The Envoy

On a routine eco-tour of the spectacular gas giants of Proxima Zed a Carnival Galactic cruise liner carrying six thousand passengers and crew exploded over the inhabited moon of Prox Zed-2, home world of the Farn, showering it with the remains of ship and passengers. Almost everything burned up in the Farn World’s thin and fragile atmosphere except for the bits that weren’t incinerated on the way down.

It was those bits that were the source of the disaster.

The Farn were – and still are – phobic about anything external entering their world’s atmosphere and we were to find out why. Fear of the consequences of just such an event made the Farn hostile to any alien presence in their star’s system, but pressure from The Authority and large bundles of credit from the company convinced them to allow an occasional cruise ship to loop around their system. Nothing could possibly go wrong. But just in case, the parties signed a treaty with a reparations clause that would likely bankrupt the company.

When the disaster happened the Farn immediately filed for compensation and Carnival Galactic prevailed upon the Authority to send a representative to oversee negotiations.

They sent me.

I was much too senior for such a low status assignment but they were the only ones I was handed. A new team had taken control of the diplomatic corps, and I was the last of the old guard who remained, tarred by my friendship with the deposed former Secretary. I could have been dumped for one of their own, but I was the only citizen of New Edo left in the diplomatic corps and my world’s leaders would have taken my removal as an insult with political consequences. So, I continued on, unwanted but untouchable, until I could be fully vested in my pension, handed nothing but trivial work.

An Authority frigate delivered us to Proxima Zed where we met the resident Carnival agent and the Carnival Galactic attorney, a Martian woman easily two feet taller than I. My team consisted of two staff attorneys, one Gaian, one Zil, and two unobtrusively armed marines.

Orbiting the prescribed distance above their moon-world in the Carnival agent’s yacht we waited for the Farn delegation to arrive. The negotiating sessions were scheduled to meet in the yacht’s domed atrium over which the gas giant Prox Zed-2 hung like a bloated Jupiter sporting a never-ending kaleidoscope of neon shades of red and yellow and black that spread and dissipated like stirred finger paint. The Authority frigate that brought us floated unobtrusively among the outer planets.

We watched the screen that showed the arriving Farn. I was prepared for what came next since I’d viewed the recordings of first contact and the treaty negotiations, but seeing it in person was shocking nevertheless.

How can I describe it? What looked like a gelatinous pseudopod erupted from the moon’s surface and rose towards us through its atmosphere. As the tip closed in on the yacht, we could see a figure in a baggy white space suit pinned to it. When the pseudopod came within several meters of the yacht’s air dock it stopped and released the figure, then retracted back leaving the Farn floating just beyond the yacht.

The room erupted in cries of disbelief: “What the hell was that?” someone behind me said.

“What kind of technology is that?” another said.

“Is their moon an amoeba?” a third said.

What indeed?

The Farn hung in space.

“Do they expect us to meet out there?” the Martian lawyer said.

I said, “No. It’s [to this day I can’t tell what, if any, gender-appropriate pronoun to use] waiting out there until anything on the outside of its protective suit dissipates. “They want nothing of their world to come into contact with us. And since it can’t breathe our air, it’ll stay in its suit. Which means when it leaves it will repeat the process to make sure anything that might have gotten on its suit during its time with us dissipates.”

She said, “So strange.”

“Mars once had a thin atmosphere similar to theirs,” I said, “Though it wasn’t as fragile.”

The Farn entered the ship’s air dock and stepped aboard. Though I wouldn’t see it in person during negotiations I’d studied the diplomatic corps records. The Farn are bipedal with a body plan nominally like ours: two arms, two legs, a central torso and a cranial bulb above what Gaians would call the shoulder line. There are differences, of course; their body plan is flatter and wider than ours, for example. I can only imagine what we look like to them. Stuffed sausages most likely. The Farn stepped forward, stopped a meter from me and waited.

As protocol required, I alone greeted it with open palms and began with my bona fides then launched into the script. It stood motionless, silent, so I continued. “We -,” I gestured to encompass my retinue, “wish to learn the harm that has been done -,” [notice the careful construction that avoided any sense of blame] “- and together discuss how best to heal the damage that has been caused.”

The yacht’s translator rendered the Farn’s response. “Grievous harm has been done. Our world,” - the translator clucked to indicate it was using that generic term for an untranslatable name -, “suffers.”

