Ambassador 6: The Enemy Within Read online

  And we were coming in with a bunch of people who didn’t like wearing clothes, and two two-year-olds—because Nicha was bringing Ayshada. I guessed I could ask the nanny to look after this Pengali youngster as well. It would give Ayshada someone to play with.

  One of the junior domestic staff showed the Pengali their room, and all became quiet for a while.

  * * *

  When the Pengali had left the hall, Nicha, Thayu and I reconvened in my office, which overlooked the marshlands that surrounded Barresh.

  “It will be interesting,” Thayu said.

  “I just don’t understand what the lawyers at Nations of Earth are hoping to achieve and whether we can deliver it,” I said. “It would help a lot if we knew what they expected to get by dragging a witness like Abri into court, when it would be just as easy to record a testimony and deal with it remotely. There has to be a secondary purpose for our visit.”

  They both nodded. We’d been through it so many times, looked at political situations on Earth, and considered motives, but we had no answers.

  Melissa Heyworth, who had been shot and wounded by Robert, and who was Earth’s gamra representative, was already at the court. She had also been explicitly told not to discuss particulars of her testimony with Abri—and with me by extrapolation—in the interest of fairness of the trial.

  We had stuck to that. We wanted Robert convicted of his deeds, and we didn’t want to risk that he got off on a technicality. I also knew that if there was anything particularly controversial to share, Melissa had emergency ways of contacting us that wouldn’t be picked up by Nations of Earth, so I guessed that everything was fine and there was nothing to worry about.

  It was just that it took a huge chunk of time and effort out of my regular job to essentially be a chaperone to a group of Pengali.

  But Ezhya Palayi, Chief Coordinator of Asto, who was my direct employer, had said to me, “Take the time you need. I don’t know where it will take us, but the situation is very curious and I’ll be watching. One way or another, we’ll learn something from it.”

  And this was where I was glad to work for him, and not a rigid Earth-based employer who required me to work against set benchmarks and work only on certain projects and justify my time spent away from those projects.

  I’d often watched Melissa deal with this. She’d had to apply to take time out from her job as Nations of Earth representative to testify. Nations of Earth hadn’t liked it. They might even take her off certain projects and that would set back her career. I knew Melissa still hoped to get a job at Nations of Earth headquarters in Rotterdam at some point and she needed her brownie points.

  Nicha said, “Karana can look after the Pengali child.” In the silence, he’d clearly been thinking about practical issues.

  “Yes, I thought the same. She can keep Ayshada entertained.”

  Then he said, “We need to press the issue of clothing on them. Can you imagine the news when the Pengali turn up in full tribal outfits?”

  I could imagine the sensation. I could already hear the words primitive and natives and all the judgement that accompanied them. “We’ll have to make sure they dress appropriately at all times.”

  Thayu snorted. “They’ll be stubborn until they get there and realise it is cold over there. Then they’ll wear the clothes no problem.”

  “Yeah, we better take some extra just in case. I know Pengali are not stupid, but they’re going into this pretty unprepared for what they’ll face.”

  “Yes, it will be very interesting.”

  I agreed.

  Nicha said he wanted to bathe Ayshada and went out, leaving me alone with Thayu.

  “How are you feeling?” I asked her.

  “Tired.”

  She looked tired. I wished I didn’t have to drag her into this. Not now.

  After postponing my fertility treatment in order to wait for a better time we decided that there was never going to be a better time, and started with the easiest and least invasive genetic treatment option. It was not without discomfort. It had involved poking needles into my . . . you get the gist.

  But it had worked, and Thayu was pregnant. We had not announced it to anyone since it was early days, but my household knew. And Thayu was different. Moody, emotional.

  I took her in my arms and kissed her on her forehead.

  “We’ll be like a travelling sideshow,” I said. “Every news service on Earth will be full of stuff that Pengali get into, what they look like, what they wear, or don’t wear.”

  “Maybe that’s the point of it, putting them on display.”

  “That would make sense if there was an election going on and Margarethe was pushing for Earth to join gamra.” But the election had been a few months ago, Margarethe had been re-elected with the narrowest of margins, and the last time I’d heard anyone at Nations of Earth speak about Earth joining gamra was years ago.

  It looked less likely to happen than it ever had in my lifetime.

  I let out a breath and registered the delicious smells coming in from the hall. “Let’s go and get ready for that great fish. I’m looking forward to it.”

  But when I went into the hallway, we met Devlin coming the other way with a reader in his hand. His face carried an expression of worry.

  “Muri, this just came for you.”

  He handed the reader to me. There was only one type of communication that would come this way, and sure enough, on the screen was a message from the Nations of Earth court. The first few paragraphs rehashed the details of the hearing. I skimmed over those, because I was already familiar with them. The last paragraph said,

  Please ensure that you bring a translator acceptable to the court. Acceptable persons include any such certified, who must, in addition, not be a member of the group that the witness belongs to. Please resubmit your proposed official translator.

  Crap. Holy crap.

  I stared at Thayu, who had read over my shoulder.

  I asked, heart thudding, “Does this mean they’re not approving us to use Ynggi?”

  “It reads that way to me.”

