Ambassador 6: The Enemy Within Read online

  Jemiro answered the question himself. “My father had a business and employed Pengali workers. I spent a lot of time with them.”

  “They were from the Thousand Island tribe?”

  “No. I met those later, when I worked on the fishing boats.”

  What a keihu man from an old family did working on fishing boats was another question, and his whole presence hung together with questions, but I guessed that was the whole point of this exercise. His sole function would be to appease Nations of Earth’s regulations, and for my team to find out more about Jasper’s activities.

  I said to Ynggi, “Can you ask him to tell you in Pengali what he thinks he’s going to be doing for us?”

  Ynggi did. I listened to the rattling sounds of the language, and Jemiro’s reply. I couldn’t understand more than a few very basic words in Pengali, and those I probably pronounced all wrong.

  His reply sounded confident and Ynggi asked something else, to which he also replied.

  Ynggi turned to me, a sightly disturbed look on his face.

  “I have no idea where he would have learned this.”

  “His Pengali is good enough?”

  “Yes.” He made it sound as if he wanted to add something, but those words never came. He just continued to give Jemiro a blank look and signalled his cautious approval with his tail. I wondered if the keihu interpreter would know about tail signals. I’d heard they varied a lot between tribes and groups within tribes.

  “All right, we’ll take him, if Nations of Earth is happy with him.”

  Jasper said, “They will be.”

  I turned to Jemiro. “Are you ready to go?”

  “I am.”

  “I hope you understand that your employment depends on Nations of Earth approving your status as interpreter.”

  “I understand.”

  “And that you will have to provide them with all the details they may ask for.”

  “Yes.”

  “Can we see your documentation?”

  He showed it to us on his reader. His paperwork was impeccable. He was an accredited member of the Interpreters’ Guild. He also had gamra credentials and had worked in four different languages.

  It was almost too perfect to believe. I met Veyada’s eyes, sure that he would check out the authenticity of the documentation.

  I asked him, “Do you need to pack anything? Do you need to go home to prepare? It will be a long journey.”

  “No, I’m fine.”

  “It’s going to be cold there.”

  “I know. I have my things.” A small bag rested on the floor next to the chair where he had been sitting. I judged it was rather too small for everything he needed, but we’d cross that bridge when we came to it.

  On our way down the stairs, I sent all the details to Devlin, who shot back at me, Is this guy for real?

  Which pretty much summed up my feelings about it.

  We’ll just have to run with him. See if Nations of Earth will approve him as our official interpreter.

  Devlin did, and we had approval from Nations of Earth even before we had arrived at the gamra island. So Jemiro was going to come with us. Silent, watching, soft-spoken. His dark eyes looked like a sad puppy’s. He sat next to Veyada on the bench opposite us on the train. He folded his hands and when he noticed me looking at him, unfolded them and leaned against the backrest.

  He looked out the window, not meeting my eyes.

  I did not trust him one bit and yet I could not find one single reason why.

  At lunchtime, in my apartment, he sat next to Abri, who appeared to have just woken up. They spoke a few sentences in Pengali.

  “I just told her that the fish is nice,” he said when he noticed me looking at him.

  “The fish is nice,” Abri said. She pursed her lips.

  I had not told her of the new silly requirement by Nations of Earth for an interpreter and she was probably puzzled by his presence.

  “We’re definitely relying on Ynggi,” I said to Thayu when we were in our room to pack our personal things. “I don’t trust this man at all.”

  Thayu said, “I looked up the Pakiru family. It seems they fell on hard times and have been struggling to make ends meet since a feud put an end to one of the businesses they ran. Their council seat is not currently occupied, and it hasn’t been for a long time.”

  Interesting. The old keihu families—the Semisus, the Damarus and all those who lived in the stately houses in the quiet ends of Market Street and Fountain Street, to the east of the airport—lived in each other’s pockets and would not let a chance go by to poke in another family’s business, which was the primary purpose of the council.

  One would think that for a traditional keihu family, their council seat was an instrument of power and influence. Why not use it?

  Chapter 3

  * * *

  WE GATHERED UP the last-moment things we needed. Personal items. Medication.

  Thayu packed a small bag with her toiletries, which included the capsules she was taking to keep her normally variable Coldi body temperature even, so that the child had a better chance of growing. She smiled at me when she tucked those into the bag. A burst of warmth went through me. Damn, I loved that woman so much.

  I added two additional lots of adaptation capsules. One set to keep the temperature down, and one to raise one’s body temperature. I’d been stupid enough to go without the ones I ended up needing a few times. I was taking no more risks. I was going to take all of them, including the ones I thought I would never need.

  “Ready?” I asked Thayu, with my hand on the door.

  “I think so.” She snorted. “I didn’t think we’d ever make it this far. I mean with all the ridiculous rules and quarantine regulations and now this business with the interpreter.”

  “No, I was starting to have my doubts.”

  Preparing to travel with the Pengali, who had no documentation, no health checks, no gamra ID, had been a major undertaking. We’d spent months getting all the right paperwork in order, finding records of birth for people who kept none, making official translations of declarations, sorting their health checks, and then, because we’d been to the tribe’s land, redoing our own.

