Trang (54 page)

That had been quite a day.

Prior to the invasion, one of the
Cyclopes' major complaints had been that, since the Hosts saw themselves as
divinely ordained to run the station that they had built, they almost never
accepted input from other species. That had, in fact, been a fairly accurate
description of the Hosts' style of governance, although Philippe and nearly
everyone else had assumed the complaint was merely a pretense to justify the
Cyclopes attack.

After all, there was really no
rational reason for the Cyclopes to go to war over the governance of the Host
station: The Hosts were more than willing to leave alone any species that did
not wish to join those on the station. They required other species to do the
same. And there was no practical way for any species to reach another without
passing through the portals—all of which led to the Host station—and alerting
everyone else to their nefarious intent.

There was no reason to
invade—unless a species was governed by paranoid, aggressive expansionists,
which the Cyclopes apparently were. It had taken them a mere thirty years
following the opening of the portal from the Cyclopes planet to the Host
station to not only draw up an invasion scheme but also to develop a
faster-than-light drive—a technical accomplishment no other species had ever
gotten close to achieving—that would allow them reach the Host planet without
using the portals.

Thanks to the Magic Man, the
invasion had failed miserably. It had, however, sufficiently rattled the Hosts'
complacency that they had rethought their methods of governance and had begun
holding all-station meetings. The meetings were designed to discuss matters of
importance to the station as a whole, and input from other species was, for the
first time, welcomed and even occasionally implemented.

Not that the group Philippe now
joined in the common area was entirely inclusive. The Cyclopes had no
representatives there, ostensibly because they were now a subject people
(although Philippe did not doubt that their attempted invasion of the Host
planet had something to do with their exclusion). The Magic Man had been
invited, both as the sole representative, and perhaps sole individual, of his
own people and as the ruler of the Cyclopes. But he was not there—not as far as
anyone could see, anyway. The Magic Man could break himself into tiny pieces
and literally be two or a million places at once, so it was possible that he
was attending the meeting in a form invisible to the naked eye. Given his usual
disinterest in everything that went on at the station, however, chances were
good that he was, in fact, absent.

The meeting was being held because
of the absence of a third species: the Blobbos. The small aliens, who looked
like slugs that had been bedecked with salt, had once run around the station in
ornate protective vehicles. They were gone now, having retreated back to their
home planet, following what they considered an inexcusable series of violent
events. The question now before the group was how to best convince them to
return.

So Philippe stood in an area that
was marked off from the rest of the station by walls so low he could see over
them. In contrast to the stark white of the Space Authority–built human living
area, the walls and floor in the common area were brown and intriguingly soft,
almost like they were constructed of membranes stretched over supports. The
Hosts had designed their station's common area to accommodate the average
alien, and the average alien was most certainly not bipedal. As a result,
tables were low, spaces were open, and there was never any place to sit. This
particular meeting place reminded Philippe of nothing so much as an especially
large stall in a horse stable.

Leading the meeting was the Host
liaison to the Blobbos. Hosts needed space: Even when they stood on all six
legs, as this one was doing now, they came up to Philippe's chest, and they
were roughly two meters long. This particular Host was especially red, almost
crimson in color, in contrast with the more common dark-orange tones of Max and
Moritz, the two Host liaisons to the humans. Like them, this Host had black
markings adorning the sides of his segmented body that, Philippe had recently
learned, indicated his status as a priest.

The expression on this Host's face—which
was not really a face, more a combination of the way the Host held his body and
adjusted his segments—was grim. The Blobbos had gone from refusing invitations
to talk to not responding at all.

"Have they shared a specific
set of demands since we last met?" asked a Pincushion. The alien, like all
Pincushions, looked like a giant sea urchin. He wore orange and yellow
"clothing"—clumps of some indeterminate substance worn on the ends of
his purple spikes. New trends in Pincushion clothing were frequent and
typically were a commentary on recent events of note. Baby usually had the
scoop on the latest Pincushion fashions, and Philippe made a mental note to ask
her about the new color combination.

"No," said the Host
liaison to the Blobbos. "They have offered no communication since their
departure. We know nothing more than we did before."

"It is nonsensical," said
a Swimmer drone. "They disliked the Cyclopes' actions, but certainly the
Cyclopes are no longer in a position to undertake such actions again."

Philippe clenched his teeth.
Comments like that—along with the attitude that only the Cyclopes had done
something wrong—drove him insane.
Denial is truly a universal coping
strategy
, he thought darkly to himself.

He spoke. "When I was attacked
by a Cyclops and my security experts killed my attacker, the Blobbos told me
that they were unhappy with my people because of the killing, even though it
was undertaken in self-defense. Perhaps they are dismayed by the Magic Man's
response to the Cyclopes' attempted invasion of the Host planet."

God knows I was.

"Do you believe they are
dismayed by his initial response, or do you believe they are dismayed by his
current response?" asked a Snake Boy, writhing his long body as he spoke.

"Perhaps both," Philippe replied.
"Perhaps they fear what he might do in the future."

"If the latter is true,"
said the Host, "and if they abstain from all communication, they will
never know if their fears are realistic or if their fears are unrealistic. My
people would like send communications on a regular basis through their portal
to the Blobbos."

"I would caution against
sending unsolicited communications," said the Snake Boy. "In the
past, with my people, the appearance of unsolicited communications generated
intense panic."

"I do know that," replied
the Host. "Your people had never received an alien communication before,
however. The Blobbos lived on this station for a long time. In addition, we
mentioned that we might send communications to them, and they did not forbid
it."

The discussion went back and forth.
Everyone sounded calm, but then again, everyone always sounded calm: The
translation devices saw to that.

