Val Vega, page 5
Wasala cuts Timoteo short and turns to me. “Actually, we’re somewhat short-staffed now and could use some help at the Institute. We were hoping Val might do an internship with us.” I guess that would be my cover story—if I do the ambassador thing. I guess they can’t say a 16-year-old is taking Umberto’s place as executive director. Suddenly the lasagna on my plate looks less appetizing. I can’t imagine lying about an “internship” when I’m really going to other planets. How did Umberto do this? Why didn’t he tell me the truth?
“What kind of internship?” says Timoteo.
Johnny waves his fork in little loops. “Oh, you know, errands, traipsing around, that sort of thing. What do you say, Ms. Vega?”
“No sé. Val has her homework and sports, and I need her help with—” Mami gets cut off by a knock at the front door. “Were we expecting someone?” As she walks to the door, Johnny and Wasala side-eye each other like they just got caught playing hooky.
Mami opens the door, and Patrece is standing outside, her tall frame filling the doorway. I wonder what her real body looks like—her species must be much taller than the average human. My way-too-polite mother welcomes her and even apologizes for starting dinner without her.
“Thank you so much for your hospitality, Ms. Vega,” Patrece says, bending slightly to step through the doorway. She holds up a two-liter bottle of sparkling water. “I brought a beverage to accompany dinner, of course.”
Mami takes the bottle of Perrier and blinks at it. “How lovely.” If I do end up being ambassador, I’m going to have to give these aliens some tips on the subtleties of Earth culture.
Everyone scoots around the table to make room for one more, and Timoteo sets a place for Patrece while I get another chair.
Patrece sits down, her body folding awkwardly into the too-small chair. “I apologize for being late. My colleagues’ text message invitations must have been disrupted by a poor signal.”
Wasala purses her lips. “I’m terribly sorry, Patrece. We meant to text you right away.”
“We ran into Val at the supermarket,” Johnny says, “and it was all totes spontaneous.”
“Indeed,” Patrece says. “The two of you have been quite spontaneous recently.” She takes a small bottle out of her briefcase and pours some sauce on her lasagna, just like Wasala did—though she offers no explanation. It must have some sort of enzyme or technology that makes Earth food digestible for them.
Wasala taps me on the knee and mouths, “You’re so smart,” which I would find affirming if I weren’t too busy wondering why Patrece is being passive-aggressive with Wasala and Johnny, and why she didn’t come with them to talk to me in the first place. I guess that strikes a chord, because Wasala purses her lips and looks in the other direction.
“Hold on a sec,” Miguel says. “Does this intern thing mean Val gets to go to Turkey?”
Johnny scoops up more lasagna. “We’ll definitely need her for a trip or two.”
Patrece stiffens her long back and looks at Johnny and Wasala with narrowed eyes. “I suppose it was another moment of spontaneity that led the two of you to discuss the potential internship without me.”
“Someone had to tell her!” Wasala snips back at Patrece.
“I’ll do an internship if I get to go to Turkey!” Miguel says.
“Me too!” Timoteo says.
“Sorry, boys,” Johnny says, giving Timoteo a wink. “Only one slot open at the moment.”
“Oh,” Miguel says, taking out his phone again. “Only Val gets to go to Turkey.”
“This entire discussion is premature,” Patrece says. “We are indeed short-handed and in need of assistance after the loss of Umberto. However, both Val and her mother will need to consider the matter, of which I am personally quite unconvinced. Val must still fulfill her schoolwork and other obligations, and it may be that this difficult time is not optimal for an undertaking as intensive as an internship.”
“Yes, it is a hard time,” Mami says. My skin tightens, and I’m not sure if it’s the stress of Mami depending on me or having to be a space ambassador or just all the things.
Wasala leans toward my mother and says, “Or perhaps working at the Institute could help Val to process her grief and better understand the powerful legacy her uncle has left behind.” She must be reading my mother’s mind. Reading my thoughts is one thing, but I don’t want her using her telepathy to manipulate my mother.
Mami stares at her plate. “Bueno, if she keeps up with school …”
“Um,” says Timoteo, “if you guys need an intern, don’t you think, like, the Harvard poli-sci major might be a bit more useful than a high school student?”
