Ambassador Read online

  After that Dad proceeded to the silly plans, though he still went through them with the utmost seriousness. Most involved ghosts. Gabe’s father liked ghost stories. He had plans for wailing ghosts, ghosts wearing veils, and ghosts wandering back and forth near ponds, lakes, or the river. He had plans for pirate ghosts, ghosts in mirrors, and ghosts throwing things in the kitchen. He insisted that he had trapped one such spirit in an empty olive jar. “It liked to toss my knives around at night,” he warned them. “Don’t you dare open the olive jar in the very back of the cupboard.”

  Most of the ghost plans fit into the “evacuate immediately” category, though some of them suggested appeasement: find out what the ghost wants and try to give it to them. If the ghost happened to be trapped in an endless, painful, post-traumatic, post-mortal loop and couldn’t stop reenacting the way that it died, then Dad suggested breaking the loop by distracting the ghost somehow. Possible methods of distraction included loud norteño music, which no one in the family actually liked.

  Gabe noticed for the first time that they had no alien-related plans. He wondered how Mom would react to the suggestion that they plan for aliens, given that she kind of hated science fiction. He also wondered what she would think of his new job. He picked up the saltshaker and then put it down again.

  A strange, metallic shriek came from the basement.

  “What was that?” Lupe asked. “That sounded spooky. Should we initiate the plan for basement hauntings?”

  Dad stood up to investigate.

  “I’ll go,” Gabe quickly volunteered, and ran out of the kitchen.

  He opened the basement door, half-expecting the staircase to swallow him whole.

  It didn’t. The light was on. Gabe was relieved to see that the basement still existed and that light could still escape it. He went halfway down the stairs and peered over the handrail.

  The Envoy sat on top of the half-dismantled dryer with a wrench in its mouth. It had built a wire frame around the appliance with dozens of coat hangers.

  “Shhhhh,” Gabe whispered.

  The Envoy swallowed the wrench.

  “Apologies,” it whispered. Then it spit the wrench back out and returned to work.

  Gabe went back to the kitchen table and shrugged. “No ghosts.”

  He ate another helping of spicy garbanzos while they finished going over emergency ghost plans.

  “One more thing,” Dad said. He brought out a box, set it on the table, and removed two cloth-wrapped objects from inside. The shorter of the two he gave to Gabe.

  “This,” he said with solemnity, “is a vajra hammer.”

  Gabe unwrapped the cloth and examined the hammer.

  “That,” said Lupe with tickled scorn, “is a rubber mallet with strings of beads glued on.”

  Dad looked annoyed. “This,” he repeated, with even more solemnity, “is a vajra hammer. In Tibet and India it represents wisdom and the power to smash deceptions and falsehoods. Use it well, Son.”

  “Thank you, Father,” said Gabe with equal ceremony. He shook his new hammer of wisdom and truth to make the beads rattle.

  Dad gave the other bundle of cloth to Lupe. “Take this, my firstborn, and keep it safe. It is an important heirloom of our family.”

  She took it, barely humoring him. “I’m sure it’s been an heirloom since you glued it together earlier this morning, whatever it is.”

  Dad stood back and crossed his arms over his stained apron. He didn’t look annoyed. He looked even more smug. “Unwrap it, wiseass.”

  Lupe removed the cloth to reveal a walking cane of polished wood, capped with a silver handle. Sarcasm fell away from her face in small pieces. She tugged on the silver end and unsheathed a long sword blade.

  “That was my grandfather’s,” Dad said. “Toledo steel, with a seascape etched along the blade. Whenever he had his afternoon nap, I would sneak in, swipe it, and swing it around in the backyard. I always put it back before he woke up.”

  “Toledo, Ohio?” Lupe asked. She stared at the blade, dazzled. There wasn’t as much joke in her voice as she probably meant to put there.

  “No, wiseass. Toledo, Spain—the nation of our ancestors. Half of our ancestors anyway. Those who crossed the wide ocean to do horrible things to the other half of our ancestors. Now pay attention. You’re the oldest, and the fighter in the family. You keep it safe. Your brother is the diplomat, so I have judged him worthy of a vajra hammer.”

