Trang Read online

  Chapter 15

  He came on the ship, and she was sitting there, an empty seat next to her.

  “Hello, Trang,” she said.

  “Hi, Shanti. I didn’t know you were on Earth,” Philippe said, and sat down.

  Shanti arched her eyebrows. “Well, I wasn’t here long,” she said.

  They sat in silence as the ship tilted back. Funny how it’s all routine now, he thought.

  “Did they tell you anything else?” he asked her.

  She shrugged. “Just that Arne’s sick.”

  They were silent again.

  “That earplant’s a hell of a wake-up call, isn’t it?” she said.

  Philippe let out a brief laugh. “I didn’t know what to do—it was saying, ‘Call Central!’ And I’m going, ‘Central what?’”

  Shanti grinned.

  “Do you have any idea what could have made Arne sick?” he asked.

  Worry flashed across her face. “I don’t know—he was fine when I left him.” Shanti thought for a moment. “You knew him from before, right? Does he have some sort of condition?”

  “Not that I know of,” Philippe said. “I don’t think they would have let him go to the station, or even to the Sudan, if he wasn’t healthy.”

  “Hm.”

  Silence again. The ship shuddered into alpha drive.

  Philippe suddenly realized that he needed information, any information, about Arne. He didn’t know enough. A wave of guilt, far from his first, passed over him: He hadn’t kept up with the reports, and he should have. If he had, he might have seen or intuited something. He might have been able to stop it. He might know something now.

  “How was he doing?” he asked Shanti. “While I was gone—how was he?”

  “Arne? Oh, he was all right, you know.” Shanti shrugged. “I mean, I’m no diplomat, I don’t know how you grade these things. But I think he was doing pretty good. He confused the aliens though, when he first came, because he’s, you know, tall like the rest of us—apparently that’s how they always knew who you were.”

  Philippe couldn’t help but smile.

  “He was nice, you know?” she said. “But, um, with people? I don’t think he was quite as good as you were.”

  Philippe blinked his eyes and opened his mouth, surprised. The Arne of his acquaintance had always been open and friendly. Philippe couldn’t recall him not getting along with anyone.

  “Were there problems with the SFers?” he asked.

  “Oh, sorry, when I say people, I mean aliens,” said Shanti. She shook her head. “Boy, I sound like I’m talking through a translator.”

  “When you start calling me ‘human diplomat,’ I’ll worry,” said Philippe.

  She laughed, but the brief flash of humor quickly sputtered out.

  “Arne had a couple of issues with the SF, but what I meant was that he really seemed to have some problems with the Hosts. Not that he didn’t try, but it took him a real long time to be able to tell Max and Moritz apart. I think it bothered them, and I know it bothered him.”

  “Are Max and Moritz still fighting?” Philippe asked, feeling another twinge of guilt.

  “I think they managed to bury the hatchet,” she replied. “But I felt like Arne could never really relate to the Hosts. I don’t know why that was. He had some quarrels with Baby about it, of all people. They had some disagreements about where the Hosts were coming from, and to my way of thinking she understood them better. Or maybe it’s just that she understood them differently than he did, and I tend to take her side.”

  Philippe nodded, troubled. He liked both Arne and Baby, so it was an unpleasant surprise to hear that they hadn’t been able to get along with each other.

  “Was that the problem Arne had with the SF that you mentioned earlier?” he asked.

  Shanti shook her head. “That was part of it—it was all pretty minor, you know, but Arne really didn’t like it when we spoke to the aliens.”

  Philippe was shocked—that didn’t sound like Arne. “He didn’t want you to talk to the aliens?”

  “No, no, no—he wasn’t an asshole or anything. He wasn’t like, you can’t talk to them,” Shanti smiled. “But if he was meeting with some aliens, and an SFer was there, he really didn’t like it when we, you know, interrupted with questions or anything.”

  Philippe suddenly got it. “Oh,” he said.

  Shanti gave Philippe something of a hard look. “You never told us we weren’t supposed to do that.”

  Philippe put his hand over his mouth for a moment, and then removed it. “I can totally see why it upset him, and I can totally see why you guys were surprised.”

  “Apparently when a diplomat is in a meeting, it’s just supposed to be the diplomat talking and not anybody else.”

