Communication Failure

by Zieja, Joe

  Rogers thought that had been pretty ironclad. There was nothing in what he’d just said to indicate that he had even a modicum of doubt as to whether or not he would be marrying this random woman whom he’d just met and who had kicked him in the face in order to kidnap him and force him to marry her.

  “Are you saying that if I were to help you deal with those problems, they wouldn’t stand in the way of your agreeing to marry me?” Keffoule said.

  “No!” Rogers said. “That’s not what I am saying at all! Are you even listening to me?”

  Well, actually, it seemed like she was listening to him very attentively. Otherwise she wouldn’t be pulling out all these tiny statements in his long explanations of why he wasn’t going to marry her.

  “I am listening to you very attentively,” Keffoule said, echoing his thoughts. “I remain, however, unconvinced that you have valid reasons to decline my proposal.”

  Rogers goggled. “The fact that I don’t want to marry you isn’t a valid reason?”

  Keffoule continued as though he hadn’t even spoken. “You are correct in that we are talking about a lot more than you and me. We’re talking about interstellar relations. We’re talking about prolonging the Two Hundred Years (And Counting) Peace. If we are united, who could divide Merida and Thelicosa? Hundreds of years of open warfare and veiled animosity would vanish behind our love—”

  “We’re not in love.”

  The Thelicosan Grand Marshal ran her tongue across her teeth, seemingly occupied with her own thoughts for a few moments.

  “Are you familiar with the golden ratio, Captain?”

  Rogers frowned. “You mean the mathematical one?”

  “Are there any others?”

  Rogers thought. “No. Well, what about it, then? What does that have to do with this?”

  “Everything,” Keffoule said, her voice disturbingly quiet. “Absolutely everything. You might not see it like I see it, Captain Rogers, but the universe has destined us to be together. Your reports list your birthday as day one hundred eighty-five of the standard calendar. Mine is day three hundred. One point six one times yours.”

  “But the golden ratio is a nonrepeating decimal,” Rogers said, his eyes narrowing. “Aren’t you all supposed to be good at math?”

  “We also understand the principle of ‘close enough,’ ” Keffoule went on. “But that’s not the only thing. The reports, Rogers. The reports. Your fleet strength? Mine has one point six one more ships. Your weight is one point six one more than mine—”

  “My weight fluctuates on a daily basis, as does yours,” Rogers tried to interject, but Keffoule wasn’t having it. She was rapidly entering a frothy-mouthed list of things that separated the two of them by the golden ratio. By the time she was comparing eyebrow hair density, Rogers had had enough.

  “I thought you people were supposed to be obsessed with science!” he said. “Now you’re telling me that some weird number is controlling our destiny because I ate one point six one more donuts than you?”

  Keffoule looked at him askance, taken aback by his outburst. “You don’t believe in numerical destiny?”

  “I have never heard those two words uttered next to each other.”

  Keffoule sighed, relaxing for a moment. “Next you’ll tell me that Meridans don’t believe in astromology.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind,” Keffoule said. “I suppose there’s nothing to be done about it. So allow me to bring this conversation back down to a level that doesn’t understand the fact that all of the forces of the known universe want us to get married.”

  “I’m not sure if that was insulting or not,” Rogers said, “but I maintain that there is no known way for you to convince me to marry you, Grand Marshal.”

  “There’s no doubt there would be personal benefits as well. You’d be hailed as a hero by your government.”

  “I’m already hailed as a hero.”

  “And I’m very good at physics,” Keffoule cooed.

  Rogers raised an eyebrow.

  “Particularly frictional kinetics.”

  “Okay,” Rogers said, holding up his hands. “Okay, stop. Just stop. No. I appreciate how well you’ve thought this through. Maybe I misjudged your character a little bit by thinking you were impetuous for charging across an officially recognized border and wanting me to marry you. But that doesn’t change my answer.”

  Keffoule looked at him, her expression blank. All the coy, smooth aspects of her face had flattened into something that was both unreadable and easily interpreted. She was going to kill him.

