Trial by Ordeal

Illustration by Vincent Di Fate

I heard his steps long before I saw him coming. I knew from the labored tread and huffing breath who it was—Ronald Hickok, one of the contact team; the group responsible for negotiating with the Onalbi.

Well, I’d given them something to negotiate about.

He scrambled to the top of the rock where I sat and collapsed heavily next to me. After he caught his breath, he finally spoke. “They treating you OK?”

I nodded. “No complaints.”

His arm swept across the periphery of my vision. “No complaints? They give you a rock valley to live in, no shelter, no food—”

“They bring me food,” I corrected.

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” he said. “And you built yourself a little mud igloo to live in, too, but it’s—”

“Ron, I don’t need a mansion. All I need is protection from the elements and food.”

He grunted and I could hear him fumbling in his pockets. “I brought that pair of socks you wanted,” he said, placing them next to my hand. “You know, I think they’d let you have more if you’d only ask. A view screen, maybe? How about—”

I waved him to silence. “Nothing.”

“Paul, I don’t get you. Sitting out here all alone, staring at the rocks with no one to talk to and nothing to do. How do you stand it?”

Shrugging, I replied, “You know how people are always saying that they’ll get around to doing something important one of these days when they have time? I’ve always meant to hang my soul out on a line to let it air out, and this seems to be as good a time as any to do it.”

He inhaled slowly, then let it back out just as slowly. “Why do you talk that way? You don’t have to torture yourself. I think we could at least talk them into keeping you someplace more civilized—in a building, for starters, where you’re out of the weather.”

“I’m fine. Just think of it as penance, if that makes it easier for you.”

“Well, it doesn’t. I mean, they haven’t even had the trial yet and you’re already being punished. It just isn’t right.”

“Right by whose standards?” I asked. “Ours? Theirs? Some arbitrary set of rules determined by a third party? Who gets to decide the rules? I have to set an example. Let there be even a hint of anything less than justice and we and the Onalbi will feel the echoes of it until the end of time.”

He pushed to his feet and stared down at me. I turned to look up at him.

“You’re crazy,” he told me. “You wear guilt as though it was some kind of armor. What if they kill you?” His arms scissored in the air in a clumsy imitation of an Onalbi’s pincers. “What good will your armor do you then? Let us at least try to save you.”

I shook my head, looking up at him. “No. We’ll do this my way, which is to say, their way. They are the ones which must be satisfied. That’s the only way we’ll ever have a future together.”

Hickok started to say something more, thought better of it, then clambered back down off the rock as ungracefully as he had climbed it. From there, he walked across the bottom of the depression, climbed the side, and was gone. I’d see him again in a few days, when the delicate balance between his conscience and his dislike for me tipped far enough to make him come to see if he could save me from myself and the Onalbi.

My name is Paul Walker. I’m twenty-eight years old, the son of a philosophy professor and a dance instructor. For as far back as I can remember, I dreamed of space. One way or another, I wanted to go to the stars. I told myself I’d pay any price… and thought I meant it.

It didn’t take long to determine that I wasn’t going to be the captain, or the pilot, or even the navigator. I wasn’t going to be a scientist, either. You want the honest truth? I was just too damned lazy to study hard enough. Now, with hindsight and a little bit more maturity, I look back and yearn for missed opportunities. A bit less beer, a few more nights with my nose to the grindstone, and I might have made it out as something more than a cook.

But make it, I did.

As a cook. Nothing more, nothing less. I made it aboard the Gorbachev as one of the lowliest of grunts. The stars were mine, even if I only saw them occasionally. We made landfall on five lifeless planets. I stood on each one, usually the last person to set foot on the surface.

The sixth planet was the jackpot. Not only flora, but fauna. Ecstasies of discovery. While we were still in orbit, everyone was sleeping three hours in twenty-four, maybe five if they were particularly exhausted. Back to the instruments, hurried discussions, impassioned arguments, new data, new theories, dashed theories… it went on and on. I went about my business patiently. It was obvious that we’d be here a while and all I wanted was a chance to stand on the surface before we left.

Meals I cooked and more meals I cooked. Some things just can’t be automated if you want them done properly. Time passed. The rudiments of understanding were hammered out between the scientists. A basic foundation was laid that all other studies could build upon. Geology, botany, oceanography, you name it, every specialist on the ship got to put in his or her say, and a consensus was reached. We landed. There was work to be done here, much work. I was only a cook, and I had to bide my time.

Finally, I was offered my chance. Would I like to go outside? Of course! Permission granted. The atmosphere was not far from that of Earth. Lower nitrogen, neon making up the difference, oxygen slightly lower. I could go out on the surface without a suit—without even a breathing mask.

My first impression was of desert. I’d seen the images on the screens, of course, but that didn’t convey the dryness of the air or the sheer vastness of the sky. It was, for all intents and purposes, much like the American Southwest. I went for a walk, aimless.

I rounded an eroded sandstone formation, and there before my astounded eyes was a bipedal creature, backed against the unyielding rock, menaced by something like a cross between an ugly lizard and a lobster. It was huge—over three meters long.

The bipedal creature, while by no means human, did have an upright torso, and a recognizable head. Arms… it did not lack for arms. My first impression was that it must have twenty or thirty. One lay at its feet, twitching. Blood flowed. It was clearly losing the battle. As I watched, the monster flashed a claw and another arm was missing, this time carried triumphantly aloft, then delivered to the gaping mouth.

Without thinking, I ran towards them, reaching into the pocket of my apron for the butcher knife I habitually carried. A claw slashed at my shoulder, but the creature was clearly caught by surprise. I rammed my knife into the soft skin between two plates on the back of its neck, withdrew, then struck again.

The bipedal creature didn’t bother to thank me. It ran.