  Philippe nodded. “Can be, yes. It depends on the situation. Ordinarily, though, yes, the normal Union Police guards would simply be there as protection and would not be talking.”

  Shanti cocked an eyebrow at him.

  “I know how much you love hearing about how the Union Police would do it,” Philippe said. “But I always felt that this was a different kind of situation—that my guards, be they UP or SF or whatever, would be living on the station and interacting with the aliens all the time anyway, so there would be no real point in pretending that they were these mute protectors without any opinions or curiosity. I knew people were going to be interacting with the aliens, so I felt like I might as well let it happen where I could see it, and then I’d get a sense of how they were with it.”

  Shanti nodded. “Like I said, it was pretty minor—it was just that he did things differently than you did, so people had to adjust. But they did, and I don’t want to make a big deal out of it, because it really wasn’t one. In general, Arne has been fine—he’s been really good at keeping us neutral, you know, so that’s important.”

  The word startled Philippe. “Neutral?”

  “Oh, yeah. Haven’t they been keeping you posted?”

  Philippe shrugged, feeling a new wave of guilt. “They’ve been sending me updates, but I was on vacation, you know, so I didn’t exactly read them carefully,” he said.

  Or at all, he thought.

  Shanti looked a little taken aback. “Well, OK. Um, the Snake Boys have been kicking up a stink about their living arrangements. They were never happy about them, but then you know that merchant you gave the translation devices to? Well, he’s really become, like, this activist, and he managed to get the Cyclopes involved. So now the Cyclopes are saying that the Hosts shouldn’t just be running things, things need to be more democratic. And the Hosts are, like, whatever, it’s our station. But the Blobbos are really upset and saying that the Cyclopes are just trying to grab power.”

  “I see,” said Philippe.

  “Anyway, it makes things a little tense, but it doesn’t really concern Earth, you know?” said Shanti. “We’re saying, not our business, we don’t have any opinion on this, and I think they’re pretty much buying that.”

  “OK,” said Philippe.

  They sat for a bit.

  “But do you want to know the really big news?” said Shanti, looking at him slyly.

  “What’s that?” said Philippe.

  “George and Baby have taken themselves off the roster.”

  “No!”

  “Yup, they both went off, the exact same day,” she said with a grin. “They’ve gone exclusive.”

  “Well, I think we could all see that one coming,” said Philippe. “How did Five-Eighths take it?”

  “Oh-ho,” Shanti laughed. “Five put his foot through the door of one of the virtual-entertainment booths. We had to fix it with a board, so now when you go in there to watch something in surround, there’s this black area down on the right side. And then, through some marvelous coincidence that I as mission commander know nothing about, his sleep cubicle malfunctioned, and he was trapped in there for an entire day.”

  Philippe smiled, but then a sobering thought occurred t
o him.

  “What does Baby being off the roster mean for you?” he asked.

  “Me?” said Shanti, looking faintly troubled by the question. “I’m MC, so I can’t really have an opinion about who’s on the roster.”

  “No,” explained Philippe. “I meant, is this going to mean that people are going to pressure you to be on the roster?”

  “Oh. No, everybody knows better than to do something like that,” said Shanti.

  “Everybody except Five-Eighths.”

  “Except him—he’s got that name for a reason. But he knows better than to do that twice.”

  They chuckled.

  “You know,” said Philippe, “I mentioned his name at dinner with some friends of my parents who have a 15-year-old daughter. And she just turned bright red and wouldn’t speak for the rest of the evening.”

  Shanti turned to him, scandalized. “You mentioned that name in front of a child? Trang! What’s wrong with you!”

  “I know, the thing is, with Five-Eighths, I don’t know—”

  “No, really, what is wrong with you?” she interrupted. “You should never mention that name in front of children. Actually, you should never mention that man in front of children at all. He’s not fit for a young audience.”

  Philippe laughed.

  “So, did you have a good vacation?” Shanti asked.

  “Oh, yeah,” Philippe replied. “I had a great time, very relaxing. I didn’t have a single migraine the entire time.”

  “You’ve been having migraines? I didn’t know that. Did you get a—?” She tapped her head.

  “An implant? No,” Philippe replied.

  “I thought you had to get one if you had migraines—if you want them to stop.”

  “I guess if they’re really bad, you do, but I didn’t have to,” said Philippe. “I just got some sleep and cut out caffeine and stimulants. And I counted breaths.”

