“Thank you for flying with New Beijing Shuttle Lines. We are now on final approach to Pen-Nee Wong International Airport,” the pilot announced on the intercom. “We’re currently passing over Xīnxīlán at approximately eighty miles altitude. Please ensure your restraints are securely fastened as deorbiting burn will be initiated shortly, following a final warning. We will descend steeply over the Tasman Sea, landing in approximately thirty minutes. There may be a little turbulence as we descend.”

“I check, Stardust,” Ziggy said, his tentacles flickering over me and little Danny, who was sitting between us. My harness tightened abruptly, but I left it to Ziggy. He was a Space Marine. He did this sort of thing all the time, and I’d only ever been in a Shuttle once, back when I was seventeen and we were moving up to New Beijing.

“Thank you, Ziggy,” I said, one of my hands giving one of his tentacles a little squeeze. Okay, I was nervous. This would be the first time I’d been down dirtside since I moved to New Beijing, up on the moon, with my mom and dad, almost six years ago now, and we weren’t on the shuttle down to New Shanghai, which at least I knew.

“Wow, is that the sea, Mommy?” Little Danny was looking out the viewport. “It’s really blue. Is that all water? Wow! It’s ginormous.”

Little Danny was so excited. His first trip down dirtside from Luna, and his first vacation with daddy, as well as mommy. His tentacles had been wriggling with excitement all the way down as he held mommy’s hand in one of his own little hands, and one of daddy’s tentacles in the other.

Ziggy’s skin rippled the patterns of amusement. I was glad his vocoder didn’t laugh. They still didn’t have them sounding normal when they translated for laughter. Right now they were using a recorded laugh and coming from Ziggy, that just didn’t sound right, so he’d toggled laughter off. I could read the patterns and colors on his skin though.

“Wow, I can’t wait to go swimming, mommy.”

“You’ve been swimming at home, Danny,” I said, smiling.

“This will be real swimming, mommy,” he said. “It’s much better than a swimming pool when you swim in the sea, isn’t it daddy?”

“It is, Danny,” Ziggy said, another tentacle curling around my shoulders. “We’ll go swimming together tomorrow.”

“Yaaaayyyyyyy,” little Danny just about jumped out of his restraints, colors flickering across his skin almost too fast for me to read.

“Initiating deorbital burn shortly. Counting down. Five four three two one zero,” an automated voice said, and the pressure cut in.

“Don’t be scared, mommy,” little Danny said confidently, his hand gripping mine tighter as his skin rippled the soothing colors of a warm summer sky, and Ziggy’s rippled back. “Daddy says this is a civilian version of the Xian Y-20 shuttle, it’s perfectly safe. Daddy says it’s nothing like a combat drop.”

Ziggy rippled amusement, but another of his tentacles slid across and curled around me comfortingly. “He is correct, Stardust,” he said. “This shuttle is very good design.”

I smiled. I was sure it was. My mom had helped design it, back when I was in high school, well before I’d met Ziggy.

“This is so cool, mommy,” little Danny said as we began to burn down through the upper atmosphere, incandescence surrounding us.

“We’re banking now, mommy,” little Danny said excitedly, as we turned, the pilot taking us down in a long series of sweeping S-curves, the sounds of our reentry penetrating through the hull and the thick layers of insulation. “It helps us slow down. Wow, I can’t wait for us to land on Earth.”

“Welcome to Xī-ní, Beak Commander Yai!lith, Comrade Citizen-Major Wong-Yai!lith.” The tall blonde Security-Captain with that weird Aodaliyan drawl snapped out a salute, nodding to Security-Major Chu, as our security team fanned out around us, moving off the shuttle ramp and into the terminal. Me, I felt like kneeling down and kissing the ground. “Security-Captain Han-Smythe, commanding your local security detachment. There’s an official greeting party and the press waiting for you, if you’d like to come this way please.”

