Long Night

I haven’t seen the foreign sun in months. It wasn’t mine, but it was better than nothing. And now there is nothing. From the comfort of the climate-controlled embassy, I watch the shadowy figures pass my window, their edges blurred by the late winter squall. It’s easy to tell us from them. We hurry home in the winter—wearing anything less than a pressure suit means hypothermia in minutes and death in under an hour. They stroll, meander, stop to throw snowballs at each other. All Alwa’an seem to have snowball fights in common, at least. Or maybe what we actually have in common is senseless violence.

The office doors slide open. Even when I’m expecting it, the transition from alone to not alone always startles me. Because that was how it happened: the parting of automatic doors, the misfire of an ill-maintained particle rifle (a stolen one of ours with the eshnan emblem scratched into obscurity), the primality of hand-to-hand combat. If the misfire hadn’t burned my attacker’s palms until they steamed, I don’t think I would have made it out alive. But the war’s been over a long time, and it’s just Kessi.

“Sorry I’m late,” she says, brushing the snow from the fur on her head. A puff of brown hairs float down to the tile. “Just couldn’t get out of bed this morning.”

“You didn’t miss anything,” I say, then look back to the window. “I don’t know how you guys do this for half the year.”

Kessi shoulders off her overcoat and sits down at her desk. “This is your second winter in Khutaba.”

“I was drunk every second I wasn’t at work last winter,” I say, which is unfortunately not an exaggeration. A body removed from its planet of origin misses home in ways logic can’t explain.

She tilts her head. “It can’t be that bad here.”

“It’s not, but even back home I hated winter. And they were a lot milder. And shorter.”

“Well.” She’s quiet for a few moments. “You could come to my family’s Mastiche dinner tonight. Maybe that would cheer you up.”

Isks tend to ask questions without asking them. That sounded like an invitation, but Gaelin knows I have a habit of unknowingly inviting myself to things. “You want me to come to dinner tonight?”

“Yes,” she says. “You live here. Sharing our traditions keeps them alive.” The alternative, of course, is gentrification and cultural erasure. Neither of us says it aloud. Snow is cold. The cosmos is bigger than comprehension. Zahrani are relentless colonizers.

“Okay,” I say. “Thanks. I’m honored.”

Kessi smiles. “Hopefully I don’t embarrass myself in front of my boss.”

“Like I’ve never embarrassed myself in front of you.”

She turns to her computer. “Lucky for you, I’m a forgetful person.”

Not true. She remembers everything. Favorite things. Painful anniversaries, which usually come with a gift of favorite things. Home planets, continents, cities. “We’re supposed to meet with the mayor today,” I say.

“I remember.”

“Do you think he’s still angry?”

“I don’t know him personally,” Kessi says, not making eye contact. “But yes. A lot of us are.” She pauses. “I mean—not us. Not me. But most of the Isks who live here in the capital.”

“But kind of you too,” I say with a sigh.

Her eyes meet mine and she doesn’t have to say anything else. I understand. This job is impossible.

Though we work side by side, Zahran and Isk take breaks separately. I sit opposite Orym, whose brown eyes possess an inescapable gravity, like I do every day. Sue, a Splinter, sits beside me, but he doesn’t eat. Or sit, really. You can’t sit without an ass. He “eats” (absorbs nutrients) once a week, but comes to the break room to socialize. No word for his species exists in spoken language, so the ones who were left after the holocaust were called Splinters. Broken pieces of an extinct collective.

“You look stressed, Thorny,” Orym says with his mouth full.

“I’m just sitting here,” I say, my palms turned toward the ceiling.

“Exactly. You’re not talking. Or eating. It’s not like you.”

“Thanks for calling me a fat blabbermouth.”

“Perfect ambassador,” Orym says.

“You feel stressed,” Sue says through the translator.

I sigh. “Orym isn’t helping, but Kessi and I are meeting with the mayor later.”

“About the refugees again?” Sue asks. “Who called for the meeting?”

“He did.” After contacting all the media on the continent to put out a story about the cruelty of the Zahrani government to interstellar refugees. We have a fairly long list of enemies, some of them not unfairly. But Kriza has wanted anybody with blue skin dead for at least a century. The Isks inviting Krizan refugees to their capital city, which is now our capital city . . . it’s treason. “I don’t know what influence he thinks I have over interstellar policy. And I don’t think I want them here either.”

“Surprised your Human side doesn’t empathize,” Orym says.

“Are you kidding?” I ask. “The Krizans would just hate me more for that. The only thing worse than a Zahran is an impure Zahran.”

“Splinters were refugees once,” Sue says.

“What are you saying?” I ask. Sue has as much reason, if not more, to be leery of the Krizans’ presence here.

“I’m not defending them; I just think nobody runs away without a reason. Governments are different from the individuals who live under the regime.”

“Not when all the individuals share the same hatred,” Orym says.

“But the mother with three children she can’t feed or protect wasn’t the one who glassed my planet,” Sue responds bitterly. “And it’s not like they’ve been invited to Laiel. This is just a territory.”