  That made Gabe nervous. How did he know that I’m a diplomat? Did he overhear us last night? Or is he just trying to make me feel better about giving me a rubber hammer with beads glued on rather than my great-grandfather’s sword?

  Dad gathered up the breakfast plates and dropped them in the dishwasher. “Take care of these gifts, my children.”

  “Thanks, Dad,” they both said together.

  “And, Lupe, you’re going to class this morning. Don’t give your mother any more grief about summer school.”

  Lupe started to say something, stopped, and then said something else. “Can I bring the sword?”

  “No,” said Dad.

  After the gift-giving ceremony was over, Mom and the twins moved through the kitchen in a sudden, frenzied bustle of kisses and shouts of “meow.” Then Mom and Dad and Noemi and Andrés all left to run errands.

  “Make sure your sister goes to class today, my heart,” Mom whispered to Gabe on her way out the door. “Make sure she does.” Gabe promised that he would, insomuch as he could ever influence what Lupe did.

  Soon Gabe and Lupe stood alone in the kitchen.

  “Can I borrow your hammer?” Lupe asked. “Temporary trade?”

  Gabe wasn’t sure she was serious. He didn’t want to agree too quickly, even though his answer was obviously yes. “Why?”

  “Because I have spiders in my room,” she told him. “I want to use the mallet of truth and wisdom to convince them that their spidery lives are illusory. If I use the sword to do it, then I’ll just make holes in the walls and ceiling. After I smash spiders, I guess I’ll go to summer school. After that I have a restaurant shift, so I probably won’t see you for the rest of the day. Have fun while I’m gone. Swing that sword around in the backyard if you can do it without hurting yourself—or hurting the sword. Call my cell if you need anything.”

  Gabe was relieved that he didn’t have to try to convince her to leave the house and get far away from the dangerous physics in the basement.

  “Why do you need summer school, anyway?” he asked. It felt safer to ask now that Mom wasn’t home.

  “Because I failed a bunch of classes last year,” Lupe told him in a very matter-of-fact sort of way.

  Lupe’s failed classes did not bother Gabe. What bothered Gabe was that they didn’t seem to bother Lupe. “You used to freak out if you got an A-minus.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “So what changed?” Gabe asked.

  “Just gimme the hammer,” she said without answering, making it clear that she wouldn’t answer.

  He took the cane and gave her the hammer.

  She went up to her room to smash spiders.

  Gabe checked on the Envoy downstairs. He felt better prepared for whatever he might find now that he carried an ancient weapon of his family—even though he knew that he couldn’t defend himself against a black hole with a sword.

  The Envoy worked furiously. Red sparks flew from the wire frame. But nothing caught fire or exploded or imploded. The Envoy waved him away with a temporary limb when Gabe tried to ask questions.

  He went in the backyard to swing the sword around and enjoy the sound it made. He didn’t do that for long, though. He still felt groggy and zombified, like a flu or a fever might be creeping up on him. He saw stars in shadows, and more stars behind his eyelids.

  Gabe went upstairs and apologized to the antsy menagerie of pets for their confinement. Then he flopped back onto his bed, even though it was still morning. The three animals roamed the room around him. He could hear the
thump of Lupe killing spiders. Despite all this, he quickly fell asleep.

  Once asleep, he was elsewhere.

  A deep, slow voice announced his arrival.

  “The Honorable Gabriel Sandro Fuentes, ambassador of Terra and representative of all Terran life, be welcome.”

  7

  Gabe stood in a small and narrow room, alone. The walls seemed to be made out of thick, smoky glass. He looked up. If this place had a ceiling, it was very far above him.

  Hello? he tried to say, but he couldn’t speak.

  “Be welcome, Ambassador,” the room said again in its slow, deep voice. The voice had no accent that Gabe could place. He wasn’t even sure what language it spoke. At first he thought it was English, the official and semi-formal English of gray-haired news anchors on television. But it might have been Spanish, the stately Spanish his grandparents always used on the phone when they wanted to seem especially grandparental.

