3xT

by Harry Turtledove

  The guard spoke to the air. "The offices of Solut Mek Kem," the translator said. Jennifer felt no motion, but when the Foitan opened the doorway again, the small chamber was not where it had been.

  Solut Mek Kem stood waiting. "Well, creatures, shall we get to the dickering?" he said. "What can you offer that might persuade us to give you copies of these other creatures of your kind, now maintained in our data store?"

  "That's not all we want," Jennifer said. "Once we have these—copies—we also want you to erase the archetypes of the humans you have in your data bank, as long as you can do that without causing them any pain. Can you do that?"

  "Yes, we can, but why should we?" Solut Mek Kem said. "I repeat, what will you give in exchange for this service? Be quick. I am not in the habit of bargaining with creatures. Were it not for the service you rendered in slowing the outbreak of a combat whose result is uncertain, I would not waste my time here, I assure you."

  "Oh, I believe it," Jennifer said. "Your whole species is like that. If only you were a little bit more easygoing—"

  "What exactly do you want from us?" Greenberg demanded. "I can provide trade goods from Odern, and others of human manufacture. I can also give you information about what this part of the galaxy is like these days. Just how much, of course, is what makes a dicker."

  "These things may perhaps buy you copies of your fellow creatures," Solut Mek Kem said. "They will in no way persuade me to clear our patterns in the matrices. Your kind, evidently, is a part of the galaxy about which we shall require a good deal of information. If you expect us to forgo it, you will have to do better."

  "I've told you what we have," Greenberg said slowly.

  Jennifer felt her face twist into a scowl. She didn't want to leave any vestiges of the CroMagnons in Foitani hands. "What would it take?" she said. "Do you want us to tell you how to live in peace with all the modern Foitani, who'd like nothing more than seeing every last one of you dead?"

  "If you can tell us how to live in peace with vodranet, creature, you will have earned what you seek."

  Jennifer looked down at her shoes. If only she were a Middle English SF hero, the answer to that question would have been on the tip of her tongue. Would Miles Vorkosigan or Dominic Flandry just have stood there with nothing to say? "If only . . ." she said softly, and then, a moment later, more than a little surprised, "Well, maybe I can."

  "Go ahead, then, creature," Solut Mek Kem said. "Tell me how I shall live in peace with beings for whom I have an instinctive antipathy. Instruct me. I shall be fascinated to imbibe of your wisdom." The kwopil used irony like a bludgeon.

  "Actually, I can't specifically tell you how," Jennifer said. "But maybe, just maybe, I can tell you a way to go about finding the answer for yourselves, if you really want to." That was the rub, and she knew it. If kwopillot and vodranet wanted to fight, they would, and good intentions would only get in the way.

  "Say on," Solut Mek Kem said, not revealing his thoughts.

  "All right. You know by now that the Foitani from Odern brought humans—my people—to Odern because by themselves they couldn't safely enter what they called the Great Unknown—the area around your ship."

  "We made sure prying vodranet would not be able to disturb us, yes."

  "Fine," Jennifer said. "The reason the Foitani from Odern got me in particular is that I'm an expert in an old form of literature among my people, a form called science fiction. This was a literature that, in its purest form, extrapolated either from possible events deliberately taken to extremes or from premises known to be impossible, and speculated on what might happen if those impossible premises were in fact true."

  Solut Mek Kem's ears twitched. "Why should I care if creatures choose to spend their lives deliberately speculating on the impossible? It strikes me as a waste of time, but with sub-Foitani creatures, the waste is minimal."

  "It's not the way you're making it sound," Jennifer said. "Look—you know about military contingency plans, don't you?"

  "Certainly," Solut Mek Kem said.

  "I thought you would. If you're like humans at all, you make those plans even for cases you don't expect to happen. Sometimes you can learn things from those improbable plans, too, even if you don't directly use them. Am I right or wrong?"

  "You are correct. How could you not be, in this instance? Of course data may be relevant in configurations other than the ones in which they are first envisioned. Any race with the minimal intelligence necessary to devise data base software learns the truth of this."

