While I was waiting for Doc Lowry to tell me something interesting, I got busy tracking Keran Carman’s movements since she had arrived in Georgina’s Town. As a rule, we don’t spy on the few tourists we get, so tracking her movements involved using the archives from every CCTV in the town to follow her and build up an itinerary of where she had gone and who she’d spoken to.
It was time-intensive, deadly boring work, so I put Ninety-Nine onto it, while I checked her documentation at the skyport.
She’d travelled here from Livira—no surprise there. Livira was home to the headquarters of many businesses with outlets on more than one world, where they could take advantage of the complex network of commercial transport routes that met at Livira. Livira’s unofficial name was MarsPort Two.
But the departure point also explained Carman’s polished, elegant business demeanor. Livira liked to think it was a cosmopolitan society that had risen far above the menial lot of serials. Residents there were snotty about their progressive outlook and attitudes which, they believed, elevated them beyond their original coding.
Attitude is just attitude. To me, it doesn’t mean anything, unless backed up by actions. And Livirians were often short on actions.
I hated the place. But I had a sinking sensation that I was probably going to end up there very soon unless I could clear up the mystery over Carman’s death right here.
When I checked, Ninety-Nine had tracked Carman’s movements from the moment she stepped off the Livira shuttle to when she’d checked into the hostel that all tourists were required to use.
He was three hours into watching people come and go from the hostel foyer, for the rooms didn’t have internal CCTVs. As Carman had probably fallen right into bed to sleep for twelve hours and normalize after the shuttle run, he had a while to go before he could pick up her trail once more. But every minute of footage from three cameras that included the foyer of the hostel in their pickup had to be checked, just in case.
Ninety-Nine had the footage running at three times normal speed.
“You going to miss her, running it at that speed?” I asked him, watching people race through the doors, swing around each other, and hurry past the hostel on their way to somewhere else.
“She kinda stands out,” Ninety-Nine pointed out.
I didn’t doubt him. “If she doesn’t show up after twelve hours, you need to go back and recheck from the point where you last saw her,” I pointed out.
He gnawed his lip, then slowed the playback to only twice normal speed. Now the people scurrying about on the screen merely looked like they’d drunk too much coffee.
I patted his shoulder and went back to my desk to try and wheedle the spaceport, which wasn’t under Georgina’s Town jurisdiction, into giving me Carman’s travel history.
Well past my standard dinner hour, I quit for the night. Everyone I was trying to reach had already gone home, and everyone else, including off-world contacts, were still to get back to me. That list included a mechanic who I’d figured out by process of elimination—location, fee structure, specialties, snottiness factor (appropriately high)—might have been Carman’s regular consultant and would know of pre-existing conditions she’d had that might explain her death.
Ninety-Nine had already packed up and left. I’d heard him shutting everything down not too long ago. I vaguely recalled he’d stuck his head in the door and suggested I go home, too.
I closed up the office and trudged home via the warrens because there was a cookshop on that route which always had a pot of noodles, vegetables and spices stewing, no matter the time of day. I picked up a tub and a baguette and went directly home from there. Sleep would be useful—I could let my autonomic systems sort out the data and file it and maybe I’d have an insight when I woke up. Sort of the same thing as humans letting their subconscious work…only we didn’t have a subconscious. Not the same way they do.
In the corridor, outside the door to my apartment, a mucky blue and dark red ball of exoskeleton was curled up against the wall. Back curved over, with cloven feet, skinny legs and long spindly arms all protectively tucked inside. Head, too. The curved ball of shell expanded. Contracted.
I knocked on the emra’s shell to wake them. Then a second time.
The emra uncurled, breathing heavily. Then it carefully raised onto its feet and straightened up as much as the emre ever straighten. They were bipedal, but always looked hunched in, as if they were cringing. Which pretty much summed up their entire culture.
This one was taller than me. It was more unusual to come across an emra that was shorter. I studied the orange and blue facial features, the unblinking eyes, and frowned. “Do I know you?”
The emra ducked its head forward. “Indirectly, Lane-sir.” It had a heavy accent I recognized as that of the emre home world. As the emra mouth wasn’t designed for human speech, the heavy accent on top of it made the emra’s words nearly indistinguishable.
“You were waiting for me?”
“Yes, Lane-sir.”
“You could have just come to my office.”
It ducked forward in a movement that made me think it was bowing, and anthropological experts had confirmed the ducking and hunching was a mark of respect. “Your place of work is for the business of Georgina’s Town. This is not business of Georgina’s Town, why I am here.”
I didn’t bother pointing out that I was flexible, that any sort of business should be taken up with me during business hours. The emra wouldn’t understand it. They obeyed human customs as if they were capital class laws, because humans didn’t make sense to them, not even when they knew the rules. But their collective nature was to accommodate, so they followed the rules.
It gave humans and the emre a sort of common platform. I don’t think I’d do nearly as well trying to navigate their society and customs, which were just as bizarre to me.
“You’d better come in, then,” I told the emra.
