Ambassador 4: Coming Home Page 9

  “Yep.”

  That was odd. I had not heard of any meteorite strike that would either have brought the ship down or would have hit it afterwards. “What were they saying about this rock?”

  “That’s the thing: it’s not a rock. It’s got all sorts of . . . stuff inside.”

  “Stuff?”

  “Yeah, machinery. Electronics. I couldn’t see it very well.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, a couple of the academics had a deep scanning machine and the image was coming up on the screen. I was sort of standing to the side, pretending not to be there. I couldn’t come too close, because I didn’t want to show them that I was interested.”

  No. That was true.

  “But I got a copy of the scan.”

  That was Reida: he would get to the important part in a roundabout way, but when he did get to it, the wait would have been more than worthwhile.

  He pulled out his comm and an eyepiece projector—which I didn’t even know he had—and scrolled through the menus on the apparatus. Then he passed the eyepiece to me. “Just move with your eyes where you want it to go,” he said.

  I had worked with eyepieces before, but admittedly that was a while back. The projection that seemed to hang in the air before me was blurry. The two little buggy antennae hung so close in front of my sleep-affected eyes that I blinked, which sent the projection flying through the menus.

  Crap.

  “Sorry. I’m not awake yet. That kid has been keeping us up.”

  I relocated the image and redisplayed it. It was a white and blue monochrome . . . something. A blobby indistinct shape that resembled a cloud, or maybe a giant peanut, if the scale down the bottom was anything to go by.

  “Is this it?” That was a disappointment. How could anyone tell what they were looking at, let alone draw conclusions from it?

  “Blink.”

  I did. The image changed. It was still blue-white and blobby but the blobs were in different places.

  “What’s the idea of this?”

  “Blink again. They’re cross-sections, like you were cutting the thing into thin slices, but without actually damaging it.”

  I blinked, and now a square shape materialised out of the indistinct blobs. Another blink and it became thicker.

  “It’s an encasing.”

  He nodded.

  I blinked again, and now some of the inner content of the “rock” became clear: a section of straight lines with interconnecting wires, a couple of slabs that looked like boards with plugs, some cross-sections of cylinders of some description.

  I scrolled through the whole thing, and then reversed the order. The shape of the—clearly artificial—contents came out clearly. I didn’t have enough technical knowledge to even begin thinking about what all this was for.

  “Can I make a copy of this?” I’d show it to Thayu in the morning.

  “You can have it.”

  I pulled the eyepiece off. “The whole thing?”

  “It’s all yours.”

  I wondered where he had gotten the eyepiece. Those things were not cheap. Surely someone would miss it?

  Reida announced that he needed to wash and go back, so he went to the bathroom and I went back into my bedroom where Nicha had gone.

  Thayu stirred when I came into the bed.

  “Hmm, what’s going on?”

  “Reida came back.”

  “What did he have to say?”

  I told her in a few sentences what Reida had told me. She sat up, a silhouette in the dark against the faint glow that came in from starlight and lamps outside. I gave her the eyepiece and she blinked through the images as I had. The glow from the tiny projector lit her face. I could only see light spots, no details of the image.

  “I have no idea what this thing is. I’ll get some people to run functional analyses on it.” If she said “some people” she almost certainly meant high-level Asto intelligence officers.

  “We could simply ask our captain.”

  Thayu snorted. “What is the chance that he’d tell us the truth? Or that he’d let us analyse these images? He could make such a stink about this data that everyone knows who’s got it, who’s supposed to have it and who doesn’t. He’ll probably find out about this anyway, and we’d best send it off before he starts complaining about information being in enemy hands. I’d think the assembly would argue against him and in favour of us, but with this idiot in charge, I don’t know anymore.”

  “Exactly where do you want to send it? First Circle intelligence?”

  “Nah. There is a group in the historical wing of the Inner Circle that does models of similar scans. If someone discovers an object at their building site, they notify these people and they turn a scan into a three-dimensional shape that you can test to see what the function of the object is and how important it is that it be preserved.”

  “Send it.”

  “I will.” She grinned. “Of course they work for the fleet as well.”

  Of course.

  She shifted to the edge of the bed and swung her feet over the side—and froze. “Wait. What’s Joyelin Akhtari’s name doing on this document?”

  “Is it?” I didn’t recall seeing that. To be honest, I didn’t recall seeing text at all.

  Thayu pulled the eyepiece off and gave it to me. She had the projection paused at the very last slide, which just contained the last fuzzy section of the layer that contained the marine growths. “Where is it?”

  “In the top corner.”

  There were a number of lines of blue text in that corner, all of them in Aghyrian—which I hadn’t mastered very well. The text was in Aghyrian script, too, not in Coldi notation, and I was even shakier on that subject. But yes, now that Thayu told me, I saw it, too. “What else does it say?”

  “Not much. Just something about where it’s meant to be sent, I think. We need to have this translated.” Again, to be done by the army.

