Ambassador 4: Coming Home
Read Ambassador 4: Coming Home Online
Authors: Patty Jansen
Tags: #Science Fiction, #Ambassador (series), #Earth-gamra universe, #Patty Jansen
4: COMING HOME
PATTY JANSEN
Capricornica Publications
COMING HOME
A Capricornica Publication / 2015
UUID# 5B9DDEFF-6476-4BB2-9973-80BD451DAB64
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Copyright © 2015 by Patty Jansen
Cover Art copyright © 2015 by Tom Edwards
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.
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Chapter 1
T
HE MIDDLE OF
the afternoon—that lazy, comfortable time after lunch when people more fortunate than I could afford to have naps—was not the ideal time to be catching up with administration. It was the time that I would normally go for a walk, find someone to visit or something to buy. But the neglect of my administration account for the past three weeks had exploded the list of exceedingly boring tasks that also happened to be important, such as to make sure my staff was paid.
And I was a little ashamed that I found it impossible to concentrate, my thoughts drifting off to more pressing issues such as Captain Luczon of the Aghyrian ship, who lodged in the apartment below mine and who had proven to be a little . . . difficult to deal with.
Who
had
to be dealt with—
after
I’d done the damned administration.
Someone knocked on the door.
I looked up from my reader. “Come in.”
The door opened, briefly letting in a snatch of sound: a woman yelling at the top of her voice, somewhere in the hall, I judged, by the way the sound echoed.
My trusted member of staff Devlin slipped into the room.
The noise cut off when he shut the door behind him. He sat on the armrest of the chair opposite the desk, glancing over the various readers spread out before me, each with a different accountancy page displayed. He knew what I was doing. Respected it. It
needed
to be done.
“Is she still at it?” I asked him.
“Yup.” He gave a lopsided smile, because, seriously, smiling was the only thing one could do besides hoping that this ordeal would soon be over, and Xinanu would go home and terrorise everyone there.
“What’s she on about now?”
“Apparently, Eirani brought her yellow-coded breakfast and she spent most of the morning throwing up.”
“Isn’t that what most pregnant women do?”
Devlin shrugged. “You tell me, Muri. I wouldn’t know.”
“So what about this breakfast? Did she accidentally get Evi or Telaris’ trays? Did they get their breakfast?”
“They did. They ate at the table.” He grinned. “You have no sympathy for the poor woman, Muri.”
“Not if she behaves like that.”
He chuckled, and then his face turned serious. We all knew this episode would cause trouble somewhere down the line. We could laugh at Xinanu now, but we wouldn’t laugh so much when she went home and her clan leaders heard her side of the story. I’d already suffered more run-ins with Delegate Ayanu than I cared to remember.
And then Devlin said, “I have a problem, Muri.”
“A
problem? I would love the luxury of having just
a
problem.” Ever since we had returned from the Aghyrian ship with its captain, the problems that we hadn’t solved before we left appeared to have bred in dark corners. They were swarming us like a herd of cockroaches: when you squished one, two new ones appeared.
“I think this may be the mother of all problems.” His face was perfectly serious, but I didn’t miss the playful look in his eyes.
I had often accused the local keihu people of being lazy, humourless bureaucrats, but like so many of my ill-informed snap judgements, I was quickly coming to re-evaluate that opinion. Even if keihu weren’t blessed with the most attractive physique and their ways were unassuming, they were incredibly stubborn and could be funny if you took the time to pay attention to their dark, self-deprecating comments.
“Let’s have this mother-of-all-problems, then.”
“I’ve discovered why so many people have been angry at you.”
“You mean any reason other than that I cleared out without notice, stayed away for three weeks and came back with someone who will change the course of history?”
“Other than that.”
“It had better be something we can fix then.”
“We can, but it’s going to need some investment. The reason why you haven’t responded to a lot of urgent correspondence is that you never got it. The hub storage is full.”
I stared at him. “Is that all? Empty it.”