I understood its statement to be metaphorical and an opening gambit in reparations negotiations. It wasn’t. “We apologize and we acknowledge our responsibility for the harm.” I gestured towards a table set in the middle of the hall. “Will you join me?”

It nodded. I led it to the conference table and showed them to seats that accommodated Farn physiology. Since I knew it would stay within their vacuum suits, we had none of the usual refreshments set out nor attempted any of the attendant civilities that went with drinks and nibbles. This had the effect of making the meeting feel tense, something I’d told my team to expect. But they were corporate lawyers, and I needn’t have bothered.

Still, we were shocked. The Farn projected holos of the disaster: the explosion of the liner like a near nova in its sky; the weeks-long shower of burning ship and passengers: close-ups of craters of smoking metal, cooked and oozing organics, and the moon’s reaction. We’d had a taste of the Farn World watching the pseudopods rising out of the moon earlier.

“The pieces of the ship and passengers that survived burning up in the atmosphere are invading disease organisms,” the Farn said. “The pieces that hit World triggered massive climate disruptions like fevers and chills. Blistering. Throwing up toxic lakes. These reactions disrupt agriculture, threaten our water supplies, our food chain, our race.”

I nodded understanding. Most worlds can be considered alive to a greater or lesser extent. All born, changing evolving, eventually dying, sometimes in the most unusual ways, but nothing in the records prepared me for that: a world that blurred the line between geology and biology.

The implicit threat was clear to all of us: without the treaty protections Carnival Galactic would have been lucky to avoid prosecution in an Authority court for attempted genocide.

“Give us the tools to develop treatments for World. We need the most current research in our own laboratories and technology centers,” the Farn said.

On the surface, their need was evident: knowledge; intellectual property; licenses for the most advanced bio- and geo-technologies among the many worlds of the Authority.

“If you don’t comply, we demand the full measure of reparations.”

The Carnival Galactic lawyer didn’t even make an attempt to negotiate. What the Farn wanted would cost the company less than liquidation, throwing millions out of work on dozens of worlds and bankrupting millions more investors.

I saw the problem the lawyer didn’t, however. On one hand the Farn had a right to whatever might help them overcome the disaster; on the other the Farn could use that vast dump of knowledge to jump-start their own technology infrastructure and compete with numerous Authority home worlds at the leading edge of scientific research, which could spell political disaster. On the other, if the company didn’t comply, the Farn would destroy it and use the resources to acquire the knowledge anyway.

If negotiations failed, I’d be blamed for bankrupting one of the largest corporations in the Authority of Worlds; If they succeeded I’d likely be responsible for bankrupting many inner worlds whose economies were tied to the targeted research.

That was the trap the diplomatic corps leadership set for me. I was the chosen scapegoat.

I left the table and paced the hall, furious and desperate, when the yacht’s first officer appeared at my elbow and whispered in my ear.

“Excellency, there is a radio contact from the moon.”

I turned to face him. “From the Farn World?” That was very strange.

“Yes,” the first officer said

“Who is it from?”

“It appears to be a lifeboat’s automated distress signal.”

Nature and training kept me from revealing my astonishment. If there were unacknowledged survivors on the Farn World then something more was involved. Why hadn’t the Farn alerted us to the presence of a lifeboat on their moon? Were there survivors? If so, or even if not, why not divulge that as well?

What had been a trap disguised as a business negotiation was now an even more dangerous and highly charged affair.

As the first officer led me to the bridge I said, “Have you returned the message?”

“We have,” he said.

We arrived. The captain took me aside and led me to a screen. “You need to see this,” she said, “This is a recording. As soon we received the distress alert from the lifeboat, we tracked it to the surface of the moon, and this is what we saw.”

It took me a moment to understand what she was talking about. A visual close-up revealed one of the liner’s lifeboats sitting in the center of a radiating circle of black in the middle of a green field. Its simple presence killed everything around it, confirming everything the Farn had shown us earlier.

The captain’s voice brought me back to the moment. “That was less than twenty minutes ago. Now look at this.”

She led me to another screen in the center of the bridge’s control console.

“This is now. Real time. Same coordinates.“

I could see nothing but swirling gray and black clouds. The operator panned out until we were looking at the anvil top of a massive thunderstorm parked over the lifeboat. Lightning flashes within the cloud column flickered almost constantly. Sprites leapt up towards us.

“We think the lifeboat is transmitting to us but the signal is disrupted.”

“And the storm formed within – ”

“Less than ten minutes.”

