Master of None

by N Lee Wood

  The Hengeli ambassador was a stout, dark woman obviously ill at ease. Her autocratic bearing and square-shouldered dress were a shade too formal to be anything less than military. She fidgeted slightly, trying to ease her legs under her on her floor cushion, unused to anything other than sitting in chairs. After half an hour of polite overtures and allusions to their common genealogy, Rashir began to realize, to her obvious irritation, that being Khasi gave her absolutely no advantage whatsoever.

  Two other Hengeli officials flanked her, one of them the ambassador’s own interpreter, completing the delegation. The other, her assistant, Heloise Ruuspoelk, a freckled woman with frizzy mud-colored hair and sharp green eyes, sat respectfully behind her. Even kneeling, Nathan was a head taller than Yronae, his light hair and pale eyes in his round Caucasian face in stark contrast to the normal dark Vanar features. As silent an observer as he was, she studied him with a puzzled expression; then her face cleared. He kept himself from reacting to her shrewd smile.

  “The fact remains,” the ambassador was saying with frustration, “there seems little point in ‘negotiating’ if the results are preordained.”

  Yronae’s interpreter translated flawlessly, but Nathan listened to the emotions behind the words: anger, tension, repressed desperation. Emotions he was all too familiar with himself.

  Yronae nodded gravely. “We Vanar have no reason to pretend to a position of weakness,” she said levelly. “But we do not believe this makes us tyrants. The Systems do concern us, even if that concern merely is one of self-interest. Vanar has always remained neutral in the affairs of outsiders.”

  “Not always, jah’nari pratha,” the ambassador said. “Even your late mother is known to have had direct involvement in conflicts outside Vanar’s interests.”

  Yronae’s cool demeanor didn’t alter. “My mother’s exposure to alien cultures affected her judgment in many peculiar ways,” she said evenly. “Some, undeniably, have aided our Family’s prosperity. Others have not yielded quite as beneficial results.” The frizzy-haired aide glanced at him. “But I am not my mother. If the Nga’esha are being asked to become more involved in your external affairs, it isn’t unreasonable for us to take the time to understand them.”

  The ambassador’s smile was bitter. “And for each minute we wait for you to educate yourselves, a hundred more Hengeli civilians are dying.” The aide’s glance flicked briefly toward her superior. Yronae was still listening to the murmur of the interpreter, and the ambassador continued before she could respond. “Women and children as well as men, pratha h’máy.”

  Yronae’s expression hardened. “War is repugnant to the Vanar, we are a culture that values peace and civilized mediation over violence. We will not lower ourselves to become involved in outside conflict by choosing sides. I understand your difficulty, Madam Ambassador, but your political conflicts are not our concern.”

  “Even if our political conflicts are making you rich?”

  “We are a trading people,” Yronae said bluntly, “not philanthropists. We have a service you need. We expect to be paid for that service, in full, in advance. If you can’t meet the price, either make an offer of a different nature, or go home. We value those who are capable of hard negotiations, while we have little patience with disrespect, in men or women.”

  The ambassador recovered her composure. “Nor do I, I assure you. Past experience has led me to suspect negotiating with those who have already made up their minds before negotiations even begin is a futile and demeaning process that I have no interest in. I’ve learned to speak bluntly, because I’ve found when faced with bloody-minded recalcitrance, honesty works when nothing else will.”

  Nathan risked glancing at Yronae, wondering how she would take the insulting innuendo. Surprisingly, Yronae looked puzzled rather than angry. “Your past experience, however relevant to other peoples, surely cannot have had much to do with the Nga’esha.”

  The ambassador smiled dryly. “I was not implying the Nga’esha,” she said, although Nathan knew damned well she was. “I’m speaking of Novapolita, our mutinous colony. The one pounding ancient and irreplaceable Hengeli cities into dust every time a Nga’esha Pilotship spits one of their warships through the Worm.”

