Fiction River, page 17
***
The corpses proved dicey in and of themselves. It took nearly 24 hours to remove them from their resting place in the clearing, and get them to the orbiting ship. Several of the branches had worked their way into the corpses and had to be dislodged. Of course, no one wanted to do that without the Eaufasse’s permission, and no one quite knew how to ask for it.
Plus no one knew if it were possible to carry bodies out of the place where they had died. If this were a Disty-run area, the problems would be extreme. The Disty believed that bodies contaminated everything, and had elaborate rituals for dealing with them.
The Eaufasse didn’t seem to have problems with bodies, but the translations weren’t really clear on anything. She was guessing, and sometimes not even guessing on much evidence.
At least she knew the shuttle landing points were safe. An actual diplomat had handled that negotiation years ago, when the Eaufasse started talking about joining the Earth Alliance. Theoretically, the diplomat’s translator had actually spoken Fasse fluently, although she always had her doubts about someone’s ability to speak well with a new culture.
The Eaufasse had a space traffic system, but not a physical port. Instead, they had landing areas near all of their major population centers.
Gomez had landed her two shuttles at the area nearest the bodies. She had brought two shuttles because she had known there might be difficulties. The shuttle landing area had been some distance from that clearing, and the group had had to walk, because humans didn’t fit in Eaufasse transports and the Eaufasse wouldn’t let Gomez use her own transports.
Walking back with the bodies, even bagged, had been difficult at best.
Gomez was happy that Rainger and the collection team handled that little mess. She had a little mess of her own.
She needed to coordinate everything, from the diplomats to the arrival of the Earth Alliance Military Guards. She also needed someone who spoke both Standard and the Eaufasse’s language well. Fortunately, that person wasn’t too far away.
Unfortunately, that person wasn’t really a person at all.
Uzven was Peyti, another scrawny alien type with long limbs and branch-like fingers. The Peyti had filtered their way deep into the Earth Alliance, mostly in a legal capacity, because they loved interactions, law, and rules—especially bending them through legal methods. So it surprised Gomez to have a Peyti translator, although, when she thought of it, it made some kind of sense: the Peyti had to talk with others as well.
The problem was that Peyti were fragile. They didn’t breathe oxygen, and so always wore a filter over their faces, providing them whatever the hell it was that they breathed. They also didn’t eat the same things humans did. Peyti tired easily—probably because they were operating in a hostile environment all of the time.
And, what annoyed her the most was that she could never tell their gender. It shouldn’t have annoyed her, but it did. She wanted to know what she was dealing with, even if it had no bearing on the circumstance.
The Peyti were unusually reticent about gender. It was considered offensive to ask. The names certainly didn’t give a clue either. This one, who arrived by shuttle from some nearby station, was named Uzven, which sounded just like every other Peyti name that she had ever heard.
She didn’t have much interaction with it when it first arrived because she placed it on the link with the collection team, Rainger, and the Eaufasse translator. But she would need the Peyti soon. She needed to figure out what was going on with these corpses.
She needed as much information as possible before the diplomats and military arrived. Her experience showed her that they often screwed things up.
No available diplomatic unit was near Epriccom. And she wasn’t going to let the Earth Alliance Military Guards anywhere near Epriccom until she had diplomats and translators in place.
Her team would be alone here for weeks, maybe even months. She had sent for help, but as yet had no idea when it would arrive.
Until then, her investigative team was on its own.
She had been alone on the Frontier many times before. She had done well in most of those instances, so well that she had the best team and the best resources.
If she couldn’t handle the situation on Epriccom, no one could.
***
Gomez’s ship, the EAFS Stanley, was one of the flag ships in the FSS fleet. The ship had all of the bells and whistles the squad could ask for, from the latest weapons’ systems to the best forensic labs to several prisoner wings. Not to mention an entire section designed for non-standard passengers.
She had set up the non-standard section to Peyti normal, hoping she wouldn’t need it for anything else during this part of the trip. But she was less concerned with the non-standard section than she was with the forensic lab. She wanted to find out what the heck was going on with these corpses and why they caused the Emir to send for the FSS in the first place.
The forensic lab was the most important part of the ship. In fact, a well-stocked lab had become one of the most important parts of all FSS ships. Often the problems that marshals ran into could be resolved with the right kind of forensic analysis. Or they could at least be understood.
