Ambassador (14 page)

Gabe tried to steer, but it wasn't easy to control his gestures while weightless. He kept flailing, and he couldn't steady himself in the empty air. The craft flailed along with him.

“Point your arm at the moon,” the Envoy told him again.

“Trying,” said Gabe. “Which way is the moon?”

“Back that way,” said the Envoy. “No,
that way
. Look at where my mouth is pointing. We are currently falling back toward the planet, where we'll probably crash in Antarctica.”

Gabe struggled to keep the craft steady. “Maybe you should choose a penguin as the next ambassador.”

The Envoy made a
pbbbbbbbbt
noise of annoyance, which propelled it bouncing around the cabin. “I might,” it said as it tried to keep still. “I have never yet selected a penguin for the role. They are good swimmers and know how to navigate between two different worlds, above the ice and below it. A penguin might be an excellent choice. The moon is still that way.”

Gabe kept his mouth shut and concentrated. He finally got the craft pointed where they needed to go.

The moon burned bright in the view ahead.

“Shouldn't we aim for where it
will be
by the time we get that far out?” he asked. “Not where it is right now?”

“If this craft moved more slowly, then yes,” said the Envoy. “But it moves very fast. Extend your arm.”

Gabe did. He pointed boldly. “To the moon!”

He felt himself pressed against the Papasan-ish back of the cabin, though not with smooshing force this time. Then he became weightless again, moving at the same speed as the vehicle around him.

The Envoy ballooned its way to the dashboard and pushed at the controls. “There. Now you can move around without changing our course.”

“How long will it take us to get there?” Gabe asked.

“A few hours,” said the Envoy. “Our destination will shift during that time, but we can chase it easily enough. Feels strange for me to be going back there so soon. I spent a long time trying to leave.”

“What were you even doing there?” Gabe asked. “How did you get stranded?” He drifted off to the side of the cabin and bumped up against the wall with his shoulder.
I'm in space!
He found that he could move around just by gently poking the walls with his fingertips.

“I helped your predecessor make travel plans, and then got stuck,” the Envoy said. “She negotiated passage out of our system. She was concerned about the Outlast—for
all the same reasons that you are concerned about the Outlast, though they had not spread so far then—and she thought she could best protect this world by leaving it.”

Gabe thought he heard disapproval in the Envoy's voice. “We just left it too,” he pointed out.

“But we're not going nearly as far away as she did,” the Envoy said.

It spent most of their transit time telling Gabe about Nadia, the previous ambassador. She lived in Moscow. Her family was Jewish and tried to hide it most of the time. An ambassador always knows how to belong to more than one world at once.

Nadia had an uncle working in the Soviet space program—or programs, really. There were more than one, and not all of them were on speaking terms with each other. Her uncle helped design the Zvezda moon base, and that turned out to be useful for Ambassador Nadia. She needed neutral territory, an off-world place to meet and negotiate in person.

“The Russian program intended to create a permanent base,” the Envoy explained. “A shelter that would grow into an entire city. It looked as though they would manage it. They put the first probe in space, sent the first probe into orbit around the moon, took the first pictures of the far side, and remotely managed the first robotic
landing there. They meant to send people there first, and then actually live on the surface—not just plant a flag and whack a couple of golf balls. But to the American program, the moon was a conquest to be wooed and abandoned after winning the race. Russian programs had more faithful plans.”

“Hey,” Gabe interrupted, annoyed. “Don't knock NASA.”

“Hmph,” said the Envoy. “Your pardon. Apologies. Sorry.” It didn't really sound sorry. “I remember that competition from the other side of it. In any case, dreams of lunar cities fizzled after the Americans landed. Most of the Russian programs shifted their ambitions and started to make orbiting space stations instead. But they still dropped separate modules of the Zvezda base on the moon's far side. They put it together remotely with radio signals and rolling Lunokhod robots. Then Ambassador Nadia and I stowed away on the last of the N-1 rockets. That was in 1974. The launch was difficult and much less comfortable than our liftoff this morning. We had to toss out equipment of precisely the same weight in order to fit, and we almost exploded right after launch. Our return lander was damaged. I only figured that out later, and by then Ambassador Nadia had left the system. I stayed stranded on the moon. That wasn't her fault.
She didn't know. While there, I modified and improved the Zvezda observatory equipment, which is how I first noticed the intruding ships in the asteroid belt. We can use the same equipment to track them more precisely.”

