New Title 2

by S J MacDonald

  ‘This has happened before?’ Then he caught himself up, flapping his hands dismissively, ‘No, doesn’t matter. Don’t care about that right now. When do I get to meet her?’

  ‘Soon,’ Tamus said, and waited patiently while Janil whooped again. ‘There are,’ he told him, ‘some procedures we have to go through first. That includes medical checks and a briefing from the Diplomatic Corps – are you happy to go ahead on that basis?’

  Janil was nodding vehemently while Tamus was still speaking.

  ‘Yes!’ he declared. ‘Absolutely! Whatever it takes!’

  Tamus smiled and spoke briefly to the driver.

  ‘We are now,’ he told Janil, as indulgently as an adult telling a child about a treat, ‘taking you to a secret base.’

  Janil stifled another whoop, attempting to conduct himself with more dignity, but his eyes were huge and brilliant.

  ‘Unit C12?’ he breathed. Unit C12 was an underground army base, deep under mountains in an inaccessible region. It had long been part of Alien Truth’s creed that Unit C12 was the Telathoran headquarters for alien affairs. It was said that they had facilities there for housing alien visitors, even that they had alien bodies there in storage.

  ‘No,’ said Tamus, with another tolerant smile. ‘I’m afraid C12 is a perfectly ordinary army communications centre. It suits our purposes for people to know that there is an exobase on Telathor, but as on other worlds, it is normal practice to distract people from the real base by offering a suitably remote and mysterious cover.’

  For the first time, it really hit Janil that there was no way back from this. He knew too much, now. Not in the deadly melodramatic ‘knew too much’ of the movies, which would see him under threat of being exterminated by ruthless government agents, but simply that he knew too much ever to be able to go back into the world which Alien Truth inhabited. Belief in Unit C12 was a fundamental point of faith for members of Alien Truth. Anyone who didn’t believe that C12 was the centre of alien operations on Telathor had no right to join Alien Truth or any similar organisation. Saying that it was actually just an army comms base would make Janil a Denier, an idiot or worse, a defender of the Establishment. Even if he was able to tell them that he knew for a fact where the real secret base was, and exactly where that was, they would not believe him.

  He felt a twinge of sadness just for a moment, as he saw his former life and friendships, even in many ways his sense of identity, falling away as his beliefs were overturned. But at the same time, the thrill of discovery meant there was no possibility of hesitating, certainly no question of wanting to turn things back to the way they had been.

  ‘So – where are we going?’ he asked eagerly, anticipating that the answer would be an undersea dome or perhaps some base hidden away in the arctic regions.

  The reality astounded him. They came down to land in broad daylight in a perfectly ordinary city.

  It would have been difficult to find a more ordinary city than Terile. It was the twenty seventh largest city on the planet and the sixth largest in its national region. Many people in other regions of Telathor would not have even heard of it. Even those within the region would struggle if they were asked, ‘Tell me about Terile – what’s it like? What’s it famous for?’

  Terilens themselves would tell you about their beautiful gardens, their modern shopping facilities and the handful of moderately famous people who’d been born there. Even they would have to admit, though, that there was nothing unusual about it, no claim they could make to anything that couldn’t be found in every other city on the planet.

  And they had, just like every other city on Telathor, an area within the inner city which had been zoned for commercial development. Actual industry was mostly located on the innermost world of the system, of course, but offices and service industries were on Telathor. This being Telathor there were no clusters of high rise offices blotting out the sky. Instead there were open squares amidst the usual riot of greenery and flowers, with buildings merging into the landscape.

  Their car came down to land in one of the squares designated for vehicle landing. There was access there to an underground car park but their driver pulled over to a drop off point and halted there.

  Janil followed Tamus out of the car and looked around. It was mid-morning here. There was a decorative pool in the centre of the square with a fountain and shaded seating around it. There were a couple of hundred people around, many of them office workers taking a break. A curve of food booths by the pool was doing quite good business. As always in public spaces on Telathor, there was a stand, a shaded platform available to any musicians who wanted to perform. Right now, an earnest youth was declaiming soulful poetry accompanied by the lachrymose and not very expert twanging of a guitar. Some people were listening in friendly interest, most took no notice. None of them took any notice at all of the car which drew up, or of the two people who got out of it.