The Peyti was in the forensic lab, along with Lashante Simiaar, the best forensic director in the entire FSS. Together, they watched the last of the corpse removal on a gigantic flat screen. The Peyti wore a human-style business suit, which had the effect of making it look like a child wearing its parents clothing.
The illusion wasn’t helped by Simiaar’s presence. She looked large next to the Peyti. She was a tall, broad woman with extra flesh that held a surprising amount of muscle. She could lift and move and carry better than almost anyone on the team, but she was no good in a fight, and she probably hadn’t run anywhere in the past fifteen years.
“What a mess,” she said to Gomez without looking at her.
“Yeah,” Gomez said, knowing that neither of them was referring to the corpses. Both women knew that something was amiss here, something they didn’t understand yet. “May I borrow Uzven now?”
Simiaar sighed. “I guess. But when those corpses get in here, I’m going to need Uzven back. I don’t know what they got contaminated with, and so I need to ask the Eaufasse a lot of questions.”
She had already set up part of the forensic wing as a quarantined area, just in case the dead had contracted something or been infected with something that wasn’t obvious to the collection team.
Gomez beckoned Uzven to move with her to a different part of the lab. Gomez wanted to keep Uzven here in case Collection had more questions for it.
“First,” Gomez said, “I assume you understand the Eaufasse since you speak their language. Maybe you can answer a question for me.”
Uzven put two fingers against the breathing mask that covered the lower part of its face. It adjusted the mask as if the mask were uncomfortable, then said, “The assumption isn’t a good one. We have just begun to understand the Eaufasse. Our language is more compatible with theirs than yours is. That is why I am somewhat fluent.”
“Somewhat fluent?” Gomez didn’t like the sound of that. She had asked for someone fluent.
“I am as fluent as anyone in the Earth Alliance,” Uzven said. “But that is not saying much. I understand quite a bit of Fasse, the Eaufasse language, but I do not have much jargon for technical details.”
“Like murder?”
“Death is a universal,” Uzven said. “However, I am not entirely sure of what constitutes murder to the Eaufasse. Not that it matters here. We do not have Eaufasse corpses. We have human ones. I will keep the discussion focused on the human side of the equation as much as I can.”
“I don’t want you to make unilateral decisions,” Gomez said. “If I have a question that needs an answer, I expect you to ask it. And if you cannot get an answer from the Eaufasse, I don’t want you trying to find a way to force one. I want to know that they didn’t answer my question. This isn’t a court of law, so I don’t necessarily need something on the record. I need information, and if we can’t get that information without a cadre of diplomats working the case, then I need to know that as well.”
“I understand,” Uzven said. “I am at your service.”
Gomez thought she heard sarcasm. It wouldn’t surprise her. Peyti always thought themselves superior to humans. Working for one had to be difficult at best. But Uzven had signed up to work with the Earth Alliance, so it didn’t get to choose who its boss was on any particular job.
“We will be speaking to my initial contact with the Eaufasse,” Gomez said. “If we need to speak to someone of higher rank or with different knowledge, then we’ll do that.”
Uzven nodded, always a strange movement from a Peyti. The mask didn’t really bend, so the head moved without any mask movement.
With Uzven’s help, Gomez contacted the Eaufasse. She did not have this conversation through an audio link, but used both audio and visual tools, so that the Eaufasse could examine her body movements. She didn’t move a lot, though, just in case some movement might be offensive.
Still, the Eaufasse had had interactions with humans before, so they were somewhat familiar with the way that humans did things. She stood as casually as she could when she began the conversation.
The Eaufasse had blacked out the area behind it, so she couldn’t see where it was standing. The Eaufasse looked like it floated against a black background, unmoored by anything. Privacy concerns? An unwillingness to let humans or the Earth Alliance see what the interior of Eaufasse offices looked like? Or something else entirely?
It didn’t matter, since the interior of an Eaufasse building or even the exterior of an Eaufasse street was not her concern. She didn’t care where the Eaufasse was so long as it talked with her.
She thanked the Eaufasse for the initial contact, and confirmed that she would be removing the enclave. She also told them that it would take time, since the enclave was so big she couldn’t do it without a larger force. She asked for permission to bring a larger group of humans onto Epriccom for the sole purpose of removing the human enclave. She promised that the force would leave as soon as the enclave left.
