Trang Page 13

  Chapter 13

  “Your messiah,” said Philippe. “I see.”

  “This is not possible,” said Moritz.

  “The opposite is true. This is entirely logical,” said Max.

  “Your words are like an unmarried old man,” Moritz replied.

  “Well, obviously, I must have seen a picture of this messiah of yours before,” said Philippe. “And I simply incorporated that image into my dreams.”

  “He has visions?” said Moritz.

  “When he sleeps. All creatures on his planet do. But these visions do not foretell the future,” Max replied.

  “How can you be certain of that?” asked Moritz.

  “He says he is certain of that,” replied Max. “He says that such visions are how their brains eliminate toxins.”

  “This is exceedingly mysterious,” said Moritz.

  “It’s really not,” said Philippe. “We see things at night that aren’t there, but often they include memories of things that we have seen. So I must have seen this image before.”

  “Exceedingly mysterious,” repeated Moritz.

  “I know,” said Max. He turned to Philippe. “You have not seen this image before.”

  “You don’t know that,” Philippe replied. “He’s a major religious figure, right? So you must have pictures of him all over the place.”

  “Cannot translate,” said Moritz. “Cannot translate.”

  “Do you see any others?” asked Max. “There are none. There is, on this station, only this image, and it is kept hidden at all times. There are, including this portrait, only 15 such portraits in existence, and they are kept hidden as well.”

  “They are supposed to be kept hidden at all times,” Moritz exclaimed, walking over to the panel. “It was irreligious to expose this portrait.”

  “You realize that I was required to expose it,” said Max, as Moritz dispiritedly turned the panel back around. “He saw him. He described him.”

  “I refuse to accept this,” Moritz said.

  “Do you know his song?” Max asked Philippe.

  “His what?” Philippe replied.

  “I refuse to accept this,” Moritz repeated.

  Max turned to him. “Your refusal is irrelevant,” he said. “You know the song as well as I.”

  Max began thrumming—an odd thrumming, because instead of being a constant throb it started and stopped, and started and stopped.

  “No,” said Moritz.

  “You must,” said Max.

  They began to speak together. Their speech was rhythmic, a counterpoint to the beat of the thrumming. The translator, dead to all sense of rhythm, spoke in its mechanical voice.

  “Listen closely, people of cannot translate. At the end of the age that I have described to you, one will be chosen. He will not know my name or my song. But he will stop our certain destruction. He will stop a disaster that not only will destroy our people but other people and the universe in which they live as well. It will be a time of great peril, but if you have fulfilled your destiny the chosen person will arrive, your new friends will aid you, and life will be preserved throughout the universe.”

  They stopped. Max and especially Moritz looked drained.

  Philippe looked from one to the other. “You don’t actually believe all that, do you?” he asked.

  Max looked wearily at Philippe. “That is the end of the prophecy. Everything else in the prophecy has come true as foretold.”

  Philippe closed his eyes.

  “He cannot be the chosen one,” said Moritz. “It is not just.”

  “He does not know the song, Moritz,” said Max.

  “That does not have significant meaning,” said Moritz.

  “It does not say that the one who knows the song best will be chosen, Moritz,” said Max, heatedly. “It does not say that the one who lives a life of perfection will be chosen. It does not say that the worthiest will be chosen. It says that the ignorant will be chosen.”

  “They are all ignorant,” said Moritz. “All of the other people, and as well almost all of our people. They are ignorant of the image, and they are ignorant of the exact song. We join the priesthood and learn these things, and we sacrifice the possibility that we will be chosen.”

  “Do you genuinely make that sacrifice, Moritz?” asked Max. “Do you know that you do not choose who is chosen?”

  “He has visions while he sleeps. His people created fictional stories of meeting other people before it happened,” said Moritz. “Cannot translate informed me that he was asking if we could think the thoughts in the minds of other people. His people are mysterious. They may know things of the future, or know things from other people’s minds.”

  “You are creating fictional stories,” said Max.

  “Look,” said Philippe. “This is insane, OK? I had a dream. It was just a dream, and it doesn’t mean anything. I thank you, very much, for showing me your secret religious icon and taking me into your confidence regarding your religion. I appreciate that you trust me that much. I intend to guard your confidence, and I have no intention of telling anyone what just happened here.”

  He paused, looking each Host in the face. “I trust you will do the same—don’t tell anyone what happened here. I won’t, and you shouldn’t. With that said, I have many things to do, and I need to leave and go do them.”

  He slipped his hand into his pocket and felt the heavy thing here.

  “You should go,” said Moritz. “Go now and be gone.”

  “Cannot translate,” said Max.

