The black Rinneret turned aside angrily, and began to slink around the room, as if stalking her from different angles. She imagined it just waited for her to fail, and then would seize her immediately.
“I have a message from a human,” the Rinneret said. “We have arrangements concerning biological valuables.”
Her heart sunk. She knew nothing about advanced biology. She was going to mess up! Still, she had to hold out hope. Maybe she could fake it. She said, “I can do that.”
“It concerns contractual obligations we have with regard to various other organisms from your planet. It also concerns a visitor and co-contractor on your planet. You must be familiar with human contractual arrangements.”
She would have thought it impossible to feel worse, but she did. She remembered nothing of Earth. She didn’t know its laws. And what did it mean to say there were “co-contractors” on Earth?
The black Rinneret pulsed as it watched her, waving its black arms.
She lied. “Yes,” she said. “I can do that. I know all about contracts.”
But her tears flowed freely again. She was staving off her doom only for minutes. She considered running for the door. Or fighting. What would the fierce human women in the adventure movies she had watched do? They would find a weapon, and use it. They would leap around the room, and kill these Rinneret, and then escape. But she didn’t know how to fight. And she had nowhere to escape to. And she saw no weapon in the room. She stood there, trembling.
“If she fails, may I have her now?” the black Rinneret asked.
Six-Traveler ignored the black Rinneret. It turned toward the center of the room. “Are you ready?” it asked Margherita.
“Yes,” she whispered. Then she spoke up louder. “Yes.”
An image sputtered to life in the center of the room. It was a human man, balding, with gray hair. He looked straight at her. She felt a thrill. This was a real person, not an actor. Of course, an actor was a real person, but not like this, not speaking just a while ago, in a normal voice, saying normal things. She felt loneliness wash over her terror.
“Yeah, there’s a fucking emergency,” the man said. He stood in a room, an office she supposed, although the walls did not enter into the hologram—only the corner of a desk by his hip, with a sculpture on it. A horse, she thought. The man leaned forward. “Two Predators, one of them a Sussuratian all fangs and claws and tongue and appetite and bad attitude, just paid me a visit. Because you put some of those waterbears, those tardigrades, in that weapon you aimed at Neelee-ornor. Our deal was, first, that I supply you with some choice organisms. Second, I act as your secret liaison into Terrestrial commerce. And, three, I hide your big ugly dangerous friends here on Earth. You, in turn, get the Galactic Empire the hell off Earth. We had no agreement for me to supply weapons and no agreement for me to help you attack the oldest race in the Galaxy.”
The Rinneret paused the image and turned to look at her. The black Rinneret moved till it stood behind the image of the human. It rubbed its claws together, eager for her failure, clearly trying to distract her.
Margherita’s mouth was dry. She had no idea what the human was talking about. No idea at all.
“Speak, human,” the red Rinneret said.
She tried to speak, but nothing came out.
CHAPTER 7
“Speak,” the Rinneret said again.
Margherita could understand nothing about this. She didn’t know why the man was angry. She didn’t know what his “guest” was, or what “weaponized” meant, or what happened to Neelee-ornor. She was going to fail, and this dreadful shining Rinneret was going to deliver her over to a slow and horrible death as some kind of target practice.
“Why does the human speak of a reproductive emergency?” the red Rinneret asked. “This is what I do not understand.”
Margherita held her breath. Could she be that lucky? The Rinneret didn’t understand human swear words?
“It.” She coughed, took a sip from the water dispenser in her helmet, and started again. “It is a way of speaking. It does not refer to sex. To reproduction. Not really. It shows anger.”
“Sex is an angry act for humans?”
“No,” she said. “It’s just that....” But then she failed. Why did people talk about sex when angry? It really didn’t make sense. For the first time, humans seemed alien to her. “No. I guess it’s just... saying something that shouldn’t be said, to show anger.”
“Strange,” the red Rinneret said. “Listen to more.”
It played the rest of the message. The man on the screen raged, till finally his face did begin to turn red. Then the recording stopped.
“Explain,” Six Traveler demanded.
Her voice squeaked twice before she managed to say, stalling for time, “Can you tell me which part is, uh, which part is unclear to you?”
“Why does this human say that he will have sexual relations with me, but also tell me not to have sexual relations with him? Also, what is Oz? Also, why does he claim I have had sexual relations with him already? And, why does he claim that he cannot feel pain but that I can feel pain?”
Margherita stared up at the Rinneret a long time, her mouth hanging open. Finally, her heart began to slow, quieting from a fearful hammering to an urgent beat. Then she laughed. She laughed while she cried. The Rinneret didn’t need her to explain the stuff she didn’t understand. It needed her to explain the normal human stuff. She could do this. The Rinneret understood nothing about humans, about the simple stuff. What it needed to know were the things that even she could explain. She was going to be all right. At least for now, she was going to be all right.
“Explain,” the Rinneret demanded again.
“The man is angry. Sometimes, people use that word not just for... sex, but when they are angry.”
“What does it mean to be angry? It seems different for a human.”