  “They pay the price,” Yronae said calmly. “You pay the price and you may spit your warships through the Worm to pound their cities into rubble.”

  Yronae knew his past. What minor details the Vanar couldn’t have found in records, Vasant Subah had efficiently extracted from him. He wondered if she had brought him into the conference just to see what his reaction would be to hear Hengeli was under attack.

  The friction between Novapolita and Hengeli had been dragging on for more than two hundred years. But other than a long series of blockades, general strikes, and sporadic terrorist assaults, the tension had never escalated into outright war.

  The Hengeli had declared a cease-fire to their internal civil war more than a decade ago. The refugee camps of Nathan’s childhood, apparently, were long gone. Enough of the remaining population had immigrated off-world to reduce the pressure on what little water resources remained, while enough goods funneled from the Hengeli territories into the depleted motherworld relieved the need to guard the Haves from the desperate, homeless Have-Nots.

  If what the Hengeli ambassador was saying was true, the Hengeli regime, having paid so dearly to crush civil war, was now losing the battle with the mainstay of their survival, their off-world colonies. Without the influx of vital resources, the Hengeli economy and the technology to run it would grind to a halt. Only what remained of the infrastructure, the military, was holding on.

  To his own surprise, Nathan found he still cared.

  Hengeli had been the birthplace of civilization, the ground from which the seed spread to the stars. Once Hengeli had been the center of all civilization, her ancient cities, her art, her languages, her cultures the foundation of all humanity populating the three hundred settled systems. Including Vanar. Rashir was doing her best to lean hard on that family connection stretching back nearly a millennium.

  It wasn’t working.

  “We treat Novapolita with as much courtesy as any other client,” Yronae said, pausing to give the ambassador’s interpreter time to translate. “If they stop paying our price, they will find themselves in the same position as the Hengeli.”

  “They have access to revenues we don’t, pratha h’máy. They have a debt to us, and we are simply demanding the fair and just repayment we are due. Theirs is a relatively young world. Surely you know Hengeli’s problems are not of our own making; our resources were decimated by natural disaster. It is true, we might have managed things better, but our colonies have benefited from the lessons we learned without having to pay the same penalty. May I remind you it was Hengeli technology that provided every single system in existence, including Novapolita, with the means by which they were able to settle their colonies in the first place? It is only right and just that they should come to our aid now in return, not take advantage of our weakness.”

  Nathan could hear the mother’s lament behind the clear, modulated elocution and her military bearing. After all I’ve done for you, and this is how my children return my love?

  Yronae smiled, humorless. “That might be true of your colonies, but not Vanar, Madam Ambassador. Not Vanar.”

  “I beg your forgiveness for contradicting you, pratha h’máy,” Rashir persisted, “but even Vanar. Your people did not settle this world by wishful thinking alone. They had to use Hengeli technology, Hengeli material, Hengeli bioscience ever to have reached Vanar and survive in the first place, regardless of any other circumstances.”

  Yronae listened to her interpreter, the taemora mumbling with her eyes half shut, almost trancelike. The silence that followed was longer than the time lag in translation.

  “I was not aware the Hengeli created the Worms, Madam Ambassador,” she said finally.

  The ambassador was quick to retort. “Neither did the Vanar. W
hatever they are, or whoever built them, they are artifacts vastly older than either of our civilizations, pratha h’máy. And with respect, while you may have been the first to exploit them and have refashioned the Pilotships into a mold more accessible for human beings, the Vanar cannot take credit for the Worms any more than you can take credit for the creation of the universe.”

  “An honor, as every Vanar knows, belonging solely to the Holy Creatress,” Yronae answered blandly. “But we are not here to discuss theology. You want to use the Worm for your own purposes. We have no objection. Pay our price.”

