Being absolutely honest, humans would have to admit that their concept of a firm agreement or a promise also carried the tacit understanding that it would only be maintained while both sides were getting what they wanted from it. Business deals and diplomatic agreements were set aside all the time, and even at the personal level people often made commitments they knew in their heart they were very unlikely to keep, such as getting married on a life-long contract when they were well aware of the probability that they would end up getting divorced at some point. Quarians were just more honest about that and saw no purpose either in loading the promise with unreasonable expectations or in apologising when whatever they’d agreed to didn’t work out.
Knowing that, Davie understood that it was pointless to try to bring K’pah back on the agreed plan with any appeal to her sense of obligation to it. And he was, besides, he knew, on very dodgy ground there. Any attempt to pressure her into keeping her word about sticking to the plan could have been turned around at once by her pointing out that humans, who did make a big issue of doing what they’d said they would as a matter of high honour and principle, had broken their own word in detaining her by force, locking her up within the Embassy. Davie was, he had decided, going to have words with whatever moron was responsible for that.
‘All right,’ he said, ‘but wait for me, will you?’ He was using priority security codes to keep the bus at the pick-up point, and running towards it as he spoke. He could actually see the bus just fifty metres or so ahead of him when K’pah overrode his override of the bus controls and it took off in a smooth arc.
It was heading for Lundane Central, the planet’s biggest spaceport and transit hub where airbus and underground train networks converged. She could go anywhere in the system from there.
‘Don’t fuss, Davie,’ she told him, as the bus merged into the lowest of the traffic levels. ‘I’m fine. And I just want to see things for myself without you yelling in my ear the whole time. So I’ll see you later, okay?’
He soon realised that she was going to Cosmos Park, flagship of the biggest and best-known chain of theme parks. It was a space station with hotel accommodation for more than twenty thousand visitors and a leisure park which could accommodate ten times as many. It boasted every leisure activity in the known galaxy, even if many of the more obscure were only available in pre-booked VR pods, along with all the fun of the high adrenalin rides and glitz for which Cosmos Park was known. They had already made arrangements for her to visit Cosmos Park – a visit for which selected parts of the station would be briefly off limits to the public under various excuses of cleaning and maintenance while the quarian got to see what she wanted.
K’pah, however, had evidently decided that it would be more fun, and more informative, to just turn up and mingle with the crowd. Ironically, it was one of the few places in the system where her movie-style alien look would pass unnoticed. People would just assume that she was either in fancy dress or part of the park’s entertainment. Other issues aside, it might even have been possible to facilitate her going about the park like that with no more than a discreet security escort.
Other issues could not be set aside, though. By the time she’d got off the bus to Lundane Central two of the other passengers were having a blazing row. K’pah, it appeared, had felt obliged to tell a passenger that she was being deceived by the man she was with, seeing that the woman was looking at him with love and trust while he was regarding her as just one more in a long line of easy conquests and was, in fact, already married to somebody else. K’pah was still trying to work out why the woman had got so cross and called her names too as she arrived at Cosmos Park. She was soon distracted, though, as one of the first people she encountered at the park had a twanging toothache.
That was as emotionally disturbing for the quarian as it was physically distressing to be around. The person concerned was a young woman employed as a greeter, working at the entry concourse today as part of the team giving everyone an excited chirpy welcome. She was dressed as a glittering Princess Ruby. The discord between her outer appearance and sparkly manner and the reality of the miserable girl underneath all the glitz was so painful to K’pah that she reeled, as disoriented as if she was suffering double vision from a blow on the head. She recovered very fast as she realised what was going on, but reacted, as any quarian would, to the reality before her. She could not see a performance artist gritting through a tough shift. She could see a teenage girl in serious pain, that tooth throbbing like a wound, and feeling very lonely, too, weary and far from home.
‘Oh, you poor darling,’ K’pah went rushing up to her at once, all concern and sympathy. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll be fine,’ she said, and raised her voice, looking around, ‘Medic!’