  Janil felt strangely exposed. He half expected everyone there to turn and stare at him, as if they would know somehow that he knew great secrets. But nobody looked at them as Tamus led him towards a nearby building, so he went along, wondering how they were going to get into the secret base which was, presumably, somewhere underground.

  In fact it was in plain view – an office complex with a sign on the path leading into it which announced it to be the home of the Terile City Council’s Planning and Civic Services Departments.

  There was no obvious security. There was just the usual kind of open entrance into a reception area with signs and a help point if you didn’t know where to go. Tamus led him through that, following signs which led up a gently curving stair and along a gallery to the Department of Parks and Gardens. There, they passed through a spacious open plan office where about thirty people were working, or at least, chatting in the vicinity of desks, then round a screen and through a door which was labelled ‘Health and Safety.’ There, Janil saw a handful of offices, a small conference room and a door labelled ‘Medical Room’ which, when he was shown in there, turned out to be just like any other doctor’s surgery.

  Janil felt robbed. There hadn’t even been so much as an elevator which took them down to levels which weren’t on the keypad.

  ‘This is it?’ he asked. ‘This is your base?’

  ‘One of them,’ said Tamus, and smiled. ‘Some secrets,’ he observed, ‘are best kept in the open. Everyone here has the highest level of security clearance. And those who work in the rest of the building are not at all surprised that so many people work in Health and Safety and apparently get so little done other than the issuing of occasional patronising advice leaflets. That’s what people expect of Health and Safety departments, after all.’

  Janil couldn’t help it – he started to laugh, then was obliged to choke it back when he saw one of the employees there giving him a long-suffering look.

  Then Tamus handed him over to the medic, which wasn’t amusing at all. The doctor had already obtained his medical records but had a lot more questions than that as well as a great many tests. Janil almost felt that it would have been better if it had been carried out in a blindingly-bright super-lab in some deep underground base, as at least then he would have felt there was a satisfying drama to it. Having to strip off and allow the doctor to poke probes in every orifice just felt embarrassing.

  All the same, he did not complain. It hardly needed the medic’s explanation for Janil to understand how important it was to manage contact between humans and their alien visitor. He would never forgive himself if he was carrying any pathogen which caused her harm, so submitted to every indignity.

  After that came the briefing, carried out by a member of the Diplomatic Corps who’d come to the offices to meet him. That made up for all the discomfort of the medical examination, especially when he was told that Ambassador Silver was not the only alien visiting Telathor.

  ‘We were expecting Shionolethe – that was arranged some time ago,’ said the attaché who’d come to brief him. ‘Though
her visit is unofficial.’ Seeing the look of blank bewilderment, he realised that Janil had not been told anything about that and enlightened him obligingly. ‘Shionolethe is from Pirrell – you may know it as the Veiled World. She is not the designated ambassador of her people and does not hold any official diplomatic role, so her visit is a private one. She has been given League citizenship and is a serving officer with the Fourth Fleet Irregulars, so her visit is simply due to the fact that they are on operations here. But it was always going to be a major event, of course, the first ever visit by any non-human to Telathor. Then, just weeks ago, we were informed that Ambassador Silver was also on her way. They actually arrived together. And, as it happened, it was Ambassador Silver who got out of the shuttle first so she is, technically, the first alien visitor ever to come to Telathor, even if the second arrived just moments later. It has to be admitted, really, that the visit of the quarian ambassador has rather overshadowed Shionolethe’s own visit, particularly as she is herself a leading member of the team which is looking after Ambassador Silver. So you may meet her too, in your encounter with Ambassador Silver. If you do, the protocol is to treat her just like any other officer in the diplomatic support team. Try not to stare, if you can help it, and don’t ask her questions. That isn’t, by the way, because she’s in any way secretive, but you just cannot even begin to imagine how tedious it is for the lady to be asked the same questions by just about everyone she meets. So whatever questions you have will be answered by us either before or after the encounter, all right?’