The Eaufasse said it understood and had been expecting such a thing. It did not offer any help from its own people which, Gomez knew, was a good thing. She had no idea what that enclave would do if it saw a group of Eaufasse approaching it. She certainly didn’t want weaponry fired at the Eaufasse on their own land, which—she knew—was a possibility. That enclave was defended against the outside, including those branch things. The enclave would probably defend itself against any intruders as well.
She didn’t want to be the person who inadvertently started a war between some humans and the Eaufasse.
After dancing around the topic for a while, she finally asked the question that had been the real point behind this conversation. She always began pointed and possibly offensive questions with an apology first, having learned the hard way that translators did not add politeness in the cultures that required it, but always subtracted politeness when it didn’t serve the needed purpose.
“Please forgive the intrusive nature of the remainder of the conversation,” she said. “But I need information to help my people understand what has happened here, so that we might remove this enclave quickly and easily.”
Uzven translated, its fingers tapping against its suit jacket.
“It seems like the enclave has been on Epriccom for quite a while,” Gomez said. “Did something recently bring it to your attention?”
Uzven continued to translate, then looked at Gomez, clearly waiting. Then the Uzven bowed its head and closed its eyes, listening.
It had not been doing a simultaneous translation from the beginning of the conversation. Uzven did not think itself fluent enough, which worried Gomez.
This entire situation worried Gomez.
Uzven translated after the Eaufasse finished. Gomez wondered how much Uzven missed just by waiting.
“The ambassador said the enclave applied for permission to build on the land sixteen years ago. Permission was granted with minimal fuss. This is a remote part of the Eaufasse nation, and so the Eaufasse do not pay it much mind. In fact, they did not hear anything more from the enclave until it started attacking itself.”
Gomez cursed silently. She wished she spoke Fasse. There were so many areas that could be misinterpreted in just that one little reply.
But she was a veteran at this. She’d had more first- or second- or third-contacts than most diplomats in the Earth Alliance.
“Okay,” she said. “Before you translate for me, answer me a few questions. Tell them that’s what you’ll be doing, for clarification.”
Uzven spoke rapidly to the Eaufasse. It raised its arms and wrapped them over its shoulders, which made Gomez look away. She had no idea if that was a relaxed position or if it was the same as nodding in her culture.
“Proceed,” Uzven said to her.
Proceed. Jeez. She didn’t like its tone, but Uzven was all she had. “The Eaufasse I’m speaking with is an ambassador?”
“That is how it identifies itself,” Uzven said.
Crap. That created all kinds of problems for her. Technically, she was supposed to interact with a counterpart, someone of equal rank—if, of course, the alien/native culture had a ranked system. Conversations with ambassadors were supposed to be conducted by diplomats.
Still, this ambassador was her contact, so she could argue that she had no choice about who she talked to. And of course, the argument would be true.
“Do you understand the governmental rankings within the Eaufasse?” she asked.
“Not entirely, no,” Uzven said. “If you are asking me if you are conducting an inquiry above your pay grade, then I cannot answer that. For all I know, all Eaufasse who deal with non-Eaufasse in minor matters are called ‘ambassador.’ Remember that we are filtering through two languages here, one imperfectly known.”
Two. It took her a moment to understand what Uzven meant. It meant that it was translating into Peytin first before translating into Standard. Just great. Yet another way to add in misunderstandings.
“I want to double-check the number,” she said. “Sixteen years? Not six?”
“Sixteen,” Uzven said in a tone that definitely showed it was insulted that she checked.
“Because the Epriccom had just applied for Earth Alliance membership sixteen years ago. We hadn’t had much contact with any of the species here before that,” she said.
She knew this because she had checked it before she had gotten here. It took a minimum of twenty-five years from application to approval to become a full Earth Alliance member. And that was if everything ran smoothly.
“Sixteen,” Uzven said again.
“Damn,” Gomez muttered. This group of humans was even more private than she imagined.
Uzven did not move, and neither did the Eaufasse on her screen. The ambassador. If it was a real, high-ranking ambassador, then she was screwing up by holding it up—at least under Earth Alliance protocol.
“All right,” she said softly to Uzven. “Let’s continue.”
Uzven bowed a little, then turned slightly.
“Forgive me, Mr. Ambassador,” she said. “Mister” and “Sir” in Standard had become gender-neutral. She hoped Uzven translated them that way. “I still need clarifications of some of what you’ve told me. Did the enclave predate your application to the Earth Alliance?”