This, however, was neither the Serenity base nor Davie’s ship, where there were medics in constant attendance. Nobody responded, other than to give her odd looks, and seeing that there was no medic present, K’Pah realised that she was going to have to deal with this herself.
This did not go well. By the time word reached the people on the concourse that the weirdo was actually the VIP they were expecting to host later that day, a VIP described as ‘The personal guest of the President’, the situation had already escalated into a multi-way row around the afflicted member of staff. K’Pah was appalled to find that nobody seemed to feel that the girl’s toothache warranted calling a medic at all, or even relieving her from work so she could go and get it sorted. Most bewildering of all, the girl herself was protesting that it was nothing, nothing, that she was absolutely fine and wanted to finish her shift, when surely even humans must have been able to see that she was lying. She obviously felt, for reasons beyond the quarian’s understanding, that it was more important to stay here for several hours saying ‘Happy holiday!’ to people than it was to take care of herself, even though she was in acute discomfort and it was only getting worse. K’Pah’s remarks on this and on the callous brutality of the supervisor had brought the debate to a very heated level, and she was on the verge of being ejected from the park by security when the VIP status alert got through and a manager came racing to take over.
Davie had issued clear instructions now, with all the weight of his Ambassadorial authority and not hesitating to use the President’s name. He was on his way to Cosmos Park himself. He would have been there already, had it not been for the delay in having his shuttle brought back to the Embassy. He was determined to catch her up this time, and to get the situation under control.
So his instructions were specific. They were not to attempt to detain the VIP by force, or lock her in anywhere. They were to comply with all her requests unless there was serious health and safety concern. And they were to attempt to keep her there, to take her to some quiet, private place, by offering her hospitality.
The manager did try. Finding herself in the midst of an emotive fracas she dealt with that rapidly, sending the now tearful Princess Ruby off to the first aid centre and dismissing everyone else with a firm assurance that she would deal with this now. Then she smiled and apologised to their guest for the misunderstanding, welcomed her to the Park and offered her the hospitality of the VIP suite.
K’pah, however, declined. ‘I want candy floss,’ she explained, and happy now that she knew that the princess girl was being looked after, she breezed off in search of a candy floss stall.
That did not go well either. Cosmos Park was famous for their Rainbow Wand of candy floss, a metre-high confection of spiralling colours. Davie had told her that he’d longed for one of those candy-floss wands as a small child, envying the normal kids who could eat such delights without a team of chefs and medics controlling every aspect of their diet. By the time he was old enough to get some for himself, he said, it had been a disappointment. Even so, K’pah had said she wanted to try it for herself, as a significant food item in League culture.
It was fair to say that she was not impressed. Just sniffing at the candy floss made her wrinkle her nose, and one
cautious nibble had her almost gagging.
‘Yerrrrgh!’ she screwed up her face in disgust, not at the sugar but at the colourants and other additives. ‘Do you know how many chemicals there are in that?’ she asked the stall holder, and with rising alarm, ‘Some of them are really bad for you, you know – damaging to your health. You ought to be wearing a mask just working with those fumes. And I can’t believe you eat this stuff – no, no!’ she saw parents handing out Rainbow Wands to clamouring kids, and rushed to intervene. ‘Don’t! It’s disgusting and full of dangerous chemicals!’
The manager was attempting to deal with worried, irate parents and grizzling kids by the time Davie arrived, with K’Pah explaining earnestly the potential health problems caused by several of the chemicals she’d detected in the product. Seeing Davie approach, she turned to him with an exasperated air. ‘What is wrong with your species? How can you give chemicals you know are damaging to kids?’
‘Good question, fair question,’ Davie conceded, strolling to a halt as casually as if he’d met her there by agreement rather than chasing round the system after her. ‘Small amounts are tolerated on the basis that we don’t consider small amounts to be significantly harmful, but we do all know that such foods aren’t good for us. There’s a reason it’s called junk food, after all.’ He smiled apologetically at the angry and bewildered people around her. ‘She’s from a colony where they only eat organic,’ he said. It was amazing how quickly they accepted that.
