by Patty Jansen
There had been a mistake in allocating the apartment to me, I insisted back then, but now I often wondered how much of a mistake it had really been and how much it was due to machinations by Ezhya and Marin Federza.
Because being put up in that apartment—that no one wanted because it was bugged to within an inch of its life by nonverifiable off-island sources—had spurred me into being much more than a minor diplomat. It had forced me into trying to prove that I was worthy of it, and as a result, money had materialised in the form of a heavy stipend paid by Ezhya.
These days I owned the apartment and paid the staff. I had even hired more.
Had I not been put in the apartment, I would have been like Melissa, and I wondered what distinguished me from Melissa in that I’d gotten these tremendous opportunities and she was just allowed to do her job.
I could never get my head around it. What did Ezhya see in me?
Thayu snorted. Of course she had been following my thoughts through the feeder.
“You are the first non-Coldi with a Coldi association and you’re still asking that question?”
“But everyone can do what I’ve done.”
“Maybe, but they haven’t.” That was her standard response to that argument. I knew it, I had heard it all before and was still afraid that one day I was going to wake up to find that it had all been a dream.
We arrived at the building. Thayu and Nicha had agreed to stay outside and I climbed the side stairs to the top floor. From here, I could see Thayu hanging around “inconspicuously” on one of the quayside benches, looking very much like a guard hanging around and waiting. Nicha was down there, too, although he’d been talking about getting something to drink.
I knocked on the door.
It was opened a moment later by a tiny woman with flaming red hair. She was a member of the Kedrasi delegation, her name was Taysin Katara Yelak, and she was Melissa’s housemate.
“Oh, Delegate!” She bowed. “Good evening. How can I help you?” She wore a grey kaftan with blue stripes. A very junior delegate to gamra.
“I’d like to see Melissa.”
“Come in.”
She preceded me through a hallway to the apartment’s living room. The entire far wall was made of glass. Most of the view was taken up by water, dark and black at this time of the day, with the city lit up in a string of lights. A train zoomed in the direction of the city, its headlights just lighting a small section of rails in front of it.
“That is a very pretty view,” I said.
“Oh, hello Cory.” Melissa spoke Isla. She sat in an armchair by the window, studying something on her reader. I hadn’t seen her because it was very dark in the room. She put the reader down and got up, flicking a lever on the wall next to her.
A pearl light came on. To mitigate the pearl light’s natural zombielike pale green glow, she had concocted a little lampshade of wire and yellow foil.
“Does the Delegate want some tea?” Taysin asked in Coldi.
“That would be nice, thank you.”
These days, few people spoke this formally to me. Most knew that I didn’t like it, and being affiliated with Coldi people reduced the need for formality in general.
“Sit down.” Melissa gestured at the couch, and I sat down. Her gaze wandered to the gun in the bracket on my arm.
“Wow, you’ve really gone all out.” Again in Isla.
“I’m allowed to have it.” The Isla words felt odd on my tongue, somehow wrong for this place.
“I didn’t think you were that keen on weapons.”
“I am not, but they’ve saved my butt often enough for me to appreciate their existence.”
“Granted.” Another shifty look at the gun. “Did you get training in using it?”
“It feels like I’ve done little else lately. I’ve just come back from a hunting trip. We went to the sand bar for a few days.”
“Oh, then you missed all of the scandal.”
My heart jumped. “Scandal?” Had I been too quick in judging Marin Federza’s administration scandal-free?
“There was a major security breach of the gamra island’s systems. Your office was one of the most heavily affected. Haven’t you heard that yet?”
“Oh, that. Yes, I heard about it. Those sorts of mishaps happen every few months. It goes with the territory of mixing a Coldi loyalty system with gamra security requirements. It’s annoying when it happens, but it isn’t the first time and won’t be the last. Security fixes it and then we move on.”
“Except this involved links going off world. It’s a highly organised operation.”
“What do you mean? Who gave you that information? The Exchange hasn’t released any statements. I doubt they know exactly who it is—”
“Oh, they know. They just don’t want to say.”
“Was your office affected, too?”
“I don’t have an office with twenty people.”
“Your data, then?”
“No, but—”
“Then how do you know what’s going on?”
“It’s not that hard to tell, isn’t it?”
“Well, I could think of a whole bunch of people who would like to get their hands on what goes on in my office, but I have no evidence that anyone got their hands on anything of importance. In fact, the culprits were probably commercial data miners after low-grade commercial resellable databases, but if the Exchange finds differently, I’m happy to listen. I’m happy to listen to you, too, if you can cite a credible source.”
She glared at me, and I glared back.
Predictably, she had no credible source. A “hunch”, she had called it several times in the past. At times like this, she remained far too much of a gutter press journalist out to find sensationalist stories. Annoyingly, too, her hunches had proven right more often than not.