  Thayu left the bedroom in her nightshirt. I followed her across to the hub where we sat by the dim glow of a couple of lights. If I found it hard to see anything, I could only imagine what Thayu would see. She couldn’t switch the main hub on, because Delegate Namion still had control of the account, and he would be unimpressed if we passed this information to the Asto military.

  I used the special line I had with Ezhya, which I couldn’t use too often because someone would pick it up. It was the middle of the day in Athyl and we received an immediate acknowledgement of receipt. Ezhya sent these messages without even thinking. I had no doubt that he would process the material later.

  For us, it was time to go back to bed.

  When were about to climb into bed, the baby started crying in the next room. We heard Nicha get up and mess about with the bottles.

  “I should go and help him,” Thayu said.

  “He’ll call us if he needs help.” I slid my hand under her thin nightshirt. Her skin glowed with heat. I ran my hands over the soft mounds of her breasts. Was I crazy or had they become fuller?

  “This is another thing you should do,” Thayu said in the dark.

  I rested my hand on her stomach.

  “You should write to the Azimi clan and complain about her departure from Barresh before her contract was even completed.”

  “Oh, I don’t want to—”

  “Yes, you do. Breach of contract is a serious clan matter. Nicha is deeply offended. I am offended by her behaviour. Ask my father. He will tell you what to do.”

  I was afraid he would, very much so.

  I even sort of agreed with them. Xinanu had been rude and didn’t leave us with much choice, but on the other hand, I was getting annoyed.

  All this stuff—the Council’s refusal to let us visit the site, Federza missing, Xinanu’s behaviour—was keeping me away from dealing with the actual problem at hand: what to do about Kando Luczon and his companions and thousands of crew on the ship.

  Chapter 9

  * * *

  BECAU
SE GAMRA operated on its own time of twenty-three and a half hour days and Barresh operated on Ceren time of twenty-eight hour days, the gamra assembly meeting was on before dawn.

  I didn’t think I’d slept much when Eirani woke me and I sat up with a shock, feeling all sweaty and shivery. It was still dark outside and the air that came in through the open window carried a definite bite. Urgh.

  I let myself roll out of the bed, poking Thayu in the side. She went, “Hmmm?” and lay back down while I went into the bathroom.

  The light, when I flicked it on, hurt my eyes, and lit a red welt on my chin where an ingrown hair was starting to make its displeasure known. For crying out loud. That always happened when I was stressed. At some point I was going to have to go back to Auckland for another treatment of my skin. Most of my facial hair was gone, but every now and then, a nasty sucker like this sprang up.

  Thayu came in, her hair mussed up and the impression of folds in the sheets in her cheek. She held out her reader. “He’s finally sent the agenda for the meeting.”

  That was none too early. “Any items about the ship or the captain?”

  “No, it’s all internal matters.”

  As I had thought. This did not improve my mood.

  I didn’t always go to these meetings, nor did I need to. Attendance was only mandatory if there was an issue to be voted on. Out of consideration for some of the assembly’s elderly delegates, those voting meetings were usually scheduled in the afternoon.

  I read through the agenda while Eirani did my hair and while I held my reader with one hand and a slice of bread in the other, getting angrier with every line. Budget this, report that.

  “Seriously, what the fuck? Not even a single mention of either the captain or the dig site?”

  “They’ve passed responsibility to the council,” Thayu said from inside the cupboard where she was getting changed.

  “That’s ridiculous. Whose idea is this?”

  Eirani complained, “Do sit still, Muri, because I don’t want to have to redo this plait again or you will be late.”

  Finally we were ready to go. I caught Thayu throwing a sharp look at the door to Nicha’s room. Of course now that we had to get up, the little monster was fast asleep.

  Even at that early hour, Telaris stood at the door. He raised his eyebrows as we came out. No, he didn’t need to come, I told him when he asked, and also, please go to bed because there might be work to do when I got back.

  He nodded, but remained at the door.

  Well, whatever. He was a big boy and could look after his own well-being.

  Neither of us said anything on our way to the assembly hall. All around us, other candidates were coming out of their apartments, many of them looking equally unimpressed with the time of day. It was not so much that meetings were held at this time, but that the time in relation to Barresh time kept shifting so much. Yes, I understood why they did it, and yes most worlds had shorter days, but right now the massive four-hour difference was not welcome.

  The meeting turned out to be very boring indeed. As always, it was quite dark in the hall with exception of the floor surrounding the speaker’s dais and the brightness of the spotlights made my eyes feel even grittier than they already were.

  We sat through discussions about funding and operational details that were comprehensible only to those people with intimate knowledge of the Exchange. A lot of the delegates’ boxes around us were empty.

  I had trouble staying awake.

  But then the time for questions arrived. Thayu had to poke me in the side or I would have missed it. I scrambled for my prepared statement, couldn’t find it, so I had to write a hasty replacement from memory and sent it off not a second before applications closed.

  The secretary read out the submissions, of which there were only three.

  When my name came up, Delegate Namion looked suspiciously in my direction. Maybe he always looked suspicious. I was starting to see ghosts everywhere.

