Strangers Among Us

I Count the Lights-1

I COUNT THE LIGHTS

Edward Willett

Selvan Hori, Terran Ambassador to Prevaria, paused on the stairs that spiraled around the Tower of the Silent God and peered anxiously at the pool of shadow in front of him. One of the green lights that gleamed eerily every nine steps had just gone out, vanishing as he stepped away from the previous light, and between the darkness and the black stone, it looked disconcertingly like the next dozen or so steps had entirely disappeared. Since he was currently some two hundred feet above the cobblestoned courtyard of the Temple complex, that was not a comforting thought.

The air around him moaned with the constant song of the Tower, carved here and there with complicated openings that turned it into a giant organ pipe, played by the sea breeze by day and the land breeze by night, so that only in the stillness of dawn and sunset did it fall completely silent. The complex chord engendered awe and tranquility in Prevarians, apparently, but it contained enough subsonic frequencies that the dominant human response was faint terror.

The steps haven’t gone anywhere, he told himself. The light has just gone out.

But he paused anyway, partly to gather his courage, partly to give his pounding heart a chance to slow and his breathing a chance to steady.

“I count the lights.”

Alfred Kelvas, Head of Security for the Terran Diplomatic Mission to Prevaria, tapped the soundbud in his right ear and glanced at the flexible screen on the underside of his left wrist. The datalink status indicators glowed green. As far as the AI back in the Embassy was concerned, that had been an accurate translation of the short squeaking phrase the blue-skinned Prevarian monk hunched on the stone bench before him had just uttered.

Maybe the translation had been faulty in the other direction. Kelvas decided to try again.

“I’m sorry, I think the translator may have malfunctioned,” he said, while the speaker concealed in the breastplate of the body armour he wore under his dark green uniform squeaked like a demented mouse. “I asked your name.”

The monk splayed his three-fingered hands and turned them rapidly from side to side, the Prevarian equivalent of a vigorous nod. He squeaked again. “I count the lights.”

Kelvas forced down his irritation. Two days ago, Ambassador Selvan Hori had fallen from the three-hundred-foot Tower of the Silent God, the central feature of both the Temple and the capital city of Prevaria. Support for the painstakingly negotiated trade agreement between Terra and Prevaria was plummeting as fast as the late ambassador had.

Kelvas’s superiors were demanding answers, the Prevarian Motivator, roughly equivalent to the Terran Prime Minister, faced revolt from the hard-core isolationists on her Council of Satraps, the Navy was making contingency plans for a complete withdrawal . . . and somewhere, the planetary pillagers who lurked in the shadows between the civilized stars were gathering their mercenary forces in anticipation of moving in and taking over. Prevaria stood on the brink of invasion, conquest, and environmental ruin, though its politicians didn’t seem to grasp that reality.

All of that meant increasing pressure on Kelvas to find some answers. He didn’t have time for malfunctioning translators.

Nor did he have time for the cheerful tri-tone bell that now sounded in his earbud. “Excuse me,” he said to the monk. “I have an incoming communication.”

“I count the lights,” the monk said . . . possibly.

Grimacing, Kelvas stepped off to one side. He tapped twice on his earbud to accept the call. “What is it, Simon?”

“I’m sorry to disturb you, sir,” Simon’s deep voice came back, “but Tyrone Boynton is in your outer office. He’s been there since this morning. Five hours and counting.”

Kelvas closed his eyes. “With Eve, I suppose?”

“No, sir,” Simon said. “By himself.”

Kelvas’s eyes flew open again. That was new.

Eve Boynton had been after him for weeks to find a job for Tyrone in the Embassy. Kelvas liked Eve. He’d known her back on Earth; she’d come to their house in Bozeman for dinner once or twice, on weekend jaunts from the Diplomatic Corps Training Centre in Geneva; Kelvas’s wife, Annie, had liked her, too. Eve had barely mentioned her brother then—he and Annie had gathered Tyrone still lived with his parents, and was attending some kind of special school, but Eve hadn’t said exactly what kind of school or why he needed to attend it.

But then, a few weeks ago, Tyrone Boynton had showed up here, on Prevaria, to visit Eve. He’d arrived on the regularly scheduled Navy supply ship, taking advantage of the rule that allowed family members to visit staff on station, at least in locations where nobody was shooting at each other. By the regulations, he was due to return to Terra on the next ship headed that way, in about a fortnight. But a week ago Eve had come to Kelvas, Tyrone in tow. They’d sat in his office, Eve stiff and upright in one of the leather-covered chairs in front of his desk, Tyrone in the other. No taller than Eve—and Eve was not a tall woman—he had an oddly unfinished look, his facial features soft and doughy. He sat with his eyes downcast, rocking slightly in his chair, his hands, too big for the rest of his body, gripping his knees tightly the entire time.

Eve had told Kelvas why Tyrone had come to Prevaria: the siblings’ parents had died and she’d begged the authorities to send him to her. He couldn’t live on his own, she explained. If he’d stayed on Earth—or if he returned there—he would be institutionalized. Eve, her voice breaking, had begged Kelvas to allow Tyrone to stay.

