Ambassador 2: Raising Hell (Ambassador: Space Opera Thriller)

by Patty Jansen

  Funny sort of misunderstanding. I brought my hand to the back of my head where a swelling lump grew.

  I heaved myself to my feet, wrestling my arms back into my suit and stumbled into the room, where Veyada came around the corner, hopping on one foot while trying to get dressed.

  Natanu slapped me on the back. “This restores some of my faith in you. I almost doubted that you could even do it.”

  Was that what they had thought because of my need for privacy? Taysha had called me impotent. Damn it, did they really need a demonstration to the contrary?

  Raanu said, “What’s going on? Why do you all think it’s funny?” She glared at me past Nicha. “He was attacking her, I saw it.”

  The guards avoided that question by skittering back to their beds.

  “Let’s go back to sleep,” I said, gnashing my teeth.

  She climbed to her bed and crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m not going to sleep. I’m going to sit here and watch you.”

  “Raanu, please—”

  “No. I don’t like you anymore.”

  I sighed.

  Thayu held out her arms. “Come and sit with me for a bit.”

  She lifted Raanu off the bed and sat her down on her own bed, in the shade of Nicha’s bunk. Nicha pretended to be asleep, but his shoulders were shaking with laughter.

  Very quietly, Thayu explained to Raanu that there was this thing men and women did when they liked each other very much.

  Raanu listened, her eyes wide, and occasionally glanced at me. Suspicious.

  I wondered what Ezhya would think of this impromptu education of his daughter. I understood that Coldi started mentoring at thirteen. How do you give a birds-and-bees talk in an alien culture?

  We went back to sleep—each in our own beds—and for a long time, I heard Raanu rustle the blankets, and imagined her peeking over the edge of the bed to see if she could catch another glimpse of this mysterious adult activity.

  Poor girl.

  Why had Ezhya never said anything to me about her?

  The Coldi attitude to children baffled me deeply.

  * * *

  I woke up in the pitch darkness with someone holding a mask over my face.

  “Hmmm!”

  I tried to push away the hands that held it, but they were too strong.

  Panic surged through me.

  “Shhh, calm down, it’s all right.” It was Thayu’s voice.

  I raised my head. The hands holding the mask were hers. By the faint light of a comm, I saw that she was wearing one as well.

  Nicha was rummaging around in the room. I could hear the rustling of a protection suit.

  I began, “Why—” My voice sounded muffled in the mask.

  “Sleeping gas. Come, let me do up the strap. We need to go.”

  I let her tighten the mask over my face, trying to process what had happened. Had she really set off a sleeping gas bomb in the room? I swung my feet out of the bed and fumbled for my clothes.

  Something creaked in the far corner, probably one of the guards turning in bed.

  “Shhh.”

  I checked my timer, squinting against the glare from the screen. It was very early in the morning, Athyl time. Seeing that on the screen as local default gave me a little thrill.

  I was here, it was happening, and I guessed it was time for some duct-crawling action or whatever else was going to take us back to the Inner Circle.

  I pulled on my suit layers, clipped the tank in the vest, heaved it onto my shoulders while trying not to get tangled up in the hoses, and put on my helmet. The latter wasn’t necessary yet, but the less I needed to carry, the better.

  Nicha came down from the top bunk, strapped his armour over the top of his clothes and clicked on the bracket with the gun.

  Thayu opened the door a crack.

  “What about Raanu?” I asked.

  “Getting to that.” Nicha climbed up on the bunk and lifted her out of bed. She moaned and mumbled.

  “Shhhh.”

  Thayu opened the door wider. The faint eerie glow from a bulb a bit further down the passage fell over the floor and edged the beds in silver.

  I followed her into the corridor.

  Nicha came out, carrying Raanu over his shoulder. She stirred, but her eyes remained closed. One of her hands hung relaxed over his back.

  Thayu shut the door behind us and pushed the mask off her face. Nicha did the same.

  “Are we going to be able to move while carrying her?” I asked.

  “She’ll wake up soon.” She unlooped the mask from around her neck and stuffed it in a pocket on her jacket.

  She turned in the direction opposite to where we had entered the section last night.

  There was a fair bit of activity at that end of the corridor. Domestic servants walking in and out of a room where the door stood open, flooding the corridor with light.

  “Someone gets up early,” I said. “Is that Risha’s room?”

  Thayu gave me an uneasy look. That strange feeling I’d had during dinner came back, the feeling that I was missing some vital clues.

  “Is everything all right?” I asked Thayu. “Should we check on him?”

  She raised her finger to her lips. Her eyes met mine squarely and then she gestured for Nicha to stop. “I know you well enough that you’re not going to stop asking until you know what’s going on, so I’ll show you this. I hope you’ll understand. Take off the helmet.”

  “Thayu?” But I did as she said, and also pulled off my mask and turned off the coolant supply from the tank. I didn’t need it yet.

  She gestured me towards the door. Two servants came out and some sign language passed between them and Thayu that I didn’t understand. The two moved into the corridor, giving me a view of the interior of the room.

