The lockdown of Yìhán’s suite was not off to a great start. Mostly due to Yìhán herself.
“You want this place secure? Then all of you get out!”
The council police officers held up their hands and backed away as Yìhán pointed towards the door. Trying to get closer only made her angrier.
“With respect, ma’am, the only person who needs to exit the room is him,” the lead officer said, gesturing towards Farsus.
“He’s the only person I want here,” Yìhán said. “The one who stabbed that poor man was disguised as one of you.”
“The k- attacker, could just as easily disguise themselves as him,” the officer said. Yìhán put her hands on her hips.
“Farsus, how many sentient species have more than six fingers on each hand?”
“Between eighty-seven and eighty-nine, depending on how one counts the bifurcated thumbs of the Kliph and the boneless pseudo-finger of the...I forget the name, actually,” Farsus said. He immediately pulled up his datapad to refresh his memory. Yìhán pointed to him as he searched.
“Who could possibly imitate that?” Yìhán said. “I know him. I trust him. All of you come and go, I don’t recognize you, I have no way of trusting you. He stays, you go.”
“Ma’am, the agency says-”
“I don’t care,” Yìhán snapped. “I have done nothing but listen to agencies and governors and organizations for the past year! You listen to me, and you get out!”
“Ambassador Yìhán, that’s not really how it works.”
“I’ll quit,” Yìhán said. “I will quit, and I will go home, and I will tell everyone on Earth about how your stupid agencies almost got me killed, and about how fake everything is, and how many times you made me lie, and- and everything! Unless you get out right now!”
The handful of officers exchanged a few quick and confused looks, and figured it was better to be on the wrong side of a disciplinary incident than a diplomatic one. They backed out of the room, leaving Farsus inside, and started locking down the suite from the outside. Yìhán caught her breath, stamped her foot once, and turned around to see Farsus looking surprised and impressed.
“That was quite a threat,” Farsus said. “And, from the sound of things, not a bluff.”
“No,” Yìhán said. “No it wasn’t.”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
The defiance faded out of her, and she wilted, leaning on the wall for support.
“I almost wanted them to refuse,” Yìhán said. “I almost wanted the excuse to quit.”
She crossed the suite to her living room, and watched the external light go out as a bulletproof sheet covered one of her only points of access to the outside world.
“I’m tired, Farsus,” Yìhán said. “All I’ve been doing lately is dancing along like a puppet on strings, doing what they tell me to do, saying what they tell me to say.”
“That is the nature of the ambassadorship, I’m afraid,” Farsus said. “You play a role as needed, not as you want it.”
“I miss being a person,” Yìhán said. She took a seat and grabbed an empty notebook off her table. “My own person. On my way up into the stars, I told myself I would write so many poems about all the incredible things I saw. The only things I see are the interiors of shuttles and auditoriums where I give pre-written speeches.”
Farsus took a seat next to her and held out a hand towards the notebook. Yìhán opened it, showing off that every page was blank.
“I haven’t even written one.”
“I’m sorry. It is unfortunate you cannot pursue your art,” Farsus said. “But it is for a good cause, and when the work is done, you will have plenty of time to explore the beauty of the universe.”
“I hope you’re right,” Yìhán said. “Until then...could you tell me a story? Of some strange place you’ve been.”
Now that she was more locked down than ever, Yìhán wanted to at least free her mind, and get somewhere far away from this gilded cage she was in.
“That is a vague prompt, Yìhán,” Farsus said. “Do you have anything more specific you’d like to hear about?”
“Hmm...Mr. Vash has told you what Earth is like, yes?”
“Diverse biomes with an abundance of green vegetation and blue water,” Farsus said. Corey’s descriptions had also included references to things like how many bastards inhabited the planet, but Farsus skipped that part. “A fairly average habitable planet, in the grand scheme of things.”
“Then tell me about the least average place you’ve been,” Yìhán said. “Somewhere entirely unlike Earth.”
“Ah, that is easy,” Farsus said. “I once joined a mining expedition on Zae 811b -though what we did there was far from typical mining. The planet’s unique soil composition and heavy gravity allows for soft metals to be extruded from the ground under the right circumstance. We set off seismic charges over the course of several days, and by the time we collected, there were thin strands of metal ‘growing’ from the ground -fields of copper and gold, to be harvested like crops.”
“Huh. Actual fields of gold,” Yìhán said. “Human kings of the past would’ve waged war for centuries over a place like that. I’ll have to visit someday.”
“The romanticism is slightly undercut by the days of labor and the heavy protective gear one has to endure to see the fields,” Farsus said. “I would not recommend visiting.”
“Then what’s an un-Earthy place you would recommend visiting?”
“Sahail-Lashan. It has no breathable atmosphere, so a spacesuit will be required, but the view is much more worth the trouble,” Farsus said. “Two planetary bodies impacted, and the resulting catastrophe somehow cooled rapidly, locking the two planets together mid-impact. The interlocked planets are as beautiful as they are haunting.”
“How so?”
Farsus spoke at length about the impossibly deep ravines on Sahail’s shattered crust, and the drifting moonlets that had broken off from Lashan’s body. With no liquid water or atmosphere on either planet, erosion had been minimal, leaving the ravaged planets locked in their millenia-old impact. Yìhán laid back and listened to stories of far-off worlds, and forgot for a moment that she was trapped playing diplomatic pawn. And also that there was maybe a killer after her.