Trang Read online

  Chapter 8

  “He wants to get in?” asked Philippe.

  “I think so, yeah,” said Cut. “I can’t say for sure, but he’s sure acting like he wants in.”

  “So, let’s let him in,” said Philippe.

  “No, we can’t just let him in,” said Shanti. “Don’t let him in.”

  “OK,” said Cut. “But right now, if we open the door, we’re letting him in.”

  “Don’t open the door,” said Shanti, starting to leave.

  “Why can’t we let him in?” asked Philippe. “He could be a diplomat. He could be the White Spider diplomat.”

  She stopped and stared at him. “He could be that. He could be an assassin. He could be a tourist. It doesn’t fucking matter—if he crawls onto the ceiling of the no man’s zone right now, he’s going to have the shit blown out of him.”

  “Oh,” said Philippe. He hadn’t thought of that.

  “Were you expecting a visit?” Shanti asked.

  “No, I haven’t been able to communicate with the White Spiders at all, which is why I want to meet this one,” he replied.

  She hit her com mike. “Escort, report to the no man’s zone,” she said.

  Philippe followed her out into the hallway. Shanti walked over to Ofay, who handed her a small electronic device he pulled out of a niche in the wall.

  “MC Shanti Pax. Disable defenses,” she said, and stuck the device back into the wall. A red light under the device went green. Bubba, Patch, and Raoul appeared, Raoul still chewing what was presumably a ration bar.

  “OK,” she said. “We’re letting him in.”

  “Shouldn’t we be there to greet him?” asked Philippe.

  “In the no man’s zone?”

  “I want to make a good impression,” Philippe said. “It’s kind of a creepy place.”

  Shanti sighed. “OK. Outer guards, it’s going to take a minute. We’re going to go into the no man’s zone first, and then you can open the outer door.”

  Philippe checked: The translation mike was still stuck to his shirt. He ran his hands through his hair.

  “Bubba, you come in with us. Patch, Raoul, and Ofay, you stay here,” Shanti said.

  Philippe wondered for a moment if Bubba was the best choice for what could be a delicate interaction, but a glance at the three remaining SFers quickly reminded him that the options were, at best, limited. The door opened and the three of them stepped in.

  “Who are we meeting?” asked Bubba.

  “A White Spider!” said Philippe.

  “Ugh, I hate those things,” said Bubba.

  Philippe opened his mouth to suggest that perhaps Patch would be a better choice for this mission, but the door behind him clicked shut, and the outer door began to open. An exploratory white foot immediately appeared in the widening crack, followed shortly by the creature’s entire body.

  “Hello!” said Philippe. “We humans welcome you to our living area!”

  The White Spider said nothing in reply, merely walking slowly across the ceiling of the tunnel as the outer door closed behind it.

  “We are very happy to meet you, and we wish most ardently that the humans and the White Spiders can become friends,” Philippe continued.

  “It can’t even understand you,” said Bubba.

  “Shhh!” said both Shanti and Philippe.

  “You don’t know that—maybe it’s just not talkative,” Shanti whispered.

  “I do know that whispering don’t help none when you’re wearing a mike. Which it’s not,” said Bubba.

  “Do you mind?” asked Philippe.

  “Look, it wants to go on in,” said Bubba.

  Indeed, the White Spider had crawled over to the door leading to the living area, and was now reaching out with its legs and stroking the door.

  “So, now what?” said Shanti.

  “Let’s let him in,” said Philippe.

  “Let’s not,” said Bubba. “We’ll have a damned infestation like they do in the common areas.”

  Philippe slapped off his translation mike and turned to the soldier.

  “You know, just because he doesn’t look like he’s wearing translation gear doesn’t mean he isn’t,” he said in exasperation. “Do you know what their gear looks like? Do you?”

  He waited for an answer. Bubba looked at him, then to Shanti, and then shook his head.

  Philippe continued. “Could you then perhaps refrain yourself from insulting them because you think they don’t understand you?”

  “I’m just saying what I think,” said Bubba.

  “Well, here’s what I think,” said Philippe. “I think this could be the White Spiders’ way of reaching out, and I think it would be foolish to spurn them. Perhaps they aren’t intelligent, in which case he’ll just hang around on the ceiling, harmlessly, like they do in the common area. But considering they had to build a space ship and fly it to get here, I think they are intelligent enough that we should at least not turn them away at the door.”

  “Maybe they just infested a space ship,” muttered Bubba.

  “Bubba,” said Shanti mildly, “shut the fuck up before I stab you. Ofay, open the inner door, please.”

  The door to the living quarters opened up, and the White Spider made its leisurely way out into the hallway as Ofay, Patch, and Raoul watched. They were soon joined by the other SFers, who watched as the creature crawled across the ceiling unhurriedly from room to room, never reacting to anything they said or did.

