Trang (10 page)

He walked into his room and began
to unpack his bag. There wasn’t much. The SA wouldn’t even let him bring a
razor or clippers, so he’d been forced to get his head, hands, and feet flashed
in Ottawa—the hair follicles on his face and scalp would be inactive for a full
year, and his nails would not grow. Of course, God only knew what flashing your
head did to the brain, and if he caught his finger in something or stubbed his
toe, he’d have to wear a bandage for months and months. This, it seemed, was progress.

Philippe put away his gear, walked
into his office to make sure everything there was in working order, and went
back into the bedroom. He pulled off his casual clothes and put on his suit.

Looking into the mirror he saw a reasonably
dapper man with dark hair and eyes—he had his father’s coloring, although his
eyes were round like his mothers. He looked more tired than either of them,
though. He had looked tired for the past year, and by this point, he was
beginning to wonder if it just meant he was old.

He was also nervous. As always
before a big meeting, he began to obsess over his grooming, brushing his hair,
smoothing his eyebrows, straightening his suit again and again. He folded down
the turtleneck of the lonjons so that it didn’t stick out over the suit
jacket’s band collar.

He kept smiling in the mirror—
We
are friendly. We are not your enemy. Trust us.

He felt like a wolf in sheep’s
clothing.

The banging on his bedroom door
came as a relief. Shanti opened it without waiting for a response and charged
into the room. “Hey, Trang—holy shit! You look
nice!
Damn, I wish the
SFers got uniforms like that!”

Philippe couldn’t help but laugh.
“Oh, the DiploCorps is famed for its tailoring. And this is just a traveling
suit—you should see what they wear in Ottawa.”

“Well, hey, I got some accessories
for you,” said Shanti, shoving some pieces of cool fabric into Philippe’s
hands. “We’ve cleared our area—looks like they didn’t fuck with anything—and
we’ve unloaded, so as soon as you’re ready, we can go meet the freaks.”

“You mean, fulfill our delicate and
historic mission?” asked Philippe, holding up what looked like two arm-length
gloves and a hood with a transparent face panel.

He did, and watched as Shanti
folded up the sleeves of his lonjons. Philippe pulled on the gloves, which
practically went up to his armpits, and Shanti folded the left sleeve down over
the top of the glove and pressed her hands around his arms. “Bango,
motherfucker’s airtight,” she said.

Philippe did the same on the right
side. The process was quite straightforward, so his mind wandered to the trip
they had just taken.

“I was surprised by Pinky,” he
said. “I mean, I guess it’s not that important considering what you do, but I
didn’t think anybody that young still spoke English like that, given how long
they’ve been pushing Union English in the educational system.”

“If your earplant tells you to put
your hood on? Do it. Just pull it up over the top of your head, down across
your face, and seal it to the front of your neck,” said Shanti, as she unfolded
his turtleneck and attached said hood where his neck met his shoulders. “My
understanding is Pinky didn’t speak any English when he joined the SF.”

“Really!” said Philippe. “I thought
you had to speak Union English fluently to take any Union job.”

Shanti pulled her own hood down
over her face to show Philippe how it was done. As with the gloves, it was
quite straightforward, and he nodded at her.

She pulled her hood up. “Normally,
you do, but with Pinky, I think it was one of those amnesty deals because he
was in some militia that got pacified. He’s a hell of an extractor, anyway. I
wish he was still here.”

“The ship left?” asked Philippe,
surprised.

“Oh, yeah,” Shanti said, blandly.
“They’re coming back, of course, but Beijing wants them to spend as little time
as possible on this side of the portal. I don’t see how that makes a
difference, but they’re paranoid.”

“And we’re expendable,” Philippe
said.

“Nice to know where you stand,
isn’t it?” she replied with a smile.

Philippe pulled on his suit jacket,
checking the back to see if the empty hood left a lump. There was a slight one,
but it didn’t ruin the lines of the suit.
Not
,
that the aliens would
know,
he thought, as he tucked the neck of his lonjons into his jacket
collar again
.

