Authors: Mary Sisson
Trang (37 page)
“
I mean, this guy’s nuts, and he
thinks he’s Jesus, and he’s worried that if the Union or whoever takes this
place away from him, he won’t be able to save mankind or whatever. So he’s
trying to purify people and eliminate the people who don’t really believe in
him, because if they
really
believed in him, he wouldn’t be about to
lose his territory, and he’s just turning on everyone around him. And the only
person in that delegation that had the least clue was Philippe, who wrote this
long memo saying, I don’t think we should trust this guy, he’s nuts. But
everyone else thinks this guy is OK, so Philippe is ignored.”
“
Diplomats want everyone to live
in peace,” said Philippe, wryly. “And Jesus is the Prince of Peace.”
“
Not this Jesus,” Shanti said.
“Anyway, Jesus’ people finally started wiping out entire towns, which is tough
to hide, so everyone found out what was going on. And they called in my people,
who actually are the warriors, and we blew that motherfucker into
smithereens—they were sponging him off the vegetation when we got through with
him, and, trust me, no one was shedding any tears over it. They found all these
torture chambers—really fucking medieval stuff, all over the fucking place. I
think Philippe was part of that, too—one of the fact-finding people who saw how
bad things had gotten. And it was
bad,
too. General Jesus had a room in
his house where he kept the ears of, you know, ‘heretics’ nailed to the wall.
In his
house
—can you imagine the smell?”
“
Ah,” said the Host. “That
explains some things.”
“
And do you know what else they
found in that room?” she asked. “Semen. He would go in there and jerk off. That
guy was one sick fuck.”
“
Yes, his people seemed quite
unpleasant when I met them,” said the Host. “Tell me, what do you know about
physics?”
“
What do you need to know?”
asked Shanti.
“
There’s the law of attraction,”
said Philippe, pulling her closer.
“
Yes, there is,” she said,
warmly.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Shanti woke up.
Damn,
she
thought,
always before the good parts.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
What the fuck was that?
“Shanti Pax! Shanti Pax!” the voice
spoke directly into her left ear. “Contact Central, emergency status! Contact
Central, emergency status!”
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Beep.
Beep. Beep.
“Oh, shit,” she muttered, fumbling
around in the dark. The fucking earplant, it would just repeat and repeat until
she got a message back through.
She felt around, finally finding
the lamp. She turned it on and got up.
Where the fuck did Keres keep that
messenger?
She left the guest room, which
opened onto the living room. She turned on the overhead light and was
momentarily blinded.
Fucking useless fake corneas,
she thought.
Fucking
useless earplant. They should let you at least turn it down.
She finally saw the messenger and
activated it. It took her a moment to remember how to work civilian equipment—and
having a machine screaming “Shanti Pax!” in her ear didn’t exactly help her
think. But she got Central’s message, sent an acknowledgment, and the fucking
thing blessedly cut off.
Keres stumbled in. “Surp, you all
right?” she asked.
Shanti looked at her darkly. “I’ve
gotta go back,” she said.
“But you just got here,” her sister
whined, blinking in the light.
“I’ve gotta go back now,” Shanti
said. “Things are really fucked.”
Chapter 15
He came on the ship, and she was sitting there, an empty
seat next to her.
“Hello, Trang,” she said.
“Hi, Shanti. I didn’t know you were
on Earth,” Philippe said, and sat down.
Shanti arched her eyebrows. “Well,
I wasn’t here long,” she said.
They sat in silence as the ship
tilted back.
Funny how it’s all routine now
, he thought.
“Did they tell you anything else?”
he asked her.
She shrugged. “Just that Arne’s
sick.”
They were silent again.
“That earplant’s a hell of a
wake-up call, isn’t it?” she said.
Philippe let out a brief laugh. “I
didn’t know what to do—it was saying, ‘Call Central!’ And I’m going, ‘Central
what?’”
Shanti grinned.
“Do you have any idea what could
have made Arne sick?” he asked.
Worry flashed across her face. “I
don’t know—he was fine when I left him.” Shanti thought for a moment. “You knew
him from before, right? Does he have some sort of condition?”
