Consequences

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  In those ways, Restrepo was an excellent representative for them. As a negotiator and diplomat, someone who should consider all sides, find the one that was best for her homeland, and sometimes compromise, she was perhaps the worst that Kreise had ever seen.

  “I have read the reports,” Kreise said, “and I don’t believe that the Alliance gains enough from Etae to justify the risks.”

  “Risks?” Restrepo asked. “We routinely work with the Disty, whose vengeance killings are both legal and legendary. We allow the Rev free access to all Alliance ports, and they’re exceedingly violent when provoked. What’s to fear about the Etaens? They’re human, for heaven’s sake.”

  Uzval’s long fingers bent upward, a sign of discomfort. Usually Uzval hid her emotions. The fact that she was communicating them clearly meant that she was very upset.

  “Humanity does not automatically confer virtue,” she said, her voice growling through the breathing mask.

  The door opened again, and this time the Nyyzen entered, two because Nyyzen always operated in pairs. At first, Kreise believed the pairs rule was simply a custom. Then she worked with the Nyyzen, and realized that compatible Nyyzen created a third entity between them.

  The third entity actually had substance. It was transparent, although its outlines were often visible in strong light. The Nyyzen sat with one chair between them, and the third entity—the actual ambassador—occupied the chair. The Nyyzen had let Kreise touch the ambassador once. It—these entities had no real gender—felt like hot slime-covered rubber, a sensation she had not expected.

  But the ambassador was not with them now. The Nyyzen were “in transit,” and the ambassador wouldn’t appear until they literally put their minds to the task before them.

  The Nyyzen were square creatures, with flipperlike feet and a head shaped like isosceles triangles. Their mouths were at the tip of the equal sides of the triangle, which was, from a human perspective, in the back of their heads. Their eyes were on the triangle’s short-sided base—on the opposite side of the mouth.

  Dealing with Nyyzen actually took training for humans, even those Nyyzen who didn’t create third entities, because humans had trouble looking at someone who saw from one side of the head and spoke from another.

  “You have not started without us, have you?” one of the Nyyzen asked. Kreise couldn’t see the mouth move, and the Nyyzen did not use any other speech indicators. Even though they had arms and hands like humans—their bodies did conform to the human idea of two hands, two feet, two eyes, one torso—they did not use their hands or any other body part in communication. Only the mouth.

  “We’ve been discussing Etae’s rights,” Restrepo said, knowing that her comments would cause the Nyyzen to go into an immediate panic.

  “We must set up!” one of them said.

  “You should not have started without us!” the other said.

  “We need the ambassador!”

  “It’s fine.” Uzval’s voice was soft and soothing. “Not everyone’s here yet anyway.”

  “And not everyone will be,” said Restrepo. “We still haven’t gotten approval for Etae’s representative.”

  Kreise gave Restrepo a hard look. Apparently Restrepo was set on causing trouble at this meeting.

  The Nyyzen sat next to Kreise, leaving an empty chair between them for the ambassador, and immediately started to hum. The crests on the top of their heads rose.

  Restrepo shut her eyes. She had once confessed to Kreise that she hated watching the aliens and their strange ways. She tolerated nonhumans only because they were the gateways to the rest of the universe.

  The final member of the committee let himself in the door. Hadad Foltz represented the Outlying Colonies, which were outlying no longer. They had been named when the known universe had been much smaller, and humans actually believed that the Outlying Colonies were as far as the human race could travel.

  Foltz was a tall man who moved with an athletic grace. In the custom of Outlyers, he kept his head bald and covered with tattoos, complex designs done mostly in sky blue, a color that accented his dark brown skin.

  He saw the Nyyzen humming, and shook his head. “You’ve panicked them,” he said, assessing the situation with a clarity that Kreise envied.

  “Ambassador Restrepo panicked them.” Uzval was rigid with disapproval. All three of her fingers on both hands were bent upward. She was angry, and the meeting hadn’t officially started.