My first thought was that we were seeing weather control beyond anything I’d ever heard of and as it turned out I was both right and wrong. My second thought was that the Farn were keeping us from communicating with whomever was inside the lifeboat and I wasn’t altogether wrong about that, either. But at that moment the whole aim of the meeting changed from negotiating reparations (and wriggling out of the trap set for me) to recovering the survivors of the disaster. I thought about alerting the frigate but decided not to ratchet up tensions until I knew more and so hurried back to the meeting.

The lawyers were still hunched around the table exchanging figures and estimates but they stopped when I entered. “May I have the room,” I said to my team. “And take the Carnival lawyer with you.”

They could see from my expression that something was seriously amiss, and they gathered up their tablets and left. The Farn had to have known what I’d seen. It stood with a flowing motion that humanoid anatomy does not allow, obvious even within their vacuum suits, as if its body inflated into a standing position.

I said, “Why didn’t you say a lifeboat made it to the surface?”

The Farn simply looked at me. I waited. The silence went on long enough for me to be sure it wouldn’t answer. Overhead, ProxZ-2 hung, bathing us in light and heat.

“All right, why won’t you allow the survivors to communicate with us?”

The Farn said, “It is how World reacts.”

I pointed towards the entry dock. “Come back when we can communicate with the survivors.”

Without a word the Farn left. After a time hanging in space to purify its suit, a pseudopod rose to gather it up and having done so, retreated to the surface.

When it was gone, I called the yacht’s captain. “Alert the frigate, but tell them to take no overt action. I’ll speak with their captain later.”

I sent off a burst to my overseers describing the situation. I was pretty sure this wasn’t a complication they’d planned for and that gave me hope. Then it was simply necessary to wait for the Farn to take the next step. That and continue to attempt communication with the survivors inside the lifeboat.

Through all of the next sleep cycle and most of the following wake cycle we had no contact with the lifeboat as the storm raged above it. My team met, discussed, reviewed, analyzed, waited. Privately, I had more than one discussion with the captain of the frigate, a young Truad, mostly to keep his natural aggressiveness in check.

It was near dinner time when the Farn finally called back. I was alone at the meeting table feeling like ProxZ-2 was an angry eye staring down at me when the comms officer informed me. I told her to eavesdrop.

Out of its protective suit the Farn looked alien indeed – for one thing it had two compound eyes – which I’d already seen – in a small triangular face more horizontal than vertical, the brain case extending back from the face, the whole head supported on a triangular neck running from the back of the skull that looked too wide for its torso to just behind the mouth– but no matter. Without any preamble it said, “What are you willing to pay to speak to the inhabitant of lifeboat?”

Different cultures have different value systems. That’s why parties make treaties, and the one which the Farn signed guaranteed all aid and assistance to victims of disasters just like the one we were here to resolve. Yet I could see their thinking. It was classic corporate lawyer negotiating tactics: unless we paid for access to the lifeboat they would insist on negotiating compliance with the Aid and Assistance Provisions while we grew more desperate about the state of the survivors.

It is in such situations that the presence of a warship becomes a useful tool. The Authority consists of many worlds circling many stars across a swath of our galaxy arm with vast military resources. The Farn World is one – moon – with pretensions to extend its control to its whole star system. One star system.

I said, “My friends, it would be better for all parties to adhere to the spirit as well as the letter of the treaty between us,” ‘friends’ being the code word that brought the Truad’s frigate alongside the yacht. The prompt arrival of a warship hanging just above the vulnerable Farn atmosphere had the desired effect.

“Agreed,” they said. “It will be arranged.” Contact was broken.

I called the bridge and asked to be told when communication with the lifeboat was re-established.

“The storm above the lifeboat site is clearing now,” the comms officer said. “I’m beginning to receive the ping again. We should have radio contact any minute.”

This was useful information: the Farn had control over at least some of their world’s reactions. I told them I was on my way. Since the frigate’s bridge was also listening in, its comms officer confirmed they were following events.

It was only then that I realized the Farn had used the singular when speaking of survivors. A survivor. One out of six thousand.

The storm had dissipated completely by the time I reached the bridge, so I was present shortly after the yacht made voice contact with the survivor.

The comms officer said, “We have Mr. Ellis alone in the lifeboat.”

I had questions and assumed the Authority’s data bank would have at least some answers.

Ellis’ face filled the screen. He looked Gaian, tan, hatchet-faced, straight black hair, brown eyes. His skin was rough, pock-marked. He didn’t sound happy to hear from us. “Who the fuck are you?”

