A Murder of Clones: A Retrieval Artist Universe Novel Read online

  The Eaufasse had blacked out the area behind it, so she couldn’t see where it was standing. The Eaufasse looked like it floated against a black background, unmoored by anything. Privacy concerns? An unwillingness to let humans or the Earth Alliance see what the interior of Eaufasse offices looked like? Or something else entirely?

  It didn’t matter, since the interior of an Eaufasse building or even the exterior of an Eaufasse street was not her concern. She didn’t care where the Eaufasse was, so long as it talked with her.

  She thanked the Eaufasse for the initial contact, and confirmed that she would be removing the enclave. She also told them that it would take time, since the enclave was so big she couldn’t do it without a larger force. She asked for permission to bring a larger group of humans onto Epriccom for the sole purpose of removing the human enclave. She promised that the force would leave as soon as the enclave left.

  The Eaufasse said it understood and had been expecting such a thing. It did not offer any help from its own people, which, Gomez knew, was a good thing. She had no idea what that enclave would do if it saw a group of Eaufasse approaching it. She certainly didn’t want weaponry fired at the Eaufasse on their own land, which—she also knew—was a possibility.

  She didn’t want to be the person who inadvertently started a war between some humans and the Eaufasse.

  After dancing around the topic for a while, she finally asked the question that had been the real point behind this conversation. She always began pointed and possibly offensive questions with an apology first, having learned the hard way that translators did not add politeness in the cultures that required it, but always subtracted politeness when it didn’t serve the needed purpose.

  “Please forgive the intrusive nature of the remainder of the conversation,” she said. “But I need information to help my people understand what has happened here, so that we might remove this enclave quickly and easily.”

  Uzven translated, its fingers tapping against its suit jacket.

  “It seems like the enclave has been on Epriccom for quite a while,” Gomez said. “Did something recently bring it to your attention?”

  Uzven continued to translate, then looked at Gomez, clearly waiting. Then the Uzven bowed its head and closed its eyes, listening.

  It had not been doing a simultaneous translation from the beginning of the conversation. Uzven did not think itself fluent enough, which worried Gomez.

  Uzven translated after the Eaufasse finished. Gomez wondered how much Uzven missed just by waiting. And Gomez didn’t entirely trust a summary. Sometimes the Eaufasse said a lot, and Uzven translated it into very few words.

  Gomez didn’t know if that was because Fasse used more words than Standard or if Uzven felt the need to shorten long thoughts or if Uzven was actually leaving out important details.

  “The ambassador said the enclave applied for permission to build on the land sixteen years ago. Permission was granted with minimal fuss. This is a remote part of the Eaufasse nation, and so the Eaufasse do not pay it much mind. In fact, they did not hear anything more from the enclave until it started attacking itself.”

  Gomez cursed silently. She wished she spoke Fasse. There were so many areas that could be misinterpreted in just that one little reply.

  But she was a veteran at this. She’d had more first- or second- or third-contacts than most diplomats in the Earth Alliance.

  “Okay,” she said to Uzven. “Before you translate for me, answer me a few questions. Tell them that’s what you’ll be doing, for clarification.”

  Uzven spoke rapidly to the Eaufasse. The Eaufasse raised its arms and wrapped them over its shoulders, which made Gomez look away. She had no idea if that was a relaxed position or if it was the same as nodding in her culture.

  “Proceed,” Uzven said to her.

  Proceed. She took a deep breath. She didn’t like its tone, but Uzven was all she had. “The Eaufasse I’m speaking with is an ambassador?”

  “That is how it identifies itself,” Uzven said.

  Crap. That created all kinds of problems for her. Technically, she was supposed to interact with a counterpart, someone of equal rank—if, of course, the alien/native culture had a ranked system. Conversations with ambassadors were supposed to be conducted by diplomats.

  Still, this ambassador was her contact, so she could argue that she had no choice about who she talked to. And of course, the argument would be true.