“Oh, you can’t do that,” Shanti
said. She reached into the neck of his jacket and pulled the lonjons’ neck back
up.

“It looks weird up,” Philippe
protested.

“No, it doesn’t, it
coordinates—blue suit, gray shirt. You look fabulous,” she said, giving his
hair a quick brush and turning him so that he faced the mirror. “And your
gloves show anyway. Besides, you have to wear it
up
. It protects your
neck.
”

“You know,” Philippe said,
“technically speaking, I don’t think I have to take orders from you.”

“Hey, easy there,” said Shanti, as
she steered him to the door. “Technically speaking, I’m bigger than you are,
and I have the guns.”

They stepped out of his office into
the corridor, where a dozen soldiers were waiting. Apprehension gripped
Philippe as he smiled. “Now’s the time,” he said.

Vip and Shanti walked down the
line, making sure everyone’s com, cameras, and translator mikes were on and
functioning, and that everyone had their gloves on and hood attached. Everyone
except Philippe also went through a lengthy check of their concealed weaponry.
The soldiers were to go through first, with Philippe at the rear, so he stood
at the end of the line as the doors to the no man’s zone slowly opened.

They went into the zone and had to
wait for the inner doors to close before the doors to the rest of the station
would open. Philippe was not normally claustrophobic, but he was standing with
a dozen bruisers in what was essentially a narrow tunnel, waiting to meet
aliens. The knowledge that he was surrounded on all sides by powerful
explosives did nothing to reduce his anxiety.

They stood for what seemed like an
eternity, but what must have been only a few moments. Philippe could feel his
heart suddenly going
thump thump thump,
pulsing throughout his whole
body and filling his ears. Then, despite the mass of soldiers in front of him,
he noticed a change in the light. They began to move forward, and so did he.

First came the smell, and then came
the noise.

Chapter
6

Philippe stepped out into the orange light, the strange air
burning in his nose and making him wrinkle it.
Don’t look disgusted,
he
thought to himself, forcing his face to relax.

Smile.

He smiled and raised his hand. That
didn’t seem to trigger any change in the noise level, so he put his hand down
again. He couldn’t see much apart from the backs of the soldiers, who were
standing taut with alertness, their hands touching the bulges in their
uniforms, doubtless ready to whip out their weapons and mow the mob down at a
moment’s notice.

But he could hear, and there was a
lot to hear. The translation mikes didn’t broadcast far enough for him to know
what the noises meant, but he could hear pings and warbles and blatting and
squeaks, low chirpings and high chitterings. Underneath it all was a low,
rhythmic thrumming, which Philippe found oddly soothing

“Excuse me,” he said to the soldier
in front of him. It was Bi Zui, who gave him a perplexed look. “I should go up
and be diplomatic.”

Bi Zui stepped aside, and Philippe
walked forward between the soldiers.

He heard Patch’s voice. “Wow, guys,
what a reception! Have you, like, been waiting all day?”

Better see what that’s about,
thought Philippe, stepping around Shanti.

Patch was standing with a big,
doofy grin on his face. In front of him were—Max and Moritz. Philippe shook his
head and blinked. It was definitely them—he recognized them right away. Behind
them were at least 50 more, a host of Hosts.

Philippe had seen the Hosts in
videos a million times. He’d been watching them for
years,
replaying the
videos obsessively like everyone else when the portal was first discovered, and
then doing so again, even more purposefully, when he was assigned this mission.

But standing before them, he felt
like he was
seeing
them for the very first time.

The difference between seeing them
in real life and seeing them on video was astounding. Back on Earth, Philippe
had participated in or wisely avoided thousands of unresolved debates over
whether or not the Hosts had faces. And now, seeing them in the flesh for just
a moment, Philippe could see that they clearly did—not a stand-alone face on a
head like a human, but a definite face nonetheless.