  “Remember, be polite” said Shanti. “Anybody try to touch it or throw something at it, and I’ll break your fingers off and shove them up your ass.”

  “I thought you weren’t on the roster,” said Five-Eighths.

  “Don’t talk like that!” said Baby, pointing up at the ceiling. “And Shanti, you don’t talk like that neither!”

  “Sorry!” said Shanti in the direction of the White Spider. “I didn’t mean you.”

  Time passed, and watching the White Spider began to lose its novelty for the SFers, who gradually dispersed. Philippe felt an obligation to stay with the alien and act as its guide, but after an hour of talking and receiving no reply, he thought that perhaps his presence was unwelcome. Bi Zui had been assigned the job of monitoring the visitor, so Philippe returned to his desk, his unwritten report, and his thousand messages.

  He was in the midst of it all when someone knocked at the door. I am never, ever going to get anything done, Philippe thought.

  “Come in!” he called.

  The door was opened by Bi Zui, but it was obvious who had requested entry. The White Spider crawled in, still on the ceiling.

  “Hello!” said Philippe, feigning cheerfulness. “Welcome to my office! Please feel free to look around.”

  The White Spider crawled over to one corner, utterly unresponsive.

  Philippe looked at Bi Zui, who shrugged his shoulders.

  “You can sit there if you want,” he told the soldier, gesturing to a chair. “I’ve got a ton of paperwork to catch up on, so I’m just going to get on with it.”

  He was putting the finishing touches on his report when Vip walked in. “Shit,” he said. “How long has that thing been sitting there?”

  “About half an hour,” said Bi Zui. “Hasn’t moved.”

  Philippe looked up. The White Spider was still in the same corner.

  “Do you think he’s sick?” Vip asked.

  They stared at the White Spider for a moment. It hung on the ceiling, perfectly still, giving no indication of health, illness, or awareness of their presence.

  “Maybe he’s dead,” said Bi Zui.

  “You know what I think,” said Vip. “I think he’s a little drone thing, like what the Swimmers use. Think about it—it’d be great for surveillance, and it’s parked right here in Trang’s office.”

  “You think he’s a spy?” asked Bi Zui, suddenly interested.

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Philippe. “If someone wants to spy on me, they can go ahead. W
hat are they going to find out, anyway?”

  Vip looked at Philippe with a raised eyebrow.

  “Well, if he’s just going to hang out here, then what?” asked Bi Zui. “I can’t stay here forever.”

  Vip went to get Shanti and Patch, and then Patch went to get George, and Philippe decided that he would gladly risk getting spied on or attacked or eaten by aliens if he could only get all these gabbling people out of his office. They finally settled on having Vip install a camera and motion sensors on the ceiling to monitor the creature.

  The surveillance equipment was promptly dubbed BugCam, because at this point none of the SFers was willing to even entertain the notion that the White Spider could understand a thing they were saying.

  The White Spider was still in the same spot on the ceiling the next day, when Philippe received a message from the Hosts that the Snake Boys were willing to meet in a few hours. When he left for the meeting, he was escorted by Patch, Gingko, Ofay, and Sucre. Five-Eighths’ maps proved accurate, and they found their way to the Snake Boys’ living area easily enough.

  Once they got there, however, things got difficult. The Snake Boy who was supposed to meet them was waiting for them outside and seemed friendly enough, but when the door to his living area opened, all the humans reeled. The common area was warm, but the Snake Boys’ living area was hot—very hot—and the air wafting out of it smelled acrid and bitter enough that Gingko discreetly took a reading and gave them a quick thumb’s up before they entered.

  The Snake Boys’ name was appropriately descriptive—their bodies were thin, sinuous, and longer than the SFers were tall. Unlike a real snake, the Snake Boys had many legs, more like a centipede. They also had what at first appeared to be eight pronounced ridges across their backs, although Philippe had seen enough of the Snake Boys to know that these were actually arms, each ending in a three-fingered hand, which folded across the tops of their bodies when not in use.

  Even with their legs and ridges, when standing, the Snake Boys only came up to about Philippe’s knee. When the door opened, it had revealed a wall of reddish material, with a small tunnel in the base. The Snake Boy passed through the tunnel easily, but Philippe and especially the larger SFers had a rough time of it, squirming through on their bellies.

  This is the level of hell reserved for evil claustrophobics, Philippe thought.

  Fortunately they didn’t have to go far before they reached a chamber, which had several tunnels leading into it. Before they could enter, the Snake Boy asked them to wait, explaining that he had to “remove the livestock.” For security reasons, Philippe was not in front, so he had to lie in the tunnel and listen to Patch’s excited description of how the Snake Boy was chasing out some “hopping maggoty grub things!”

