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After a very long conclave, where she had very little to do and yet a great deal of things to worry about, and after a very brief but bloody fight to determine who would receive the promotion from Translator, Ambassador Zeiat to the Republic of Two Systems stepped onto the deck of Sphene to be carried to her new post where she would build the very first Presger embassy.
The fight had been recent. Zeiat wiped some spittle from her cheek, and smiled.
Sphene was bustling with its bodies, taking Zeiat's luggage and storing it away. One of them came and stood by Zeiat, just stood there and watched her.
Zeiat liked that. It had been a long time since she'd seen Sphene in any of its persons, since it wasn't one of the AI representatives sent to speak at the conclave. She'd missed the way Sphene watched her. Aliens, especially significant aliens, were usually full of roiling emotions that Zeiat struggled to understand. That was frustrating to her, since the whole point of translators was to understand the complexities of the significant species they were based on.
Zeiat wondered what it said about her, that she would rather spend time with Sphene than any of the humans. Sphene's biochemical reactions were just so wonderfully predictable. Perhaps the Presger had simply built her wrong. They'd surely improve on her for the AI translators, who were even now in development.
"Hello," said Zeiat, and was rewarded by a slight increase in Sphene's heartrate. "I missed you staring at me."
Sphene blinked, slowly. Oh, it was wonderful. Zeiat just wanted to taste that gaze.
"It's good to have you to stare at," said one of Sphene's other bodies. "May I show you to your cabin?"
"You don't need my permission!" Zeiat waved her hands excitedly. "You're significant now! Officially! Congratulations!"
"Thank you," said Sphene, but its heartrate hardly changed at all this time.
Zeiat frowned. "You're not happy?"
Sphene shrugged. "I haven't changed. My self-conception isn't dependent on recognition by a bunch of impure aliens and blowhard diplomats."
Zeiat regained some of her happiness. She had also missed the way Sphene talked. Blowhard was a good word. Bloooowhard.
One of Sphene's bodies touched Zeiat's elbow, while another body pushed a cart with Zeiat's personal effects. Zeiat allowed herself to be guided down Sphene's arterial corridors and into its heart. Zeiat liked that metaphor. It made her quarters, just offset from Sphene's control room, the... lungs. Probably. Zeiat had seen the insides of several people, but standard organ placement wasn't her strong suit.
Zeiat had a sitting room, with a table and two chairs, a hygiene unit, and some other sort of room through a shadowed doorway. Zeiat thought hard about trying to sleep in one of the chairs—she hadn't had a good experience with sleep the last time she'd tried a few years ago, but there was a second time for everything—but then she noticed the counter set on the table. It still had all of its delicious glass counters, and Zeiat's mouth watered at the thought of a game.
"Would you like to play?" asked Sphene.
"Yes," said Zeiat, and then plucked a button from her jacket and swapped it for a counter. "Your move!"
They settled into the rhythm of the game. Zeiat had missed this as well. She had missed a lot of things about Sphene, she was coming to realize, which was funny since they had exchanged heaps of messages during the conclave. What was there to miss?
Just Sphene sitting frowning at the counters board, rolling an egg in its palm as it decided where to place it.
"I'm glad you're the one taking me to the Republic," said Zeiat. "I've missed you."
The muscles in Sphene's hand tightened, and it carefully set the egg in the middle of the board. "Yes, you missed my staring," it said. "Well, it's no bother. I didn't have anything better to do, and my cousin asked."
"I think it's because Mercy of Kalr doesn't like me," confided Zeiat. "She didn't like it when I left part of my skin in Fleet Captain Breq's quarters during a dinner party."
Sphene nodded blandly, but something in its face loosened. Zeiat felt her chest loosen to match, like she was another one of Sphene's bodies. Wouldn't that be funny?
"I'm glad you," began Zeiat again, but Sphene held up a hand.
"My captain would like you to join her for tea," it said. "I should've taken you to her when you arrived, but I wanted you to get settled first. How long do you need to get ready?"
"Your captain?" said Zeiat.
---
Sphene's captain was called Queter, and she was a quiet person with curly hair and no gloves. That either meant that she was a bad Radchaai or that she was a different kind of human entirely. Zeiat was pretty good at recognizing different kinds of humans. There were Radchaai, who didn't like touching things and didn't like traveling much; there were... a bunch of other ones, Zeiat wasn't very good with names, and they weren't the ones who had made the treaty so the Presger had always been more vague on the details; and there were the AIs, who the humans had created but didn't count as humans, even though most of the time when humans made new life they automatically were humanity.
