by John Scalzi
“I’m not smelling deodorant, you little shit,” Lars-win-Getag snarled. “I know one of you is speaking to me. Insulting me. I will not tolerate it.”
“Sir,” Alan said. “If one of us have said something that offended you during the talks, I can promise you—”
“Promise me?” Lars-win-Getag bellowed. “I can promise you that every one of you is going to be working at a convenience store in twenty-four hours if you don’t—”
Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.
Silence. Moeller was suddenly aware that the entire room was looking at him.
“Excuse me,” Moeller said. “That was rude.”
There was a little more silence after that.
“You,” Lars-win-Getag said, finally. “It was you. All this time.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Moeller said.
“I will have your job for this,” Lars-win-Getag exploded. “When I get through with you, you—” Lars-win-Getag stopped suddenly, distracted. Then he took a long, hard snort. Moeller’s final message had finally gotten across the room to him.
Lars-win-Getag took full receipt of the message, processed it, and decided to kill Dirk Moeller right there, with his own hands. Fortunately, there was a Nidu ritual for justifiably killing a nemesis; it began with a violent, soul-shattering roar. Lars-win-Getag collected himself, draw in a deep, cleansing breath, focused his eyes on Dirk Moeller, and began his murderous yell.
One of the interesting things about alien life is that however alien it may be, certain physical features appear again and again, examples of parallel evolutionary paths on multiple worlds. For example, nearly every intelligent form of life has a brain—a central processor, of some sort, for whatever nervous and sensory system it may have evolved. The location of the brain varies, but it is most frequently located in a head of some sort. Likewise, nearly all life of a complex nature features a circulatory system to ferry oxygen and nutrients around the body.
The combination of these two common features means that certain medical phenomena are also universally known. Like strokes, caused when the vessels of whatever circulatory system a creature might have rupture violently in whatever brain structure that creature might possess. Just as they did in Lars-win-Getag, less than a second into his bellowing declaration. Lars-win-Getag was surprised as anyone when he cut short his bellow, replaced it with a wet gurgle, and then pitched forward dead, following his center of gravity down to the floor. The Nidu immediately swarmed their fallen leader; the humans stared slack-jawed at their negotiating partners, who by now had begun a keening wail of despair as they attempted to revive Lars-win-Getag’s body.
Alan turned to Moeller, who was still sitting there, calmly, taking it all in. “Sir?” Alan said. “What just happened here, sir? What’s going on? Sir?”
Moeller turned to Alan, opened his mouth to provide some perfectly serviceable lie, and burst out laughing.
Another common feature among many species is a primary circulatory pump—a heart, in other words. This pump is typically one of the strongest muscles in any creature, due to the need to keep circulatory fluid moving through the body. But like any muscle it is prone to damage, especially when the creature to whom the pump belongs takes rather bad care of it. And, say, eats a lot of fatty, plaque-inducing meat, which causes the circulatory vessels to cut off, suffocating the muscle itself.
Just as they did in Dirk Moeller.
Dirk Moeller collapsed on the floor, still laughing, joining Lars-win-Getag in a fatally prone sprawl. He was dimly aware of Alan shouting his name and then placing his hands on his chest and pumping down furiously, in a valiant but fruitless attempt to squeeze blood through his boss’s body.
As Moeller lost consciousness for the last time, he had time for a single, final request for absolution. Jesus, forgive me, he thought. I really shouldn’t have eaten that panda.
The rest is darkness, two dead bodies on the floor, and, as hoped, a major diplomatic incident.
chapter 2
Secretary of State Jim Heffer regarded the tube on his desk. “So this is it?” he asked his aide, Ben Javna.
“That’s it,” Javna said. “Fresh from the schmuck’s large intestine.”
Heffer shook his head. “What an asshole,” he said.
“An apt description, considering,” Javna said.
Heffer sighed, reached for the tube, then stopped. “This isn’t fresh, is it?”
Javna grinned. “It’s been sanitized for your protection, Mr. Secretary. It had been grafted onto Moeller’s colon. All the organic bits have been removed. Inside and out.”