  The chamber itself was not big either—Philippe could just sit upright by clasping his knees to his chest. Patch and Gingko had to lie down to fit, while Ofay and Sucre couldn’t come in at all and were eventually sent back out into the common area. Periodically during their discussion some of the livestock would try to hop back into the chamber. The Snake Boy would chase them out with his tail end while carrying on an uninterrupted conversation with his head. Eventually Philippe realized that the creature had clusters of eyes on each end of its body.

  “I’m sorry there is not more room here,” said the Snake Boy. “We have increased in numbers since we first came to this station and are experiencing overcrowding.”

  “Being able to meet you in your home more than makes up for any physical discomfort,” Philippe replied.

  The Snake Boy looked at the three humans crouched and crowded into the room. “I am afraid that your people are not built like our people. I am curious—do your people climb?”

  “Climb what?” asked Gingko.

  “Vegetation, or geological formations. I have not heard of you climbing since you came here, and I was curious to know if you typically climbed at home.”

  “We are physically capable of climbing, and some climb as a sport,” said Philippe. “But usually we just walk on the ground.”

  “I was told that the bipeds on my planet are arboreal,” said the Snake Boy. “You are the first bipeds I have encountered in my own experience, so I thought you might be arboreal, like the White Spiders. But that is what I was told bipeds are like on my planet; I am not surprised that things are different on your planet.”

  “Not that different,” said Gingko, trying to nod. “We evolved from an arboreal species.”

  “I’m a little confused, and I’m afraid your comment may not have translated correctly” said Philippe. “Why would you need to be told what things are like on your planet?”

  The Snake Boy’s answer turned out to be a quick history of their arrival at the station—which had been undertaken in rather a different spirit than the arrival of the Swimmers or the construction of the station by the Hosts.

  Like the Swimmers, the Snake Boys had been contacted by the Hosts immediately after a portal opened up near their planet. Unlike the Swimmers, however, the Snake Boys had reacted to the communication with such intense panic that the Hosts had resolved never to make the first move again.

  The Hosts had told the Snake Boys that they wanted visitors, so the Snake Boys sent them sacrifices—a shipload of convicts and troublemakers, sent on a one-way journey to what every last Snake Boy, both on and off the ship, believed would be their certain destruction.

  Of course, the visitors hadn’t been slaughtered, but rather greeted with much rejoicing. The celebration became somewhat muted, however, when the home planet stopped responding to messages sent through the portal. It became obvious that the Snake Boys’ home world had no intention of taking the visitors back—and had made no plans to provision them, either.

  Fortunately, the family of one of the condemned, fearing that death, while certain, might come slowly for their beloved, had arranged for a small herd of livestock to be on board the ship. Eventually the Hosts were able to process food from their planet so that it did not make the Snake Boys violently ill, and between that and the livestock the Snake Boys were able to make a life for themselves on the station.

  “We have done well here, and we have been quite successful in our reproduction,” the Snake Boy told the humans. “This is why our living space has become overcrowded.”

  “Why can’t you move into an unoccupied living area?” asked Philippe. “Is it too complicated to outfit another one so that it is comfortable for you?”

  The Snake Boy paused for a moment. “The problem is not a technical problem. The problem is that the Hosts will not permit it, because they worry that they will run out of space for new species that may arrive later.”

  “But I thought there were only nine species here, and the two Swimmer species share quarters, so that’s only eight living quarters being used. There’s a lot of empty space.” Philippe thought a moment, and an explanation occurred to him. “Are there more aliens here that I don’t know about?”

  “There are currently only nine different people on the station, and only seven living areas are occupied, because both Swimmer species live in a single area, and the White Spiders typically avoid their own living area,” the Snake Boy said. “More than 20 portals have opened, however, so the Hosts fear that suddenly many different people will agree to come to the station, and there will be no place for them.

  “I do not personally believe that is a realistic concern, however. With some of the portals, the Hosts have been in contact with the species on the other side for a long time. Therefore, I think if they were going to agree to come to the station, they would have done so before now. In other cases, the Hosts have not managed to establish communication at all. But as the Hosts say, other people are inscrutable, and it is not always easy to predict what they will do.”

  Philippe was not eager to discuss Host policies with a Snake Boy—that seemed politically injudicious at best. Quite a bit of time had passed already, and he certainly knew more about the Snake Boys t
han he had when he arrived, so he politely took his leave.

  Philippe crawled out with Gingko and Patch, coming outside to the fresh-smelling air to see Ofay entertaining a group of Snake Boys by walking on his hands.

  “Let’s see if you can do it!” exclaimed Sucre, stepping up to a Snake Boy, but Philippe stopped him before the soldier was able to put his suggestion into action.

  In the process of averting that incident, Philippe discovered something more troubling—Ofay had felt obligated to entertain the Snake Boys because he and Sucre had told them that they couldn’t enter while Philippe was there.