Red rope barriers kept the exit path clear for us and held back the traveling masses as we walked through arrivals. The red and gold carpet made it clear where we were going. It would’ve been hard for us to get lost, even without our official guide. Ziggy flowed beside me, one tentacle curled around my waist, the tip in my hand, the others mostly on the carpet, although every now and then the odd one would curl into the air at random. Walking beside Ziggy, smiling and occasionally waving for the mobiles that were flashing, I could make out the occasional voices.

“Who are they mommy? Are they important?”

“Of course they are, Sheila. It’s that lady from the moon that’s married to an alien, they had something about them on Xinhua yesterday. They’re here for a vacation.”

“Hey, look! That’s one of those Heptapods ... you know, those aliens...”

“That’s Stardust Wong, you know, the one that married that alien...”

“That must be him...”

“He’s one of those Heptapod Spider Killers, you know, like our Space Dragons...”

“She’s so beautiful ... do you remember her wedding on the news ... the Chairman himself was there.”

I heard the comments about Ziggy’s tentacles too, but I ignored them of course. Honestly, I’d heard that Aodalyians could be a little crass and blunt sometimes, but I mean, goodness! I did smile though, thinking of tonight ... vacation ... our own holiday, and Jenny was with us to look after little Danny, so it’d just be me and Ziggy. He was always so eager to fertilize my eggs and I was really looking forward to this evening. Ziggy could fertilize my eggs for hours with all those tentacles, and maybe we should try for another little one while we were down here dirtside.

“Look at their little boy, isn’t he sooooo cute...”

I smiled when I heard that one, because little Danfeng was cute, all the way from his toes to the tips of his cute little fingers and his darling little tentacles, which made manners so hard to teach. We still weren’t sure if little Danny’s tentacles had the same autonomous brains that Ziggy’s tentacles had, but the way they did things at random, it seemed like it. The experts said it was still too early to determine that for sure, but the experts weren’t trying to teach him to use chopsticks. It could be quite dangerous when they got excited. Sushi days were really bad, and I don’t ever want to talk about the goldfish tank.

Those goldfish had been a wedding gift from the Mayor of New Shanghai, where I’d grown up, and some of them had been dreadfully rare. I’d almost died when I’d seen little Danny in there with them. Well, what was left of them by then. They were even rarer on Luna, considering they’d been lifted up to New Beijing from Gold Mountain Province. People used to come to our tunnel to see them all the time, and my dad had had a real job getting replacements sent up in time for that official visit.

“This way, Beak Commander Yai!lith, Comrade Citizen-Major Wong-Yai!lith.” The tall blonde Security-Captain gestured, our security escort moving in a ring around us.

After just over four years of being married to Ziggy, I was used to our security. The arrangements had been made well before our trip down, because I was still getting those horrible xenophobic death threats, and someone had actually tried to attack me and little Danny back on Luna, on that shopping trip to Novy Hong Kong, just before Ziggy returned from that last mission. It’d been awful, but Security-Major Chu’s team had been there, and they’d dealt with it before that horrible crazed xenophobe had gotten anywhere near us.

Still, it’d been scary, and I was so happy Ziggy was back.

No-one but no-one was getting past Ziggy’s tentacles to attack me or little Danny. The press were nowhere near as bad as they’d been four years ago either, back when we’d married, thank goodness. I was used to them now, and dad had been a great coach to start with. He still was. My personal assistant, Karmen, was almost as good, and she was right beside us.

“I have your speech loaded in your implant, Stardust,” she said, adjusting my dress whites as we walked, checking out Ziggy’s black and silver harness. “The Embassy loaded yours for you, Beak Commander Yai!lith. Jenny will take Danny straight to the house down at Bondi from here. The speeches are short but there’s a small reception afterwards. Two hours max, and then we’ll move to the hotel. Time to settle in, a formal banquet with the Governor of Aodaliya and other dignitaries this evening, and then you’re mostly free for your vacation. Just the occasional press conference and some casual meet the press moments for those one-on--one interviews.”

