The V'Dan (12 page)

“Ambassador, meioas, if you will direct your attention to the
closed
shutter, it is also a display screen. The video you are about to see was designed to allay the understandable concerns and instinctive fears of aboriginal cultures—those who do not normally participate in the modern ways of the Empire, and thus have little to no knowledge of who and what the K’Katta are,” he continued, pitching his voice to be soothing, friendly, and reassuring. “You may not be aboriginal, but your fears are still natural. There is no shame in being afraid of seeing something so different when it evokes instincts buried deep within our minds.

“However, it is also a fact of modern life that the K’Katta are our allies and have been closely involved in helping us to develop advanced technology, including the artificial gravity weaves allowing us to occupy this station under normal living conditions instead of being forced to float around, as you experienced on your journey here,” he stated, and gestured at the shuttered window behind him. “They are kind, they are patient, they are honorable, and they
very
much prefer cooperation and trade over any other activity. In short, they are the best allies a peace-preferring nation could want.”

Jackie looked at him a long moment, then edged away from the wall. One step, then two, she moved back toward her seat, putting her trust in him. So did the other three, another woman and two men. One of the ones who had
not
flinched away was her assistant, the older woman, Rosa. The former Premiere.

That was a concept which continued to confuse him a little. Rosa McCrary was a woman who had been the equivalent of his mother, the Empress of V’Dan. She had been the Premiere of the Terran United Planets, their foremost leader, for several years . . . but was now
below
Jackie in her rank? Jackie had been the equivalent of an Imperial Advocate while Rosa had been an Empress of sorts, but now things were flipped, and the older woman was now junior to the younger.

The dynamics of their past and current ranks made for almost
too
much fluidity in their social structure for him to comprehend. He wondered if any among his own people could possibly comprehend it.

“. . . If you are all composed and ready, and if you will take the seats set out for you,” he added, gesturing at the padded
chairs set in two rows, “I will begin the presentation. Please do not take offense at how it is aimed at those who are from presumably low-tech cultures. Given how each of our advanced nations is still learning about the other side, it was decided to simply use the presentation we already have, with the assumption that you do technically know little about the Alliance and its allies.”

Drawing in a deep breath, Jackie squared her shoulders and moved forward. Her outfit was similar to Rosa’s in that each wore a calf-length skirt, a jacket that fell to her hips, and a low-necked shirt underneath. Jackie’s outfit came in shades of peach and pale pink, and the other woman wore shades of blue and pale green. The Grand High Ambassador—Li’eth could see her pulling that side of her personality into place with each step—carefully moved to the front row. She took her seat between Rosa and the captain of the
mah-reens
, soldiers who were serving as the bodyguards and security specialists for the embassy.

Her movement, dignity visibly regained, prompted the others huddled along the wall to uncurl and return to their own chosen seats, their expressions somewhat more embarrassed than unsettled, now. As everyone was situated, Li’eth tapped in the commands for the presentation, which filled the upper half of the window.

It was, as warned, designed for introducing the K’Katta to aboriginal cultures who did not pay much attention to modern society or modern technology, so it explained things in very simple terms. But it did give a general history of K’Katta/V’Dan relations, narrated by a V’Dan professor of xenoprotocols. The woman, standing to the left of the projected images, was accompanied at first by vague sketches of what the K’Katta looked like, then with still photos on the right.

He knew the histories, but Li’eth had never needed to see this particular, watered-down version of them. Three times, wars were nearly started over misunderstandings, but in each instance, diplomacy finally won, and trade began. Those stories were intermixed with tales of K’Katta crews helping to rescue stranded V’Dan ships, the offering of supplies and parts, the cautious, painstaking learning of each other’s languages . . . only to find that syntax and grammar were remarkably similar
to High V’Dan, even if neither side could physically pronounce each other’s words.