  “You kept them out of their own living area?” Philippe asked, stunned.

  “They seemed OK with it,” said Sucre.

  Philippe stared at him. “Could you tell if they weren’t?”

  “They didn’t complain.”

  “They know the human diplomat’s a VIP—I think they understand the security issues,” said Ofay. “And they really thought I couldn’t walk on my hands.”

  The humans returned to their living area, and Philippe went into his office, where the White Spider sat, unmoving. There were three memory widgets on his desk. He sighed and turned on his workstation. Checking his office folder first, he saw that Shanti had forwarded another excerpt from Baby’s report. “I’m thinking of assigning her to wander the common area and yak at people full-time,” Shanti wrote.

  Philippe intended to talk to Shanti about the SFers’ gaffe, but Baby’s last report had been interesting, and he figured it would only take a moment to read this one.

  It said:

  “I was in the common area two floors up from our floor, and this Pincushion said hello to me. And I noticed that he was wearing blue-and-gray clothing. And a lot of the Pincushions are wearing those colors now, so I complimented him on his outfit. He told me that the Pincushions wore those colors because of Trang, because he wears a blue suit and gray lonjons together. So we talked about clothing a bit. He wanted to know what color Shanti’s scales are, and I told him, so we may see that soon.

  “He also told me something really interesting—their clothing is stuck on the ends of poisonous spines! He said that the Pincushions lived in a really dangerous environment, so they have spines that contain a really super-deadly poison. But then they became civilized, so they didn’t need no poisonous spines, so they started to wear clothes. He said that now most people get their poison taken out when they’re kids, but they still wear the clothes. And they have an expression, ‘uncover your spines,’ and that means to be, you know, just rude.

  “I asked him how he put on his clothing, since he ain’t got no arms or hands, and he said that he did too, they just don’t put them out none when they’re walking. So I asked to see them. The big, fat spikes they have are really tubes with arms in them. You know how a snail has eye stalks, and if you touch one, the snail pulls it back in? The Pincushions do the same sort of thing. And the arms split off into a bunch of fingers that can grab. He grabbed my foot to show me. He ain’t got no bones in there, but he can still grab pretty good.”

  Philippe smiled. Baby definitely could join the UI. Speaking of which. . . . His eyes traveled over to the widgets. He picked them up and loaded them.

  His office folder was just ridiculous, so he looked into his personal folder. There were ten new messages, seven of which were from Kathy.

  Philippe took a deep breath.

  He selected all 19 of Kathy’s messages, and set the display so that they would be text-only, with one tiled on top of the other. He could scan the first lines and see if maybe there was some kind of emergency happening, some reason why Kathy was sending so many messages.

  They read:

  “I saw your picture on the news feed today; it made me want to vomit.”

  “You think you’re so wonderful, don’t you? So great, so famous.”

  “If only people knew what a fucking fraud you are.”

  “God, I wish everyone knew the truth about you; they wouldn’t be talking about you like you’re a hero.”

  “You’re a piece of shit.”

  “Fuck you! Just fuck you, Philippe. Fuck you!”

  “You know, you really are contemptible.”

  “ASSHOLE. FRAUD. CHARLATAN.”

  “Everyone thinks you’re so great, it makes me sick, literally sick.”

  “You’re just a worthless fake, do you understand that?”

  “They showed an interview with you on the feed last night, so I threw that scroll out the window.”

  “If I have to hear your name one more time, I’m going to kill somebody.”

  “FUCK YOU.”

  “Smug bastard. Some day, you’re going to get what you deserve.”

  “You and I both know what you really are.”

  “God it makes me sick to hear about you.”

  “I hope that station fucking blows up with you on it.”

  “FUCK YOU!!!!! FUCK YOU!!!!”

  “Everyone needs to know what a worthless, lying little prick you are.”

  He sat there for a moment. His hand, seemingly of its own accord, deleted the messages.

  He was stunned. He had known she was crazy. He had broken up with her because she was crazy. But seeing her rage in all its lunatic glory was still a shock. The vividness of it, the living insanity, had been dulled in his memory.

  He had wanted to punish himself, and he had succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. What the hell is wrong with me? he wondered.

  There was a knock at the door, and Shanti opened it without waiting for him to reply.

  “Hey, Trang, you’re back!” she said. “Didn’t get eaten, right? Did you see Baby’s report?”

  “Yes I saw it,” he said, somewhat vacantly. He blinked. “It was great—she gets great material from these people.”

  “Yeah, she’s got the gift of gab—” Shanti began.

  “Do you know why?” Philippe suddenly interrupted. “Do you know why she is able to get the aliens to open up to her? Because she doesn’t have to cope with an armed entourage that won’t let people enter their own home because their diplomat is such a very important person.”

  Guilt flashed across her face. “Yeah, Ofay and Sucre told me—it sounds like they got a little heavy-handed.”