It took days for the enormity of my error to become apparent. The bipedal creature, while vaguely humanoid, was nothing, a mere animal. The fierce-looking predator was actually the sentient one, simply out for a bit of dinner. Now it was dead, the victim of an Earthling who had assumed that anything with two legs was worth saving.

Now, I would stand trial for murder.

The Onalbi have the death penalty, and they use it often.

A geological curiosity was my little valley. Almost perfectly round, with no outlet. If there were any significant amount of precipitation, it would fill over time and become a lake. It was bowl shaped and I toyed with the idea that it was the scar where some long ago meteorite had blasted untold tons of rock into the sky, or perhaps a volcanic caldera.

There was nothing to keep me from climbing to the rim, and I frequently did so, to sit and talk with my guard. I was not as lonely as Ronald assumed. My guard was scrupulously fair with me. Never once had he—I refer to him as he, although I don’t even know whether the Onalbi have genders—done anything even remotely like the cruel and abusive things I would have expected of a human jailer. It was as though he, too, felt the weight of the destiny of our two species, and wanted to make certain that future generations could look back and nod approvingly at his treatment of the murderer from Earth.

The floor of my valley sloped up gradually, becoming steeper the nearer I got to the rim. The first few times I climbed to the rim, I was winded so severely that the most I could do was throw myself on the ground and wheeze, chest heaving. Now, after living outside for the last few months, I had gradually toughened and was able to make it without trouble.

I sat with my back against the guard post and waited for Hresah, my guard, to scuttle around the rim to where I was. He still had a ways to go, so I drew up my legs and rested my chin on my knees, looking out over the empty, sun-bleached land.

Hresah arrived, and switched on the power to the guard post. Actually, it was more like one of the automated information kiosks that you see in large cities. He spoke to it, the computer inside translated, and it spoke to me. Over time, I had learned to filter out his actual voice and hear only the kiosk’s translation. Onalbi voices were dry and whispery, like the desert wind.

“You are well?” he asked.

I nodded. “I’m well.”

“I apologize for being long to get here.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I told him. The one thing that I had asked of the ship’s crew was that they bend every effort to get our languages in synchronization. Setting aside my little problem, the sooner we got our words aligned, the sooner we could get our future straightened out. They had done remarkably well, but some things still tended to sound a bit odd coming from Onalbi into English.

“Snow will come soon.”

“Really? I know it’s been getting chilly, but it’s not that cold.”

Hresah raised his claws out of the way and used the secondary limbs underneath his forward shoulders to prod at the side of the guard kiosk. An image appeared, looking something like different colors of swirling mud—their version of a weather map showing temperatures and isobars and such. He traced the curve of one arc of purplish brown with one of the limber tentacles on his secondary arm.

“See here? How it pushes this way?”

Try as I might, I still couldn’t read their maps. A theory had floated back to me from the ship that they might be able see a broader range of frequencies. There might be colors there that 1 could not see. Presumably in the infrared, from what Ronald had told me. It was a low-priority issue at the moment, but someone would investigate as soon as there was time.

Instead of wasting my afternoon trying to read the map, I put it into more practical terms. “How long before the snow gets here?”

“Early tomorrow morning.”

“Could I get you to toss down another tree or two? I’ll need some more stuff to burn to stay warm.” They weren’t trees, of course, they looked more like heavy-limbed shrubs, but that’s what the guys back at the ship and the Onalbi had agreed to call them.

“You are empty?” More work needed on that bit of translation.

“Not yet, but I will be if I don’t get some more.”

“Looking ahead is something that humans do not always do.”

All I could do was chuckle and say, “If I had looked ahead, I would not have killed Grenabeloso, and you and I would not be here talking this afternoon.”

“You are better at it since you became a prisoner.”

There could be any number of interpretations of that, so I asked him to rephrase what he’d said.

“When you first came here, you only looked at the now. Now you look more ahead.”

I sighed, picked up a pebble and cast it over the edge into my valley. “I don’t know if the computer knows the word, but we have a word called maturity. It means that we learn as we go along.”

“We learn, too.”

“Maturity isn’t quite the same as learning. You’re already wise when you’re born. A human must learn that actions have consequences. Learning that helps give a human maturity… the ability to choose the right course of action, even if it hurts now, in the hopes that it will be seen as the right thing later on. If I had been wiser when I was in school, I would have studied harder. Then I would have been able to be more than a cook.”

“I do not understand how you can be born not knowing this.”

“From what I’ve been told, you Onalbi live a long time and are not subject to hormonal surges. Your longer life span permeates your entire culture. It’s ingrained in you to consider the consequences of your actions—you might live long enough to see them. Also, your more stable hormonal levels don’t lead you into some of the… ah, impetuous actions that humans are subject to.”

“But we are hunters, like humans.”

Somewhat oblique, but a good point. Eventually, I nodded. “My hunter instincts were part of what led me to kill Grenabeloso. Humans are territorial. We also tend to protect our own kind. In my haste to decide how to act at the time, I assumed that the besa was more nearly human and deserving of my protection.”

Hresah waved one huge claw from side to side, a gesture I’d been told to interpret as a nod, even though it looked more like equivocation. “We are not territorial,” he agreed. “It is hard to understand how humans feel that they own certain things. How can you own a piece of land, for instance? I have heard you refer to the valley as ‘yours’ many times, and yet you did not make it. Onalbi only call theirs something that they made. You did not make the valley, nature did, yet you call it yours when even by your standards, it should belong to the Onalbi. How can it be yours if it is ours? I can understand the mud hut. You built it. It is yours. But the valley, I do not understand.”

I shrugged, hoping that he understood the gesture. “I agree. The things you say are true. I will think about them and try to have an answer the next time I climb up here to see you.”

Hresah laid one fearsome claw next to my thigh. I didn’t flinch; it was a gesture akin to placing a hand on someone’s shoulder. “Please make that climb happen soon. I will look forward to your answer.”