Uzven dutifully translated. The Eaufasse’s arms came down to the position they had been in before. Its eyes shone whitely for a moment. Gomez had no idea what that meant.
“Why is that important?” The Eaufasse asked. The question sounded defensive, but she wasn’t sure if that was the Eaufasse’s defensiveness or Uzven’s.
She was going to act as if every emotion belonged to the Eaufasse. “Sir, I am trying to understand the enclave from a human-to-human perspective. If the enclave’s arrival predates our contact with you, this tells me that the enclave was looking for some place not affiliated with the Alliance to form its community.”
That whiteness flared, then disappeared. The ambassador’s arms flopped over its shoulders again, elbows—if that’s what they were—pointing at her. She wasn’t even going to try to understand the body language. It unsettled her, and she didn’t want to be unsettled.
“Their arrival predates the application by six months,” Uzven said. “And before you ask me, the ambassador is referring to months as the Earth Alliance calculates them.”
“Thank you,” Gomez said, and before she could ask her next question, the ambassador continued.
“It was their arrival that made the Eaufasse and the others on Epriccom aware of the Earth Alliance. It was in the researching of the humans that Epriccom decided that joining the Alliance would be a good idea.”
That was interesting.
“Why?” she asked.
“The Earth Alliance is a trade and protection organization, facilitating business throughout several sectors. It would bring much needed revenue to Epriccom while providing many opportunities to the various local groups here.”
Gomez almost laughed in surprise and relief. The ambassador was selling her on Epriccom’s final entry into the Earth Alliance. As she realized that, she relaxed slightly.
“So,” she said, “the enclave have been good neighbors until they—as you said—started attacking themselves.”
“Slang,” Uzven muttered loud enough for her to hear. Then it tilted its head slightly—a Peyti sign of disgust—and translated for her. Apparently it didn’t approve of “good neighbors,” which she didn’t consider slang at all.
The Eaufasse ambassador brought its arms down again. She wished now that she had left this on audio. The movements were distracting. It turned its head away from her for just a moment, and she suddenly wished she could see if it was alone. She doubted it was. She wondered if it had another translator or if it had someone of higher rank just off camera.
Then it turned toward her and spoke.
The corpses proved dicey in and of themselves. It took nearly 24 hours to remove them from their resting place in the clearing, and get them to the orbiting ship. Several of the branches had worked their way into the corpses and had to be dislodged. Of course, no one wanted to do that without the Eaufasse’s permission, and no one quite knew how to ask for it.
Plus no one knew if it were possible to carry bodies out of the place where they had died. If this were a Disty-run area, the problems would be extreme. The Disty believed that bodies contaminated everything, and had elaborate rituals for dealing with them.
The Eaufasse didn’t seem to have problems with bodies, but the translations weren’t really clear on anything. She was guessing, and sometimes not even guessing on much evidence.
At least she knew the shuttle landing points were safe. An actual diplomat had handled that negotiation years ago, when the Eaufasse started talking about joining the Earth Alliance. Theoretically, the diplomat’s translator had actually spoken Fasse fluently, although she always had her doubts about someone’s ability to speak well with a new culture.
The Eaufasse had a space traffic system, but not a physical port. Instead, they had landing areas near all of their major population centers.
Gomez had landed her two shuttles at the area nearest the bodies. She had brought two shuttles because she had known there might be difficulties. The shuttle landing area had been some distance from that clearing, and the group had had to walk, because humans didn’t fit in Eaufasse transports and the Eaufasse wouldn’t let Gomez use her own transports.
Walking back with the bodies, even bagged, had been difficult at best.
Gomez was happy that Rainger and the collection team handled that little mess. She had a little mess of her own.
She needed to coordinate everything, from the diplomats to the arrival of the Earth Alliance Military Guards. She also needed someone who spoke both Standard and the Eaufasse’s language well. Fortunately, that person wasn’t too far away.
Unfortunately, that person wasn’t really a person at all.
Uzven was Peyti, another scrawny alien type with long limbs and branch-like fingers. The Peyti had filtered their way deep into the Earth Alliance, mostly in a legal capacity, because they loved interactions, law, and rules—especially bending them through legal methods. So it surprised Gomez to have a Peyti translator, although, when she thought of it, it made some kind of sense: the Peyti had to talk with others as well.