  Finally, just as Rogers was considering making a break for the door or at least closing his eyes so he wouldn’t see it coming, Keffoule reached out and tapped a button on the table.

  “Xan,” she said, but gave no other command. She released the button.

  “Finally,” Rogers said, breathing a sigh of relief. “I’m glad you’re seeing reason. I’m sorry I had to let you down like this; I know it’s hard to see someone like me walk out of your life and all that, but it had to be done. It’s the best thing for both of us.”

  The door opened a moment later, and in walked the saggy-faced attendant, looking just as chipper as he had when he’d left the room what seemed like hours before. Had he been standing outside the door the whole time? Rogers would have said he looked angry, but that would have implied that he looked anything at all.

  “Yes, Grand Marshal?” Xan asked.

  “The Grand Marshal was going to ask you to take me back to the hangar,” Rogers said, giving Keffoule the sort of look that said “Right? Right?!  ” “So that I can make my way back to the Flagship and we can put all this behind us.”

  Xan seemed unconvinced, as he didn’t make any immediate movements to bundle Rogers out of the room and back onto the death-mobile they called the Chariot. Rogers waited impatiently for Keffoule to confirm the order.

  “We’ll be needing the one-twenty,” she said.

  “Right,” Rogers said, nodding. “Shuttle 120, that’s the one that’s going to take me back to the Flagship, yes?”

  “Are you sure, Grand Marshal?” Xan said, continuing to ignore Rogers.

  “It is unfortunate that we have to settle things this way,” Keffoule said, “but I am afraid that there is nothing for it. The captain is . . . stubborn.”

  “Stubborn as a droid caught in a logic loop,” Rogers said, nodding emphatically. “Totally immovable, a mass approaching the speed of light.”

  “As you wish, Grand Marshal.”

  Xan promptly turned on his heel and exited the room, closing the door in Rogers’ face as he tried to follow.

  “Hey!” Rogers called. “You forgot me! I’m supposed to climb onto your scary Chariot and get out of here.”

  The silence that followed his request made him suspicious that perhaps he’d misconstrued.

  “I’m sorry it had to come to this, Captain Rogers,” Keffoule said. “I haven’t had to settle an argument like this in a long time.” She was smiling, but not in the warm or even sly way that Rogers had seen before. This smile looked . . . evil. He didn’t like smiles that looked . . . evil.

  “What are you talking about?” he said, swallowing. He felt his back press involuntarily against the door. “I thought we were clear.”

  “We are perfectly clear,” Keffoule said. “Clear that there is no other way for us to solve this problem but a duel.”

  Oh shit.

  “Duel?” Rogers said. “You must be joking. Ha ha, very good. Very funny. I didn’t know Thelicosans could tell jokes that didn’t involve math. Really got me, there.”

  Keffoule didn’t look like she was joking.

  “No,” Rogers said. “I won’t do it. This is preposterous. You can’t be serious.”

  Keffoule looked like she was serious.

  Xan opened the door and came back into the room, holding a covered tray that he placed on the table after clearing out some of the dirty dishes. It looked like another g
ourmet meal was about to be served, but Rogers knew better. Xan was about to lift that cover and reveal a pair of pistols.

  “You are serious! Grand Marshal, what kind of barbarous society are you that you still engage in this sort of pseudo-macho behavior?” Rogers looked at the still-covered tray nervously. “Have you even seen me shoot?”

  Xan dramatically placed his hand—which Rogers now noticed had a very crisp white glove on it—and lifted the lid. Rogers squeezed his eyes shut, barely looking out through his eyelashes at the weapons that would soon bring an end to this absurd adventure.

  Instead of guns, however, the tray had a large bottle on it, filled to the brim with a thick amber liquid, and two very gaudily decorated highball glasses.

  “I’m afraid you may have misjudged,” Keffoule said. “A duel in Thelicosa doesn’t involve weapons.”

