Ambassador (11 page)

“Subtle,” said Gabe. “Thanks, Protocol.”

He climbed down from the hills and approached the floating arrow.

An elaborate ball game unfolded over his head, played by flying and hovering ambassadors. It might have been an attempt to make a large and interactive map of several solar systems, or it might have been some kind of space soccer. No one used their hands to catch the ball, which made it look a bit like soccer—but they also avoided using their feet or wings or whatever limbs they happened to have. The players whacked the ball back and forth with the side of their hips. It looked difficult and painful.

A long line of other kids sat whispering together. Ripples of laughter ran up and down the line.
They're playing telephone,
Gabe realized.
That must be especially strange and hilarious with so many translations involved.

He approached the three kids beneath the big orange arrow. The arrow cloud dissipated as he drew near. Then he stopped, unsure how to introduce himself.

The tallest one, a girl, held a broken branch. The two smaller kids looked boyish. All three took turns plucking leaves, folding leaf-paper airplanes like the one Gabe had made earlier, and then throwing them. They spoke low, whispering to each other. All of them wore simple orange robes.

Gabe squinted, just for a moment, to see how they saw themselves. Their shapes shifted. The tall girl looked like an eel with an entire cat for a head. One of the smaller boys looked like an armadillo made out of jellyfish. The other one resembled a tangle of tree roots and elephant ears.

Gabe immediately regretted the squint. He opened his eyes wide and tried to forget about what he had just seen, tried to trust the translation in order to more comfortably communicate and introduce himself. He still felt awkward about barging up and saying hello—especially since one of these three kids might be trying to kill him.

The other ambassadors noticed him and all turned to stare.

Gabe held up one hand. He hoped the gesture translated well.

“Hello,” he said. “I'm Gabe.”

Are any of you surprised to see that I'm still alive?
he wondered.

The tall girl stepped forward, immediately taking charge as though she were the oldest as well as the biggest. Her hair trailed all the way down to the ground. “Hello. I'm Jir of the Builders and the Yards.” She pointed to one of the boys. “This is Ca'tth, Seventeenth in the Unbroken Line.”

Gabe wished he had used a more full and formal name to introduce himself.
Hello, everyone. I am Gabriel Sandro Fuentes of Terra. Or maybe Gabriel the Guardian of Lizard, Bird, and Fox. Except I had to abandon those three in Frankie's kitchen, so if that was my official role, then I've already failed it.

He nodded to Ca'tth and tried not to think of him as Jelly Armadillo.
I really shouldn't have squinted,
he thought.

Ca'tth said nothing. His translated appearance was completely bald, and his eyes shimmered strangely. The look he gave Gabe was wary, suspicious, and unwelcoming.

Jir of the Builders and the Yards pointed at the third ambassador.

“This is Ripe-Fruit-Dropped-in-Sunbaked-Mud-and-Left-to-Sit-Content. It's his child name. His scent will change after puberty, when he settles and puts down more permanent roots, and then his name will change with it. He goes by Ripe for short, and he might not really notice you if your species doesn't have a developed sense of smell or a memorably translated scent of your own. Don't be offended if he ignores you. He doesn't mean to be rude.”

“He's a
plant 
?” Gabe asked, surprised.

“He's flora, yes,” said Jir.

“Doesn't he mind tearing leaves off another plant?”

“No,” said Jir, politely annoyed. “This is a game. It's a translated plant. And I think he cooks and eats other plants, where he comes from.”

Ripe had messy hair that waved and twisted by itself. He folded a new leaf-paper airplane without acknowledging Gabe. It did seem more absentminded than rude.
I must not have a very memorable smell,
Gabe thought.

He remembered his mother's powerful sense of smell while she was pregnant with the twins. She could recognize family members by scent rather than sight or sound, so she became impossible to sneak up on. This
had seemed like a superpower to Gabe, like something she could've used to fight crime. He figured that detectives should
always
be pregnant, the better to sniff out evildoers. Mom had been less excited about her temporary powers, though, and Dad had had to change all his recipes to avoid cooking up kitchen smells that nauseated her. It was the only time he had ever seemed flustered about which spices to use.