  But we had made it and now there was a giant pile of luggage in my hall, and a whole host of people in dark blue gamra security uniforms carrying guns. Nicha was there, Sheydu and Veyada, and Reida and Deyu. The latter two looked very dapper in their official gear. It was the first time since qualifying for gamra security that they wore it on an official trip, and they appeared keen to prove every bit of their worthiness.

  At the door were Evi and Telaris, looking very threatening, their belts bristling with weapons. They were sorting out some sort of issue with electronics and the men who would look after the apartment’s security while we were gone.

  The source of all the fuss—Abri, Kita and Ynggi—sat on the little ornate bench that no one ever used in the hall. They wore clothes, no less, and having heard Eirani complain about that this morning, I understood that it was a Herculean victory in a battle that had been fought over many bathrooms and bedrooms.

  Devlin kneeled on the floor, nervously checking his bags and his pockets. His travel had been limited to one trip to Kedras for his training. I had decided to take him so that he could be our liaison contact with gamra while we were in the courtroom, because there would be many things that Amarru at the Exchange would need to know. The prosecutor Conrad Martens had agreed that he was an acceptable addition to our attending team, because it was important that we keep gamra informed about the proceedings.

  I had paid to bring Eirani, because I felt sorry that so many of us were going and she wasn’t, and that she always had to stay home. Once the court session was done and Abri and her family, plus guards, safely delivered to Athens for the return trip, I was hoping to tack on a visit to my father on the farm in New Zealand, which had plenty of room. My stepmother Erith was Damarcian and she would make everyone feel at home. Eira
ni, of course, had never travelled and she had packed a host of soft bags full of warm clothes. She even wore some of those clothes. She had taken the warning that it might be cold very seriously, and appeared to have packed her entire wardrobe.

  Apparently, Eirani hated cold. She also hated being unprepared.

  And then there was Jemiro Pakiru, prim-faced. He stood by the door holding his small pack. During lunch, all I’d been able to get out of him was that he worked as translator for gamra and the council, and that he had recently specialised in the Thousand Island dialect of Pengali. So recent that the Pengali office didn’t know about it? I asked. He said the Pengali office was a charity run by volunteers. They did not know everything.

  No, the office was paid for by Pengali, and Pengali paid each other in favours and in food and lodging. They had no use for money. I wouldn’t call those people volunteers, but I guessed it depended on what definition one used.

  The whole situation with him was very strange, and he seemed defensive when we asked questions about his skills. And when Nicha asked him where he had obtained his certification, he said Kedras; and then Nicha said that it was unlikely he could have learned Pengali on Kedras.

  “No, no.” His face grew red. “I learned that here, but I became an interpreter at Kedras. Coldi and keihu and Damarcian.”

  “And then you tacked on Pengali?”

  “There seemed . . . a demand. I’m good with languages, you know.”

  Oh, I didn’t doubt that, but I wished I knew why.

  Finally, the group included Nicha’s nanny Karana Semisu—definitely from a well-respected keihu family—who had also agreed to look after little Idda.

  But Pengali toddlers, as it appeared, were impervious to commands, angry words in any language, threats or bribes.

  The little ratbag had taken off her clothes and had climbed on top of the pile of luggage, where Ayshada had been told repeatedly he couldn’t jump. So he stood squealing at the bottom of the pile, and she danced on top displaying her giraffe-patterned skin and swinging her black and white banded tail for all to see. The nanny was too short to reach her, so that job fell to Evi who had developed a particularly good relationship with Ayshada, even if only because Evi’s name was the only one Ayshada could pronounce.

  So he yelled, “Evi, Evi!” and he pointed at the pile of luggage and the Pengali brat on top.

  Evi reached out his very big and very black hands—even the palms were black in Indrahui people—and nabbed the youngster off the pile of suitcases.

  She let out an almighty squeal and tried to free herself, kicking and snaking her tail around Evi’s hands. When Evi set her on the ground, she scurried across the hall under the bench where her mother and grandmother sat and paid her no attention. Ayshada followed her.

  Karana, the poor girl, ran after the pair of them.

  Thayu gave me an apologetic glance. All of a sudden, I wanted to take her in my arms. I wanted to tell her that no, I didn’t mind the noise and I knew children made rather a lot of it, and that she would do infinitely better than the Pengali in raising her child—our child.

  Something else to tell my father when we got there. I was looking forward to spending some relaxing time on the farm.

  Reida had opened the door to the apartment and was talking to someone on the gallery outside.

  A man’s voice drifted into the hall—the concierge. Apparently, the train was ready and waiting for us.

  So the great exodus began. People picked up their packs and gathered up children, and the party started moving towards the door. Sheydu and Veyada already stood in the hall. Devlin was giving last minute instructions to the young man who would be looking after the hub in our absence, and whose job it would be to relay and file the correspondence we would send him.

  Jemiro had picked up his little bag and stood on the gallery, looking impatient and prim.

  Karana picked up Ayshada—giving up on the Pengali brat—who sat triumphantly on the luggage trolley.

