Ambassador 4: Coming Home Page 8

  We did. We were on the far side of the main square where there was a good deal of building activity. I pretended to be looking into a yard. Thayu was talking to Devlin on her comm. “Can you get a fix on them?”

  I couldn’t hear Devlin’s response.

  Thayu pulled my arm and yanked me to the side of the street. I knew better than to shout out or resist, even if I almost tripped. We went into a little side alley that ran between two garden walls. She ordered me, “Get down.”

  There was a door in the wall to the right, with two steps leading up to it. It was probably a servants’ or delivery entrance. Leaves had piled up on the steps, especially in the corner in front of the door. I sat down on the steps. There was a collection of food wrappers and empty drink containers, as well as dead leaves and other rubbish.

  Between the wall and a bush, I could just see a small section of the street. People walked past in a leisurely pace. They were mostly locals, either merchants or servants of the rich families.

  But then a different group came past.

  They were all quite stocky and dressed in a variety of clothing that looked as untidy as the local dress, but wasn’t local.

  They were olive-skinned with brown hair. They walked past slowly, looking to both sides. One of the men was looking at a screen. He briefly turned in our direction. Thayu and Sheydu raised their guns, but the men continued on their way.

  We waited a while before coming out of our hiding place.

  Sheydu said, “I’m finding this continued presence of Tamerians in Barresh disturbing. Everyone is quick to yell out ‘hired guns’ when they are mentioned, but I think there is more to it, and I think we should investigate where they come from. Maybe that will tell us a bit more about who is hiring them.”

  I said, “Or why.”

  She shook her head. “We know why. Kando Luczon is in possession of some of the most advanced technology anyone has ever seen. No one can stand the thought of any of their enemies getting their hands on it.”

  Chapter 7

  * * *

  ON THE WAY BACK in the train, we discussed our unease about the various things that were happening around us.

  Sheydu didn’t like the Tamerians. To be honest, I don’t think anyone liked their presence, but I liked even less that no one could explain why they were in Barresh.

  I mostly felt uneasy about Federza having gone missing after trying to alert the gamra assembly that the Aghyrians were talking to Kando Luczon long before the ship got involved in the stand-off with Asto’s military.

  “I just don’t like that captain, nor his robotic helpers,” Thayu said. “If they knew enough about us to specially seek out the Barresh Aghyrians, they would have known that they should have sent their correspondence to gamra. My guess is that they’ve been spying on us for years. I don’t trust anything that man says. He’s not interested in a peaceful reunion. He wants us divided and he is doing all he can to maintain disagreement.”

  I had a disturbing thought. Everyone had heard the rumours that the Tamerians were an artificial race, but— “If that ship was communicating with the Aghyrians, they might have been talking to others, too. Do you think anyone made the Tamerians according to specifications the Aghyrian ship sent them?” After all, these were the people who had made the Coldi people—and were convinced there were flaws in the Coldi genes that they needed to fix. The Tamerians might well be their start-over, second try attempt.

  Thayu and Sheydu gave each other a disturbed look. I would probably never know what Asto’s military had found out about Tamerians, but my question might have hit close to the mark.

  “Well,” Thayu said, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees. And then again, “Well . . .” Her face had a disturbed expression as if she was trying, but not succeeding, to find reasons why the truth would not be as I suggested. “I’ll . . . see what my father has to say about this.”

  Clearly something going on there.

  The sunlight had turned golden by the time we came back to the apartment. Because I was out, no one was required to be at the door. Evi and Telaris must have gone out for errands, or maybe they were in bed.

  The hall in the apartment was deserted, eerily quiet. A couple of lights blinked in the hub, but I didn’t think Devlin was in there.

  Thayu announced that she had some work to do and made straight for the hub. I suspected she intended to talk to her father.

  I said that I was going to get changed out of my formal clothes for dinner and set out for the bedroom—and one moment I was walking across the hall and the next moment my left foot slid out from under me. My left leg shot forward and I landed awkwardly on the left hand side of my butt with my right leg folded under me.

  Ouch. What the. . . ?

  “Cory!” Thayu stood at the door of the hub, looking into the hall. “What happened?”

  “I fell.” I pushed myself to my knees and ran my hands over the tiles. “It’s wet here. Slippery.”

  Eirani came in, carrying a bucket. She clamped her hand over her mouth. “Oh, Muri, I just went to get this bucket to put over the wet tiles. You didn’t hurt yourself, did you?”

  I hadn’t and was about to tell her, but at that moment a sound came from deeper inside the apartment: the crying of a baby.

  I stared at Thayu, and then met Eirani’s eyes. “Has Xinanu had the child?”

  “Yes, Muri, and she’s gone.”

  “What do you mean, gone?”

  “She had the child and left.”

  “Isn’t she supposed to stay until the child is feeding properly?”

  “Muri, tell me, has that woman ever done anything properly?”

  Well, maybe not, but . . . “Where is Nicha?”

  “He should be in his room, but dinner will be ready soon.”

  I ran to Nicha’s room. The sound got louder when I opened the door.