‘I said she’s a food nut,’ the mother of the family pointed out, with a look of loathing at the quarian. ‘Just leave people alone!’ she aimed a threatening finger at her. ‘We’re here to have fun.’
The manager gestured to one of the other staff hovering around, and they moved in deftly to take the family away and placate them with vouchers. The manager, meanwhile, was looking at Davie, rather obviously hoping that he was going to get this weird VIP off the park. Davie gave her a brief smile and a nod.
‘Come on,’ he told K’Pah. ‘I’ll take you somewhere they do really great food.’
She went with him, though with a dubious look.
‘I’m not from a colony where they only eat organic,’ she pointed out, and after a moment to consider, ‘Are there colonies where people only eat organic?’
‘No,’ Davie admitted. ‘But groundsiders never know anything about the outer worlds, let alone colonies, and it isn’t likely that they’ll try to look it up.’ He grinned at her, but she looked troubled.
‘So – you lied.’
‘Yup,’ Davie confirmed. ‘A social lie to resolve a problem that you, my darling, were causing.’ He gave her a look of the warmest affection. ‘There is a system-wide panic going on, you know, over the mayhem you’re creating. Do you know how many traffic laws you’ve broken, for a start?’
K’Pah looked unimpressed. ‘Those are human laws to keep human pilots safe,’ she observed. ‘It’s silly to apply them to us.’
She meant, he understood, people like them, people with the intellect and reflexes to be able to pilot safely at high speed without traffic control. There was no such thing as traffic control on Quarus; pilots went wherever they liked at whatever speed they liked, in the air and underwater, relying on their piloting ability and the etiquette of courtesy to other vehicles to prevent accidents. To K’Pah, requiring her to stay in lanes and comply with satellite controls was as ludicrous as expecting her to waddle around in a baby-walker.
‘Possibly,’ said Davie. ‘But until they issue two levels of piloting permit, one standard and the other for super-advanced pilots not restricted by system control, we are required to work within the same rules as everybody else. It can be frustrating, I know, but that’s one of the realities of living amongst people who function at a much slower, lower cognitive level.’
‘Well, that’s silly,’ K’Pah repeated, with emphasis. ‘And anyway you said that the diplomatic immunity means that your laws don’t apply to me.’
‘True, but there’s an expectation that you will conduct yourself as if they do,’ Davie said, and grinned at her reproachful look. ‘Yeah, I know, humans are bonkers.’ He’d been leading her towards a transit pod, and gestured invitingly, now, for her to step aboard. That was one of the moments that he really felt as if he had things back under control. He was already sending messages on his wristcom for the restaurant he had in mind to stand by to receive them. It wasn’t actually a restaurant as such – it appeared in no listings and no member of the public would even know it existed, let alone be able to book a table there. It was beyond exclusive – a private dining venue where you had to be a VIP even to get through the door, and either a system president or member of the Founding Families to merit the personal attention of the Maître d’. Davie had been there several times and was confident that she would like it – the views were spectacular, the service discreet and the food was arguably the best on the planet. There was no menu there, you just asked for whatever you wanted and they would get it for you. They would be quiet and safe there, with an interval to give everyone time to get their breath back before continuing with the visit on a rather less frenetic basis.
At least, that’s what Davie was intending. He was also planning to introduce her to his cousin Zelda, who was visiting Chartsey at the moment. Zelda worked for Davie, and had done so for years. If asked to pin down exactly what she did, Davie would say that she was his eyes and ears in sensitive situations. Others might describe her as an undercover agent, apparently a vapid socialite but actually a shrewd observer and investigator. She had been working on Karadon for several months, informing Davie about the drug smuggling operations going on there, before the Fourth had gone in on their operations. Now she was on Chartsey, apparently doing the high fashion social round but actually checking out another of his corporations Davie had his doubts about. He was hoping, really hoping, that the quarian would click with Zelda, who might then join them and help him to look after her. He was already messaging her, asking her to join them at the restaurant in about half an hour.
