Undaunted

25

Kris would not pass along Honovi’s assessment of matters in human space to Ron. She got no argument there.

The problem was, what could she do with six Iteeche while she went to Texarkana, performed a miracle, and came back. And not leave any tracks that they’d ever been here.

Professor mFumbo wanted to get them talking to his experts. So far, they hadn’t made it past the front door.

“Could we give them access to the ship’s computer?” Kris asked after lunch.

“Too much there we don’t want them to know,” the colonel said, and got nods from all around the table.

“Actually,” Kris said, slowly measuring her words, “some Iteeche know quite a bit about us. Apparently, there were some communication lines left open after the war.”

“I never heard about that,” Abby said.

“Well, there were. Most people didn’t know about them.” The blank stares showed Kris that her listeners weren’t buying it. “Okay, almost nobody knew about them. I didn’t. Ron didn’t. That was something I learned after the rest of you . . .”

“Got the bum’s rush out of the room,” Abby said.

“Well, yes.”

“How much info were they swapping?” Penny asked.

“I don’t know, and wouldn’t tell you if I did figure it out, okay? I’m not that much less in the dark than you are.”

“But you want to let your Iteeche buddy there be less in the dark about us than we are about them,” the colonel said.

“I’m hoping that if we give him something, then he’ll give us an equal amount.”

“Hope is not a strategy,” the colonel pointed out.

“Does anyone have a better idea?” Kris asked.

“May I point out a tactical problem,” Penny said, quietly. “Even if you give them access to the ship’s database, they’ve got no way to translate. You going to loan them Nelly?”

“No!” Kris said.

“One of Nelly’s kids? One of the two not being used at the moment?”

“No!” Nelly said.

“No?” Penny echoed.

“I will not have one of my children raised by an alien. They have a hard enough time relating to you humans, and with you, I can help them. Imagine how crazy it would make one of them if they had to adapt to a totally strange mind.”

“And here I thought Kris’s mind was about as strange as it got,” Abby said.

Now it was Nelly’s turn to sniff. “I’ll assume that was an attempt at a joke. The upbringing of my children and their sanity is not a joke to me.”

“It’s not a joke to us, Nelly,” Kris put in.

“Well, ah,” the colonel said, “what do we do? Assuming we want to keep the Iteeche from going stir-crazy on a long trip with no shore leave.

“And the boffins,” Penny said. “We don’t want them going crazy either.”

“They are crazy,” Abby insisted.

“As I see it,” Kris said, raising two fingers, “there are two problems. First, what part of the ship’s database do we want the Iteeche to access? It seems to me that we and Nelly ought to be able to decide what stories and histories won’t give them too much about us.”

That got some agreement.

“Then the second part of the problem is who does the translation. None of us want to spend our time or our computer’s time doing that full-time. Nelly, do you have a solution?”

“I’m already working on it,” Nelly said, proudly. “I’ve asked Chief Beni who has the oldest computer on the Wasp. It seems the cook is rather proud of that distinction. For a ridiculously large sum, he is willing to accept Abby’s old computer, which I must say is disgustingly obsolete.”

“No, little darling, you may not give away my computer.”

“Why?”

“Because it is not nearly what you think it is.”

“You’ve fooled me.”

Kris had a hard time believing anyone could fool Nelly.

“Let’s just leave things as they are. Cookie can have Cara’s old computer. It’s got plenty of fun stuff on it and can still hold his recipes, both of them.”

“Can Cookie’s old computer do the translating?” Kris asked.

“It will after the chief makes a few minor upgrades,” Nelly said. “Don’t worry, it will still be fifty years behind the bleeding edge. It will also be unable to access the ship’s net. It will get what we feed it, not one gram more.”

So Kris found herself knocking on the door to Iteeche country.

“My master was expecting you,” the herald told her as he bowed her in . . . and slammed the door shut before two boffins right behind her could slip in.

Today, Ron was busy with paint and brush, coloring in a sketch he’d made on the wall across from the beach scene. This one showed towering buildings and sparkling ponds with slashes of color that Kris took for flowers along walks of brightly colored stone.

