Ambassador

fiction by michael werneburg

Jane said, "That's Rover, through and through. Something new comes into his environment, he runs. Then he calms down and he plays around with it and tastes it if it can." With a sigh, she added, "and that's about it!"

"Always while saying nothing," Cuong added, somewhat peevishly. "How can a being that's advanced enough to have designed that ship go around without any communications as sophisticated as 'You my friend?' or 'I'm hungry'!"

We'd had this conversation manytimes. I shrugged, and said, "Maybe they just don't have much to say." Now irritated with Cuong at his disregard for his marriage, I couldn't help but to needle him.

"I mean," continued Cuong oblivious, "you'd expect at least some rudimentary ability to learn to communicate with other sentient life!"

I'd hired Cuong for the creative thinking evident in his published work. But as far as I could tell, he'd spent his time on the project whining -- and fooling around. Well, if my invoices had all been rejected by the Canadian government due to our non-delivery, this man was certainly going to carry his share of the financial loss. "In the course of my 82 years," I scolded him, "I've learned that there's not much point in expectation."

Cuong frowned at me. The man had his share of grey hairs himself and seemed to take umbrage at my occasional "back in the day" and "at my age" statements, as if I thought of him as a child.

"And Jane," I added, "For the love of God, stopped calling it 'Rover'."

She nodded, but said, "The way he'd go around and around in his quarters." She smiled at me, "He really does get around like a dog!"

"A dog that can work out a childproof bottle with its hind feet while inspecting a piece of fruit. All the while hanging onto the back of a chair," Cuong muttered.

Some footage, now, of the Ambassador on an outing from the facility. It was surveying the landing site. The alien made his way to the craft across the ground with that awkward gait but scrambled into the cockpit with fluid grace once he'd climbed aboard.

That the ship itself was still at the site was another embarrassment for the humans. We hadn't figure out how to move it, and we didn't know why. Its mass was trivial, it just seemed to be somehow .. held in place.

The waitress had arrived with Jane's next drink. "Look at him go," she said, "like a little monkey, I've always said."

"He's not a monkey," Jane said archly, "he's wholly alien. Aside from the extra limbs and the aforementioned carnivory, there's the matter of the superb night vision, to say nothing of the large cranium or the brain that we think is packed with neurons."

Marveling at Jane's abrupt taking to the exact opposite side of the argument she'd just been having with me, I ordered another club soda and turned back to the show.

There was just under half an hour to go before the actual ceremony. Bollen, mercifully, had now gone and I restored the volume. We were being treated to a series of prepared historical clips. A voice-over was guiding us through the clips, which pieced together the history of mankind's own timid space exploration. An exploration that had decidedly slowed over the past few decades as the economy worsened and the wars raged on. Which reminded me of our financial plight: I'd needed this pay-day as much as anyone on the team and had far fewer years left to make up the loss.