  Shanti gave him a skeptical look. “You counted breaths?”

  “It’s a meditation technique, you count your breaths. You count to ten over and over again. It helps you focus on the present instead of stressing about the future or worrying about the past,” Philippe said.

  It had all sounded much more plausible when his parents had explained it to him back in Alberta. Shanti’s expression wasn’t helping. “You know, you can manage stress without getting your head cracked open. There was no need for an implant.”

  “Oh, but you should get one—they’re great, they really are. They go in, and you don’t have to worry about anything,” said Shanti. “You don’t have to count anything.”

  “Is counting a problem for you?” teased Philippe.

  She rolled her eyes at him. “Seriously, we all have them.”

  “All the SFers?” Philippe asked, shocked. He could see them all having to get implants for their eyes, but brain implants seemed excessive, even for the SF.

  “No, no.” She waved her hand. “All the Paxes.”

  “Really?” he said, thinking of Kelly. “All of you?”

  “Yeah, and if we say, ‘Hey, I think we should take over the world after all!’ they explode.” Shanti made a crashing noise with her mouth and pulled her hands slowly away from her head.

  “Uh-uh,” Philippe said. “I think I’m going to try to find another seat.”

  “No, seriously. We all do, because of our mom,” she said. “Mom—the woman we were cloned off of—they think she was manic-depressive. She was Nigerian Army—you know, decorated, a big war hero. But then she got heavily into self-medication, and she was dishonorably discharged. So when the Old Man dangled a big bunch of money in front of her, she took it, and then she spent all the money on drugs and none of it on food, which is what killed her.”

  “Did you ever meet her?” asked Philippe.

  “No, she died when we were five, we never even knew about her until after we got out of there.” Her expression became wistful. “I’d like to think that if she knew about us, maybe she—you know, she would have thought that she had something to live for after all.”

  She snapped back to herself. “Anyway, they didn’t want us all to wind up the same way, so they gave us implants. And it’s a big relief, you know—you never have to worry, if your brain starts working funny, the implant just kicks right in and nips that shit in the bud. That’s how mental illness works, you know—it starts small and you let it go, and then you get big problems and you don’t know it, ’cuz by then you’ve lost your mind. They make ’em for anxiety disorders, too.”

  “Um, I can see the appeal, but I think in my case, it’d be a permanent solution to what was really a temporary problem,” Philippe replied. “I haven’t had these kinds of problems coping with stress in my other jobs, and I think it was really a unique set of circumstances this time around.”

  Shanti raised an eyebrow. “Maybe they make one for technophobia,” she said.

  Philippe clucked at her. “So, why were you back on Earth? Did you win the draw, or did you also cause an interplanetary incident?”

  “Oh, we’re getting fucking sued again. Have I told you about that?” she asked. Philippe shook his head. “The old man has some nephews and nieces and cousins—all folks who couldn’t be bothered to look him up once in the 20 fucking years he was off being crazy in the South Pacific. They’re all a bunch of fucking losers who are pissed that we got his money. They’re like, You murdered this poor old man! And we’re like, No, assholes, it was in self-defense—which it was, and the courts said so, too—so fuck you, you spoiled brats, we’ve got a right to this money.”

  “Huh,” said Philippe.

  “Yeah, and the shit we went through there toward the end, and these people have the nerve . . . it’s so fucked. Anyway, according to the Union, the money’s fucking ours, so what they keep trying to do is file shit with the national courts.” The anger mounted in her voice. “Basically the only life plan these fucks ever had was to cash in when the old man died, and there’s always a chance that one of the national courts will want to stick it to the Union. So now one of his fucking dipshit relatives—who probably wouldn’t have gotten anything even if we hadn’t been in the will—crawled out of a koffie shop and filed another fucking suit, so I came down for a family conference. Our lawyers say not to worry, but at this point, I think we should countersue for legal costs every fucking time they do this, because it’s getting fucking ridiculous.”

  “I didn’t know about all that,” said Philippe.

  “It’s been going on fucking forever, and it needs to fucking die,” she said. “I mean, do you know what they found when they searched the place after we surrendered?”

  Philippe shook his head.