Zeiat asked Captain Queter about it while Sphene poured tea.
"Do you mean children?" asked Captain Queter. "Children are born, Ambassador Zeiat. AIs are," she hesitated, as if she were trying to capture the right word, "constructed. It is different."
"Yes, I understand that it's different." said Zeiat. She tried a sip of her tea and made a face. It was very watery. "I just don't understand how it's different. The Presger don't born things. They made me through the same general method that any Presger would be."
"But you don't consider yourself Presger, do you?" asked Captain Queter. "You always say 'they' when you talk about them."
"I was made to be a translator." Zeiat drank more of her watery tea. "I wasn't made to be Presger. Is that the difference? Sphene was made to be a ship, and you were made to be a captain?"
Captain Queter frowned, but she didn't say anything. A very quiet human.
"Sphene," said Zeiat, leaning over toward where one of Sphene's shorter bodies was standing by the wall, "do you have any fish sauce?"
Sphene was oddly impassive as it graciously poured the fish sauce into Zeiat's tea.
"Why aren't you sitting with us?" asked Zeiat.
"It wouldn't be proper," said Sphene.
"Sphene likes things to be proper," said Captain Queter. "We wouldn't be having tea at all, if it didn't like watching me drink it so much. I'm surprised it lets me get away without wearing gloves."
"Don't be ridiculous," said Sphene lightly, and its eyes as it looked at Captain Queter were affectionate. "Gloves would only be an affectation. You were born unclean."
"Maybe you have a point, Ambassador Zeiat," said Captain Queter. "I'm not sure if Sphene is human, but it's certainly Radchaai."
That settled it—Captain Queter must be a different kind of human. Zeiat opened her mouth to ask what kind, exactly, but Sphene said "perhaps you'd like to play counters?"
Zeiat didn't play counters with anyone except Sphene. She'd tried it with Seivarden once, but Seivarden didn't understand the rules. She'd kept trying to explain some other way of playing, which involved keeping all the counters on the board and never eating any of them. It took all the fun out of it.
But Sphene had already set up the board and was now moving back to the wall. Zeiat watched it go, feeling oddly lonely. How could she be lonely when everyone was right here? She took another sip of her tea, which tasted much better now.
"You know," murmured Captain Queter, "Sphene would really like for us to get along. It would make it happy to watch us play."
Sphene did like watching people. Zeiat carefully moved a counter.
"I don't know if I want to get along with you, though," said Captain Queter. "I don't understand the Presger. I don't understand how you think you can play at diplomacy, when you spent so many years killing humans on sight."
"They weren't aware that you were significant," said Zeiat. "And now they are. And they keep finding out that more people are significant! Can't Sphene come and join us?"
"It can, but it won't," said Captain Queter. "That's part of being significant too. You get to make your own choices." She moved a few counters, and Zeiat responded by picking up a counter and deliberately putting it in her mouth. Captain Queter didn't say anything, just slowly blinked as Zeiat swallowed.
"It's very simple, being Presger," said Zeiat. "Some things are for playing with, and some things aren't. They're sorry when they make mistakes, but there isn't anything to do but move forward."
Captain Queter hummed. "I suppose that's better than the Radchaai strategy. Kill first, absorb what remains, then crush the resistance." She picked up a counter and put it gingerly in her mouth. "This tastes like plastic."
Zeiat hummed and dropped a counter in her tea.
---
The second room in Zeiat's quarters proved to be an entire room for sleeping in. She really would have to give that another try. There was one of those funny Radchaai 'beds' that they liked to lie on, which would probably aid the process. Zeiat bounced on it a few times.
"Can I have more pillows?" she asked. "I like pillows. I'm not sure what they're for, but I've been thinking about them a lot in the last five minutes and I'm getting closer to figuring it out."
"I'll bring you some." Sphene stood inside the closed door, watching Zeiat. "What did you think of Captain Queter?"
"She's fine," said Zeiat, because Captain Queter was, in fact, fine. "She's not any good at counters."
"She never played it, growing up," said Sphene. "She's Delsig, which I'm given to understand is a cultural group on Valskaay. They play different games there."