  On a table in the middle lay a pale body. Risha’s white hair was free of the ponytail, flowing over the table like an aura. Someone had placed coloured gemstones around his head.

  He wore his long white robe, his feet sticking out from underneath, the skin waxy and white. His hands were folded over his chest, holding the fish-bowl with the husk that had been sitting on the small table in the corridor last night.

  With a sick feeling, I remembered how I’d heard of it before. It was a funeral relic.

  I stared at Thayu. “What? Did he. . . ?”

  “High-ranking people from the Inner Circle often come here for their last respect to the city.”

  “You mean he killed himself.”

  “There was no choice. He challenged. He lost. There was nowhere for him to go.”

  As I met her eyes, a gulf of understanding opened up for me. Last night, he’d spoken of rimoyu and how the zeyshi balanced the Inner Circle and they were part of the same society. To be reunited with the other half was their idea of inner peace, the last thing to do before stepping out of the rain of life.

  My mentor Amarru in Athens had said how most high-ranking Coldi did not die a natural death. I had assumed that most were murdered.

  Stupid me.

  The signs of what was to come had been everywhere. That he had taken no guards, the way the zeyshi treated him. The dinner, the speeches, the way he went around the group giving everyone a message.

  Last night, the domestic worker—one of the few who had come with Risha—had told us that people would be using the bath.

  First, Risha had bathed, and gone to bed, then he had taken poison. When it had done its work, people had washed his body again and dressed him in this robe.

  All this had been going on while I had been stupid, selfish and acted like a hormonal teenager.
And I had been blind to it, a stupid, selfish boor—

  I felt like hitting my head against the wall.

  Thayu met my eyes, her expression intense.

  And then another thought.

  When I first woke up in the hospital, Thayu had said that this was the only place where I could be if I was still alive.

  I saw the truth in her eyes. She had feared that I was dead. She had fought Natanu to come here and won. Even Natanu was still smarting about that.

  “Thayu?”

  “We should get moving.” Her voice was soft and unsteady.

  I took her hand and cast one last look at Risha lying peacefully on the table. Damn, I owed him . . . I don’t know what. To do my best and not make any more stupid blunders. To fight for Ezhya and try to resolve the situation with the Aghyrian claim peacefully.

  But damn it, I was a fucking idiot.

  ‎

  Chapter 21

  * * *

  THAYU SET a cracking pace along the passages, following a map on her reader. I jammed the helmet back on my head and ran after her. Nicha followed me, with Raanu slung over his shoulder.

  We went down long dry passages, rough and narrow corridors with puddles where I banged my helmet against the roof, up ancient stairs with slippery and worn treads and across an open space that might have been a train platform in a previous life, at least a few thousand years ago.

  Some passages were natural, others were ancient and still others much more modern. We crossed a train line with rails caked with dust and grim, into another passage, until we came to a cave through which flowed an underground river. A light in the very highest point of the ceiling cast an orange glow over the water. The surface churned with upwellings and eddies. Pretty decent current.

  Our path ended on a small beach surrounded by huge boulders. On the sand lay a flat-bottomed boat, anchored to a hook in one of the rocks.

  “Ah, I was wondering where you were leading us,” Nicha said. He set Raanu down and massaged his shoulder. She managed to keep standing, but her eyes remained unfocused and her expression slack. A track of drool ran down the side of her face.

  Thayu untied the rope and dragged the boat into the water and held onto the bow. “Come on, get in.”

  I stepped in from the beach, but not without getting wet feet. I hoped the water was safe.

  The boat wobbled with my weight.

  “Sit down, grab a poncho.”

  On one of the boat’s benches lay a pile of cloths such as those worn by mushroom harvesters. The cloth looked fresh, as if it had been left there less than a day ago. Some connection of hers had left these here for us?

  How much had Thayu been involved with the zeyshi before coming to Barresh?

  I unfolded the fabric. There was a hole in the middle where I poked my head through.

  Nicha passed me Raanu. I sat her on the bench next to me, arranging another poncho over her. It was too big so I tucked the ends under my leg. Her head lolled onto my shoulder.

  Thayu was fiddling with the engine, some sort of jet-powered structure with a massive fan.

  Nicha pushed off hard and climbed in. The current tugged at the boat, dragging it into a dark passage.

  Thayu started the engine with a huge roar. A blast of wind tore over my head, almost sucking up Nicha’s poncho which he had just thrown over his head but hadn’t pulled down yet.

  He wobbled. “Whoa.”

  “Sit down.” Thayu grabbed hold of the rudder and turned us sharply upstream. The boat shot over the water back to the cavern with the beach and into the tunnel at the other end. The engine blasted air and noise and a fine spray of water. The fast-moving air blew in my face. Sheer walls and mushroom racks whizzed past, not an arm’s length from the boat. How could she even see enough not to crash into the walls? Coldi had notoriously poor night vision.

  We screeched around tight corners, through large caves with still water, down shallow rapids. Water sprayed in my face. I could smell the acid tang of it. For all I knew, it was eating into my suit, but it was too dark to see and I needed my hands to hang onto Raanu and the bench underneath me.