As I climbed back down to my hut, I felt the first whisper of a cold wind. In my imagination, it was the chill touch of the Grim Reaper that I felt!

When I awoke the next morning, the ground was already three or four centimeters deep in snow. The fat, sticky flakes were driving in steadily, with very little in the way of a breeze.

I pushed the mud-covered branches that served as my door back into place and set about nursing the embers from the previous evening’s fire to life. The fire had to be just the right size—too small and it wouldn’t give off enough heat to warm the hut, too large and it would fill the domeshaped hut with eye-stinging smoke and send me scrambling outside to cough my lungs out. When I had things just right, there was a thin stream of smoke that rose straight up through the round vent hole I’d left in the roof.

The only thing surprising about Ronald Hickok’s footsteps outside the door was that I hadn’t expected him for another day or two.

“Knock, knock,” he called.

“Come in.”

“What do I do… just push through?”

I reached over and pulled the plug aside. Cold air laden with snowflakes drifted in with him before I got it back into place.

“Thanks,” he grunted, hunched over uncomfortably as he inched his way around the fire in the middle of the floor. He sat heavily. “I brought you another blanket. Thought you might need it, what with the snow and all.”

“Actually, I think I’ll use it to cover the door until I can make a new one. That one’s getting pretty crumbly.”

He looked disgusted. “Whatever. Look, seriously, let me try to get you inside somewhere, at least. If you catch pneumonia out here, you won’t be proving anything to anyone. If you insist, I’ll even see if I can scrape up a bed of nails for you to sleep on.”

It took an effort, but I refrained from rolling my eyes. “Thanks, but no thanks. I feel fine so far.”

He unfastened the front of his parka. “It is warmer in here than I thought it’d be,” he admitted.

“As long as Hresah brings me wood and food, I’ll be fine.”

Ronald snorted. “Huh… I’m glad you’re happy. Some of the rest of us are up against a wall.”

“The contact group? What’s wrong?”

“Everything. We’ve never gotten past learning the names of the Onalbi. Every time we try to move on to other issues, like what to do about you, the Onalbi seem to want to talk to someone else. They keep acting as though we’re just flunkies.”

Being the cook means that I know everyone on board. The corollary is that I have opinions about their worth. “Do you blame them? You guys all act like politicians trolling for votes.”

He jerked as though I’d slapped him. “What would you do, put the scientists in charge?” he demanded scornfully.

I shrugged. “Maybe. Overall, they’re pretty good people, with the possible exception of Farak. Him, I’d keep as far away from the Onalbi as possible.” To get him off my back, I shifted topics. “How about the linguistics—”

“Oh, now there’s a success story for you. To hear them tell it, the Onalbi they’re paired with are born linguists. All they have to do is just barely get started on an idea, and the Onalbi take it and run. Eileen says they have an intuitive grasp of things—even things they’ve never seen—that’s almost scary. She was describing our history of transportation to them, working backwards. She told them about cars, then horses, then all of a sudden her Onalbi comes up with the idea for a wagon, being a wheeled vehicle powered by a horse instead of electricity, and wants to know what we called it. That’s in spite of the Onalbi never having used any sort of draft animal at all. They did everything themselves until they invented machines to do it for them.”

“Pity the scientists can’t get anyone like that to work with.”

“Oh, supposedly the Onalbi are waiting for someone. Until that someone gets here, our scientists are on their own. Even the linguist who derived the concept of a wagon won’t talk to them, in spite of the fact that he sounds like a pretty smart cookie. The sociologists are saying it’s a caste system and they can’t step out of their area.”

I shook my head. “I don’t think so. I’ve met several and they’ve acted pretty equal towards each other.”

He sneered. “The ship’s cook speaks with authority. I’m sure they’ll be waiting with bated breath for your assessment when I get back.”

I guess I deserved it—I’d insulted his contact group. “If it’s a caste system, I’ll be real surprised.”

“They think it explains why the contact group can’t get anywhere. Somehow, we’re the wrong caste.”

“Not so much of a caste… more like a peer group, and your contact group may not measure up to their idea of someone they’d want as a peer.” I confess… I did that on purpose.

“Well, if you get to chose a jury of your peers,” he snapped, “you’d better get started, because it may take a while to find twelve Onalbi cooks.”

As time went on, I cared less and less for the behavior of my own kind. Maybe I was going native. Perhaps I was trying to distance myself from the fallible human who had killed a sentient alien just because he didn’t look “normal.” Then again, maybe humans aren’t such great company after all.

Not that I was angry with Hickok for his sarcasm. I’d gone out of my way to bait him. The reason it stung was because he had prodded my feelings of inferiority.

Still, I felt faintly soiled after his visit, so I crept out of my hut and started walking towards the guard post. I thought I could see Hresah, but couldn’t be sure. The snow was falling less thickly now, but still hard enough to obscure my vision.

With no gloves, my hands quickly became numb from the cold, and climbing the last part of the wall was difficult. By the time I crawled over the rim, I was having bouts of violent shivering.

The guard post had a bit of an overhanging roof so I pressed my back against the central column and scrunched my legs in as close as I could, then wrapped myself in the blanket Hickok had brought, which I had carried lashed to my back.

“Are you well?” Hresah asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“You move.”

I started to correct him by saying that I was sitting still until it occurred to me that he meant the chattering of my teeth. “It’s called shivering. It’s a natural human reaction to cold. The muscle movement generates heat and helps to keep us warm.”

“Then you’ll need more food since you are being more active. I shall send to your ship for more of your food.” He lifted his secondaries and started fiddling at the side of the kiosk.

Just another example of the Onalbi seeing side effects and repercussions more quickly and completely than humans. This time, Hresah had done it with just two facts—a sort of minimalist approach that would have been frightening if I hadn’t learned to trust him to be right, first time, every time. He was awfully smart for a guard.

