The Lion and the Lizard

by Brindle, Nathan C.

  "Who says they wear clothes?" inquired Wolff, having inhaled about half of his coffee already. "This is great coffee, Ari."

  "Thanks."

  "They probably wear clothes," argued von Barronov, "if for no other reason than to keep themselves clean, and to differentiate ranks and professions. Come to think of it – didn't Bob tell us they wore kilts?"

  "Oh, yeah." Wolff snorted. "Scots lizards. Gotta see that."

  "Wonder what they do for haggis?"

  "And, was there a Shizzle Robbie Burns to write an ode to it?"

  "When will we be ready to go?" asked Ariela, somewhat impatiently, looking at her holotab.

  "In a hurry?"

  "No, but I should probably call the captain back and give him an update."

  "Ah." Wolff sat up, as did von Barronov. "Nanos do great work on caffeine, don't they?"

  "Sure do," said his sidekick. "That was like a three-hour nap."

  "Why don't you call the captain back, Lieutenant, and let him know we're ready to rotate when he is? Chris, we do have the coordinates they gave us locked in, right?"

  Von Barronov gave him a thumbs-up. "We do."

  "And I've adjusted the power output, and the field size. We're ready. Though I'd have rather tried this with the Chinese ship first."

  "Calling the captain," acknowledged Ariela. She keyed the microphone. "Proven in Battle, this is the Frumious Bandersnatch, we are ready to rotate when you give the word, over."

  "Frumious Bandersnatch, Proven in Battle acknowledges. Per your advisory, we are at alert stations and everyone is buckled in. You may proceed at your discretion, over."

  "Stand by for rotation."

  She looked at Wolff, who whispered, "Give them a three second countdown."

  "In three, two, one, rotate."

  Wolff flipped the safeties up, and snapped the two red switches.

  There was a horrific shudder as the Bandersnatch rotated and pulled the Proven in Battle into rotation with it. The Bandersnatch literally bounced up and down on the Proven's topside, only remaining more-or-less in contact due to the cables tying it down to the Proven's two topside barbettes.

  The rotation seemed to take forever, but finally ended as both ships popped out of rotation into the Xzl5!vt home system. Or at least, what they hoped was the Xzl5!vt's home system. According to the coordinates they'd been given, Earth catalogs had it as the WASP-110 system, 1044 light years from Sol.

  "Wow," said Ariela, weakly, looking more than a little green. She grabbed quickly for a gee-sick bag and barely got it around her mouth before she vomited into it.

  "Rough ride," gasped Wolff. Von Barronov shook his head, slowly, to clear it.

  "I think," he said, "maybe we ought not try that again, any time soon. At least not without first running some significantly more thorough modeling."

  "Brother," replied Wolff, breath having returned, "you ain't just whistlin' Dixie. System checks."

  The two men started running diagnostics.

  "Captain," Ariela called, looking a little less green but still not fully recovered, "Proven in Battle, is everything all right over there?"

  There was nothing but the usual background hiss for a moment.

  "Frumious Bandersnatch, Lieutenant Wolff, everything is nominal here. That was quite a ride. From the banging on the hull, it sounded like it was a lot worse for you. Is it like that all the time?" asked the captain.

  "No. How bad was it for you?"

  "A little bouncy, a couple of ratings lost their lunch. Medical says we had a Marine with a broken arm, but he wasn't strapped in like he was told to do." The captain chuckled. "His commanding officer said he'd normally take a stripe off him for disobeying a direct order, but figures the broken arm was sufficient punishment."

  "Captain," said Wolff, raising his voice to be heard from the pilot's position, "I suspect there is tuning that has to be done to make that work smoothly; the field didn't seem to build like our calculations suggested it would. We're not going to try that again unless we have to, and certainly not without running a hawser around your ship to hold us down firmly. So hopefully, you can confirm we're in your home system."

  "Indeed we are. Am I speaking to Major Wolff? Well done, we're firmly ensconced in Xzl5!vt's L3 point and are receiving panicked messages from our Space Command as we speak." Dz4!bz sounded amused.

  "Excellent. Captain, I'm going to release the Bandersnatch from the cabling. I hate to leave it to you to clean up, but I'm sure you have Marines who would love to make an EVA."

  "No problem, Major. We'll take care of it. It's certainly nice to be home without the two-week trip, so it's the least we can do in return. By the way, our control frequencies are on 14 meters; the main all-call channel is 21.3 megahertz."