“Who knows this exists?”
“Aside from whoever helped Moeller put it in? You, me, and the medical examiner. The ME is content to keep quiet for now, although he wants State to bring a cousin over from Pakistan. Alan suspects something, of course. That’s why he called me right after it happened.”
“A former intern turns out to be useful for a change,” Heffer said. He picked up the tube, turned it around in his hands. “Have we figured out where this thing has come from yet?”
“No, sir,” Javna said. “We haven’t started a search because, officially, it doesn’t exist. So far as anyone knows officially, Moeller and the Nidu trade representative rather coincidentally collapsed simultaneously for unrelated health reasons. Which is true, as far as it goes.”
It was Heffer’s turn to grin. “And just how long do we expect that story to hold up, Ben?”
“It’s already collapsing, of course,” Javna said. “But at this point the only thing anyone has to go on are rumors and speculations. We start searching for plans for that,”—Javna pointed to the tube—“and you know it’s going to get noticed.”
“I think we could keep the search out of the papers,” Heffer said.
“It’s not the papers we need to worry about,” Javna said. “You know Pope and his creeps at Defense are going to be all over this, and they’ll even find some way to try to make it seem like it’s the Nidu’s fault.”
“On one level, that’d be nice,” Heffer said.
“Sure, right until the part where we start shooting at the Nidu and then they kick our ass,” Javna said.
“There is that,” Heffer admitted.
“There is indeed that,” Javna said.
Heffer’s intercom switched on. “Mr. Secretary, Secretary Soram is here,” said Heffer’s scheduler, Jane.
“Send him in, Jane,” Heffer said, stood up, then turned to Javna. “Well, here comes the idiot,” he said. Javna grinned.
Secretary of Trade Ted Soram came through the door, brisk and grinning and extending his hand. “Hello, Jim,” he said. “Missed you this weekend at the house.”
Heffer reached across the desk and shook Soram’s hand. “Hello, Ted,” Heffer said. “I was in Switzerland this weekend. Middle East peace negotiations. You may have read something about them.”
“Ouch,” Soram said, good-naturedly, and off to the side, Heffer could see Javna roll his eyes. “Okay, I admit, a good excuse for your absence. This time. How did the negotiations go?”
“As they usually do,” Heffer said, motioning to Soram to sit. “Right down to obligatory suicide bomber in Haifa halfway through the session.”
“They never learn,” Soram said, nestling into an armchair.
“I guess not,” Heffer said, sitting himself. “But right now I’m less concerned about the peace negotiations in the Middle East than the Nidu trade negotiations here at home.”
“What about them?” Soram said.
Heffer glanced over at Javna, who subtly shrugged. “Ted,” Heffer said, “have you been in contact with your staff today?”
“I’ve been at Lansdowne since dawn,” Soram said. “With the Kanh ambassador. It loves to golf there, and I have a membership. I’ve been trying to get them to agree to import more almonds. We’ve got a glut. So I thought I’d lobby it on the links. My staff knows better than to disturb me when I’m working on something l
ike that. I almost chewed out your gal until I realized she was calling from your department, not mine.”
Heffer sat there for about a beat and wondered again at the political calculus that required President Webster to appoint Soram as trade secretary. The Kanh were violently allergic to nuts. The first state dinner ever held for the Kanh ended in disaster because kitchen inadvertently used peanut oil in one of the entrees; two-thirds of the Kanh guests ruptured their digestive sacs. The fact that Soram would lobby the Kanh to import almonds was a testament to his cluelessness, and the willingness of the Kanh ambassador (who was emphatically not clueless) to capitalize on his stupidity for a couple rounds of choice golf.
Well, we needed Philadelphia and he delivered, Heffer thought. Too late to worry about it now. “Ted,” Heffer said. “There’s been a development. A rather serious one. One of your trade representatives died today during negotiations. So did one of the Nidu representatives. And we think our guy killed the Nidu representative before he died.”
Soram smiled, uncertainly. “I’m not following you, Jim.”