Gabe waved his arm to interrupt. Something else had become suddenly urgent.

“Does this little ship have a bathroom?” he asked.

“No, I don't think so,” said the Envoy. “The anatomy of those who built it might not require a bathroom. Or else they might wear suits with built-in waste collection. Nadia wore a large diaper on our lunar trip.” It paused. “She'd be unhappy to know that I shared this information.”

Gabe took a deep breath and let it slowly out.

“How badly do you need a bathroom?” the Envoy asked. “Can you wait? The base has crude facilities, and a little gravity will make the process easier.”

“I don't think I can wait,” said Gabe. “This is urgent. Suddenly. With no warning.”

“Not surprising,” said the Envoy. “The weight of urine collecting in your bladder is what tells you it's there. But neither your bladder nor anything inside it has noticeable weight right now.”

“Makes sense,” said Gabe, pained and clenched. “So what can I do?”

He ended up making a makeshift toilet out of a plastic
bag and his camping towel. He needed the towel to soak up pee inside the bag—otherwise floating streams of the stuff would have bounced out again with equal and opposite force.

Gabe felt a bit embarrassed to do this in front of the Envoy, who still sounded like his mother. “Turn away, please,” he asked midstream.

“I can't,” said the Envoy. “All of me is an eye. I could point my mouth away from you, but every part of my surface can still see.”

“Fine,” said Gabe.

One splash did escape. It formed a perfect pee sphere. Gabe reached out with the plastic bag, caught the globule inside, and then tied the bag tightly shut.

“Nicely done,” said the Envoy. “That was a decent piece of astroengineering on the fly.”

“Ha,” said Gabe. “So, you were saying we can track the ice pirates from the moon base.”
That was kind of fun to say out loud,
he thought.

“Yes,” said the Envoy. “They clearly fear discovery. Let's go discover them.”

The lunar surface loomed large in Gabe's view.

“Keep the nose up,” the Envoy told him. “We must reach the far side, just beyond the landing site for the
Luna 24
probe—which you probably can't see from here, so never mind. That side is dark at the moment. Hopefully our headlamps will give us enough light to land by.”

Gabe moved his outstretched arm to shift the angle of their descending orbit. They crossed the lit horizon and flew behind the full moon. It was extremely dark. Gabe saw precisely nothing of the ground in front of them.

“What headlamps?” he asked in a whisper. It seemed important to whisper while this close to the moon. “Could you turn them on?”

“They're on already,” the Envoy told him in a worried whisper of its own. “Can't you see them? I can see them.
Maybe the alien pilot used a different spectrum of light to see by—a wavelength invisible to you.”

“I can't see anything but the glowing parts of the dashboard,” said Gabe.

The Envoy pushed a few dashboard buttons. “Can you see now?”

“No.” Gabe glared at the absolute darkness of the ground below. He had no idea how close it was, no idea when they might slam into it. “Now I wish you could drive.”

“Me too,” said the Envoy. “This landing is going to be difficult. Please pull up—not that much—and now steer a little to the left to avoid a series of sharp mountain peaks. Yes, good. Good.”

“My nose itches,” said Gabe.

“Do not scratch your nose!” said the Envoy. “Please don't distract the motion guidance of this craft by scratching your nose.”

Gabe scrunched up his face and tried to keep his outstretched hand steady.

“Extend your other arm in the opposite direction,” the Envoy instructed. “Then bring it forward and open that hand.”

He did. The craft cranked its tail around to fire its engines ahead of them, slowing their descent. The engine
blast cast a dim, blue light. Gabe saw the ground leap at him. He flinched. He almost threw both hands in front of his face by reflex, but he didn't.