  "Thank you, Captain. We'll tune in." Wolff waved at von Barronov, who fiddled with the ship's "regular" radio controls. He listened on his headset for a moment, then gave a thumbs-up.

  "If you want to stay connected, we can transport you to our main base. That seems to be where the frightened little man on the radio wants us to go. They don't seem to have spotted you yet, but if we keep up this conversation on 1900 AM, sooner or later every citizen with a radio tuned in to the afternoon political talk show is going to know something strange is going on." A sigh came over the link. "And those people are nutty enough as it is."

  "What's a good channel for us to switch to?" asked von Barronov.

  "Let's move this conversation to 21.2, but I'd advise you simply listen for now. The translator is good, but it's got some glitches. Just odd syntax, mostly. We'll get close in and then I'll tell them what's up, and you can get in contact with the diplomats."

  "Okay," replied von Barronov. "We'll monitor both 21.2 and 21.3 till you give us the word."

  "Ari," said Wolff, "switch your holotab to monitor 21.2; Chris will monitor 21.3. And sorry about jumping in when I did. I figured explaining the wild ride would be quicker that way."

  "Not a problem, Dad." Ariela started changing settings on her holotab. "Proven in Battle, Frumious Bandersnatch diplomatic channel is QSY on 21.2 megahertz." She punched a virtual button and the frequency display changed.

  "Acknowledged, Frumious Bandersnatch, Proven in Battle is now on 21.2 megahertz and listening. Request you remain QRT until further notice. Proven in Battle, out."

  Ariela tapped the transmit key once, in reply.

  "They're talking to the base operator now," noted von Barronov. "Base wants to know where the hell they came from out of nowhere, and how. Captain says he'll discuss that only with the base commander or the Admiral of the Fleet, and in person at that. There's some sputtering going on but the captain is remaining firm and they're trying to get their commander on the line, at least to give them instructions."

  "Hmm. I wonder if we could shift a quarter second to the left or right and still be able to keep up on the radio," mused Wolff. "Probably not. Plus, we'd drop the cables. But I feel a little exposed up here." He fiddled with his holotab and threw a screen up showing data from the ship's passive scanners, and stared at it, intently.

  "Coming up on their orbital base," he said, presently.

  "They finally found the commander," said von Barronov. "It was apparently his sleep cycle and he was, erm, not in his cabin." He managed to keep a straight face. "The commander isn't happy but will meet with the captain of the Proven as soon as the ship docks. He's apparently coming to the Proven and not the other way around."

  Wolff nodded. "Makes sense, I guess. He can get to the berth and be there when the ship opens up. At least he understands there is some urgency involved."

  "Dizfor suggested it would be more secure, as well," replied von Barronov. "They have the same attitude about SCIFs as we do, apparently."

  "Dizfor?" asked Ariela.

  Von Barronov shrugged. "As close as I want to try to get to pronouncing his name."

  "I suspect," said Wolff, "the bang! sound means 'clan', or something like that. Of course that could be totall
y wrong, but all these people seem to have what we'd consider single-word names. So his name could be something like 'Dizfor of Clan Beezee'. And maybe that makes my engineer counterpart 'Yuzate of Clan Refek'." He shrugged. "Or they could be Japanese and it's the other way round."

  Ariela thought about it. "Could that mean the planet is Xzlfiv of the star system Vit?"

  "Maybe."

  "A single syllable name for the star might make sense from our standpoint," noted von Barronov. "We call our star 'Sol', after all."

  "The Japanese, anciently, would have said 'hi'," said Wolff, pronouncing the word as 'hee'. "But there are plenty of examples of multi-syllable indigenous names for the Sun on Earth. For instance, the Hebrew 'shemesh', or Hindi 'sooraj'."

  "Lieutenant Wolff," came Dz4!bz's voice, almost lost in the noise, over her connection. "Before responding, please reduce your transmit power to the lowest possible level that will allow us to converse."

  Ariela reached over and dialed the power down to a tenth of a watt. "Captain, do you read me?"

  "Adequately, yes. You are about as far down in the noise as we probably are for you. At any rate, the station commander is boarding now, and we will meet briefly – I hope – in my ready room, where I have a jammer which ought to keep our conversation private. I've already sworn my command crew to secrecy and I would imagine we'll get a code word to cover this entire incident."