“It means he feels... driven to... strike back at you.”
“But his claims are irrational. His interests will be hurt if he attempts to attack us.”
“Right,” she said. “But because he’s angry he’s not thinking of that. He’s thinking of getting back at you. Only that.”
“Yes. Understood. This is what he means when he says he cannot feel pain, but I can?”
“Well.... Yes. He’s saying, um, not really that you cannot hurt him. Of course you can hurt him. But he won’t care. He won’t let that stop him.”
The Rinneret waved two arms together and apart, quickly. A gesture like nodding the head in recognition. “It makes his threat more dangerous.”
“Yeah. That’s it. He doesn’t care if you try to hurt him. He thinks you care if he tries to hurt you.”
The Rinneret waved its arms in a long, sinuating pattern. She recognized this gesture too: pleasant realization of a puzzle solved. “Many galactic species have this irrational impulse. It serves to make otherwise incredible threats now credible. It is used in economic exchange bargains. He wants to bargain.”
She hesitated. “Maybe not. Not exactly. He wants you....” She looked back at the frozen image. “How old is this?” she asked.
“Why?” The Rinneret raised and straightened its arms in suspicion.
“Uh, well, the proper response to anger changes over time.”
The Rinneret relaxed. It accepted her reasoning. “This recording is five days old.”
She thought hard, doing the math in her head. Assuming Rinneret days, then it was about five e-days.
“Well,” she said. “He’ll still be mad. He wants you to promise him that you won’t put him in danger again.”
“Yes. New terms for the negotiation. What about these other words?”
Margherita explained that Oz, being a fictional place, represented unreasonable possibilities.
“Again, constraints upon negotiations,” the Rinneret said.
She shrugged. No point in trying to get a Rinneret to see it any other way, she realized. “Yes. And, well, you should
apologize, too. If you want to make him less angry.”
“Apologize?”
“Say you are....” She frowned. She did not know if there was a Rinneret word for ‘sorry.’ Fortunately she knew the Galactic word for sorry. She tried it out.
“That seems a useless gesture.”
Better put it in money terms, Margherita thought. “It will show him that you feel bad about what happened. That it is not your normal way of acting to let that happen again. So he thinks it wasn’t on purpose that you harmed him. He will think you can be better trusted then. He will be more willing to negotiate. You should apologize soon, also. Time matters. How soon can you apologize?”
“A real-time conversation is scheduled for one measure from now. You will be present and guide me.” The Rinneret waved an arm, and the image disappeared. “You have been useful,” it added.
Margherita swooned. She had never received, she suspected, a more hard-earned and rare compliment. Not just because the Rinneret don’t often make such comments without expecting payment, and here she obviously had nothing to pay. But because it meant he intended to hold onto her service.
“It is fortunate for me that you were here, and that a stake in you could be purchased. I will contact this human. Meanwhile, you may retreat to your ship. The robot will take you.”
She turned her shoulders so that her helmet faced the black Rinneret, and watched it writhe in discomfort.
_____
Back in the ship she lay down on her bed, exhausted, and closed her eyes.
Sometimes she had nightmares about her first months with the Rinneret. Sometimes she had nightmares too about when her ship had been attacked, about the sound of steel shattering and the tearing wind as the command cabin decompressed. After the emergency airlock sealed, and then her mother went outside and didn’t return, she floated a long time, alone, crying and shouting, until the Rinneret found her ship. When she dreams of that, she always wakes screaming and crying again, just at the point where Nine-Four-Rock-Cutter sticks his huge, beetle face up against the airlock’s window.
But worst is when she dreams of the school.
She had been alone on her ship a long time, towed around by the old Rinneret until he stowed her ship in the asteroid where he lived. Then she was left there. She thought she had been forgotten. She spent days radioing for help with the ship’s regular EM comms, and hoping desperately that the Rinneret were simply holding her while they found her parents. But after uncounted days, the old Rock-Cutter came to the airlock and peered in with its googly eyes. Margherita had screamed.
“I am receiving a radio message,” the ship had said. “It is in a Rinneret language. Shall I translate?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“You are an adolescent,” the translated voice said from the ceiling speakers, “in need of education?”
Margherita thought about that a long time before she said, “Please take me to my mother and father.”
“You are an adolescent,” the translated voice said from the ceiling speakers, “in need of education?”
She sighed. Maybe it was asking if she needed to be with her parents. “Yes.”
“You will not be of value without an education. Come out of the ship and follow me.”
She thought of hiding, of saying no, of trying to barricade the door, but she was nearly going mad from the solitude. She put on the one suit that remained in the closet, and went through the airlock. When she stepped outside she expected some kind of new ritual greeting, but the Rinneret just turned away, its gold suit shimmering darkly in the blue light of the bay. She followed it, struggling to keep up, through the airlock, and then down long black tunnels, where she stumbled over the uneven ground in the nearly invisible blue light.
Rock-Cutter left her in a round, dim room with a dozen other small Rinneret, and one old pale Rinneret that moved slowly and had the name Two-Eight-Teacher. At first, Margherita thought this meant the teacher had high status, but she learned later that there were few teachers among the Rinneret. The Rinneret held little respect for the profession of education.
