“Look who’s coming to dinner,” Irina whispered to Stanley as the Lord Admiral entered the mess area. A host of Hrwang had already arrived, each shaking Irina’s and Stanley’s hands and telling them their rank and position. Stanley would never remember them all.
Everyone wore the same dull gray jumpsuits as Stanley and Irina did, but the Lord Admiral’s still looked better, more refined. Stanley wondered how the man pulled it off.
Once the Lord Admiral sat down, at the same table as Stanley and Irina, everyone else found their seats and floating trays of food entered the mess. As a tray lowered itself in front of Stanley he looked to see what held it up in the air. A small mechanism sat on one end of the tray, but it wasn’t enough to make it float around.
“No gravity,” one of the Hrwang at their table said. The man obviously guessed Stanley’s unspoken question.
“The little robots are more efficient than people,” the Lord Admiral added. “They never drop their trays.” He chuckled and the other Hrwang at the table chuckled with him.
Stanley watched what the others did and copied them, removing the small dishes and utensils from the tray in front of him. The tray moved up in the air, hovered a few seconds, then headed for the door.
He examined what lay in front of him. Sectioned lids covered each dish, most likely to keep food from floating away, and the metal dishes and utensils stuck to the table. He carefully opened one and the food inside smelled good.
It looked like green beans.
He looked up at the Lord Admiral who smiled at him.
“It’s just like food from your world. We grow similar things to you. It’s been in a can for a few years, but it’s safe to eat.” The Lord Admiral grinned even wider and watched him.
Conversation buzzed in the background at the other tables, but Stanley felt everyone at his table watching him, seeing what he would do, marking his every move. He’d heard leaders and celebrities complain they felt their lives were lived under a microscope and he’d always considered them whiners. If they couldn’t stand the heat, they should get out of the kitchen, Stanley would say to himself.
Now he sympathized with them.
He took his fork and gently poked a green bean, bringing it up to his mouth. It was good, a little overcooked and mushy like it had come from a can and been microwaved, but Stanley ate it. His table relaxed a little and the other Hrwang began eating. Irina just sat still, not even removing the dishes from the tray in front of her. No one said anything about her or to her, so Stanley ignored her also.
He negotiated the first few forkfuls of green beans fine, but forgot where he was and tried to stab too many of them. One, not secure on the fork tines, floated away. He reached out and grabbed it with his hand, popping it quickly into his mouth.
The Lord Admiral looked disapprovingly at him. One of the other officers with them said something in his own language. The Lord Admiral glared at the man and surprised Stanley with what he said next. Most in the mess were speaking in their own language and Stanley didn’t know why the man was singled out.
“Please only speak English. For a courtesy for our guests.”
“Yes, sir,” the man said and bowed his head. The mess grew silent.
After a moment of palpable tension, Stanley said, “The food is good. Thank you.”
“It is welcome,” the Lord Admiral replied. He used his fork to point out a section on Stanley’s plate. “Try this one. Tell me if you like it.”
The exchange seemed to give the rest permission to speak, and they began saying things to each other in halting English, laughing at their difficulty. The mood lifted. The officer who had been chastised remained silent, though.
Stanley opened the suggested lid and a piece of meat sat inside, smothered in a smoky brown gravy. He used his knife to cut a small piece and tasted it.
His mouth rebelled at the flavor. It looked like a peppery gravy but tasted spicy instead, like a Sriracha sauce. He chewed slowly, then sipped a drink out of his cup. At least it was water.
“That’s hot,” he said after he swallowed.
“You can allow it to sit to cool down,” the Lord Admiral replied.
“Spicy hot, not hot hot.”
The Lord Admiral looked at him quizzically. Stanley ended up giving an impromptu English lesson on food terms and most of the mess listened in.
They ate the spicy meat with gusto and Stanley suggested they should try South American or Thai food. Stanley didn’t eat any more of his, closing the lid and trying another section.
“You haven’t touched your food, Commander,” the Lord Admiral said between mouthfuls to Stanley’s second-in-command.
Irina shrugged.
“Perhaps I should have allowed you to sit at another table so you could get to know some of my junior officers,” the Lord Admiral said. He stared at Irina now, an expectant look on his face.
Irina looked down uncomfortably. Stanley felt the tension rise again. Irina finally looked up and the Lord Admiral still stared at her.
“You want me to move?” she asked.
“Please,” he said simply, then returned to his meal without looking at her again. Irina glanced daggers at Stanley, then stood. She stumbled a little getting off the bench, kneeing Stanley in the side. Her tray rose up in the air with her and followed her to a new table.
His side sore, Stanley wondered how much of an accident the knee really had been. Irina eyed him again and Stanley decided to ignore her, returning to his conversation with the Lord Admiral.