Johnny smacks his teeth. “Don’t underestimate your sister, Timsito. She’s got skills.”
“And yet,” Patrece says, “Timoteo is correct in noting her lack of experience.”
It’s overwhelming. Everyone arguing about me right in front of me, all the double-meanings, my family not even knowing what the conversation’s really about, Wasala reading people’s minds, Patrece totally against me for no reason …
“I don’t even know if I want to do it!” I snap. I push my chair away from the table and stomp into the kitchen with my half-empty plate. My appetite’s completely gone. I scrape the rest of my food into the trash and leave my dish to soak in the sink. This dinner was a terrible idea. I wish I could just end it now, but Mami is sure to insist everyone stay for dessert.
I walk out to the backyard and take a few deep breaths, try to let the cool night air calm me down. The stars are coming out. Looking at the stars used to make me feel wonder at the possibility of what might be out there. But now the stars have a new, weighty reality to them. Those three aliens inside are all from those stars. Umberto has been to those stars. The idea of going there, going out into the Galaxy like Umberto did would be … amazing. And terrifying.
Behind me, someone clears their throat. I turn around and see Patrece, holding up two small bowls of rice pudding. “I told your mother I’d like to have a word with you about your ‘internship,’ and she suggested I bring you dessert.”
“I’m not really hungry,” I say.
Patrece holds up one of the bowls, balancing it on her long fingers. “And this is not really food for me.” She sets the two bowls down on the back stoop and pulls a small silver cylinder out of her briefcase. “Let’s dispense with pretense and discuss this in private.”
She presses the cylinder, and it projects a gradient of gentle blue all around us, like we’re standing inside a screensaver—another holosphere, I guess. Standing in the middle of the blue, where Patrece just was, is a giant greyish-white stick insect standing upright. Her body is a long stalk, with three spindly legs and two long arms that almost reach the ground. Her face is noseless, hairless, and lipless, but has two eye-stalks that extend upward and wriggle like antennae. Two penny-sized holes in the sides of her thorax heave in and out like gills. Her physiology is even more amazing than Wasala’s. Instinctively, I reach out, curious what her skin feels like. Patrece responds with a series of abrupt whistles. Just like with Wasala, a translation follows, her mouth eerily still, like a movie where the sound track is off sync. “Never touch me without permission.”
I pull back my hand. “I’m sorry, Patrece.” Her spindly limbs almost look like icicles. I remember her cold hand at the wake. Looking like a pile of giant icicles would be useful camouflage in an icy climate. “Your planet’s colder than Earth, isn’t it?”
Patrece lets out more whistles. “Umberto was correct that you’re a quick study, if nothing else. Yes, Terra is quite hot and humid for my taste, among other shortcomings. And my real name is Pash-Ti. It was inappropriate of Johnny and Wasala to speak to you without me. Allow me to offer a more realistic assessment of your situation. Hosh is on the brink of war, and it was only thanks to Umberto’s skillful mediation that there was a slim possibility of peace. It’s true that you’re the appointee to be the next ambassador of Earth, but there’s no reason you must accept the position. If you do, your inexperience would doom any prospect of renegotiating the treaty. There is an alternative candidate who is far more prepared.”
“Would that be you?” I say.
Pash-Ti’s blowholes let out a high-pitched screech, like the whistle of a demanding tea kettle, which gets translated as laughter. “The likelihood of you asking that question is inversely proportional to the depth of your knowledge. Only a Terran can represent Earth. That is the logic, what little of it there is, behind the politically dubious system of appointed representatives for primitive worlds. My only interest is assuring that this sector of the Galaxy is not plunged into chaos simply because a young girl from an Atomic world has been placed in a situation far beyond her ken.”
“You’re not like Johnny or Wasala,” I say. “You act like you’re the ambassador’s boss.”
“My formal title is Observer of Earth. The ambassador has authority over the embassy, but the Observer of a primitive world tracks its progress for the Interstellar Council.”
“So you’re kind of our babysitter.”