  "We have similar protocols," acknowledged Ariela. "Is there a concern about how the public will take this first contact?"

  "Well, possibly," replied the captain. "But more to the point, you're not aware of our usual negotiating procedures between opposing parties. We don't want the Opposition Party to challenge you to a negotiation until you're fully apprised. I have to assume, given our rather friendly chats since we made contact, your race doesn't generally negotiate at gunpoint."

  Ariela looked flabbergasted. Wolff, the historian of such things, grinned. "Depends on the negotiation," he whispered.

  "Um, sir, it depends on the negotiation," said Ariela. "We negotiate peacefully until negotiations fail, but in our modern world, generally that just means a treaty or some other agreement between nations falls through, the negotiators shrug, and go home. The same treaty or agreement, possibly with minor modifications, might be picked up later to try again. We also have the concept of cease-fires in wartime, where the diplomats attempt to bring an ongoing conflict to a peaceful conclusion. But perhaps the best summation of our attitudes toward such things came from one of our nation's best known and best loved humorists and commentators, who stated 'The art of diplomacy is saying, "nice doggie, nice doggie," until you can find a stick.'" Ariela managed not to giggle, then, and added, "I hope that translated adequately."

  Something sounding suspiciously like a snort came from the radio speaker. After a moment, Dz4!bz replied, "That is not . . . a saying among us. But I suspect it may become one in the future. We have a flying animal that can be quite a pest and requires swatting from time to time to prevent it becoming more of a pest. Which is how that translated. You had my entire bridge laughing, quite unprofessionally."

  But Ariela could hear the humor in his voice.

  They felt a slight shudder, then. "We have docked," said the captain, "so I must receive the base commander for our little conversation. When it is over, I will update you via this channel. If you have nothing further for me, I will go."

  "Thank you, Captain," said Ariela, "we have nothing further at this time, and will await your return to this channel. Frumious Bandersnatch, out and listening."

  "Very well. Proven in Battle, out."

  "I wonder if all of their negotiations are armed," mused Wolff.

  "Could be a stylized tradition," von Barronov pointed out. "That they are armed may not mean anything in modern diplomacy. It could simply be like the formal diplomatic dress typically worn by Earth ambassadors when concluding agreements and signing treaties."

  Wolff snorted. "Yes, morning clothes, tails, white gloves, and all that folderol."

  Von Barronov grinned. "Just like when the Grand Lodge meets."

  "Heh. None for me, thanks. Tails alone were bad enough when we got our 33rds."

  "What would be the point of going to a negotiation armed?" wondered Ariela.

  Wolff sat up and turned around to face her. "Well. For one thing, the truce might be quite fragile, and someone might try to throw a clinker into the fire. Or their negotiations might always have been in the field, in no-man's-land between armies. Remember, this is a culture that fights religious wars over ice in whisky." He sighed. "They may have even quicker tempers than humans."

  "Hmm. I seem to recall hearing whisky called 'the water of life'," said Ariela, thoughtfully.

  Wolff shrugged. "In Scots Gaelic, it was originally called 'Uisge Beatha'," he explained, pronouncing the words oosh-gae bay-ah. "It was a translation of the Latin aqua vitae, which just means distilled alcohol. But yes, they both mean 'water of life'."

  "Could be a very religious thing, I suppose, if one were oriented that way," replied Ariela.

  "So, why do you ask?"

  "I'm considering how to approach them, Lion of God style," she grinned.

  Wolff and von Barronov traded glances.

  "They'll never know what hit 'em," prophesied von Barronov.

  "Scares me," agreed Wolff.

  Ariela stuck her tongue out at both of them. "You'll see," she promised.

  Chapter 12

  Morally, It's A Problem Of Ethics

  An hour went by. Wolff and von Barronov kept a close eye on scan, hoping nobody casually flying by would notice the Bandersnatch snuggled up on the Proven's topside. Traffic appeared to be light, however, and only a few freighters (or what appeared to be freighters) trundled by as they watched. Occasionally they took a note or two, or commented back and forth quietly, so as not to disturb Ariela.

  Ariela fretted.

  Not because of the time factor. She recognized it took time to iron out protocols. She'd been through this sort of thing, thirty years ago in her own time, with the uptime invaders. But they'd been human, and understandable even if seriously weird. She still felt a great deal of love for them, as she'd told Admiral Sanchez she would, and in moments of quiet meditation would often find herself wondering how they fared, thousands of years in the future in her native timeline.