  The wall in front of him shifted, becoming silvery and reflective.

  “Please observe your own image until it is familiar to you,” the room said. “We are now coordinating the recoherence of your entangled self.”

  The first thing Gabe saw in the mirror was a floating metal ball.

  Doesn’t look much like me so far, he thought.

  “Please be patient while you coalesce,” the room said.

  Now the mirror image looked like a floating tadpole the size of a soccer ball. It shifted again, growing limbs and losing a tail, then growing bristly hair before losing that, too. Throughout each shift the reflection looked back at Gabe with wide, dark eyes. They were expressive eyes, full of the same wary, skeptical wonder that Gabe felt while watching.

  “Still not me,” he said—out loud, this time. The beastly-looking thing in the mirror moved its mouth while he spoke.

  “Your remote is collating sense memories,” the room explained. “Some of these memories are very old. Please be patient. Please do not fidget.”

  “Sorry.” Gabe had been flapping his arms to see what his reflection would do with its own momentary limbs. He stopped. “Is this the Embassy?”

  “Yes,” said the room. It sounded distracted, as though concentrating on something else.

  “Good,” said Gabe. “Just glad I’m in the right place. Hello.” He checked out the size and shape of his reflection’s teeth.

  “Hello,” said the room. “I am Protocol. Your remote is very nearly calibrated to your own sense of self.”

  “That still doesn’t quite look like me,” said Gabe, scrutinizing his reflection. He wore a simple, reddish robe that looked a little bit like a martial arts uniform. “Close, but too tall.”

  “Variation and mutations of perception and meaning are unavoidable in translation,” said Protocol, sounding annoyed. “Please proceed to the Chancery.”

  The mirrored wall slid open.

  Gabe hadn’t actually understood most of that, but it was easy enough to understand the invitation of an open door. He paused in the doorway and peered down the corridor on the other side. He felt air on his skin, a little colder than comfortable. He also felt like he actually had a body here, like his arms and legs were with him. His emotions were a mix of top-of-the-roller-coaster feeling (Gabe didn’t actually like roller coasters, but he always rode them anyway to quietly prove that he could), first-day-of-school feeling, and edge-of-cold-swimming-pool feeling—only much bigger, as though the swimming pool in front of him were several million miles deep.

  “Proceed, Ambassador,” said Protocol.

  “Please be patient,” said Gabe, still hesitating. “What am I supposed to do out there, exactly?”

  The room made an exasperated noise. “I take it that your Envoy has not yet explained this to you. And I note that your world is without a registered Ambassador Academy. You have had no prior training. Splendid.”

  “You’re making me feel less welcome,” Gabe pointed out.

  “I am very sorry,” said Protocol, without contrition. “Experience trumps explanations, however, so I recommend that you simply proceed. Go meet your peers. Communicate as best you can, and try not to start an intergalactic incident. Have fun.”

  “Thanks,” said Gabe. “Very helpful.”

  “You are most welcome,” said Protocol. Gabe couldn’t tell whether or not it was being sarcastic, but he very much suspected that it was. “Please proceed.”

  Gabe took a breath, let it out, and walked down the corridor. It was long, narrow, and made of the same thick and smoky glass stuff as the room behind it.

  The corridor opened into a room big enough to have its own sky.

  Clouds swirled and hovered in that sky. They looked more like the nebulae that Gabe had dreamed his way through than clouds of water vapor in the air back home. Orange-tinted light came from every upward direction, as though local sunlight were setting everywhere at once.

  The room itself looked like several landscapes squeezed into a gymnasium. Gabe saw things that looked like hills and trees, though shaped with simple, geometrical precision as though made rather than grown. And the colors were all unfamiliar, from purplish hillside plants to silvery tree leaves.

  He saw caves set into the ground, a lake that looked more viscous than watery, and stranger features of the landscape that he wasn’t even sure what to name. The Chancery looked alien to him. It also looked like a really big playground.

  Kids were everywhere, climbing, running, swimming, building things together, or flying through layers of cloud. They all seemed human-shaped and Gabe-size, with hair and skin colors just a few shades different from what he was used to. This was disappointing. He had expected some green skin and tentacles.