Hresah finished his fiddling—I thought of it as typing, although it certainly wasn’t a keyboard—and sent the information from the computer in the kiosk to the main one at the human camp and wherever the Onalbi did their data processing. Transcripts of everything that Hresah and 1 said were sent to the linguists and scientists to let them know what Hresah and I were learning about each other. Presumably, a rudimentary definition of shivering had just been entered into the Onalbi master database. More grist for the mill.

The ground underneath me was hard and cold. The metal shell of the kiosk was hard and cold. Even the air felt hard and cold. I wrapped the blanket tighter around me and tried to concentrate, but ended up just watching the snowflakes drift to the ground. Up here on the rim, there was a slight breeze. Every so often, the snow would twirl into eddies and dance in response to subtle air currents I could scarcely feel.

Hresah poked the side of the kiosk, then said, “Your people are inquiring about your health. I am told that it is not good for you to be exposed to this much cold.”

“Well, it’s not exactly Miami in the middle of August.”

“I’m sorry. That didn’t translate well. The computer thinks that you were making a comparison, but I have no referent.”

I grunted. “Miami is a place on Earth where it is warm. August is the name of a time period when it is warm. To be in Miami during August means you will be warm.”

“And it is not warm here, now. I understand. Do you wish to be warmer?”

I sighed. “Do I wish to be warmer? Yes. However, I wish even more to atone for killing Grenabeloso. Eventually, you will decide what to do about the situation. Then I will face whatever punishment you think is necessary with as much dignity as I can muster. I made a mistake. Now, I must accept the consequences.”

He was quiet for quite some time after that. I watched the snow accumulate on the lower edge of my blanket where it stuck out from under the overhanging roof. After a while I said, “Hresah, I have been thinking about what we were saying yesterday.”

“About you owning the valley?”

“Yeah. I think the best way to explain it is to start with my hut. We both feel that when I mixed the water and the grass and the dirt and sticks together to make a little adobe shelter, that I made something that is, in some sense, mine, right?”

“We have similar feelings, yes.”

“OK, well, let’s look at it this way. You Onalbi, at least as far as I can tell, are pretty solitary creatures. So far, I’ve never seen more than three of you together at a time, and that only happened once. The rest of the time, you guys seem to stay by yourselves, right?”

“Yes.”

“Humans, on the other hand, tend to stay together. We evolved to hunt in packs against bigger, stronger animals. You have those claws and you’re pretty much able to take care of yourselves, but humans have little in the way of natural weapons, so we needed to outnumber our enemies.”

“You have pack hunters called hyenas, do you not? Are humans like them?”

My gut reaction was to deny it, but from his point of view, the similarities would outweigh the differences. “Uh, well, sorta. Let’s say wolves instead. A comparison with a hyena is considered insulting—comparison with a wolf is less so.”

“But do not hyenas laugh? Are they not—”

All I could do was laugh out loud, knowing full well that it would only reinforce Hresah’s assumption… and that irony made it all the richer, so I laughed even harder. “Hresah, you’re wonderful. I like the way your mind works. Under better circumstances, I would have liked to offer you my friendship.”

“I do not understand.”

“It’s quite all right. Perhaps we will take the time someday to explore the differences and similarities between humans and hyenas, but it will probably be a long conversation.”

“We will have that conversation. I will remind you. Let us return to humans hunting in groups.”

“The critical thing here is that humans settled down. We used to be nomadic hunters. Then we started living in one place—”

“Ah! Ah! I see! When a group of humans lives in one place, then they all need mud to build huts. Mud becomes scarce. Once mud becomes scarce, then humans must leave to find more. But that goes against the human tendency to want to settle and live near other humans, so a tension is set up to be near other humans, and yet to find enough mud to build huts. This tension will express itself how… as hostility? Yes?”

Like I said, give an Onalbi two facts to work with and he’s as good as a mind reader. “That’s one possibility. They may take mud from one another by force. Another possibility is trade. Someone who lives on the edge of the valley where mud is still plentiful can trade mud for food.”

“Marvelous! Ecstatic! I see it! It explains so many things. You are in competition for resources. Not only for mud huts, but for the mud from which to build them. By your very numbers, you make commodities scarce. The valley is yours because it is where you get your mud.”

I nodded. “Now, you’re on the right track. Follow that train of thought and you’ll derive law and nations and war and the whole concept of advertising.”

“I’m sorry, the computer doesn’t know that word.”

“Well, suppose you have mud and someone else does not. Advertising lets him know you have mud and want to sell it to him.”

“I am fascinated. You and I have done more to further understanding than all other Onalbi-human contacts. This makes it all so clear. The same for food then, yes? Eat too much food in one area and it becomes scarce.”

“Right. You Onalbi are nomadic. When you wander about, the food you eat, whether it’s a besa or whatever, is only a small part of what is in that area. Then you move on. We build a town and it’s not long before the food nearby gets exhausted.”

“And this drove you to agriculture. So clear. Your greatest weakness is also a strength. Amazing. Then agriculture made you learn biology and forced your technological growth. Oh, this is marvelous. Tell me, you must advertise food, right?”

“Relentlessly.”

“You are both strong and weak at the same time.”

“And so when I saw Grenabeloso and the besa, I was acting like a pack hunter defending one of my own kind against a predator.”

“Because the besa might have mud and return the favor in the future by giving you mud when you needed it.”

“Right. But you could also say that I simply acted on a prejudice that anything that stood on two legs must be similar to me.”

“You did not look far enough ahead.”

“Right.”

“And yet you can learn to look ahead. I have seen this.”

“I am trying to learn to look further ahead, yes.”

“Do others look ahead? Your contact group cannot be what they claim to be. Of all humans, they are the ones with the shortest sight, when they should be the ones who see furthest ahead. They do not look beyond the now. We keep waiting for the ones with the vision of the future, and yet they do not come.”

“But, Hresah, they are the contact group.”