“Thank you, Karmen,” Ziggy said, his tentacles curling and twisting.

“She’s so beautiful, mommy, she’s like a fairy Princess...”

“Wow, daddy, that alien’s really a Spider Killer. My news feed says so. Look at those swords he’s wearing. Can I be a spider killer when I grow up, daddy?”

“Jeez Snowy, look at those tits ... I’d tit-fuck that bitch in a second.”

“Shut ‘ya face, Bruce, you drongo. Look at her fuckin’ security ... it’s youse’d be fucked if you even look at her wrong ... she’s one of them fuerdai, you dickhead.”

I heard that alright. So did Security Captain Han-Smythe, he was already speaking into his headset. On the security channel, and I switched across.

“ ... two blonde surfers by the rope barrier. Charges: Insulting comments about...”

I did see the blonde young Aodalyian who’d said that myself, and my eyes met his. Bruce, I guess. I smiled as he paled, remembering what my dad had said about Aodalyians.

“There’s still a big non-Chinese minority in Aodalyia, Stardust, even with all the inter-marriage and encouraged emigration to the colony worlds that’s been going on over the last hundred years to get rid of any holdouts, and the Zhōngguó Gòngchǎndǎng Zhōngyāng Jūnshì Wěiyuánhuì is hoping that we can use your vacation in Aodalyia to promote ongoing assimilation. The old Aodalyian culture, it’s pretty strong and a lot of them are only half-heartedly assimilated, even after a hundred years, so whatever you can do, Stardust. Probably not much, but every little helps.”

He’d chuckled. “They’re strange people, the native Aodaliyans, but if you get on their right side, they’re what they themselves call ‘good blokes,’ and you know their military units, those Aodaliyan militia units are some of our best. Their old army, back before we liberated them, gave us one helluva fight back a hundred years ago.”

Yeah, I looked Bruce over, and the guy with him, and it was a split second decision before we walked past them, because I could see Security closing in through the crowd. Surfing shorts. Ratty old tees, and was that a couple of surfboards on the luggage trolley behind them? Reminded me a bit of the Joeboys I used to run with back when I was a rebellious teenager and just arrived in New Beijing myself. I knew how I’d felt about security back then, and I knew how Security used to deal with the Joeboys that annoyed them or made too much trouble.

That’d almost been me, but for Ziggy and Chewy. Well, and my mom and dad, because my dad had been New Beijing Party Secretary. He still was, of course.

“Wait one,” I said into my headset, cutting into the security channel with my override, my eyes holding Bruce’s. “Leave this to me, please, Captain. No detaining them unless it’s really necessary. Public Relations.”

“Yes Ma’am,” Captain Han-Smythe said, and I could hear him canceling that order as I cut back to my own channel.

“PR time, Karmen, make sure you’re recording. If there’s any press nearby, get them on us.”

“Yes, Stardust,” Karmen said.

“Ziggy, follow my lead, this is public relations for the media,” I said, because Ziggy knew this was an important public relations gig, just as well as I did. Sometimes he clued in, sometimes he didn’t. It was always better to be clear with him, and he did enjoy interacting with humans.

Our security team paused, forming an outside perimeter as I turned towards the rope barrier, Ziggy beside me, his skin mottling with that pattern that said confused but happy to go along?

Bruce didn’t look confused at all, and neither did his buddy. They were glancing around, a little scared now as they took in all the security eyeing them, and other travelers edging away from them.

“You’ve really landed us in it now, Bruce, ‘ya dickhead,” the other one, Snowy, said.

We walked towards them, only a few steps, but enough that they knew who we were heading towards, and so did everyone around them.

“Hi,” I said, hoping they understood Chinese. The briefing had said most of the white minority did, although there were still a few holdouts. The last of the holdouts would probably be shipped out to one of the colonies over the next couple of decades. “Are you two going surfing? Are those surfboards?”

