Trang (16 page)

“Thanks so much for bringing that
up, asshole. What’s the roster usually like, anyway? You’ve got seven guys and
half the women in the unit—that’s pretty fucking good.”

“Half the women is one fucking
woman.
Usually
the locals can pick up the slack. But these—”
Five-Eighths put his hands in the air, at a loss for words.

“You expected better?” asked
Shanti. They looked at each other for a moment, and she let out a small bark of
incredulous laughter. “You honestly expected better! Holy shit, Five, you’re
like a casualty of SF VPE.”

Philippe found himself wondering
when his translator would kick in.

“It’s not fucking funny,” said
Five-Eighths.

“No, it’s fucking
hysterical.
God, I knew you were a pervert, but I never knew you were stupid. Look,
motherfucker, you’ve got eight people, a huge library of VPE, and two perfectly
good hands—”

“Eight people
including me,
”
Five-Eighths cut in.

“
And
it’s not like you’ve
never gone outside your species before,
farm boy
. Don’t come to me
because you lack imagination.”

Shanti stepped around her desk,
putting her face right into Five-Eighths’ face. Her voice, which had had a
slight note of amusement to it, was now hard and icy, like a diamond.

“Do you think I owe you something?”
she asked. “Do you think I’m obligated to be on the roster? You bring this up
again, I’ll tear your balls off. And then? I will report your sorry ass. Now
get the fuck out of here.”

Shanti looked at him quizzically.
“The Yoopers don’t—? Oh, OK, I guess this is something we do different from
them. When an SF unit goes out on a long-term mission like this one, we draw up
a roster—it’s basically a sex thing. If you’re on it, then you’re available
for, you know, sex-type action. Five wants more people on it, so he was asking
me to sign on—which people are totally not supposed to do, just so you know.
Anyway—not that
I
am asking—but you should know that if you
want
to
be on it, it’s totally available to you. It’s OK that you’re not SF, we’re all
kind of stuck out here.”

“You’re very generous, but I don’t
think so,” said Philippe, trying to keep any sarcastic or judgmental tones out
of his voice.

Judging from her expression, he
wasn’t very successful. “Hey,” she said. “I may just be a dumb Sister Fucker,
but the roster? It works. It’s life-affirming, it builds morale, and it helps
members of a unit bond.”

“You’re not on it,” Philippe said,
flatly.

“The
only
reason I’m not on
it is that I just got divorced, and I really don’t feel like dealing with it,” said
Shanti, irritably. “Everyone’s been on the roster or will be on the roster at
some point—even the Moes.”

Shanti’s smile vanished. “It’s more
complicated than you think, OK? It can be a problem: One of the reasons—
one—
I
got a divorce was that my husband was putting himself on the roster. But it
really depends—after something traumatic, like a big firefight or something,
lots of people who wouldn’t normally go on the roster do, and nobody says shit
about it. With my husband the problem was that he was on the roster
the
first fucking day.
And he did it in a unit where he
knew
I had
friends and he
knew
it would get back to me. Nothing says ‘Fuck this
marriage’ quite like that.”

Philippe sighed and shook his head.
“You know, no one else does things this way.”

“That’s why we’re the
Special
Forces,”
she said, dryly. “Regardless of what you think, the roster does work. It makes
things easier on the locals, and it cuts down on the Eve-teasing. I mean, the
SF is almost entirely guys, and the average age is something like 22. So you’re
better off just telling them how to handle their sexuality instead of having
them try to figure it out themselves. Unless you’re Five, and then there’s
pretty much no hope.”

“You mean Five-Eighths?” said Philippe.
“Yeah, he’s—well, he’s got an interesting nickname.”

“If it bothers you, just call him
Five, that’s what I do,” Shanti said. “Anyway, at least he’s been busy—he’s
been mapping the station for us.”

“Really! That’s useful.”

“Yeah. He’s a good soldier, despite
the whole pervert thing.”

Philippe suddenly remembered that
he had not come into Shanti’s office to discuss the sexual mores of her
soldiers. “Anyway, I came by because I was wondering if you managed to film the
broadcast the Swimmers made.”

“Oh, yeah, I got the whole thing, I
think,” Shanti pulled the camera off her uniform and pointed at her memory
station. An open scroll on her desk sprang to life, showing a close-up shot of
a Host hand holding a screen. “Here it is—here you are!”

“Right, right,” said Philippe.
“Your mike was recording sound, but the Swimmers broadcast the thing in code—I
mean, what good is a station-wide broadcast in English, right?”

“Fuck!” exclaimed Shanti, slamming
her hand on the desk. “I’ve got to talk to Vip and Thorpe about this and make
sure all our fucking surveillance isn’t this way. This is so fucking stupid.”

“Hey, hey, it’s not all horrible.
Sound could be useful,” said Philippe.

“Fucking chirps and rattles? I
mean, yeah, you’re right, we might need sound, too, but we need to be picking
up the universal code on
everything
.” She stood up, and then picked up
the scroll again. “Oh, wait, let me give you—OK, there’s the video of your
fucking mime interview, I’m sorry about that. And this is some of the stuff
from Baby’s report that I though you might like. It’s all in your folder now.”

“Thanks,” said Philippe.

She bolted down the hall, and
Philippe went back to his office. He opened the office folder again, which now
contained one more message.

