Trang (11 page)

“Welcome to the station,” said the
Magic Man, the smile fixed on his face. “I hope in the future you become fully
incorporated into the body.”

And with that, he walked away.

Shanti and Patch had heard it. The daffy smile on Patch’s
face was gone, replaced by a look of puzzlement with vague shadings of
something more chilling. Shanti looked like someone had just spat in her face.

It was definitely going to wind up
in their reports.

The important thing,
Philippe thought,
is to make sure they don’t say anything about it in front
of the aliens.

“This is a wonderful event,” said
Philippe to Max and Moritz. “I was wondering if you had anything special
planned, or if we could possibly take the opportunity for a tour of your
station.”

Max and Moritz looked like they
were about to explode with delight, which was good—and the comment had drawn
Shanti and Patch’s attention as well, which was even better.

“We would consider it a fantastic
honor,” said Moritz. “We shall tour the common area with you.”

Shanti hurriedly gestured to the
SFers, and Philippe soon had an entourage of soldiers that included her and
Patch. Max and Moritz told the crowd that the humans were going to go for a
tour, and the other aliens quickly made way. A loose group followed them.

Max and Moritz plodded ahead on their
six feet as Philippe tried to follow them and gawk about at the same time.

The alien station looked
nothing
like Beijing, thank God. Everything was quite brown, although the orange light
made it hard to determine exact colors. The area was large and open, with no
dividing walls and only the occasional narrow column. The floor seemed to give
a little underfoot, although Philippe wondered if that was an illusion created
by the difference in gravity and oxygen content. When he had the chance, he
discreetly touched one of the walls. It gave a little under his gloved fingers,
tempting him to peel off the protection to get a better feel.

“As you may have already
determined, we are currently occupying a common area,” said Max. “If you were
to look at the station from the outside, we are on a floor located in the large
cylinder that comprises the main body of the station.”

Moritz looked slightly apologetic.
“You will notice that the common areas are very open,” he said. “That is to
accommodate the wide variety of body types present. I realize that some people
prefer more-enclosed spaces, and I apologize if our arrangement makes you feel
uncomfortable.”

“Not at all,” Philippe assured him.
“Humans don’t mind open spaces in the least.”

“Yeah, they’re great,” said Shanti,
in an unenthused tone. “What are those things?”

She pointed at an arrangement of
low walls that emerged from the floor to their left. They looked oddly like
office cubicles, or perhaps stables.

“Those are more-enclosed spaces,”
Moritz replied.

“As part of our divine mission, we
have created spaces in our common areas where different people may meet and
communicate,” said Max. “Since some prefer more-enclosed spaces at times, we
have those. We also have many areas with tables.”

They approached one of the narrow
columns, which lay at the back of a large oval hole in the floor. The hole was
marked off by a low railing with a large gap in it.

Philippe looked up where Max was
indicating. The White Spiders had not had a representative at the reception,
but there were at least a dozen of them here, clinging to the high ceiling
overhead. Patch’s name for them had been typically descriptive—they had ten
long, feathery legs sticking out from an oval body.

“We provided them with a living
area, as we do everyone,” said Max. “But for the most part, they prefer to
inhabit the high parts of the common areas.”

Shanti made a noise in her throat,
communicating to the humans at least her opinion of that particular lifestyle.

The elevator arrived, so the humans
and Hosts got on. As they waited for it to start moving, a White Spider let go
of the ceiling and started to drift down, parachute-like. A cross-draft caught
it, and it suddenly flipped inside-out, like an umbrella in a windstorm,
presumably to avoid being blown off course.

Weird,
thought Philippe, but
of course, they were aliens, and not half as weird as the Magic Man.

“I personally believe that he uses
the body as a metaphor for friendship or alliance,” said Max. “He has told me
that the Hosts are part of the body. But he can be difficult to understand.”

“Oh,” said Philippe, still puzzled.
“He always seemed very easy to understand in the videos.”

“He was speaking other’s phrases,”
said Max.

That can’t be right,
thought
Philippe.
The translator must not be working very well.

“I’m sorry?” he asked, and then
realized he would have to be more explicit. “I don’t understand.”

“He was repeating phrases that
others had created,” Max said. “We or the Swimmers typically handle
communication with new people. We and they both lack the vocal range of the
Magic Man, however, so we create the phrases, and he speaks them.”

They reached their floor, and
Philippe stumbled off the elevator, stunned.