K’Pah, however, had other ideas.
‘You need to stop fussing,’ she told him. ‘And tell the others to stop panicking, too. I’m fine. I’m an intelligent, responsible adult and perfectly capable of looking after myself – far more so than just about any human, that’s for sure.’ She fixed him in a steady look. ‘You have to trust me, accept that I’m an adult and respect my right to make decisions for myself.’
That was a direct, deliberate quote from Davie himself. He had told her that he’d said that to his father when asserting his adult rights, a personal declaration of independence. Now she was saying the same thing to him.
But it wasn’t the same, Davie wanted to protest. He’d been brought up human, registered as born on Flancer and raised as every member of the Founding Families was, to regard service to the League not merely as a sacred duty but as their reason for being. These were his people, however separate he might feel from them at times, and this was his culture. She was an infant, in that sense, taking her first steps on a very crowded, complex world. And that empathic ability coupled with her devastating honesty meant that she’d take very few steps here before getting into difficulties. There was just no way she was safe to be going around on Chartsey by herself.
Even as he was about to try to explain that to her, though, she was gone again. It was so fast that even Davie didn’t see it coming in time to prevent it. She’d stepped into the transit pod and he was just about to follow her, thinking of how best to tell her that she really would have to accept some guidance and support, here. And then the doors shut with an emergency-speed snap, leaving him on the outside, and the pod was whizzing away.
‘Hey!’ he exclaimed, through the comlink, but she just laughed.
‘Chill,’ she told him. He’d already jumped into the next pod and programmed it to go to the shuttle concourse as fast as it would go. It was only three seconds behind her pod, but he knew that those three seconds would be more
than enough. She’d ditched him – deliberately, this time, giggling as she’d left him standing there. ‘It’s fine!’ she insisted. ‘See you later!’
It was two hours and forty three minutes before he caught up with her again – two hours and forty three minutes which would stay in his memory as a living nightmare. Finally, he really understood why Ambassador Tellis and President Tyborne had used that word. It was a nightmare, there was no other way to describe that sense of dreadful helpless effort, the feeling of attempting to catch something that was more precious than life, when your feet were snarled in mud and wire and your legs felt like they were encased in lead. Only this time the sense of desperation, the anguish of trying to save something precious that was always just out of reach, was very, very real.
Davie could hardly believe it was happening. They knew where she was the whole time, as the authorities had got their act together by then and were not only tracking her but mobilising whatever people they had at whatever location she headed to next. Their orders were to protect her, to intervene in the inevitable Incidents as she encountered members of the public, and to do their utmost to attempt to persuade her either to go with them to a safe place or to stay there until Davie arrived. He was never more than two minutes behind her. At one point he was just four seconds away and could just glimpse the platinum cone of her hair in the crowd. But then she was gone – dodging him, flitting off with a mischievous giggle trailing in the air.
She visited nineteen locations during that time, eleven of them on the planet and eight around the system. Everywhere she went she left a wake of emotional scenes, outraged civilians and frantic officials. The Diplomatic Corps, the police, secret services, Presidential staff, army and SDF were all doing their utmost to bring her in, but even when they got close she would just advise them on their emotional issues and slip away again. A suggestion from the army that they might bring her down with a long-range stun shot was vetoed with yells and bad language from every direction. Whatever else happened, seizing an alien ambassador by force would have catastrophic consequences for future contact, as word went around that the humans had done that. The only strategy they could use was that of persuasion. And that just got them nowhere. Even a direct invitation to get into a waiting car and go and meet the President got no more than a cheerful, ‘Lovely – I’ll pop up later,’ and then she was gone again.
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