  Philippe opened the door and walked out.

  Baby was not satisfied with Philippe’s explanation regarding Ptuk-Ptik. That was hardly unexpected—if things hadn’t taken such a weird turn with Max, Philippe would have demanded more assurances himself. Baby wanted to at least be able to exchange messages with her friend, if not head a small but heavily armed force to break him out of the dreadful prison in which she was convinced he languished.

  Philippe tracked down the merchant and got him to confirm the broad outlines of what Max had told him—Ptuk-Ptik faced an inquiry, not a trial, and the worst thing that could happen is that his religious order would not allow him to re-enter the station. While that would be a significant loss of status for the priest, he was not in any real peril.

  That calmed Baby down somewhat, but it was obvious that Philippe was going to have to talk to Max or Moritz again—she still wanted to get a message to Ptuk-Ptik, and Philippe himself wanted to know if he could testify at the inquiry. He wouldn’t be able to avoid them forever in any case, so he went to the Host’s living area, guards in tow, and asked to see one or the other.

  Max received him. “Moritz has gone to the portal to contemplate recent events,” he said. “I wish to do the same, but not while he is there, because I do not wish to interact with him in his current mental state.”

  “I am sorry about your conflict,” said Philippe, quickly moving on to what, for him, was the more important issue. “Have you told the other Hosts the reason behind it?”

  “I have not and will not. In that one thing I agree with Moritz,” said Max. “In the past the chosen one has been identified, and those identifications have been mistakes. Although false, those identifications caused great panic, because a disaster was anticipated.”

  “I appreciate that,” said Philippe. “Discretion is key.”

  Max agreed to record a message from Baby and a statement from Philippe noting that he had chosen to speak to the merchant without guidance or pressure from Ptuk-Ptik. He also agreed to pass along Bubba’s surveillance footage, which showed Philippe going over and talking to the merchant before Ptuk-Ptik showed up.

  Their interactions were polite, if strained. It reminded Philippe of some negotiations he had witnessed in Ottawa, where everyone in the room knew that the participants had engaged in champagne-fueled indiscretions the night before, but everyone was just going to pretend that nothing had happened.

  The main impact of that br
ouhaha seemed to be on Philippe’s dreams—the nightmares, already troubling and violent, ratcheted up a notch as General Jesus’ men accused the dream Host of falsely claiming to be the messiah, a charge he denied for as long as he was able to talk.

  Philippe sat in his office, wondering what to think.

  He had gone earlier that day to meet Brave Loyalty and record more of the Cyclopes’ language. At the end of the session, out of the blue, the alien had said, “Tell me how you humans rule yourself.”

  “You are curious about that?” said Philippe, a little surprised. “Historically, we organized geographically, into nations. Each nation followed its own interests and organized its government differently, and nations often fought over resources. More recently, the various nations have formed voluntary alliances with each other. The main alliance is called the Union.”

  “If each nation had its own interests and government, why did they ally?” asked the Cyclops.

  “Humans are not that different from each other, and they realized that oftentime, they are more likely to get what they want if they work together, rather than fighting and destroying resources and lives.”

  “How does such an alliance work?”

  “That has changed over time,” Philippe said. “In its early form, each country had a vote, and certain powerful countries had more authority than the other countries. But as people have become more accustomed to the alliance, it has become more representational. Now each nation has ultimate authority over some issues, but with other issues that the Union has authority over, representation is based solely on population, and national divisions are irrelevant.”

  As he was talking, he began scratching the inside of his left arm. He stopped himself, hoping that Brave Loyalty hadn’t noticed. Because he hadn’t been sleeping well, Philippe had been using stimulant patches pretty regularly, and the skin where he usually placed the patches was developing an itchy rash.

  “That is emphatically different,” said Brave Loyalty. “My people have a unitary government. Once we were scattered and weak, but for a very long time now we have been one people, with one language and one government.”

  Philippe thought for a minute. “I am surprised that geographical divisions did not have the same impact on your people as on my people. Even the discovery of people on other planets has not served to unify my people as much as your people appear to be unified.”

  “To live, my people had to be unified,” said the Cyclops. “Our continent was once emphatically dangerous, with many dangerous carnivores. We became intelligent, and through intelligence, courage, and unity, we were able to eliminate these dangerous creatures, despite their superior strength and voltage.

  “We have accomplished a great deal through unity, and I believe our future relies on unity, in the consistent focus of our people on our people. I do not agree that we should focus on this station and on other people.”

  “I see,” said Philippe, a little taken aback.

  “I wanted to communicate that to you because I will not be seeing you again after today,” Brave Loyalty continued. “The time I was assigned to remain on this station has ended. I am returning home.”