  The ambassador fidgeted on the floor cushion, unaccustomed to Vanar furnishings. “Novapolita is rich in natural energy resources. She is, legally and legitimately, under Hengeli administration. For political reasons that are making her own government unstable, she has defied all legal pressures to compel her to resume repayment of a significant debt owed to Hengeli fiscal authorities. The situation has become critical. We would only need the use of the Worm for a single operation. Once Novapolita is back under rightful Hengeli control, and her internal crisis rectified, we would be able to repay Vanar threefold the price.”

  Yronae heard the bribe and ignored it.

  “And if you failed, Vanar would lose its investment.”

  “We would not fail,” the ambassador insisted. “We may be lacking in natural resources, but Hengeli has had a much longer time to perfect our military capabilities. Our military force is five times that of Novapolita, both in the total number of warships and in support vessels, and the magnitude of our technological capability and expertise is unmatched by theirs.”

  Nathan realized how desperate the situation must be. They were going to throw all they had at Novapolita in one last-ditch campaign, gambling everything on victory.

  “Once Novapolita is back under our control, we would reimburse Vanar for the expenses she has incurred in our behalf for a pre-arranged, mutually agreed upon amount.”

  Yronae did not take the bait. “That sort of business practice is illegal on Vanar, Madam Ambassador. It is not only unlawful, but morally contemptible for a buyer to use the assets of a company it wishes to purchase as its own collateral against it.”

  “Novapolita is not a company, pratha h’máy. But to use the same analogy, it is an illegal and immoral rebellion of one of Hengeli’s subsidiary concerns attempting to break away from the parent corporation without the stockholders’ permission or even offering a fair buy-out deal. It would be like one of your own Stations deciding they wanted to become a separate government without your permission, and cutting you off from your own assets. We only offer what is ours to begin with, a share of Novapolita’s resources, which we are illegally being denied access to.”

  “This is a matter of opinion, Madam Ambassador, as well as a matter of politics. Vanar is a neutral government. We are not in the business of deciding the legality of one non-Vanar complainant over another. Nor are we willing to break our own laws to gamble on the outcome of your dispute.”

  Rashir looked down at her blunt fingers wrapped around each other with white-knuckled strength. Ruuspoelk had not changed expression, still scrutinizing Nathan.

  “We do not have sufficient ready funds to buy passage for the number of ships we require,” Rashir said. “Unless we are in possession of another asset you may be interested in?”

  Yronae shrugged, halfway between the Vanar gesture for no and indifference. “If you are in possession of something that might be of value to us, however uncustomary, the Nga’esha are willing to consider all offers, Madam Ambassador.”

  Rashir nodded grimly. “I would need to confer with my superiors, pratha h’máy. We shall return to our ship in the morning, with your permission. Message transmissions with Hengeli may take a few hours. May I request a delay until tomorrow evening?”

  Yronae consented, and remained seated until the Hengeli party had bowed and filed out of the room. She sat for some time, eyes narrowed as she deliberated. No one dared so much as to fidget.

  “Little brother,” she said finally, without looking at him.

  “Hae’m, pratha h’máy?”

  “You will have tea with me. I would like the benefit of your observations and feel it may take longer than I had initially anticipated.”

  His stomach lurched, the thought of an intimate tête-à-tête with Pratha Yronae not his idea of an enjoyable afternoon. But however courteously it might be worded, her request was not optional.

  “A pleasure, eminent sister.”

  XXXIX

  FIVE HOURS LATER, HE WAS ESCORTED THROUGH THE RESTRICTED annex of the House where foreign visitors were lodged, opulent guest rooms at the far west end of the women’s quarters well guarded by Dhikar. All the rooms overlooked a large, cloistered garden, with a stunning vista of mountains over the rooftops, but any view of the city or its inhabitants was meticulously concealed. The Hengeli entourage were entertained and pampered, taemorae at their beck and call, but kept confined as securely as in any prison and more isolated from contact with the Vanar than an asteroid mine.