  “Do you understand the governmental rankings within the Eaufasse?” she asked.

  “Not entirely, no,” Uzven said. “If you are asking me if you are conducting an inquiry above your pay grade, then I cannot answer that. For all I know, all Eaufasse who deal with non-Eaufasse in minor matters are called ‘ambassador.’ Remember that we are filtering through two languages here, one imperfectly known.”

  Two?

  It took her a moment to understand what Uzven meant. It meant that it was translating into Peytin first before translating into Standard. Just great. Yet another way to add in misunderstandings.

  “I want to double-check the number,” she said. “Sixteen years? Not six?”

  “Sixteen,” Uzven said in a tone that definitely showed it was insulted that she checked.

  “Because Epriccom had just applied for Earth Alliance membership sixteen years ago. We hadn’t had much contact with any of the species here before that,” she said.

  She knew this because she had investigated it before she had gotten here. It took a minimum of twenty-five years from application to approval to become a full Earth Alliance member. And that was if everything ran smoothly.

  “Sixteen,” Uzven said again.

  “Damn,” Gomez muttered. This group of humans was even more private than she imagined.

  Uzven did not move, and neither did the Eaufasse on her screen. The ambassador. If it was a real, high-ranking ambassador, then she was screwing up by holding it up—at least under Earth Alliance protocol.

  “All right,” she said softly to Uzven. “Let’s continue.”

  Uzven bowed a little, then turned slightly.

  “Forgive me, Mr. Ambassador,” she said. “Mister” and “Sir” in Standard had become gender-neutral. She hoped Uzven translated them that way. “I still need clarifications of some of what you’ve told me. Did the enclave predate your application to the Earth Alliance?”

  Uzven dutifully translated. The Eaufasse’s arms came down to the position they had been in before. Its eyes shone whitely for a moment. Gomez had no idea what that meant.

  “Why is that important?” The Eaufasse asked. The question sounded defensive, but she wasn’t sure if that was the Eaufasse’s defensiveness or Uzven’s.

  She was going to act as if every emotion belonged to the Eaufasse. “Sir, I am trying to understand the enclave from a human-to-human perspective. If the enclave’s arrival predates our contact with you, this tells me that the enclave was looking for some place not affiliated with the Alliance to form its community.”

  That whiteness flared, then disappeared. The ambassador’s arms flopped over its shoulders again, elbows—if that’s what they were—pointing at her. She wasn’t even going to try to understand the body language. It unsettled her, and she didn’t want to be unsettled.

  “Their arrival predates the application by six months,” Uzven said. “And before you ask me, the ambassador is referring to months as the Earth Alliance calculates them.”

  “Thank you,” Gomez said, and before she could ask her next question, the ambassador continued.

  “It was their arrival that made the Eaufasse and the others on Epriccom aware of the Earth Alliance. It was in the researching of the humans that Epriccom decided that joining the Alliance would be a good idea.”

  That was interesting.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “The Earth Alliance is a trade and protection organization, facilitating business throughout several sectors. It would bring much-needed revenue to Epriccom while providing many
opportunities to the various local groups here.”

  Gomez almost laughed in surprise and relief. The ambassador was selling her on Epriccom’s final entry into the Earth Alliance. As she realized that, she relaxed slightly.

  “So,” she said, “the enclave have been good neighbors until they—as you said—started attacking themselves.”

  “Slang,” Uzven muttered loud enough for her to hear. Then it tilted its head slightly—a Peyti sign of disgust—and translated for her. Apparently it didn’t approve of “good neighbors,” which she didn’t consider slang at all.

  The Eaufasse ambassador brought its arms down again. She wished now that she had left this on audio. The movements were distracting. It turned its head away from her for just a moment. She got a sense that it was not alone. She wondered if it had another translator or if it had someone of higher rank just off camera.

  Then it turned toward her and spoke.