“Uh, yes, ma’am,” Bruce said. “We are, going surfing that is, down at Bondi.”

“You’re not from Xī-ní?” I asked.

“Uh, no ma’am,” he said nervously. Sweating. “We’re from Ài-lí sī-quán.”

“Wow,” I said. “That’s in the middle of Aodalyia isn’t it? Out in the desert. How long are you here in Xī-ní for?”

“A week, ma’am,” the other one said.

“So are we,” I said, smiling at the way his eyes kept dropping, then jerking back up. “I’m being so rude. Forgive me. I’m Stardust Wong-Yai!lith and this is my husband, Space Marine Beak Commander Ziggy Yai!lith from the Waterpaths of the Heptapods Space Navy. And you are?”

“Uh, I’m Bruce, ma’am. Bruce O’Day, and this is me mate, Snowy O’Donoghue.”

“Are you good surfing?” Ziggy interjected.

“Uh, not bad, Sir,” Snowy said after a second. “Come here for a few weeks every year.” He actually managed to grin, which wasn’t bad with Security eyeballing him and an alien talking to him. I could tell Captain Han-Smythe wasn’t happy.

“Are you staying at Bondi?” I asked before Ziggy could say anything more.

“Uh, well, we’re surfing at Bondi,” Bruce said. “Haven’t sorted out a place to stay yet, ma’am. We’ll do that after we get there. Around Bondi’s way too expensive for us.”

“We are staying at Bondi,” Ziggy said. “Is that not correct, Stardust?” One of his tentacles curled around my arm, another curled around my neck and caressed my face affectionately. I gave his tentacle a little kiss, enjoying that little shiver I felt under my fingertips.

“Press is present and now recording, Stardust, Beak-Commander.” Karmen’s voice cut in.

“No threats identified. Security is moving to low profile,” Security-Captain Han-Smythe followed, before switching back to the Security channel, our security team moving back out of range of the press cams.

“Yes, Ziggy,” I said. “We’re staying right across the road from the beach.”

Ziggy loved the sea, and he’d never been dirtside before, not on Terra anyhow. Dad had arranged the house out at Bondi specially. It was for the Party high-ups like my dad, not for someone like me, but dad had a lot more guanxi these days, and his connections with the Heptapods, thanks to him being Ziggy’s father-in-law, had really helped. Dad was one of the go-to’s now for anything Heptapod, and guess who was always being pulled in to assist.

Guess who’d used his guanxi to pull a few favors and book that house for us. I sure didn’t have enough of my own yet to pull that one. Not yet.

“I would like to learn to surf,” Ziggy said. “Can you teach to surf?”

“Us?” Snowy said, looking like he’d been smacked in the face by a wet fish.

“Yes,” Ziggy said. “You. We do not know any humans who surf. Stardust, can you arrange?”

I kind of felt like I’d been slapped in the face by a wet fish myself. I hadn’t expected this, but okay, I’d had four years of being surprised and the press was on us. Karmen had actually put together a short list of surfing instructors, but we’d left it until we arrived and could meet them. Still, press. This was going to be on the news. Milk it, Stardust.

I smiled, dialing it up. and I knew what that smile did to guys.

Bruce and Snowy looked a bit stunned.

“Would you like to?” I asked. “Ziggy really would like to learn to surf, if you think you can help teach him, it’d be wonderful.”

Not to mention what it would do to have a couple of the Aodaliyan native minority teaching Ziggy. The Party would love it, and I could think of half a dozen ways we could play this to the media. Karmen could probably think of a dozen more.

“Genius move, Stardust,” Karmen cut in. “Aodaliyan Broadcasting Corporation has already switched to live coverage. They just showed clips from your wedding. The house has servants quarters, invite them to stay, we can find rooms for them.”

“Security assessment complete,” Security-Major Chu cut in. “No threat. Typical Aodalyian minority, no political record.”

