me up. Tayron had asked me two days ago why we talked so much, but I couldn’t go out with a bunch of companions who said absolutely nothing to each other. Coldi didn’t do that, keihu didn’t do that. I knew of no people who did that.

  All around us normal train platform life went on. People going to town for errands. Servants doing their daily trips. There was a mother with two young children, a rare sight on the island. People chatted, behaved normally while we stood in uncomfortable silence.

  The train shot out of the tunnel with a whoosh of air. The silver and gold three-car vehicle came to a hissing halt at the platform. The doors opened.

  Because the track ended here, the cabins emptied of people. There were not many, mainly local council people coming to meetings, I guessed, as well as some domestic staff who had been on errands into town.

  We sat on two facing benches, Kando Luczon facing me with our companions on either side.

  “About those mistakes in the all-purpose colonising genome,” Kando Luczon continued the conversation that we had broken off when we got to the platform. He was good at drawing conversations out over a long time. His mind was like an elephant’s: he never forgot.

  From the corner of my eye, I noticed that the muscles in Thayu’s arm tense.

  “We want to rectify them.”

  What? I almost burst out laughing, wanting to say: “Do you know that there are more than ten billion of those mistakes running around in the galaxy?” But at the same time, I sensed that I was finally getting somewhere, finally seeing a corner lifted of the blanket of mystery that covered the Aghyrian purpose. I simply asked, “Why?”

  “Why?” Now he frowned at me. He didn’t usually show emotion, so I also regarded his confusion as a step forward.

  “I understand that you call the Coldi people . . . flawed, but they don’t see it that way.” I felt all hot saying that, keenly aware of the presence of Thayu and Nicha on either side of me. Of all the things I thought I’d be talking about . . .

  “There are flaws,” he said, his voice insistent. “They are the result of the incompetence of certain people.”

  “Don’t we all have genetic flaws? Isn’t that part of what makes us human?”

  “They can be the perfect colonising genome after we fix the flaws.”

  “They’re perfect enough. As I recall from the history of Asto, it took a very, very long time after the meteorite strike for the Coldi to rebuild. Most of the rebuilding has come in the last few hundred years. Civilisation and technological development has accelerated during that time. This is not something that was built into them and they were not given clear maps on how to develop technology. Civilisation is something that comes from within.”

  “They took it all from us and the blueprints we gave them. It’s an outright shame that they took so long to act on the information. As for innovation: they may have added a few things, but it all comes from us.”

  At this point Thayu rose. “I’m not listening to this bullshit.”

  She had been sitting next to the window, so she climbed up on the bench and pushed herself behind me and Nicha and jumped into the aisle. She went to the back of the cabin and found another seat. I couldn’t see her from where I was sitting.

  To be perfectly honest I felt like joining her.

  “Excuse me.” Nicha rose and went after her. I could hear snatches of their conversation.

  Thayu said, “No. I’m through with this. If this arsehole wants to insult people, let him reap the consequences. Someone will turn a gun on him and I won’t be sorry.”

  Nicha replied again, trying to shush her up.

  I faced my three Aghyrian travel companions in a moment of intense awkwardness. Kando Luczon raised his eyebrows.

  He really did
not get it, didn’t he?

  And I was utterly failing at making him see our side of the discussion. I’d tried to talk, but he didn’t listen. I’d tried the gamra assembly meeting and what a disaster that had been.

  But his presence here was on my invitation. Because I had, foolishly, believed that I could talk to him. Maybe I did need to be more blunt in my approach.

  I took a deep breath, hesitated, sighed, and said, “The reality is that it makes matters very hard for me if you keep insulting people.”

  There. My heart was thudding.

  “Insult?”

  He met my eyes. Damn, he even had the gall to look affronted. “I was offering a great service to them. We have a full medical facility. We can fix genes.”

  “They don’t want fixing.”

  “Don’t want. . . ?”

  “They’re not broken. They’re people.”

  “But what about the throwbacks?”

  “They happen, especially in the Ezmi clan. They know why it happens now. Those people no longer suffer. They’re happy. They even have children.”

  He was still looking at me with an expression of shock on his face.

  “Really, there is nothing wrong with these people.”

  The captain’s companion Tayron said, “They’re too short, their eyesight is weak in the dark.” I was surprised that he spoke up, because he rarely opened his mouth. His voice sounded just as haughty as that of his captain, only younger.

  “Does poor night vision justify extensive medical procedures?”

  “We could simply bring all the young women in and treat them,” Kando Luczon said.

  “All of them?” This conversation was getting increasingly absurd. Was this what they had come back for? Some misguided idea that the people they had created weren’t perfect enough and that they should be grateful that they could be “fixed”?

  I was glad that Thayu and Nicha weren’t here to hear this.

  I was meant to assist and protect this man, but I’d been proud when yesterday in the assembly meeting the new Barresh Aghyrian leader Feylin Herza had risen in the audience and had asked, “The story goes that when the meteorite was about to strike Asto, yours was one of the three ships that could evacuate people, yet you did not allow anyone on board, despite having room for thousands. Is that true?”