  A drinking contest. They were about to engage in a drinking contest. Thelicosan society had just moved up a notch in Rogers’ book.

  “One-twenty,” Rogers said slowly, amorously, like it was the opening line of a beautiful poem. “You mean Jasker 120?”

  “You are familiar with it?” Keffoule said, sounding surprised.

  “Oh,” Rogers said, grinning wildly. He sat down and slowly traced his finger along the outside of his glass. “You have no idea.”

  * * *

  The following hour or so passed in a mixture of emotions and sensations that were both familiar and forgotten to Rogers. He felt as though he hadn’t had a good drink in forever—never mind the best Scotch in the galaxy—but it only took a few minutes to get reacquainted with his old friend. The smoothness, the smokiness, the texture. It was a marvelous reintroduction.

  “You’re doing this all wrong, you know,” he said, swirling around the last bit of this particular glass. “Jasker 120 is a delicate flower, meant to be taken care of, caressed.”

  Keffoule blushed—not for the first time since she’d started drinking—and averted her glassy eyes. She clearly knew her way around the bar, but she was handling it more like a bouncer than a bartender. There didn’t appear to be any rules to this “duel” other than to drink alcohol—rules that Rogers understood and appreciated—but Rogers wasn’t about to slam back glasses of Jasker 120 just because the enemy fleet commander was doing it. He’d take his time with it because it deserved his time.

  “You speak very eloquently with a glass in your hand,” Keffoule said. “I had thought you a bit . . . timid.”

  “Really?” Rogers said, a sardonic smile on his face. “What gave you that impression? Was it all the running away or all the begging for my life?” He laughed, the liquid courage flowing through him. He felt much more at ease than he should have in front of someone as powerful and deadly as Keffoule.

  Keffoule passed a hand in front of her face, and for a moment Rogers thought she was going to be sick. But, strangely, he realized that she’d actually tittered. Giggled, even.

  “I find you amusing,” she said. “Among other things, of course. Do you really think you can beat me?”

  Rogers looked her over. A thin sheen of sweat was building up on the woman’s forehead, and her shot-throwing accuracy was already starting to decline, as evidenced by the small splotch of tragically wasted Jasker 120 on the lapel of her uniform.

  “I do a lot of things poorly,” Rogers said. “An awful, awful lot of things.” He drained his glass and refilled both of theirs from the half-empty bottle. “This is not one of them.” He leaned forward, the motion causing the room to move a little bit more than he liked. “I bet I could drink approximately one point six one times the amount that you could.”

  The look on Keffoule’s face was almost worth being kidnapped. She squirmed—actually squirmed—in her chair and was clearly trying to control herself.

  “We shall see,” she said, her voice husky. “You do know that traditionally, if you lose, you must acquiesce to my request, yes?”

  “I’ve already told you what I think about Meridans following Thelicosan traditions,” Rogers said, taking a sip of the fresh glass. By god, that was amazing. “But you can think whatever you want.”

  A brief glance at Keffoule’s lapel forced him, quite unexpectedly, to reevaluate her. He knew better than to make romantic judgments of any kind while drinking or being kidnapped by the enemy, but she wasn’t exactly hard on the eyes. Her whole personage seemed . . . smoky, from the way her skin darkened in different places to the way her eyes sort of swirled as she gazed at him.

  Rogers blinked, his glass halfway to his face. What was he thinking? This was not the time or place to be making any kind of evaluation except how to get the hell off this ship.

  As he looked down at the first decent drink—and the first decent conversation, strangely—he’d had in a long time, an unexpected thought punched through his anxiety.

  Did he really want to get off this ship?

  Glancing again at Keffoule, he could see immediately that she’d grossly underestimated him. After the whole damn Meridan Navy over estimating him, promoting him, and placing him in positions he had no business serving in, it was kind of refreshing to be thought less competent than he actually was.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked, grinning.

  She grinned back at him, but the grin was sort of crooked. “I feel like a Schvinkian grass dragon who just pollinated.”

  “No idea what that means,” he said, raising his glass. “Cheers.”