  “They have to be fucking kidding!” We were all ready to go. I spent months sorting this out, getting Abri ready, getting the permits, the new IDs, the health checks, everything.

  But Nations of Earth had less humour than a dead fish. There it was in clear letters: please resubmit your proposed official translator and not be a member of the group the witness belongs to.

  They weren’t going to accept Ynggi as translator.

  “Where do they think I’m going to get someone at such short notice?” Ynggi was one of the few Thousand Island Pengali who had lived in the city and had enough knowledge to translate official terms.

  You couldn’t take anyone from the Washing Stones tribe to translate for the Thousand Island tribe, even if people from the Thousand Island tribe rarely spoke keihu or trusted people who did; and you couldn’t find a translator who translated from Pengali into Coldi who was available and was happy to work for Thousand Island people without being from the tribe. Dog, meet tail.

  Well, wasn’t that just awesome?

  I snorted. “I’m going to take him anyway.” I trusted Ynggi. I’d been in contact with him for months. He did a good job and was probably the Thousand Island Pengali with the most gumption about other worlds. He was not staying behind, even if I had to pay for his trip.

  Thayu said, “We’ll still need someone else.”

  Yes, I knew that, and when I met Veyada in the hall just before dinner and explained the situation to him, he agreed, after uttering a few strong words. “Just to appease their conditions. I don’t think we’ll be able to find anyone who is any good in that very short time.”

  We might not, but I could see Nations of Earth cancel the trial over this trivial issue. They were bureaucratic enough for that, and I didn’t know if I could organise Abri to come here a second time without both her and me losing face with the tribe. Losing face was a big thing with Pengali. Pr
omises had to be kept and failures to do so were chalked up to a person’s social standing over that person’s entire lifetime.

  I shook my head. “I’ll have to try.”

  But then I remembered the talk with my accountant. Who was going to pay for one extra person? I could not leave Ynggi behind. Three adults was a small enough group already. As we’d seen, Pengali travelled in bigger groups, usually with a few young male fighters. I couldn’t leave him here. But if I overshot my travel budget before I’d even begun, the accountant would eat me alive.

  Well, damn it.

  Chapter 2

  * * *

  ONE COULD SAY that it put quite a damper on what was otherwise an excellent meal taken with all the members of my association, as well as Evi and Telaris and the Pengali.

  When Eirani brought in the fish, there was further ceremony to be performed.

  The Pengali came in full tribal gear, with painted patterns on their skin and elaborate ornaments in their hair that included the famed blue diamonds that were the start of this whole affair.

  Eirani brought the fish on a platter, steamed with a tangy sauce made from lily flowers. The meat was pure white, divested of the tough skin and drizzled with bright orange berry pulp.

  I, the official householder, needed to cut the fish and divide it into equal portions for all the members of our group. The fact that they were all Coldi and that Coldi on Asto grew up not eating the meat of any animal higher than a slug did not compute with them. Veyada had developed a taste for fish. Having lived on Earth, Nicha would eat oysters and prawns, but was iffy about vertebrate animals, but the others were staunchly vegetarian. Reida looked like he might want to try it, but he was unsure if Nicha, his superior, agreed with it. His zhayma companion Deyu had tried fish on a previous occasion, but didn’t like the taste nor the thought of eating an animal. She was interested in animals, but not in that way. Being pregnant, Thayu was definitely not going to try it. She was in general not particularly adventurous about food. Sheydu had spent most of her sixty years in a rigid military environment and would probably eat the fish if I told her and would never tell me how much she hated it, but she would hate it, so I wasn’t going to. I appreciated Sheydu very much.

  So we were left with the slightly awkward situation of having far more bowls than people who were actually going to eat this fish.

  First, I was meant to taste it. I cut a piece of the pure white flesh and put it in my mouth.

  The creamy taste was heavenly.

  “It’s a very good fish.”

  This was met with waving tails and serene, slightly smug expressions from Abri, Ynggi and Kita. The little child sat on a high table that normally stood in the corner with a vase on top. Ayshada occupied the apartment’s only high chair, and he eyed this little intruder in his domain with curiosity.

  Now that I had approved of the fish, everyone could start eating it. Veyada did not see the fact that so many of our association were vegetarian as a problem. Neither did Evi and Telaris, who were from Indrahui and had no reservations whatsoever about eating fish. Fortunately, the three of them were big muscled guys, with healthy appetites. The Pengali also seemed capable of devouring much larger quantities of food than their size suggested.

  The little Pengali toddler Idda got a bowl and ate with both fists. Strapped in his chair, Ayshada protested loudly that Nicha would not let him eat fish. While everyone ate, Idda picked up her bowl, slid down one of the legs of the tall table, ran across the floor holding the bowl under one arm and climbed up Ayshada’s chair. She slapped a piece of fish on his table and scampered off again.

  Ayshada put it in his mouth but spent the rest of the meal rolling it into a ball with his tongue, dribbling sauce down his chin.

  He always did this with his food, and I didn’t think Nicha noticed.