  Three of his fellow ambassadors seemed to be making sand castles out of the dark, blue-black sand of the lakeshore. Or maybe they were speaking to each other in some sort of sculpture-based language. Gabe watched from a distance, curious, but he couldn’t really tell what they were doing.

  He glanced away and accidentally caught sight of those same three ambassadors out of the corner of his eye.

  They weren’t human-shaped anymore.

  One looked like a crab with the head of a camel.

  Another looked like a lump of dandelion seeds.

  The third was huge. That’s all Gabe could tell at a glance. A face and one limb rested on the sand. The rest disappeared in the water.

  Gabe stared at them directly. All three ambassadors looked human again: one crouching, one sitting, and one resting on his stomach with feet idly splashing the water behind him.

  Gabe squinted. All three took on their very different shapes.

  They only look like me when I look at them directly, he realized.

  He squinted up at the flying ambassadors and caught glimpses of wings or waving tendrils. With eyes open wide he just saw kids, flying kids. They shouted and swooped, playing an airborne ball game.

  The three on the beach might have been playing some sort of board game—but shaping the towers and tunnels of the board itself seemed at least as important as moving little stone pieces across it. He watched carefully, but he couldn’t tell how to play, and he didn’t feel comfortable intruding. He didn’t feel comfortable at all. Instead he felt confused, disoriented, out of place—alien. Gabe didn’t like this feeling, so he went walking and exploring to try to shake it off.

  He couldn’t shake it off, but the feeling shifted inside him. It traded awkwardness for awe.

  We’re not alone, he thought. He had always figured that aliens must exist somewhere. Space was entirely too big, filled with too many other stars and way too many other planets for the rest of it to stand empty. And he had known about the living reality of intelligent-yet-nonhuman life since his first chat with the Envoy. But the Envoy was just one purple oddity that fit in an aquarium. Now aliens surrounded Gabe. He squinted to glimpse the wide variety of shapes and movement. He was one of many. His own world was just one place among infinite many.

  Gabe felt very small. He savored
that feeling and kind of enjoyed it while he explored. Then he came to the forest. It looked like a coral reef and a massive jungle gym as much as it resembled terrestrial trees. Forest games apparently involved lots of running, hiding, and chasing. Gabe climbed a tree to get out of the way. The surface of the branches felt smoother than tree bark but not slippery.

  He perched on a limb and watched the kids below. He could recognize bits of hide-and-seek, tag, and capture the flag, but he wasn’t sure how they fit together. There seemed to be teams, but players often switched sides.

  Two other ambassadors climbed an adjacent tree. They both looked like girls, and both wore clothes similar to Gabe’s. He resisted the sudden urge to squint at them, to find out what other shapes they might have. He felt like that would have been rude.

  One stood upright on a thick branch. She had high cheekbones, a wide nose, and very straight, dark hair. She looked severe. Gabe thought that she should have pointy ears, but she didn’t.

  “Kaen,” she said, and pointed to herself.

  “Gabe,” said Gabe. Then he hesitated, unsure what information they were supposed to swap. “Is Kaen your name or your species or where you’re from? My name is Gabe. I’m from Earth. Or Terra. We call the planet Terra in Latin. That sounds more official somehow. Hi. I’m babbling. Sorry.”

  “Kaen,” she said again. “I am the ambassador of the Kaen, which isn’t my species, and it isn’t my world. We don’t have worlds. We are different species, all traveling in a great, nomadic fleet, and all together call ourselves the Kaen. Call me that. It isn’t my name. I won’t share my name with you.”

  “Fair enough,” said Gabe. “Gabe is my name, but you’re still welcome to use it.”

  “I will,” she said, and stared at him. Gabe wondered if she was squinting, if she saw him now as he saw himself. He felt exposed and uncomfortable.

  The other girl held on with both hands and both feet, crouching on her branch and mostly paying attention to the games below. She shrieked with laughter every time someone got tagged, and her laugh was much larger than herself.