At least this one will be
helpful
, Philippe thought.

The message contained both the
video and Baby’s report. Out of curiosity, Philippe looked at the report first.
It was pretty a-grammatical—Baby had obviously recorded it and then converted
it into text.

But the content was quite worthwhile.
Baby had been on guard duty outside the front door with another soldier when a
Host—who was neither Max nor Moritz—approached her. He was accompanied by a
second Host who was not outfitted with translation equipment.

“The Host guy heard Doug call me Baby,”
the report read, “so he wanted to know if I really was some baby. I told him
that I weren’t no baby but a grown-up woman, and he got real excited and wanted
to know if we had two sexes. I told him we did and that Doug was a man.

“So then he asked me if we stayed
men and women all our life, so I told him we did. He told me that the Hosts
also stayed men or women all their life, and that them and us are the only two
people on the station who have two sexes and that don’t change. I said, ‘How do
you change sex?’—I thought maybe he meant an operation—but he said that some of
the other species will change sex depending on their age or other things
without no kind of medical procedure. I told him that sounded weird, and he
said that aliens are mysterious and that mysteries are good things.

“We then tried to figure out if we
really are the same that way, it sounds like we pretty much are. Women Hosts
get pregnant and have babies, although when I tried to ask him about nursing he
didn’t seem to understand me. He was really excited that I was a woman, and
then he said he was surprised at my size, because he thinks I’m real
small—that’s why he thought I might actually be a baby. It turns out that women
Hosts are really enormous and don’t get out much, so they don’t go into space.
I asked what they do then, and he said they do different stuff but basically it
all sounds like desk work. I told him I wouldn’t make a good Host woman because
I can’t stand to just sit.

“What else? Oh, yeah, I asked him
why his buddy didn’t have translation gear, and he said it was because the guy
weren’t no priest like he were. But then he had said that he was married, so I
said that most Earth priests don’t get married. He said that on the Host
planet, being a priest is really a big help to finding a wife, which is pretty
hard to do, because there aren’t a lot of women. He said that most women have
five or six husbands, so they like priests because they are always here and not
underfoot. He also said that Max and Moritz are brothers-in-law and priests,
but they ain’t in the same order, and he’s in a different order from either of
them two.”

Good Lord,
thought Philippe,
she really missed her calling. Union Intelligence should recruit her.

He started to head for the no man’s
zone, but Ofay, who was standing by the door, made him go back for his gloves
and his hood. Back in his room, he remembered to grab the translation mike off
his desk, sticking it onto his shirt and hoping the adhesive still had holding
power. He joined the soldiers waiting to go outside.

Cut and Feo were standing outside
with a Host, who was thrumming heartily and holding out what looked like
saddlebags.

“He can’t speak,” said Cut.

“He probably doesn’t have
translation gear; some of them don’t,” said Philippe. He reached out for the
bags and took them, bowing deeply. The Host seemed satisfied and turned to go.

“No, with alien
things.
Like, weird
things
from aliens.”

Philippe was genuinely shocked. “A
diplomat is
never
supposed to turn down a gift,” he said.

Shanti rolled her eyes. “That may
be, but it’s kind of a security issue,” she said. “I mean, we’re really not
supposed to have alien stuff in our living area.”

“It’s really
very
insulting
to reject a gift, in every culture,” Philippe replied. “I cannot risk insulting
these people like that, especially not this early.”

“Look—” she began.

“Hey, guys.” Cut interrupted. “More
aliens coming.”

Philippe handed the bags to Shanti
as two Centaurs—
better start thinking of them as Cyclopes,
Philippe
thought—walked up. They were grayish-brown and covered in fur, with no obvious
head. He wondered again if those eye spots were actual eyes, and if the
Cyclopes could really see behind them. They were both shorter than Philippe,
but quite broad, and had a rolling walk.

“We saw the broadcast of your
formal meeting with the Swimmers,” said the second Cyclops. “We were wondering
if you intended to hold a formal meeting with us as well.”

“I would be delighted to meet with
you formally,” Philippe replied. “I hope to meet with all the people on this
station formally.”

“When are you planning to hold a
formal meeting with us?” said the first. “We have received no communication
about a formal meeting.”

“I’m sure you will be contacted
soon. I certainly wish to meet with you, um, formally, and I hope your people
and my people become friends.”

“When are you planning to hold a
formal meeting with us?” said the first. “Is it soon?”

“Unfortunately, I am not certain,”
said Philippe. “Our liaisons with the Hosts are scheduling the formal meetings
on our behalf.”

“If the Hosts are handling that
task, then you will hold a formal meeting with us last,” the Cyclops said. “As
you will discover, if you allow the Hosts to handle your affairs, they will not
always place your interests first.”

He turned and walked away.

“Again, we are emphatically happy
to meet you now, and we anticipate with pleasure the time when you will hold a
formal meeting with us. Good-bye,” said the second Cyclops, who then followed
the first.

Philippe turned around, ready to
shush her, too. But Shanti was talking to the doctor, who had come out of the
living area and was examining the Hosts’ gifts.

“Well, we’ve got an isolation unit
in the infirmary, so we could keep them there. Of course, if anyone comes down
with space Ebola, we’ll have to figure out another place for them,” George
said.