  “Our entire sleeping area was wired to blow.” Shanti shook her head. “The old man was always going on about this Ultimate Weapon, and we were afraid that he was going to use it to wipe out the population of the Earth—that was key to his whole plan, you know, the normal people would all die, and then we would take over. And it never even occurred to us that he meant us, his kids. He was going to wipe us out.

  “We earned every fucking penny of that money, and I will apologize to no one for it. Especially someone who just sat on their ass and let it happen because they didn’t want to piss off their rich, crazy uncle because then he might cut them out of his will.”

  They talked a bit more until the conversation began to lag, and then they read. They ate and napped. They had the ship to themselves—they were on an emergency flight to Titan—so there wasn’t anyone on board to ask about Arne.

  When they got to the Saturnian moon, they changed into their lonjons and transferred to Cheep and Pinky’s ship.

  “Guys, when you get a chance, you’ve got to tell us about Arne. We don’t know shit,” Shanti said as they stepped on the ship.

  “He very sick,” Pinky said.

  “That much we do know,” replied Philippe. “What happened?”

  “He have a sickness from alien in stomach,” said Pinky. “He
very, very sick.”

  “Does the doctor think he’s going to live?” asked Shanti.

  “We no speak to doctor; he too busy.”

  “He’s had a hell of a time, I can tell you that much,” said Cheep. “We’re bringing all kinds of crazy medical shit on this run ’cuz the doc’s used it up or needs more for that poor bastard. We got a ton of medication, and skin, and gut.”

  “Catgut or people gut?” asked Shanti.

  “What?” asked Cheep.

  “A cat?” asked Pinky. “He no is a cat.”

  “What’s catgut?” asked Philippe.

  “OK, so people gut,” Shanti said. “Thank you for answering my question. Catgut, so you know, is used to sew up wounds.”

  “You sew wounds?” asked Cheep. “Like, embroidery or something?”

  “What century is this?” asked Philippe.

  “They no sew wound not even where I grow up,” said Pinky.

  “Fine, fine. I grew up with the survivalist training, OK?” Shanti said. “You can all shut up now.”

  They grilled Cheep and Pinky some more, but the pilots had told them all they knew—Arne was extremely ill with some alien bug that attacked his stomach, and George had been hard-pressed to keep him alive.

  When they docked, Philippe immediately went into the infirmary. The place looked like a tornado hit it—every cabinet door was open. His foot slipped on something on the floor. It was a puddle of something dark that he couldn’t identify.

  It’s probably better that way, he thought, noticing that the Cyclops arm had been taken out of the isolation unit and thrown onto a counter.

  There were four beds in the infirmary, plus the isolation unit. George was curled up on one of the beds, asleep. Philippe walked over to the clear walls of the isolation unit. Lying there, his body utterly limp in the bed, a mask over his open mouth, was Arne.

  Oh, God, thought Philippe, staring at the pale, drained body.

  “Trang?” said a sleepy voice.

  “George?” said Philippe quietly, turning around and walking over to the doctor. “Don’t get up. I’m sure you need to rest.”

  George shook his head. “I just wanted a little nap. I told Raoul and Gingko to go to sleep—we’ve been up forever—and I was going to clean up in here, but. . . .”

  He stood up and staggered over to the counter. He stared at the Cyclops arm.

  “What the hell am I supposed to do with this thing?” he asked nobody in particular.

  “Can I help?” asked Philippe.

  “Uh, yeah,” said George, and then turned to look at him. “Oh, no. You don’t have your gloves on. It’s all right, I just need to neaten up.” He began putting the containers that had been knocked over upright, putting supplies back in the cabinets and closing the doors.

  “We brought more supplies,” said Philippe.

  “Good,” said the doctor.

  “George, what happened?”

  “Arne, God bless him,” said George, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the isolation unit. “Arne ate alien food. The Hosts had some, so he had some, too.”

  “Oh,” said Philippe.

  “You probably want to sit on the bed, there. I’m going to get the wet vac going on the floor,” said George, pointing to one of the beds. Philippe sat.

  George kept talking. “The problem wasn’t the food itself, it was something that grows in the food—some kind of parasite. And it so happens that this parasite just loves the human small intestine. That’s how lucky Arne was.”

  He set the wet vac going and sat on another bed, facing Philippe. The drone’s buffing wheels started on the stains on the floor.