The problem was that Peyti were fragile. They didn’t breathe oxygen, and so always wore a filter over their faces, providing them whatever the hell it was that they breathed. They also didn’t eat the same things humans did. Peyti tired easily—probably because they were operating in a hostile environment all of the time.
And, what annoyed her the most was that she could never tell their gender. It shouldn’t have annoyed her, but it did. She wanted to know what she was dealing with, even if it had no bearing on the circumstance.
The Peyti were unusually reticent about gender. It was considered offensive to ask. The names certainly didn’t give a clue either. This one, who arrived by shuttle from some nearby station, was named Uzven, which sounded just like every other Peyti name that she had ever heard.
She didn’t have much interaction with it when it first arrived because she placed it on the link with the collection team, Rainger, and the Eaufasse translator. But she would need the Peyti soon. She needed to figure out what was going on with these corpses.
She needed as much information as possible before the diplomats and military arrived. Her experience showed her that they often screwed things up.
No available diplomatic unit was near Epriccom. And she wasn’t going to let the Earth Alliance Military Guards anywhere near Epriccom until she had diplomats and translators in place.
Her team would be alone here for weeks, maybe even months. She had sent for help, but as yet had no idea when it would arrive.
Until then, her investigative team was on its own.
She had been alone on the Frontier many times before. She had done well in most of those instances, so well that she had the best team and the best resources.
If she couldn’t handle the situation on Epriccom, no one could.
***
Gomez’s ship, the EAFS Stanley, was one of the flag ships in the FSS fleet. The ship had all of the bells and whistles the squad could ask for, from the latest weapons’ systems to the best forensic labs to several prisoner wings. Not to mention an entire section designed for non-standard passengers.
She had set up the non-standard section to Peyti normal, hoping she wouldn’t need it for anything else during this part of the trip. But she was less concerned with the non-standard section than she was with the forensic lab. She wanted to find out what the heck was going on with these corpses and why they caused the Emir to send for the FSS in the first place.
The forensic lab was the most important part of the ship. In fact, a well-stocked lab had become one of the most important parts of all FSS ships. Often the problems that marshals ran into could be resolved with the right kind of forensic analysis. Or they could at least be understood.
The Peyti was in the forensic lab, along with Lashante Simiaar, the best forensic director in the entire FSS. Together, they watched the last of the corpse removal on a gigantic flat screen. The Peyti wore a human-style business suit, which had the effect of making it look like a child wearing its parents clothing.
The illusion wasn’t helped by Simiaar’s presence. She looked large next to the Peyti. She was a tall, broad woman with extra flesh that held a surprising amount of muscle. She could lift and move and carry better than almost anyone on the team, but she was no good in a fight, and she probably hadn’t run anywhere in the past fifteen years.
“What a mess,” she said to Gomez without looking at her.
“Yeah,” Gomez said, knowing that neither of them was referring to the corpses. Both women knew that something was amiss here, something they didn’t understand yet. “May I borrow Uzven now?”
Simiaar sighed. “I guess. But when those corpses get in here, I’m going to need Uzven back. I don’t know what they got contaminated with, and so I need to ask the Eaufasse a lot of questions.”
She had already set up part of the forensic wing as a quarantined area, just in case the dead had contracted something or been infected with something that wasn’t obvious to the collection team.
Gomez beckoned Uzven to move with her to a different part of the lab. Gomez wanted to keep Uzven here in case Collection had more questions for it.
“First,” Gomez said, “I assume you understand the Eaufasse since you speak their language. Maybe you can answer a question for me.”
Uzven put two fingers against the breathing mask that covered the lower part of its face. It adjusted the mask as if the mask were uncomfortable, then said, “The assumption isn’t a good one. We have just begun to understand the Eaufasse. Our language is more compatible with theirs than yours is. That is why I am somewhat fluent.”
“Somewhat fluent?” Gomez didn’t like the sound of that. She had asked for someone fluent.
“I am as fluent as anyone in the Earth Alliance,” Uzven said. “But that is not saying much. I understand quite a bit of Fasse, the Eaufasse language, but I do not have much jargon for technical details.”
“Like murder?”
“Death is a universal,” Uzven said. “However, I am not entirely sure of what constitutes murder to the Eaufasse. Not that it matters here. We do not have Eaufasse corpses. We have human ones. I will keep the discussion focused on the human side of the equation as much as I can.”