  "Whatever you say, Solut Mek Kem. Do me one more favor, if you would: give me the connotations of the word this translator program uses to translate the term fiction."

  The Great One paused before answering, "It means something like, tales for nestlings' ears. Another synonym might be, nonsense stories."

  Jennifer nodded. A lot of races thought that way. With some, the only translation for fiction was lying. She said, "We use fiction for more things than the Foitani do, Solut Mek Kem. We use tales that we know to be false to entertain, yes, but also to cast light on true aspects of our characters and to help us gain insight into ourselves."

  "And so?" Solut Mek Kem said. "What possible relevance does a creature's insight into itself have to the truly serious issue of vodranet?"

  "Bear with me," Jennifer said. "More than a thousand years ago, back when humans were just starting to develop a technological society, they also developed the subform of fiction called science fiction."

  "This strikes me as a contradiction in terms," Solut Mek Kem observed. "How can one have a nonsense story based on science?"

  "Science fiction doesn't produce nonsense stories," Jennifer said, reflecting that Solut Mek Kem sounded like some of the contemporary critics of the genre. "It's sort of a fictional analogue of what you do when you develop a contingency plan. Conceive of it as a method for making thought experiments and projections when you don't have hard data, but need to substitute imagination instead. You kwopillot don't have hard data about living with vodranet, for instance; all you know is how to go about killing each other. You need all the imagination you can find, and you need a way to focus it. If imagination is light, think of the techniques of science fiction as a lens."

  "I think of this entire line of talk as a waste of time," Solut Mek Kem said.

  "Let me tell you this, then," Jennifer said quickly, before he could irrevocably reject her: "The Foitani from Odern sought me out and brought me here specifically because I'm an expert in this kind of fiction."

  "The foibles of vodranet are not a recommendation," Solut Mek Kem said, and she was sure she had lost.

  But Bernard Greenberg said, "Consider results, Solut Mek Kem. Before Jennifer got here, you had been dormant for twenty-eight thousand years. The Foitani from Odern weren't close to getting into the Great Unknown, let alone into the Vengeance by themselves. Look at all that's happened since Jennifer came to Gilver."

  Jennifer put her hand on Greenberg's arm. It was completely in character for him to minimize his own role in everything that had happened so the deal could go forward.

  Solut Mek Kem opened his mouth, then closed it again. Greenberg had managed to make him thoughtful, at any rate. At last the Great One said, "An argument from results is always the most difficult to confute. Very well; let me examine some samples of this alleged science fiction. If I think expertise in it might prove of some value to the present situation, I shall meet the terms you have set: copies of the creatures of your kind in our data stores, with the originals to be deleted."

  Jennifer clenched her teeth. Put up or shut up, she thought. While she tried to decide which stories Solut Mek Kem ought to judge, she said, "May I please call Aissur Aissur Rus at the research base of the Foitani from Odern? He has a program that translates between your language and the one in which the stories were composed, one which we humans no longer speak."

  "First scientific nonsense or nonsense science, I know not which. Now you haul in the vodranet,"
Solut Mek Kem grumbled. "Do what you think necessary, creature. Having stooped so low as to negotiate with sub-Foitani, how could vodranet befoul me further? Speak—your words are being transmitted as you require."

  "Aissur Aissur Rus?" Jennifer said. "Are you there?"

  The reply came from nowhere. "That is a translator's voice, so you must be a human. Which are you, and what do you need?"

  "I'm Jennifer," Jennifer said. "Can you transmit to the Vengeance the program you used back on Saugus to read Middle English science fiction? You thought someone who knew it might be able to give you insights on the Great Unknown. Now the Great Ones hope its techniques may help them figure out how not to fight the next round of the Suicide Wars." She knew she was exaggerating the Great Ones' expectations, but no more than she would have in arranging a deal of much smaller magnitude.

  "I will send the program," Aissur Aissur Rus said. "I would be intrigued to learn the Great Ones' opinion of this curious human discipline."

  "You aren't the only one," Jennifer said.

  Solut Mek Kem turned to glance at something—evidently a telltale, for after a moment he said, "Very well. We have received this program. On what material shall we make use of it?"