  George looked down at the drone, distractedly. “You know, at this point I’m kind of disappointed when these things don’t talk to me like the Swimmers do.”

  He shook his head, snapping himself back into the moment.

  “Anyway, of course I’ve got no idea how to treat this parasite—it makes these big black tumors, I don’t know how, and I keep cleaning them out and cleaning them out, and they keep growing back and growing back. So we go to the Hosts, and they said, we have this poison for it, but we’d never, ever use this stuff on a person. And I said, give it to me, because I’ve got absolutely nothing, and this guy’s dead for sure. So they send a shipment of this, this pesticide, and I don’t know what’s in it, and I’m supposed to slap it around old Arne’s small intestine, and I don’t know if he’s going to absorb it and it will poison him or what the hell’s going to happen, but those tumors keep getting bigger by the minute. And it turns out that this pest killer is beyond caustic, and it burned the hell out of his gut, and I had to replace five meters of his small intestine with the artificial gut. Unbelievable.”

  “Is he going to live?” asked Philippe.

  “Fuck if I know,” said George. He collected himself for a moment. “He’s not growing black potatoes in his gut anymore, so, yeah, if they don’t come back, he’ll most likely live.”

  George looked over at Arne in the isolation ward.

  “If they start to grow again, he’s dead,” he said, flatly.

  He stood up. “I guess I’ll go get those supplies.”

  “I’ll help you,” said Philippe.

  They unloaded the medical supplies with help from several SFers. Then Philippe grabbed his bag and headed with some trepidation toward his room. According to George, if Arne survived, he had a long recuperation period ahead of him. Once he was well enough to be moved, he would be going straight from the infirmary to a medical facility on Earth.

  That meant that Philippe could move straight back into his old room—as soon as he packed up Arne’s stuff, a task that struck Philippe as opportunistic and unsavory.

  He walked into the office, then turned around and walked back out. Patch was in the hallway.

  “Patch?” Philippe said. “Why are there gold things in the office?”

  “Guy, have you been in your conference room? There’s lots in there, too,” Patch replied. “They’re get-well presents from the aliens. They say that the color gold, like, heals people on Earth.”

  “Who told them that?” asked Philippe.

  “Well,” said Patch, with a shrug. “They say you did.”

  Philippe shook his head. It was bizarre, but right now, it wasn’t really important. “Have we been keeping the aliens posted about Arne’s condition?” he asked.

  “Uh, not really, I don’t think,” said Patch. “They sure know he’s sick, though.”

  Philippe went to the infirmary. George was lying down on one of the beds again, but he was not yet asleep.

  “I’d like to tell the aliens how Arne is doing,” said Philippe. “What can I tell them?”

  George hauled himself up to a sitting position. “Well, there are no alarms going off, so that’s good,” he said, then looked at some of the monitors. “It’s been three hours with no sign of the parasite—you can tell them that’s good news; before it was coming back every five minutes. He’s in critical but stable condition now. He’s young and doesn’t have any underlying health problems. If the parasite stays gone, he may well recover.”

  “Thank you,” said Philippe.

  He went to the door leading to the no man’s land, feeling like he had forgotten something.

  He had. Fortunately, Feo was on duty and pointed out that Philippe needed his gloves, hood, and entourage.

  “I’m rusty,” Philippe replied.

  A few minutes later, duly outfitted and guarded, he stood in the tunnel as the outer door opened.

  It was like his first day on the station all over again. There was a crowd of aliens standing around the door—Philippe even saw a small group of White Spiders hanging out on the ceiling—and underneath the various noises they were making was the continual thrumming of several Hosts, who doubtless had been holding a vigil. Philippe saw the familiar faces of Max and Moritz among them. He noticed that the Pincushions were all wearing gold on their spikes, and the Magic Man—who
had showed up without being asked this time—was also gold.

  He asked one of the Swimmer drones to start recording for broadcast. “Our doctor has every confidence that, should the parasite remain dormant, the human diplomat will recover,” he began. “He will most likely return to our planet to recuperate, however. I am once again taking over the position of human diplomat and representative of Earth, effective immediately. I would like to extend our thanks to the Hosts for providing us with the antidote, which the doctor tells me was vitally important and saved the human diplomat’s life. I would also like to thank all of you who have expressed your concern and well-wishes to us humans. Your support means a great deal to us.”

