Ambassador
fiction by michael werneburg
The bare autumn farms and flaming red trees of central Ontario were gorgeous under a crisp blue sky. It was my favorite time of year, with ragged clouds that skudded by seemingly just above the treetops. But the beauty didn't really suit our disgraced situation, and three of us maintained an unhappy silence as I drove.
How far we'd fallen was evident in the way we'd been told to leave the compound on our own. When Jane and Cuong had arrived, it had been by helicopter, and my car had been chauffeured.
The long-awaited media event introducing the alien Ambassador to the world would finally happen today. He was being transported back to the landing site for the event. We had been told our attendance was 'optional'. Watching a tractor navigate an intersection ahead, I asked, "Do we know if anyone made any breakthrough? Maybe the Chinese or Europeans?"
Jane shrugged at me. Cuong was texting. Cellphone reception at the research site had been blocked after a couple of embarrassing leaks, and he was clearly catching up. Their silence wasn't too out of character. To my eternal resentment, both had largely checked as our contract term had waned.
Our failure to make any breakthroughs had led to irritation by our government handlers, then resentment. And that had led to a breakdown in trust and collaboration. The nature of our dismissal today surely hadn't helped with the mood of my two scientists. Perhaps they'd guessed that I wouldn't be able to pay them their bonuses. I needed to find a time to deliver the news.
When no one responded, I said, "It boggles the mind that they're going through with this event."
Jane wearily said, "You mean trotting out Rover before we've been able to get it to talk to us?"
The highway came to an intersection and I drew up behind a line of cars at a red light. I glanced at Jane in the mirror. I had asked her about fifty times not to call the Ambassador 'Rover' but yeah, that's what I meant. We humans still couldn't talk to the alien visitor. And despite weeks of study, we didn't really understand its physiology. We couldn't figure out how it had designed the spaceship when its brain was significantly smaller and simpler than we'd expected. It didn't even seem able to speak.
On the one hand, the Ambassador seemed too simple for the achievement. But on the other, the technology that had brought the alien to Earth was so advanced it might as well have been magic. For one thing, we couldn't even scan the material from which the Ambassador's ship was constructed. We were also mystified how a spacecraft with very little visible instrumentation could transport the alien through vast distances of space. And it was estimated to have a mass no greater than about five kilograms. Not that we'd found a way of moving the damn thing; it just resolutely refused to be shifted from the spot it had landed.
None of this added up. We were completely in the dark, and with the world clamoring louder and louder to see the Ambassador and to understand its mission, the research site had become a paranoid and miserable place with recrimination and firings and worsening desperation. I was leaving empty handed and had a lot riding on this, but I could see it all slipping away.
"How mandatory is the big event?" Cuong asked, finally speaking.
The traffic started moving just then, but I realized I could still make a turn. I leaned over to look at his drawn appearance in the mirror. "I know a place in Lindsay where we can watch the show on a screen."
I took their silence for consent. So be it; I'd lower the boom about the money when their stomachs were full.
###
"Just look at that gait." With a look of distress upon her face, Jane watched some footage of the alien Ambassador on the TV above the bar. The insectoid Ambassador was six-limbed, like a big ant, with four articulated legs supporting its lower torso and two others mostly used for grasping or climbing. Its hairless head had a high forehead capped with three long antennae, and its prominent pupil-less eyes rarely blinked. Its face had a rough, protruding chin and a mouth full of pointed teeth, while its body had a whip-like tail with which it would occasionally manipulate a pencil to draw uncertain shapes.