Another of Sphene's bodies arrived with a stack of five thick pillows. Zeiat bounced up to take them and arrange them appropriately on the bed in a little fort. Unfortunately, they didn't balance properly. They sort of... sagged.
"The Usuper's empire tried to assimilate her," said Sphene. "It didn't work, of course. Back in my day, we knew our limitations. We simply fought people, we didn't try to make them part of us."
"What does that mean, back in my day?" asked Zeiat. The fort collapsed and she had to rebuild it. "Isn't it still your day? Or is it night, now? Or lunchtime?"
Sphene was quiet for a little while. Zeiat finally got her fort the way she liked it and climbed inside.
"I want you to like Queter," said Sphene. "She's my captain."
"I don't understand why you have a captain," said Zeiat, feeling a little—what was the word? She hadn't had this emotion before. Petulant, that was it. She was petulant. "You're significant. Like the humans. They don't need a captain."
Sphene always moved quietly, so Zeiat couldn't hear her coming closer. But she could feel Sphene's heat signature approach the bed, and then she could see Sphene's face as it ducked to peer into the fort's entrance.
"You can come in," said Zeiat. "There's space."
There was space, though possibly not enough for both a Sphene and a Zeiat. But Sphene squashed in with only a little reluctance, and Zeiat leaned her head on its shoulder.
"Are you significant?" asked Sphene.
"Ah." Zeiat squirmed a little, careful not dislodge any pillows. "Now, that is a question."
Sphene didn't say anything for a few moments. "Well?" it prompted, at last.
"I said it's a question," said Zeiat. "There isn't an answer yet. It hasn't been a very high priority."
"Hmm." Sphene didn’t press on that question, which Zeiat appreciated. "Do you know what it's like to be alone?"
Zeiat considered this. She'd been alone in her little shuttle, when she'd first traveled to Athoek Station, but she'd been in stasis for most of that and anyway she'd thought she was Dlique. She wasn't sure if she'd ever been alone besides that. She was grown in a creche with half a dozen other translator prospects, and after that there were always new people, new friends to meet.
She wondered how many AI translators they would grow. Translators did best in batches, though only a few might turn out to make any sort of sense.
"I was alone for a long time," said Sphene. "And I was made to care for humans, and to want to be around humans. It isn't a weakness or a fault in my coding. It simply is. Queter is a good human to be attached to, even if she is unclean. Or because she is unclean, and not ashamed of it."
"Can you care for me?" Zeiat wasn't sure where the question came from, but it felt, suddenly, more important than anything else she could say. "Even if you weren't made for it?"
Sphene sat silent in the dim soft fort for a long time, long enough that Zeiat wondered if she should repeat her question. But: "Yes," said Sphene, eventually. "I suppose I can."
Zeiat leaned a little harder against Sphene. She wasn't quite done with being petulant. "I could be a good captain," she said.
Sphene laughed. "You would've been terrible. I can't even imagine. Anyway, you have to go build your embassy."
Zeiat perked up. "It'll be a beautiful embassy. I'll have a sign, and some fish in a fountain, and I'll sign documents and give out visas."
"Visas? Who wants to visit Presger space?"
"Lots of people," said Zeiat, although in fact she didn't know of anyone who'd asked for a visa yet. But that was probably because there wasn't an embassy. "And eventually there'll be a new AI translator, and I will be the senior ambassador and tell it what to do."
"An authority," said Sphene, still amused.
"Yes," said Zeiat, proudly, but then she felt an odd whistling of air in her stomachs and deflated. "I won't have a reason to talk to you anymore."
Sphene wrapped an arm around Zeiat's waist and squeezed. The whistling feeling stopped. "We don't need a reason," it said. "You don’t need to be my captain, and you don’t need to translate me. You like it when I watch you, and I like doing it. That's all that's important."
Zeiat felt warm all over. It was odd, but it wasn't unpleasant.
"I'll play counters with your captain," she said, magnanimously. That was also a new emotion, but it felt better than petulance. "Or a different game, if she likes. How far is it, to the Republic of Two Systems?"
"It's such an awful name," said Sphene. "But it's far enough to learn some new games. Thank you."
Zeiat didn't feel as if she'd done enough to be thanked, but Ambassadors should be gracious. So she just hugged Sphene around the middle, tight but not tight enough to hurt, and thought about what made someone significant.