Heffer slid the tube across the desk to Soram. “He used this,” Heffer said. “We’re pretty sure it’s a device used to send chemical signals the Nidu could smell and interpret through a code of theirs. We think your guy hid this until he got into the room, and then used it to enrage the Nidu negotiator into a stroke. He had a heart attack right after. He died laughing, Ted. It didn’t look very good.”
Soram took the tube. “Where was he hiding it?” he asked.
“In his ass,” Ben Javna said.
Soram jerked and dropped the thing on the floor, then smiled sheepishly and placed it back on the desk. “Sorry,” he said. “How do you know all this, Jim? This is a trade problem.”
Heffer took the tube and put it into his desk. “Ted, when one of your guys kills off a Nidu diplomat, trade or otherwise, it pretty much becomes my problem, now, doesn’t it? We here at State have a vested interest in making sure that trade negotiations with the Nidu run smoothly. And I know you’re not exactly the most ‘hands on’ of Trade secretaries. So we over here have been keeping tabs on how things have been going.”
“I see,” Soram said.
“Having said that,” Heffer said, “I have to admit this one took us by surprise. Trade is fairly packed with anti-Nidu negotiators and has been for years, even after this administration took over. But this is new. We expected some of your minor functionaries to put in a few roadblocks. We were ready for that. We weren’t ready for one of your people to attempt murder to gum up the works.”
“We got rid of the biggest troublemakers,” Soram said. “We went right down the list and pried them out.”
“You missed one, Ted,” Heffer said.
“Who was this guy?” Soram asked.
“Dirk Moeller,” Javna said. “Came in during the Griffin administration. He was at the American Institute for Colonization before that.”
“I’ve never heard of him,” Soram said.
“Really,” Javna said, dryly.
Even Soram couldn’t miss that. “Look, don’t try to pin this on me,” he said. “We got most of them. But a few are going to get through the net.”
“A spell at the AIC should have been a red flag,” Heffer said. “That place is full of anti-Nidu nutbags.”
The intercom flicked back on. “Sir, Secretary Pope is here,” Jane said.
“Speaking of anti-Nidu nutbags,” Javna said, under his breath.
“He says it’s urgent,” Jane continued.
“Send him in, Jane,” Heffer said, then turned to Javna. “Behave, Ben.”
“Yes, sir,” Javna said.
Every administration crosses the aisle to appoint one secretary from the other side. Robert Pope, war hero and popular former senator from Idaho, was the sop thrown to swing voters who needed convincing the Webster administration was strong on defense, and would stand up to Common Confederation pressure when necessary, particularly when it was applied by the Nidu. Pope played the part a little too enthusiastically for Heffer’s taste.
“Bob,” Heffer said, as Pope entered the room, trailing his aide, Dave Phipps. “Dropping by on your way back to the Pentagon?”
“You might say that,” Pope said, and then glanced over at Soram. “I see you’ve got the brain trust here already.”
“Missed you this weekend, Bob,” Soram said.
“Ted, you know I wouldn’t be caught dead at one of your parties,” Pope said, “so let’s not pretend I would be. I understand you hit a little roadblock in today’s negotiations.”
“Jim was just catching me up on that,” Soram said.
“Well,” Pope said. “Nice to see someone’s minding the shop over there at Trade. Even if it is the State Department. Strange that two chief negotiators should die within seconds of each other, don’t you think.”
“The universe is filled with disturbing coincidences, Bob,” Heffer said.
“And you think coincidence is what this was.”
“At the moment, that’s the official line,” Heffer said. “Although of course we’ll let you know if anything comes out. We’re hoping to catch this while it’s still a minor diplomatic issue, Bob. Nothing you folks at Defense need to worry about.”
“That’s reassuring to hear, Jim,” Pope said. “Except that it may already be a little late for that.” Pope nodded to Phipps, who pulled papers from a folder he was bearing and handed them to Heffer.
“What are these?” Heffer asked, taking the papers and reaching for his glasses.