The trouble was, the Diplomatic Corps rules were clear: to live on Prevaria in the Embassy compound long-term—and draw a Diplomatic Corps paycheck—Tyrone had to have a job . . . of which there were none suitable to someone of his limited mental capacity. Kelvas explained all that. Eve begged. He finally got rid of her by agreeing to “see what he could do,” but in fact he hadn’t given it another thought—certainly it hadn’t crossed his mind since the Ambassador’s death.

He wouldn’t have been particularly surprised to hear that Eve was waiting in his outside office, hoping to press her case further, but Tyrone by himself? That made no sense. The young man hadn’t said a word when he’d been with his sister.

“What is he doing?” he asked Simon.

“Sitting. Staring at the Persons of Interest screen. Rocking back and forth,” Simon said. “Special Agent Eston is the Officer of the Day. I could ask him to come take Tyrone away but . . . I think that would frighten him.”

“Probably,” Kelvas agreed. “I assume you’ve called Eve?”

“I’ve tried, sir, but she’s on duty in the comm centre, and you know how crazy things are there since the . . . incident. She’ll be out of touch for another couple of hours.”

Kelvas sighed. “And I presume you’ve told Tyrone I won’t be back for hours . . . if at all . . . today?”

“I tried, sir. I’m not . . . I’m not sure he understood.”

Kelvas shook his head. He really did not have time for this. “Then let him sit there as long as he wants,” he said, aware he’d let his irritation into his voice, and not really caring, either. “Once Eve is off duty, have her come get him.” And then have her make sure he’s on the first ship home, he wanted to add, but didn’t. There’s no place for someone like him here. Especially now.

“Yes, sir.”

“Anything else that needs my attention?”

“Mr. Kimblee would like to meet with you.”

Kelvas sighed again. “Let me guess. He’s champing at the bit to organize the withdrawal of the Embassy staff.”

“He did indicate that contingency planning of that sort would be the purpose of the conversation,” Simon said carefully.

John Kimblee, Kelvas’s second-in-command, had never had a good word to say about Prevaria in Kelvas’s hearing: he clearly resented being stationed on a primitive new-contact planet without access to the many pleasures of the Core Worlds. He would have closed down the Embassy the second they’d heard about the Ambassador’s death if it had been up to him.

Fortunately, it hadn’t been.

“Tell Mr. Kimblee I will speak to him at my earliest convenience, and leave it at that,” Kelvas said. “Anything else?”

“No, sir. Sorry to have bothered you.”

“Just doing your job,” Kelvas said. “No need to apologize.” But don’t bother me again, he wanted to say, and he suspected that, too, seeped into his tone of voice.

“Yes, sir,” Simon said. “Simon out.”

The tri-tone played again, in reverse order.

Kelvas took another look at the screen on the underside of his wrist. All datalinks remained green. He turned back to the waiting monk. “All right,” he said. “Let’s try this again. What’s your name?”

Big-eyed like a lemur and with a snout like a dog, the monk looked up at the Tower of the Silent God, looming over the courtyard, and pointed with the longest, central finger of his left hand. “I count the lights!”

Ambassador Hori leaned against the black stone of the Tower, breathing deeply of the cool night air. He’d had no choice but to make this ascent. Prevarian tradition insisted that no treaty could be finalized until the negotiating satraps had ascended the Tower, both to meditate upon the agreement and to show their commitment to upholding it before the Silent God.

The climb was made along this staircase, bereft of any guardrail, which spiraled around the spire’s exterior. Every nine steps glowed a dim green crystal lantern, set above a carved face, each face an Aspect of the God, each unique: some smiling, some frowning, some howling in rage or fear, some slack in sleep or death. Believers offered a silent prayer as they passed each Aspect. Ambassador Hori was not a believer in the Silent God, but he was a somewhat-lapsed Catholic, and now, as he waited to regain his breath, he offered a prayer of his own, to the Archangel Gabriel, patron saint of diplomats, that he could make it to the top of the tower without suffering a heart attack.

He dared not fail. To do so could well sabotage the trade agreement he had been working on for six long local years—almost eight Earth years.

He knew well enough there were plenty of Terrans for whom that would be the ideal outcome. For that reason, he was ordinarily accompanied everywhere he went by two bodyguards in constant contact with his head of security, Alfred Kelvas. But the High Deaconness who presided over the Temple Complex had made it clear that no weapons could be carried up the Tower, and since his bioengineered bodyguards were weapons in and of themselves, their presence on the Tower could and would have been seen as sacrilege, and used to derail the impending agreement. And so, over the strong objections of both his bodyguards and Kelvas, whom he had formally absolved of all responsibility for whatever might happen to him during the climb, he had left his men stationed at the foot of the steps, and ascended on his own.

His heart no longer pounded and his breathing came more easily now, and that lessened his disquiet. He was at least two-thirds of the way to the top: he could surely make it the rest of the way. There’s life in the old man yet, he told himself, smiling—it was something his wife liked to say to him. He took a fresh breath and, staying close to the Tower wall, stepped cautiously into the pool of darkness.

Kelvas glared at the monk, who was still pointing uselessly at the Tower, then gave his head a frustrated shake, turned, and strode across the courtyard to where the High Deaconness watched and listened with her handmaiden, a young Acolyte. The two Prevarian women stood in the shadow of the Tower, swiftly lengthening as the sun sank toward the saw-toothed mountain range in the distant west.