Humans are moody, and we are a little territorial. Even in the future, we seem to be introverted, and distant, and a little afraid of the alien. We discover that perhaps the alien may be all of the above, too. Yet, they can still become friends…
Geraldine stepped into the dark room and was surprised to find that someone else was already there. A bulky form stood off to one side of the great window, indistinct in the gloom. The only light in the room was from outside, and the dim glow of the Venusian atmosphere did not offer much at this time of day.
She found herself a bit annoyed, though she chided herself for it. It was not her room. Over the last few years, she had come to think of it as her own space, as it was so often only occupied by herself. She came here to think, to meditate; occasionally, she had come here to work, though she hadn’t liked it. Today, she had come to say goodbye, and of all days, she was not the only one gazing out of the large porthole.
She tried to ignore the bulky presence. She stepped over to the window without looking over at them and sat cross-legged before the glass. She took a deep breath, and looked out, knowing that this was the last time she would do so. She placed one hand on the glass and felt the coolness of Venus’s upper atmosphere. Around the porthole, bits of the aerostat could be seen jutting into the thick clouds. Antennae above, rotors below, and a myriad of other protruding machinery that she didn’t even understand in between.
Sometimes, when the air was particularly clear, she could see the line of the great space elevator, New RapUnsEl, stretching from the surface up out of sight to Venusburg, the space station far above the clouds and out of sight.
Down on the surface below was the rest of her team. Her friends. In truth: her family. The only family she had. They had all been sent down to help work on the new surface facilities, now that the first of the Envi plants was finally back online. She felt isolated.
“Hello,” the voice came from the other figure in the room, whom she had successfully forgotten about. It was a gravely digitized voice, accompanied by a telltale chittering. Her companion was a Garrison, speaking through a translator.
“Hello,” she said, without really looking. She wasn’t in the mood for conversation.
“I haven’t ever seen anyone else in here,” the Garrison said, “I had begun to think that perhaps I was the only one who knew this room was here.”
This made Geraldine laugh. It was the first time she’d laughed in days. “Sorry for intruding, then,” she said.
“Not at all,” he said. She assumed he was male from the voice he’d chosen for his translator, though she did not know how to distinguish Garrison gender at a glance. He must be part of the diplomatic mission on the Aerostat. They had arrived a few years ago, after Venus had won its independence. Governor Rampion had chosen to place their embassy down on Aerostat One, rather than up on Venusburg itself. She didn’t understand what political machinations had led to such a decision. Maybe Rampion just didn’t feel the need to keep them close. “In truth, he continued, as he stepped into the light, “I was feeling a bit lonely.”
She had seen only a handful of Garrison in her life, mostly in video streams, and was still struck by the sight of them. There were only a few hundred in the entire system, nearly all diplomats and merchants, and there were only three of them at the embassy on A1. They looked like lumbering sloths with bluish exoskeletons. He was more than twice her size, but she did not feel threatened. Garrison moved slowly and had a gentle disposition. They wore special masks to breath in Earth-normal atmosphere and had to use translation computers to communicate. It was thought to be biologically impossible for Humans and Garrison to speak each other’s languages. This one was wearing a set of drapes and sashes that identified him as a mediator.
“May I join you?” he asked.
Geraldine nodded.
He stepped over and folded his limbs to sit. It did not bring his face down to her level, but she was a bit glad of that. He reached into his robes and extracted a small bag which crinkled in his chitinous grip. He held it out to her. Double-salted peanuts. “No, thanks,” she said.
“Do you mind if I?” he asked.
“Please.”
He opened the package deftly and lifted his mask to pour some from the bag into his mouth. After a moment he said, “You know, rock-salt is a rare delicacy in Garrison space. The cheap abundance of it is the best part about being stationed here.”
“I had heard that, yes.”
“You Humans don’t even appreciate it,” he said, shaking his head. His mannerisms seemed much more human than the Garrison she had seen in videos of the early diplomatic and trading missions. She guessed that it came from years of immersion in the culture. She tried to imagine what it would be like to spend years at a stretch among totally alien peoples.
“I can’t imagine how hard it is to be away from home for so long,” she said.
“It’s not too bad,” he said. “I like my colleagues, mostly, and Human food is good, mostly. I’ll miss the views of Venus, especially from this room. It’s so beautiful here. I never get tired of it.”
She followed his gaze out to the rolling red and orange clouds. The aerostat was balanced in the atmosphere above most of the densest, most caustic air, but where acidic clouds would roll and drift up away from the fog, sometimes swirling, sometimes dispersing, and sometimes just sitting like rusty steel wool on an ocean of boiling beet-broth. It was beautiful. What must it be like to see beautiful things that had never even been on the horizon before?
“Miss it?” she asked. “Are you going?”
“I am,” he said, “my assignment here is at an end. My team leaves this afternoon, and a new team will come to replace them. We don’t keep ambassadors in place longer than a few of your years, it cuts down on corruption, and keeps the missions grounded in our home. I’ve done my duty, and will be returned to my family, who I will be glad to see. I came here to say goodbye.”
Geraldine thought about her team down on the surface with a pang of regret. She had thought she was being bold. She thought she was standing her ground, refusing to go along for the mission to the surface, but she’d been left behind, and…
“I’m also being sent home this afternoon,” she said, “Back to Earth. My immigration papers were revoked when I lost my job here.”
“You are also returning to family?”
“No, all my family is gone. This place. These people had become my home more than any other place has been.”
“I’m sorry for your loss, then.”
“Thank you.”
For a time, they sat in silence, letting the clouds swirl outside the window. For just a moment, the mists parted enough that they could make out the New RapUnsEl in the distance, and they both stared.
“I’m Sasha,” he said suddenly. She knew it was not his given name.
“Geraldine,” she said.
He stood and gave a diplomatic bow, so she did the same. “It was nice to sit with you for a time, Geraldine,” He said, “now I have some paperwork to complete to prepare the office for the next team. Perhaps I will see you on the shuttle over to the elevator?”
“Of course.” She said, smiling. “See you then, Sasha.”
Sasha lumbered out of the room, and Geraldine waited for the door to close behind him before she turned back toward the window. Finally, alone with the view, she made a decision. When she saw Sasha again in a few hours, she would ask him how one goes about becoming an ambassador to a distant star.
END
