Barbary

“If you join us,” a voice said, no longer from the radio but from one of the crystalline beings, “then we may rotate your vehicles and release the small person in the lower craft. It does not respond to our communications in an intelligible fashion, and it appears to be quite perturbed.”

Barbary could not help it: she laughed. Heather managed to smile. Barbary picked her up — her weight was insignificant in this gravity — and carried her from the raft. The aliens made a spot among them for her; they slid across the mother-of-pearl floor as if, like starfish, they had thousands of tiny sucker-feet at their bases. The floor gave off a comforting warmth. Barbary laid Heather on the yielding surface.

“I’m okay, I really am,” Heather said. She tried to sit up, but she was still weak. Barbary helped her, letting Heather lean back against her. Heather gazed at the aliens. “Holy cow.”

Mick’s furry form hurtled across the space between the rafts and Barbary. He landed against her with all four feet extended and stopped himself by hooking his claws into her shirt. Somehow he managed to do it without touching her skin with his claws. He burrowed his head against her, and she wrapped her arms around him and laid her cheek against his soft fur.

“Boy, Mick,” she whispered, “did you cause a lot of trouble.”

She looked at the beings, who had rotated the rafts and opened the hatch of Mick’s with no help from her. They could have opened up her craft and plucked her and Heather out like peas from a pod, if they had wanted to.

“Aren’t you mad?” she asked.

“Our psychology differs from what we understand of yours, but we believe you would consider us sane.”

“I didn’t mean mad-crazy. I meant mad-angry. We didn’t mean to bother you, but we had to rescue Mick.”

“We comprehend this. We are not mad-angry,” the nearest being said. “How could we rouse ourselves to anger over actions taken in distress?”

“Then how come you asked us not to approach you when you first called us?”

“When a species advances beyond a certain point, it must be introduced to civilization. Otherwise it would discover galactic society, and the rules of galactic society, in a random way. This might cause it shock. Yet even when a people has reached a technological position of adequacy, it may not be ready in the psychological sense to meet other beings. We have found, through experience, that meeting new citizens is easier for them if they are in a large group of their own people. Then their fear of other beings, their xenophobia — which is inevitable in some degree — is acute. In this case, however, we recognized an emergency.”

“Hasn’t anyone ever approached you before?”

“Yes,” the being said. “Several times. But always with the aim of conquest or attack.”

“What did you do to them?”

“We showed them the futility of violence. Oftentimes disarming the aggressor is sufficient, though sometimes their aggression must be turned back upon them.”

Barbary decided to leave questions on that subject till later. She wondered if she was ready to find out all the things the beings could do if they had to.

But Heather felt braver, despite her pallor.

“What rules did you mean?”

“The rules that, beyond your own planet, you may create, but you may not destroy. You may observe, but you may not interfere.”

Those rules sounded reasonable to Barbary. They sounded like what any sensible person would try to do.

“A lot of people won’t like those rules,” Heather said, her expression troubled. “They’ll want to break them.”

“They will be persuaded to comply. There is no choice.”

Heather leaned against Barbary, thoughtful and solemn. Barbary tried to think of something to say.

Mick changed the subject for her. He had stopped burrowing into her armpit. He curled against her, purring and watching. Now he squirmed out of her arms and leaped into the air, coming down and bouncing ten meters away. He stalked up to one of the beings and sniffed its base — its feet? — then rubbed against its side. His fur stroking the crystal surface made an electric, musical note. The beings swiveled toward him, fascinated.

“What a delightful feeling!” said the one that Mick had touched, “What a fine song the small person has invented.”

“He’s pretty inventive all right,” Barbary said.

“I do not wish to ask a rude question,” one of the beings said, “But why is the small person permitted to operate the vehicle? The controls have not been adapted to him.”

“Um, that’s a long story,” Barbary said.

“We love long stories. They help pass the time of travel between the stars.”

Heather drew herself back from her troubled reverie. “How long have you been traveling?” she asked.

“About a billion of your years.”

“Your people have had space travel for a billion years?”

“Oh, no, we have had space travel for a time an order of magnitude longer: for ten billion of your years. I thought you meant to ask how long we here had been exploring the stars.

“Ten billion years of star travel,” Heather said. “You must be the oldest intelligent species in the universe.”