A few soft, low whistles. “That metaphor would not be entirely inaccurate.”
With long, spindly white fingers, Pash-Ti pulls a small cube out of her briefcase. The air above the cube lights up with a string of glowing words. “Sign this document and you need not concern yourself with these matters. You can return to your life, finish high school, and enjoy the final years of your youth.”
The words are English, followed by a column of unfamiliar characters—several different types of characters, maybe three or four translations. “I, Valeria Vega, hereby resign and waive my responsibilities and privileges as ambassador of Earth, now and forevermore. In so doing, I understand that the alternate shall immediately assume the title …” It goes on about all the responsibilities being waived and the maintenance of strict confidentiality.
“Standard language of interstellar law,” Pash-Ti says. “You need not concern yourself with the details. You may sign with your thumbprint or standard Terran signature, as you prefer.”
But I’ve already read it, and two details do concern me. The first is the word resign, and the second is that if I sign it, I’m not just giving up being ambassador for now, but forever. “I’m already the ambassador,” I whisper. My breath is short, as if the air were shallow.
Pash-Ti adjusts her weight, leaning back on her third leg. “Technically, the title passed to you at the moment of Umberto’s death.”
I stare up at Pash-Ti’s face, at her eyestalks that are two feet higher than my eyes, at her greyish-white skin. I wonder if it’s actually skin or more of an exoskeleton. I felt overwhelmed when Johnny and Wasala first told me I was supposed to be ambassador of the entire planet, but Pash-Ti’s smug smack-down almost makes me want to do it. That, plus seeing her in her real form, and Wasala in hers, and learning there are Synthetics like Johnny—it all makes me want to see what’s out there, to be part of this secret Galaxy that made up so much of tío Umberto’s life.
Before I can say anything, Johnny and Wasala burst into the blue gradient surrounding us. Johnny points at the holographic words hovering between Pash-Ti and me. “I knew it! Really, P.? Ten minutes with our new ambassador and you’ve got her resignation letter out?”
“This is so rude,” Wasala says in clicks and chirps, now back in her true furry form. “This is exactly why Johnny and I went to her without you.”
Pash-Ti steps forward on her front leg and leans toward Wasala, towering over her even more than in their human guises. “It’s my role to recruit the new ambassador. It was you who violated protocol.”
“Ah, you were dragging your feet like a Centarian sandslug,” Johnny says.
These three alien diplomats are arguing like my brothers. “What’s up with you three?” I say. “Shouldn’t you, like, be on the same page about this?”
“Indeed,” Pash-Ti says. “We are divided on this matter because my colleagues—and Umberto before his tragic fate—failed to see that you are not ready for this. You are a child. The only reason you’re even eligible to be ambassador is because the protocols of the Terran embassy were enacted hundreds of years ago, at a time when the average human life expectancy was barely 37 years and a female your age would in all likelihood have already been married off like property. Your dubious appointment is one of history’s odd accidents.”
I can’t argue with anything Pash-Ti is saying, but the way she’s tearing me down makes me want to find some hole in her argument. “So how come the law is still the same? If the age cutoff is obsolete, why haven’t they changed it?”
Pash-Ti laughs again, that harsh whistle followed by recorded laughter. “Because no one has bothered to update it. Because not one real ambassador in the Interstellar Assembly cares one iota about anything on this backwater world of yours.”
“Age schmage,” Johnny says. “She’s as ready as any Terran can be.”
Wasala strides toward Pash-Ti on four legs, and for a moment they look like two creatures in the most interesting zoo ever. “Her mind is uniquely malleable. That will be a great asset as mediator.”
Pash-Ti lets out a series of shrill whistles. “I acknowledge she has potential. That’s why her heart rate remains unaltered even though she’s in conversation with three alien beings, a realignment of her understanding of reality that would overwhelm the average Terran. But her malleability is also a deficiency. Imagine how the Etoscans will manipulate her around the Tumasra issue. How the Levinti will make an intellectual snack of her! And how will this child handle the next inevitable attack from Hosh-Unam Front?”