  “Heavy-handed!? Heavy—oh, that’s just the understatement of the year,” said Philippe, working just the right amount of mockery into his tone. “Considering the policies and attitudes toward territory here—what you so memorably described as the concept of your space and our space—I think one alien species actually barring entry of another species to their own home might be considered a tad, oh, disrespectful, maybe? Hostile, perhaps?”

  He felt good. He felt like pent-up steam was just blasting out of him. He went on.

  “Look, I think you and I can both agree that none of the aliens are actually hostile, right? So why do I need this massive, intimidating entourage every time I stick my head out the door? You know, having the thug brigade about makes it so that I can’t do my job. And in case you missed the memo, my job is our mission!”

  “Well, we can discuss—” Shanti began.

  “Discuss?” Philippe interrupted. “Oh, no. I don’t think you’re really clear on this: I don’t have to take orders from you. My job is paramount here—we are a diplomatic mission, and I am the diplomat. We’re not discussing anything; we’re not going to have a debate; we’re not going to call in all your little goons and have a town meeting, chock full of threats and swearing. What is going to happen is that I am not going to have an entourage any more. I am going to go out on my own so that I can do my job. That is what is going to happen.”

  Shanti stared at him for a moment, her dark eyes hard, narrow, and unblinking. Her jaw twitched, and without a word, she shut the door to his office.

  Two days later, Shanti had still not said a word to Philippe. He had not heard from the Hosts regarding another meeting. And the White Spider was still sitting there, motionless on his offi
ce ceiling.

  He had messaged the DiploCorps, telling them that the volume of mail he was getting was completely unacceptable and that someone in the Beijing office needed to screen his messages and handle the easier questions. He also asked that Kathy be blocked from sending him personal messages, and that any messages sent by her to his official address be scrutinized for appropriateness of content. He knew that such a request would probably damage her career, but he was through taking crap.

  The day before, Philippe had gone out into the common area, all by himself, like the fully-grown adult he was. He had run into Baby, who had wanted to show him something. She took him to the common area near the Hosts’ living quarters. There were dozens of low platforms, and a number of Hosts were eating and chatting there.

  “Quite the café culture,” Philippe had said.

  “What?” Baby had replied.

  It turned out that she had arranged a lunch date with the Host she had mentioned in her report. He was waiting for them by one of the platforms. After greeting them, he went over to a machine with two basins in the top, somewhat like a kitchen sink. The Host stuck his front hands in the first basin, waited a few moments, then pulled them out. His hands were covered in a thin layer of gel. Then he stuck them in the second basin. A bright light shone, and billows of steam came off of his hands. He pulled them out, checking them carefully. The gel was gone.

  “This is a hand-sanitizing machine,” said the Host. “I do not think you should use it, however, because I am not certain that it is safe for you.”

  “It certainly looks powerful,” Philippe said, not at all eager to put any part of his anatomy in it.

  “It is. We usually walk with all six hands on the floor, so a complete and thorough cleaning of the front hands before eating is essential. But since you do not touch the floor with your hands, I assume that it is not essential for you.”

  Philippe looked at Baby. “We’ll be sure not to touch the floor with out hands when we sit,” he said, more for her benefit than the Host’s.

  They sat on the floor at a dining platform, carefully keeping their hands on the table. Baby pulled a ration bar out of a pocket, broke it in half, and gave half to Philippe. The Host ate something with a crumbly texture that looked like sand. First, he moistened his hand in a bowl full of colored liquid. Then he used the wet hand to press the sandy food into a wad, which he shoved into a gap between the segments of his deep-red shell.

  They tried to discuss what he was eating, but the translators would only tell them that the grainy material was “foodstuff” made of “organic matter,” that the liquid was “foodstuff processed into a liquid,” and that together, they constituted a light meal. The Host asked them about their food, and Philippe realized that he had no idea what was actually in ration bars, aside from a gazillion nutritional supplements and years of scientific research. He said that the bars were a compact food designed for travelers.

  “I think,” said Baby to the Host, “that I want to learn your name.”

  The Host, Philippe could tell, was completely tickled by the suggestion—and by Baby herself. “I do not think that you can say it,” he replied, teasingly.

  “You know my name,” she said.

  “But your name translates: Infant. I like such names, and I feel it is unfortunate that more of your people do not have such names. The Cyclopes have such names, although none as charming as yours.”

  “Come on, teach me!”

  “Listen. It is this: Cannot translate,” said the Host.

  It took them several tries—they tried to tune out the translator but eventually made him turn off his mike when he said it, and they turned off their mikes when they attempted to repeat it. They finally came close with “Ptuk-Ptik,” although the Host told them that they were missing several syllables in what was apparently the ultrasonic register.