  This time it was she who refilled their glasses. The bottle was approaching empty, but Rogers felt like he could have easily tackled another all by his lonesome. It was good to know that his liver was still functioning at Olympic performance levels.

  “How does one lose this duel, exactly?” he asked. “I mean, aside from dying.”

  “Don’t you understand what you could have?” Keffoule asked.

  “That’s not really my question.”

  “My career is nearing its far horizon,” she said. “A few more years—all of which would be spent in full glory, thanks to this—and we’d be ready to retire. We could go anywhere, do anything.” She motioned at the bottle. “I’ve heard legends of a Jasker 130. With my pension, we could buy a small freighter and travel the galaxy searching for it.”

  Rogers frowned. Keffoule looked like she was pretty young to be nearing retirement, but he couldn’t remember the age that had been listed on her dossier. He wasn’t exactly a young buck either, though.

  “That’s not really my point,” he said. “And what do you mean you’d be living in glory?”

  Keffoule blinked at him for a moment, as if she didn’t understand what he was saying. Did she sway a little bit? Her lips moved to form words, then paused.

  “Never mind,” she said. “But there’s all that other . . . stuff . . . I said. The stuff, right?”

  Wow, Rogers thought. She’s even starting to drop her highborn speech act. This is going to be shorter than I thought. I wonder if she’ll let me keep the rest of the bottle?

  “Maybe we should stop,” he said.

  “Aha!” Keffoule said, thrusting a finger in the air. “You’re giving up! Marry me, Rogers.”

  “No.” Rogers sighed as he poured them another glass. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “Yesh, I do,” Keffoule said. “It’s important to me. I’m tired of being a failure.”

  Rogers swallowed another sip. He was starting to feel really warm, maybe even a little dizzy, but certainly not ready to fall out of his chair like Keffoule. He estimated another two glasses before he could actually be considered drunk, but she was long past that point.

  “Failure?” he asked. “You of all people should be considered a success, shouldn’t you? I don’t know what you did for most of your career, but you’re the commander of a fleet. What about that is failure?”

  “Grassy field!” she shouted. “That’s where I am. I’m in the grass. Like a cow.”

  Rogers paused for a moment. “You mean they put you out to pasture?”
>
  She pointed at him, shaking her hand and nodding as she took another sip of the Scotch. At least she wasn’t throwing it back like some cheap vodka now, though Rogers still didn’t think she was really appreciating it.

  He opened his mouth to say something, but Keffoule held her hand up to stop him. She looked at him across the table with dire seriousness, mitigated only by the fact that she was rocking from side to side like she was on a seaborne vessel.

  “I . . .” she said, then fell over.

  It was only after Rogers had jumped out of his seat and run over to where Keffoule was lying on her back on the floor that he’d realized he’d done so. Why had he bothered? This woman had kidnapped him and subjected him to five to ten minutes of starvation. He owed her nothing. By all rights, he should still be in his chair laughing at his “victory,” or using her semiconscious state to plan a quick escape. Instead he was making sure she was alright.

  “You lose,” he said, kneeling over her.

  “Schmingar,” she replied sagely.

  “Right.” Rogers put her arm over his shoulder and performed a well-practiced drunk-person lift. Once she was stable, he slowly eased her over to her bed, a massive but simple thing in the back of her stateroom. He had intended to let her down gently, but the Jasker 120 was catching up to him in a way he hadn’t expected. As such, his careful ministrations to the enemy commander ended up looking much more like a really bad judo throw. Keffoule let out a huff of breath as she made contact.

  “Mrr,” she muttered.

  “I told you you’d lose,” Rogers said triumphantly. “Does that mean you’ll let me go now?”

  “No,” Keffoule said.

  Rogers shook his head. He couldn’t really say he hadn’t expected that. For now, though, it was enough that fate had afforded him a couple of stiff drinks, something he’d really needed. The room spun a little bit around him; maybe his liver wasn’t in the condition he’d assumed it was.