Gabe gently set the memory aside. Then he shut a mental door on that memory, locked the door, and hid the key.

Ripe tossed his folded glider. It didn't go far.

“Can I play?” Gabe asked. The whole playground setup really was useful. It gave them something to do and a way to interact, even when they weren't sure what to say to each other. He reached for the branch to pluck a leaf of his own.

“No,” said Ca'tth immediately. “No, no, no, no, no.” He kept his eyes fixed on Gabe while shaking his head, which was unsettling to see.

“Maybe later,” said Jir, still polite, still annoyed. She sounded like a babysitter who wasn't getting paid enough for the job. “This is a private game. We live in overlapping systems, so we have shared concerns to discuss while we play.”

“Then maybe I
should
join in,” said Gabe—also polite, and not wanting to intrude, but not willing to leave, either. “Protocol says that we're neighbors, so we might have some of the same things to talk about.”

He would have done this differently if not in a hurry. He would have waited, observed, sorted out the politics and learned how to navigate them—just as he might have done in any other kind of playground. It's important to know who hates to share the swings. It's good to figure out which bullies find fart jokes funny, and whether you can get them to stop throwing rocks by telling one. Gabe would have tried to make friends slowly, to figure out where he was welcome before barging into a group and a game uninvited. But he didn't have time for that. Someone was shooting at him. His sleeping self hid underneath a bridge. He needed to hurry.

The other three ambassadors looked alarmed at the news that they were neighbors.

“Send him away,” Ca'tth whispered, urgent. His shimmering eyes grew very wide, and he tugged at Jir's sleeve with both hands. “Send the Gabe away now. Quick. Do it. Send away the Gabe.”

“Just keep playing!” Jir told him in a loud, urgent whisper. “Focus! We might attract his attention if we stop playing. Fold another leaf.”

“Whose attention?” Gabe asked.

The three all busied themselves with folding gliders. They pretended that they hadn't heard him. Gabe looked around.

Omegan of the Outlast stood on a hilltop nearby. Gabe remembered the phrase
mass extinctions.

“Don't look at the Outlast!” Ca'tth hissed. His eyes grew wide enough to take up most of his face, and his ears began to flutter up and down. “Don't ever, ever, ever, ever, ever look at the Outlast. And please go away.”

His voice rose and fell whenever he said a word over and over, from whisper to loud and then back down to whisper with every
ever
.

Gabe didn't protest or bother to argue. Instead he took one slow step closer, plucked his own leaf, and threw his own airplane. It flew a long way.

Jir sighed. “Maybe he should stay,” she said, though she still sounded like a babysitter with better things to do. “He might hurt us more out of ignorant blundering than by knowing our business. He should learn enough to keep quiet. And he might be able to contribute somehow.”

“No, no, no, no, no,” Ca'tth insisted. His ears still fluttered like an agitated moth. “He can't help us. He's brand-new, and he can't travel far. We would have noticed his people already if they could, and we haven't, so they can't.”

He folded a glider and threw it hard. It did not travel far either.

Ca'tth's aggressive nervousness and distaste made Gabe suspicious.
Why exactly are you trying to get rid of me?
he thought.
Why do you want me to go away? Did you recognize me? Did you expect me to be crushed inside a clothes dryer rather than here?

Ripe sat down. He made several gliders and set them all on the ground beside him. “This is a meal,” he said. “This is all a cooking cake inside an oven-cave with worms alive inside it. This is the sort of cake that might eat everyone else slowly after they digest it.”

Gabe was not sure what that meant or whether it might be suspicious.

“The newcomer is still more dangerous to us ignorant than he is knowing,” said Jir. She folded two gliders and tossed them together, one from each hand. They spun around each other in a double spiral before drifting apart. “And his system is close. This matters to him, too.”

“No, no, no,” Ca'tth protested, but he spoke softly as though already resigned to losing the argument. “Don't let him know about things he can't ever escape. Cruel, cruel, cruel, cruel, cruel. It's too cruel of us to tell him.”