“Okay,” I say, “I’m not a kid. And I’m getting tired of all the conversations about me when I’m right here in the same, um, holo-sphere thing.” But I have to admit Pash-Ti makes it all sound overwhelming, especially the string of names I don’t know, and the thing about an inevitable attack. This is all way over my head.
Pash-Ti presses something on the cube, and the projection of letters disappears. She extends a long white arm toward me. I’m not sure what to do, so I hold out my palm and take it. “It would be helpful if you sign the document.” Pash-Ti says. “Or you may simply do nothing—you seem to be rather good at that—and at midnight tomorrow I may appoint an alternate on the basis of your absence.”
The cube still has a slight glow to it—which reminds me of something that happened at the wake. I put it in my pocket and stare up at Pash-Ti’s eyestalks. “What did you put in Umberto’s casket?”
Pash-Ti’s boney white shoulders hunch forward. “What do you mean?”
“You were fiddling with his body, and then there was this green glow on his neck.”
“WTF?” Johnny says. “Did you for real inject Umberto’s body with a nanoprobe?”
Pash-Ti snaps back at Johnny with a shrill whistle. “I was merely looking for evidence of what or who may have been involved in Umberto’s murder.”
Murder? The blue gradient around me abruptly gives me vertigo, like all of a sudden I’ve fallen into the sky.
Wasala reaches toward me with an upper claw. “I’m so sorry, dear. Pash-Ti is so abrupt. We don’t even know for certain if Umberto was murdered.”
“You expect her to be ambassador, and you haven’t even told her this?” Pash-Ti says. “Of course he was murdered. He was doing his job too well. The Etoscans, the Levinti, the Hosh-Unam Front—they all want war! And his skillful mediating was making war look just as unreasonable as it is. That’s why he was killed.”
“But he died in his bedroom.” I say, wishing I could bargain my way back to normalcy. “They said it was a heart attack. How could he have been murdered—by aliens?”
“I hate to say it,” Johnny says. “But Pash-Ti’s probably right. It was probably a nano-sassin, delivering a poison designed to mimic a human heart attack.”
Wasala lifts her long snout. “It would have to be quite advanced to get past the ISS security protocols.”
“Since the murder took place on a primitive world, of alleged natural causes,” Pash-Ti says, “there will be no investigation.”
“So,” Johnny says, “your nanoprobe find anything?”
Pash-Ti lets out a few short whistles. “Unfortunately, the assassin left no trace.”
I’m listening to everything they say, the alien sounds and the English translations—but all I can think is—if someone killed tío Umberto, that means he didn’t just die. It means someone took him from us.
Wasala gently scratches my arm with her upper claw. “Yes, they took him from us all.” She turns to Johnny and Pash-Ti. “I think we’ve overwhelmed this poor Terran enough for one day.”
Pash-Ti de-activates the holo-sphere. The blue is replaced by our ordinary backyard, and she and Wasala return to their human disguises. “Simply sign the resignation letter. You needn’t concern yourself with these matters.”
Johnny sidles up to me as we walk toward the back door of the house. “Or you could call me tomorrow and get off this hunk of rock. My Earth phone number is EXCELSIOR-7. Don’t forget the C. Call me any time. I mean that for reals—sleep is boring.”
Pash-Ti harrumphs as she walks inside, and I wonder what harrumph sounds like in her real language of whistles. “I don’t even know how to decide this,” I say.
“I totes get that,” Johnny says, “but we’ve got to meet with the Levinti ambassador in less than thirty-six hours. So you need to get in gear by midnight tomorrow to make it in time.”
As Johnny follows Pash-Ti indoors, Wasala reaches up and touches my face. I feel her claw beneath the hologram. “I know this is all overwhelming, even for a mind as open as yours. Interstellar politics, a secret history, and murder of a family member are a lot to digest. It’s hard to know what to make of it all. But your uncle knew. He trusted you more than anyone in the Galaxy. He knew you were the one to finish what he started, to bring peace to my world.”
I wonder if Uncle Umberto really thought that. I wish I could talk to him. He’s the only person I can imagine helping me figure all this out, and now he’s gone, leaving a mess of a Galaxy behind him.
