Ambassador 6: The Enemy Within

by Patty Jansen

  But I doubt she did and it didn’t matter anyway, except that I was so terribly sick of these attitudes. And what was worse, in the past years, nothing seemed to have changed in this respect at all.

  “I also suggest that you do something about the fish in this pond. You saw how the kid was eying them when we first came here.”

  “Yes, yes, sure.”

  I turned away, but not before catching her muttering, “No sense of humour.” It was true; a lot of people in our party had no sense of humour that she would recognise.

  Pengali, in fact, were the most humorous of people in our group. Try tickling Thayu’s sense of humour, or Evi’s. This was how diplomatic incidents started. “Humour” and rudeness were not interchangeable, and “humour” was not an excuse for being rude.

  I went back upstairs, angrier than I should have been. Damn it, why did these people keep doing crap like this? They were not the farmer next door to my father’s house, or random people in the street, who could be excused for trying to be funny while making insulting statements. These people should know better.

  Thayu had gotten changed into informal clothing: the same fluffy pants and big jumper she had worn when we last stayed at my father’s farmhouse. And that was—oh—far too long ago.

  Her eyes widened when she saw me.

  “What’s going on?”

  “It’s always the same with these people. They think none of you can understand them and they think that is their license to make insulting comments under the guise of a joke.”

  “Humour is a mask for fear,” Nicha said. “They’re afraid that these strange people will drive them out of their homes.”

  I knew, but that didn’t make this behaviour any less annoying.

  “How is the room?” I asked and I gestured under the table to Nicha, making the security hand signal for “listening bug”.

  He signalled, Can’t find any.

  That didn’t mean none were there. It was worse than We found some because that would mean that they had been disabled.

  At that moment, Veyada came in. He had that I’ve got news look on his face.

  I gestured, Bathroom?

  When suspecting that people were listening in, all security guards had their meetings in the bathroom where they could mask speech through sounds of splashing or running water.

  As it was, the bathroom was a lot smaller than any we’d had the necessity to meet in previously. Nicha turned on the tap. Water splashed in the bath.

  Nicha sat on the edge of the bath, Veyada sat on the floor and Thayu leaned against the cabinet. She looked tired, I thought, and then I felt guilty. I should let her sleep, in her condition.

  Evi must have had a sixth sense that we were about to have a meeting, because he came in, shut the door and leaned against it. I’d had no indication that their feeders to each other were working either. In fact I was pretty sure they weren’t.

  There was no room for me to sit except on the toilet. I shut the lid and sat on top of that. “You got news from Sheydu?”

  Veyada shook his head. “Nothing yet, so we’ve contacted Amarru.”

  “How can you contact her if you can’t contact Sheydu and we’re in a dead zone?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “We have our ways.”

  Of course, he was unlikely to explain it in case someone was listening in, and also to protect Amarru, whose secret systems this message had probably come through—those little routines that, over their one hundred and fifty years as part of Earth society, the Coldi were rumoured to have built into ordinary electrical equipment, and that should only be used in emergencies.

  I’d never liked the possibility of the existence of such routines, but I’d seen too much solid evidence for their existence to deny it. “What news does she have to report?”

  “She told me that she sent Sheydu to Rotterdam.”

  “Why?” My heart skipped a beat.

  “I think you know. To honour a meeting that we can’t attend.”

  Damn. It suited us because I really couldn’t see how I was going to see Margarethe without being noticed, but damn Amarru. “That message to me was meant to be private.” Sent through the Trader Guild and all that. I’d told Margarethe that it was guaranteed private, and if Amarru had obtained the message without Margarethe’s knowledge, I . . . I guess I wasn’t going to be very happy about that.

  Shit. This thing was getting away from me. For years I’d argued to people at Nations of Earth that if the Coldi had built their secret routines into Earth technology—and in all seriousness, there was no “if”; they had done it, loud and clear—the surveillance was going to be benign, because the goals of Nations of Earth and gamra aligned. But spying on the president fell squarely outside what was acceptable even to me, and if it was true, I was going to have to face Amarru.

  She held a higher position that I did, but because I was the leader of an association, she might view it as a challenge to her position. That was something I needed to avoid, but oh, I was becoming increasingly uneasy with her power.

  I let the subject rest, because I wanted to risk exposing Amarru to whoever listened even less than I wanted a confrontation with her. The main reason I’d never raised the issue of Amarru’s power before was that she acted in everyone’s best interests, right?

  A chill crept over my back.

  “Are Sheydu and the others coming here to the hotel?” They would be monitored when they came in that way, and they couldn’t slink into our party.

  Veyada said, “We’ll have to arrange a meeting place and they may have to stay outside this area. If they come into the hotel’s front door, they’ll be photographed and profiled, and people will start wondering where they’ve been.”

  That was my thought, too. “On the other hand, its not a secret that a couple of people in my party went on the train, is it?”

  “I don’t know. Amarru added four people to the party. Four people went on the train. The size of the group that arrived at the hotel was the same as the number we told them were coming.”

  Damn, Amarru’s interference again. That woman was starting to scare me.

