“What have we been saying back to them?” she asked Nine Hibiscus, walking by her, the comms officer, and Mahit to stand by the curved plastisteel windows, four layers thick between her and vacuum, only vacuum between her and the aliens.
“That we heard them play our message back—and then, since I didn’t have either you or the Ambassador, Envoy, for a good twenty minutes, Two Foam and I switched to visual composition. If they can hear us and they want to talk, then they can see images that we transmit on the same channels.” Nine Hibiscus had come to stand next to her, a large solid form, immovable, like a star that satellites could orbit around. Three Seagrass wished rather a lot that she’d spent a little less time trying to get rid of the kitten and feeling sorry for herself, and even a little less time talking to Fourteen Spike about how impressive the yaotlek was, and a little more time going to the bridge, even if Twenty Cicada had obviated her of the direct responsibility. Since Fourteen Spike was right about the yaotlek and her impressiveness. She was the sort of person who made you want to do what she asked, before she asked it.
“Images are easier than trying to speak their language with my extremely limited and machine-mediated vocabulary, yes,” Three Seagrass agreed. “And the aliens do have eyes that seem to work in the usual fashion, based on the autopsy. What’s the visual?”
“Two Foam is drawing it,” Nine Hibiscus said. “Your Ambassador is helping. She’s a decent hand at orbital mechanics, which is interesting.”
“She was raised on a space station.”
Nine Hibiscus lifted one shoulder, suggesting that living in space did very little to guarantee that a person knew how space worked. Three Seagrass assumed that was valid. Then the yaotlek said to her, “Envoy, before we send this message—you and the Ambassador are willing to meet face-to-face with these things, yes? Given appropriate military escort.”
“Are you inviting them onto the ship?” Three Seagrass asked, as blandly as she could manage while thinking, quite vividly and nauseatingly, of all those holoimages of the disemboweled people on Peloa-2.
“Certainly not,” said the yaotlek.
“Without much more substantive communication,” Three Seagrass said, warily, “I would prefer not negotiating on their ship. No matter whether I am with the Ambassador, a military escort, or you yourself. It shows a certain weakness.” Also, she didn’t trust those pretty cave-fish mouths, spinning in space: she had already had enough of the physical effects of these aliens and their noises to last several lifetimes, and that was without whatever resonant capacities the material of their hulls provided.
“Funny,” Nine Hibiscus said, “the Ambassador said the same thing, nearly word for word. Don’t think we’re such rubes at negotiation, Envoy, just because we’re the Fleet. We’re sending you down to Peloa-2. And presumably, they will also send down their representatives. Or at least that’s what Two Foam is attempting to draw.”
Down amongst the eviscerated. Delightful. “Let me see,” Three Seagrass said, and braced herself for being near enough to Mahit to brush one of those pure white sleeves in apology.
Mahit didn’t say hello. But she did shift slightly, so there was room around the holodisplay Two Foam was working at for Three Seagrass to see properly. The comms officer clearly knew how to draw: she’d sketched two little humans, and two aliens that looked very like the dead thing in the medical lab. Below the two humans and the two aliens was a static flat image of Peloa-2, captured from real holo. As Three Seagrass watched, the aliens and the humans descended on parallel arcs, the orbit Mahit had sketched with the gesture of one hand, and stood facing one another on the surface of the planet. They were extremely out of scale. Neither humans nor evisceration-prone aliens were several thousand feet in height, even when engaged in critical negotiations.
“You need to put the ships in,” Three Seagrass said. “Ours and theirs. So it’s clear that we want to talk specifically to the ones right out there.” They were still spinning, those three-wheeled rings. Spinning and not moving yet, just transmitting louder and louder self-reinforcing renditions of the message Three Seagrass and Mahit had written. Come talk. Come talk. Come talk. For our mutual benefit.
Mahit nodded. “She’s right. Both ships, and when they get to Peloa-2—when we get to Peloa-2—do you know the symbol for volume? For increasing volume?”
Two Foam looked at her as if she’d said something in her own incomprehensible language, instead of a perfectly understandable Teixcalaanli sentence. “The glyph for crescendo?” she asked. “… If you want me to draw that, I can…”
Mahit’s face acquired a particular amused, arch expression that Three Seagrass didn’t think she’d ever possessed back in the City. Again, she wondered if what she was seeing was the other person, the other Ambassador from Lsel Station, dead and machine-reborn Yskandr Aghavn. (And worse, in terms of the inconvenient timing of the realization: she felt a sudden spike of hope that it wasn’t Mahit that she’d had this terrible fight with, but Yskandr, and everything could still be put back the way it had been. That would be nice, wouldn’t it. Most things turned out not to be nice, so perhaps she should immediately forget she’d thought of it.)
All Mahit said was, “That has eleven strokes and doesn’t even look like a sound wave, ikantlos, of course not the glyph for crescendo. Let me show you.” And instead of sketching an orbit in the air she made a gesture with one cupped hand, moving across space: a small curve, a larger one, a larger one still. Like a cone of sound.
“Oh,” said Two Foam. “Volume. Absolutely.”
Three Seagrass really needed to get Mahit a cloudhook so she could move holoimages around, but bloody stars, she hardly needed one, did she? Two Foam drew exactly what she’d described: three cupped curves, increasing in size, being emitted from the aliens and the humans once their silhouettes were standing on the surface of Peloa-2. Like they were talking to each other.
“That’s good,” Three Seagrass said. “I like it. Anything else, Mahit, or should we transmit?”
Transmit, and get ready to go down there. We’re not going to have time to make up. Maybe that’s easiest.
“We’ve kept them waiting long enough,” said Mahit. “Send it. And let’s see how much audio playback equipment we can make portable, and does the Fleet have exceptionally strong antiemetics?”
“You’d have to ask medical,” said Two Foam.
“Someone ask medical,” said Mahit. “I can’t talk to anyone. I’m not a citizen.” And she smiled, terrifying and far too beautiful with all those teeth exposed, gesturing to her entire lack of cloudhook.
“I’m disappointed in you, Cure,” Eleven Laurel said, and Eight Antidote cringed so hard he almost fell off the bench he was sitting on and into the reflecting pool in the garden outside Palace-Earth. Which would have been hideously embarrassing, and bad aquaculture besides. Splash, one wet kid and a lot of ruined water lilies, smashed pink petals.
“I don’t like being snuck up on,” he said, which was true and also not a good response to being surprised by a teacher who was disappointed. But he’d really thought he was alone.