Awmit watched graceful human as she stood on the balcony of the warehouse that was being converted into her palace. She stared intently at the night sky. “There it goes,” she said.
Awmit looked at the stars. He saw more sharply in the dark, yet this time she saw a boat that sailed unimaginably the sky, where he saw only a tiny streak of light.
“A toast,” Tompa said. “To the departure of the Vance.”
The other six humans on the balcony raised their glasses and sipped. Then the humans wearing Navy uniforms put down the glasses and saluted briskly the sky. The midnight human, Beyongo, had explained that salutes expressed herd-bonding. To Awmit, it expressed silliness. Couldn’t humans feel bonded without little rituals that could be faked so easily? How had they survived and prospered, if they were so blind?
“The Vance is gone,” Tompa said.
“It will be back in five months,” said the cloth-headed human, Pradeep Singh. “Then we’ll have the resources to set up a real embassy.”
“I’ll return to my office now, Ship’s Ward,” said the human named Trader Ingler.
“It’s Ambassador Lee now,” said the midnight human, Beyongo.
Ingler shrugged. He’d been second-in-command to the Schneider human who allowed the Klicks’ final attack. The association with Schneider should discredit and shame the man, but instead he believed astonishingly that he should be the Ambassador, instead of Tompa! The servant assigned to Ingler’s quarters reported that he strove sneakily to take charge of the embassy and trick Tompa into becoming what he called a figurehead. Such blasphemy was an enigma stacked atop incomprehensibility, yet Awmit yearned to understand. The answer might tell much about the individuality that burrowed ubiquitously through human minds like chavva roots through freshly tilled soil.
Ingler bowed stiffly. “Some of us have work to do yet tonight.”
Awmit tried to memorize exactly what Ingler had said. After first sleep, he and other Shons on the embassy staff would discuss all they’d heard. After second sleep, they would formulate the next day’s actions to strengthen Bez-Tompa’s power. Ingler would find his papers mislaid, his food spoiled, his clothes washed in urine. On Zee Shode, ease existed negatively for traitors to the prook-nah of a goddess.
The embassy staff was the most prestigious dwarain on all Zee-Shode, and Awmit was awed to be part of it. Helping Bez-Tompa soar loftily to her destiny drew the planet’s best and brightest. Ingler’s servant was a renowned linguist; he’d volunteered to learn human speech and spy skulkily for the new goddess. The maid for Beyongo was the foremost psychologist of the Shon-Ahm-Zee people; she’d volunteered in order to learn about humans. Awmit felt unworthy of such august company, yet the scholars and geniuses bowed respectfully and called him bez-p’toor—the goddess’s soul. The honor was huge, the responsibility huger.
The embassy’s other executives left, leaving Awmit alone with Tompa. She curled her legs under her and sat beside him, her hip touching his. “It suddenly seems so real. I’m alone on an alien planet with just a few other humans. And this time I have to do more than just survive.”
“Graceful human feels throbbingly lonely?”
She took a long time to answer. In humans, that seemed to mean difficulty in finding words for emotions, although Ingler human used pauses to subtly insult Bez-Tompa. So confusing, these humans.
“I . . . I miss Dante,” Tompa said. “I never thought I’d say this about a roach—I mean, a policeman—but he was the only man I ever trusted, or . . . or cared about.” Her voice broke. “And I never even told him.”
Awmit nodded. The humans’ nod-gesture was so easy to learn that it had swept Zee-Shode as a sign of solidarity with Bez-Tompa. “Dante human stills exists as memory here?” He touched the top of her head. Her hair was a joy to the fingertips.
“Yeah.”
“Then tell him sincerely now.”
“But he’s dead.” Her eyes glistened in the light from a window.
Human goddesses could weep? Awmit’s toes warmed in wonderment. “Not dead in here.” He touched her head again, then his own. “Tell sincerely now.”
Tompa rubbed away a tear that had started to crawl down her cheek. “Okay.” She paused. “Thanks, Awmit. I wouldn’t be able to stand all this, being an ambassador I mean, if I didn’t have someone I trusted.” She took a deep breath, as though preparing to plunge headfirstly into frigid, murky waters. “I’ve been meaning to tell you something.”
She looked down at her hands. The gesture meant hesitation or fear; such at least was the theory of the wise ones of the goddess’s dwarain. But why fear? Incomprehension tickled his limbs.
“Awmit, I . . . I love you.”
His ear canals grew warm, pouring a feathery rain of acceptance and contentment across his mind. The love of a space alien was an eccentric accolade indeed for a retired roofer of no great wit or wisdom—one who had started this journey hating aliens. Yet her words produced, amazingly, the same melting delight as though one of his own had spoken. “This one emotes reciprocally.”
Graceful human pressed her lips to his head. Then she closed her eyes. Her lips moved soundlessly, saying goodbye to Dante.
The protective warmth of prook-nah filled him. Tompa’s presence rinsed his soul of uncertainty and fear, leaving only peace and determination. Uttering a wheeze of contentment, Awmit gazed across sky and city, toward the shared future of their peoples.