“Do you like what you see?” he asked.

“Yes. Where is it?”

“A portion of the Imperial Palace. I’ve painted from memory the spawning tidal pools and the Palace of Learning for the newly chosen ones.”

“From memory?” Kris asked.

“Maybe someday when I have spawned myself, these pools will take on better memories. For now, they are of being a tiny fish, fleeing from larger fish. There is a reason why evil and chaos lurk in the deep, dark depths of our sea.”

Kris shook her head, then remembered she had to nod to be understood by Ron. “I cannot conceive of a mother leaving her child in such a horrible place.”

“One spawning fertilizes millions of eggs. The best will fight to survive.”

“Or is it just the lucky?” Kris asked.

Ron barked a laugh. “Oh, so you are one of those radical ones who question the workings of harmony and order.”

Kris had no idea she’d walked into an ongoing debate among the Iteeche. She held up both hands to claim innocent ignorance.

Ron laughed again. “Do not fear. I am not so sure the radical ones are not right. Spending time among you strange ones is giving me more questions . . . and my chooser says that I have always asked too many questions.”

“Honestly, I was not attempting sedition.”

Ron reached out and ran his hand through Kris’s hair. She found his touch surprising. Electric. She held her breath and tried not to shiver.

“I liked the first time I did that. You humans are so strange.”

Kris took a step back and settled cross-legged on the floor mats. She needed a distance between them until she could figure out the strange feeling he created in her.

He put down his paints, wiped his hands of one or two stray drips, and settled onto the bench a few feet from Kris.

“I cannot tell you how much you humans make me wonder about everything I know.”

“I didn’t think we had said all that much. All we talked about was the way our mutual war actually went. By the way, my great-grandfather did not disagree with anything we decided.”

“That is . . . interesting. So, where has your chooser sent you and us? I know we are under way again.”

“He asked me to help him solve a problem he has.”

“And so he sends you and me far away where we cannot foul his fins as he swims in troubled waters, huh?”

“That is pretty much it.”

“How does it come to happen that he has a problem for you to swim at just at the moment I and mine arrive? I thought all was going so well in the sea you humans swim in.”

“You must know that we are hiding a lot from you.”

Ron took in a deep breath. “Just as we are hiding much from you. Open your mouth, I want to see how big your teeth are.”

Now it was Kris’s turn to laugh. “You are a bit big for me to fillet.”

“In the war, we killed a lot of you, and you us.”

There was no way to joke about that. Suddenly serious, Kris shook her head in agreement. “So many died because we were ignorant of each other.”

“I wish you could spend a few seasons in the Palace of Learning. It’s not easy to learn how to be civilized when all you’ve known before was fleeing the bigger fish and eating the smaller fish.”

“I can’t go there, and you can’t go to my schools. And I assure you, though we are raised by our mothers and fathers who gave us life, it is still hard to teach our young the rules.”

“Oh, now shall we compete to see who was the most uncivilized in our youth?”

“No, no,” Kris said. “I was taught to fit into my own civilization. Being trained for a completely alien race must have been much harder for you. No, I have something better for us to do.” She pulled out the computer from her satchel.

“This is for you,” she said, handing it up to Ron.

“What is it?” he asked, then almost dropped it when it translated his question as quickly as Nelly did.

“It is your own computer and translator,” Kris said, and heard herself echoed twice.

“Nelly, let Ron’s computer do the talking. Holler if it gets something wrong.”

“Will do, Kris.”

“So,” Ron said, turning the machine over in his large hands. “You are not giving me something as smart as your Nelly?”

“I wouldn’t be that mean to you. No one should have to put up with Nelly’s arguing.”

“I resent that,” Nelly said in both tongues.

“Besides,” Ron said, “I know you humans are far ahead of we Iteeche in making tiny calculating machines, though your Nelly is a surprise for me.”

“You are a gentlemen and a scholar,” Nelly said, “unlike some, who never did get educated enough to be civilized.”