I leaned over the comms officer and introduced myself. “Are you all right, Mr. Ellis? Do you need medical attention?”

“I’m fine. Leave me alone.”

He didn’t look fine; he looked like he’d been told he had terminal cancer. “You’re a very lucky man, Mr. Ellis, the only survivor of the explosion that took thousands of lives. Can you tell us what happened?”

“I don’t know.”

“How did you manage to escape?”

“Just lucky.”

His prevarication made me suspicious. The captain and I exchanged a look. She nodded and went off to alert the Authority.

“Come now, Mr. Ellis, luck had nothing to do with it. You had to be sealed into the lifeboat before the liner exploded.”

“If you say so,” he said.

At that point I was handed a download on Ellis. He’d signed on as a certified engine operator, but Carnival Galactic wouldn’t have known he was born and raised in the Sao Paulo barrios on Gaia, that his family was connected to the Capo Limpo gang that overran Brasilia and blew up Carnival Galactic’s commercial dock in Rio.

Mr. Ellis’s survival was now beyond suspicious, as was the cause of the liner’s explosion. It had to have been another Capo Limpo terrorist attack on the cruise line. And the six thousand souls’ lives snuffed out in a microsecond? They deserved it for doing business with Carnival Galactic.

Experience told me something else: Ellis was expecting to be rescued by the gang. Not by us. “Your Brazilian friends aren’t coming, Mr. Ellis. Why would they? You’re just the price they pay for blowing up a cruise liner, killing six thousand people and now endangering a whole race.”

He said, “Hey, what are you doing to my lifeboat?”

“Nothing. Did I mention that you’ve also sickened a whole planet?” I asked the bridge crew if anyone saw anything happening to the lifeboat. Nothing. I asked the frigate crew the same thing and their answer was the same. Saw nothing, heard nothing, except one analyst who said, “Maybe he’s hearing what’s happening on the surface.”

We all looked and sure enough, the blackened area around the lifeboat looked smaller.

“Call the Farn. Ask them when we can retrieve our survivor.” Carnival Galactic would want him as proof it wasn’t responsible for the disaster. Though, of course, it still was. But corporate lawyers can spin facts to minimize damage.

The reply from the Farn was disturbing. They regretted it was impossible to return the lifeboat or the survivor. They understood they could be considered to be in violation of the Aid and Assistance provisions of the treaty, but nothing could be done. They regretted.

That didn’t sound like a negotiating move to me, it sounded like the beginning of something ugly. In situations like that it is the Authority rather than the Envoy who makes the decision to escalate to military intervention.

While I was awaiting instructions, circumstances on the surface of the Farn moon were changing.

“Excellency,” the frigate’s captain called in, “It is getting harder to image the lifeboat and its signal is degrading. It appears that a membrane of some sort is forming around the lifeboat and sensor analysis says it’s likely that the membrane is filling with some sort of fluid.”

A disturbing image came to mind. “I think the moon is forming a blister around the lifeboat.”

“Impossible,” the Truad captain said, “It’s a moon, not a Gaian or a Zil or a Martian.”

“And yet,” I said. I’d have to brief him on the Farn world’s bio-geology.

I told the yacht’s captain to call the Farn. They put me on hold for a long time. I wasn’t surprised; relations had become strained over the Ellis situation was revealed and I was about to add to the tension.

When the Farn finally appeared I said, “Something seems to be happening to the lifeboat. Are your people doing something to it?”

The Farn said nothing.

It was impossible to read Farn facial expressions, but I got the feeling my question made it uncomfortable. So I waited.

Eventually, the Farn disengaged the translator and spoke to someone off-screen. That was the first time I’d heard its weirdly unsettling natural speech, sounding like two voices talking at the same time, one somewhat lower than the other, twining around each other, as if the two tones were engaged in a conversation of their own. I understood why the yacht’s translator sometimes failed.

Having received instructions from someone off-camera, it reconnected with the yacht’s translator and spoke to me. “World is healing itself around the thing. When the wound heals, World will spit the alien thing back into space.”

“You can stop it doing that, can’t you, so we can retrieve our survivor?”

“No,” it said. “It is what World does.”

What the Farn was telling me was consistent with their belief, that in their eyes their moon was more a living entity than a rock and any attempt to rescue Ellis would be considered assault, perhaps even murder if we, the infection, overwhelmed the moon’s ability to heal itself. The situation looked grim for Ellis.