I shake my head. “I think it’s too much of a security risk. But my opinion doesn’t matter anyway. I have to support whatever the government decides.” My attention falls on Sue, whom I can feel seething, even without a face to show it. “You okay?”

“Fine,” he says. Telepaths make horrible liars—you can always sense the emotion underlying the words.

“There’s no way the Isks just want them here out of the kindness of their hearts,” Orym says. “There has to be some ulterior motive.”

“I agree. Wish I knew what it was.”

“You’ll figure it out, Ambassador,” Orym says. “You always do.”

Today might be the first time I don’t figure it out. Mayor Indolar arrives with only his secretary and a Sister from the hushpar. I touch the mayor’s face, and the secretary’s, but I avoid touching the Sister. A lesson that only needed to be learned once. She returns a respectful nod.

“Nice to see you again, Mayor,” I say. Water droplets dot his white fur where snowflakes once clung.

“Thorn,” he says, with the hint of a sneer on his short nose.

Guess it isn’t nice to see me. I smile and motion to the marble conference table. There are plenty of negative things to be said about our government, but they—we, I suppose—have impeccable taste in furniture. Mayor Indolar and his companions sit down at one end, Kessi and I at the other. “So. I think I know what we’re here to discuss.”

“It is cruel not to grant the Krizan refugees asylum in Khubata,” says the Sister, barely above a whisper, like a mother scolding a child in public. “Our city has always welcomed refugees.”

“Do you know of our history with them?” I ask.

“Your history is not our history,” she says.

“We were promised our government would remain autonomous in planetary matters,” the mayor adds.

“You have to understand this isn’t just a planetary matter. The Krizans . . . if it were anyone else, it wouldn’t be a problem. But they’re terrorists. They can’t be in Zahrani territory.”

The Sister’s wide jaw stiffens. “Who are you to condemn an entire people?”

I think of the perfect fractal of indigo scar tissue the particle rifle etched into my chest, the rigidity of the injured muscles, a permanent reminder of Krizan hatred. I think of the friends who weren’t so lucky, their blood on my hands as the rest of us searched for signs of life. The plasma fires casting shadows in the colony we were supposed to protect. The metallic fetor of irradiated flesh. I feel Kessi’s eyes on me. I’m taking too long to answer the question. “I’m only a messenger, Sister. But I’m also a witness. When the Zahrani government allowed your planet into the Federation, you agreed to abide by our laws and support our interests. Krizans are not people you want here.”

“Refugees are essential to our infrastructure in Khubata,” the mayor says. “Without them, life as we know it would end.”

I frown. “How are they essential?”

“They hold the jobs no Isk is willing to do,” the mayor says. “Manufacturing jobs, sanitation jobs, you understand.”

My expression doesn’t change. I might have a bigger problem on my hands than I thought. “Mayor—”

“No people is more generous than Isks,” the Sister interrupts. “We commune with the deities by sharing our abundance. It’s our identity.”

“I understand and I’m sorry, but the Krizans won’t be allowed here. That has to be the end of it.”

“You aren’t sorry,” the Sister says. “Your cruelty will damn you.”

“Sister.” Kessi shifts in her chair. “You must be able to see it from their perspective. The war was a long war. Billions died. For many Krizans, it still hasn’t ended. We have no way of knowing which ones feel that way.”

Silence. My hearts pound in my stomach.

“Even more disappointing to hear such a sentiment from one of us,” the mayor says after a long pause. “You’re spending too much time around them.” His grey eyes settle on me. “Zahrani have so many enemies, I almost have to wonder if it’s worth being under your so-called protection.”

I laugh a little, mostly because the disbelief has to go somewhere. “I don’t want you to inherit our war. Take the warning. Learn the easy way.”

“There’s nothing to warn us about. They’re refugees; we’ll do the same thing we’ve done for millennia. You can take that back to your government, Ambassador.”

He’s testing me, wondering if I’ll buckle. “How are your refugee laborers compensated?” I ask.

“With shelter,” he says. “Food. Safety.”

“Like livestock?”

Another pause. “You’re threatening me.”

“Not at all. It was only a question. Did it feel like I was threatening you?”

Mouth hanging open, the Sister looks at the mayor, then back to me. But the words never come. She rises and leaves the meeting room, the air shifting as she passes me in her long garb. So much for generosity. I raise my eyebrows at Mayor Indolar, who follows her out. The secretary trails behind. When they’re gone, I take a deep breath and put my head in my hands. “Oh Gaelin.”

“If it makes you feel better, I think you were doomed from the beginning,” Kessi says.

I laugh and sit back in my high-backed chair. “Not really.”

“We voted for this. To be part of the Federation. I think they forget, sometimes, that we can’t do everything the way we used to do it.”

I chew on my lip. “I need to take a tour of those facilities. Can you set that up?”

“Of course.” Her compact, short-fingered hands rest on her knees. “I wish we could have found a solution.”

“Me too. Thanks for having my back. I hope it doesn’t complicate things for you.”

“Life is never uncomplicated. Unless you’re a bacterium.” She checks her holo-watch. “Are you ready for tonight?”

“Can I go in my suit?”

“Sure. My mom is old-fashioned. She appreciates people who dress up.”

“Then I guess I’m ready.”