  “I am sorry that we will not be meeting again, and I thank you very much for your help in teaching me your language,” said Philippe. “I hope you have a safe journey home.”

  “I appreciate your concern for my safety,” the Cyclops replied. “I want you to know that as much as I can, I intend to encourage my people to become more focused on themselves.”

  Thinking back on that conversation, Philippe wasn’t sure what to make of it. While it had always been somewhat difficult to communicate with Brave Loyalty, Philippe had nonetheless felt like they had a real connection. It seemed a bit out of character for Brave Loyalty to have said something quite so rude, and it made Philippe wonder if he had offended the Cyclops in some way.

  But then again, it wasn’t uncommon for diplomats to get suddenly disgusted with a place when they knew they were about to leave it—although they usually were better at keeping such feelings to themselves.

  Philippe rubbed his temples. His head was aching despite the analgesic patch, and his jaw was clenched. In addition to the stimulant patches, he’d eaten ration bars with extra caffeine at both breakfast and lunch, and he could feel the tightness of his muscles. He kept seeing quick movements out of the corners of his eyes—he knew they were nothing but the products of fatigue and too many stimulants, but he kept looking around edgily anyway because he kept thinking that another White Spider had crawled into his office.

  He should cut back, but the simple fact was, he needed the stimulants if he was going to do his job. He hadn’t gotten a decent night of sleep in what seemed like weeks. Just the night before, he had woken up from a nightmare as General Jesus’ men had chopped off the Host’s forelimb, right below the joint. He finally managed to fall asleep again, and the dream picked up right where it left off, with the men lopping off the joint itself and handing it over to be nailed up on the wall, while the Host lay, limp and bleeding, on the floor.

  His memory of the nightmare was interrupted by a ruckus outside his door. Eager for a distraction, Philippe went out. All the SFers were running to the mess hall and whooping happily, so he followed them in.

  Shanti was standing on a chair. “Shut up!” she yelled.

  The noise died down.

  “OK, as you bums know, we’ve been due leave for a long fucking while now. It took some ass-kicking, but they finally decided to give us what’s fucking owed us.” The soldiers cheered, and she continued. “Two weeks! That’s two weeks total, so travel and quarantine time is just your tough shit, don’t come crying to me about it.”

  “How long is quarantine?” yelled one of the soldiers.

  “Two days on Titan—they’ll do whatever debriefing they gotta do then, so at least you don’t gotta waste more time on that. We’re going to do a random draw—whoever gets picked leaves with Cheep and Pinky, who are coming in about an hour.”

  She held up an open scroll. “Random Draw!” appeared on it in colorful letters, with “start” in smaller letters below.

  “Here goes!” she yelled, and hit start.

  A colorful icon bounced around the scroll, as the soldiers whooped and clapped. The word “Done!” appeared with a little musical flourish.

  Shanti looked at it. “And the winner is—Baby! Get your shit packed, Baby—you’re going to—where are you going?”

  “Owens Valley! My mom’s place!” shouted Baby, who was bouncing up and down with excitement. Five-Eighths was standing next to her, and Philippe could see that he was far less thrilled.

  She headed toward the door, stopping when she saw Philippe. “Can you be sure to let me know if you hear about Ptuk-Ptik?” she asked. “I’ll give you my address.”

  “Absolutely,” said Philippe.

  “Hey, Baby?” It was Five-Eighths. “Can I see you for a bit before you go?”

  “I gotta pack my stuff, Five,” she said, walking on.

  “Yeah,” he said, following. “But what I’m talking about won’t take more than a minute.”

  As promised, Cheep and Pinky were there within the hour, and Baby was on her way. Philippe, of course, got a mail widget.

  Whoever was screening the mail was doing a good job—the volume of messages was far more manageable, and what came through had been sorted by importance, so Philippe knew what he had to answer and what could wait. This batch included a memo by someone in Union Intelligence in response to Philippe’s report that the Hosts had agreed to allow a volunteer to undergo a medical examination.

  Philippe read the memo with increasing consternation. Then he picked up the scroll and went to see George.

  “Have you seen this?” he asked

  George glanced at the scroll. “I was just about to head over to the Hosts’ to do the exam,” he said.

  “Read this thing through, first,” said Philippe.

  George took the scroll an
d read the memo. He shrugged. “Typical UI,” he said, handing it back.

  “I hadn’t really thought of this, of the information being used in this way,” said Philippe. “To create poisons and whatnot.”

  George shrugged again. “It’s information. If we put it out there, we can’t really control how it’s used.”

  Philippe rubbed his temples again. His headache was suddenly worse.

