text: [Themes: Science Fiction, male protagonist, moral choice, complicity]
  
  > Look around
  You climb the gravel pathway. On Earth you would be struggling more with this slope; the lighter gravity and richer air are a great help. Even so, it's a trip of some minutes.
  
  This is as far north as you can come without ice-climbing. The glacier is chunks and patches of ice at first, but soon solid beyond that. There are rocks on the face of it, and twisted metal, and scraps of buildings, which were formerly the northern part of town.
  
  You can feel the frigid air coming off of it, and hear the rumble of breaking and shifting ice -- the danger is obvious -- but somehow it gives the impression you could start walking now and in an hour come to the summit; stand at the top of Cordia and turn around, and see the rings filling the sky and the visible curvature of the world, the western ocean green with engineered algae, the patches of land made fertile and those still barren rock.
  
  From this direction the rings frame the outline of town, off toward the south.
  
  A narrow path descends east along the side of the glacier towards the lakeshore.
  
  This is as far north as you can come without ice-climbing. The glacier is chunks and patches of ice at first, but soon solid beyond that. There are rocks on the face of it, and twisted metal, and scraps of buildings, which were formerly the northern part of town.
  
  You can feel the frigid air coming off of it, and hear the rumble of breaking and shifting ice. The initial inclination to climb the face of Cordia has worn off, but there's still something intriguing about it.
  
  From this direction the rings frame the outline of town, off toward the south.
  
  A narrow path descends east along the side of the glacier towards the lakeshore.
  
  > examine the mountain
  Cordia Peak dominates the northern horizon. The perfect symmetry reminds you of Fuji, though this mountain is wider, bulked out by the layers of glacial ice. But it could erupt at any time, turning all that ice into floodwater.
  
  It was self-indulgence to have the shuttle set you down at the Lakeshore, since you wanted to have a look at the part of the Colony you would recognize from pictures, before going on to the part that would be strange to you. But you shouldn't drag this out.
  
  > go south
  You walk about half a mile. There are now some buildings along the east side of the street, though most of them are abandoned.
  
  To the northwest is a public building with a deep portico; to the east, one with a conical roof. The others are private houses, but, except one or two, they don't look lived in. There is a general atmosphere of neglect.
  
  The street continues south into the heart of town, or north towards the mountain and the glacier. A track for a floating train cuts southeast between the buildings.
  
  The rings in the southern sky are partly obscured by the buildings on the horizon, but are still bright enough to catch the eye.
  
  > Go south
  After a few minutes of walking, you reach an area with Colonists around. You carefully don't stare at them as they carefully do not stare at you. But from the sides of your eyes you watch how they float a few inches off the ground; how they do not touch things.
  
  The street runs north/south, so that you have an uninterrupted view of Cordia Peak, and the leading edge of the glacier at the northern edge of town.
  
  Both sides of the street are built up. A substantial building of metal and glass lies to the east, houses to the west.
  
  The ring system is mostly obscured by the grand solarium to the south, accessible through the insulating doors. The solarium is a huge domed structure to keep in as much heat and warmth as possible; the Earth embassy is inside.
  
  At the center of the open space here is a monument shaped like a tusk or tooth. This is the landmark: Ambassador Valenti is going to meet you here -- in fact, he was supposed to be waiting.
  
  Mentally you check off "go to the Clearing to meet Valenti" on your list of remaining tasks. You run over the things you still need to get done before you can settle in:
  find out what Valenti wanted
  show up at the Embassy
  
  (To stop receiving reminders of your schedule, try REMINDERS OFF. You may still view them manually with THINK.)
  
  > examine the monument
  It has look of force-grown bone, monolithic and taller than a man.
  
  The symbolic lettering of the current language has been painted on the side, but the original carving is in Chinese and English: "To those who, in the name of the Company and for the advancement of knowledge, were killed, modified incorrectly, or born unfit."
  
  A flash of memory: Kruger has turned his chair toward the window and was looking out over the water. "They want to send some colonists back to Earth," he says. "To repopulate. They're losing climate control, and they're afraid they can't turn it around. And we could use them, to be honest."
  
  You start to comment, but he goes on. "And your future boss is insane and a genius and needs watching. I know you're too senior to be someone's lackey. But these are not normal circumstances."
  
  What you heard on the way here was more worrying: anecdotes that Valenti had gone native; that he had stopped answering official mail; that he was in love with a native woman; that a native man was in love with him. That he abused his assistants. That he was concealing a sinister truth he had learned about the Colony. That he was not human. That he was human, but had been talking with a native scientist about a genetic retrofit.
  