“What we call Bogans here,” Captain Han-Smythe added.

“More or less a Joeboy equivalent, Stardust.” Chewy grinned. He knew all about me and Joeboys. From before I met Ziggy, of course, when he’d been my Security liaison and I’d dated all those Second Republic fascists passing through New Beijing on their way to the frontlines, and of course I’d been a patriotic citizen of the Hegemony even if I did enjoy dating them. I’d passed on everything they mentioned to Chewy.

“Uh, yeah, sure,” Bruce said, eying Ziggy. “We’ll need a bloody big Malibu board for your husband though, ma’am.”

“Please call me Stardust,” I said warmly. “This is wonderful. And you said you needed to find somewhere to stay?”

“Uh, yes, ma’am ... I mean, uh, yes, Stardust.” Snowy blushed.

“You don’t mind being on the news?” I asked. “Uh, Ziggy and I are used to it, but perhaps...”

“Don’t mind at all, ma’am,” Bruce said. “Me mates back in Ài-lí are never gonna believe this unless they see us.”

I couldn’t help that giggle, and Ziggy’s skin rippled amusement.

“That’s settled then,” I said, clapping my hands and smiling. “You will be our guests for the week, and in return, you will teach Ziggy to surf.”

“Cool bananas,” Ziggy said, completely unexpectedly.

We all looked at him. Me. Bruce. Snowy. Security-Major Chu. Karmen. Security-Captain Han-Smythe. The press pool rep broadcasting live. The travelers nearby.

Everyone.

“I am studying colloquial Aodalyian slang,” Ziggy said. “Is this correct context please?”

“Bloody oath it is, mate,” Snowy said. “Ya’ nailed that one, Sir.”

Captain Han-Smythe laughed.

“Brilliant,” Karmen said. “Cut ABC coverage please.” After a second she added, “We’re not live now and the dignitaries are waiting, Stardust, Beak Commander.” She glanced at Snowy and Bruce.

“Thank you, Mr. O’Day, Mr. O’Donoghue. Stardust and Beak Commander Yai!lith have to meet a number of dignitaries and give some speeches. You can accompany Jenny here to Bondi and the house, she’ll make all the arrangements for your accommodation for the week, and we’ll see you there this afternoon.”

“Where’s Danny?” I asked, looking around. There he was, talking to a little Aodalyian girl, both of them really excited, and she was holding one of his tentacles, with half a dozen other kids all crowding around.

“Here, mommy,” he said. Then, “goodbye, Yin-Ling, I have to go now.”

“Goodbye Danny,” she said, giving that tentacle a last little stroke.

“You have to go to the house with Jenny now, Danny,” I said. “This is Bruce and this is Snowy, they’re going with you and Jenny, and they’ll be staying with us and they’ll be teaching you and daddy to surf. Now hurry with Jenny, mommy and daddy have to make some boring speeches.”

“Okay, mommy,” little Danfeng said, smiling happily.

“Be good for Jenny, Danny,” I said, giving my little one a quick hug and a kiss. “Mommy and Daddy will be there in two or three hours.”

“Yeth mommy,” little Danfeng lisped, his skin mottling with the patterns of understanding. Such a smart little boy. “Jenny says there’s a jacuzzi at the house. Can I swim?”

“Of course you can swim, Danny,” I said, nodding to Jenny. “Just don’t frighten Jenny by staying underwater too long, okay?”

“Yeth, mommy,” little Danfeng said, his little tentacles wrapping around one of Jenny’s arms. “I’ll be good for Jenny.”

“See you soon, Danny,” Ziggy’s vocoder spoke as a couple of his tentacles writhed over little Danny, colors flashing happily.

“Will you swim with me later, Dad?” Danny asked, his own tentacles writhing excitedly.

“Of course I will, Danny,” Ziggy said. “And we will learn this surfing together tomorrow with Bruce and Snowy.”