  She was their saint, regardless of whatever she'd told her "acolytes" in hopes they'd spread the story that she was just a human woman, a doctor and healer, not a religious figure to be venerated. And over the years, she'd finally accepted what that meant. When she prayed, she always remembered to add a special blessing for "her" people.

  Which, of course, now included more than a few people from the present day, in both timelines. She could understand how that had happened back home. What she couldn't figure out – or at least, until Beam explained it, hadn't been able to figure out – was how that status could have crossed from her timeline into this one. Turned out, she herself was the vector for that "infection". She snorted, quietly.

  And now it looked like she was going to be a saint to – the Shizzle?

  "How does that work?" she asked herself, for what seemed like the thousandth time. "They're not human! They're not even from our time trunk!"

  She was getting the impression a great deal more was at work than could be seen on the surface. How had she managed to get Dizfor to come around so quickly? They had negotiated peacefully, regardless of what he said was the default Shizzle diplomatic protocol. He'd even warned them about that. Would he have done that for Wolff, or von Barronov?

  She loved them both dearly, as dearly as their counterparts back home, but she thought not.

  Particularly in light of what Beam had said.

  So she was thinking (though she wouldn't have described it thus) like a chess master, visualizing moves well ahead of the present, trying to figure out what to say at the real negotiation, if they could arrange it in such a way as not to disadvantage t
he humans from the start. She had a bad feeling about the bits and pieces with which Dizfor had tantalized them. Moreover, in something like despair, she recognized she was going to be the only human who would be able to safely navigate these treacherous waters.

  "I need them to explain their actual protocols," she muttered. "Maybe there's a Total Moron's Guide."

  A small window popped open on her holotab screen. She glanced at it, then did a double-take.

  THEY NEGOTIATE IN BRIEF PAUSES BETWEEN PERIODS OF WARFARE BREAK

  Her eyes widened. She made the hand-motion that displayed a holographic keyboard, attached it to that window, and typed, Are they always at war?

  NO BREAK BUT THEY NEGOTIATE IN THE SENSE IN WHICH YOU WILL BE EXPECTED TO DO ONLY DURING WARTIME BREAK

  Do their diplomats travel with the armies?

  NO BREAK THE PROCESS IS HIGHLY FORMALIZED BREAK SELECTED BATTALIONS LEAVE THE BATTLEFIELD DURING TRUCE AND TRAVEL TO AN ANCIENT SHRINE BREAK THIS IS WHERE THE DIPLOMATS SPEAK BREAK

  Ariela mused on that for a moment. She typed, The battalions act as escort for the diplomats?

  IN A SENSE BREAK THE TRUCE IS BROKEN WHEN THE CHIEF DIPLOMAT OF ONE FACTION KILLS THE OTHER BREAK AT WHICH POINT THE ARMIES BEGIN FIGHTING IMMEDIATELY BREAK THE FIGHTING CONTINUES THROUGHOUT THEIR JOURNEY BACK TO THE BATTLEFIELD AND THE GENERAL WAR RESUMES ON THEIR RETURN BREAK

  That's crazy!

  IT IS THEIR WAY BREAK ARE YOUR WAYS OF WARFARE NEGOTIATION AND TRUCE TRULY SO DIFFERENT BREAK

  But how do they end a war? There is no true benefit for either side to call an end, and sue for peace. If the other side wants to keep fighting, they simply kill the opposing chief diplomat, and away they go again.

  WARS ON XZL5!VT DO NOT END BREAK ONE COULD SAY ANY WAR THEY FIGHT IS MERELY A CONTINUATION OF A DISPUTE ORIGINATING IN THE DEPTHS OF THEIR PAST BREAK FIGHTING STOPS ONLY WHEN THE TWO CHIEF DIPLOMATS AGREE TO AN ARMISTICE AND TELL THEIR ESCORT BATTALIONS TO STAND DOWN BREAK GENERALLY THIS IS DUE TO EXHAUSTION OF BOTH SIDES AND A NEED TO STEP BACK REBUILD REARM AND REPAIR THE DAMAGE TO THEIR SOCIETIES BREAK THE CURRENT ARMISTICE HAS LASTED FIVE HUNDRED OF THEIR YEARS BREAK THE WAR ITSELF FOR WELL OVER TEN THOUSAND BREAK