  Eirani walked past, chatting to Karana about how much she had hoped that working for me meant that she could travel one day. Pearls of sweat glistened on her forehead from wearing all those clothes.

  Jemiro followed them.

  Then Evi and Telaris, Deyu and, finally, Thayu and I.

  I waved to the remaining staff, looking a bit sad in that big hall.

  There would be fewer of us left in the apartment than ever before. The staff would probably play games in the hall and eat in the hub with the plates on their knees while talking to their friends elsewhere or watching whatever vids youngsters liked to watch or games they liked to play. And we would come home to a house that was neat, clean, no matter the mess they would make in the intervening time.

  We walked as a big, chatting group across the gallery, where our voices echoed in the atrium and brought one or two curious folk to open the front door to check what was going on. We went down the stairs—or in case of the drum and the trolley, in the lift—and then out the building’s entrance, past the uniform fitter, and into the courtyards and avenues of the gamra island. People stopped to let us through, or watched us from the eating-houses or balconies of their apartments.

  Thayu said nothing, and I caught some cautious thoughts through the feeder, which I had turned down since so many of these people were connected to me and it was getting very noisy inside my head.

  “What are you thinking?” I asked in a low voice.

  “Can’t hide anything from you, can I?”

  “Nope.”

  She let a small silence lapse. “Well, what I’m thinking is that it’s really strange that any government is happy to pay for us all to come to deliver a simple testimony that could be given remotely.”

  “Yes.” In the end, Nations of Earth had paid for all of us, even Eirani. Devlin had told me that Nations of Earth had refused to take my payment. Thayu was right that it was strange, and I had no answer for the reason for this other than the ones he had given me: that they wanted to treat the case properly, whatever that was supposed to mean.

  I strongly suspected that there was some other motive, but we wouldn’t find out what that was until we got there, or maybe not even then.

  We made it to the train station without too much hassle. The train waited for us with an entire carriage dedicated to our considerable party with our luggage that included the big drum and the bundle of pipes of the irrka.

  The moment she saw the train, Idda jumped off the luggage trolley and ran, squealing, into the carriage, flying from backrest to backrest like a squirrel. Apparently, Pengali kids were particularly fond of crawling into hollows, like cats, and the train had all kinds of hollows within hollows: the luggage racks, underneath the seats, the emergency compartment—

  “Oh, no, you don’t, you little brat!” Karana ran after her, hair flying.

  Idda squealed and scurried to the far end of the carriage.

  Ayshada ran after her.

  Karana tried to catch them, gave up in Idda’s case and scooped Ayshada from under a bench. He didn’t agree with the sudden restriction of his freedom, and let that be known in a loud voice.

  “Really.” Eirani sat down, with a withering glare at Idda’s mother Kita, whom I had not once spotted trying to control her daughter’s behaviour.

  Everyone else came in and found seats. The luggage trolley was secured and the train was off.

  I stared at the window while Reida chatted excitedly to Veyada. It was not Reida’s first trip with us, but the previous one had been very short. The wonders of Earth were often discussed in the circles of security where he and Deyu had trained for the past two years.

  “You’re quiet, too,” Thayu said softly next to me.

  “I think everyone else is already making enough noise.”

  She smiled, and my heart melted. I loved that woman so much.

  “What are you worried about, then?”

  I blew out a breath. “I’m hoping that Abri giving evidence is all we’re going
for. With these kids here and . . .” I didn’t need to say more. I wanted to protect her, not let her protect me.

  This morning was the first time I’d happily packed my new gun, although I fully intended to leave it in the hotel room as much as possible. “We’re vulnerable. We can’t move fast if we need to. I’m even hoping that those kids won’t make too much trouble for us in our accommodation. These people are not very accepting of children in public places and there are hundreds of ways for toddlers to injure themselves or get lost. And I do not like that interpreter.”

  She nodded.

  The man in question had taken a seat on his own and, while everyone chatted, he stared out the window. One could pose that the whole issue with his inclusion in the party was ridiculous, designed to drive up our costs and line the pockets of service industries. There was always plenty of that going on at Nations of Earth.

  Bureaucracy. Coldi had a fairly low tolerance for it. I would almost say that the scheming at Nations of Earth was more foreign to me than Coldi associations.

  Thayu briefly flitted through my thoughts about that.

  She briefly touched my hand, that subtle Coldi sign of solidarity.

  Right at that moment, I would a thousand times rather take her on a trip somewhere than drag my entire household to Earth for a court case that, by all the signs, had the potential to be highly political. There would be hundreds of ways in which we could stuff up, say or do the wrong things.

  My team chatted around us, but Thayu looked at me and I looked into her gold-flecked eyes. The sun peeped between the clouds and made her eyebrows and eyelashes glitter, peacock-like. She was oh so serious, and gorgeous. And I wanted to put her in a protected room and bring her breakfast while she left the running and shooting to others and she grew big and round and her breasts full and firm.

  Veyada glanced at me from across the carriage. He knew. He had no children, despite my frequent reminders that I would be happy for him to take time off to look for a mother, but he appeared uninterested.