“Yaaaaaaay,” little Danfeng squealed excitedly, and he was chattering away to Jenny as they moved off with their own security team, Bruce and Snowy being shepherded along behind, looking a little bemused.

“ABC’s rocketing up the ratings, Stardust,” Karmen said, leading the way now, security once more moving with us. “They’re replaying your invitation to Bruce and Snowy. Viewer response is uniformly positive, even higher among the native minority. We’re going to arrange pool media coverage of the surfing lessons. We have a request for Danny to appear on Skippy the Bù Shí Dài Shǔ ... it’s an old Aodaliyan TV series that we apparently resurrected for children, really popular here, and I just got a request from the Governor asking if you and Beak-Commander Yai!lith could appear on Línjū later this week, with Ky-Lee Ming-Oh.”

“Línjū?” I asked. Neighbors? “What’s that?”

“It’s another network series,” Karmen said. “Predates the Hegemony, really popular with everyone, and Ky-Lee’s, well, she’s the most popular actress and singer in Aodaliya. And the Governor...”

“Accept,” I said, because I did know a big part of Ziggy and my role was public relations.

“Done,” Karmen said, thirty seconds later. “Ziggy’s also been asked to give a talk on the Battle of Zhuolu to the graduating class of the Aodaliyan Province People’s Militia Military College, that’s at some place called Duntroon. No idea where that is. Wasn’t in my briefing. We need to review that request before accepting.”

“Okay,” I said, because I did know all about the Battle of Zhuolu.

Everybody in the Chinese Hegemony knew about the battle of Zhuolu. It was taught in all the schools now, and it’d all happened back when I’d just started high school, three or four years before I’d even met Ziggy. The first big Spider attack. Back when I lived dirtside, before mom and dad had moved to New Beijing, it’d been all over the news, day after day after day. We’d had settlers on the planet, military forces as well, building space fortresses and fortifying the system as a forward base, because by then we’d run into the Spiders, and the military knew about the threat. Just, no-one understood how bad that threat was, and the Spiders had attacked before we were ready.

The Peoples Liberation Army Navy (Space) had been fighting a desperate battle to hold off the Spiders, the media was full of it, because it’d been a horrible surprise, and the Spiders just swarmed into the system, and the PLANS hadn’t been able to hold them at the warp point. Their ships pushed ours back, all the way back to the planet that we were on, and their landers kept breaking through in swarms, getting down to the surface, and our Marines on the ground had been dying like flies to hold the perimeter while our transports evacuated the civilians.

I still remembered how horrible it’d been to watch the media reports, and then the Heptapods had arrived out of nowhere through a warp point we didn’t know about. Back then, we’d had no idea who they were, and they’d had no idea who we were, but as soon as they saw the Spider spaceships and landers, they’d attacked them, and they couldn’t talk to us, and we couldn’t talk to them, but it didn’t matter to them. We were fighting the Spiders, and that was all they needed to know.

I’d seen the clips, everyone had, how they threw themselves into the fight in space, and then their landers burned down through the atmosphere, nobody knowing what was going on, and the Heptapod Space Marines in their battle armor had flowed out of those strange landers and lanced into the Spiders like buzz-saws on steroids.

They hadn’t turned the battle round, there hadn’t been enough of them or of our own Space Marines left to do that, but they’d died alongside our Hegemony Space Marines, holding that perimeter until the Navy ships had got our surviving civilians out, and their landers had evacuated some of our civilians, and their Marines and ours had been all mixed up at the end, but they’d fought the Spiders and died alongside our men, dying to protect a species they hadn’t even known existed before they popped out of warp space and into that system.

Ziggy had been one of those Space Marines, on his first big training exercise, and every single Heptapod Space Marine in his Battle-Tentacle, every one of them except him, had died in the fighting. Ziggy had attached himself to the remnants of a PLANS Space Marine Company and been evacuated with them. I guess if anyone could talk about Zhuolu to our graduating Officer Candidates, it was Ziggy.