“How can this be? They need the furthest vision, but have no idea of even tomorrow’s consequences! Consequences longer down the road—they are blind to them. They are… I cannot say that, it is a bad thing to say even of one of my own kind, much less of a human.”

Knowing full well that what Hresah and I said would make its way to the contact team, I decided to throw caution to the wind. I had empathy for the frustration that the Onalbi must feel when w’ords were malleable depending on the needs of the moment and the shifting objectives behind the opaque eyes. “Hresah… I am going to say a bad thing, myself. After this, I will probably be in trouble with my own people. The contact team is made up of politicians. Does the computer know that word?”

“Elected officials who decide policy. Is that correct?”

“As far as it goes, yes, although not all politicians are elected. But here you must read between the lines. You are aware that humans have jobs. A job is a function that a human specializes in so that someone else may specialize in another task and they both become more efficient at their jobs.”

“We have jobs. We have specialized functions. I understand.”

“We get paid for our jobs. This allows us to—”

“Ah! Money! Wonderful concept. So fluid. So versatile. Our system is more like what you call barter. We are very interested in your money idea.”

“And you realize politicians get paid.”

“Competition for money. Yes. Splendid process. This means that your humans who have the job of politician should each strive to do the best job that they can, so that they will earn the most money, yes?”

“Well, it should work that way, but it doesn’t. Instead, partly because there isn’t a good way to objectively rate the job that a politician does, we get people who are not good at governing. In other words, they are not good at politics.”

“But a rating system should not be the problem. You pay musicians to produce music. How well they play is subjective, yes? Yet you are able to decide who you like. On objective things, simply wait, then evaluate how their decisions worked out.”

“Hmmm, this may be more difficult than I thought. Let’s throw in the concept of advertising. Politicians advertise that they do a good job.”

“So? This should not be a problem. It would allow you to find the politician who does the best job. Then you choose him, then he makes more money. Yes?”

Slowly, sadly, I shook my head. “Add one more thing. Humans do not always tell the truth. Since it’s difficult to tell whether a politician actually does a good job, they can lie to you in their advertising. The better their advertising sounds, the more they get elected. Basically, they get elected, not on how well they govern, but on how well they lie.”

It’s foolish to project human emotions onto aliens, but, anthropomorphism or no, I could have sworn that Hresah was flabbergasted. He said nothing. He kept making little abortive movements as though he was about to say something, but nothing came out. While I waited for him to sort out his thoughts, I amused myself by contemplating the expressions on the faces of the contact group when they found out what I’d just done to their carefully manicured, coiffed, and pampered egos.

I wondered if I should start filling out paperwork to join Onalbi society, even if it was only until my execution. Regardless of my personal opinion of their worth as human beings, the contact group had very real power, including the ability to override the captain under certain circumstances. They could have me boiled in oil and chopped into little bite-sized pieces for the Onalbi to pick apart. To say I had just burned a few bridges was an understatement.

Finally, Hresah mastered himself. “You do not consult—” And here the computer was unable to translate the word; it passed it straight through. The word was anwabi.

“Try that one again, Hresah. It didn’t come through.”

After jockeying for a while, we finally had to admit defeat. It was frustrating, because Hresah clearly thought that the concept was important enough that it merited the effort, yet was at a loss to define something that to him seemed so obvious that he had never had to define it.

I was of little help. The cold had seeped so far into my bones that my shivering was continual. As much as I enjoyed our conversation, I had to get back to my hut and the warmth of my fire, or I would save the Onalbi the trouble of killing me.

We agreed to part. He promised to throw down more fuel for my fire.

My strength was gone, and I lost my grip going over the edge, falling down the sloping wall of the valley.

Hresah could not come to my rescue. The Onalbi cannot negotiate steep inclines. Indeed, my incarceration in what would be a high-security cell for an Onalbi was mainly symbolic; my frequent visits to the rim were proof of that.

What Hresah did do was to summon help via the kiosk. Several Onalbi showed up, but under the circumstances, mainly as observers. Fortunately, it wasn’t long before humans arrived and scrambled down to where I had fetched up on a rock ledge. Hasty examination and conferring led to the conclusion that I had broken an arm, a leg, and probably a rib, plus sundry contusions, lacerations, and other indignities. I endured their poking and prodding with as much stoicism as I could. When I ran low on stoicism, I substituted groans. During the trip back to my hut, I ran out of groans and began cursing as a means of expressing my discomfort.

The doctor, a fellow named Lamon, was the practical sort. Hickok fumbled ineffectually at rekindling my fire from the coals for ten or fifteen minutes while Lamon worked on getting me patched up. After achieving a state of supreme frustration over having to share the tight quarters inside my hut with the bumbling Hickok, Lamon shooed him out and had the fire up and going in less than two minutes. He then went back to working on me, leaving Hickok outside cooling his heels, along with the rest of his body. Since I was in no mood to put up with Hickok at the moment, that raised Lamon several notches in my estimation.

He clucked and fussed over me for a while longer, then pronounced me as fit as I was going to be for a bit. He started in once, wishing that he could get me back to the medical bay on board the ship, but I told him that I’d rather be where the Onalbi put me and that I felt that the precedent was important enough that I’d chance things the way they were. He looked distinctly unhappy, but desisted.

He left me some pills to deaden the pain, then crawled out the door, promising to check in on me later in the day, and again in the morning. I thanked him just as Hickok barged in.

Hickok wasted no time on pleasantries now that Lamon was gone. “Just what did you think you were doing, Paul? Do you think that being a cook makes you more qualified to negotiate with the bugs than the contact team?”

I’d heard people refer to the Onalbi once or twice as bugs before, so I wasn’t surprised to hear the term. Given his position on the contact team, however, I was a little surprised to hear it from him. “I didn’t negotiate anything.”

“No,” he spat sarcastically, “you just did your dead level best to undermine everything we’ve achieved in the last three months.”