  I thought of that moment where Sheydu offered to go on the train and casually remarked that she’d take Reida and Deyu, and Telaris. There had been nothing, nothing, casual about it.

  So, it was likely that Nations of Earth didn’t realise that four of our party had split off.

  Well . . .

  A chill crept over my spine.

  Disturbing.

  “So what can we do now?” I asked. “Wait until they turn up and see what Sheydu has to say about the meeting she’s had?” I still had trouble envisaging Sheydu in Margarethe’s office. I guess that was why she had so casually suggested taking Telaris: he knew Isla.

  Veyada made a hand signal that I interpreted as: Be quiet.

  He listened.

  I glanced at Thayu, who was yawning so much a tear ran over her cheek. A pang of guilt went through me. I’d meant to let her rest. Never mind the time; never mind dinner. She should go to bed.

  “Anything going on?” Nicha asked Veyada after a while.

  “My feeder was getting a very weak signal just now. There is a large public meeting going on in the building next to the court.”

  Yes, I remembered the receptionist mentioning it. “Someone trying to contact us from there?”

  Veyada shook his head. “I think it’s just some spillover from local data overload in that area. I suspect it’s coming from just outside the dead zone. The transmission block is crude, and there would be limits to its strength.”

  “I wonder what all those people are there for, then, especially at this time of the day. The court would be closed by now.”

  Veyada spread his hands. “The ways of this world are a mystery to me.”

  I had to admit that they were a mystery to me, too.

  I wish we had paid less attention to documentation and regulations before coming here. Clearly, there were issues going on that
went beyond Robert’s appearance in court, and clearly someone at Nations of Earth had wanted to shield us from those events and they had done so by putting lots of bureaucratic roadblocks on our path. And we had let ourselves be distracted.

  “We need to find a way to get a picture of the issues surrounding this trial or whatever else is going on. All we hear is that it is a criminal trial, but the issues that surround it are obviously much bigger.”

  Veyada said, “Agreed. Let us make some investigations.”

  “First we have to get out of this information trap,” Thayu said. “We can’t communicate effectively without anyone listening in.”

  “What about Amarru’s secret channels?”

  Veyada said, “Once we start fully using them, they won’t be secret anymore. They’re only for short messages and emergencies.”

  Nicha said, “We need to see what the court schedule is.”

  I agreed. It was hard to plan without knowing when Abri would appear.

  I asked, “So the communication dead zone covers this building and most of this block?”

  “Yes, it’s not terribly big,” Thayu said. “They’d probably get too many complaints from local businesses every time they turn it on.”

  “So we could ‘casually’ wander outside that area, since we haven’t been told about it, or haven’t been told that we need to stay inside.”

  “Why don’t we take Ayshada for a walk after dinner?” Nicha said. “Someone put a pram in my room.” He used the Isla word, because Coldi parents mostly carried their children in slings. Mostly also, the children were pretty good at keeping up with the adults soon after they started walking. “We’ll stay away from the courthouse or any other sensitive areas. You might even ask the reception if there is a nice park for him to play in or something.”

  “We’ll be watched,” Thayu said.

  “That goes without saying. We’re not going to do anything except listen.”

  A walk was a good idea. This far into May the evenings were long.

  We went to the dining room, a light-filled room at the back of the building, looking out into a courtyard with clipped bushes. One side of the room was all glass, with double doors into the courtyard that might be open when the weather was nice. A path led through the courtyard to a gate in the back fence. There was a security lock on the fence, but I suspected that it led into the alley behind the building.

  As predicted, dinner was a quiet affair. We shared it at the big table in a very lonely dining room where there were no other people. Just Thayu, myself, Evi, Veyada, Eirani, Karana and Devlin. Amarru’s people had some other job to do. The Pengali didn’t turn up. Jemiro didn’t turn up. I asked Devlin if he’d been notified that there was dinner and Devlin said that he had.

  Everyone was tired. Devlin was going back to bed himself and looked at me as if I were nuts when I said we were going for a walk.

  I had heard people say that your body got used to travel through the Exchange and I’d always laughed it off as old wives’ tales, but here was the proof in front of me.

  So, we got ready after dinner. Nicha went upstairs first while we remained at the table, drinking tea. He had secured some hot water to make Ayshada’s favourite instant porridge, and went to feed his son before we left.

  Thayu wanted to come. Veyada asked Evi, but he was going to stay to check out the hotel and report on bugs.

  I went upstairs and met Ynggi in the hallway carrying a stack of blankets—had he been to reception to get those? He declared that Abri and the other Pengali couldn’t possibly do anything in the daytime, so they were going to bed. Good. Asleep was the best way to be for them for now. I guessed we’d pay for it later, but it gave us some downtime.

  I found Jemiro moping in his room from having nothing to do, but I managed to find a news service that wasn’t banned by the block. I thought it was boring but he said he found it interesting.

  “There are so many nuances to the use of the local language,” he said.

  Sure. If that excited him.

  I went back to our room.

  Our copious luggage had included sets of local clothes. Thayu spent some time choosing an outfit, wondering whether it was going to be too cold, and when she came out of the bathroom with her hair loose, wearing a pair of tight jeans, a short knitted top and a long trench coat, she almost blew me away. That was a woman who would turn heads.