He noticed after a while that everyone at each table spoke, and the group at Irina’s new table even convinced her to eat some of her meal, but at their table only he and the Lord Admiral spoke. The reprimanded officer kept his head down and ate quickly.
Tension remained in the room, but Stanley felt he navigated it well, helping others to feel at ease. They spoke of food and eating customs and the Lord Admiral questioned him closely on the Muslim practice of cutting off a thief’s right hand so they could no longer eat in public. He asked about other food related punishments and Stanley could only remember the story of why a baker’s dozen meant thirteen.
“If someone ordered a dozen rolls but only found eleven in his bag, the baker would be taken out to a nearby river, placed in a metal cage, and dunked under several times. They would hold them under for a few minutes at a time.”
“What is the word for dying by being underwater?”
“You mean drowning?”
“Drowning, yes,” the Lord Admiral answered enthusiastically. “Wouldn’t the baker die of drowning?”
“Sometimes, I suppose. It was definitely an unpleasant experience. So the bakers always put an extra roll in the bag, just in case they had miscounted.”
“It seems like a terrible punishment for a simple mistake.”
“Sometimes punishments, particularly during the Dark Ages, were quite severe,” Stanley offered.
“Dark Ages? Tell me about those.”
And Stanley shared what he remembered of the history of Europe after the fall of the Romans. The Lord Admiral questioned him in detail, asking about things that Stanley didn’t remember. He also delved into the Romans and seemed fascinated with their way of life and how they successfully conquered the known world.
“I must learn all of your history,” the Lord Admiral jumped in at one point. “Your people fought so many more wars than ours.”
“I don’t think that’s a good thing,” Stanley said.
“No, of course not,” the Lord Admiral answered, but his eyes said otherwise. Stanley became uncomfortable with the direction the conversation was heading. The Lord Admiral began expounding on one of the wars on Hrwang and Stanley barely listened. He tried to come up with what to say next to steer the conversation away from military things and to what he really wanted to learn about. Science. How interstellar travel worke
d. And other questions, like when they would return to Earth and how Stanley would fulfill his new duties.
“How long have you been able to travel between the stars?” Stanley blurted out when the Lord Admiral finished his story. He hadn’t figured out how to ease into the topic, so he simply changed it. It took the Lord Admiral aback for a second, but then he smiled his wide grin.
“We are friends, but our protocols prevent me from sharing certain military secrets.”
“I understand,” Stanley said.
“Perhaps you are uncomfortable talking about military subjects?” the Lord Admiral asked. One of his officers visibly held his breath. Stanley knew he had to tread lightly.
“It’s fine. I’m just a scientist, not a warrior, and I’m afraid I can’t hold up my end of the conversation too well.”
“It sounds like everyone on your world are warriors.”
“Not really,” Stanley said. The Lord Admiral didn’t jump in to contradict him or add to what he said, so Stanley continued. “Many people on our world want to advance science and art. They are not concerned with war. That’s kind of the category I fall into. Science has been my life. It’s been more important to me than anything.”
One of the officers at his table who had been silent until this point said something in his own language. The Lord Admiral held a finger up and the man stopped talking. The Lord Admiral pulled a tablet out of his pocket and searched on it for a few moments.
“Blasphemy. Am I pronouncing that correctly?”
Stanley nodded.
“Admiral Commander, what our friend is saying is not blasphemy. He is from a different culture than ours and does not understand our laws.”
“Yes, Lord Admiral,” the Admiral Commander said. He was a short, stocky man with dark eyes and dark, curly hair. He reminded Stanley of a Greek wrestler. “I apologize, Captain,” he said to Stanley.
“No offense taken,” Stanley said, his hand in the air, waving it off.
“We have a religious order that has strict rules. Saying that science is more important than anything else would mean it was more important than religion. That would be against the rules of this order. The Admiral Commander and I belong to it, although he is much more faithful than I.”
His hand swept around the room.
“Everyone here belongs to the order. It is a requirement of senior officers from Est.”
“Est? I thought you were from Hrwang.”
“Est is our,” the Lord Admiral fumbled for a word. He consulted his tablet. “Est is our nation, state, or country.” He looked up a little exasperated. “English has so many words for the same thing.”
“Est is a religious nation?” Stanley asked.
The Lord Admiral grinned in response. “Some would have us be more religious than others. Some believe your world to be more religious than ours. You still follow the sacred numbers.”
“What?”
“The sacred numbers. Three, seven, twelve, and sometimes five. We follow these no longer.”
“We don’t follow numbers,” Stanley replied hesitatingly. He didn’t want to get into an argument with the Lord Admiral about something the Hrwang had misunderstood. But he didn’t want to concede that his world was something it was not. Earth had suffered under religions and religious wars for millennia and only with science and logic and reason would things get better. He hoped the Hrwang would further their scientific knowledge, not introduce more religious dogma.