“Tell me what?” Gabe demanded, though he tried to keep his voice low and quiet.

Jir lashed her long hair behind her.

“Evacuation,” she said.

Ca'tth groaned. Ripe sniffed the air. Jir ignored them both.

“We're planning to evacuate our systems,” she went on. “That's what we're talking about here. That's what we're trying to do. The Outlast is expanding suddenly and impossibly fast. They've claimed much of their spiral arm already, and now they've begun to invade our own smaller arm. So we plan to abandon our homes. But we're not sure how to do it or where to go. Should we travel together like the Kaen, all in one nomadic fleet, or should we split up and scatter? Do we tell each other which way we're going or try to stay safe by staying secret? Do we hide and then try to find our way home again later? Do we risk uprooting Ripe's elders so they can travel, or should his people send only seedpod ships? Do we ask the Machinae for help?”

Ca'tth shook his head several times. “The Machinae never listen, never, never, never. No one understands them. And once we leave, we can never go back, not after the Outlast lays claim to our system. Then it all belongs to them, always, always, always, from now until the universe collapses on itself.”

“That's only what they believe,” said Jir. Her hair snapped like a whip.

“Yes,” Ca'tth said sadly, “and they've been right so far.” He gave up on the glider he was trying to fold, crumpled it, and threw away the crumpled ball.

Gabe plucked another leaf. “Your plane will fly better if you fold the wing tips,” he told Ca'tth. “Like this.”

Ca'tth and Jir both watched him fold. Ripe stayed where he sat and stuck each of his gliders in the ground, point-first, playing his own private game according to his own rules.

“How far can you travel?” Jir asked Gabe. “Have your people explored much beyond your motherworld yet?”

“Only as far as our moon,” Gabe answered—a simple, honest answer. He tried not to sound defensive about it.

“Your own moon?” Jir asked. “In orbit around your own world? No farther than that?”

“Not
yet
,” said Gabe. “But we have sent probes and robots farther out. There's a robot on Mars that we dropped with a sky crane. Dad and I stayed up late to watch it happen.”

“I don't think you can help us,” Jir told him. She still sounded condescending, but not so annoyed. “And I don't think we can help you, either. But if you haven't traveled far, then the Outlast might not even notice your people.”

Ca'tth made a sudden noise that didn't translate. He snatched away the leaf branch and stomped on it.

“Hey!” said Jir, surprised and annoyed again.

“Bones and carapaces!” Ripe protested.

“Run,” Ca'tth whispered, his eyes wide and his ears moving. “Omegan is watching us. Watching, watching, watching now. I'll stomp off like a sore loser. Everyone scatter. Play a chase game in the trees until we can meet again.” He locked his massive eyes on Gabe. “I'm sorry,” he said. “You can't travel, and we can't take you with us. Try to hide when they reach your system. I hope they don't find you.”

He disappeared into the trees. Ripe followed, lifting his legs very high as he ran.

Jir of the Builders and the Yards hesitated. Her hair lashed like the long eel-ish tail that it actually was. “Farewell, Ambassador Gabe,” she said. Then she walked away rather than running, though she walked quickly.

Gabe stood bewildered on the edge of the forest, alone.

Ca'tth told me to hide,
he thought.
And he didn't want to frighten me with news about huge and scary things. That makes me less suspicious of him. If my neighbors are all ditching this part of the galaxy, then they probably don't have any interest in my system. Unless they want to hide out there. But it sounds like the Outlast are coming my way too. Maybe the Outlast are the ones trying to kill me—though they seem to want to kill everyone, so they're more likely to stage a massive
invasion than carry out sneaky and secret assassination attempts. They're pirates, not ninjas.

A galactic invasion inflicting mass extinctions felt like a force of nature, like tornadoes and hurricanes, like something Gabe could do nothing about other than buckle down and keep away from windows. And he still didn't know what to think about his neighbors.

He threw one last glider, frustrated. He threw it too hard and it nose-dived.

Gabe turned around to find Omegan of the Outlast standing directly beside him. He made an involuntary noise of alarm.