“Not that I know of,” Philippe
said. “I don’t think they would have let him go to the station, or even to the
Sudan, if he wasn’t healthy.”
“Hm.”
Silence again. The ship shuddered
into alpha drive.
Philippe suddenly realized that he
needed
information, any information, about Arne. He didn’t know enough. A wave of
guilt, far from his first, passed over him: He hadn’t kept up with the reports,
and he should have. If he had, he might have seen or intuited something. He
might have been able to stop it. He might know something now.
“How was he doing?” he asked
Shanti. “While I was gone—how was he?”
“Arne? Oh, he was all right, you
know.” Shanti shrugged. “I mean, I’m no diplomat, I don’t know how you grade these
things. But I think he was doing pretty good. He confused the aliens though,
when he first came, because he’s, you know, tall like the rest of us—apparently
that’s how they always knew who you were.”
Philippe couldn’t help but smile.
“He was nice, you know?” she said.
“But, um, with people? I don’t think he was quite as good as you were.”
Philippe blinked his eyes and
opened his mouth, surprised. The Arne of his acquaintance had always been open
and friendly. Philippe couldn’t recall him not getting along with anyone.
“Were there problems with the
SFers?” he asked.
“Oh, sorry, when I say people, I
mean aliens,” said Shanti. She shook her head. “Boy, I sound like I’m talking
through a translator.”
“When you start calling me ‘human
diplomat,’ I’ll worry,” said Philippe.
She laughed, but the brief flash of
humor quickly sputtered out.
“Arne had a couple of issues with
the SF, but what I meant was that he really seemed to have some problems with
the Hosts. Not that he didn’t try, but it took him a real long time to be able
to tell Max and Moritz apart. I think it bothered them, and I know it bothered
him.”
“Are Max and Moritz still
fighting?” Philippe asked, feeling another twinge of guilt.
“I think they managed to bury the
hatchet,” she replied. “But I felt like Arne could never really relate to the
Hosts. I don’t know why that was. He had some quarrels with Baby about it, of
all people. They had some disagreements about where the Hosts were coming from,
and to my way of thinking she understood them better. Or maybe it’s just that
she understood them differently than he did, and I tend to take her side.”
Philippe nodded, troubled. He liked
both Arne and Baby, so it was an unpleasant surprise to hear that they hadn’t
been able to get along with each other.
“Was that the problem Arne had with
the SF that you mentioned earlier?” he asked.
Shanti shook her head. “That was
part of it—it was all pretty minor, you know, but Arne really didn’t like it
when we spoke to the aliens.”
Philippe was shocked—that didn’t
sound
like Arne. “He didn’t want you to talk to the aliens?”
“No, no, no—he wasn’t an asshole or
anything. He wasn’t like, you can’t talk to them,” Shanti smiled. “But if he
was meeting with some aliens, and an SFer was there, he really didn’t like it
when we, you know, interrupted with questions or anything.”
Philippe suddenly got it. “Oh,” he
said.
Shanti gave Philippe something of a
hard look. “You never told us we weren’t supposed to do that.”
Philippe put his hand over his
mouth for a moment, and then removed it. “I can totally see why it upset him,
and I can totally see why you guys were surprised.”
“Apparently when a diplomat is in a
meeting, it’s just supposed to be the diplomat talking and not anybody else.”
Philippe nodded. “Can be, yes. It
depends on the situation. Ordinarily, though, yes, the normal Union Police
guards would simply be there as protection and would not be talking.”
Shanti cocked an eyebrow at him.
“I know how much you love hearing
about how the Union Police would do it,” Philippe said. “But I always felt that
this was a different kind of situation—that my guards, be they UP or SF or
whatever, would be living on the station and interacting with the aliens all
the time anyway, so there would be no real point in pretending that they were
these mute protectors without any opinions or curiosity. I knew people were
going to be interacting with the aliens, so I felt like I might as well let it
happen where I could see it, and then I’d get a sense of how they were with
it.”