  After his statement, various aliens came up to express their concern. “It is an emphatically shameful action that an important official was poisoned,” said a Cyclops named Stern Duty, whom Philippe had not met before.

  “The poisoning was not intentional. It was an accident, and the Hosts provided the antidote,” he replied.

  “Nonetheless, it is a very emphatically shameful action,” said the Cyclops.

  Philippe expected someone to ask if he had spoken with Arne, or if Arne had regained consciousness—certainly on Earth those questions would be asked. But for whatever reason, the aliens did not.

  Finally Max and Moritz approached and asked if they could speak with him in private. He commed Patch and had the no man’s zone disarmed, and the three of them went into the cluttered conference room. Philippe asked his guards to stay outside.

  “We are very sincerely concerned over this incident, and regret it most sincerely,” said Max.

  “I appreciate your concern,” said Philippe

  “I assure you it was accidental,” said Moritz.

  Philippe nodded.

  “We attempted to dissuade the second human diplomat from eating Host food, because we knew it was probably dangerous to your people, but he insisted despite our cautions,” said Max. “I do not want you to have the least suspicion that it was anything other than an accident.”

  “Why would I think it wasn’t an accident?” asked Philippe.

  Max and Moritz looked at each other.

  “Max told me that when he heard you were to leave, he attempted to dissuade you out of a belief that you are the chosen one mentioned in the prophecy,” said Moritz. “We were concerned that you might assume he had caused harm to the second human diplomat in an effort to force you to return here. I assure you that that was not the case. I, too, was present at the unfortunate meal, and what Max has told you is what I witnessed. We attempted to dissuade him from eating our food, but he said that he believed the risk was minimal and that his body could withstand any harm.”

  “We know that you are a curious people,” said Max, looking testy. “But curiosity must be tempered by an awareness of the risks of danger. The curiosity of the second human diplomat was excessive and ill-advised.”

  “I must agree with Max in his blunt assessment of the situation,” said Moritz. “I admire your people’s desire for knowledge, but certainly this desire could cause you to participate in dangerous activities. Survival is also important and must always be considered while making decisions.”

  “I appreciate your concern, and I wish to assure you that I place no blame for this incident on your people,” said Philippe.

  He saw them out and went to speak again to George. Arne’s condition was unchanged, so Philippe went into his bedroom and guiltily packed the sick man’s things. When he was finally done unpacking his own belongings, he lay down on the bed and went to sleep.

  He slept heavily, with no dreams. When he woke up, he got a caffeine-free ration bar and went to find the doctor. Raoul told him that George was in Shanti’s office, so Philippe walked over, knocked, and went in.

  George and Shanti were glaring at each other, tense and upset. “Is something wrong?” asked Philippe.

  “Have you checked your mail?” asked George acerbically.

  “I haven’t had the chance,” said Philippe.

  “They decided what they want to do with Arne,” said Shanti, her face grim. It wasn’t until that moment that Philippe realized they weren’t having an argument. They were angry—very angry—at something other than each other.

  “It’s criminal,” said George.

  “What are they doing?” Philippe asked.

  “Oh, they’re outfitting a medical suite for him!” said George with sarcastic enthusiasm. “It will have everything you need for a complete recovery! The latest in automated-care technology, because God forbid a human being touch him.”

  “They’re putting him in isolation?” asked Philippe.

  “They’re putting him in an orbital isolation pod!” George spat. “They’re outfitting one now—you know, one of those pods where they keep mass murderers and serial killers. Because that’s what he deserves for his service and sacrifice to the Union.”

  Philippe was stunned. “You mean the ones in space?”

  “Yes, the ones in space!” raged the doctor. “The ones in orbit, kilometers away from the precious surface of the precious Earth. And do you know how long they’re going to keep him there?”

  “How long?”

  “They don’t know!” George threw his hands in the air. “However long it takes them to feel safe, because obviously this parasite—the one that grows on plants? the one that’s gone?—obviously it’s an intelligent life form bent on taking over the motherfucking planet. Christ!”

  “George.” It was Shanti. She was trying to calm him, which in its own way was disturbing.

  George turned to her. “You know, any intelligent form of life would know enough to stay the hell away from us.”

  Shanti turned to Philippe. “Do you think you can do anything?”

  Philippe put his hands up. “I will certainly try.”