Once the two sides could communicate, the K’Katta earnestly sought new sources of vegetables, fruits, nectars, and a very few flesh-based proteins. They eagerly exchanged artworks—particularly sculptures and musical compositions—and in general were interested in improving lives on all sides rather than harming them. Overall, the K’Katta were happiest when exchanging information and goods. Some of the most reassuring exchanges had come once enough of each other’s languages had been learned to allow translations of literary and entertainment works, though for the visual arts, most of that had flowed from the V’Dan to the K’Katta and not the other way around at first, for obvious reasons.

The sketches of the stiff-furred spiders became animated as a brief discussion of K’Katta anatomy was given; the most unique feature was their dual skeletal system, with bones inside and chitin-like armor outside; the second-most-unique feature was how they could see into both the ultraviolet and infrared ranges, depending on which sets of eyes were being used.

A video appeared on the screen of a K’Katta chitter-whistling shrilly and the translator box—programmed for words but not much in the way of inflection—cried out, “Oh I am in pain! I have agony! This hurts very badly!” while V’Dan medical personnel attempted to calm the alien and splint a bloodied, compound-fractured leg, while one of the medics apologized over and over for not having any K’Katta-compatible anesthetics on hand.

Li’eth sensed several underthoughts in turmoil in his Gestalt partner. They were linked by a sort of quantum entanglement of their minds, and he could feel her fear of the giant, spiderlike beings mixing awkwardly with her compassion for the injured, shrilly whistling and swiftly clicking alien. He didn’t reach out to her; he didn’t want to interrupt the message being delivered.

There were more scenes of fuzzy miniature K’Katta playing and rolling and climbing—no doubt the images were provided in the belief that the children of most species were considered cute by V’Dan aesthetics, which surely wasn’t too
different for the Terrans—and pictures of slightly older ones learning in the K’Katta equivalent of a school. Images of K’Katta creating art, of playing chime-and-drum music that was slightly atonal to V’Dan ears but still breathtakingly beautiful . . . and then the news of the Salik War. That pleased Li’eth, to know that someone in the Protocol Department was keeping these presentations reasonably up-to-date, if not necessarily tailored for their newest friends.

The K’Katta, the film explained, had been hard-hit by the Salik because the K’Katta preferred negotiation over conflict. That meant the Salik had decimated five colonyworlds before the aliens had regretfully stopped trying to negotiate and started fighting back. They were hard to motivate to fight and did not like to press a battle when a foe turned to flee. But once they were committed, they did fight hard when defending themselves and their allies.

The film concluded with a speech by the V’Dan professor of xenoprotocol stating that, “. . . Though we may instinctively find these beings fearsome in appearance, and though your fears will not fade today just because you have learned several important facts, I hope you can now acknowledge with honesty that these are indeed gentle, worthy allies.

“They are beings who have a lot more in common with the average V’Dan’s thoughts, feelings, wishes, and needs than the Salik, who are bipedal and monoskeletal, ever could have with our people. The K’Katta are sentient beings the Empire is proud to call our friends. And the more we openly acknowledge it and repeat it to ourselves, the less fearsome they will appear, until we can see them for what they truly are: one of the best allies the Empire could possibly have.”

The presentation ended with neatly scribed vertical characters, V’Dan characters, suggesting several keywords to use when searching for more information in their data matrices.

Li’eth ended the program and waited to see if anyone had a comment to make. The other woman who had been frightened—one of the captains of the fifteen ships that had ferried everyone here, if he remembered right—spoke up in the silence. “I think I would have been a lot more reassured if I had seen that
before
seeing those . . . alien beings.”

Jackie dragged in a deep breath and let it out. “I myself find
it reassuring to hear that they are more gentle than fearsome . . . but I am also still unnerved by even just the memory of their appearance. Not as much as I was to begin with, but . . .”

“
I
feel sorry for them,” Captain al-Fulan said. That earned him several bemused looks. He shrugged, glancing around at the others. “They have no racial fear of
us
, yet must deal with our fear of them . . . and as
our
people say,” he added, looking over at the prince, “‘What we do not understand, we fear; what we fear, we hate; and what we hate, we destroy.’ I may be in the military, but I would rather not get to the hating stage, let alone the point where we destroy. That would not be polite of us, at the very least.”

