Mike Resnick - I, Alien

I don’t think being a General Maintainer is why I am here. Someone or something put me here for another reason. I wish they would let me know what I am supposed to be doing. It would not be. a clever idea to broach my situation to anyone on board. They all know what I ought to be doing.

I hear we are going to reenter RealSpace tomorrow and dock at some orbital station. We don’t land on planets because it would cost too much. I’ll get station leave if I don’t screw up.

The cook ordered me to catch some small vermin that have been stealing food. I built three vermin traps. Lady Susan kicked me while I was crawling into a raided cabinet to place them. One snapped on my paw and I yelped. I think she smiled at that. It takes very little to please some people.

We’re docked. I drew some of my pay tokens. The tokens are silvery with a numeral on one side and a serpentine orgy on the other. I bought some sort of smoked meat with them. The meat seller warily directed me to the local equivalent of a library. Not too many General Maintainers (Probationary) look for that kind of diversion.

I stepped through menus on political galactography and entered my home planet’s name as nearly as I could transliterate it.

+Unknown+

I tried the name from other languages—RRgol, Hssthat, Mrr IV. And back came the answer every time.

+Unknown+

Conclusion: Mrrthow doesn’t exist and all my memories of it were hallucinations. I decided to investigate the Gardener Mythos. I reached that query point and the library came back with

♦Logical Exclavity+

I must have made a mistake; so I tried again and again it returned

♦Logical Exclavity+

I thought, Let me at least find out what that means, Again I made my way through the databases and was rewarded with:

♦Logical Exclavity: a volume of space removed from all records, databases, references. The space of a logical exclavity, and all objects in it have no existence with respect to the galactic knowledge. Note: the existence of this phrase and its definition are not included in any record, database, or references

A datum telling me that it did not exist. What next?

♦Hello, did you enjoy the trip?+

I jabbed my claws into my I/O device, recovered, and entered “Not particularly.”

♦Unnecessary; just talk.+

“You’re the one who set me up?” - +1 am the not-specific sentient who transported you. I am involved in the project.+

“Why?”

+We have a task for you.+

I could ask who “we” is or I could ask what the job is. “Who are you that you want me to do what?” That didn’t come out the way I expected it to.

♦Continue your job on the ship. More details will be available later.+

“No!”

+No?+

“No.”

+If you don’t want more details, we won’t give them to you.+

“You are deliberately misinterpreting my statements. I may decide I like being a General Maintainer and spend my life working my way up in that profession.”

+You wouldn’t. Vavacq don’t.+

“Tell me about vavacq. Why aren’t there many around? Why do most of the other species treat us (me) like dirt, especially the humans?”

+The last time you ruled this part of space you were a particularly unpleasant group. That’s why most species dislike you. The humans knocked you down and took over; before that you knocked the humans down and took over. This has cycled four times.+

“So everyone hates vavacq and loves humans?”

+No, they hate both species. The humans aren’t any better at ruling than vavacq.+

That agreed with my one data point—Lady Susan.

“Couldn’t you have told this to me while I was on the ship? It might have made things easier.”

+Not out of RealSpace.+ Pause. +Your job is to break the cycles. We will talk to you again when necessary. Use your personal imagination when the pain becomes too great.+

The screen was just a screen again. I had gotten the runaround, threats, and an impossible job, but I had to pay for the connect time. I walked around the accessible part of the station, entered the equivalent of a bookstore, bought some reels of popular history with most of my remaining tokens and returned to the ship. I wasn’t going to be able to retire on my earnings. I wondered if saving the universe for unknown races paid well.

I’m reading the tapes in my off hours. Most of them are meaningless because I don’t have the referents— the sort of thing that doesn’t get into the book because everyone knows it. The vavacq and the humans have been fighting over this part of space for a few hundred thousand years. Currently, the humans are on top, but vavacq are sniping at them everywhere. The other species are not particularly happy, either.

There’s no mention of Mrrthow. Mrrthow, and the Mrr System, are a Logical Exclavity. We don’t exist as far as the galaxy is concerned. The opinions of six-plus billion of us Mrrthowq don’t count because we don’t exist. There’s no such term as “logical exclavity” either.

I now understand this: I am vavacq: most sentient beings dislike me; Lady Susan hates me. Lady Susan is human: most sentient beings dislike her, too; if she vanishes me, there’s no one to complain about it. She is showing remarkable restraint for a human forced to be on the same ship with a vavacq.

The tapes are interesting. They’re biased, but all history is written from someone’s point of view and few cultures rate anyone higher than themselves. This part of the galaxy is a mess. There are tens of thousands of polities trying to undercut each other, putting high tariffs on goods, taxing passage—just like early Mrrthow. On Mrrthow, we thought this sort of behavior disappeared when technology came, but… Space is big, and worlds self-contained so that most trade is in intangibles and rarities. Bulk materials are there on the planets or in the planetoid belts that most systems have. Everyone should be secure and happy—but they aren’t. One of the intangibles that gets exported is religion. Jihads and crusades through space and time with high-tech weapons. Half of one tape is a list of extinct sentients.

In my CR stories we would come bursting out of Mrrthow, rip ears, order the galaxy, and all the subser-vients would live happily ever after. In reality, vavacq were a big part of the problem.

We’re docking at Haavio orbital station. The computer says it’s huge and has a reasonably-sized vavacq colony aboard. Do I want to meet my long-lost out-sibs or would I rather keep them lost? Do I know enough to keep from screwing up? Probably not, but I’m getting tired of reacting to events. Maybe I should go out and push something to see if it pushes back.

I find a map. I’m planning to go to the vavacq sector and see what information I can pick up. Perhaps my fellow vavacq could do something about getting me back to Mrrthow. I doubt this, but it’s worth a try. The path seems long, but it goes through safe areas where solitary vavacq aren’t likely to be molested. I pass a few vavacq who stare at me, but they ignore me so I ignore them. The vavacq sector could be closed off easily. The bends in the corridor allow a small human force to pen in any number of vavacq.

It stinks. The ship’s air was stale, but this is not passive staleness; this is an active, living stench compounded of rotting food, unwashed bodies, and un-emptied litter. Groups of vavacq glared at me or ostentatiously ignored me. I saw no females or kits. It looked more like a prison than a community. I walked briskly as if I knew what I was doing and where I was going and turned into the third cafe I came to.

It was dim. I ordered a mild drink and took it to an empty table. I was sipping the foul-tasting brew when it was wrenched from my hand and thrown at the dispenser, who ducked with an alacrity born of practice. “That’s human piss! Take a real drink.” Some distilled beverage was slammed down before me. The container was attached to a large paw; the large paw was attached to a large arm; and then to a huge vavacq.