  “It smells like garlic in here,” Foltz said. “Is someone cooking?”

  “We’ve been promised lunch,” Kreise said.

  “By someone approved, I trust,” Restrepo said.

  “Take it up with the City of Armstrong,” Kreise said. “They know our rules.”

  “As if they’ve been paying attention,” Restrepo muttered.

  “The rules sometimes clash with local law.” Foltz took the seat at the other end of the table, so that he faced Kreise. He was wearing a blackish-blue suit that gave him a suggestion of even more height than he already had.

  “I know,” Restrepo said.

  “If you knew it, then why complain about it?” He smiled at her and she smiled back.

  Kreise was the one who bristled. She hated the way her colleagues taunted each other.

  The humming beside her rose to a buzz. She resisted the urge to cover her ears. Restrepo rolled her eyes. The Nyyzen didn’t notice, of course, because theirs were closed while their minds combined. No one else seemed to notice Restrepo’s lack of respect either.

  “We were discussing the merits of the petition,” Uzval said. “Informally, of course.”

  “But enough to upset the Nyyzen.” Foltz raised his voice so that he could speak over the buzz.

  “We weren’t certain who would come,” Restrepo said. “This meeting is silly, consider the fact that Döbryn is still stuck in Port and Ambassador Kreise refuses to let us vote on whether or not to hold the hearing on Döbryn’s ship.”

  “I thought the Port of Armstrong wouldn’t allow that.” Foltz looked at Kreise for confirmation.

  “Since when do port guidelines affect intergalactic relations?” Restrepo asked.

  [when they interfere with life, health, and safety of the sentient beings the ports are sworn to protect.]

  The Nyyzen Ambassador finally arrived. The buzz disappeared as it spoke, but Kreise always took a moment to notice. The buzz would echo in her ears for a good five minutes.

  The Nyyzen Ambassador’s voice didn’t really sound like any other voice Kreise had ever heard. It rasped and echoed and doubled back on itself, and yet, even though it didn’t sound like speech, it was easy to understand.

  “I thought you supported the Etaen’s claim.” Restrepo crossed her arms. Bangle bracelets that she wore on both wrists jingled.

  [I do. But we are under no time pressure to review this application, so there is no real reason to upset the City of Armstrong which has been kind enough to host us.]

  Kriese folded her hands together, her fingers digging into her skin. She worked to remain silent, even though she wanted to argue.

  “There’s time pressure,” Restrepo said. “We do have our own lives and schedules.”

  [But that schedule is irrelevent. If we cannot hold a meeting in Armstrong, we shall find some place else at some other time. It might give us an opportunity to convince our more reluctant comrades of Etae’s importance to the Alliance.]

  “It’ll take a lot of convincing,” Kreise said before she could stop herself. “I see nothing positive in allowing Etae into the Alliance.”

  “They would be subject to our laws,” Foltz said.

  Kreise frowned at him. “And we would be subject to theirs. If they have any.”

  “That’s unfair, Orenda, and you know it,” Restrepo said. “They have laws.”

  Kreise glared at Restrepo. When they gathered, they were to talk to each other formally. But Kreise had never officially called the meeting to order, an argument that she knew Restrepo
would make.

  “Laws they don’t enforce,” Kreise said.

  “Actually,” Uzval said, “they enforce those laws stringently, with certain segments of the population.”

  Her fingers had flattened on the table. She was, apparently, calmer.

  “Yet another reason not to let them into the Alliance,” Kreise said. “The peoples of a planet should be treated with equality on that planet before anyone applies to the Alliance.”

  [Nyyze has never approved of that rule. It is human-centric.]

  Kreise suppressed a sigh. “We note that every single meeting, Ambassador.”

  “The rule exists,” Uzval said. “It is something you agreed to within the Alliance. Stop changing the subject.”

  Her voice seemed even raspier than it had earlier. Kreise wondered if she was getting enough air.