“Undermine what? You yourself said you’ve gotten nowhere. Hickok, you and I—and for that matter, the Onalbi, as the recordings clearly show—are under no illusions as to how much progress you’ve made. Hresah as much as said that you’re fools.”

“Ohhh… so Hresah is qualified and authorized by the Onalbi to conduct their side of the negotiations? A prison guard? Well, please be so kind as to inform the rest of us once the two of you get this all figured out. We don’t want all of the contact team’s time to be wasted, not to mention our years of training for this very moment. This is a very delicate process, you know. What did you think you were going to accomplish as a cook? Trade recipes? How quaint!”

What I wanted more than anything in the world was to take a deep breath, but my rib precluded that. Spears of pain rewarded my attempt. I briefly considered telling Hickok to buzz off, but decided that, since it was coming sooner or later, I’d just as soon get it over with. “You can talk all you like, but you’ll never get anywhere because the Onalbi have seen through you. Pretending otherwise is nothing more than ego inflation.”

“What? You think the Onalbi are going to tell a mere prison guard what’s going on in their negotiations with the humans? You know what, Walker? You’re stupider than I thought. Hell, it’s probably just a ploy on their part to flank us and see if they can get inside information on our position. And you fell for it! If that’s the case, you’re as good as a traitor!”

And with that, he left.

I held off as long as I could from taking a pain pill, as Lamon had told me that they’d make me drowsy and I wanted to think.

Was it possible that Hickok was right? Had I been played for a fool? Were the Onalbi just using me to get confidential information on our side of the negotiations? Once again, Hickok had deftly played on my lack of self-worth, reminding me that I was only a cook, and that I had no training for dealing with the situation.

I had rashly alienated the only humans who might be able to help me. At this point the contact team was going to do everything in their power to distance themselves from me. For all I knew, they would throw me to the Onalbi as a sacrificial offering. Effectively, I was now alone against the Onalbi… and against my own species.

As promised, the pills knocked me out. I had the vague impression that Lamon came in, checked me, stoked the fire and left, but was unsure whether it was real or just another dream.

Sometime late in the night, I became aware that the fire had died down to the point where I was getting cold. Some part of my mind kept telling me that I had to get up and put more wood on, but I was too tired and hurt too badly to actually follow through.

Sometime later, I became aware that the fire was burning steadily. I remember thinking that Lamon must have dropped in again to check on me. I made a mental note to thank him, and nodded back off.

The next morning I came fully awake to a crackling fire. It was a little too big, but the excess smoke that was pooling in the ceiling didn’t bother me where I lay on the floor. Clearly, Lamon had made his promised morning visit.

I enjoyed the warmth for a while, then dozed off again. Drifting in and out of sleep, I thought I heard a dry snick, snick sound. My first impression was that Lamon was breaking twigs to add to the fire.

Imagine my surprise, then, when what came through the door was not Lamon, but an Onalbi claw. While one of the smaller manipulating arms gently moved the door aside, the claw deposited a few branches, neatly cut to the same length, on the fire, then withdrew. This was followed by more snicking sounds and another deposit of wood on the fire.

Then I heard soft scratching noises as a large, bulky body moved close to the door, settling itself across the opening, effectively adding its mass to the insulating effect of the thin shield of mud-slathered branches.

“Hresah?” I called.

No answer.

“Hresah?” I called again, louder this time. My side felt as though it was going to rip open.

“Hresah,” acknowledged the dry, whispery voice from outside. No translation, just his naked voice.

“Thanks,” I said, knowing that without the computer in the kiosk to translate, he probably wouldn’t understand.

“You are welcome,” came a stronger, more mechanical voice. Clearly, he had brought some kind of smaller computer down with him.

But… “How did you get down here?”

“Same way we put other Onalbi in. A sling used as you would use an elevator. Another now stands at the top. He lowered me to take care of you.”

“But why bother? You’ll probably just kill me anyway.”

At this, I heard scrabbling noises as the body at the door shifted. The door pushed aside and his large, blunt head appeared as his secondaries placed what I took to be his computer on the floor between us. “Why do you think you are to die?”

“I killed Grenabeloso.”

“Do you want to die?”

“No. Believe me, I don’t want to die. But I want the books to balance and if that’s what it will take, then I’ll have to face it. I don’t want the future of our two species to have a shadow hanging over it.”

“You are looking ahead.”

“I’m trying to.”

“That is what an anwabi does.”

In spite of, or perhaps because of all the rest I’d had, my mind was cloudy. Maybe it was a side effect of the drugs. I couldn’t follow what he was saying. “What is what an… anwabi does?” I did my best to approximate the way he pronounced it, with the accent on the middle syllable.

“It is the word we had trouble with yesterday before you fell. An anwabi looks ahead. It is his job, his specialization. Do you not have those whose job it is to look ahead?”

“I’m still not sure what you mean by look ahead. How could you have someone whose job is to look ahead?”

“Everything that we do has consequences, yes? Sometimes large actions have small consequences. Sometimes small actions have large consequences. It is the specialization of an anwabi to examine an action for possible consequences. Sometimes it is very difficult, as the consequences may be very far in the future and many things must be considered.”

“Then I wish I’d talked to an anwabi back when I was fooling around instead of hitting the books,” I muttered to myself.

Apparently, his computer’s hearing was sensitive enough to pick up on that. “You have mentioned before that you wish you had not spent your youth as you did. Was there no one to tell you what would follow?”

“Sort of. It’s pretty much accepted that you should do well in school, but it’s like washing your hands before you eat, everyone pretty much ignores the advice.”

“And there was no… person you could go to?”

“Person? You mean a person whose only thing to do is to tell you to study hard?”

“A person whose job is to study any question you bring and tell you what is likely to happen.”

“Sounds like a fortune-teller.”

“I’m sorry, the computer does not understand that.”

