Ambassador by William Alexander Page A

blond, and more accustomed to large conversational distances—whereas Gabe’s family preferred nose-to-nose chats. So he felt perfectly fine an inch away from Sapi’s face.
    A part of Gabe was jumping up and down and shouting Girl! Girl! Almost rubbing faces with someone girlish! But he didn’t have too much trouble ignoring that part. Sapi seemed like a girl to him, but he had no idea what she was like to herself. The inner voice shouting Girl! sounded far enough away.
    â€œMy turn for questions,” he said. “I’ve got strange ships in my solar system. Not sure who they are. Not sure what they’re doing, either. How do I find out?”
    Kaen said nothing.
    Sapi made a thoughtful, humming noise. “Who are your closest neighbors? Ask Protocol how to find them if you don’t already know. Travel takes a while, so it’s probably someone already nearby.”
    She jumped away and threw more leaves at the kids below.
    Gabe plucked a leaf from his own branch. It felt more malleable than terrestrial tree leaves, more like a kind of sticky paper. He folded it into a leaf-paper airplane and then tossed it out and away from the forest.
    Several other ambassadors broke away from their chasing game to watch it fly. They pulled down more foldable leaves to try making their own.
    Gabe’s flew farther than he thought it would. The plane sailed over hills and then whacked an ambassador in the back of the head.
    The ambassador turned around. This one was tall and very pale, his skin whitish-blue. He stood apart from every game, but he didn’t look like a newcomer. He looked like a predator. Everyone else seemed to avoid his company and move wide around him.
    The pale ambassador noticed Gabe in the tree, and they shared one moment of eye contact.
    Gabe waved. “Oops,” he said. “Sorry!”
    Another ball of leaves smacked the side of Gabe’s face.
    â€œLook away, look away, look away!” Sapi whispered. “Stupid! Don’t talk to him. Don’t even look at Omegan of the Outlast, not ever. Do you even have eyes? Most do, but not everybody. Light is a pretty efficient way to noticethings, so practically everyone grows eyes. But sometimes they don’t. If your species grew up in very deep caves, or down at the bottom of very deep oceans, or in the middle of very dense clouds, then maybe you didn’t have enough light to bother with eyes. So you might not know what I’m talking about when I say, ‘Don’t look at him,’ but try not to look at him anyway!”
    â€œI’ve got eyes,” said Gabe. He shot a quick look back at the pale and solitary ambassador. But that one no longer seemed to notice or care about Gabe’s existence.
    Sapi climbed up beside him. “Then stop challenging the Outlast by catching his attention! If his people come to your system, then you should run. Flee. Off you go, all of you, your whole species and whoever else you can bring along. You need to keep moving if you want to outlast them.”
    Gabe glared at her and wiped sticky leaf sap from his cheek. “Moving?”
    â€œYes, moooooooooving,” she said with exaggerated slowness as though speaking to an idiot. “Leaving the nest. Heading up and out to other worlds.”
    â€œWe can’t do that yet,” Gabe admitted. “We did walk on the moon, though. I haven’t been there, personally, but my people have.”
    â€œYour own moon?” Sapi asked.
    â€œYes . . . ,” said Gabe.
    â€œWell,” she said, and leaped back to her own branch. “Well, well, well. That’s tremendously impressive. Your own moon. Right there, big in your own sky. What a great place to run and hide. They’ll never find you there. Forget about running, then. Just keep your head down. If you have one. Maybe you’ll get to keep it.”
    Gabe plucked a leaf, wadded it up, and threw it at Sapi. It bounced off her