The Admiral Commander jumped in at this point, questioning Stanley.
“How many days do you have in a week?”
“Seven.”
“How many months in a year?”
“Twelve. But these aren’t religious numbers.”
“How many hours in the day?”
“Twenty-four.”
“Just in the day. Twelve daylight hours, twelve nighttime hours.”
Stanley nodded. “At equinox, I suppose.”
The Admiral Commander continued, more comfortable speaking English than the Lord Admiral.
“Sixty minutes in an hour, which is twelve times five, sixty seconds in a minute, also twelve times five. Three hundred and sixty degrees in a circle, which is twelve times three times ten.”
“Three hundred and sixty is a number that is divisible by many other numbers. It isn’t religious.”
“It all started with religion, Captain. How many members of the Godhead are there? Three. How many periods of time describe the world’s creation? Seven. How many disciples did the Savior call to serve him? Twelve. These are deeply religious numbers. Perhaps God chose them because they are divisible by many other numbers. Perhaps He simply liked them. They are His numbers.”
Stanley wanted to argue with the man. But he was talking to aliens. “Seek to understand, then to be understood,” was a mantra someone had taught him. It applied here.
The Admiral Commander continued, his eyes blazing.
“Our world has rejected these numbers. We have ten day weeks, ten month years, ten hour days and ten hour nights, one hundred minutes per hour, one hundred seconds per minute. Our seconds are less than half the length of yours to accommodate this. Some have argued we should adopt your world’s timekeeping system.”
The look the Lord Admiral gave his Admiral Commander led Stanley to believe it was the Admiral Commander advocating this change.
“You have a metric system for time,” Stanley said.
“Metric system?”
“We had an old measurement system where length was measured by the length of the king’s foot or arm and so on. It got complicated. Everything was simplified by the metric system, everything in increments of ten or a hundred. A hundred centimeters in a meter, a thousand meters in a kilometer, and so on. You did it for timekeeping as well.”
“And turned our backs on thousands of years of history and religious practice,” the Admiral Commander rejoined.
“But it’s scientifically based,” Stanley said.
The Lord Admiral put his hand on Stanley’s. The intimacy of the action frightened Stanley a little.
“Maybe religion is not the best thing to talk about,” he suggested.
“I’m sorry if I’ve offended,” Stanley said. The Lord Admiral grinned.
“I also apologize, Lord Admiral,” the Admiral Commander said.
Stanley thought of a topic and asked quickly why the Admiral Commander had two ranks.
The Admiral Commander explained that his first rank represented his rank in space, the second his rank groundside. The Hrwang had studied a dizzying array of military ranks from Earth and come up with equivalent names they thought worked.
“And your rank, Lord Admiral?”
“I am the commander of everything.”
“I would be the equivalent of a three star admiral on your world,” the Admiral Commander added, “and the Lord Admiral would have five stars.”
Five star rank was reserved for very few people. Stanley knew that much. He wasn’t sure the Hrwang had translated things correctly.
“But enough of military talk also,” the Lord Admiral said. “Tell me what a hippolotamus is.”
“You mean a hippopotamus?”
“Yes. That’s it. Tell me what that is. I just love the sound of the word. Hippopotamus.”
The conversation continued on inane, almost random topics until long after they finished their meal.
Stanley enjoyed the interplay of ambassadorial conversation, seeking common ground and avoiding conflict and he felt like a soldier walking through a minefield. He’d have to share that analogy with Irina later. Being a military type, she’d appreciate it.
He stole glances at her occasionally, but the dour commander refused to enjoy the conversation surrounding her. Her loss.
Eventually the Lord Admiral declared the m
eal ended and asked that Stanley and Irina, calling them the Captain and the Commander, get a good night’s sleep. They would have much to do in the morning. The Lieutenant Grenadier arrived to escort them to a room that had been reserved for them. He apologized, but they would have to share the room.
Stanley shook his head imperceptibly. Would he never be rid of this woman?
The cabin was tiny; Stanley expected that. But it was larger than their cabin on the Beagle, and the beds were on either side of a tiny aisle rather than bunks, one on top of the other like on the Beagle. Positively luxurious.
The cabin connected directly to a bathroom, a definite luxury. It was about the same size as the Captain’s head on his old spaceship but not much bigger than an airplane restroom. The Lieutenant Grenadier showed them how to flush the toilet, which was a large push button on the wall beside it. It looked remarkably like an American toilet. Stanley realized he hadn’t thought about what a Hrwang toilet might look like but was grateful it wasn’t a squatter like some cultures on Earth used.
The Lieutenant Grenadier told them that due to water conservation needs, they must use the bottle of water provided to brush their teeth and drink from. The faucet would not work.