  After the official part of the meal, the Pengali retreated to the room we had allocated them downstairs. I thought they were getting changed out of their official gear, but they did not resurface. I asked Eirani what they were doing when she came in to collect the plates and bring fruit, and she said they had gone out, presumably to look around and get breakfast, or maybe see fellow Pengali, or whatever it was that Pengali did.

  This gave us the opportunity to talk about the interpreter situation. We moved to the hub, where I sat between Thayu and Nicha, with Veyada on the other bench. The only light in this room came from the circular bench of communication equipment in the middle. It would normally display a holographic projection of whatever Devlin, who was in charge of the hub, was doing.

  But Devlin had stopped work for the day. He was nervous about travelling with us tomorrow, and had gone into town to pick up additional items that his mother thought he might need.

  We sat down, looking at each other in the semidarkness.

  Thayu said, “Surely Nations of Earth wouldn’t be so dumb to cancel the case over such a trivial technicality.”

  “You don’t know Nations of Earth,” I said, and Nicha nodded. “We absolutely have to find someone, or we will lose a lot more time and effort and we’ll all have wasted a lot of resources.”

  Would the trial even go ahead if Ezhya said I needed to do something for him here and I couldn’t go at a later date and therefore Abri wouldn’t go?

  But where could we find an acceptable interpreter? The Pengali office had already let me know that I would find many local Pengali unwilling to translate for people from the Thousand Islands tribe.

  I thought the whole issue was petty and childish but, apparently, the feud between the Washing Stones and Thousand Islands tribe was about a lot more than rivalry and fishing grounds, although I couldn’t claim to understand the source of the conflict. Each Pengali tribe seemed to be like this with all other tribes. There was a third tribe in the area, the Whitesand Creek tribe. They lived mostly in the forest and were equally hated by both the Washing Stones and the Thousand Islanders.

  As translator, a Pengali person from any other tribe wasn’t going to work. But Nations of Earth insisted that the interpreter couldn’t be from the same tribe.

  Thayu asked, “Would there be any non-Pengali? The keihu families have Pengali housekeepers and cooks. Surely some of their kids have grown up speaking Pengali?”

  That was an option, albeit a far-fetched one, so I contacted anyone I knew who worked with Pengali. I even sent a message to Clovis Keneally, the tour guide whose falling out with Robert Davidson was the stitch that brought all of Robert’s secret diamond smuggling business undone.

  Clovis and his wife had a lot of health problems these days, and lived as virtual recluses. They didn’t do tours anymore. I was sure that the affair with Robert had something to do with it.

  His ferry company with all its inherent feuding over route rights was run by a manager. I didn’t think Clovis worked a lot with Pengali anymore. Maybe just the domestic staff. I couldn’t help but feel a bit sorry for him.

  He got back to me quickly and said he knew no one. His reply suited the way I pictured him: reluctant, and always a bit shifty, even if he didn’t mean to be.

  I contacted Huang Le, who had recently bought a second restaurant in Fountain Street, the overflow of the hugely popular shop near the airport. I had to admit that he made a mean stir-fry and that the local fresh produce in Barresh suited Chinese cooking well. Even Thayu and I ate there sometimes.

  Never let your dislike of the cook get in the way of a good fish. If that wasn’t a Pengali proverb, it should be. Except Pengali didn’t do proverbs like Coldi.

  Huang Le did not like Pengali. His kitchen staff and waiters were all keihu. His children had keihu names and spoke no Isla. I guess that showed us what he thought of Earth.

  Predictably, he knew of no one either.

  We put requests on notice boards and local employment markets and sent out messages to several people who had contacts in the Pengali community, hoping against better knowledge that they would send us back all these amazing offers tomorrow morning.
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  We found nothing. Decent interpreters had their schedules full. We were leaving tomorrow. Was this issue going to scuttle the entire expedition?

  I leaned my head in my hands. “We’re not going to be able to find anyone.”

  Veyada gestured wordlessly at his screen.

  I looked as he held it up. It said, Hire any professional, any task. Guaranteed.

  There was no name. Advertising business names was considered tacky in Barresh, but I thought I recognised where this was coming from: Jasper Carlson, shady figure extraordinaire. He was, like Clovis, like Huang Le, a refugee from Earth for all the wrong reasons. He differed from those two by being smarter, richer and much less transparent in his goals.

  “Really?” I said to Veyada.

  Veyada shrugged. “It’s your decision.”

  But at the same time, signing a contract with one’s competitor to suss them out was very, very Coldi thing to do. He would jump at this opportunity.

  I said, “I wonder what they can offer that the Pengali office can’t.”

  “Maybe this is bluff. Maybe it isn’t. But we can try.” He was in favour, clearly.

  “All right, then.”

  “You were planning to take Ynggi anyway, weren’t you?”

  “He at least knows the Thousand Island dialect and can translate it correctly.”

  “So we’d be taking this extra person to appease Nations of Earth.”

  “Yes.” And pay for an extra person, too. Grrr. I really needed to solve this budget issue. “Contact him at least. See what he can do.”

  Veyada did. He would not use my name, but I had no doubt that Jasper would work out where it was coming from soon enough. I still didn’t like it, but it was not to be helped.

  We received a message back almost immediately that a translator would be available for us in the morning. There was no information about who this person would be, just a price tag that made me gulp.