  Kruger's last message didn't reach you until you were in orbit here: that you were not to be a lackey after all; that you were to take over the job of ambassador yourself. "Valenti has been notified," he said.
  
  So this is the man you're waiting to meet, and all you know of his character is that he is not punctual.
  
  > look at the solarium
  It's a huge dome and encloses not only gardens but also a good number of buildings. The Embassy is inside, you gather, but not visible from here.
  
  Out of the doors to the south comes a short, balding man, walking briskly for someone so late. So this will be Valenti, then.
  
  "Ambassador Moskin. Welcome to Aleheart," he says, shoving both hands deep in his pockets. Perhaps it would be uncouth to shake hands in public. "I read your file."
  
  > greet Valenti
  "Pleasure to meet you," you begin, but you get no further than that before he interrupts.
  
  "You're out of your depth." He kicks a spray of gravel into the bushes. A young female coming along the path lifts her head in surprise and floats to the side before passing him. (A heressa: the female colonists are called heressa when they have reached the age of maturity.)
  
  "Your previous assignment was New Zealand?" He bounces on the balls of his feet, getting in your face. "New Zealand has humans. Who speak English."
  
  > look at Valenti
  His eyes are black. His hair, if he had much, would be black. He reminds you of nothing so much as a plutonium ball: small, dense, packed with malignant energy.
  
  "There's only one reason High Command would replace me with you," he says. "You'll do what they say." He takes something out of his pocket and tosses it to you. It is, you see, the size and shape of a skipping stone, a widget that can be turned on. "You'll need this."
  
  "What is it?"
  
  He laughs, waves, and begins walking swiftly down the gravel path. "Don't lose it!" he calls back. "You'd better hurry. My feckless assistant Liam is waiting for you. Your feckless assistant now, I suppose."
  
  You consider chasing him, but it's obvious that he's in such a mood that he will be no help to you anyway. Instead you weigh the stone in your hand, frowning.
  
  > look at the stone
  A plain grey device, fitted to the shape of the hand, and turned off at the moment. There is an inscription on the back, and it is in English: To LV from A3205.
  
  Mentally you check off "find out what Valenti wanted" on your list of remaining tasks. You run over the things you still need to get done before you can settle in:
  show up at the Embassy
  
  > turn the stone on
  You tap the widget and it warms in your hand -- more waking up than being switched on, somehow. After a moment, three numbers appear on its... skin? The later digits flicker: SOC 15.7759, POW 20.00197, INT 11.2261. Below this, in smaller letters: SQUEEZE TO SUMMON AIDES.
  
  > squeeze the stone
  The surface has a give to it, and it squeaks once. Small regretful letters read: AIDE CURRENTLY OUT OF RANGE. Maybe in the embassy proper, then.
  
  The chronometer chirps, indicating that you have a new message waiting to be read in the Embassy communications room. You should get inside and check your mail. This will be important.
  
  > think
  You run over the things you still need to get done before you can settle in:
  check your messages
  show up at the Embassy
  
  > go to the south
  The air inside is thicker, denser, more humid: more like Earth. The paths are crowded with people coming and going, brightly-clothed. As they glide around, their feet move, just a little, as though they were slowly treading water: not striding, not skating, not quite hovering either.
  
  The Grand Solarium is an enormous dome with an oval roof of glass and grown metalwork. Inside is a botanical garden, which, on this planet, is a kind of art museum. Each plot displays some invented shrub that would be illegal on Earth.
  
  The southern end of the dome, where they grow edible crops, is hidden by a decorative screen of hanging flowers. The garden also continues to the east; away to the west is the front of the Earth Embassy, now your home.
  
  A double set of insulating doors leads north to the outdoors.
  
  > examine the garden
  Shrubs with fur. Shrubs with ears. Best not to think too hard about that.
  
  > examine the flowers
  Flowers with all the color bred out, translucent buds clustered on grey vines. They separate you from the southern part of the dome.
  
  A heressa approaches the curtain. The air shimmers around her and her green gardening robe, and then the vines draw aside to let her through.
  
  > go to the west
  You wander between plots: what catches your eye this time is a grass that grows silver and then dies off, leaving an intricate metal fence.
  
  You stand at the eastern end of a shallow rectangular pool -- no doubt part of the reason the air is softer and more humid here than it was outside. The Embassy is just west of here, at the far end of the pool.
  
  If you look down, you catch the reflection in the surface, and a number of small red fish swimming around, in formation, making symbols which you cannot read.
  
  > examine fish
  They have red-gold scales and fat round bodies, and are about two inches long. The formations are symbols from the syllabary, but you can't read them.
  