  “Well,” he said, “what do you think we should do? The Hosts are letting us do a medical examination because they trust us. I think it’s pretty low if you examine one of them, and then we use that information to develop better weapons to kill them.”

  George gave a sardonic smile. “To be honest, Philippe, I don’t think you have too much to worry about. The weapons we have now will kill them just fine. This is what the UI always does; they’re always getting excited over a half-penny’s advantage, but it never amounts to much in the field. Plus, you don’t know—the data we collect from the examination could lead to some kind of major scientific breakthrough, or maybe it will help people feel like they understand the aliens more. There’s a lot of good that could come from this.”

  “That’s true,” said Philippe, “but it still—it just bothers me that they think like this.”

  “This is how they’re paid to think,” said the doctor. “It’s their job to be paranoid and stupid, and to make mountains out of molehills. It’s not like everyone’s that way.”

  “I hope not,” said Philippe. “I’ve been gathering some recordings on the Cyclopes language. I was thinking that maybe the UI would have good linguists who’d be interested, but now I don’t think I want to give them anything.”

  “I certainly understand that,” replied George.

  Philippe looked at him. “You really don’t like Union Intelligence, do you?”

  George laughed. “There is no love lost between the UI and the SF—they’re rats, and they’re useless. So, do you want to come with me to see the Hosts?”

  “I can’t. I’ve got to finish my report,” said Philippe. That was, technically speaking, true, although it was also true that nowadays he only went to see the Hosts when he had to. “So, do you have a volunteer?”

  “Yeah, the merchant you gave my translation gear to is up for it,” said the doctor, pulling on his gloves and attaching his hood. “I just need to check and make sure that they’re not incredibly sensitive to anything that our scanners use.”

  “Good plan,” said Philippe.

  They walked down the hallway. As Philippe turned to go into his office, he stopped.

  “Don’t you need an escort?” he asked the doctor.

  George smiled. “Stone-cold killer, remember?” he said, thumping his chest.

  Philippe put two stimulant patches on the inside of his right arm and went to get his morning ration bar with extra caffeine. All night, he had kept waking up from nightmares, and he felt like he’d been kicked in the head by a mule. His left hand hurt, too—he’d smacked his knuckles against the wall thrashing around in his sleep, opening up a gash that bled every time he closed his hand.

  He went back to his office and sat, eating breakfast alone. He messaged George about the gash, which he assumed would set off the alarms in his lonjons once he put the gloves on. He looked again at the doctor’s report—the merchant’s physical examination had gone off without a hitch, and there were reams of data in there regarding the Host’s physiology.

  It had already gone to Earth, and no doubt some sociopath in the UI was already going over it all. Maybe they could modify smallpox or something—the Union was supposed to be too civilized for germ warfare, of course, but the Union had once been too civilized for nuclear weapons as well.

  People are animals, Philippe thought. The second they feel threatened, all the rules go right out the window.

  He chewed, pondering the UI and its ilk.

  He stopped, mid-chew. He could even the scales a little bit. It would be a simple matter to go over to the Hosts’ living area and suggest—nay, insist—that they perform a physical examination on a human.

  Philippe would volunteer. And then, whatever the UI cooked up, at least the Hosts would have had a chance to do the same.

  He quickly discarded the idea. Things over in the Hosts’ area were just too weird. Max and Moritz were no longer speaking to each other, and they were high-profile enough in the community that all the other Hosts had noticed. Since they wouldn’t say what had triggered the rupture, rumors were flying—and not just among the Hosts. A Pincushion had stopped Philippe a few days ago to ask him if he had heard that Max and Moritz’s wife had found out that they were fighting and had threatened to call them home if they didn’t make up—which, considering that the Pincushions had neither gender nor marriage, was a pretty powerful indication of an innate gift for gossip.

  “Philippe!” One of the soldiers, in his earplant.

  Philippe slapped his com mike. “Yeah.”

  “It’s Rojy at the outer door. There’s a Host here with a video message for you.”

  “I’ll be out in a minute.”

  Gingko stopped him before he entered the no man’s zone and made him wait for his entourage—T.R. and Vijay this time. Then he went outside to find a Host—this one without translation gear—thrumming and holding a video screen. The screen was broadcasting “This message is for the human diplomat” in universal code.

  The Host saw him and hit a button. “You guys recording this?” Philippe asked his guards.

  They nodded. Ptuk-Ptik’s face appeared on the screen.

  He began speaking, and Philippe noted that the message was transmitted both in normal sound and in universal code. Ptuk-Ptik said that he was fine, healthy and at home. He had received Philippe’s and Baby’s messages, and he said that they would be of great use at his hearing, which he expected to take place soon. He hoped to see them when it was all over and he could return to the station.