  “They needed supervision in their first year as they built their enclave,” Uzven translated. Then it added in a more confidential tone, “You should know that the ambassador may have used the word ‘crafted’ here. I chose ‘built.’”

  Gomez nodded.

  Uzven continued its translation. “The supervision included monitoring the materials they brought to Epriccom, transporting them to their location, and overseeing their building. They have a dome, although they do not need one because Epriccom’s atmosphere suits humans, but the Eaufasse appreciate the dome nonetheless.”

  She expected Uzven to continue, but it didn’t. She glanced at it, then at the Eaufasse. Apparently that was all it had said.

  “Why do you appreciate the dome?” she asked.

  “Because the humans have landing ships. Those ships go into and out of their dome, and do not do anything except transverse our airspace.”

  Uzven started to explain all the words it changed, but she didn’t care.

  “You don’t mind the ships?” she asked, feeling cold.

  “They are small. They must be scanned for weaponry. They have none. We see no threat.”

  “Weaponry?” She turned toward Uzven. “Does the ambassador mean external or internal weapons?”

  Uzven asked and received a quick answer. “The ships are weaponless. The interior scans, done in a cursory manner, do not show weapons either. But you know that part means nothing—”

  “Was that ‘means nothing’ thing your editorial or the ambassador’s?” she asked.

  “Mine, of course,” Uzven said.

  Of course. She didn’t like this. She knew more about weaponry than any Peyti translator could, and she knew that weapons could be built onsite of components that many governments thought harmless.

  Once again, she was at a disadvantage. She didn’t know enough about Eaufasse culture to know what they considered harmless.

  “Do you use Earth Alliance protocols for ships that land on Epriccom?” she asked the ambassador.

  “For Earth Alliance ships, yes,” the ambassador said. “As best we understand the protocols.”

  “Do you consider all human ships to be Earth Alliance ships?” she asked.

  “Are they not?” the ambassador responded.

  She wasn’t going to answer it directly. It was fishing for more information on humans, and she wasn’t about to provide it. Sometimes, the Earth Alliance did not tell Frontier members that humans were scattered all over the sectors, and were not always members of the Alliance.

  Some, in fact, were enemies of the Alliance.

  It was better for the Frontier members to remain in the dark about such matters and to call the Earth Alliance when they had a human problem.

  Like the Eaufasse had.

  “Your ship protocol is correct,” she said. “Thank you.”

  The Eaufasse moved one arm outward. Uzven did not comment on the gesture, either as a translation or as an opinion.

  “Mr. Ambassador,” she said, “these attacks the humans performed on each other. Is this the first time such a thing has happened?”

  “We do not monitor the dome,” the ambassador said.

  “Again, sir,” she said. “The information I am asking for is to allow me to deal with the enclave. If we need diplomats to discuss human-Eaufasse relations, I am happy to provide them. But my job here is strictly judicial, and concerns the humans in that enclave only.”

  Uzven translated that. Then the ambassador spoke, and Uzven answered.

  She felt left out, which she most definitely did not want to be.

  “I want you to translate everything,” she snapped at Uzven. It put out an arm toward her, its branchlike fingers tilted upward at a 90-degree angle. Finally, a gesture she understood. It was a Peyti gesture for shush combined with wait.

  After a moment, Uzven said, “The Ambassador wanted to know why the Multicultural Tribunal was involved. I assured him it was not. I told him that we have a law enforcement branch designed to take care of recalcitrant individuals. Apparently, the Eaufasse do not use the word ‘judicial’ the way that our two cultures do.”

  It was Gomez’s turn to be sarcastic. “Good to know.”

  “I am not entirely sure it understands the concept of law enforcement, so I might have to do extra explaining,” Uzven said. “I will inform you when I am doing so.”

  “Thank you,” she said as dismissively as she could. “Mr. Ambassador, is this the first time, to your knowledge, that the enclave has attacked its own members?”

  “We do not know about life inside the dome,” the ambassador said. “We have only seen a few of the humans outside of the dome, and then only on rare occasions. Generally, they walk to the clearing, look around, and then return to the dome.”

