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Shanti stared at him for a moment,
her dark eyes hard, narrow, and unblinking. Her jaw twitched, and without a
word, she shut the door to his office.

Two days later, Shanti had still not said a word to
Philippe. He had not heard from the Hosts regarding another meeting. And the
White Spider was still sitting there, motionless on his office ceiling.

He had messaged the DiploCorps,
telling them that the volume of mail he was getting was completely unacceptable
and that someone in the Beijing office needed to screen his messages and handle
the easier questions. He also asked that Kathy be blocked from sending him
personal messages, and that any messages sent by her to his official address be
scrutinized for appropriateness of content. He knew that such a request would
probably damage her career, but he was through taking crap.

The day before, Philippe had gone
out into the common area, all by himself, like the fully-grown adult he was. He
had run into Baby, who had wanted to show him something. She took him to the
common area near the Hosts’ living quarters. There were dozens of low
platforms, and a number of Hosts were eating and chatting there.

“Quite the café culture,” Philippe
had said.

“What?” Baby had replied.

It turned out that she had arranged
a lunch date with the Host she had mentioned in her report. He was waiting for
them by one of the platforms. After greeting them, he went over to a machine
with two basins in the top, somewhat like a kitchen sink. The Host stuck his
front hands in the first basin, waited a few moments, then pulled them out. His
hands were covered in a thin layer of gel. Then he stuck them in the second
basin. A bright light shone, and billows of steam came off of his hands. He
pulled them out, checking them carefully. The gel was gone.

“This is a hand-sanitizing
machine,” said the Host. “I do not think you should use it, however, because I
am not certain that it is safe for you.”

“It certainly looks powerful,”
Philippe said, not at all eager to put any part of his anatomy in it.

“It is. We usually walk with all
six hands on the floor, so a complete and thorough cleaning of the front hands
before eating is essential. But since you do not touch the floor with your
hands, I assume that it is not essential for you.”

Philippe looked at Baby. “We’ll be
sure not to touch the floor with out hands when we sit,” he said, more for her
benefit than the Host’s.

They sat on the floor at a dining
platform, carefully keeping their hands on the table. Baby pulled a ration bar
out of a pocket, broke it in half, and gave half to Philippe. The Host ate
something with a crumbly texture that looked like sand. First, he moistened his
hand in a bowl full of colored liquid. Then he used the wet hand to press the
sandy food into a wad, which he shoved into a gap between the segments of his
deep-red shell.

They tried to discuss what he was
eating, but the translators would only tell them that the grainy material was
“foodstuff” made of “organic matter,” that the liquid was “foodstuff processed
into a liquid,” and that together, they constituted a light meal. The Host
asked them about their food, and Philippe realized that he had no idea what was
actually in ration bars, aside from a gazillion nutritional supplements and
years of scientific research. He said that the bars were a compact food
designed for travelers.

“I think,” said Baby to the Host,
“that I want to learn your name.”

The Host, Philippe could tell, was
completely tickled by the suggestion—and by Baby herself. “I do not think that you
can say it,” he replied, teasingly.

“You know my name,” she said.

“But your name translates: Infant.
I like such names, and I feel it is unfortunate that more of your people do not
have such names. The Cyclopes have such names, although none as charming as
yours.”

“Come on, teach me!”

“Listen. It is this: Cannot
translate,” said the Host.

It took them several tries—they
tried to tune out the translator but eventually made him turn off his mike when
he said it, and they turned off their mikes when they attempted to repeat it.
They finally came close with “Ptuk-Ptik,” although the Host told them that they
were missing several syllables in what was apparently the ultrasonic register.

“You know, maybe these translators
aren’t the best thing to be using,” said Philippe. “If we had the right kinds
of mikes and earplants, then we could speak and hear in the register you speak
in as well. And in that case, we could just learn your language rather than
having to rely on translators.”

“Sounds complicated,” said Baby.

“I’m not saying that this would
replace the translators, but any translation is imperfect. I think if people
who were willing to learn an alien language actually could, that would improve
communication. I mean, during the past five years, you guys essentially learned
English in order to communicate with us.”

“That was a group effort, and in
truth, only the Magic Man could be said to have sufficient familiarity with
your language to communicate spontaneously,” said Ptuk-Ptik. “You are an
innovative thinker, but my people would never support that idea. They are
attached to tradition. I am in a very flexible order, but even my order would
not be willing to see the translators replaced as a means of communication
among species. It would mean a loss of status and purpose for the Swimmers, so
I predict that they would oppose it as well.”

“It’s odd that so many of you here
are priests,” said Baby. “We ain’t got no priests with us.”

“Did that translate?” Philippe
asked, curious. “What she just said?”

Ptuk-Ptik looked at him
thoughtfully. “Her most recent remark translated as: She considers it unusual
that many of the Hosts on this station are priests because none of the humans
on this station are priests,” he said.

“That’s what I said,” said Baby.

“I asked because she uses an
unconventional grammar,” Philippe explained.

“It is evidently sufficiently
conventional for those who provided us with code for your language to include
it,” replied Ptuk-Ptik.

“Ha!” said Baby to Philippe.

“To answer your question, Infant,”
the alien continued. “We have priests here because the portals represent that
part of the universe that is beyond reason, that part that offers a deeper
purpose, a divine destiny. What bigger mystery is there than the portals and
the aliens who come through those portals? And who better trained to examine
that mystery than the priests?”