  Nicha sat on the chair by the window, holding a little squirming bundle in a blanket. I went to stand next to him. The baby’s face was all scrunched up from crying, the skin red, flaky and blotchy. His mouth was open, with only a ridge of gum, and no teeth. A tiny hand had wormed itself out of the blanket and opened and closed into a fist with each cry.

  “He’s so small.” I wasn’t terribly familiar with newborns, whether on Earth or here. I’d only heard that Coldi babies tended to be small.

  “He makes a lot of noise,” Nicha said.

  “Is he drinking yet?” Eirani asked.

  Nicha shook his head. “He doesn’t want the thing in his mouth.”

  A baby bottle with a soft teat sat on a table next to him, filled with the yellowish, rich milk that had sat in our cooling cell downstairs for the past week or so.

  The room was an absolute mess. The bedding lay on the floor, as well as a good number of Nicha’s books and clothes. A cupboard door stood half open. The contents all lay on the ground.

  “What happened here?” I asked over the crying of the baby.

  “Oh, don’t ask,” Eirani said. “She didn’t like something and she started throwing things around.”

  “She wasn’t feeling very well,” Nicha said, still defending Xinanu.

  “That is no reason to make a mess of the room,” Eirani said. “When we aren’t feeling well, most of us crawl into bed. We don’t make a huge scene.”

  Nicha picked up the bottle and pushed the teat in the open mouth. The boy turned his head to the side and continued screaming.

  “She should have stayed,” Thayu said. “It’s in all contracts. Feed the child until it takes a bottle.”

  “There are many things she should have done, if you ask me,” Eirani said. “Making that scene in the hall definitely wasn’t one of them.”

  I glanced at Nicha, and he looked away. It was that embarrassing, right?

  He nodded. “We had a fight.”

  I wavered between saying “Another one?” or “That was long overdue.” It had irritated me a lot that Nicha had accepted and sometimes even defended the w
ay she treated him.

  “She started packing her things. Screaming at me. It made no sense what she said. Anyway, here I was trying to calm her down and she started throwing things around. Then she ran into the hall. A lot of the staff had gathered there out of curiosity, so she started screaming at everyone there. I mean, she was really abusive and rude. Even Eirani was not taking it any longer. She and Devlin were trying to drag her back into the room, and then she pulled away, fell to her knees and gave birth.”

  “In the hall? Just like that?”

  “Yes, Muri, it was outrageous. With everyone watching.” Eirani stuck her chin in the air. “I know you look down your nose at my people, but at least we don’t make a spectacle like that. There are many things that are meant to stay in private, to be shared only with loved ones and best friends.”

  I remembered the wet patch in the hall, and tried to imagine what would have happened in that spot, and failed utterly.

  While we spoke, the little boy had quietened down a bit. He appeared to have noticed my voice and turned his head so that he could see me. His eyes were very dark, still lacking the golden flecking of the irises. But apparently, unlike human babies, Coldi babies were quite aware of their surroundings.

  Nicha picked up the bottle and held the teat to the boy’s mouth. He turned his head away sharply and nosed Nicha’s shirt. His little hands clawed the fabric while he started screaming again and turning his head further and further away from the bottle. It was a frustrating thing to watch.

  Thayu said quietly, “Give him to me.”

  Nicha did. Thayu held him, squirming and all, in the crook of her arm while she sat on the bed and opened up the top of her uniform with her other. She held the boy to her breast. He latched on. She winced. “Ouch.”

  It was quiet.

  “Is that going to work?” I thought milk tended to dry up.

  “Not really, but it will keep him happy for a little bit. If I did this every day, I would have more, but for now, he might calm down. When he’s not so frustrated, he might take the bottle.”

  I’d noticed how over the past two years her breasts had become smaller. She said that they would eventually shrink back to nothing if she didn’t have another child. This had happened to Sheydu, which was why I had never suspected that Veyada was her son.

  There was already a sign that the baby wasn’t happy with the offerings. He was starting to squirm again.

  Thayu held out her hand. “Give me the bottle now.”

  Nicha did, and Thayu inserted the teat in the corner of the little mouth. He latched on. His eyes widened as if in surprise. He drank in long, noisy gulps.

  Nicha watched, fascinated, and Thayu’s eyes glittered while she looked down at the little helpless creature who was yet unaware of all the controversy that would break out over him.

  “Have you named him yet?” she asked.

  “Ayshada.”

  I sat down on the corner of the bed. “Well then, Ayshada Azimi, welcome to my household.” I stroked the top of his head, warm and soft with almost no hair.

  The first of the next generation. Things in our house would never be the same. And yes, we should get on with providing a playmate for him, or he was going to annoy Eirani.

  When he had drunk his fill of milk, his eyelids started drooping. The little hand fell slack. Thayu rose from the bed and lowered him into the bassinet.

  Nicha nodded at her. “I clearly have a lot to learn.”

  He carried the bassinet with us to dinner and while we ate, I spotted him looking down at his sleeping son with a tender expression.

  His mother, with whom he had grown up, was very sick. She had connections with the Azimi clan and even if Xinanu hadn’t been Nicha’s partner of choice, this child was probably part of a contractual obligation between the two clans that I couldn’t even begin to understand.