“That’s all very well, Muri, but what do I do with all the messages, materials and documents that people have sent you?”
“Isn’t there some sort of backup running?” I didn’t see why this was my problem. Information systems and communication was Devlin’s job. Surely he could shift all that stuff elsewhere and allow the current space to be usable again? I didn’t know anything about data systems. That’s why I had him.
“There is a backup, and it works. And we use it all the time. It’s just that I cannot back up things that haven’t been dealt with.”
Oh. Hell. “You mean . . . the storage has filled up in the space of those three weeks?”
He nodded. “And more is coming in every day. More than we can deal with. I’d apply for bigger storage, but I’m sure Delegate Namion would get upset because it will then be bigger than his storage.”
And Delegate Namion could certainly not be allowed to get upset. I was tempted to roll my eyes, but Delegate Namion and whoever elected the doofus as Chief Delegate was another subject altogether. “Well, in that case . . . maybe we should try to direct some of the correspondence to Delegate Namion.”
“We’re already doing that, but we cannot stop people using your main address.”
No, we couldn’t. “What is it all about, anyway?”
“Your trip, the Aghyrians, any of your projects in the past. A long list of subjects.”
“Who is it from?”
“All kinds of people. A lot of civilians. Individuals, smaller organisations, businesses. All kinds. From everywhere.
Gamra
worlds, non-
gamra
worlds, Indrahui, even.”
“And why are they all writing to
me
? They should be writing to their own representatives.”
“Yes. And some have. But the representatives cannot answer the questions, so they’ve sent them on to you.”
“But why not Delegate Namion?”
“I’ve looked at it. A lot of messages ask quite detailed questions and I know I’m not supposed to comment on it, but I don’t think Delegate Namion would have a clue how to reply to them.”
Oh. Yes. I couldn’t disagree with that. And ouch. And I still didn’t understand why the assembly had chosen him to succeed Delegate Akhtari.
The little voice in my head said,
Then you should have been here, shouldn’t you?
That was the story of my life in these last few days.
But I’d had no idea that using the Asto military’s single-node exchange sling would lose us three weeks. Three weeks! The biggest chunk of time the regular Exchange system lost was about half a day on a transfer to Hedron.
I spread my hands. “All right. I will make a quick selection of the correspondence. I will probably authorise you to dump a huge lot of it in Delegate Namion’s account. Then we’ll clear it all out. And get more storage, anyway. We can’t stop people sending us correspondence. If Delegate Namion complains, send him to me.”
He nodded, looking happy. One of the rumours about me I’d heard in the corridors was that my staff liked to work for me because I would often do exactly as they’d hoped I would. Whatever that was supposed to mean.
Devlin opened the door, letting in another wave of yelling.
“Devlin, while you go past Nicha’s room, do tell that woman to shut up.”
“Uh-uh. Not doing that. I’d rather keep my head where it belongs, Muri.”
I could understand that.
He shut the door. I ignored the sound of muffled yelling through the door and pulled my reader in front of me.
I hadn’t accessed the correspondence directories since coming back, because I’d been too busy, and because I had relied on my staff to keep them under control and pass the important items to me, but I was horrified to see that Devlin had been right. Everything was full to capacity. Almost every directory had a time period of a few days this week when no messages had come in at all—probably bounced because there was no space, until the ones from yesterday and today, when the auto-backup had made some space because I had dealt with some correspondence.
The most recent ones that I had received were all high-priority correspondence, from the Aghyrian delegation whom I had abandoned without notice or from the Barresh council and various other people who had been upset with me not reacting to their correspondence because it wasn’t getting to me. This included messages that should have been replied to with automated responses. For example, every three days a slew of authorities like the Barresh Council, the Pilot’s Guild and a whole bunch of additional professional organisations would send me a message requesting updates on the negotiation process. My account would automatically send out this material from the relevant administration accounts where my staff kept recordings of meetings and tabulated the status of various negotiation processes.