After their meal, Philippe and Baby
took their leave of Ptuk-Ptik and walked around the common area. They chatted
with a few other aliens who recognized Philippe as the human diplomat, among
them a Snake Boy. The Snake Boy was not among those kept out of their living
area by Ofay and Sucre, but Philippe made a point of expressing his regret
about that incident nonetheless.

He came back feeling pretty good,
and even the sight of another three widgets on his desk did not dismay him—the
DiploCorps would start screening his messages soon enough. Aside from the
immobile White Spider, he was alone in his office and could get his work done,
which was a nice change, although at several points he thought he could hear
someone shouting who sounded a lot like Shanti. When he went to get dinner that
evening the SFers around him were pretty quiet, and the same was true when he
got breakfast the following morning.

It wasn’t until the next day that
someone knocked on his office door. “Come in!” Philippe said.

Patch opened the door, stepped in,
and shut it. He looked tense. “Guy,” he said, “I don’t know what exactly you
said to Shanti, but you have
got
to make up with her.”

“What do you mean?” asked Philippe.

“I know you had a fight, OK? And
she’s really, really, really, really mad at you, all right? And if you really
want the truth, everyone else is kind of pissed at you, too.”

Philippe looked at his desk,
feeling a touch defensive. “Well, I don’t see why.”

“Guy, when the MC wants to spank,
everybody’s ass is red.” Patch stared at Philippe in silence for a moment,
looking uncomfortable, and then decided to push on. “She says you pulled rank
on her. That you didn’t want to talk about stuff, that you just wanted her to
do what you told her to do.”

Philippe thought for a moment.
“Well, perhaps I was a bit harsh—”

“Harsh!” Patch yelped. “Guy, have
you listened to Shanti talk? Harsh she can handle. She
is
harsh. Harsh
is
fine.
It’s when she starts getting quiet that you have to worry. I
mean, I don’t want to freak you out, but I don’t think she ever yelled much at
her old man.”

Philippe sighed. Sometimes Patch
made no sense. “If she doesn’t care if I’m rude, then why is she so upset?”

Patch stared at Philippe
incredulously. “Guy, you
pulled rank.
” As he said it, he looked at
Philippe as though he, too, should be horrified to hear his aberrant behavior
described in such blunt terms.

When Philippe only continued to
look confused, Patch continued with his explanation. “You told her that you
were in charge of this mission.”

“Well, I sort of am,” said
Philippe.

Patch looked defeated and sat down.
“OK, I’m trying to think of how to put this,” he said.

The effort of cognition kept him
silent for several moments, and Philippe was just about to start talking when
Patch opened his mouth. “In some of the national armies and I guess maybe in
the Union Police and other places that are kind of stuck in the twentieth
century, there’s like this big rank structure, right? And in those types of
places, I guess it’s, like, OK to order people around just because their rank
is lower than yours. But guy, we’re the Special Forces, and the SF is all about
respect for the individual soldier. Nobody has any fucking
rank
, you’ve
got a
job
—I’m second, Shanti is MC, the doctor is MO, Cheep and Pinky
are pilots. You’ve got the thing that you’re good at, like munitions or
communications—you don’t have
rank
. Other people do not order you around
when it comes to you doing your job. It’s fucking insulting.”

“OK,” said Philippe, “but
my
job was being impaired by having this entourage—”

“So you go to Shanti, whose job it
is to manage your security, and you say that there is a problem, and you
ask
her to fix it.”

Philippe stared at Patch in
amazement.

“Look,” he said, “Shanti is called
the mission
commander.
She orders people around all the time. She
threatens
them. Don’t tell me she can’t handle it.”

“There’s a difference between that
and what you did,” said Patch. Philippe rolled his eyes in response. “No, there
is, it’s like a dignity thing. And you know, if she feels strongly enough about
something that she wants to kick my ass over it, she’s more than welcome to
try.”

Patch flexed his massive arms
unconsciously, causing Philippe to silently resolve to never, ever offer to
kick his ass.

“She can tell me what to do as her
second, because that’s the second’s job—to back up the mission commander. But
she can’t
order
me to do jack shit when it comes to my other job, which
is munitions. I know a lot more about it than she does, and I could get her
into a hell of a lot of trouble if she was a pain in the ass about it. That’s
like, why people join the SF and not some other military—respect for the
individual soldier.”

Philippe sighed. That line was
clearly a mantra for Patch—for all the SFers, probably.

It would be easier, Philippe
reflected, if they were just
normal.
He knew he had been snappish,
very
snappish, and that his quarrel with Shanti probably had had a lot more to
do with the letters from Kathy than anything else.

But his snappishness had also had
something to do with the fact that Philippe was surrounded by people who didn’t
appear to follow
any
rules of etiquette. If everyone around him could
threaten to cut each other’s throats without consequences, why couldn’t he
snap?

But now Patch was telling him that
there
were
rules—deep-seated, treasured rules that represented
everything the Special Forces stood for as a culture. And Philippe had violated
those rules.

Philippe sighed again.
You can’t
fight culture,
he thought.

“So, basically, everyone hates me
now,” he said.

“Not really, not yet,” Patch
replied. “But you know, we’re a small group here. When two of the, like,
authority-type people stop getting along, it can cause a lot of problems with,
like, morale and people feeling like they have to take sides. It’s not just you
two, it affects us all. And, uh, I’m talking to you because, um, you gotta get
the ball rolling. I mean, I’ve worked with Shanti a long time, I was around
when she and Royal got divorced, and I know that when she’s this pissed off,
she’s not going to be the one who reaches out. She just, like, stews—and she
makes life fucking hell for the rest of us.”