  “You know, maybe these translators aren’t the best thing to be using,” said Philippe. “If we had the right kinds of mikes and earplants, then we could speak and hear in the register you speak in as well. And in that case, we could just learn your language rather than having to rely on translators.”

  “Sounds complicated,” said Baby.

  “I’m not saying that this would replace the translators, but any translation is imperfect. I think if people who were willing to learn an alien language actually could, that would improve communication. I mean, during the past five years, you guys essentially learned English in order to communicate with us.”

  “That was a group effort, and in truth, only the Magic Man could be said to have sufficient familiarity with your language to communicate spontaneously,” said Ptuk-Ptik. “You are an innovative thinker, but my people would never support that idea. They are attached to tradition. I am in a very flexible order, but even my order would not be willing to see the translators replaced as a means of communication among species. It would mean a loss of status and purpose for the Swimmers, so I predict that they would oppose it as well.”

  “It’s odd that so many of you here are priests,” said Baby. “We ain’t got no priests with us.”

  “Did that translate?” Philippe asked, curious. “What she just said?”

  Ptuk-Ptik looked at him thoughtfully. “Her most recent remark translated as: She considers it unusual that many of the Hosts on this station are priests because none of the humans on this station are priests,” he said.

  “That’s what I said,” said Baby.

  “I asked because she uses an unconventional grammar,” Philippe explained.

  “It is evidently sufficiently conventional for those who provided us with code for your language to include it,” replied Ptuk-Ptik.

  “Ha!” said Baby to Philippe.

  “To answer your question, Infant,” the alien continued. “We have priests here because the portals represent that part of the universe that is beyond reason, that part that offers a deeper purpose, a divine destiny. What bigger mystery is there than the portals and the aliens who come through those portals? And who better trained to examine that mystery than the priests?”

  After their meal, Philippe and Baby took their leave of Ptuk-Ptik and walked around the common area. They chatted with a few other aliens who recognized Philippe as the human diplomat, among them a Snake Boy. The Snake Boy was not among those kept out of their living area by Ofay and Sucre, but Philippe made a point of expressing his regret about that incident nonetheless.

  He came back feeling pretty good, and even the sight of another three widgets on his desk did not dismay him—the DiploCorps would start screening his messages soon enough. Aside from the immobile White Spider, he was alone in his office and could get his work done, which was a nice change, although at several points he thought he could hear someone shouting who sounded a lot like Shanti. When he went to get dinner that evening the SFers around him were pretty quiet, and the same was true when he got breakfast the following morning.

  It wasn’t until the next day that someone knocked on his office door. “Come in!” Philippe said.

  Patch opened the door, stepped in, and shut it. He looked tense. “Guy,” he said, “I don’t know what exactly you said to Shanti, but you have got to make up with her.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Philippe.

  “I know you had a fight, OK? And she’s really, really, really, really mad at you, all right? And if you really want the truth, everyone else is kind of pissed at you, too.”

  Philippe looked at his desk, feeling a touch defensive. “Well, I don’t see why.”

  “Guy, when the MC wants to spank, everybody’s ass is red.” Patch stared at Philippe in silence for a moment, looking uncomfortable, and then decided to push on. “She says you pulled rank on her. That you didn’t want to talk about stuff, that you just wanted her to do what you told her to do.”

  Philippe thought for a moment. “Well, perhaps I was a bit harsh—”

  “Harsh!” Patch yelped. “Guy, have you listened to Shanti talk? Harsh she can h
andle. She is harsh. Harsh is fine. It’s when she starts getting quiet that you have to worry. I mean, I don’t want to freak you out, but I don’t think she ever yelled much at her old man.”

  Philippe sighed. Sometimes Patch made no sense. “If she doesn’t care if I’m rude, then why is she so upset?”

  Patch stared at Philippe incredulously. “Guy, you pulled rank.” As he said it, he looked at Philippe as though he, too, should be horrified to hear his aberrant behavior described in such blunt terms.

  When Philippe only continued to look confused, Patch continued with his explanation. “You told her that you were in charge of this mission.”

  “Well, I sort of am,” said Philippe.

  Patch looked defeated and sat down. “OK, I’m trying to think of how to put this,” he said.

  The effort of cognition kept him silent for several moments, and Philippe was just about to start talking when Patch opened his mouth. “In some of the national armies and I guess maybe in the Union Police and other places that are kind of stuck in the twentieth century, there’s like this big rank structure, right? And in those types of places, I guess it’s, like, OK to order people around just because their rank is lower than yours. But guy, we’re the Special Forces, and the SF is all about respect for the individual soldier. Nobody has any fucking rank, you’ve got a job—I’m second, Shanti is MC, the doctor is MO, Cheep and Pinky are pilots. You’ve got the thing that you’re good at, like munitions or communications—you don’t have rank. Other people do not order you around when it comes to you doing your job. It’s fucking insulting.”