Stanley thanked the man, who bid them good evening. He raised his hand to let the man know he had one more question. The Lieutenant Grenadier paused.
“What’s the name of this vessel?” Stanley asked.
The Lieutenant Grenadier pulled out his tablet and scrolled a bit.
“I apologize. I’m looking up words,” he said at one point. “I believe in your language it would be designated Command First Class of the Fleet of the People. In conversation it is simply First Command.”
“That’s a little boring, isn’t it?”
The Lieutenant Grenadier cocked his head to one side quizzically, his barrel chest filling the width of the door frame he stood in.
“Never mind,” Stanley rushed to say. “Thank you for your kindness. Good night.”
“Good evening,” the Lieutenant Grenadier said again, nodded his head, and turned and left. Stanley smiled a little at the language usage error. There would be many such mistakes and he wanted to make sure no one allowed them to escalate out of control, which is what must have happened when Earth had attacked the Hrwang in the first place. He would do everything in his power to make that right, to restore the relations between the two peoples. The dinner conversation tonight had proved that possible.
Irina floated nearby, holding a handrail and not acknowledging the Hrwang officer. People like her started this war, Stanley thought.
He went into the bathroom first, not even asking Irina if she needed to use it. A Hrwang officer would probably have done the same. Rank had its privilege on both worlds.
The confined bathroom felt like a coffin. The one on the Beagle felt the same; Stanley had simply grown accustomed to it over the previous months. After doing his business, he found a sanitary wipe he used to wash his hands with. He also took one of the disposal toothbrushes the Lieutenant Grenadier had left for them, put a little water on it from his bottle, and put some toothpaste on it. It tasted a little like almonds with a hint of licorice. He enjoyed brushing his teeth. It left him refreshed.
He exited, standing to the side so Irina could get past and into the bathroom. She did so without looking at him.
The Hrwang solved the problem of sleeping in zero and low gravity much the same as humans had. A full sleeping bag attached to a bunk with velcro. He separated one of the connectors and inspected it closely. It was exactly like velcro from Earth. He reattached it.
When the Hrwang provided the suits they wore, they had not provided underwear. Stanley debated leaving his suit on, but sleeping in the buff wouldn’t be so bad. He undressed and crawled into the bag, enjoying the soft, warm material inside. He closed his eyes and relaxed for a few minutes.
He did need to consider the dinner conversation. He replayed much of it, as much as he could recall, in his mind, and he pondered what he had learned from the Hrwang.
All of the officers at the meal were from the same country and belonged to some sort of religious order. One of them, he had been called the Admiral Commander, took it more seriously than the others, or at least more seriously than the Lord Admiral, but Stanley felt confident he could negotiate that minefield.
He also recalled the Hrwang had converted to a metric timekeeping system along with the rest of their measurements; they must be more scientific than humans. There were still pockets of humans that didn’t use the metric measurement system. They never would have agreed to metric timekeeping.
Irina exited the bathroom while Stanley pondered and she looked disdainfully at his jumpsuit and shoes lying on the floor, attached to the decking. She wordlessly pulled her boots off and crawled into the sleeping sack with her suit on.
Stanley knew how to lighten her mood.
“Hey, Commander. Didn’t you think that dinner was just like a soldier walking through a minefield? You had to avoid the dangerous places, look for safe ground, or common ground in this case, and navigate your way through it. Wasn’t it exhilarating?”
Commander Irina Samovitch replied rather undiplomatically, the initial cursing turning into a low growl. She started punching the inside of her bag, like she had punched the walls of the mess hall, squirming angrily in it. Her gyrations caused the bag to tear free from the velcro near her feet, and the end started to float up. In her anger she didn’t realize what was happening, and more of the velcro tore free. Irina was almost upside down before she cried, “What the...,” and twisted around to right herself.
The motion tore the bag from the last of the velcro and she floated to the the ceiling, twisting and turning in the bag, each motion moving her around more, and the bag flipped end over end.
Stanley laughed at her. He recognized the endorphins triggered by healthy laughter and he enjoyed the moment, watching his second-in-command twist and turn to try to maneuver her sleeping bag back to the velcroed bunk. She finally had to crawl out of it, a difficult procedure in zero gee with the bag not attached to anything, and reattach it.
He chuckled one last time and said, “Good night, Irina.” He turned away from her and closed his eyes, wondering how to turn the cabin lights off. There was a ding a few minutes later and the lights went out on their own. It must be night ship wide. Irina still struggled with her bag and her frustration intensified at having to finish the job in the dark.
Stanley ignored her, sleep enveloping him quickly in his warm and comfortable cocoon, the day’s exertions finally catching up with him. When he awoke the next morning, he couldn’t remember any of the dreams he’d had.
26