It nodded—this time, it was just a nod. It followed me into the apartment, stepped sideways around the coffee table, and stood in the open space between the sofa and the round table under the window, watching me as I shut the door and took off my coat. Its head was only just lower than the ceiling.
“You know who I am,” I told the emra. “You are?”
The emra bobbed its head and shoulders. “I am Yengro, Lane-sir.”
“I don’t know that name. But you look familiar to me.”
This time, the emra lifted its head and tilted backward. They didn’t have chins, but whatever they used in their throats to form language bobbed up and down rapidly. The emra was laughing. Politely. An emra belly laugh was an alarming thing, involving arms thrown up and knees kicked sideways. To me it was amazing that emra had a sense of humor in the first place. They were so docile, in general, and their lives so miserable thanks to the war they were perpetually fighting against the Vind, that I wouldn’t have blamed them if they’d never laughed at all and resented it in others. But they did like a good knee-slapper.
Its little chuckle over, the emra said, “I am brother-son to Larkrier, Lane-sir.”
All my humor fled.
I sank onto the sofa.
The emra, being polite, also lowered itself into a crouch, its knees by its frail shoulders. That was actually their version of sitting, although they would sit on human chairs if they thought it was expected of them.
This emra knew I wouldn’t expect them to sit in the human way, because they were a blood relative to Larkrier, and Larkrier was a name from my past. Not just from my past, but from a particular period in my life that I thought I’d closed a door upon.
I spoke, my lips uncooperative, my heart slamming about. “Is Larkrier well?” Even the emre considered it polite to enquire about the well-being of old friends, when meeting their kin and familiars.
“Larkrier now leads our war effort, so is very well.”
The response required unpacking. The emre were not aggressive, but they’d learned how to fight when the Vind had invaded their colonial worlds and taken over management. Their war effort had been the sole focus of their species for more than a thousand years. In that time it had calcified and now was a central part of their social structures…and their politics. If Larkrier was leading their war effort, that put Larkrier near the top of the political chain. A general-admiral, junior only to their prime minister, Rauks, and on equal footing with perhaps five other general-admirals.
If Larkrier was well because they were leading the war effort, then it was because they had intended to reach that position.
“Go, Larkrier,” I murmured. The wily, lanky emra had never revealed political ambition when I had known them.
“Larkrier regrets they cannot speak to you in person,” Yengro added. That sentiment was purely Yengro aping human politeness. The emre would much rather not speak directly about anything. It made them too uncomfortable. Messages, letters, recordings, any indirect communication was their forte. It let them react in private, then compose a non-offensive response.
I nodded, indicating that I understood. “They have a message for me?”
Yengo rose to their full height. The way the emre rise straight upward without swaying or leaning the way humans do always made me think of hydraulics and mechanical lifts.
They reached into the pouch on their hip.
The emre don’t wear clothes. Their skin is thick and leathery, and the rear exoskeleton protects them against a lot of abuse. But they did wear a type of breechclout over their genitals, which were kept in the crotch area like ours. The same anthropologists figured the emre adopted the breechclout to avoid offending our sensibilities. They also wore belts with pouches threaded on them, which carried all the tools and possessions that we humans put in our pockets.
Yengro removed something from their pouch, bent from the hips and placed it on the coffee table before me. They pressed their hands to their chest over the iridescent blue decorations they liked to paint on themselves. It was an emre gesture of offering.
The object on the table was a data box. The emre, either to avoid offending humans, or to be polite, or simply for convenience sake, had adopted our technology standards almost from the day we’d met them. This data box would interface with any computer, emre or human.
The message from Larkrier would be in that box.
“You could have sent this by normal mail,” I pointed out.
Yengro bobbed his head. “Larkrier did not wish the message to…go astray.”
My heart was back to bouncing around. Too many dark, unpleasant memories were wrapped up in the emre and my associations with them. “Thank you for ensuring it reached me. I appreciate the courtesy.” The words were almost automatic. The rust was already falling off my dusty diplomatic skills in just these few short minutes. I didn’t reach for the box. That would embarrass Yengro, who would feel I was trying to rush them out the door.
Instead, I got to my feet, too. “My house is at your disposal. My food, my drink.”
Yengro bowed—this time there was no mistaking the gesture. “I would partake willingly, but I regret, my time is short. My return is scheduled. I must hurry to meet my flight.”
“To…?” I coaxed.
“Chotrucury,” Yengro replied.
The emre home world. Or, the new home world. I think it was their sixth home world that I could remember. They had a different name for it, one humans couldn’t pronounce.
“I wish you well on your journey,” I told them and opened the apartment door—a human custom they appreciated.
We did not shake hands, or bow. Yengro simply moved through the door and kept walking.
I shut the door and turned to eye the data box on the table.
Larkrier had sent Yengro with the message all the way across known space to give it directly to me, then scuttle straight back home. That made it a very expensive message.
I was almost afraid to open it.
And I was afraid of what might happen if I didn’t open it.