  “OK,” said Philippe, “but my job was being impaired by having this entourage—”

  “So you go to Shanti, whose job it is to manage your security, and you say that there is a problem, and you ask her to fix it.”

  Philippe stared at Patch in amazement.

  “Look,” he said, “Shanti is called the mission commander. She orders people around all the time. She threatens them. Don’t tell me she can’t handle it.”

  “There’s a difference between that and what you did,” said Patch. Philippe rolled his eyes in response. “No, there is, it’s like a dignity thing. And you know, if she feels strongly enough about something that she wants to kick my ass over it, she’s more than welcome to try.”

  Patch flexed his massive arms unconsciously, causing Philippe to silently resolve to never, ever offer to kick his ass.

  “She can tell me what to do as her second, because that’s the second’s job—to back up the mission commander. But she can’t order me to do jack shit when it comes to my other job, which is munitions. I know a lot more about it than she does, and I could get her into a hell of a lot of trouble if she was a pain in the ass about it. That’s like, why people join the SF and not some other military—respect for the individual soldier.”

  Philippe sighed. That line was clearly a mantra for Patch—for all the SFers, probably.

  It would be easier, Philippe reflected, if they were just normal. He knew he had been snappish, very snappish, and that his quarrel with Shanti probably had had a lot more to do with the letters from Kathy than anything else.

  But his snappishness had also had something to do with the fact that Philippe was surrounded by people who didn’t appear to follow any rules of etiquette. If everyone around him could threaten to cut each other’s throats without consequences, why couldn’t he snap?

  But now Patch was telling him that there were rules—deep-seated, treasured rules that represented everything the Special Forces stood for as a culture. And Philippe had violated those rules.

  Philippe sighed again. You can’t fight culture, he thought.

  “So, basically, everyone hates me now,” he said.

  “Not really, not yet,” Patch replied. “But you know, we’re a small group here. When two of the, like, authority-type people stop getting along, it can cause a lot of problems with, like, morale and people feeling like they have to take sides. It’s not just you two, it affects us all. And, uh, I’m talking to you because, um, you gotta get the ball rolling. I mean, I’ve worked with Shanti a long time, I was around when she and Royal got divorced, and I know that when she’s this pissed off, she’s not going to be the one who reaches out. She just, like, stews—and she makes life fucking hell for the rest of us.”

  “All right, all right,” said Philippe. “I’ll talk to her.”

  “Thanks so much, guy,” said Patch, standing up with a relieved smile on his face. “Just, you know, get her yelling. As long as she’s yelling, you’re OK.”

  Patch walked out. Philippe gave him a moment to get clear of the upcoming conflagration and went out to find Shanti. She wasn’t in her office, but he found her in the mess hall. He asked her if they could speak. They silently went back to where both their office doors were. Philippe followed her into her office, thinking that he might as well let this happen on her turf. She sat behind her desk, and he sat in the chair in front of it.

  “Patch spoke to me, and he told me that you were very upset by the way I ordered you around the other day,” Philippe began. “I didn’t realize that what I said was considered offensive by people in the SF, so I wanted to apologize for any offense I might have caused you by pulling rank. I realize your job is important, and I value the work you do, and I am sorry that I made you feel like I did not value you.”

  Shanti stared at him for a moment.

  “You are so full of shit,” she said flatly.

  It was not the reaction Philippe had been hoping for. “I’m apologizing to you,” he said.

  “Right, right, right. You’re apologizing,” Shanti said, her voice bitter. “Well, I guess that makes everything fine and dandy, then! Because you certainly would never be insincere. You would never apologize just to hide your agenda. Not you.”

  Philippe was flabbergasted. “What agenda? Wanting to talk to the aliens isn’t my agenda, it’s my job.”

  “Oh, and that’s what this is about, right?” The volume of her voice was rising. “That’s why you chewed Ofay and Sucre out, right on the spot!”

  “We were in the common area!”

  “The moment you got back then, right? You chewed them right out and told them in no uncertain terms that that was the wrong way to handle that situation, and then you told them what the right way to handle that situation would be, right? Because that’s what you would have done if you had wanted to fix what was wrong.” Shanti punctuated her words by slamming her palm repeatedly into the desktop. “You would have done that if you wanted them to do better the next time. But that’s not what you want.”

  “It’s not?”

  “No, it’s not, you motherfucker, and you know it.” She had stopped pounding the desk in favor of pointing a finger at Philippe. “You don’t want there to be a next time—not with these soldiers. You don’t want us here. You didn’t want us here to begin with—you think I wouldn’t find out about your memos?—and you’re not willing to get the fuck over it and work with us. You want to be able to say to Beijing, I couldn’t use these damned Sister Fuckers. They are so awful—so fucking awful—that I would rather go without protection than have them around. That’s what you want. And now you’re smiling in our faces about it because you’re a fucking weasel.”