  Finally, Thayu cut the engine and we drifted into a large cavern filled with deep and mirror-like water. A soft beam of pre-dawn slanted into the underground lake. A flock of sliver-winged insects took off from the surface, their wings glittering.

  The entire left-hand wall of the cavern was covered in plants with leathery leaves and bell-like purple flowers. I had seen these plants often enough on pictures, and some people in Barresh kept sorry-looking specimens in hothouses. They did not have roots, but had sucker pads which they could pull loose and place somewhere else. Their leaves would angle themselves to the best flow of air and light. They weren’t sentient, because the process was entirely mechanical, governed by expansion and flow of fluids driven by chemical reactions under the influence of sunlight. But one could be forgiven for believing that these plants were thinking creatures. The entire cavern wall moved and rustled with the constant shifting of leaves and stems.

  Although the air was hot here, it was also quite humid. The water surface reflected the mass of moving plants like a mirror, disturbed only by the faint ripple the boat made as it gently drifted across the cave. Underneath the boat, the water’s blackness revealed none of its depth.

  “Wow.” I took off my helmet and wiped sweat off my forehead.

  The boat glided across the deep water to a jetty on the other side of the cavern. It sat in the shade of a rock shelf. There was more plant life on the overhanging rocks: mosses with leaf-like fronds, mushrooms and other structures that didn’t neatly fit into our plant descriptions.

  An Earth scientist by the name of Richard Morton had drawn a lot of attention on both Earth and Asto by tracing back shared ancestry between some Earth plant families and plants of both Barresh and Asto. Barresh’s megon trees reminded me a lot of the Christmas bushes that grew on the shore near my father’s house in New Zealand, not only because they looked related; they were related.

  I was standing not only in the birthplace of all of humanity, but of a significant part of all life. I could only imagine the beauty of this place before that meteorite had done its damage.

  That was the driving force for the Aghyrian claim. For Asto to be beautiful and green once more. And why shouldn’t it? And why shouldn’t it be the home of both Aghyrians and Coldi?

  Nicha leaned over the side to stop the boat colliding with the pylons of the jetty. When we had stopped moving, I became aware of a low roaring sound. To the right of the jetty, water fell over an artificial edge into a slit of darkness. I shivered, probably about to find out what interesting route we were going to take.

  Thayu climbed up on the jetty while Nicha tied up the boat. I handed Raanu to her. She was looking around confused, but more awake than before. Thayu peeled off her own and Raanu’s poncho. I left mine next to Nicha’s in the bottom of the boat.

  A narrow rock ledge led away from the jetty. There was a door at the end, which Thayu opened by tapping a code into a modern-looking panel on the wall next to it.

  We plunged down a couple of flights of stairs into the darkness. Our footsteps echoed dull as if we were in a concrete bunker. The sound of a lot of falling water roared somewhere close.

  Nicha clicked on a light. We were in what looked like a pump house. One wall was made out of glass, next to which a few control panels were mounted on the wall. On the other side of the glass, water entered through an inlet at ground level. A huge screw-like device sloshed water up into a basin at the level of the room’s ceiling from where it fell back into the basin below. Through the gap that let in water from outside, I saw the fast-turning blades of a watermill, presumably to drive the screw.

  “What’s t
he point of this? The water is just going around in circles.”

  “Aeration,” Thayu said. “Purification and de-acidification. This whole area is a water purification area. It’s a reserve. You’re not really supposed to come here.”

  Everything about her said that she was more than familiar with this area. That would also account for the ridiculous speed with which she had taken us through the aquifer network.

  From the pump house, a narrow circular staircase led down into the earth. Thayu went first, I followed her by the glow of the small light from her comm. It grew a lot hotter the further down we went. I even had to put my helmet back on.

  We ended up in a narrow tunnel. Nicha was still carrying Raanu and had to be careful so as not to bump her into the walls.

  From somewhere nearby came a steady hum, probably the pumping station.

  My pack was starting to get heavy with the shoulder straps cutting into my shoulders.

  Thayu walked ahead with the comm, stopping to check something every now and then.

  Raanu mumbled, “Daddy?”

  “Shhh, we’re going to see Daddy,” Nicha said. He put her down, wiping his face.

  “Where are we going?” she asked, her tongue thick with sleep.

  “Hmm, the guards will have woken up by now, too,” Thayu said.

  She had been using Raanu’s alertness as guide, because Raanu was the only one exposed to the sleeping gas.

  “The chase is on,” Nicha said.

  “You’re ready?” Thayu asked, looking at me.

  For what? “Do I have a choice?”

  “In theory, yes. But this is the point where it gets interesting.”

  So roaring through an illegal part of the aquifer network in a boat at speeds that made my toes curl was not interesting? “One day I must ask you what you did before you came to Barresh.”

  To the right of the passage, a ladder led up to a hatch in the ceiling. Thayu grabbed the bottom rung, climbed up the first step and stopped. She turned to me. “Trust me, if I end up telling you, it means that something bad has happened. Although I suppose you can figure most of it out.”