“Close your left hand. Open it one more time, briefly. Now point it behind you again.”

He did. Darkness returned. Gabe tried to blink away the afterimage of the ground, tried to guess how close to it they were.

“We are about to slide across the floor of a shallow crater,” the Envoy told him, whispering again. “Hopefully we will do so without bouncing much. The legs of the craft should grab the ground automatically.” It pushed two buttons. “Since there are no handholds or seat belts, I recommend curling up in a fetal position . . . now.”

Gabe tried to make himself into a ball. Then he felt like someone was hitting him from all directions at once. He knew what was actually happening. He knew that he was tumbling around the inside of the cabin, bouncing off the walls. But it didn't feel like he was moving at all. Everything else was moving and pummeling him.

The craft tumbled and scraped to a long, slow stop.

Gabe uncurled himself and pushed back into the Papasan-like chair. He settled downward. He had landed on the moon. He now had a “down” to settle toward.

He listened for hissing sounds and held out his hand
to feel for drafts, afraid they might have sprung a leak in the rough landing. The dim lights of the cabin display were still on, filled with information that Gabe couldn't read. And he still couldn't see anything outside. The cabin angled toward the ground. If the headlamps were on, Gabe still couldn't see them. Instead of moon rock, Gabe saw the Envoy smooshed up against the windshield.

“You okay?” he asked.

The Envoy peeled itself away from the transparent surface, drifted down, and made a mouth.

“Fascinating . . . ,” it said. It hopped in place and then stretched out its neck to peer outside. Its voice sounded higher with its throat stretched so thin. “You picked a very interesting place to land.”

Gabe moved to stand beside the Envoy. He wasn't weightless now, but he had only a fraction of his usual weight. “I think the place picked us rather than the other way around,” he said. “What's so fascinating about it? I still can't see anything out there.”

“I might be able to fix that,” said the Envoy. It pushed more pieces of the dashboard display around. “Maybe. I should have tried this earlier. . . . Oh, dear. Oops.”

“What's wrong?” Gabe demanded.

“That landing damaged the craft,” said the Envoy. “We
should be able to move across the lunar surface, but I very much doubt we can launch again.”

“So we're stuck here,” said Gabe.

“I'm sure we'll think of something,” the Envoy said, trying to be cheerful. “And at least I can adjust the lights.”

The view outside became visible to Gabe—dim at first and then brighter.

A field of oddly shaped stones stretched out in front of them.

He saw that the stones were brightly colored rather than lunar gray.

He saw that they were not stones.

“This can't . . . ,” he started to say. “This isn't . . .” He gave up. His mind hadn't rebelled against the sight of the Envoy or the sight of the mining ship come to kill him or even the sight of the Embassy and his own alien colleagues when he squinted at their actual shapes. But his mind rebelled now.

He saw dinosaurs, each one crested with three horns. Several triceratops lay dead on the surface of the moon.

“Fascinating,” the Envoy said again, its neck craned thin to peer over the edge of the display. “The comet impact was very severe, I remember. It must have knocked this herd off-world entirely. Then they drifted until lunar gravity caught them up and brought them back down.”

Gabe nodded slowly without really listening. Then he listened.

“Wait,” he said. “Wait just a moment.”

“I'm waiting,” said the Envoy.

“You
remember
? You remember the comet? The one that smacked into the Gulf of Mexico? You were there?”

“I was,” said the Envoy. “I don't remember very much from that era. Memory is always an uncertain thing, salvaged and bent into whatever we need it to be, and those old memories are worn especially thin. But I do remember the comet. It was memorable.”

Gabe began to realize just how little he knew about the Envoy. “Where did you come from?” he asked.

“Here,” it answered. “Not this moon, but this planet. Yours. Instructions for making Envoys out of local material are sent in seedpods to every system and habitable world. I was born here. I've never lived anywhere else. I have no species of my own, no genetic family heritage to share with the rest of Terran life, but otherwise I'm as native to this place as you are—and as native as they were.”