  > go to the west
  The Embassy proper is directly west. The entrance is flanked by orange trees, familiar and earthly.
  
  From the top of the Front Stairs you have an excellent view of the whole interior of the Solarium, the sunlight catching in the curved triangular panes of glass.
  
  East, at the bottom of the stairs, is the mirror-glass of the pool. Beyond it the botanical garden has a structure invisible from the inside.
  
  > examine garden
  The paths are a knot-work, the plots arranged to diversify shape and unify color. If you stare long enough, you even start to get the impression that the movement of the colonists through the garden is itself choreographed so that groups meet and pass each other at the nodes -- but it's impossible to be sure.
  
  > go to the west
  Your first impression is of a large space, luxuriously built; of many textures of wood and metal and colored enamel; of four corner pillars with the shape and height of oak trunks. There is a staircase up, and some other exits north and west, which look more like things to investigate later.
  
  At the south end is a door to what looks like a private room.
  
  A young ayamet is waiting at the center of the room -- studiedly looking at something in his hand, trying to wait without seeming to do so. This will be Liam the assistant, then.
  
  He turns: his face is elfin and slightly furred. "Greetings, ambassador. Welcome to Aleheart." His English is oddly accentuated, almost sung. He does not extend a hand, but you would not have expected him to touch you: some things are too much a taboo to overcome, even in deference to Earth manners.
  
  "You've just been meeting Ambassador Valenti, I think?" he adds. "I hope it was a productive encounter. You must have had questions for him."
  
  The smile is so bland. This might be a dart at your inexperience, or at Valenti for being naturally unhelpful. Or it might be nothing at all. But the grey widget trembles eagerly in your hand. It catches Liam's eye, and his expression grows, if anything, blander still.
  
  Mentally you check off "show up at the Embassy" on your list of remaining tasks. You run over the things you still need to get done before you can settle in:
  check your messages
  
  > ask Liam about the widget
  This is awkward.
  
  Your assignment was sudden, and you have only the phrases you learned on the voyage by skulking outside the engine room. You are therefore restricted to a) insulting your listener's parentage, diet, and sexual practices, or b) suggesting that he is damaged in the antigravitic propulsion unit.
  
  It would be dangerous to let on that Earth sent a diplomat who doesn't even know the language, so it is best to rely on gestures and silence until you can (quickly!) finish a linguistic hypnosis program.
  
  > Point at widget
  Liam looks at it and then at you. He says something, which naturally is meaningless. Then he makes a gesture of hiding something in his sleeve. So maybe you're not supposed to be showing it off...?
  
  It would be nice if you'd been properly trained for this assignment, instead of half-trained for the position of your own assistant. It would be nice if Valenti weren't using you in some power play. And it would be nice if you could work, privately, in your office for a while until you'd had a chance to figure out the situation here. But that's looking less and less likely.
  
  > look at the widget
  A plain grey device, fitted to the shape of the hand,  on whose surface are three constantly flickering numbers: SOC 15.26018, POW 20.26726, INT 11.14011. SQUEEZE TO SUMMON AIDES. There is an inscription on the back, and it is in English: To LV from A3205.
  
  > check what you're carrying
  You are carrying:
  a grey widget saying SOC 15.99781, POW 20.45966, INT 11.3811
  a comfortable outfit of chronometer, grey undersuit, shoes, and socks
  
  > insult yourself
  With concentration, you manage a tolerably accurate rendition of the chief engineer's favorite insult, complete with pitch and accent. A strange look crosses yourself's face; then open laughter.
  
  Evidently you got it wrong.
  
  > squeeze the stone
  The surface has a give to it, and it squeaks once. Liam winces and puts a finger to his temple. Summoning him at short range is possibly a little unfair.
  
  > go south
  You approach the door; Liam watches you uncomfortably and speaks a few hesitant words of his own language. The phrase is unclear but the meaning is not: he is embarrassed to stop you, but he very much does not want you to go in there; it would be inappropriate. Probably this is his own private room, in fact.
  
  > Go upwards
  At the top of the shallow stairs there is a spacious landing, with windows giving a view east across the Grand Solarium garden. Apparently past ambassadors have found this a pleasant place in which to read, because there is a small library of Earth books, otherwise impossible to get here.
  
  The entry to your bedroom is to the north, and an office area to the south.
  
  Liam follows you upstairs, floating without any apparent motion of the legs even on the incline. "This floor is the Earth Ambassador's," he says, as you reach the top. "The office--" and he points to the south door. "And the personal quarters." He indicates the north. "I believe Valenti left some clothing behind." He looks you up and down as though trying to guess whether it would fit you. "I do not know whether you will have a use for it, but I am sure that no one else will, so please..."
  