“I don’t want you to make unilateral decisions,” Gomez said. “If I have a question that needs an answer, I expect you to ask it. And if you cannot get an answer from the Eaufasse, I don’t want you trying to find a way to force one. I want to know that they didn’t answer my question. This isn’t a court of law, so I don’t necessarily need something on the record. I need information, and if we can’t get that information without a cadre of diplomats working the case, then I need to know that as well.”
“I understand,” Uzven said. “I am at your service.”
Gomez thought she heard sarcasm. It wouldn’t surprise her. Peyti always thought themselves superior to humans. Working for one had to be difficult at best. But Uzven had signed up to work with the Earth Alliance, so it didn’t get to choose who its boss was on any particular job.
“We will be speaking to my initial contact with the Eaufasse,” Gomez said. “If we need to speak to someone of higher rank or with different knowledge, then we’ll do that.”
Uzven nodded, always a strange movement from a Peyti. The mask didn’t really bend, so the head moved without any mask movement.
With Uzven’s help, Gomez contacted the Eaufasse. She did not have this conversation through an audio link, but used both audio and visual tools, so that the Eaufasse could examine her body movements. She didn’t move a lot, though, just in case some movement might be offensive.
Still, the Eaufasse had had interactions with humans before, so they were somewhat familiar with the way that humans did things. She stood as casually as she could when she began the conversation.
The Eaufasse had blacked out the area behind it, so she couldn’t see where it was standing. The Eaufasse looked like it floated against a black background, unmoored by anything. Privacy concerns? An unwillingness to let humans or the Earth Alliance see what the interior of Eaufasse offices looked like? Or something else entirely?
It didn’t matter, since the interior of an Eaufasse building or even the exterior of an Eaufasse street was not her concern. She didn’t care where the Eaufasse was so long as it talked with her.
She thanked the Eaufasse for the initial contact, and confirmed that she would be removing the enclave. She also told them that it would take time, since the enclave was so big she couldn’t do it without a larger force. She asked for permission to bring a larger group of humans onto Epriccom for the sole purpose of removing the human enclave. She promised that the force would leave as soon as the enclave left.
The Eaufasse said it understood and had been expecting such a thing. It did not offer any help from its own people which, Gomez knew, was a good thing. She had no idea what that enclave would do if it saw a group of Eaufasse approaching it. She certainly didn’t want weaponry fired at the Eaufasse on their own land, which—she knew—was a possibility. That enclave was defended against the outside, including those branch things. The enclave would probably defend itself against any intruders as well.
She didn’t want to be the person who inadvertently started a war between some humans and the Eaufasse.
After dancing around the topic for a while, she finally asked the question that had been the real point behind this conversation. She always began pointed and possibly offensive questions with an apology first, having learned the hard way that translators did not add politeness in the cultures that required it, but always subtracted politeness when it didn’t serve the needed purpose.
“Please forgive the intrusive nature of the remainder of the conversation,” she said. “But I need information to help my people understand what has happened here, so that we might remove this enclave quickly and easily.”
Uzven translated, its fingers tapping against its suit jacket.
“It seems like the enclave has been on Epriccom for quite a while,” Gomez said. “Did something recently bring it to your attention?”
Uzven continued to translate, then looked at Gomez, clearly waiting. Then the Uzven bowed its head and closed its eyes, listening.
It had not been doing a simultaneous translation from the beginning of the conversation. Uzven did not think itself fluent enough, which worried Gomez.
This entire situation worried Gomez.
Uzven translated after the Eaufasse finished. Gomez wondered how much Uzven missed just by waiting.
“The ambassador said the enclave applied for permission to build on the land sixteen years ago. Permission was granted with minimal fuss. This is a remote part of the Eaufasse nation, and so the Eaufasse do not pay it much mind. In fact, they did not hear anything more from the enclave until it started attacking itself.”
Gomez cursed silently. She wished she spoke Fasse. There were so many areas that could be misinterpreted in just that one little reply.
But she was a veteran at this. She’d had more first- or second- or third-contacts than most diplomats in the Earth Alliance.
“Okay,” she said. “Before you translate for me, answer me a few questions. Tell them that’s what you’ll be doing, for clarification.”
Uzven spoke rapidly to the Eaufasse. It raised its arms and wrapped them over its shoulders, which made Gomez look away. She had no idea if that was a relaxed position or if it was the same as nodding in her culture.