  Knowing the entire wing was monitored and hyperaware of invisible eyes watching, Nathan followed one of Yronae’s many nieces, stopping as the woman knocked on the doors. As the doors slid open, the niece half bowed silently and left him facing Ruuspoelk. He had barely touched his dinner, too nervous for any appetite.

  “Come in, please,” she said, and turned to let him past her. The power of habit had him bow toward her, fingers together loosely, before he walked into the room.

  “Would you like to sit down?” She seemed uncertain of what etiquette was expected.

  “Thank you,” he said, and crossed to a pair of floor pillows heavy and flattened from use beside the low table. He brushed the hem of his sati back with one foot and knelt, Vanar fashion, Vanar manners, then waited pointedly until she lowered herself awkwardly to the floor cushions. Sitting back on his heels, he slipped the edge of the sati from his head and arranged it on his shoulders. He quietly adjusted the numerous heavy gold bracelets on his wrists before placing his palms against his thighs. And hoped he didn’t look anywhere near as nervous as he felt.

  He kept his eyes focused steadily just past her shoulder as she examined him with frank interest. While some Vanar might consider his alien features unattractive, he had never had that complaint with Hengeli women, and he knew it. Regenerative therapy preserved his youth, and the Vanar male obsession with exercise kept him fit and trim. He wore a formal Nga’esha sati of rich watered birdsilk, hand-embroidered at the edges with gold thread, only the neckline of his wine red mati showing. His feet were bare but freshly hennaed, the bangle around his right ankle glinting with blood rubies the same color as his mati. An elaborate five-strand braid fell across his shoulder, following the curve of his chest. A tiny scattering of blue flowers and small silver beads glinted where they had been mixed with his blond hair.

  Heloise Ruuspoelk had the harried look of an overworked bureaucrat, several pounds overweight from too many hours spent over files on a reader. She wore the same unexceptionally tailored trousers and jacket she had worn to each of the three meetings, and he wondered if she actually owned any other clothing.

  “Drink?” she offered as an afterthought.

  “No, thank you.”

  “Well.” She cleared her throat. Smiled. The expression was flat, without warmth.

  “You requested to see me,” he said quietly. “What can I do for you?”

  “Actually, I asked to see ‘that man who said nothing at the meeting.’ I’d like to know who you are, first.”

  He said promptly, in Vanar, “Son of Yaenida, brother of Yronae, husband of Kallah, father of Aenanda.”

  She stared at him blankly. “I meant, what is your name?” “Nathan Crewe Nga’esha,” he said.

  Her smile widened, but grew no warmer. “That’s an Hengeli name,” she said with satisfaction.

  “Nga’esha isn’t.”

  “You’re Vanar?”


  “Yes.”

  She studied his sati. “And Nga’esha?”

  “I am the youngest son of the former pratha h’máy, Yaenida Nga’esha. Yronae is my sister.”

  “Amazing. Your late mother must have been exceptionally fertile at such an advanced age.” Nathan didn’t respond to her sarcasm. “You speak excellent Hengeli.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You are Hengeli, aren’t you?”

  He thought about how to answer that, aware others were listening. “Yes,” he said after a moment. “I’m also Hengeli.” He kept it in the present tense.

  She laughed, the sound small and tight. “Ironic, isn’t it? The first Nga’esha man I ever get to meet turns out to be Hengeli.” He didn’t respond. “If you don’t mind my asking, Mr. Crewe, what is an Hengeli man doing at these meetings?”

  It had been a long time since someone had addressed him as “mister,” the sound of it jarring.

  “I’m an interpreter.”

  “Bullshit,” she said. He translated the word literally into Vanar in his head and thought of Yronae trying to puzzle out the meaning of the word, wondering what bovine droppings had to do with anything.

  “I don’t translate conversation. I’m there to give the Nga’esha pratha h’máy the benefit of my knowledge of Hengeli culture. Cultural analyst, if you prefer.”

  “It was my understanding that foreign men were strictly prohibited on Vanar.”

  “They are,” he agreed. He didn’t elaborate.