“Nelly, I know where that off button is.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Ladies, ladies, please. I have asked many questions and been patient when you deftly avoided them, but this bit of human handiwork excites me. What can I do with it?”

“Nelly, instruct the gentleman.”

“As you can see, the face of the computer is a reader. I have loaded a small portion of the ship’s database into it, and you can either read it or have it spoken to you in Iteeche. It’s on. Please feel free to page through the contents.”

Ron’s fingers were twice as thick as Kris’s. The old computer, though large to Kris’s eye, seemed suddenly diminished in his hand. Nevertheless, he used a finger on the screen to move through the available reading material.

“Oh ho, you give me Shakespeare. We have heard of him. Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Much Ado About Nothing. Now there is a title that says something. Are they all here?”

“Yes. A professor I once had insisted that the mere reading of his work is an education in the human condition. I was too young to realize how right he was. Maybe I still am. Grampa Trouble says you should reread Shakespeare every ten years.”

“And you will see more each time. My chooser and your grampa Trouble have much in common.”

“For our sake, I’m glad each let the other one live.”

“Yes,” Ron said, and his eyes gleamed as he flipped through more of the information on his new and ancient computer. “So, is this all that I and mine will be allowed to see from your huge storage in the ship’s main computer?”

“No, there is more, if you want. Ask Nelly, and she will clear off what you’re done with and download more from the ship.”

“And if I don’t want to give up what I have, but want more?”

“Ah, Nelly, what about that?”

“That will be a problem, Kris. This is the oldest computer on the boat.”

“No dishonesty intended,” Kris said to Ron.

“None taken.”

“But its old age presents us with a problem,” Nelly said. “The cook only had one extended memory device, and there isn’t a similar device on the Wasp.”

“Could the scientists or Chief Beni knock something together?” Kris asked.

“They could, Kris, but they’d clearly be using more advanced technology to do that. They advise against doing that.”

“I’ll have to talk to them.”

“Kris, they aren’t going to budge. Take my word for it. Neither you nor even Cara could twist them around her little finger on this one.”

“I understand,” Ron said. “It was a long and bitter war.”

“However,” Nelly went on, “we are headed for Texarkana, and they are rumored to be even more backward than an Iteeche, if you’ll pardon me, sir.”

“Call someone as backward as a human some places, and you’re likely to get socked with four fists faster than you can blink four eyes,” Ron said.

“You think we can buy some memory cards for this computer there,” Kris said.

“That is the betting, the chief says.”

“Then, Ron, I will leave you and yours with the translator and its database. Nelly has put it on her comm net. If you need anything, just ask. But that leaves the boffins lurking at your door. If I’m showing you mine, I’d like to see yours.”

“Something tells me that that translates more than one way. Would you care to go for a swim with me, young lady?”

“Are you propositioning me, or do you really want to go swimming?”

“If you’d spent the first part of your life swimming from meal to meal, any one of which might be you, would you want to go swimming?”

“I didn’t think so.”

“My chooser tells me that after you’ve spawned once or twice, you develop a different attitude toward the water.”

“When will you get to spawn?”

“When I have earned the privilege. Maybe if this mission is a success.”

“When you spawn, is it with a particular female? One you are fond of?” Kris asked. And wondered why she’d said it only after the words were out.

“Some do, some don’t. I am told that it is a much more complicated matter than it used to be. Now that we know what we do about genetics, one does not just spew himself into the dark water and let the currents do what they will.

“Which raises the question, where is this Texarkana, and why are we going there?”

Kris wondered if Ron was in need of changing the subject as much as she was. She was grateful for it anyway.

“It is about as far from the border of the Iteeche Empire as you can get and still be in human space, or at least it was back during the war. And we’re going there to solve an issue that might rip apart an alliance that Grampa Ray needs.”

“Oh, that sounds very Iteeche. I hope you have as much fun doing it as I have.”

“You’ve been involved in stuff like this?”

“Once or twice.”

“We must talk about it.”

“First, let me and mine look at what you have offered. Then we’ll let you see what we want you to see. Later, maybe we can talk.”