“How is that good news?” Kahurangi asked. “The idea of you with a weapon is objectively terrifying.”
“If you think that’s terrifying,” I said, “wait until you see me with low blood sugar.”
* * *
“Have you ever used a weapon before?” asked Riddu Tagaq.
“In video games,” I said. “Is that bad?”
“Did you ever have a reason to use a weapon, outside a video game?”
“No.”
“Do you feel your life would have been improved by using a weapon?”
“No.”
“Then it’s not bad,” Tagaq said. “There is a certain type of person who feels like they must be armed at every moment of the day or else the world will come for them in some way. Back home, this is very much not a good way to live. Here, however, outside of the base, it is the only way you are going to survive.”
We were at the Tanaka Base screened-in shooting range on the jungle floor, standing at a table, on which an array of weapons rested, their various magazines and cartridges and whatnot beside them. Some of them I recognized. A rather large number I did not.
I pointed to one of them I did recognize, a handgun. “Am I going to have one of these?”
“Do you think it would work for you?”
“I’ve never used one.”
Tagaq nodded, picked up the handgun, checked it, loaded it, disengaged the safeties. “This is a Glock 19,” she said, and fired at a man-shaped target ten yards down the range. I jumped at the noise and immediately heard ringing in my ears.
“How do you feel about it now?” she asked me a minute later.
“Weren’t we supposed to be wearing ear protection for this?” I yelled.
“Wear ear protection in the jungle and you won’t hear what’s coming to eat you. Answer my question.”
“I don’t think I’m ready for that,” I said.
“You’re not,” Tagaq agreed. She reset the safeties and cleared the Glock and set it back down on the table. “It’s just as well. A handgun is not a very good weapon for this planet, or for most of the people who come to this base. It requires training and constant practice to maintain skill and accuracy. It’s a short-range weapon, and here the range is shorter because the atmosphere is so thick. Bullets tumble fast here. Creatures move fast here. Most people are not very good at aiming at something close to them, moving fast.” She pointed to the Glock. “If something on this planet is close enough to you that this is the weapon to use, you are likely already dead.”
“If this is such a terrible weapon here, why did you show it to me?” I asked.
“Because it’s what you think of as a weapon,” Tagaq said. “Not just you. Everyone. You don’t use weapons but you see them used all the time, in movies and TV and video games. Handguns and rifles, mostly.” She pointed to an assault rifle of some sort down the table. “These are what you expect. These are what you think you want, even if you don’t know it. You’ve been trained to think of these as the best weapons available. I need you to believe that there are better ones here.”
I cocked my head at Tagaq. “You do this a lot,” I said. “The whole ‘I need you to believe this’ thing.”
“I could just tell you,” Tagaq said. “And at the end of me telling you, you would still want the handgun or the rifle. It’s not just you. I have to break everyone of this. This world is not our world. I need you to believe that.”
“The head and the heart thing again.”
“Yes. You believe it or you die.”
“Has that happened? People dying?”
“Of course it has. And it’s hard. Hard on the people here. Especially hard on the people back home.”
“Why?”
“Because usually there is nothing left to ship back.”
I considered this. “I don’t mean to be disrespectful here, but you’re not a lot of fun at parties, are you?”
“I’m a fucking delight at parties,” Tagaq said. “Especially if there is karaoke involved. But this isn’t a party. It’s me trying to save your life, and maybe help you save someone else’s life. Now, are you ready to see what weapons I think you should use?”
“Yes. Please,” I said.
“Good.” She reached over and organized several objects on the table into a group. One I recognized as a shotgun. The rest were new to me. “There are two basic definitions of a weapon. The first, and the one everyone uses, is an object that causes or inflicts pain or damage. The second, which is more relevant here, is an object one uses to defend one’s self or gain an advantage. What do we know about the creatures here?”