Discussion, Li’eth knew, was an important part of the desensitization process. He pointed at the man who had refused to look. “What about you, meioa-o? How do you feel now, having learned these things?”

The Terran looked around at the others, then touched his chest, brows lifting in silent inquiry. At Li’eth’s nod, the dark-skinned man spoke. “I’m a nurse practitioner, and . . . I want to get a degree in xenobiology. Real xenobiology, not just the animals found back on Earth; that’s veterinarian medicine. I want to learn about new sentient races, and how to cure their ills, how to make them feel better. But . . . Don’t mistake me, I felt really bad for that . . . poor broken leg, that was a nasty compound fracture. But they still look creepy and scarier than a
moggofroggo
.”

(
Jackie, what is a . . . ?
)

(
I believe it’s similar to a
modofrodo
,
) she replied quickly. The subthoughts that came across involved unpleasant epithets and socially unacceptable personality slurs. Out loud, she said, “Don’t worry, Arthur. There are several friendly alien races to choose among for your studies.”

Arthur . . . Jackman, that’s his family name,
Li’eth reminded himself. He was used to keeping track of hundreds of courtiers, advisors, officers, and soldiers, but it wasn’t nearly as easy memorizing names and faces among the Terrans. Their lack of
jungen
made that task a bit difficult for him, particularly if there was more than one person with a similar set of skin tone and hair color in a group. For that much, he envied Jackie’s easier time in telling them apart, but he wasn’t surprised that she had memorized all those names and faces.

“I know, but I feel guilty, feeling squeamish about this
particular race,” the nurse, Arthur, said. “Guilt compounded on top of fear. My oaths as a medical professional are in conflict with my abhorrence of . . . of things with that many legs.” He shuddered, and the man next to him touched his shoulder in sympathy.

“Well, if it will help,” Rosa stated, “
I
will volunteer to interact with the K’Katta. I find their appearance a little disturbing because it’s so unusual, but not frightening. I believe I can get used to it quickly enough.”

“That . . . might be the best idea, Rosa,” Jackie admitted slowly. She shook her head, standing so that she could face the large, shuttered window. “But for now, I must find the nerve to greet them calmly, rationally, and politely. Just as I will greet their foremost ambassador when we move on to the planet. It isn’t their fault I’m afraid. Now . . . is everyone ready, or do we need a few more moments?”

A hand raised, one of those whose reaction had been in the midrange, so she nodded and changed the subject. “Arthur, how are Dr. Du and the others coming along?”

He looked relieved to be talking about his work rather than the aliens on the other side of the shuttered window. “Quite well, actually; they’ve been running tandem gene-splicing sims on both our and their machines, and the results have been matching within a 0.2 percent variance with the normal strain. But that’s down from over 5 percent found in yesterday’s experiments, so things are proceeding rather quickly.

“That is to say, we’re talking about an insertion on a single chromosome pair; there’s pretty much zero risk of the splice’s happening on any other pairs,” the nurse practitioner added. “So it’s a larger improvement than that sounds. A few more runs, a little bit more tweaking and they should have the viral delivery agent perfected. Dr. Kuna’mi has been working on setting up a markless version of the
jungen
virus, but she’ll still need at least two more days of hard biocoding, plus an extra day to free up enough machines to begin running the sims.”

“I hope somebody else understood all of that,” one of the others muttered, a quip that provoked a few chuckles.

“Bottom line, Arthur?” Rosa asked, craning in her seat to look at him.

“One week to live testing, and we already have a list of
volunteers,” he stated confidently. Then amended with a shrug, “Provided nothing huge goes wrong, of course.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t,” Rosa agreed. “I’d like to try some of the local foods without risking anaphylactic shock.”

“Alright,” Jackie stated, as the others nodded. The general expressions of her fellow Terrans had calmed from the fright of earlier. “On the other side of that shutter, we have three sets of allies. One set looks like us, but with funny, painted faces. One set doesn’t look
that
much like us . . . and I’ve already envied their four arms long before we met them,” Jackie added wryly. “Usually, whenever I’m trying to carry too much at once.”