  I stood up in my box and asked him, without much preamble, why Kando Luczon had been refused entry to the dig site, and stated that he should be one of the people allowed access to the site.

  Delegate Namion gave me an annoyed look. “I remember telling the Delegate that it is a matter for the Barresh Council.”

  “No, it is not. The Barresh Council is free to instate their own rules, but gamra can override their decisions if this is deemed to be in the interest of all member entities.” I had looked that up.

  “I cannot see a reason we should take such action. While excavation is in progress, it is only fair that the party conducting the work gets the say over who is allowed on-site.”

  “The captain and his companions can help with the excavation. They have important knowledge about what we might find. Their entire ship is built using the same technology.”

  “If we give them access to the site, there will be a lot of other people who will want access, too. There simply isn’t the room in this small excavation area.”

  That had to be the lamest argument I’d yet heard. “We have this man here and he or his companions will become extremely impatient if they’re not allowed to do anything.”

  “Is this of importance to us? Who brought this man here in the first place?”

  “The reason I brought him was to preserve the peace and break the standoff.”

  “Whose fault was the standoff? Gamra did not provoke them. Gamra did not follow them or push them into corners where their only option was to use violence. It could well be that your employer wants these things to happen, but I cannot see why we should be beholden to these people’s wishes. The captain is a most rude and unforgiving man. I don’t wish for him to think that in our world that sort of behaviour gets rewarded. He can wait. He can sit at the table when we resume the talks about the Aghyrian claim that’s still outstanding.”

  “Certainly, that claim should be killed as soon as possible.” In fact I was surprised that it hadn’t been declared void already.

  “Not if the claimants let it stand.”

  Letting the claim stand, of course, suited any conservative person well enough. That’s what he seemed to be saying: bury the process in bureaucracy and eventually people will forget about it.

  There were just too many places where I could see openings for manipulation.

  I asked him, “So what would you suggest that I let these people do? They want to access the historic sites. They are going to get impatient if I have to deny all their requests.”

  He held up his hands as if he wanted to say, That is not my problem.

  But it was my problem, and yes I knew that it had been a gamble, but I couldn’t possibly send Kando Luczon back to his ship without having seen anything, because he would wake up all his crew and come back to get that information by force, as well as everything else he wanted.

  Delegate Namion gestured at another delegate.

  “Hang on, I wasn’t finished.”

  “We are finished with the current subject.” The tone in his voice was cold.

  “This is about a different subject.”

  “I only noticed one submission from you.”

  “One submission that contains two questions.”

  He glanced at his screen. His scrunched up in an expression of distaste as he saw that I was right. He said nothing.

  In the hostile silence, I went on. “Yesterday I filed a missing person report for Trader Marin Federza. I want this to go on the record as having been said in this room. I’ve looked through recordings of the past meetings, but cannot see any places where people have discussed the fact that Federza hasn’t been seen since his apartment was shot at.” It had gone very quiet in the hall.

  “Why does this need to be mentioned here? Trader Delegate Federza has been replaced.”

  Yes, I noticed the Kedrasi Trader Delegate in the box—her hair stood out like flaming fire in the glow from the spotlights. Still very keen to attend all meetings, I guessed, because Federza would never have
come to this early morning sitting.

  I returned her nod. “I know that he has been replaced. I am concerned for his safety.”

  “He’s a trader. He’s travelling.”

  “He is not answering my correspondence. Unless my correspondence is being held up somewhere.” I glared at him.

  He glared back. “We’re still in the process of setting up filters to direct the appropriate messages to my account.”

  “Was there anything from Trader Federza?”

  “I’m not a message boy.”

  “I would appreciate if control to my account could be returned to me, along with all the messages that have arrived in the last two days.”

  He didn’t say anything, didn’t move. I gathered that there hadn’t been a message from Federza.

  I said to the assembly, “If anyone here has any information about Trader Federza’s whereabouts, you know where my office is.”

  I sat down to an increasing murmur of voices. The Trader delegate gave me a strange look. Disturbed, almost. She might be living locally, I don’t think she’d been here long. I had no idea what the people in the Barresh Chapter of the Trader Guild had told her.

  By the time the meeting finished and I left the hall, it was light outside. Both suns were above the horizon, bathing the island in a rich golden glow.

  Neither Evi nor Telaris was at the door to my apartment, and the hall lay equally deserted. I went into the bedroom to get changed. Out of curiosity, I opened the door to Nicha’s room, and found that it was dark inside.

  Nicha lay in the double bed, on his back with his head on the pillow, his eyes closed and mouth slightly open. The infant lay curled up on his stomach, his little head on Nicha’s chest.

  I shut the door as quietly as I could.

  “Is he still asleep?” Thayu had been grumpy because she had to get up early and she sounded even grumpier now.

  We had breakfast at the dining table. Neither of us said much. We were both tired. We weren’t getting anywhere. Kando Luczon was going to be extremely unimpressed and some people, possibly including Delegate Namion, were actively obstructing us. I mean—how long could it take to redirect messages relating to a particular subject?