“Let’s pass on that, then. It would be a diversion. So how does an anwabi do whatever he does?”

“Let us use an example. Suppose we are to take present circumstances. We have a human. The human has killed an Onalbi. The humans and the Onalbi both wish to establish permanent communications. To be friends, perhaps. We are agreed on the conditions?”

I nodded. “That pretty well sums it up.”

“Then what we do is this. We need an anwabi. There are many, but due to the complexity and the importance of the question, we need a good one, the best we can find. We, you and I, go to talk to this anwabi. We tell him the conditions I have just described. He will think about the problem in general—decide what is relevant. Then he will ask us questions.”

“Questions? What kind of questions?”

“Did you kill the Onalbi as an act of war? Since it seems that humans are in competition for resources, did you kill the Onalbi for its resources? Were you defending yourself because it attacked you? Many questions.”

“Sounds like a trial.”

“In a way. An anwabi will want to look at the way the humans will react if one of their kind is killed. Also, how will the Onalbi feel?”

“That sounds like the kind of thing that you and I’ve been talking about.”

“Just so. Then there are the longterm things to look at. For this, the future of our two races, we must examine things with the greatest exactitude, as the future will be with us, our children, and their great-grandchildren. We must provide for them all the optimal solution.”

“Sounds impossible. You can’t always make everybody happy.”

“That is part of the anwabi job. Knowing that an anwabi has decided something makes it more palatable, even to those who must suffer.”

“So an anwabi is kind of like an arbitrator between two parties?”

“He can serve that function. But he can also assume the role of investigator, and judge, and lawyer, and jury—as I understand these terms. And sometimes… executioner.”

“That’s an awful lot of power for one person to have. How do you know they’ll be fair?”

“They are born to it.”

“Born to it? It’s a hereditary title?”

“No. They are born to it. Literally. Centuries of breeding. Long pedigrees. Records are kept of the decisions that anwabis make. Many years later, they are reviewed by others to determine if the anwabi’s decision worked out as he foresaw. If necessary, adjustments will be made to rebalance. If an anwabi is good and has few or no decisions reversed, then he is able to mate with other chosen anwabis. Their offspring are then better anwabis. Many centuries of this have produced anwabis who can reliably work into the third generation from the present, and less reliably out to the fifth generation.”

Considering the life span of an Onalbi, that was impressive. “But what about the anwabis whose decisions aren’t good enough?”

“There are always smaller decisions to be made. There is plenty of work for all, for we all need to make decisions, and though the breeding for anwabi has had trickle-down effects throughout the general population—even an ordinary Onalbi can see several years into the future—there are always things where wise counsel is needed. So even a lesser anwabi does well. And if his decisions are deemed wise, he begins to advance, and his bloodlines are elevated in the breeding plan, which is in itself something that others are bred for—to oversee the breeding.”

“Wait a minute, are you saying that all Onalbi are bred for their jobs?”

“Yes and no. They are bred for their jobs, but they are not required to take that job if they do not wish. If they choose another profession, they may do well, but they must be aware that they will be competing against those who have been bred to that job and they must do well indeed to prosper. Though we would never force an Onalbi to do a job they did not want to do, they usually will be most prosperous doing what they were born to do. Whether to follow the job one’s bloodlines were blended for is a frequent question for an anwabi to answer.”

My head was reeling with the implications. “But how can you select the genes for an anwabi? What makes someone able to see the future?”

“We do not know. It does not matter. We breed.”

I spluttered and fumed. I had anticipated a long, complicated answer, based on intense scrutiny of the Onalbi genome. Instead, what I got was such a pragmatic, rule-of-thumb reply that it threw me. “But how can you know?” I persisted.

“What makes a good anwabi? Good answers. What else could possibly matter? If it would make you feel better, we regard it as a facet of intelligence. You breed for intelligence, do you not?”

I was flummoxed. “Uh, no. We don’t breed for anything.”

“I do not understand. Do you not breed with those who are most successful? Have I misunderstood? I thought that human women desired men who were intelligent, wealthy, and strong. Do they seek men who are foolish, poor, and weak? Do they seek men who are at the bottom of your society?”

I gave this one a few moments of thought before answering. “Put that way, then you’re right. But it’s not planned in a formal sense.”

“Ah, good. Then you reap exactly that which you sow. Did my idiom translate well? Did it make sense? We breed for specialists and you breed for generalists. Our system yields those who are very, very good at one thing only. Your system yields those who are perhaps not quite as good at any one thing, but are more versatile. Both systems have merit. Onalbi and humans would be good partners. Our strengths and weaknesses would fit nicely, yes?”

Was it the pain pills that gave me this giddy sense of unreality? The conversation was slippery, out of control. I had the sense of things being said that I couldn’t quite grasp. “Uh… yes. We, not just me, but all humans, I think, could use anwabis from time to time. Possibly you have other things that we need, but a good anwabi would be priceless.”

“And we Onalbi find much to admire in your concepts. Your more general approach to questions has led to cross-fertilization between your sciences, and to more technology. I am telling you no secret that we have seen the results of your approach and it will give us thoughts for many years. Your concept of money as an abstract thing is something that has caused many conversations already. We must consider for some time before adopting the idea, but it has merit. I, myself, feel that it may be adopted. I will urge this.”

Remembering Hickok’s sarcasm, I shook my head. A prison guard urging an entire world to change… now, that was a laughable concept. “Hresah, how can you say such a thing? You’re just a guard.”

Hresah made a noise that the computer could not translate. “And what kind of job—what kind of training would produce the best prison guard?”

My brain was blank. “I don’t know. Maybe a warrior.”

“Would it not be efficient to have the judge as the guard? Save time, I think. Also be jury. Also be executioner, if need be.”

“Sounds as though…” Sudden chills racked my body. “My God, you’re an anwabi!”

He bowed his head slightly, a mannerism I had showed him on another occasion. “Hresah, at your service.”