  ‘Understood,’ said Janil, though he felt bewildered. ‘But… two different aliens?’

  ‘Yes, I know. An obvious joke doing the rounds of the exodiplomacy scene – we wait centuries for an alien visitor and then two of them turn up at once. But in fact, it is not a coincidence. When Shionolethe first arrived in League space she was assisted and supported by someone we might call a consultant on exodiplomacy matters. He is a very private person so I’m not in a position to tell you much about him beyond the fact that he is independently wealthy and the owner of the yacht Stepeasy which you may have noticed arrived in company with the Fourth. Let’s just call him Mr N, okay? He has been working closely with the Diplomatic Corps for several years and assumed a leading role in assisting Shionolethe, which included supporting her in her desire to serve with the Fourth. She has been doing so very successfully now for a couple of years and Mr N has moved on to working with Ambassador Silver. After a visit to Chartsey, which did not go at all well, he made the decision to bring her out to Telathor so that Shionolethe could give her the benefit of her own experience of integrating with humans. She has, as I said, since taken on a leading role in Ambassador Silver’s care.’

  Janil gave him a look which held some alarm.

  ‘What happened at Chartsey?’ he asked.

  ‘Confusion,’ said the attaché, frankly. ‘Offence both given and taken, security and diplomatic panics, a nightmare all round. In the words of a letter sent to His Excellency Ambassador Li to advise him of the difficulties to expect, there was, and I quote, ‘a certain amount of running and sobbing.’. And there was, too,’ he reflected, ‘there were a number of incidents in which people either ran away or burst into tears. The president himself decided against meeting Ambassador Silver in person and talked to her over a comlink instead.’

  Janil looked, and was, appalled. For the League President to refuse to meet the quarian ambassador seemed to him an insult which might in itself lead to the quarians deciding they wanted no more to do with humanity.

  ‘Why?’ he asked, in horrified tones.

  ‘Well, that gets us to the core of the issue which has made human-quarian contact so problematical all along,’ said the attaché, sounding resigned. ‘It wasn’t even realised at first just how much quarian communication is non-verbal, or how limited that made the verbal communication our ambassadors were having with them. There was just this total bafflement in which we seemed to be understanding one another’s words in any given conversation but would then find that we’d come away from it with entirely different understanding of what had been said. Part of the problem is that quarians – normal quarians – find it almost impossible to read humans in the same way that they communicate empathically with one another. To them, human minds are just a mass of noise and emotional confusion, so they just can’t understand us in the way they do one another. That was why, finding that diplomatic efforts were failing, they engineered a new kind of adapt, one who could live comfortably in our air-breathing environment and even more importantly, one who is capable of empathy with humans.’

  He gave Janil a wry look. ‘The Diplomatic Corps officially refers to Ambassador Silver’s ability to read human emotions as ‘problematical’. In fact it would be more accurate to describe it as ‘disastrous’. Can you imagine someone who is able to read human emotions and even appear to pick up on their thoughts, how intrusive that feels and how difficult to cope with? Now add the fact that the lady has absolutely no concepts of privacy, personal space or tact. Very few encounters with humans went well. And before you ask why, I have to advise you that Ambassador Silver, though making remarkable progress in her understanding of humans, will certainly see in you whatever thoughts and feelings you are most desperate to keep private, and there is still a very good chance of her commenting on them. You have to be prepared for that, and willing for any secrets and your most intimate private thoughts and feelings to be exposed to everyone around at the time, if you want to go ahead and meet her. And don’t just say that of course you want to meet her – take a moment to think, here, actually think. What is there in your life that you would make you want to curl up and die if it was put on social media?. Now understand, okay? You may be in a crowded room when you meet her. And what we are now calling the Quarian Effect may well come into play, that the more desperately you are trying not to think about the things you don’t want her to know about, the more clearly she sees it. To her, it is just as if you were shouting it aloud. And she may well comment on it just as if it was something you had said aloud, though she is learning to use some discretion even if she doesn’t understand it or why it is important. Shionolethe, you see, is guiding her in learning social skills. But you do have to be prepared for the reality that meeting Ambassador Silver can be personally humiliating, even devastating if life-damaging things about you are revealed.’