Rinneret were hermaphrodites, but Margherita always found she thought of each one as having a sex. Old Rock-Cutter was male, as far as she was concerned. This Two-Eight-Teacher, she decided immediately, was a sour spinster.
Rock-Cutter had given Margherita 0.1 credits, and shoved her into the room.
She stood there, a human pace inside the doorway, staring. There were seven other young Rinneret, and they turned their black eyes toward her and clicked quietly, with minimal curiosity. The room was square, with a low stone ceiling from which dangled ominous blue lights. Scraps of old papers and fabrics were piled in one corner, forgotten. The floor was bare, but for a few low tables on which sat tablet computers. The screens of the computers were tuned mostly to blues outside human visual range, and as a result the images that flickered on them appeared to her as vague, sad gray forms.
She stared a long moment. Nothing happened. She watched the other Rinneret children as they finally turned away from her and went off into the corners in groups, talking in high, quiet voices and quickly passing back and forth thin sheets of metal—foil, really—that could act as the smallest denominations of money. It seemed to Margherita that they were playing some games. Or even gambling. The teacher sat before one of the low desks. She seemed idle, but for occasionally a few of the small Rinneret would go and talk to her, head tilted forward to speak privately, before the child handed over a slip of metal.
“Excuse me?” Margherita said, when the teacher was alone. The teacher looked at her and said nothing. Uncertain, she took a step forward, and said again, “Excuse me. Should I... what should I do?”
The teacher stared, but did not reply.
Dispirited, Margherita finally sat on the stone floor, and watched the other children for nearly eight earth hours, trying to understand their activity. When the teacher finally did seem to take notice of Margherita, and her hopes rose because she thought perhaps her turn in some ordering had finally come, instead Two-Eight teacher came toward her only to push her out of the room, having said nothing to her all day. Margherita went back to the ship, slowly tracing the way back using the suit’s location memory, her stomach growling with hunger.
The next day, again Rock-Cutter gave her 0.1 credits, and told her to return to the classroom.
Again, she watched uncomprehendingly while the Rinneret children exchanged foil. She approached the teacher finally, and, this time, decided she would ask a direct question. “Can you help me?” she said. She waited while her translationware spoke, clicks and squeaks emanating from her suit and making her helmet hum.
The teacher leaned forward and said, “Why should I help you?”
Thinking the question meant to test her understanding of the situation, she said tentatively, “Because you’re the teacher?”
The Rinneret hissed and turned away. “I... I can pay you,” Margherita added quickly.
“How much?” the teacher asked immediately.
“Uh... zero point two credits,” she said, before she had time to think better of offering all her money.
“For?”
“To tell me what’s happening here.”
The teacher took the credit transfer. “This is a classroom. You must purchase my services. You may also start a business, to try to increase your allowance.”
“What can you teach me?” Margherita asked. The teacher moved closer and its breath fogged the outside of her helmet.
“All the primary topics of Rinneret education that are currently considered most marketable for young Rinneret.”
“OK, thank you. Can I start to learn one of those now?”
“You purchased an explanation of what is happening here. Not a lesson. Why should I help you?”
Out of credits for the day, Margherita had to sit again. But her education had begun. She found she could purchase lessons for a hundredth of a credit, and she did that, while also watching th
e other children scheme.
She learned their language. She learned how to reset the monitor on one of the computers screen so that she could see the images. She learned about mining. When she no longer needed the suit’s translator at all times, she began wearing a breathing mask during the classes, so that she could better talk and hear. The air stank with the pungent, bitter smell she now equated with the Rinneret. But she understood them. A little.
And after seventy two cycles, the old Rinneret showed up at the class, and told her that school was over. It was time to start cracking asteroids.
_____
After her time with Six-Traveler, Margherita awoke after just a Rinneret measure of sleeping, eyes wide. The interior of her ship glowed dimly, the ghostly readouts pale gray in the gloom.
Somehow, falling in and out of sleep, as she thought about the message from the human that Six-Traveler had shown her, it finally hit her, and knocked her wide awake.
“It can’t be,” she said. “It... it just can’t be. Why didn’t I see it before?”
“Excuse me?” the ship said.
“Ship, how fast does hyperradio go?”
“The speed of hyperradio transmission is dependent upon the power of the transmitter, requiring exponentially more power as the speed increases. The known range of speeds achieved is 2 times light speed to 7000 times light speed. The mean and median speed of transmission are 45 times light speed.”
“At, like, even at the fastest speed—7000 times light speed—how long would a transmission from here, from the Second Green Disk, take to get to Earth?”
“Approximately ten e-days.”
Margherita threw herself back onto the bed. The red Rinneret, Six-Traveler, had said he had talked to that man on the screen, the man in the image, five days before. And it said it was going to talk to the human in a short while. It said nothing about transmission delays. It had wanted her to help with a conversation going back and forth. As if in real time.
Earthrise Page 8