  “In a group,” she said, for clarification.

  “Always in a group.”

  “Were they in a group on this trip?”

  “No and yes,” the ambassador said.

  Great, she thought. More nitpicking.

  “Four emerged,” the ambassador said. “They moved quickly. A dozen more emerged. They moved even more quickly. They carried weapons.”

  Gomez remained still, but a tension filled her.

  “I asked him what kind of weapons,” Uzven added. “He did not know. Long ones, he said.”

  “Thank you, Uzven,” Gomez said. “So, Mr. Ambassador, for my edification then. Four left the enclave, followed by twelve. The twelve had weapons and chased the four.”

  “Not quite,” the ambassador said. “The four left some time before the dozen. The dozen tracked them, found them, and killed them.”

  “But we only found three bodies,” Gomez said.

  “Yes, that is correct,” the ambassador said. “The fourth is with us.”

  She felt a surge of adrenalin. That explained a lot. The bodies were in a state of decay, so they’d been dead a while—in theory, anyway. And if the fourth human somehow found its way to the Eaufasse before dying, the human’s death could have caused problems inside the Eaufasse culture. Gomez could think of dozens of cultures in which going from living to dead in the wrong location caused all kinds of interspecies squabbles.

  “Humans are particular about their death rituals,” she said. “We will have to request that the body be returned.”

  The ambassador peeped, like the Eaufasse in the clearing had. It was an odd and noticeable sound. Then the ambassador spoke.

  “The ambassador says he’s sorry,” Uzven said. “He was not clear.”

  “Word for word, Uzven,” Gomez said tiredly. She hoped that the diplomats ended up with a better translator than Uzven, although she suspected they wouldn’t.

  “The ambassador said,” Uzven said with emphasis, “‘I am sorry. I have spoken unclearly. The fourth human is with us. It lives and asks for asylum. That is why we contacted you.’”

  It would have been good to know the entire translation the first time. Gomez bit back her irritation, and concentrated. So the reason the Eaufasse had contacted the Earth Alliance had been because of the fo
urth human, not because of the dead bodies in the clearing.

  She had not expected this. “My understanding is that the Emir contacted us to remove the enclave.”

  “The Emir did that, yes,” the ambassador said. “Our politicians believe that the enclave will now be a problem and want it gone. But we contacted you before the Emir. We do not know how to proceed with an asylum request while we are under consideration for membership in the Earth Alliance.”

  Neither did she. She had never heard of such a thing.

  “And you are…separate…from the politicians?” she asked carefully. Then she remembered to couch the terms more carefully. “Forgive me for my failure to understand your culture. I was the Earth Alliance representative closest to Epriccom when you requested Alliance presence. They chose me for my proximity, not for my understanding of your culture.”

  “That’s all right,” the ambassador said. “We do not have a deep understanding of your culture either. This is why we are confused about the asylum request. We did not know that one member of a culture can become alienated from that culture. It is not our way.”

  Oh, but it’s ours, she thought, but did not say.

  “My clan are the functionaries,” the ambassador was saying. “We maintain the systems of government. The Emir and his clan direct the government. In other words, we do not make policy. They do. But we enforce it.”

  “Ah,” she said. “Our jobs are similar then.”

  “No,” Uzven said. “They’re more like—”

  “Let me, Uzven,” Gomez said. “Just translate.”

  Or she’d grab Uzven’s scrawny little arm and snap it in half, just to hear if it sounded like the twig it resembled.

  All right, she acknowledged to herself, her level of frustration was higher than it needed to be. At least she was directing her aggression toward the Peyti, and not toward the Eaufasse.

  “I do believe our jobs are similar,” the ambassador said and tossed its other arm outward. Then its eyes flared gold. She hoped that was a good thing.

  “Well,” Gomez said, “I will work with you to make sure we make things easier for our politicians. The less they have to do, the better.”