I could not think of a single intelligent thing to say. Suddenly, it all came into focus. The free-ranging conversations. The philosophical discussions. The probing questions. Hickok had been right, in a way. I had been played by a master. Plumbed to the depths of my soul. Used as a mirror of the human race. And found wanting, no doubt. How could a murderer give a good impression of what humans were like? All too accurately, I was afraid.

“But, Hresah, you’ve been here with me for months. How could you give up that much of your time? There must be other things that you should have been doing.”

“What could be more important than a first meeting between races? What more important questions to settle? What greater challenge? Let others answer the ordinary questions. I would not miss this opportunity.”

“But me? Why didn’t you talk to the contact team? They’re the ones you need to talk to.”

“There are other Onalbi talking to humans. There is an anwabi among the Onalbi talking to your contact team. He looked forward to… let’s try this word,” he spoke and the computer paused briefly before translating, “relished—did that word translate properly?—he relished the opportunity to talk to your contact team. I do not think I would be exaggerating to say that he is now disappointed. I think you and I have said enough about your contact team.”

“Is there an anwabi assigned to each group that’s talking to humans?”

“No. Only two so far. There are not enough to go around. That is why there are no Onalbi talking to your scientists. Their anwabi is in the final stages of investigating another issue. Nothing must disturb him until he is done. Once he is free, then he will make his way here and the scientists will begin to talk.”

“But can’t another be found?”

“Sadly, no. There are three anwabi alive at this time whose decisions have never been reversed. It was decided that those were the ones and the only ones who might serve as anwabi concerning the humans.”

“And you’re one of the three?”

“You have a word, ‘boast,’ which I do not understand the depth of. From our conversations, I think now that it implies a certain falseness. Like a politician. If you will consider, you will realize that it would be the worst kind of foolishness for an anwabi to underestimate or overestimate his own powers. In acting capacity as anwabi, I have never had a decision altered or modified in any way. This is nothing but a fact.”

“And yet you spent your time on me.”

“Most fascinating problem imaginable to me. Would spend rest of my life on this problem if necessary to assure that the right thing was done. Glad to say that it will not be necessary. My decision has already been made.”

Years before I had run across the phrase, “Today’s as good a day to die as any.” I decided that I’d rather not face those claws on my back. My struggle to get into a sitting position left me panting for breath. “I’m ready,” I gasped.

“Grenabeloso’s death was bad. It was brought about by ignorance and by prejudice. These are both bad things by themselves. Combined, they are destructive beyond the limits of either by itself. You have admitted the same to me many times. You do not contest the facts or this interpretation. Is this correct?”

I nodded weakly. “I did kill Grenabeloso. I’m not proud of it.”

“You did not kill Grenabeloso as an act of war. You did not kill him for his resources. You did not kill him for any reason other than the thought that you were saving a being that you regarded as similar to yourself. That the being was a besa, an animal frequently used for food, was unknown to you then, but understood by you now. Is this correct?”

I nodded again. “Right.”

“Now, I will tell you something that you did not know. Grenabeloso was an anwabi, a well-regarded one.”

My stomach sank into the ground. Now, I was in for it. “You’re right,” I whispered, “I didn’t know that.”

“I will now tell you another thing. There is a provision in Onalbi law that restitution may be made by fulfilling the obligations of the one killed. I am considering extending this provision to cover the current unusual circumstances. Do you wish to assume Grenabeloso’s position as anwabi?”

Reality lurched. Hresah might let me live? “How can I? I wasn’t bred to it.”

“The same way Onalbi do when they take a job outside their bloodlines. You have consulted with an anwabi, who is myself, and have demonstrated some ability to look ahead. It is my consideration that humans would do well to begin breeding their own anwabi. You will make mistakes, your children will make mistakes, but fewer. Your grandchildren, hopefully, will make fewer still. How can you object? You have said yourself that humans need anwabi.”

“But I killed Grenabeloso! How can a bad human anwabi make up for killing a good Onalbi anwabi?”

There was a lengthy pause, during which I imagined Hresah searching for words. “We are on unsafe footing, here. We are at the mercy of the translations provided by the computer. Let us hope that they carry the proper flavors. Your words were that you would be a bad human anwabi. Now, consider. Does the word bad refer to the word human, or to the word anwabi? It is to be expected that you would be an imperfect anwabi, even with help. The very concept is new to you, although you have shown more aptitude for the work than any of the members of your contact team. But as for you as a bad human being… this is a cultural thing. I am forced to try to understand you within the framework of your own culture, and a fascinating problem it is. In our favor is the fact that we seem to be able to reach similar, if not identical, conclusions on issues of morality and ethics. Killing is bad. Life is good. Producing things is an admirable trait. The gulf is not so wide as to be unbridgeable. I have been studying this problem for the last few months. I do not see that you are a bad person. The worst that I see is that you reach conclusions too quickly, without weighing enough evidence or considering consequences. This, however, is the same thing that happens with beginning anwabis. We must give ourselves time to learn. I believe that it will best serve our two races for you to live. You humans will need an anwabi for your contact team. You will be that anwabi. You are more long-sighted than they are, and we will conduct talks with you. You and I will review decisions together. You will learn to be an anwabi. As a side benefit, I will get to study interesting human topics, like owning this valley. That I must ponder more to get the full depth of it.”

I did not trust myself to speak. My life was being handed back to me. I had grown so accustomed to the idea that I would be executed that I had closed down my vision of the future. Now, unexpectedly, I had a future again—a blank slate. What would I do with it?

I steadied myself against the wall of my hut. “Hresah, if you think that I can atone for killing Grenabeloso by attempting to be an anwabi, then I will accept your judgment. I would like to thank you for sparing my life.”

Sudden sharp pains lanced my side as I attempted to laugh. “And don’t forget… we still have to talk about humans and hyenas….”