  One of the side doors pushed open. A woman whom Kreise had never seen before stuck her head inside. “I have lunch. When would you like it served?”

  Everyone at the table, with the exception of the Nyyzeni ambassador, looked at Kreise. She stood.

  “No one informed you about protocol?” she asked in her haughtiest voice.

  “I was told to ask—”

  “One of the assistants,” Kreise said. “Even they are not allowed in this room.”

  The woman bowed her head.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, and eased the door closed.

  There was a long silence before Foltz spoke. “Is anyone else uncomfortable here?”

  “In the building?” Kreise asked.

  “In Armstrong,” he said. “Doesn’t it seem to you that a lot of things are going wrong?”

  Kreise sat down slowly. It did seem that way. But sometimes meetings went poorly.

  “I have never understood,” Restrepo said, “why we didn’t set this meeting up on the Earth compound. After all, we’re on our own ground there.”

  “Nonaligned aliens are not allowed on Earth,” Uzval said.

  “At least in the Earth Alliance compound,” Foltz said.

  Kreise sighed. She hated correcting them. “Actually, that’s just a guideline. In the early days of the Alliance, potential new members always made their pitches at the compound.”

  “Which is my point,” Restrepo said. “You know that, and you set up this meeting. Why here?”

  Kreise made certain that her surprise didn’t show. Did Restrepo know what Kreise was doing?

  “Armstrong is as close to Earth as we dare get. I wanted to see if the Etaens would enter the heart of the Alliance,” Kreise said.

  “Now you know they will,” Restrepo said. “If the Ambassador is right—” whenever anyone referred to someone that way, they meant the Nyyzen ambassador—”then we can reschedule this thing somewhere else. Maybe even at our headquarters in the Outlying Colonies.”

  Foltz was shaking his head.

  “What’s the matter?” Uzval asked. “Don’t you want Etaens there either?”

  “We’d have the same problems that Armstrong is having. Etaens have been known to bring their disagreements—and their enhancements—to other planets.”

  “Yet you back them for the Alliance,” Uzval said.

  “I never said that.” Foltz kept his voice calm. He had an amazing ability to avoid seeming provoked. “I said I believed they deserved a hearing, just like any other petitioner.”

  “Just not in your homeland.” Restrepo spoke with bitterness.

  Foltz inclined his head toward her. “Indeed.”

  “Not in any of our homelands,” Kreise said. “That’s another reason for Armstrong. I’d like to give this a chance here.”

  She hoped that they’d have enough time for discussion before Armstrong cleared Döbryn and her colleagues, if the city ever would.

  [I cannot help but feeling that there are subtle prejudices at play.]

  As usual, the Ambassador’s words silenced the argument. The group turned toward the shape outlined in the chair.

  [All of our homelands have a history of genocide. We have all overcome it. Our peoples still make errors, which is why we have laws. Surely we should look at Etae’s record, and realize that had the Alliance existed when we were in the same position, we would have applied—and we would have been turned down.]

  Kreise’s breath had left her body. The Ambassador had said so many things that offended her, she wasn’t sure which one to object to first.

  “You’re calling genocide an error?” Uzval’s fingers had bent upward again. In fact, she was leaning slightly backward in her chair, her upper torso bent back at the shoulder, another sign of upset.

  “The Ambassador was making several points,” Restrepo said. “Don’t work them all together into one.”

  “Then the Ambassador shouldn’t have said them all at one time,” Uzval said. “Genocide is not an error. It is not an unfortunate occurrence. It is not a footnote in history, nor is it easily forgivable.”

  [Yet your people committed it against the qavle as recently as a century ago, Ambassador Uzval.]

  The Ambassador seemed to be enjoying itself. Kreise’s observation over the years was that the Ambassador lived—literally—for intellectual debate and argument. So it seemed to relish the moments when things became tense in the meetings.

  Uzval was about to answer the Ambassador, but it kept speaking as if it didn’t notice her attempts to interrupt.