Five years—
five years!—
of
talking to the Magic Man, and Earth hadn’t been talking to him at all! There
were actual Magic Man
fan clubs
on Earth, and he had just been parroting
lines penned by someone else.

Worse yet, with all the resources
and analysis the Union had thrown at these communications over the years, they
hadn’t been able to figure out who they actually
had
been talking to.
The lengthy conversation humanity had been having with the Magic Man had
actually been with the Swimmers, a species—no,
two
species—Earth didn’t
know existed until yesterday!

The only hint the humans had had of
the Swimmers’ existence was seeing the small, oval shapes that roamed around in
the background of the videos the aliens sent them.

All
of the videos.

My God,
Philippe thought,
we
know absolutely nothing.
He had known that he would be breaking new ground
on this mission, but
this. . . .

Philippe shuddered, and then
quickly suppressed it, mindful of his companions. He suddenly realized that
Moritz had been talking rather at length, and he forced himself to tune back
in.

Mortiz was apparently pointing out
the various living areas—fortunately Shanti had been paying attention, and by
asking questions basically got Moritz to repeat everything he had just said.
Philippe was polite and noncommittal, hoping to avoid any major blunders as
Moritz and Shanti pointed out to him that many of the prongs were unoccupied
and that all the occupied quarters were clustered on the middle floors. The
Hosts, Moritz explained in response to Shanti’s leading questions, were
optimistic that someday enough species would join the station so that it would
be fully occupied.

I’m too distracted for this,
Philippe
realized. He needed time to process the discovery that some of Earth’s most
basic assumptions about the station and the aliens on it were utterly wrong.
Only then would he be able to absorb the new information the Hosts were
throwing his way.

“Maybe we should head back now?” he
asked Shanti, casually but with a clear undertone of command.

“Absolutely,” she replied, with a
knowing look. Whatever else she was, she was clearly perceptive and quick on
the uptake. Philippe was grateful for that.

“Shall we meet again tomorrow?” he
asked the Hosts.

“It would be our pleasure,” said
Max. “What time would be convenient for you?”

That turned out to be a
surprisingly complicated question. The station operated on its own clock, which
was based on certain regular fluctuations in the portal that led to the Hosts’
planet. Someone had apparently decided to translate English terms for time
directly into the Host’s terms, which created even more confusion because
everyone started out assuming they were talking about the same units of time,
only to discover that they were not.

Patch was the most familiar with
the station’s method of keeping time, but he was alarmingly unsure and chose
this particular delicate moment in the history of diplomacy to start making
jokes about short-term memory loss.

They did the best they could to
select a time, but even with a remote assist from Thorpe back in the living
area, no one was entirely confident. Max and Moritz decided to eliminate the
possibility of missing Philippe by maintaining a constant vigil outside the
door leading to the human’s living area for however long it took for him to emerge
again.

Philippe, of course, insisted that
some other solution be found. Eventually a passing Swimmer drone was hailed,
and it was arranged that, if Philippe were to come out and find that Max and
Moritz were not there, he would notify the nearest Swimmer drone, and the
drones would find and notify the Hosts.

Philippe returned to his office,
where he sat and tried to think of how to best explain to the DiploCorps that
the beloved Communicator, the ultimate diplomat, was nothing more than a
talking head who may or may not have threatened to eat them.

There was a knock on the door to
Philippe’s office. “Come in!” he said, eager for the distraction.

It was Baby, the pale young woman
who had pulled out a knife to demonstrate the effectiveness of her lonjons. “Hey,
Trang,” she said. “The doctor can adjust everyone’s eyes, if you want, so that
it’s less orange out there.”

She gave him a perplexed look, and
then comprehension dawned on her face. “Oh, you know, I was thinking you was
like an SFer—I forgot about the whole Amish thing. Your eyes are natural?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah, that’s it—we’re augmented.
We all have the implants. That way, we can get adjustment for night fighting or
whatever. But if you’re natural, then never mind it.”

“Your real name?” he asked. She
nodded. “Oh, all right, I thought it was a nickname. And I felt a little funny
calling a big tough SFer who I’d just met Baby.”

She laughed. “It’s OK because it’s
my name—but I don’t think I’d let nobody just
call
me Baby. There’s some
crazy nicknames, though. Five-Eighths? That’s just disgusting. And I know if I
was a man, I wouldn’t want nobody calling me Pinky or Cut. I mean, really.
There were some people in one of my other units who wanted to call me Baby
Killer, but I said, ‘Oh no.’”