They finally decided to have an
unmanned communications probe sent through the Blobbos' portal on a regular,
but not frequent, basis. The Hosts wanted to send the probe, but at Philippe's
suggestion, the Swimmers took on that responsibility. The Swimmers—two
cooperative aquatic species, whose small, brown remote-controlled drones roamed
the station—had been entirely uninvolved in the invasion and takeover. In
addition, they had a long history of providing generally accurate information
to the station's residents, which might make the Blobbos more receptive to
their overtures.

With the decision made, the meeting
began to break up. Philippe was glad to see that a few White Spiders once again
had hung around the meeting. Although they had said nothing, they had stayed
fairly close, clinging to a nearby table with their long, white, feathery legs
rather than hanging from the high ceiling. Philippe was certain they had
listened in.

Philippe knew he was the only human
on the station to have had a conversation with a White Spider, and he hadn't
yet definitively eliminated the possibly that he was the only sentient being to
have done so. Nonetheless, they seemed to be indicating more interest in the
possibility of communicating with others, even if any actual communication
lagged. The issue appeared to be cultural, not technical: The translation
devices had worked fine during Philippe's friendly conversation with a White
Spider. They simply chose not to talk.

"I should tell everyone before
you leave: We are adding to our staff on this station today, so there will be
new humans to meet," Philippe said.

"Are you reproducing?"
asked the Pincushion.

"Um, no," said Philippe,
trying not to look embarrassed. The Pincushions very casually and quite
publicly engaged in group reproductive activity—although, Philippe reminded
himself, it was really more of a group renewal
activity, in which Pincushions
exchanged genetic material, a process that apparently did not give rise to
little baby Pincushions. "These are mature humans, coming from
Earth."

He took his leave of the other
representatives and walked over to Ofay, one of the SFers who had been assigned
to guard him.

"Do you know when the new
soldiers are getting here?" he asked.

"No idea," said Ofay with
a shrug.

"I was thinking of going to
the café," Philippe mumbled as he slapped the com mike in his jacket
collar. "Patch," he said, opening a channel to the second.
"Patch, it's Trang. Do you know when the reinforcements are
arriving?"

"They're here now, guy,"
Patch's voice sounded in Philippe's earplant.

"They're
here?
"

"Um, yeah, the ship just
docked."

"Oh, fudge!" exclaimed
Philippe.

Patch laughed. "Language,
guy!"

Philippe hurried back home, but by
the time he got there, the new soldiers had already gotten off the ship and
dispersed. He spotted a couple of newcomers in the hallway and introduced
himself, meeting a Pazzo and a Dick.

Then he heard an unfamiliar voice
coming out of the open door to Shanti's office, so he stuck his head in.

Not bad,
he thought.

Shanti was standing next to another
woman. She was a little shorter than Shanti, but gave the impression of being
taller. Philippe wondered briefly why that was—being SFers, each woman stood
like her spine had been fused to a flagpole. Then he realized that, by SF
standards, the new woman was slender. No doubt she was physically strong, but
she lacked the burly, muscular build that typified most SFers, be they male or
female. Her body, in contrast, was a smooth hourglass. She was almost—perhaps
not by civilian standards, and her bulky uniform wasn't helping—but almost,
very nearly, quite close to being willowy.

It had been a long time since
Philippe had seen a woman like that.

Her head was almost touching
Shanti's—they were both looking at the same scroll, deep in a discussion of
schedules, which, Philippe realized, meant that he could look at them for a
little longer without seeming to ogle.

The two faces complemented each
other, each emphasizing the other's prettiness. The new woman had remarkable
eyes—large, round, and black, surrounded by a thick fringe of lashes—but Shanti
had good eyes, too—tilted in a way that could give her face a merry cast. Both
had high cheekbones, although the new woman's face was more oval, while
Shanti's was heart-shaped. Both had full mouths. Their noses were different,
though: Shanti had a button, while the new woman's nose was decidedly Roman.

They would probably make a good
recruiting poster,
Philippe thought.
Or a calendar.

Shanti looked up at him.
"Hey," she said.

Philippe snapped out of his
reverie. "Hi."

He turned to the new woman and smiled—experience
had taught him that there was really no reason to expect Shanti to attend to
social niceties like introducing people to each other. "Hello," he
said, sticking his hand out. "I'm Philippe Trang of the DiploCorps."

"It's a pleasure," said the
woman, taking his hand in her own and shaking it. "I'm Princess."

Her voice had that precise, clipped
quality that once would have meant that she hailed from England. Nowadays,
given how young she looked—Philippe would be surprised if she was twenty-five—her
accent meant she was likely from South Asia. North Americans had defended their
regional accents, but the British had taken their role as "Guardians of
the Language" so seriously that they had pushed standard Union English
with the standard Union accent down the throat of their schoolchildren with a
maniacal vengeance. As a result, unless you were in a former Commonwealth state
where schoolteachers clung to the old ways, you almost never heard the plethora
of accents that were so common in old virtual entertainments—no dropped
h
s,
no clenched teeth, no twittering tones.

Perhaps this standardization had
improved communication and eradicated class and regional barriers the way its
boosters claimed, but Philippe was hard-pressed to consider it progress. He
liked Princess' accent. And her voice. And a number of other things about her.

He snapped himself back to the
moment.

"So, you're Shanti's new
second?" he asked.

A voice exploded into his earplant.

"Trang!"
It was Sucre.
"Trang!
You've got to get out here
now! I'm in the common area near the Cyclopes! You've got to get out here! One
of them is down! A Cyclops is down!"

Philippe slapped his mike.
"Sucre, I will be there as soon as possible. Tell George as well." He
slapped it off.

He looked at Shanti, who had
already dropped the scroll—she'd been commed in.