Larry Niven - Choosing Names

Now she spoke carefully, tasting the words and disliking them as she used them: “What if they do not want to communicate with us? What if they deliberately disguise their speech? Deliberately make it impossible for anyone else to translate it?”

No-one asked the obvious question: “Why?” But here and there expressions began to change.

“Selina!” Peter Brown laughed, “What have you been reading?”

She flinched for a second. Beneath its innocent surface, the question might have dangerous implications. Then she came back at them.

“Another thing: you said the alien ship is big. Look at the scale. It’s not big, it’s gigantic! And the shape—that might not be for atmosphere entry, it might be to reduce surface area. Why do you think they would want to do that?”

No one answered for a long moment. Then Peter asked:

“What about the Angel’s Pencil? Have there been any messages?”

“None we’ve heard.” The colony ship to Epsilon Eridani would have passed through this quadrant, but in the interstellar distances no-one had seriously expected to intercept messages from it. Its big comm-laser would be tight-beamed back to Earth or the Belt.

“I suggest we all assemble at the end of each watch for updates.” The crew of the Happy Gatherer dispersed reluctantly, with many lingering glances at the screens. Peter called Rick and Paul aside.

Selina had comfortable quarters, decorated with a number of personal touches. In Space “personal space” was a necessity not a luxury. There was a transparent case of stimulated glass and wood on the shelf, a small grey-painted object within. The model recalled a shared life of the mind light-years away. A reminder too of the dangers the old sea-voyagers and traders of Earth had faced in primitive craft. A good-luck charm, perhaps? Something else? She looked at it as she had many times in the past, but HMS Nelson told her nothing more.

The door signaled a visitor. Rick entered.

“Why did you say that?” He asked her without preliminaries, “About alien messages being made untranslatable deliberately.”

“I hardly know.” She already regretted her previous words, and their inevitable implications. The intimacy of a long voyage could lull one into self-betrayal.

“Selina, I don’t agree with what Peter’s been saying…”

“Why, what has he been saying? Or can I guess?”

“I don’t want to be hypercritical, and I’m sure that’s not his intention either. Or anyone’s. Paul has always defended you, you know. And sometimes Peter says things a little before he’s thought them through, perhaps.

“I’m not suggesting you need conditioning or anything like that, but have you thought of having your psych profile redone, just as a precaution. It would be entirely voluntary—”

“No.”

“Suppose there was some chemical imbalance.”

“The doc would notify me and correct it when I have my next check-up. In fact, and as you know, I would never have got past the selection board carrying anything like that. But Rick, both the selection board then and the doc now are of the opinion that I am sane.” His self-assurance was a goad to her. She realized she had never liked or respected this smug, complacent, always unsurprising, somehow herbivorous man. Like Paul, only worse, she thought. Well, it’s not surprising. There was always a chance we might meet Outsiders. The same board chose both of them as the best representatives of the human race… what an error it made when it also chose me!

“Are you sure you’re happy?” It was a weighty question as he asked it. This was a culture that took happiness and its pursuit more seriously than any in history.

“What’s it to you?”

He was hurt by her words. “We are a team. You know that.”

“Thank you, Rick. You’ve possibly seen my profile as you are in charge of crew records. Since one of my jobs is Space navigation, I have studied something of Space-flight. Since I am also, as you are doubtless also aware, particularly as we have discussed it a number of times, a natural scientist, I do know something about human body and brain chemistry.” She paused, measured him with her eyes and added, “And they may have gravity control.”

Part of Selina’s problem in socializing may have been connected to the fact that she lived in a culture most of whose members had little concept of sarcasm or irony. These people did not insult each other, and it took Rick Chew a little while to work out what she meant.

“I’m only thinking of you,” he told her at last. “Anyone who can’t get on with people shouldn’t be here.”

“Shall I get off and walk home, then?”

He flinched.

Something hurt her. She sensed that the atmosphere of conflict was not only alien to him, it was painful. She sought for words to calm the situation.

“I think you’re tense, Selina,” Rick said, “Perhaps a little current stimulation would help you relax.”

He backed away, raising his hands against the murderous rage blazing in her face. He distinctly saw the beginning of a striking motion before she checked it. She spoke as he had never heard anyone speak before.

“My father was a current addict. He cured himself. I was with him. I saw him cure himself. Have you any idea what that means? Do you know how many current addicts have ever cured themselves? Do you know the price they have to pay?”

“I’m sorry I didn’t know.” Rick was doubly distressed at giving and receiving pain now.

“Don’t you ever, ever, say that again, do you hear!” Selina had dropped into a half crouch. She glared into Rick’s face, now working with signs of consternation, for a long moment without speaking. It was a glare which a generation experienced in such things might have called murderous. Mumbling apologies, he shook his head in bewilderment and left.

How would he behave, how would any of them behave, her thought began to form, how would any of them look if… if at that moment…

A headache. Stress perhaps. The autodoc had outlets in each crew member’s rooms and Selina quickly inserted her fingers for chemical analysis.

Gutting Claw

I fell onto my forelimbs as I crossed the bridge. Zraar-Admiral would have to calculate how much more I could take. It was not my place to comment on this, but to report.

“Dominant One, the enemy know nothing of Tracker. They know a little of the Ancients, but of no other thinking life in Space. They have no clear aims except to gather data about anomalous radio and gravity events and other useless knowledge. But they are kz’eerkti.”

“What radio and gravity events?”

“Probably us.”

Monkey inquisitiveness. There were Simianoids on several planets in the Patriarchy, and it was an ecological niche which often led to rudimentary tool-using. Intelligent beings were generally somewhat alike and also generally edible. Slaver-students thought the Ancients had spread common primitive life-forms through much of the Galaxy. But this on the screens represented more than rudimentary tool-using.

“I believe the same type of apes killed Tracker. The drives are similar. Omnivores with five fingers like the print… The species has established itself in considerable numbers in one star-system apart from its original one, and in smaller colonies further away, using reaction drives. They have hibernation…” We Telepaths were expected to understand alien sciences, religious, societies, languages and technologies as well as alien thoughts.

But several inhabited worlds! A Vengeance-Hunt had become a promise of Conquest Glorious! The hunters’ minds were volcanic.