Their faces were on one end of
their bodies, and different body parts combined and worked together to create
unquestionable expressions. Part of the Host face was in the fringe between the
foremost segment and the one behind it, and part of it was the way they held
their forelimbs, and part of it was what he had thought were just markings.
Philippe had watched hours upon hours of footage and had never really been able
to grasp it, but now, he could see their faces as plain as day.

The Hosts had faces—and they were
happy to see him!

“Hello!” said Philippe, stretching
out his hand.

“Oh, guys, I gotta introduce you to
Philippe, our diplomatic guy,” said Patch. “This is Max”—he gestured to the
longer and darker of the two Hosts—”and this is Moritz.”

“We are extremely pleased to meet
you, human diplomat,” said Moritz. “This is an extremely auspicious day for
us.”

“For us as well,” said Philippe,
bowing after the aliens did not respond to his outstretched hand. “I look
forward to establishing friendly relations between our peoples.”

“Nothing would please us more,”
said Max. “On a personal level, both Moritz and I are delighted to be your
liaisons. It is a tremendous honor to us and to our family.”

As always with translations, their
voices were tinny and devoid of emotion. But Philippe could also hear their
actual speech, which was a chittering noise that started and stopped at odd
intervals. He realized that the pleasant thrumming was also coming from the
Hosts, although it didn’t seem to bear any relationship to what they were
saying.

Something moved on the floor, and
Philippe realized that the Swimmers had sent several of their drones. “Hello!”
he said to one of the devices, waving.

“Greetings,” replied the drone. It
made no audible noise—the Swimmer drones apparently broadcast directly in
translator code—but a light went on in the front of the device. Philippe
supposed that was to indicate which one of the drones was talking—at least, he
was going to act as if it did and hope he was doing the right thing.

“We are happy to greet you,” said
the drone, “and we hope that our relationship will be one of cooperation and
mutual benefit.”

“I, too, look forward to our friendship,”
said Philippe.

The Pincushions and the
Centaurs/Cyclopes also had large contingents to greet them, and Philippe
exchanged pleasantries with them both. He had just finished greeting a
representative from the Snake Boys and was noticing that a number of
Pincushions had gathered around Shanti when he heard Patch ask Max, “Hey, is
the Magic Man here?”

Max’s face fell. “I am extremely
sorry his absence disappoints you. I realize that you are likely most
accustomed to speaking to him, and I apologize for the discomfort you must feel
in speaking to people who are less familiar to you.”

“No, no!” Philippe jumped in,
glaring at Patch. “How could we possibly be disappointed when all of you
wonderful people turned out to greet us? We are deeply, deeply honored.”

“Yeah,” said Patch in a small
voice, his blue eyes aimed at his feet. “I was just curious.”

“Mere curiosity—we’re a curious
people,” said Philippe. “So, please introduce me to the representative of the
Blobbos.”

God, they really are just blobs,
aren’t they?
he thought, exchanging greetings with the small, pink creature
sitting in what looked like a motorized incense burner.
I’ll change that
name tomorrow.

“You wished for me to greet you?”
said a voice behind him. The English was oddly flat, with pauses of identical
length between each word. The enunciation was extremely precise.

As far as anyone on Earth could
tell, there was only one Magic Man. He was the ultimate diplomat, able to speak
any language. For the five years between the discovery of the Titan portal and
Philippe’s mission to the station, the Magic Man had been the voice and face of
the aliens.

He was assuredly a shape shifter,
there was no other explanation. Back when communications were first being
established with the aliens, the SA had sent a video of a respected elder
statesman, who assured the aliens that Earth was happy to learn of them and
wanted only friendship. Several months later, the aliens had sent back a video
that looked like a prank—the form of that same elder statesman, speaking in his
voice. Only the flow and emotion of the statesman’s voice was gone, and his
body was semi-transparent. Colors flowed through him in waves, the polite smile
on his face never changed, and his movement was strange and fluid.