At the far end of the table sat the only other non-human in the room, a dione with blue skin. This would be Minister Cuna.
“Alanik of the UrDail,” they said. “Welcome.” They, like everyone in the room, had a translator pin perched on their shoulder. I hadn’t had this many in my ship, so Cuna must have brought a large number as well. Jorgen offered one to me, and I pinned it on.
“Yes, welcome,” said a man in a white uniform. I remembered him vaguely now—he’d accompanied Jeshua the first time we spoke. “I am Admiral Cobb, and this is Minister Cuna.” Admiral Cobb had hair growing from the space below his nose—a big white bush of it. That had to be impractical when his nostrils cleared. Or maybe the bush existed to collect the contents. That was a disgusting thought.
I wasn’t supposed to judge other cultures’ practices—Finis said we had to be open-minded about the customs of other species if we wanted them to be open-minded about ours. I understood that in theory, but it didn’t make it easy.
Admiral Cobb went around the room, introducing Jeshua Weight and several people who seemed to be her attendants, though I didn’t understand the significance of their titles or manage to remember their names. Finis would have been disappointed. A good spy, she’d said, always paid attention to detail.
Unfortunately, I was distracted by Snuggles, who slipped off Jorgen’s shoulders and onto the table, meandering over to Cobb.
“Is it necessary for those things to be here?” asked a man to Jeshua’s right.
“Yes,” Cobb said. “The pilots have been instructed to carry their taynix with them at all times.”
“Could we at least get rid of that one?” the man asked, pointing at the red and black slug. “We all heard what it did.”
“Boomslug isn’t going to hurt anyone,” Jorgen said. “I’m working with him.”
“Perhaps the pilots could step outside then,” the man said. “Since this isn’t the place to discuss the taynix program.” He looked meaningfully at Jeshua. While I didn’t know enough about human expressions to deduce the full meaning, I could guess.
“I know that the taynix are hyperdrives,” I said.
Everyone in the room looked at me in alarm, including FM and Jorgen, though I wasn’t going to reveal that they’d given it away. “We UrDail are not as ignorant as the Superiority assumes.”
“Your species shows great promise,” Cuna said. “That’s why you were selected from among the lesser species to try out for our military exercise.”
I tried not to bristle at the term ‘lesser species.’ This wasn’t the time to split twigs.
“That military exercise showed up on our doorstep and tried to kill us,” Jeshua said. “So let’s not make it sound like such an honor to be invited.”
Ah, so the Superiority was gathering a military force to destroy the humans. That made sense. Perhaps it was a good thing then, that I’d avoided recruitment at Starsight. Now I knew the secret I’d meant to glean there, and I hadn’t made an enemy out of the humans.
Jeshua continued to glare at me.
Most of the humans anyway.
“Let’s get to the point,” Jeshua said. “Why have you returned, Alanik? What do you want?”
Cuna leaned back and their eyes widened—a dione gesture of discomfort, I thought. FM stepped back against the door where she still stood, while Jorgen tried unsuccessfully to get Snuggles to return to him.
I would have written Jeshua’s direct question off as human aggression, but it seemed not all the humans accepted it as normal.
Interesting.
“I returned because I think we can help each other,” I said. “The Superiority is also the enemy of my people.”
“The Superiority is not the enemy,” Cuna said quickly. “Winzik, the current leader of the Superiority military, has taken a hard line against the humans, but the Superiority itself is not a monolith. It is a sprawling amalgamation of diverse peoples and perspectives, none of which can be summarized with a single creed or—”
“Yes, as you’ve said,” Admiral Cobb cut in. “But whatever you want to call it, its military is trying to exterminate us. And that makes us enemies.”
“I think the more immediate question,” Jeshua said, “is what the UrDail have to offer us.”
I stood up straighter. Like FM, I had not been given a seat at the table. I didn’t know anything about human customs. Finis would want me to reserve judgment, to allow that perhaps in the human culture being left to stand was a gesture of respect.