Jerry Oltion - Anywhere but Here

“Be my guest,” Donna told him. “I was going to ask if I could download one that’s more reliable. And we should warn people not to use this version.”

“Certainly. On both counts.”

There were a few seconds of silence, then a shiny green bug about four feet long chittered something, and the speakers on Trent’s and Donna’s arms said, “Go on with your story.”

“That’s pretty much it,” Trent said. “Donna figured out how to find our way back, and here we are.”

The bug chittered some more, and the speakers said, “So let me make sure I understand your complaint. Your government is suppressing personal freedoms within its own borders, and attacking other humans it disagrees with outside its borders. But it is not to your knowledge attacking other species?”

“Not that I know of,” Trent admitted.

“This sounds like an internal matter to me.”

“And to me,” said several of the other aliens.

“The Federation stopped the war that broke out when Allen invented the hyperdrive,” Trent pointed out. “That was an internal matter, too.”

“It was,” said the arm speakers in a high-pitched voice. Trent didn’t know who was talking, but the voice went on to say, “It was the Federation’s first act, entered into when there were only four member species, and it was entirely a bluff. There would have been no retaliation if humanity had destroyed its homeworld. I believe your governments knew that, but perhaps welcomed the excuse to withdraw from the brink of disaster. I doubt if we would be so lucky a second time.”

“You don’t have to threaten them with war,” Trent said, addressing the entire group for lack of a specific target. “There are lots of other ways to make people back down.”

“All of which require the Federation to interfere in a species’ internal affairs, solely to improve conditions for certain members of that species,” the speakers said. “That is not our purpose.”

“So you’re just going to let the U.S. keep killing people it doesn’t like?”

“That is what humans seem to do,” said the yellow-gilled reptile, Kasak, using English directly. “You aren’t the first of your species to come to us with this request. We’ve investigated the matter thoroughly, and we’ve concluded that humans kill one another when they disagree. That is your way of solving problems. If we impose our own moral code on you, we would be forcing you to do something unnatural for your race.”

Donna hadn’t said much, but she spoke up now. “We’re not all the same. Peace is the natural state for most of us. It’s just the kind of people who go into government who like to fight wars.”

“And the kind of people who go into military service,” said Kasak. “You have the highest proportion of your populace devoted to military service of any species we have encountered.”

“They’re still a minority!”

“But they are the ones who run things.”

She looked over at Judy and Allen. “Come on, you two. Help us out here. You helped set up this federation. You can’t believe it’s right to let something like this go on, can you?”

Judy said, “Of course it’s not right, but think for a minute what you’re asking. You want us to go in and overthrow a government because it’s gotten out of control. But how did the United States become what it is today? By overthrowing governments that were out of control. They thought they were the world’s policeman.”

“That’s not why they did it,” Trent said. “They were after oil.”

“Maybe at first,” Judy said. “I could argue otherwise, but even if that was their motive at first, they had all the oil they wanted after Iraq, and they didn’t stop there. They got locked into a foreign policy of bullying other nations to get their way, and they’re still doing it.”

“And you’re saying that’s okay?”

“No it’s not okay! But if the Federation starts doing the same thing, where do you think we’re going to wind up in twenty years?”

Trent didn’t have an answer to that, probably because the answer was so obvious.

“What can we do, then? Start bombing Washington ourselves?”

“That would be the natural way for humans,” Kasak said.

“ Some humans,” Trent said. “Idiot humans. We’re not all like that.”

“Yet you carry a weapon in your vehicle,” said the arm speakers. That had to be Potikik, the only one who had seen their pickup.

Trent looked up to the butterfly, who floated over the middle of the group and kept itself in place with gentle flaps of its wings. “That weapon saved our lives a time or two. There’s a difference between self-defense and murder.”

“It is perhaps a more subtle difference than you believe,” said the speakers.

Trent almost said, “Tell me that when they’re dropping shit on your head,” but he knew that wouldn’t gain him anything. Instead, he said, “So what would you do, then, if you were in our shoes?”

“Speaking only for my species, we would exchange members with the minds opposed to us until we achieved consensus. In extreme cases, we would swarm the offensive mind and force it to disband.”

“Killing it,” Trent said.

“Redirecting it,” the butterfly said. “Or you might say outvoting it. None of the individual members would be sacrificed.”

That didn’t seem particularly helpful. “How about you?” Trent asked Kasak.

“We eat the eggs of those we oppose. The next generation is descended from the winners.”

“And that’s not murder?”

“The eggs are purchased, and the seller knows what they will be used for.”

Donna made a puzzled face. “Why do they sell them, then?”

“Because they believe that they can out-breed their opponents.”

Trent snorted. “So your solution is to make love, not war.”

“Precisely.”

“My grandparents’ generation tried that. It didn’t work.”

“Perhaps they weren’t rich enough.”

Hah. That was probably closer to the truth than they had wanted to believe. Love and compassion were great in theory, but it seemed like the rich were the ones who called the shots in practically every political system humanity had ever invented.

“Any other bright ideas?” Trent asked, looking from alien to alien around the circle.

The fuzzy snowball squeaked and shivered, and the arm speakers said, “Educate the warmongers. My species learned long ago that those who preferred violent solutions to their problems were simply ignorant of better ways.”

That was probably true of anybody, Trent thought, but one guy couldn’t very well educate an entire nation. Not Trent, anyway.

The green bug chittered, and the speakers said, “Your species’ belief in religion offers a possibility. If you start a new religion based on pacifism—”

“Been done,” Allen interrupted. “The religion gets subverted, and before you know it, you’ve got crusades.”

There was an embarrassed silence. Trent felt sorry for the bug, who was just brainstorming, but then he realized that the embarrassment wasn’t for it, but for humanity.

“Your first instinct was perhaps the wisest,” the speakers said in Potikik’s voice. “Remove yourself from the violence, and seek a better life elsewhere.”

“That would be fine if it didn’t follow us,” Trent said, “but there’s no escaping it. Not if we want to stay in contact with civilization, such as it is. And besides, I promised Andre I’d try to stop it.”

Judy said, “I don’t imagine he expects you to turn around twenty years of hostile foreign policy by yourself.”

“No, but he expects me to do what I can, and I’m going to do it.”

Kasak said, “An admirable attitude, but the execution is between you and your government. We wish you success, but we can’t interfere.”