Shanti nodded. “Like I said, it was
pretty minor—it was just that he did things differently than you did, so people
had to adjust. But they did, and I don’t want to make a big deal out of it,
because it really wasn’t one. In general, Arne has been fine—he’s been really good
at keeping us neutral, you know, so that’s important.”
The word startled Philippe.
“Neutral?”
“Oh, yeah. Haven’t they been
keeping you posted?”
Philippe shrugged, feeling a new
wave of guilt. “They’ve been sending me updates, but I was on vacation, you
know, so I didn’t exactly read them carefully,” he said.
Or at all,
he thought.
Shanti looked a little taken aback.
“Well, OK. Um, the Snake Boys have been kicking up a stink about their living
arrangements. They were never happy about them, but then you know that merchant
you gave the translation devices to? Well, he’s really become, like, this
activist, and he managed to get the Cyclopes involved. So now the Cyclopes are
saying that the Hosts shouldn’t just be running things, things need to be more
democratic. And the Hosts are, like, whatever, it’s our station. But the
Blobbos are really upset and saying that the Cyclopes are just trying to grab
power.”
“I see,” said Philippe.
“Anyway, it makes things a little
tense, but it doesn’t really concern Earth, you know?” said Shanti. “We’re
saying, not our business, we don’t have any opinion on this, and I think
they’re pretty much buying that.”
“OK,” said Philippe.
They sat for a bit.
“But do you want to know the
really
big news?” said Shanti, looking at him slyly.
“What’s that?” said Philippe.
“George and Baby have taken
themselves off the roster.”
“
No!
”
“Yup, they both went off, the exact
same day,” she said with a grin. “They’ve gone exclusive.”
“Well, I think we could all see
that one coming,” said Philippe. “How did Five-Eighths take it?”
“Oh-ho,” Shanti laughed. “Five put
his foot through the door of one of the virtual-entertainment booths. We had to
fix it with a board, so now when you go in there to watch something in
surround, there’s this black area down on the right side. And then, through
some marvelous coincidence that I as mission commander know nothing about, his
sleep cubicle malfunctioned, and he was trapped in there for an entire day.”
Philippe smiled, but then a
sobering thought occurred to him.
“What does Baby being off the
roster mean for you?” he asked.
“Me?” said Shanti, looking faintly
troubled by the question. “I’m MC, so I can’t really have an opinion about
who’s on the roster.”
“No,” explained Philippe. “I meant,
is this going to mean that people are going to pressure you to be on the
roster?”
“Oh. No, everybody knows better
than to do something like that,” said Shanti.
“Everybody except Five-Eighths.”
“Except him—he’s got that name for
a reason. But he knows better than to do that twice.”
They chuckled.
“You know,” said Philippe, “I
mentioned his name at dinner with some friends of my parents who have a
15-year-old daughter. And she just turned bright red and wouldn’t speak for the
rest of the evening.”
Shanti turned to him, scandalized.
“You mentioned that name in front of a child? Trang! What’s wrong with you!”
“I know, the thing is, with
Five-Eighths, I don’t know—”
“No, really, what is wrong with
you?” she interrupted. “You should never mention that name in front of
children. Actually, you should never mention that man in front of children at
all. He’s not fit for a young audience.”
Philippe laughed.
“So, did you have a good vacation?”
Shanti asked.
“Oh, yeah,” Philippe replied. “I
had a great time, very relaxing. I didn’t have a single migraine the entire
time.”
“You’ve been having migraines? I
didn’t know that. Did you get a—?” She tapped her head.
“An implant? No,” Philippe replied.
“I thought you had to get one if
you had migraines—if you want them to stop.”
“I guess if they’re really bad, you
do, but I didn’t have to,” said Philippe. “I just got some sleep and cut out
caffeine and stimulants. And I counted breaths.”
Shanti gave him a skeptical look.
“You counted breaths?”
“It’s a meditation technique, you
count your breaths. You count to ten over and over again. It helps you focus on
the present instead of stressing about the future or worrying about the past,”
Philippe said.