  "I've been thinking about that," Jennifer said. "I'm going to give you three pieces. You know or can learn that humans are of two sexes, which we keep throughout life, just as you do. The Left Hand of Darkness speculates on the consequences of discovering a world of humans genetically engineered to be hermaphrodites."

  "That is not precisely similar to our case, but I can see how it might be relevant," Solut Mek Kem said. "It is not the sort of topic about which we would produce fiction."

  "Species differ," Jennifer said. Mentally, she added, You might know more about that if you hadn't gone around slaughtering all the aliens you came across.

  "You spoke of three works," Solut Mek Kem said. "What are the other two?"

  "One is 'The Marching Morons,' which looks at the possible genetic consequences of some of the social policies in vogue in the author's day. The events it describes did not happen. Kornbluth—the author—didn't expect them to, I'm certain. He was using them to comment on his own society's customs, which is something science fiction did very effectively."

  She waited for Solut Mek Kem to say something, but he just looked at her with those dark blue-green eyes. She went on, "The third story is called 'Hawk Among the Sparrows.' It warns of the problems someone used to a high technology may encounter in a place where that technology cannot be reproduced."

  "Yes, that is relevant to us," Solut Mek Kem said. "Again, it is not a topic we would choose for fiction. I will consider these works. I will consider also the mind-set which informs them, which I gather to be the essence of what you seek to offer me."

  "Exactly," Jennifer said, more than a little relieved the Great One understood what she was selling.

  "Enough, then. You are dismissed. I shall communicate with you again when I have weighed these documents. You would be well advised to remain in your ship until that time, lest you be destroyed by one of my fellows who has less patience with vermin than I do. The guard here will escort you."

  Jennifer fumed all the way back to the Harold Meeker. The worst of it was that she knew Solut Mek Kem had been trying to help. The Great Ones simply had no idea how to deal with any beings unlike themselves. No wonder they had started fighting when the split between kwopillot and vodranet developed among them, and no wonder they kept fighting until they could fight no more.

  The only glimpses she got of Vengeance were of the open area around the Harold Meeker, which she'd already seen. Just a couple of Foitani beside her guard saw her, which she soon decided was just as well. By the way they automatically took a couple of steps toward her, she was sure they would have attacked if the guard had not been with her. They probably assumed she and Greenberg were prisoners. By the way the guard acted, that was what he thought. She didn't care to find out what would happen if she tried going in the wrong direction.

  The quiet hiss of the air-lock gaskets sealing made her sag with relief. Logically, it shouldn't have mattered. She was just as much in the power of the Great Ones inside the Harold Meeker as she had been outside. But logic had little to do with it. The barrier looked and felt strong, no matter how flimsy it was in fact.

  "I have a question for you," Greenberg said. "Suppose you do manage to convince the old-time Foitani you've given them a way to work out how to exist alongside their modern cousins? The modern Foitani don't have that way. You need two sides to have peace, but one is plenty to start a war."

  "You're right." She paced back and forth, as best she could in the cramped crew compartment. "I'll call Aissur Aissur Rus. He's had some actual experience working with the concepts I'm selling. If anyone can interest the others in them, he's the one."

  "Not Voskop W Wurd?" Greenberg asked slyly.

  She rolled her eyes. "No, thanks."

  As it happened, Aissur Aissur Rus called her first. She explained to him the deal she had put to the Great Ones, knowing all the while that Solut Mek Kem or one of his aides was surely listening in. She finished, "You were the one among your people who thought someone used to the ideas of science fiction would be able to help you on Gilver, and you turned out to be right. Do you think that you modern Foitani can apply this same sort of creative extrapolation to the problem of living with kwopillot?"

  "That is—an intriguing question," Aissur Aissur Rus said slowly. "If the answer proves to be affirmative, its originator would surely derive much credit therefrom." You would derive that credit, you mean, Jennifer thought. Aissur Aissur Rus continued, "If on the other hand the answer is in the negative, the Suicide Wars begin again shortly afterward, at which point no blame is likely to accrue, for who would survive to lay blame?"