“Proceed,” Uzven said to her.
Proceed. Jeez. She didn’t like its tone, but Uzven was all she had. “The Eaufasse I’m speaking with is an ambassador?”
“That is how it identifies itself,” Uzven said.
Crap. That created all kinds of problems for her. Technically, she was supposed to interact with a counterpart, someone of equal rank—if, of course, the alien/native culture had a ranked system. Conversations with ambassadors were supposed to be conducted by diplomats.
Still, this ambassador was her contact, so she could argue that she had no choice about who she talked to. And of course, the argument would be true.
“Do you understand the governmental rankings within the Eaufasse?” she asked.
“Not entirely, no,” Uzven said. “If you are asking me if you are conducting an inquiry above your pay grade, then I cannot answer that. For all I know, all Eaufasse who deal with non-Eaufasse in minor matters are called ‘ambassador.’ Remember that we are filtering through two languages here, one imperfectly known.”
Two. It took her a moment to understand what Uzven meant. It meant that it was translating into Peytin first before translating into Standard. Just great. Yet another way to add in misunderstandings.
“I want to double-check the number,” she said. “Sixteen years? Not six?”
“Sixteen,” Uzven said in a tone that definitely showed it was insulted that she checked.
“Because the Epriccom had just applied for Earth Alliance membership sixteen years ago. We hadn’t had much contact with any of the species here before that,” she said.
She knew this because she had checked it before she had gotten here. It took a minimum of twenty-five years from application to approval to become a full Earth Alliance member. And that was if everything ran smoothly.
“Sixteen,” Uzven said again.
“Damn,” Gomez muttered. This group of humans was even more private than she imagined.
Uzven did not move, and neither did the Eaufasse on her screen. The ambassador. If it was a real, high-ranking ambassador, then she was screwing up by holding it up—at least under Earth Alliance protocol.
“All right,” she said softly to Uzven. “Let’s continue.”
Uzven bowed a little, then turned slightly.
“Forgive me, Mr. Ambassador,” she said. “Mister” and “Sir” in Standard had become gender-neutral. She hoped Uzven translated them that way. “I still need clarifications of some of what you’ve told me. Did the enclave predate your application to the Earth Alliance?”
Uzven dutifully translated. The Eaufasse’s arms came down to the position they had been in before. Its eyes shone whitely for a moment. Gomez had no idea what that meant.
“Why is that important?” The Eaufasse asked. The question sounded defensive, but she wasn’t sure if that was the Eaufasse’s defensiveness or Uzven’s.
She was going to act as if every emotion belonged to the Eaufasse. “Sir, I am trying to understand the enclave from a human-to-human perspective. If the enclave’s arrival predates our contact with you, this tells me that the enclave was looking for some place not affiliated with the Alliance to form its community.”
That whiteness flared, then disappeared. The ambassador’s arms flopped over its shoulders again, elbows—if that’s what they were—pointing at her. She wasn’t even going to try to understand the body language. It unsettled her, and she didn’t want to be unsettled.
“Their arrival predates the application by six months,” Uzven said. “And before you ask me, the ambassador is referring to months as the Earth Alliance calculates them.”
“Thank you,” Gomez said, and before she could ask her next question, the ambassador continued.
“It was their arrival that made the Eaufasse and the others on Epriccom aware of the Earth Alliance. It was in the researching of the humans that Epriccom decided that joining the Alliance would be a good idea.”
That was interesting.
“Why?” she asked.
“The Earth Alliance is a trade and protection organization, facilitating business throughout several sectors. It would bring much needed revenue to Epriccom while providing many opportunities to the various local groups here.”
Gomez almost laughed in surprise and relief. The ambassador was selling her on Epriccom’s final entry into the Earth Alliance. As she realized that, she relaxed slightly.
“So,” she said, “the enclave have been good neighbors until they—as you said—started attacking themselves.”
“Slang,” Uzven muttered loud enough for her to hear. Then it tilted its head slightly—a Peyti sign of disgust—and translated for her. Apparently it didn’t approve of “good neighbors,” which she didn’t consider slang at all.
The Eaufasse ambassador brought its arms down again. She wished now that she had left this on audio. The movements were distracting. It turned its head away from her for just a moment, and she suddenly wished she could see if it was alone. She doubted it was. She wondered if it had another translator or if it had someone of higher rank just off camera.
Then it turned toward her and spoke.