  “A weasel?”

  “A weasel! A rat! A liar!” She was certainly yelling now. “Oh, please, oh, please, like I haven’t heard you talking to these aliens. ‘Oh, we people of Earth, we never ever are mean and cruel to animals. Extinction? What’s that? No we love them and pet them.’ You manipulate people. You lie to them. You do it for a living!”

  Philippe sprang out of his chair. He was shaking with anger.

  “You kill people for a living,” he hissed. “How dare you judge what I do!”

  They stared at each other for minute.

  Philippe closed his eyes and sat back down.

  He had lost it, just then, completely lost it. He covered his eyes with his hands.
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br />   There is no coming back from this, he thought. There is no way.

  But he had to try.

  “Listen,” he said, his eyes still covered, “we’re more alike than you might realize. I mean, I doubt very much that you enjoy killing people, right? But sometimes, it has to happen. You don’t like it, but you have to do it. You have to protect the good people from the bad people, and sometimes the bad people can’t be stopped any other way.”

  He dropped his hands and opened his eyes. He still couldn’t look at her, so he kept his gaze down.

  “It’s the same with what I do. Yeah, sometimes I’m not terribly honest. I don’t want other species to know about the dodo, because then they’re going to wonder what we’re going to do to them. The truth does not always serve, because the truth—the unvarnished truth—is that all too often people aren’t really trustworthy and don’t have good histories and sometimes only one side is going to win, and if I can gloss over those truths and manipulate people so that they don’t really care about them, then that’s what I do. Because that’s better than having people fight and fight and fight. I do what I have to do so that you won’t have to do what you don’t like to do.

  “I don’t like to do it. I don’t do it if I don’t have to. And I’m not trying some bureaucratic jujitsu to get you and your people off this assignment. There have been problems, but this is a very new situation for everyone, and I know that. And I think in general you guys have done well—I mean, Baby has done really well. And I want to do really well, too, and I honestly believe that having a four-person armed guard around me all the time makes it so I can’t do really well. But I understand that I was too dismissive about your concerns before, and I realize that they are valid concerns, so I’m willing to talk this out with you.”

  “What’s your report going to say?” Shanti asked.

  Philippe looked up, looking her in the face. This was an opportunity, however small. An opportunity for negotiation.

  “I don’t even have to put this in,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “Or I can say, ‘In a meeting with the MC, we decided that since the security threat to me did not appear to be severe, we would scale back my protection—’”

  “We would make your protection less conspicuous,” Shanti interjected. “‘Scale back’ sounds bad.”

  “We would make my protection less conspicuous,” Philippe continued with a nod. “Instead of four guards around me at all times, we decided on one guard—”

  “One guard by your side, and two trailing. That’s what we had yesterday.”

  Philippe stared at her for a moment, and then laughed. “And I’m the sneaky one! Look, they’re not all like Baby—you know that pretty much anyone else will come across like a bodyguard. How about just the two trailing?”

  Shanti looked like she was about to object, then relented. “They can trail close, right? You’re not going to try to ditch them?”

  “Absolutely. I will fully cooperate. And when I go into alien living quarters, I’ll always take one with me.”

  Shanti thought on that for a minute. “If you’ve visited them before with no incident, in that case? I think it’s OK to take just one. But if you haven’t visited before? I think you should take both.”

  “That’s your considered opinion as the person in charge of my security?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Then that’s what I’ll do,” said Philippe, extending his hand.

  They shook on it. Shanti started laughing.

  “Oh, thank God,” she said. “I thought you were really a two-faced rat! All of a sudden you were like, ‘Do this’ and ‘I don’t want to discuss that.’ You sounded like the old man.”

  “The old man?”

  “Yeah, my old man. And trust me, when you sound like someone who wants to take over the world with a grand total of 52 people, you’ve got problems.”

  “Great. Just don’t—” Philippe stopped himself and winced at his own stupidity. They had just patched things up and now. . . .

  “Don’t put poison in your nightcap?” she asked, sounding slightly amused. “Don’t worry. I wouldn’t poison you. You should know that I didn’t poison him. I was against it.”

  “Oh?” said Philippe, not sure how to respond.

  “I wanted to shoot him in the head,” she continued, pointing her finger to the back of her head and cocking her thumb as a visual aid. “Quick and certain. But I got outvoted.”

  Philippe looked at her. Shanti did not seem the least bit upset or embarrassed or ashamed. She’s been dealing with this all her life, he realized. Everyone knows what they did.

  “Well,” he said, “I’d like to put in my vote now against your shooting me in the head.”

  She laughed again. It was good to see. “OK. We’ll stick to the yelling.”

  They shook hands again, and Philippe walked out the door, feeling like a tight band across his shoulders had suddenly been cut free.