“If the Exchange knew of any high-level plot behind a security breach, rest assured that some of the people in my association would know about it. As far as I can see, it was done by a commercial company, who would have had some clever people working for them and happened to luck upon a routine that attacked the gamra security walls from an angle that the programmers hadn’t considered. This company sells archives and archive space. Likely, they will sell databases of low-level information, and in the next year or so, I will receive a bunch of solicitations from companies wanting to sell my household bed sheets, because the domestic database shows that we replace ours every four years or something. There is much more money to be made doing that than there is with the high-profile spying.”
“Well, I hope you’re right. I don’t trust everything the Exchange says.”
“I can see no reason for the Exchange to lie.”
“No reason? To protect itself? Not to have to admit that it did something wrong?”
I saw in my mind an image of Yetaris Damaru standing in front of a room full of important gamra people telling them that the system had gone completely down, and he had no idea where one of their key leaders was. I could not imagine that man lying deliberately, ever. But I wasn’t going to argue that with Melissa, because I’d be “too naive” and “bought out by the people in power” and once we went into that territory, there was no end to it.
“Melissa, all I can ask is this: If you have any information that I don’t have, present it to the gamra assembly at the next sitting. If it can’t wait, take it to security.”
Meanwhile, it would be a good move for her to ditch the conspiracy-theorist, gutter-press mentality, but that was another discussion I’d made the mistake of having with her, and one I wasn’t going to repeat.
She continued giving me a pointed look. I shouldn’t let myself get so worked up over her attitude. If there was a real issue, we’d find out.
“Anyway, whatever is happening, someone will sort it out. That’s not why I’m here.” I sipped from my tea. It was fragrant and hot.
“Why are you here then?”
I set down my tea, rummaged in my bag and put the
jar on the table.
Melissa frowned at it and then at me. “Whatever is that?”
“You tell me.”
She picked up the jar, unclipped the lid and took out the piece of paper. Her frown deepened. “Help? What sort of joke is this? Did this get left on your doorstep or something?”
“No. I found it.” I told her about our trip and the location where I had found the jar.
“That is . . . odd. Really, really, really odd.”
“It is, and I need your help in trying to decide what to make of it. I’m not taking it one hundred percent seriously, but I don’t want to dismiss it either. Just in case it’s a real cry for help.”
She nodded and turned the jar over. “It’s a locally made thing. I’ve seen these jars in restaurants for storing pickles and things. And locally made paper. It’s a train or ferry schedule.”
The waxy surface wasn’t very good for writing either.
“Ferry. This is for the service from the eastern side of the main island to the back of the council building.” Melissa shook her head and snorted. “If whoever wrote this would really want help, then they might have been a little bit more specific about where they are.”
“Unless they don’t know that either.”
Now her expression looked disturbed. She stared at the jar, shaking her head.
“This is why I’m here: before I dismiss this as a really strange prank of some kind—and to be frank I can’t see how anyone could pull off something like this—who are the people who could have written this note and are any of them missing? Who are the people from Earth in town?”
“Not many, but I’ll give you a list.” Melissa picked up her reader.
I was almost ashamed that I didn’t know the Earth people in Barresh. I only ever spoke to Melissa. There were a few others I would see in passing on the streets or at events, but the only other person I’d spent significant time talking to was my predecessor Seymour Kershaw, who had become a member of Amoro Renkati and who had been killed at the assembly for trying to kill Ezhya Palayi.
Weren’t we supposed to have an Earth Society or something like that? One with monthly social meetings at which Earth foods were served and we watched old movies?
“So, here are the Earth people.” Melissa had pulled up a short list on her reader. “There’s you and me, and Huang Le and his family—” Le was a bit of a celebrity on Earth because he held the honour of owning the first-ever interplanetary Chinese restaurant. “There is Benton Leck at the History Centre.” He was an older academic who was well-integrated in the local population. “Then there is Clovis Keneally and Juanita Rey.” They were a retired couple, a bit eccentric.
I felt ashamed. I knew these people. I never saw them or made an effort to help them or even to check if they were all right.
Melissa flicked to another page. “Oh, and Jasper Carlson.”
I’d heard that name a few times even if I hadn’t met the man. He was a merchant of some kind and had a reputation of being a recluse. I wasn’t sure what he sold but he had a warehouse and shop in town, and of all the Earth people in Barresh, was probably the one who had been here the longest.
“Do any of them have children?”
“Huang Le does. He has a boy and a girl. They’re about ten or twelve.”
I guessed she was speaking in Earth years, because in Ceren years, that would make them adults, and I didn’t think that was what she meant.
“Would the kids have been playing pirates or something?”
“I don’t know. You would have to ask him.”
“I presume these people sometimes get visitors from Earth.”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I’m not aware that anyone has any visitors right now. The Exchange would be able to tell you.” That same Exchange she didn’t trust. If anything, travel data was the type of thing that I could see being manipulated for the purpose of circumventing arduous, and expensive, administrative processes to bring visitors or partners across.