  The message ended, and the Host turned and walked away.

  It was a relief for Philippe to actually see Ptuk-Ptik, and he knew that Baby would be absolutely thrilled. They went back inside, and the two soldiers transferred their video recordings to Philippe’s memory station.

  He decided he should look them both over and send the better video on to Baby. He started with Vijay’s recording.

  The voice and translated message were the same, but Ptuk-Ptik looked different. He was glowing, he was gold, his markings had changed, and his face was different.

  Philippe turned off the recording.

  Just ignore it, he thought.

  He went back to the beginning of the message and played it again. There was Ptuk-Ptik, looking like he always had, sending his greetings and warm wishes to “my friends among the humans, including Infant and the human diplomat.”

  The quality of Vijay’s video was pretty good, so Philippe just sent it on to Baby without looking at T.R.’s.

  “Fuck, Trang, you look like shit.”

  “Gee, thanks,” Philippe replied peevishly, stepping into Shanti’s office.

  “No, I’m serious—you look like you’re sick or something,” she said. “Are you feeling all right? You’ve been kinda squirreling yourself away in your office lately.”

  Philippe sighed. People had been saying this a lot to him lately, and it was beginning to annoy him. I’d engage more with people if they were less irritating, he thought.

  He said, “I’m a little tired.”

  “Do you want a stimulant patch?” Shanti asked, opening a drawer in her desk.

  “No, no, I’ve got one on,” Philippe said. He showed her his right forearm, with its one patch surrounded by a pink rash. He didn’t pull up his sleeve further and show her the three other patches and their rashes.

  “All right then,” she said, closing the drawer. “You know, if you ever need something with more kick, George has some of the super-duper kind that can wire you up for, like, a week.”

  “Really?” Philippe per
ked up, interested.

  “Yeah, I mean, they’re like restricted and everything—you can’t have a lot, and you have to be examined before and after. But if the shit hits the fan, they’re there.”

  “Oh,” said Philippe. That sounded like it would involve too many questions.

  “Anyway,” Shanti continued. “Did you want something?”

  “Yeah, I— I—” Philippe was drawing a complete blank. “I wanted something, something important. Damn it! I can’t remember what it is. Damn! I can’t believe it! I can’t think anymore!”

  “Hey, hey, don’t get upset,” said Shanti. “It’ll come back to you, whatever it is.”

  But it never did.

  It was more than a week since Philippe had split open the knuckles on his left hand, and they hadn’t even begun to heal. Between the pain and the shaking, it was hard even to type. His head hurt all the time now, and at this point it was just a regular thing to be woken up several times each night by nightmares and to never get a restful night of sleep. He had itchy rashes all along both arms, presumably from all the patches—they looked so nasty that he had taken to wearing his gloves whenever he left his bedroom. And he had developed the same rash on his chest despite the fact that he hadn’t put any patches there.

  But Philippe felt good about himself. He had decided to do it.

  I’ve been feeling like crap, he thought, because I haven’t been doing my job. If I do my job better, I’ll feel better.

  If he did his job better, his subconscious would stop torturing him every night with visions of Guantánamo. And then he’d actually get more than 30 minutes’ sleep in a stretch. And then he wouldn’t have to be hopped-up on stimulants all the time. And then his headaches would go away.

  Everything would be better, once he set things right.

  He was going to go over to the Hosts’ living area and volunteer for a medical examination. He was going to make them examine him. And then he was going to have a long chat with either Max or Moritz—ideally both—about the need for the two of them to put aside their religious differences and get along. Whatever prophecies they’d been taught, whatever they believed, the three of them had jobs, important jobs, and they needed to do them well.

  They were diplomats: They had to work together.

  So he walked out into the common area with Mo and Bi Zui in tow (they called escort duty “Tranging” now), crossed the floor, and waited for the elevator. When it came, the glowing Host from his dreams stepped off it and walked away. Philippe ignored him.

  They rode the elevator to the Hosts’ floor, and Philippe walked to their living area. He saw the glowing Host twice among the café crowd, and when he entered the living area and stopped a passing Host to ask where Max and Moritz were, he was met by the glowing, golden face of the dream Host.

  “I’m sorry, never mind,” he said, and turned around.

  He walked back, looking down at the floor the whole time. Despite this measure, he spotted a glowing Host foot with his peripheral vision during the elevator ride.

  He walked into the no man’s zone, waited for the doors to open, and walked straight back into the infirmary, making sure the door was closed behind him.

  “Hello, George,” he said to the doctor. “I think I’ve lost my mind.”