  She nodded at him, and Philippe went back into his office.

  His breakfast lay untouched on his desk as he began composing a message for the DiploCorps expressing the shock and outrage of all the humans on the station at the way Arne was being treated.

  “Needless to say, this is pure poison to station morale. The soldiers can now expect that, if they too are injured on the station, their sacrifice for the Union and for Earth will be repaid by imprisonment in an ultimate-security facility,” he wrote. He made some vaguely threatening noises about how the aliens would react if they found out how their “honored colleague, and in some cases, dear friend” was being treated.

  He also drafted a message to send to all of his and Arne’s mutual acquaintances in the DiploCorps, alerting them to the situation and asking them to bring any influence they might have to bear to help the sick diplomat.

  It wasn’t much—if the Union was outfitting the pod, then the decision had already been made. The DiploCorps was either being ignored or going along with it. But it was what Philippe could do.

  George knocked on his door and told him that Arne was awake and wanted to talk to him. Philippe hurried to the infirmary. Arne was looking marginally better—his eyes were open, at least. His body, though, was still completely limp, as though every muscle had been utterly exhausted.

  “How’s it going, buddy?” asked Philippe.

  “They say a lot better than before,” replied Arne, weakly.

  Philippe asked if he could go into the isolation unit. The doctor grimaced.

  “Apparently the planet-conquering life form still lurking within your friend here is too dangerous for you to enter into its dread presence,” he replied. “Even we disposable medical staff are now required to wear our hoods and gloves when touching the untouchable.”

  Philippe looked at him.

  “Yeah, I think it’s bullshit,” said George. “The main problem is, given his condition, he’s being monitored with a camera. And if they go through that footage and see you go in there, they might fix up a pod for you, too. At this point, I seriously have no idea how they’re going to treat Gingko, Raoul, and me
when we head home.”

  “I’ll risk it,” said Philippe.

  George looked at him for a moment, and then smiled and touched his shoulder. The doctor let him into the unit and showed him the pull-up seat in the floor. Arne asked George if they could have some privacy.

  “I really blew it,” Arne said once George had turned off the camera mike and left. “I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, Arne, don’t,” said Philippe.

  “No, I totally screwed up. I screwed my sister.”

  Philippe smiled, trying to lift the mood. “You’ve been around the SFers too long.”

  Arne did not look consoled. “I just—I just absolutely blew it. I can’t believe how badly I screwed up.”

  “Oh, come on,” said Philippe. “So you ate something you weren’t supposed to. I accepted gifts from the aliens, and we didn’t know if that was safe. We’ve all done it—someone offers you food, you eat it. Otherwise you’ll offend them. If their sanitation isn’t quite up to snuff, you get sick afterward—that’s just how it goes. One time when I was in Kurdistan, I was desperately ill for a week after drinking a warlord’s goat milk. But you know, he signed the treaty and stuck to it, and frankly, that was worth losing seven kilos in as many days.”

  Arne shook his head, the movement barely perceptible. “No, no, no. They tried to tell me not to do it. They tried. Have you met Five-Eighths?”

  “Um, yes,” said Philippe, wondering about the sudden change in topic.

  “He was my guard,” said Arne. “You’ve met him, and you know: The only thing that man thinks about is his penis.”

  Philippe nodded, realizing that any denial would reek of insincerity.

  “I said I wanted to try some food. They—the Hosts—they said it might not be safe,” Arne whispered. “And then they launched into this story of an old outlawed cult among their people, these Host priests who wanted to experience being alien so much that they would eat alien food and die. And I thought, OK, maybe this is a warning, but maybe it’s a challenge—if they could risk their lives to bring people together, what better way to prove that that’s what I want to do?”

  “Oh, Arne,” said Philippe.

  “And he took me aside—Five-Eighths—he took me aside, and he said, ‘I really don’t think you should do this,’” Arne croaked, agitated. “And then he said, ‘Can’t you see how frightened they are?’”

  He paused, his breathing irregular.

  “‘Can’t you see how frightened they are?’ he said,” Arne said again, once he had recovered. “And that’s when I decided I had to do it. I had to, you know. I had to prove him wrong.”

  Philippe stared at him in amazement. “Why?”