“We’ll go through all these this evening,” Karmen said. “And here we are ... down here and let’s join the Premier of Xīn Nán Wēi ěr shì on the dais. The gentleman beside him is the Mayor of Xī-ní, he’s a friend of your dad’s and arranged the house down on Bondi Beach. Don’t mention the house at all. I just forwarded you the agenda...”

“Okay, I have it,” I said, calling up my own speech as the Governor smiled at Ziggy and I, and began to speak.

“We’d like to welcome our distinguished visitors from New Beijing, Beak Commander Ziggy Yai!lith, of the Heptapod Space Navy Marine Corps and the first of our Heptapod fellow warriors, fighting the fascist and speciesist paper spiders, to visit Xī-ní, and together with Beak Commander Yai!lith, we welcome his wife, Comrade Citizen-Major Stardust Wong-Yai!lith of the New Beijing People’s Militia and an expert on Heptapod-Human relations...”

Well, I was married to Ziggy. Married for five years now, so I guess I better be an expert...

“We’re on the news, Stardust. Come and watch,” Ziggy called from the jacuzzi the following morning. That latest vocoder he was using sounded way more natural. They’d really improved tremendously over the year he’d been away on his last mission to (redacted), even if the laughter function was still wonky.

Ziggy was relaxing, and taking care of our little one. Little Danfeng Wong-Yai!lith (which made my dad really happy, because we’d named little Danny after him) was darting around the jacuzzi, occasionally popping up for air that he didn’t really need because of his gills, but he knew it made mommy feel happier when he did, laughing happily and splashing his dad with his hands as he kicked his feet and swam with his little tentacles.

That’d been a relief, when he was born, that he was almost human, except for that chameleon skin and those tentacles and the gills, because he could breathe water too. I was still happy it’d been a Cesarean though, because nobody had been sure what those tentacles would do when he was born and thinking about him pulling his way out hadn’t been exactly reassuring. They were pretty strong, and he swam just as well as his dad.

Little Danny did enjoy his daddy time, now that his daddy was back from that last mission to (redacted), where they’d beaten the exoskeletons off of those horrible Spiders and liberated one more planet. Ziggy didn’t talk too much about the mission, but I knew it’d gone well, the news had been full of it. Now he was back with me, his fighting days finally over, re-assigned for the next few years at least to the embassy on Luna as the military attaché of the Water Paths of the Heptapods to the Chinese Hegemony, and me? I was officially working part-time now as a Translator and Cultural Facilitator, attached on behalf of the Chinese Hegemony to the Heptapod Embassy.

We even had our own Embassy Tunnel, a beautiful one with an outside dome, and access to a small swimming pool shared with other Heptapod Embassy staff. It was lovely, but right now, we weren’t there. Ziggy had a lot of R & R time due, after almost a year away on that last mission to (redacted), and we were using it and we were settling in to the house across from Bondi Beach, in Xī-ní.

Anyhow, you do know Xī-ní, right? Used to be called Sydney, back before Australia voted by 99.99% to join the Chinese Hegemony a hundred years ago and became the province of Aodaliya. Xī-ní’s a lovely city, built around that beautiful harbor with that old harbor bridge and that lovely old Opera House where they put on those wonderful traditional Chinese Operas.

Personally, I was from Gold Mountain Province, over on the other side of the Pacific, and even though I’d lived on Luna, in the New Beijing burrow, since I was seventeen, I was still a New Shanghai girl at heart, although I didn’t like to remember why we’d had to leave New Shanghai, but that was long in the past now, although every now and then I wondered rather sadly if Security-General Zhao was still alive. It would’ve been dangerous to ask though, so I never had. He had taken advantage of my youth and naivety, but I did still remember him rather fondly. Old Zowie and I, we’d had a lot of good times together.