  "Then shall I send you the same materials I gave to Solut Mek Kem?" Jennifer asked. "Maybe you can use them, if not to change Pawasar Pawasar Ras's mind, then at least to open it a little bit."

  "What materials did you furnish to the Great One?" Aissur Aissur Ras asked. Jennifer told him. He said, "I presently have all of those, I believe, save 'Hawk Among the Sparrows.' We kidnapped you before you gained the opportunity to discuss the literary pitfalls of overreliance upon advanced technology. Though alien, I find them most intriguing documents. 'The Marching Morons' presents a quite Foitani-like view of what constitutes proper behavior under difficult circumstances—not that we would ever have permitted culls to breed as they did to establish that story's background."

  "Aissur Aissur Rus, I'm convinced you would have gotten an A in my course," Jennifer said.

  "So you have said, human Jennifer. I shall take this for a compliment. My people have said repeatedly, in talks you have heard and in many more conversations where you were not present, that they could not imagine how they were to live with kwopillot. I still cannot imagine how we are to accomplish this. Nevertheless, perhaps you have furnished us a tool wherewith to focus our imagination more sharply on the problem. If this be so, all Foitani will be in your debt."

  "That's not something you ought to tell a trader, you know," Jennifer said.

  "Possibly not. Nevertheless, you are at present in no position to exploit my words. Will you send 'Hawk Among the Sparrows' to me now?"

  Jennifer fed the piece into the computer for transmission to Gilver. She remarked, "You know, Aissur Aissur Rus, you may end up as Odern's ambassador to the Great Ones if you do manage not to fight. You're better with strange peoples than any other Foitan I've met. Thegun Thegun Nug, for instance, would have ordered me to send him that story just now, instead of asking for it."

  "He is an able male," Aissur Aissur Rus said stoutly.

  "Have it your way," Jennifer said. "Out." She turned to Greenberg. "Now we wait to see what the Great Ones have to say."

  "I hope we don't wait too long," he answered. "I'd be willing to bet Odern's fleet is already heading this way, and I have no idea how for from Gilver Rof Golan
is. For once, I wouldn't mind if the communicator interrupted us."

  "Is that a hint?"

  "You know a better way to pass the time?" Greenberg asked.

  "Now that you mention it, no," Jennifer said.

  The communicator did not interrupt them. Like Greenberg, Jennifer almost wished it would have.

  * * *

  "You will report to me at once," Solut Mek Kem said, as abrupt as if he'd been Thegun Thegun Nug. Jennifer and Greenberg traded worried glances as they hurried out through the air lock. The communicator had been silent for thirty-six hours before that sharp order. Solut Mek Kem knew what he thought of the works Jennifer had given him. Whatever it was, he wasn't letting on.

  A Foitani guard waited outside the Harold Meeker. Jennifer could not tell if it was the same one who had escorted her to Solut Mek Kem before. The guard said nothing and gave no clues, merely gesturing come along with his hand weapon. One of the nice things about human worlds, she thought, was that sometimes whole weeks went by without anyone pointing a gun at you.

  She also could not tell if she and Greenberg went by way of the same moving chamber as they had the last time; one blank room looked much like another. Solut Mek Kem was definitely in the same office he had occupied before. The company he kept there, however, was a good deal different.

  Some sort of invisible screen—possibly material, possibly not—kept the CroMagnon man and woman from either running away or attacking the Foitan. The two human specimens turned fierce, frightened faces on Jennifer and Greenberg as the guard led them into the chamber. They shouted something in a tongue as dead as the woolly mammoth.

  "You have won your wager," Solut Mek Kem said. "The concept of extrapolation mixed with entertainment is not one we developed for ourselves, yet its uses quickly become obvious as we grow acquainted with it. I wonder how many other interesting concepts we have exterminated along with the races that created them." Jennifer had not imagined a Foitan could feel guilt. A moment later, Solut Mek Kem disabused her of her anthropocentrism, for he said, "Well, no matter. They are gone, and I shall not worry about them. The masters of these creatures—" He stuck out his tongue at the CroMagnon couple, "—are also now gone from our data store; I keep my bargains. The copies are yours to do with as you will."