  “Because I couldn’t see it!” Arne hissed. “I couldn’t see how frightened they were—they didn’t look frightened to me, or happy, or angry, or anything. And this dumb jarhead, this ambulatory scrotum who probably joined the SF to avoid being thrown into jail on a morals charge, he could see it. They all can see it. I’m the only one who can’t.”

  Philippe just sat and looked at Arne.

  There has to be something I can say, he thought.

  But there was not one thing.

  “Tell me,” said Arne. “That grinding noise they make—do you like it?”

  “What noise?”

  “You know—” and Arne launched into a fair approximation of the Hosts’ thrumming.

  “Oh, yes,” said Philippe. “I guess I never really thought of it as a grinding noise.”

  “They sound like cement mixers,” said Arne, his voice bitter. “And half these soldiers play that noise to help them sleep.”

  “Look,” said Philippe, gently putting his hand on Arne’s shoulder. “None of this matters, OK? You got hurt and you feel like crap—I went through the same thing, all right? The important thing—”

  Arne was shaking his head.

  “The important thing—” said Philippe, in a firmer tone of voice, so that Arne stopped shaking his head and looked at him “—is that you don’t get down on yourself, and that you get healthy. You’ve been through a lot, and it’s very hard, and I know you feel terrible and feel like you’ve failed. But I’ve worked with you—you’re a good diplomat, you’re good with people, and you’re smart. Trust me, I was in Ottawa before I came here, and the DiploCorps could use many, many more people like you. And you’re going to need all your skill when you get back to Earth—I suppose the doctor has told you how they plan to treat you?”

  Arne nodded.

  “OK, you know that it’s not fair and it’s not right. You deserve better, and you need to focus on getting well and getting your strength back, not on tearing yourself down,” Philippe said. “I’m sending messages to everyone I can think of who might be able to help, but you know that you’re going to have to fight this, too. It’s not just for you—you heard George, most likely he and the medics and now me, we’re all going to be stuck in orbiting pods, too, if we let them do this to you.”

  Arne looked a little more energetic. In the Sudan, Philippe remembered, Arne had always worked best when fired up to combat some injustice.

  Philippe hoped that that was still true. “Once they decide to isolate everyone who gets stationed here, you know that no one will agree to come. If we let them, they will destroy the diplomatic mission on this station. They will simply destroy it.”

  Arne nodded. “All right,” he croaked.

  “All right!” said Philippe. “I’m going to head back to finish those messages—when you feel up to it, just ask the doctor or one of the medics to get you a scroll, and you can start lodging protests yourself.”

  He raised his fist in the air, and they smiled at each other—Arne only weakly, but it was the first smile Philippe had seen on the sick man’s face.

  Philippe went back to the office and worked on his call to arms. He dug up some addresses of those who might be responsible for Arne’s treatment, so that his friends would know who to pester. He did some brainstorming and came up with some additional people to whom he could send either pleas for help or messages of protest.

  Finally he decided to stop and take a little break. He ate his breakfast ration bar, and then he walked into his bedroom. He pulled out a mat he had been permitted to bring to the station because it was classified as “necessary medical equipment for the treatment of chronic migraine.” He unrolled it onto the floor, and then he rummaged through his bag for the other piece of “necessary medical equipment”—an electric candle. His parents had found the very notion of an electric candle hilarious, but open flame was prohibited on space stations.

  He lit it and sat, comfortably cross-legged, on the floor, facing the candle.

  One. Inhale. One. Exhale.

  It was hard to focus—for the first couple of rounds of ten, Philippe’s brain kept coming up with new people for him to contact about Arne. Finally he was able to settle his mind down, to focus on the numbers and the breathing.

  Six. Inhale. Six. Exhale.

  He started to get more relaxed, attaining the slightly zoned-out feeling that would last for a few minutes. He couldn’t stay in it much longer than that at this stage, but it seemed enough—he could just really relax for a spell, and then come out of it and get on with his day.

  Three. Inhale. Three. Exhale.

  Since he was so relaxed, it didn’t alarm him when the light from the candle began to blur—his eyes often went a little out-of-focus when he meditated, so he kept his mind focused on the breathing and the counting.

  He breathed and counted as the light blurred and expanded. He breathed and counted as it grew, and he breathed and counted as it coalesced into the shape of a golden, glowing Host.

  “Hello, Philippe,” said the Host. “It’s good to see you again.”