  Janil did as he was told, and really thought about that seriously before he replied.

  ‘I don’t have any awful secrets,’ he said. ‘And if it’s embarrassing, I don’t care, it’ll be worth it just to meet her.’

  The attaché nodded, as if that was a routine procedure they had had to go through.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Second thing – you have to be prepared for the fact that any exo-contact is by its very nature profoundly disturbing, a very powerful experience. It is no exaggeration to say that your life will never be quite the same afterwards. You may struggle to go back to your ordinary life, to go back to uni and attend lectures and listen to your fellow students talking about the usual rubbish when you have had this immense, life-changing experience you can’t even talk about. People do sometimes need support, counselling, in order to cope with the aftermath of exo-encounters. I am obliged to tell you that,’ he added, with a smile, ‘so you can’t say afterwards that you weren’t warned. But obviously, we would not have got this far unless we had satisfied ourselves that you are not likely to panic, scream, run or pass out at the encounter. And if you don’t want to go back to your old life, then, well, there are, as you know, other offers on the table.’

  Tamus was sitting in on the meeting, though silent and seeming a little bored by the routine. Now, though, he cleared his throat pointedly and the attaché threw him a quick grin.

  ‘Quite right,’ he conceded, and told Janil, ‘we are not allowed to attempt to recruit you to the exodiplomacy service for now – inter-agency etiquette has been invoked, so we’re all hands-off. And in any case,
I am only here to prepare you for your encounter. So. You’ve been medically cleared and given the usual warnings – now I have to go through the rules.’

  They were straightforward, starting with a requirement to undergo decontamination beforehand and then rules for conduct during the encounter itself. Janil was not to attempt to touch the quarian, nor to badger her with questions.

  ‘Allow the ambassador to set the topic for discussion,’ said the attaché, then added with the voice of experience, ‘which she will do, anyway – if she doesn’t want to talk about something she’ll just tell you to shut up.’

  Janil tried to reconcile that with the memory of the woman he had spotted in the Amber Sea. She was without a doubt the most beautiful being he had ever seen – he’d barely glimpsed her through his camera for more than a few seconds but the memory of it would be with him all his life. She had been swimming deep in shadowed water, her silver hair floating around her, her cheeks pulsing gently as she breathed. She glimmered as if her skin was covered with iridescent scales. She had been playing with a shoal of tiny rainbow fish, conducting them to dance around her in a shimmering cloud. A little laughing flick of her fingers and they had coiled away to form a perfect spiral. It was hard to imagine any being so magically ethereal telling anybody to shut up.

  ‘She doesn’t mean to be offensive with that,’ the attaché informed him. ‘She never intends to be offensive. In many ways it helps to think of her as a small child who hasn’t yet learned what it is appropriate to say in different situations. She has been advised that ‘shut up’ is considered abrupt and potentially offensive by humans but it is, as she observes, very effective at getting people not only to stop saying things but to stop thinking them, too. And if that is considered rude by humans then it is no ruder, from her perspective, than the things the humans were saying or thinking at her. And you do just have to accept that, Mr Caldova. Do not even attempt to explain or instruct her in the ways of human courtesy. Others, far more qualified than you are to do so, are already helping her with that, with due regard for the fact that she isn’t human. Our role as exodiplomats is primarily to learn about the other species, secondarily to give them all the information needed to assist them in learning to understand us. At no point in that process, ever, is there any attempt or intention to teach them to become like us. And your role, as someone coming into the periphery of exo-contact, is not even that. You are being brought to this encounter because Ambassador Silver has asked to meet you. All that is expected of you in that is that you answer her questions as honestly as you can. If you come out of the encounter without having caused offence, we call that a pass. If you succeed in satisfying her curiosity and she expresses pleasure in having met you, that’s a win.’