“Intercepts from the Nidu Naval Attaché’s office, dated thirty-six minutes after our respective trade representatives hit the floor,” Pope said. “About two hours after that, we know two Nidu Glar-class destroyers got new orders.”
“Do you know what the orders are?” Heffer asked.
“They were encrypted,” Pope said.
“So they could be anything, including something entirely unrelated to our little problem,” Heffer said.
“They could be,” Pope said. “There is the minor matter that these new orders came directly from the Nidu Supreme Commander rather than through the admiralty.”
“What does that mean?” Soram asked.
“It means that orders aren’t going through the chain of command, Ted,” Heffer said. “It means that whatever the Nidu have going, they want to start working on it fast.” Heffer turned to Javna. “Are the Nidu having any other extracurricular squabbles that would warrant new orders to those destroyers?”
“I can’t think of anything offhand,” Javna said. “They have that low-grade border war going with the Andde, but they’ve been in a détente phase for a few months now. It’s not likely they’d ratchet back up without the Andde doing something stupid first. Let me check on that, though.”
“In the meantime, I have to work on the assumption that what happened today at Trade is a proximate cause,” Pope said. “And that the Nidu may be in the initial stages of something more than a diplomatic response.”
“Have you shared this with the president?” Heffer asked.
“He’s in St. Louis, reading to kindergarteners,” Pope said. “I spoke to Roger. He suggested that on the way back to the Pentagon, I stop by and give you a heads-up. He said this is something that warranted a personal social call.”
Heffer nodded. Roger probably also suggested to Pope that he’d be following up with Heffer shortly thereafter, which was undoubtedly the only reason Pope was actually in his office. This is one of the nice things about having your brother-in-law as the president’s chief of staff; if Roger let Heffer get sandbagged, he’d never hear the end of it from the missus. The Heffers were a loyal clan.
“Can I see those intercepts?” Soram asked.
“Later, Ted,” Heffer said. “Bob, what are you planning to do with that information?”
“Well, that depends,” Pope said. “I can’t just do nothing, of course. If we have two Nidu destroyers on their way, we need to be prepare
d to respond.”
“The Nidu are our allies, you know,” Heffer said. “Have been for decades, despite attempts in recent years to have it otherwise.”
“Jim, I don’t give a shit about the politics of the situation,” Pope said, and Heffer caught Javna performing another subtle eyeroll. “I care about where those destroyers are heading and why. If you know something I don’t, then by all means enlighten me. But from where I’m standing, two dead trade representatives plus two Nidu destroyers equals the Nidu doing something I need to worry about.”
Heffer’s intercom piped up again. “Sir, the Nidu ambassador is here. He says it’s—”
“—Urgent, yes, I know,” Heffer said. “Tell him I’ll be right with him.” He flipped off the intercom, and stood up. “Gentlemen, I need the room. All things considered, you should probably exit out through the conference room. It might make the ambassador nervous if he saw the secretaries of Trade and Defense coming out the door.”
“Jim,” Pope said. “If you know something, I need to know it. Sooner than later.”
“I understand, Bob. Give me a little time to work this. If the Nidu see us gearing up for something, it’s going to complicate matters. A little time, Bob.”
Pope glanced over at Soram, and then at Javna before looking back to Heffer. “A little time, Jim. But don’t make me have to explain to the president why we’ve got two Nidu destroyers parked in orbit and nothing to counter them with. You won’t like the explanation I’ll give him. Gentlemen.” Pope and Phipps exited out through the conference room.
Soram stood up. “What should I be doing now?” he asked. Soram was normally the picture of clueless confidence, but even he was aware he was in over his head at the moment.
“Ted, I need to you to keep quiet on what I’ve told you today,” Heffer said. Soram nodded. “The longer we keep this thing officially a coincidence, the longer we’ve got to make this turn out all right. I’m going to have some people come around and take a look through Moeller’s office. Make sure no one touches anything until they get there. I mean no one, Ted. Ben here will make the arrangements and give you the names so you can be sure. Until then, stay calm, appear unconcerned, and don’t overthink this.”