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Dick. That was another word for dingdong. There were a lot of words out there for a thing none of us had ever seen. I preferred the word “dingdong,” as it sounded less threatening than the more hard-edgedDick.
Comms laughed nervously. “Well, I think Weapons is probably right.”
“My guess,” I said, “is that High Command is working on a deal to get them to leave us alone. If they’re so much more advanced than us, like you said, Co-Pilot, then what use could they possibly have for us? All of our technology is probably just like sticks and stones to them. Our ships are probably like rickety wooden boats to the aliens. They haven’t attacked or destroyed us yet—and given their technology, theyeasilycould have done it already.”
“You think they’re just going to leave?” Co-pilot asked.
Comms glared at her. “You sound almost disappointed.”
“No, no,” she said, waving her palms at us. “Of course not. I don’t want to get tainted! You really think they don’t want to hurt us, Weapons? Aren’t you scared? Your whole role is almost pointless when it comes to them, right? Like, our weapons can’t even touch them, doesn’t that make you feel powerless?”
No, because we might be able to learn something from them. I thought of everything we had to learn from a civilization that far beyond us, even if they gave us little table scraps, it might be enough to make us exponentially more powerful against the pirates.
Chef Hypatia had been in the circle with us, just quietly listening, but she finally spoke up before I could think of an answer to Co-Pilot. “Um, I thought of something actually really scary. Something that might explain everything.”
We all looked at her. She was just the chef. She cooked our food. We tried as best as we could to be egalitarian when possible, but we were all rightfully very skeptical that Chef could figure out something that none of us had thought of.
“Yeah?” Comms said.
“Well, um,” Hypatia said, “you know how the pirates are always wanting to, um, kidnap us and do horrible things to us with their dingdongs?”
“You think the aliens want to dothat?” Co-Pilot asked, much too loudly.
Emissary Eve looked toward us, glaring at us, but then she turned back to Airlock Eve and Life Support Athena.
I spoke in a very low whisper. “If that’s what the aliens wanted from us, they’d have done it already. Why bother meeting with us? Why set up this rendezvous with High Command?”
“Well,” Chef said, “maybe they want us to like them? Maybe they aren’t mean like the pirates?”
I rolled my eyes, but then I caught both Co-Pilot and Comms smiling.
I jabbed a finger at all three of them. “You’re all on dangerous ground here. Stop thinking about stuff like that. We don’t want them tolike us, not like that. We want them to go away. Eden isn’t for men, and they’ll need to understand and respect that. End of story!”
“Well,” Co-Pilot said, “I mean, if their technology isthatmuch better than ours, and if they decide they want us to like them back, then we couldn’t actually do anything to make them leave. Right, Weapons?”
“Maybe anti-matter bombs,” Comms said.
Maybe.Maybe. Except for the fact that the Khetar would see the bomb coming, then they’d just have to use whatever they did to disable our probes, which would kill the anti-matter containment field, detonating the bomb in space rather than on the Khetar ship. I had a feeling that anything we could try would simply be stopped effortlessly by some kind of mindless AI defense grid.
“Maybe,” I said, “but I don’t think this gossip is helping any of us. Do you?”
“I dunno,” Co-Pilot said, “it’s giving me something to think about. High Command taught us to be afraid ofhumanmen. What if alien men are different?” She smiled at Chef. “Thanks, Chef Hypatia.”
I threw up my hands and walked away. Those stupid women were going to be fantasizing about alien menlikingthem? They could go ahead and do that, I was going to do my job and avoid getting tainted. This was a dangerous mission, and it was about to getmuchmore dangerous if Chef Hypatia was right and the aliens did want us to like them.
* * *
I tooka short rest in my quarters, but came back out when Chef knocked on my door. She was very skinny for a chef, and had bright blue eyes. She looked too fragile to be mean to, so I smiled even though shehadpissed me off. “Yes?”
“Sorry,” she said, “for making you upset earlier.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “We just disagree. I still think it’s dangerous to think like you were saying.”
“I think we’re all feeling very powerless right now, Weapons, and I’m maybe just looking for ways to think about things which really wouldn’t be so bad. I know you’re confident that they aren’t going to completely destroy us, but can we really project our human thinking onto alien minds?”
It was a fair point. One I’d tried not to think too hard about.
“I don’t know. If thinking about the aliens…likingus makes you better able to do your role, then it’s fine. I’d just caution you to be extremely careful about gossiping about something so dangerous when two women from High Command are onEve’s Ribwith us.”