“Would any of these people contact you if they had visitors?”
“Sometimes they do, but it’s not a formal requirement. A few months ago, Huang Le’s brother visited. He wanted to investigate the possibility of exporting Chinese foodstuffs, seeing as his brother’s restaurant is so popular here. He came to me because he wanted make sure that everything he did was above the table. I’ve heard that Huang Le is looking into training chefs and opening a second restaurant on the gamra island.”
Hmmm, so even the locals liked their Chinese food, huh? “Can I have that list of names?”
“Sure.”
My comm pinged when it received the document. I glanced down the short list. First was Huang Le with his wife Fifi, and their children Matara and Peris. Both were keihu names, so they must have been born here.
The next person on the list was Benton Leck, age sixty-three, Earth years of course. “Lack is not married?”
“He has a partner who lives with him.”
“A local?” I guessed.
“Mirani.”
The next entry was Clovis Keneally. “Does he have any business interests in town or anything or does he live off retirement income only?”
“Who? Clovis? Oh, he has lots of income. He owns shops and other businesses. He was smart enough to use all of his retirement capital to buy Trader credits before he came here, and we all know what happened with them. They’re quite rich.”
“ ‘They’ refers to him and Juanita?”
“Yup. They own investments all over town and manage it all from their house. They live on the northern shore of the main island.” One of the “new rich” areas in town.
“Do they get a lot of visitors?”
“Sometimes. I don’t really know.” Melissa shook her head. “They stick to themselves, mind their own business. I honestly don’t know much about most of these people. I’ve never met Benton Leck. These people don’t want to have social gatherings.”
“They probably hate each other’s guts.”
Melissa laughed. “Have you met Jasper Carlson?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“I have. He’s probably the reason why they don’t want to have a little Earth club and meetings with cups of tea. He’s a strange, suspicious, divisive, vindictive character.”
“Do you think this note could be in some way related to their disagreements and vindictiveness?”
“Maybe. Look, I’m stabbing in the dark as much as you are.”
“All right, then. Appreciate your honesty.” It was always worth quizzing Melissa on those subjects about which she did not have conspiracy theories.
I picked up the wrapper and put it back in the jar. “Yet someone wrote this note. Probably because there was nothing else to write with. I need to make sure that there isn’t someone out there in real trouble. I’d love to dismiss this, but I can’t.”
Melissa nodded.
“I’m going to visit all the people on this list.”
“I was afraid you’d say that. Most of these people don’t want anyone gawking. They’re not here to represent Earth. They’re here to get away from it.”
* * *
“Visit all these people? Why don’t you ask her to do it?” Thayu asked me when we walked back through leafy avenues of the gamra island. “After all, she is the representative.”
The evening was warm and the air laced with the humidity of the approaching wet season. All around us, people sat eating at outdoor eateries or lounged on benches or balconies.
“Melissa represents Earth at the assembly. She’s not running a diplomatic post.”
“You’re not, either.”
“No, but I’m the one who found the jar. I should probably get to know these people better, anyway. I’m not comfortable that I hardly know any of the people on that list. Coldi on Earth have the registry. There’s a similar registry here in Barresh. Coldi can always rely on others to help them in time of need. These people have . . . nothing. Any of them could disappear tomorrow and
I would never find out about it unless someone told me.”
“Coldi have a registry because we’re Coldi, and we have loyalty networks. Indrahui don’t have a registry.”
“No but if Evi or Telaris were in trouble, related somehow to Indrahui, their folks would help them.”
Thayu spread her hands and let them sink again. “So, it’s like a ‘back to your roots’ kind of thing?”
I didn’t know what to say to that. People often said to me that I was more Coldi than some Coldi, or they accused me of trying to be Coldi. I was much more fluent in Coldi than Isla. I dressed Coldi. I’d had my face treated so that I no longer grew facial hair. I was the head of a Coldi-style association and, a little while ago, Thayu and I had visited the Aghyrian geneticist Lilona Shrakar in her office in town to discuss possible gene modification for me that would effectively turn me Coldi.
Was visiting these Earth people a “back to my roots” thing?
Was it a last-chance, “Let’s see if these people are really so bad” thing?
After all, I’d not been interested in any of these people for all the years I’d lived in Barresh. If I’d been a true diplomat representing Earth, I’d have given parties at my apartment for all of them. Seymour Kershaw used to do this.
Instead, I’d moved into a top floor apartment with a whole bunch of Coldi and never even contacted any of them.
No wonder those stories about me did the rounds.
I sighed. I didn’t really want to discuss what I was. Half the time, I didn’t know either. “It’s a peace of mind thing. I’d like to think if there is someone out there in trouble, I’ve done all I could to help, just because I’d like to be a decent person. I also think that because I can read the message and I know Barresh, I’m in a good position to help. It’s really got nothing to do with my personal situation.”
“Good.”
We walked silently for a bit, and then she added, “I’m happy that you believe that.”