  [What fascinates me the most, however, are the humans. They have taken genocide to an art. I know that most of us who have dealings with them believe that the humans have not participated in such things in a long time, but we do not count tribal deaths within our own species as genocide. The humans do. They have such varied cultures and they have wiped thousands—perhaps millions, if you count all of human history—out.]

  Kreise clenched her fists. The Ambassador probably wanted to anger her. If so, it was doing a good job.

  She had to turn the attention back to Etae, and then chastise the Ambassador for the assumptions it made in its earlier arguments.

  “That’s precisely why we don’t want Etae in this Alliance,” Kreise said. “They have committed genocide—human against human genocide—and—”

  “That stopped with the Child Martyr incident thirty years ago,” Restrepo said.

  Kreise’s fingers dug even deeper into her skin. “It did not. We have records that the killings continued during the civil war. Just because so many people sympathized with the rebels when it became clear that the then-government was murdering children doesn’t mean that the rebels stopped their own killing of families. The rebels just got smarter about it.”

  “I have not seen this evidence,” Restrepo said. She had always defended the rebels who, in the end, had won the civil war and become the current government of Etae. No matter how much evidence of unjustified killings that Kreise had shown her, Restrepo believed that the current government could do no wrong.

  “You also ignore the murders of the indigenous peoples,” Uzval said into Kreise’s silence.

  “That was done by the Idonae,” Restrepo said. “They conquered Etae first, exploited it, stripped it of resources and the Ynnels, and then the humans came. Humans had nothing to do with the death of the Ynnels.”

  “That’s not the history that I have read. I’ve seen evidence of human-Ynnel slaughter with my own eyes,” Uzval said. “I will bring it to our next meeting.”

  “You should have given it to the various approval committees.” Foltz’s voice was soft.

  “I did,” Uzval said.

  “If they ignored it, then they didn’t think it relevant,” Restrepo said.

  “I think they had other reasons for ignoring it,” Uzval said, “reasons you’re quite familiar with.”

  “Are you making some kind of accusation?” Restrepo asked.

  “The intergalactic corporations,” Uzval said, her breath raw in the mask, “want the Etaens—the current ones, the human ones—to train them in the art of guerrilla warfare, intergalactic s
tyle. They want to buy Etaen enhancements. They want all those subtle little weapons that can get past scanning and they want the murderous techniques. You pretend to speak for your people, but you speak for the intergalactics. We all know they’re tired of playing by the rules, tired of reporting all of their activities to the Alliance, tired of—”

  “They do none of those things,” Foltz said. “Stop accusing Ambassador Restrepo of being in bed with them. She is her own woman.”

  “She is,” Uzval said. “She represents the Jupiter colonies well because she believes the lies the corporations that run those colonies tell. She has to realize there is more to life than trade and economics. She has to understand that a certain morality—”

  [If the Alliance teaches anything, it is that one species’ morality is another’s immorality. Do not lecture us on life, Ambassador Uzval. You have no standing. As I said, all of our peoples have made mistakes, and all of them would not, at one point or another in their histories, HAVE qualified for membership in the Alliance.]

  “Precisely,” Kreise said as quickly as she could. “And that doesn’t excuse the Etaens. Just because we once had a similar history, doesn’t mean we should look at a decade as if it’s a significant amount of time.”

  [In the history of Etae, it is. The Etaens—the current ones, as Ambassador Uzval says—had not maintained peace for longer than an Earth Day before the cessation of fighting a decade ago. Ten years, then, is quite a success. We must look at their history in this context.]

  “I think we should look at it in the context that you presented earlier, Ambassador,” Kreise said as quietly as she could. “Humans are experts at genocide, particularly of a type that many other races do not recognize. Now Etae is populated almost exclusively by humans, and two decades ago, they were slaughtering each other. A decade may be a long time in Nyyzen history, but in human history it’s a nanosecond. We need to deny the petition.”