  But despite the manner in which fatherhood had come upon him, he seemed to be enjoying it. He had been looking to have a child, and his agreed woman had broken her contract. Maybe he hadn’t walked into this quite as innocently as the stories let us believe.

  Chapter 8

  * * *

  THAT NIGHT, I discovered that babies don’t like sleeping when adults do. Twice, Nicha came into our room with the screaming baby for Thayu to calm down. Thayu, being Thayu, went back to sleep immediately, but I lay awake, worrying about things that might be happening where I couldn’t see them, things that would happen if I didn’t achieve certain other things, and things that had already happened, but I didn’t know about.

  I worried about control of my gamra message account and messages Delegate Namion’s assistant said weren’t there, and potential ones that would be there and I didn’t want him to read.

  The second time Nicha entered the room, I got out of bed intending to go to the kitchen to find something to eat, but when I let the door to our bedroom rattle shut behind me, I sensed movement in the hall. Someone was just shutting the door with a soft snick.

  “Devlin?” The figure was too short to be either Evi or Telaris. They would be outside, and they would have let this person in, wouldn’t they?

  “What is everyone still doing up?” a Coldi voice said. Young, male.

  It was Reida. He found it necessary to make a subservient greeting. I touched him on the shoulder. Both he and Deyu had trouble dropping that behaviour, no matter how many times I told them. Maybe I should just ignore it and get used to it.

  I said, “The baby has been keeping us awake. He needs feeding all the time and Thayu is helping Nicha with it.”

  “Isn’t it in the contract that she should stay for a while?” I had sort-of expected him to make a surprised remark about the birth, but of course, being Nicha’s second, he would already know.

  “That’s another story for another day. Why are you here? Is it safe for you to visit?”

  “I have to be a bit careful. I told them at the dig site that I was from the northeastern barracks, except I’m not, and sleeping on the street makes you dirty, so I had to go somewhere to wash. I’ll be gone before daylight.”

  “Did you find out anything interesting?”

  “That’s what I was hoping I could tell you.”

  “Come.” I pulled him into the living room where I turned on a small light. Ouch— that hurt my eyes. Reida was still wearing black council gear. He wore his hair loose, kept out of his face by the clip that held his earpiece in place. Very much like the local young men wore it. But he was right. He did look a bit scruffy and smelled of marsh mud.

  We sat down on the couches in the living room facing one another. His belt bristled with guard equipment.

  “You’ve actually done a really good job of looking like a council guard,” I said.

  He snorted. “This?” He indicated his belt. “Most of this doesn’t work. It just looks good.”

  “Yes, it does.” Although I assumed that the equipment was probably dated and a real guard would be able to see the difference straight away. “What have you found out?”

  “There is some really strange shit going on.”

  “Tell me something new.”

  “Well, it was actually quite easy to station myself at the dig site. All I did was claim to have been sent there from the northeastern guard division. I expected checks—yes, I have a pass—but the guards are clueless. No one ever asked me for identification. They just told me to stand on the footbridge to the station and stop anyone wanting to access the site. The fellow in charge of the dig is someone named Adaron Namitu. He’s an academic and seems to know what he’s doing, but he’s very slow. People keep putting pressure on him to work faster. I don’t understand why they don’t get people in from the Outer Circle. At Asto, people have been digging up this stuff for hundreds of years.”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it?”

  “At night we all have to leave. There were rumours that the Council was getting Tamerians to do the night shift, and we all have to leave before they arrive. I was cur
ious, so I hid in the reeds—which is why I look like this.”

  The dried mud on his uniform made grey patches on his knees and lower legs. There were also splatters on his shirt.

  “Tamerians did arrive all right. There were two. They pulled down all the side flaps and stood outside. That was pretty boring. I had to crawl all the way to the beach and it was really muddy.”

  I restrained the urge to laugh. “Do you know who hired them?”

  “They’re saying the Council. It’s not because of the Tamerians or the night shift that I’m here.”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “I actually managed to wander into the tent yesterday and I had a look at what they’re doing. They’ve sealed off the site by driving plates into the ground and pumping the area dry, but there is nothing much to see except stinking mud and roots and rotting weeds. They’re taking the mud up in buckets and rinsing out the dirt until only sand is left. Then they dry it under all these lamps that you can see lighting up the tent at night, and pick all the little fragments out. It takes forever and most of the things they’re finding are tiny metal fragments. They pick them all up with tweezers and then they go into a little jar. One per grab sample. They record exactly where each sample came from. It’s all very slow.”

  Yes, that was how it was done.

  “Then yesterday, they started uncovering this rock-looking thing.”

  “Thing?”

  “Yes, it’s in the middle of the site. It looks like a rock with stuff growing all over it.”

  “What sort of stuff?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, the rubbish that grows on rocks that lie in the water. Slimy plants and all that.”

  “Water life?”

  “Something like that. They all seemed very excited about this rock. It’s right in the middle of the site.”

  “In the middle of where the ship used to be?”