On a different channel in my other ear the Truad captain muttered, “We can go down there and take him.”

He was young; possibly his first command. I switched channels and told him, “That would constitute an act of war and even though our intentions would be justifiable, they would not be acceptable. Think war crimes convictions and life behind bars for me and you and maybe many more.”

The captain muttered something about bureaucrats that I chose to ignore.

At that point I was still looking for a solution. Switching back to the Farn I said, “Is it possible for you to remove the survivor and bring him to us before your world seals off the wound?”

“No. It is not possible to do anything.”

I said, “If I understand you, the best you can do to honor the Aid and Assistance provisions of the treaty is wait until your moon expels the lifeboat.”

“What we promise to do is return the survivor to you as soon as World expels it.”

“How soon would that be?”

The Farn consulted a screen. “About one year.”

At this point I didn’t see a way forward.

“When can we resume negotiations for reparations?” it said.

I admit I felt the urge to answer, “About one year” but instead I said, “Soon,” and closed communications.

I called the team and both ships’ captains together in the yacht’s atrium to discuss the situation. The frigate’s captain sat silent, arms folded, legs crossed, a scowl on his face. The lawyers were fascinated by the legal ramifications of the situation. I had to work hard to steer them back to the immediate problem of what to do about Ellis and the Aid and Assistance provision.

“Alive doesn’t mean sentient,” I said. “Look at it this way: all the inhabited worlds we know of heal over things like meteor craters, volcanic explosions, continental rifts, all kinds of damage, only they do it in geologic time. Apparently the Farn World does it in real time. So even if the Farn believe their world is a living being, even if it appears to us that it acts as if it’s alive, we understand the situation differently, that their moon has a geology we have never seen before and it’s not alive, it’s only a moon with a weird geology. So let’s get on with the business at hand.”

It was at that moment that a crewman arrived with a message for me from the Authority. I read it silently to myself, then aloud to the assembled team. “The Authority reports that the Capo Limpo gang has taken credit for the explosion of the Carnival Galactic cruise liner in Proxima Zed’s planetary system.”

The Carnival Galactic lawyer said, “That means the Authority doesn’t need Ellis to admit whose instructions he followed.”

This changed the mood around the table. The Zil said, “So maybe we don’t have to worry about getting him out. Maybe we can consider the situation as pre-trial incarceration?”

I said, “More than that. A year on the Farn world is roughly the same as a Jovian year. About forty-eight Gaian years, give or take. When he gets out – assuming he’s both alive and sane – he’ll go on trial for mass murder.’

The Gaian said, “It’s a death sentence.”

Nobody disagreed. But we had no choice but to leave Ellis where he was. I did not then, nor do I now, believe that there was any way we could retrieve a terrorist that the Authority no longer cared about short of an act of war that the Authority didn’t want.

The solution – and my way out of the trap – opened before me.

I said, “So long as the lifeboat with Ellis aboard is held by the Farn World -,”

The Zil got it immediately. “Then by the terms of the Aid and Assistance provision the disaster is considered to be ongoing.”

I nodded. “Exactly. Carnival Galactic will have to agree to the Farn demands, but not until the terms of the Aid and Assistance provisions are fulfilled. For another fifty or so Gaian years.” It was hard for me to keep a straight face, not that I cared much about the company’s situation.

It was time to re-engage with the Farn. I signaled for communications to open and the face of the Farn appeared, hovering in the air above the conference table.

I said, “As the Authority’s representative to this negotiation, it is my determination that so long as the lifeboat with one survivor aboard is held by the Farn World, the disaster is considered to be ongoing. Until the terms of the Aid and Assistance provision have been satisfied the Farn may not claim reparations.”

In other words, a fifty-year wait to retrieve Ellis was a fifty-year wait for reparations.

In the end I brokered a deal that satisfied none of the parties, which is often what is considered a successful outcome. Carnival Galactic purchased a small number of licenses for enough advanced research data for the Farn to help heal their world somewhat while not giving them enough data to challenge existing industry players, in return for which the company agreed to withdraw from Proxima Zed permanently. The Authority had to accept the Farn expanding their sphere of control to the whole planetary system, setting an undesirable precedent.

I was the only party fully satisfied by the outcome. In avoiding the trap set for me I received a medal from the Authority and the diplomatic corps was forced to allow me to retire early on a full pension so I could return to my family’s estate on New Edo and walk among the gardens of my ancestors with my wife and grandchildren.