  This speech is halting enough to suggest that he memorized all these remarks.
  
  > go south
  You take in perfunctorily the Earthish surroundings: two paintings, a plain floor, a shipment crate that probably arrived on the same vessel as your own.
  
  Valenti has of course left you his handheld computer -- useful, though not able to send and receive messages. The secure mail line must be in the next room, off to the west.
  
  Liam is out of sight, though you can presumably summon him back at need, or find him again.
  
  > get the computer
  Taken.
  
  > examine it
  The computer is portable, and is able to scan and interpret the meaning of the colonists' symbolic writing. It has also been programmed to respond to search terms, to sift through data files and the personal logs of the ambassadors before you, assuming all the relevant disks are loaded. At the moment the slot for adding an extra data disk is empty, which looks ominous.
  
  > go to the west
  With all the machinery in here, the space remaining for you is little larger than a closet, except that the room extends upward a good fifteen or so feet, widening at the top into a bell of tinted glass.
  
  The comm terminal itself could be an invention out of Jules Verne. The keypad is arranged in the standard way, except that all the keys are slightly too small for the fingers of a normal human, and the pad itself stands up from the floor on a metal stalk.
  
  The comm screen, meanwhile, is round and surrounded by a copper ring, porthole-like. The whole arrangement is aesthetically pleasing and completely inconvenient.
  
  > check the messages
  You key in your pass-code to activate the terminal.
  
  The following messages are available for you to read or reply to:
  
  11:21 am: Instructions
  10:02 am: Hello From Ivory Coast
  9:34 am: Shuttle Departure Plans
  
  > read the instructions
  You select the message and read:
  
  Greetings, ambassador. Sorry for the sudden change of plan. One day I'll tell you the whole story with Valenti, it'd be a good read. For now, you've got to do the Gift Day ritual, which means receiving their ambassador and handing over a present. There are two main points here -- what you give her and what you wear. Get the gift box that we shipped. It should have come in a crate, on the same ship as you. You're going to want to give them a vaccine sample; there should be one among Earth artifacts in our Museum in the Embassy.
  
  Wear something red and keep the rest of your clothes (if any) neutral. Black and white are also meaningful to them, so avoid those. Grey is fine.
  
  If you can get a float unit, get one: you'll want it for the meeting, so you can be as tall as the others.
  
  That's it. Don't give offense, don't look weak, and remember that they need us. -- Kruger.
  
  Mentally you check off "check your messages" on your list of remaining tasks. You run over the things you still need to get done:
  acquire a gift box from the goods shipped
  acquire vaccine from the Museum (HC's orders)
  prepare gift for Ambassador Aylene
  wear something red(dish) (High Command's instruction)
  find a working float unit
  
  > read hello
  Seeing this message makes you almost too impatient to read it.
  
  Your situation with Jane is odd. She is not much older than yourself, but prematurely grey, with mannish features. Her braying laugh is a liability in quiet restaurants. But she is smart and dependable, and sensitive to the times when you're best left alone. In the past year you've rarely been out of message contact for more than a week, and during the voyage over you missed her correspondence intensely.
  
  You were beginning to wonder about your feelings toward her -- a worrying idea that can be put aside now. She would probably be as appalled by the thought as you are.
  
  > read hello
  You select the message and read:
  
  Trust you're settled into UNDESERVED post with minimum fuss/maximum floating handmaidens. Wish I were there. Ivory Coast still rustic. Marsh risen two feet in floods. Cannot leave research post. Cannot buy liquor. Cannot reach you on transport ship. About to kill self from tedium and bug bites. Write at once. Jane.
  
  > read the shuttle plans
  You select the message and read:
  
  Ship scheduled for departure 9:30 PM -- pls advise if any further shuttle contact is needed before that time.
  
  > Reply to Jane
  You try to rest your hands on the odd keypad and type normally, but the keys are too small for that to feel right, and the keypad bounces on its stupid metal stalk with every stroke. Eventually you settle on a vicious two-fingered approach.
  
  Dear Jane,
  
  Arrived to news Kruger assigning me as Valenti's replacement rather than assistant. Understood mystery when I met Valenti, who has less diplomatic skill than bowl of chopped liver.
  
  Am thus ambassador without language training. Would be content to switch places, if you wish. No liquor here, nor any floating handmaidens either. Understand through channels that I will be living on diet of tan ration bars fabricated in vat. Disgusting.
  
  > Y.
  You fire it off. Soon she will write back, and be sane and not related to all of this mess.