  The coat contained various types of weapons and spy equipment, I was sure of that, but it also wasn’t out of place, because the wind was quite chilly.

  Nicha looked like a very laid-back dad dressed in black trousers and black leather jacket—no doubt also with guns and listening devices. Ayshada wore a cute set of overalls with a train on the front and a red jacket. He had woken up cranky, not wanting to eat, but had calmed down at the sight of the pram and found it enormously interesting—to zoom around the hotel’s foyer by pushing it backwards, missing vases and furniture by a hair’s width.

  In the hotel foyer, I also found the hotel staff’s solution to the fishpond issue: they had put a childproof fence around it. It would be useful for all of the five seconds it would take the Pengali youngster to climb over it, but we’d solve that issue when we came to it.

  I asked the receptionist for directions to a park and she reminded us to stay away from the court building, and that we would be monitored. “For your safety of course.”

  Yes, sure. “Do you know what sort of people these protesters are and what they’re doing there?”

  Her cheeks coloured. “Oh. It’s all about politics. I’m not terribly interested in that stuff.”

  “Where can I see any news feeds about it?”

  “I’m not sure. I’ll look it up for you.” Spoken much too fast. Then her cheeks went even darker red. “Oh, I’m sorry. I meant to tell you that someone will be contacting you tomorrow.”

  “You did tell me. The prosecutor’s assistant.”

  “Oh, no, this is someone else. He wants to talk to you about business. He asked me to tell you to make some time.”

  Business? Make some time? “Does this person have a name? What kind of business does he want to talk about? Just so that I can prepare?”

  “He said he’ll introduce himself.”

  “How is he going to contact me? This is a dead zone.”

  “We have a hardwired line from our office. You can use that. I will come to get you.”

  “What about the court representative?”

  “They will come here.”

  Once we left the building, Ayshada wasn’t so happy sitting in the pram, but standing was another matter, even if it meant that we couldn’t do up the harness and we had to make sure that the pram didn’t topple. He was clearly enjoying himself, clapping and singing at the top of his voice while standing on the pram’s seat.

  Nicha joked about setting a precedent. Ayshada might from now on expect to be wheeled everywhere. But he was a delight to us, very Coldi, exuberant and incredibly cute.

  I noticed Thayu’s tender glances at him and could not restrain a smile myself. So much was changing for us, and it was all for the better.

  It was indeed quite fresh outside, if sunny. The wind that rushed through the streets was bitingly cold. The signs of spring were everywhere: in the fresh green leaves on the trees that lined the street, in the tulips that grew in planter boxes outside people’s doorsteps, in the mother duck with a long trail of yellow and brown fluffy ducklings that paddled across the canal.

  We walked along the street, looking at houses that must be close to a thousand years old. All along the sides there were places to leave bikes and scooters, and charging stations for those scooters. We’d come past the wind farms that harvested the power for them.

  We’d arrived at the end of the street when suddenly my feeder burst into action. It always amazed me that I never missed it when it was out, but found it so noisy when it came back.

  Did that mean that Nations of Earth had blotted out communication in a wh
ole city block just to keep us from talking to anyone about the trial? Did that mean that none of the businesses we’d just walked past had wireless connectivity?

  “I said their methods were crude,” Veyada said. “Although a lot of houses and businesses have hardwiring so they wouldn’t notice.”

  After I’d made certain that there wasn’t anyone desperately trying to contact me, I told them of the second meeting I was supposed to have the next day, the meeting with the businessman. Predictably, Thayu and Veyada were more interested in whether they would be able to use the hotel’s hardwired connection to contact Sheydu. To be fair to them, business people did contact me sometimes when I was here, so they couldn’t see what was unusual about it. Except for the fact that I wasn’t on a visit related to Nations of Earth and that they had managed to circumvent a communication block.

  I explained that the wiring used to be an old telephone network, that newer buildings relied on wireless transmission—which was subject to the communication block—and that some parts of the wired network were likely defunct.

  My team, and especially Veyada and Thayu, found it very interesting.

  “We must locate those wires,” Veyada said.

  There were clearly none in our room, otherwise he would already have found them.

  Nicha judged the wind too chilling for Ayshada to play in the park, plus there was a family with two kids already at the swings and he wanted no trouble caused by the fact that Ayshada as a Coldi toddler was stronger and mentally more developed than those children, so we kept going. Thayu and Veyada were silent, presumably checking out the news. I didn’t have that level of connectivity. I preferred to use my reader, because I hated the noise in my head.

  We found a quaint little cafe on a street corner. A bell rang when I opened the door and stepped into the warm air that smelled of coffee and sweets and was filled with talk, the hissing of coffee machines, the whine of blenders and the clinking of cutlery on plates.

  Our presence didn’t attract a lot of attention, although one or two patrons glanced at Thayu. She really was stunning. We sat down near the window and ordered when a waitress came to our table. I found that the little EXO tag on my Nations of Earth card absolved me from restrictions about what I could order. Seriously, since when did authorities think they could be so meddlesome as to dictate what and how much people could eat?