Chapter 648

Jeff sat in the Miadax rec room with the First Officer.

The First watched as Jeff’s empty cup disappeared and reappeared so quickly that it seemed to flicker only slightly, but now it was full again.

“How does she know when you want more?” the First asked, then immediately waved a hand dismissively when he realized what he had said. “Of course she knew because she asked you mentally, or else you asked for a refill,” he said, embarrassed.

“Which brings us to the topic I’m here about.”

The First raised an eyebrow — a gesture he had sometimes used, but was now trying to perfect it after noticing his Captain’s occasional use of it.

“In your race’s... adventures,” he said while stressing the word, “did you or any of the other ships ever encounter a telepathic race?”

The First shrugged, and Jeff realized his First Officer was diligently working on learning the subtleties that went with the English language. “I never heard of any encounters with telepathic beings until I met you.”

“Me?” Jeff said, somewhat taken aback. “I’m no telepath.” But it hit him, and he went quickly on. “I wish I were, but Ship reads my mind, and we can communicate while I’m inside her or within a couple of hundred yards, but it’s Ship that basically does the communicating. I’m just a plain old Earthman with absolutely no mental talents along those lines — at all.” But even as he spoke, Jeff wondered how he was able to call to Ship if he were close enough to her, and then there was the time when he was slipping off that snow-covered ledge...”

The First raised that eyebrow again, but made no verbal response. Finally, “We have had individuals who were rumored to be telepathic, but I have never encountered anyone who claimed to have that talent.”

“What about this Precog thing you’ve talked about? You said that you were a Precog 1 with absolutely no — shall we say — marketable abilities. Is that correct?”

The First Officer smiled. “I have never thought of it that way, but yes, that describes it nicely.”

“Well, if that’s so, then how did you win all those gunfights? I’m a fairly fast reader, and I’ve read through much of your ship’s logs that it dumped to the escape pods, or whatever your race called them, when they were activated.”

“I ... just knew they were waiting to attack me. The Captain managed to...”

“Bullshit. Even though you had your back turned, you still had time to shoot him in the arm instead of killing him. You made a mistake by turning your back on the Captain — yet you still managed to live. When they tested you for Precog abilities, did you fake it to flunk the test?” Jeff bluntly asked.

The First stared at his Captain for a moment before answering. “If we were of equal rank, I could, perhaps, ask you generally the same question about your Precog abilities. But I would never do that because you are my superior, and my gratitude and respect goes far beyond that, as you well know.” With a moment’s reflection, the First quickly went on, “Sir, I again wish no disrespect...”

“None taken,” Jeff said as he relaxed back into his seat and took another sip of coffee. After a moment, “So, you deliberately failed the Precog test?”

“I...” the First began, but the look on Jeff’s face stopped him. “Not ... necessarily. The Precog Organization claims the test is infallible, and the equipment tests certain patterns in a person’s brain under stimulus. The tested person isn’t required to answer any questions, and his brain’s abilities are evaluated solely by the equipment.”

“You still figured out how to spoof the equipment, hmmm?”

The First Officer hesitated so long that Jeff thought the First wasn’t going to answer. Finally, “I did not want to be labeled a Precog, but I knew they already suspected that I was, at least, a near Precog. Perhaps my not wanting to be one somehow did something to the reading, but they were confident that I was only a Precog 1 with no real Precog abilities. I still do not think I have any.”

“Except that you were impossible to surprise and tended to kill those who tried to kill you, no matter the circumstances, hmmm?”

The First Officer sighed. “As you would say, Sir — more or less. But, please understand this, Captain; it is not consistent. Things do sometimes surprise me ... just as this conversation has.”

Jeff looked at his First Officer and slowly raised an eyebrow, only to see a grown Miadax blush. After a moment, Jeff said with emphasis, “Bullshit.

“As you are undoubtedly aware, I have had Helen teaching, or trying to teach, the Miadax women a few simple defensive moves. It seems that even the thought of defending themselves sets off a reaction in them. Ship says it is similar to their withdrawal symptoms when we were flushing the drug from their systems. The limited success we have achieved resulted from our making the takedowns and come-along holds into a sort of game.

“I can only surmise what generation after generation of zero resistance to anything done to them has caused in their psyches, but any force to resist seems to be counteracted by a powerful desire to refrain from any such tactics. Oh, they’re intelligent and therefore know what we’re doing, but somehow they must be able to convince themselves that it’s permissible because we say it is a game. To me, that means they want to do what we ask of them, but our asking for violence is counteracted by the generations of using absolutely no force to defend themselves.

The First Officer remained quiet until Jeff asked, “Is there something I’m missing?”

“Well,” the First said after a few more seconds, “generally,” he stressed, “the only force a Miadax male would ever consider is with weapons. If there is personal combat, it will almost certainly be with knives, guns or some other type of weapon. It would seldom, if ever, occur to an adult Miadax to ... grapple with someone. We might, under extreme circumstances, use a club, but most of our combat is through challenges and thus are generally fights to the death. I have used this lack to my advantage on several occasions.

“As far as teaching the women to defend themselves physically, I think it would be a long and arduous process — at best.”

“If that is so, why didn’t you tell me about this before now?”

“I ... I suppose it is just so ingrained into me that our females do not fight that it never occurred to me to mention it to you. However, I have been totally amazed at the progress you and your wives have achieved.”

“So, our teaching them to defend themselves with a weapon...”

“Would be ... Uh, what is the word?”

“A miracle,” Jeff offered.

“Yes, a female firing a weapon at anything, other than maybe a target, would normally be even beyond one learning to defend herself physically and would definitely fall into the miracle category. Aggression has been ... bred out of them, I suppose. Instead, they have been bred to serve any male who asks for it, and I seriously doubt that could ever be changed to any significant degree. That said, I have worked with my females and have had some moderate success at target practice, but I doubt they would ever think of defending themselves with a weapon.”

Jeff frowned and said under his breath, “You don’t know Diana.”

“So, how are the males responding to doing without sex? And yes, I know you are loyal to your crew, but you are my First Officer.”

The First sat for a moment as he gathered his thoughts. “Captain, I think there is a basic difference in the thoughts of a typical Miadax crew member to that of Earthmen. At least, I suspect there is. From what I infer from your previous comments, Earthmen are always ready for sex, if not actually actively seeking it.”

“Well, that may not...” Jeff began but stopped when the First motioned.

“While Miadax men like sex, even love it, our actual need for it seems far less intense than does that of Earthmen.”

“I suspect some of that comes from the difference in the females of the two races,” Jeff continued... “And I’m not talking about the difference in the placement of breasts or any other physical thing that may be different. It has been my observation that Earth women like sex every bit as much as men do, and since they can have practically unlimited orgasms, they are at least technically always ready. A man may want it mentally, but at least with men who have not been enhanced and who are not Alphas, they are sometimes physically unable to keep up with a normal woman.

“I had Ship enhance you and your men enough to give you perfect health, but I did not have her go all the way. That will ... probably come with time...”

“No matter what Ship says, or I say, we will have to prove ourselves,” the First interrupted to comment, but there didn’t seem to be any bitterness in his statement. “I can understand that, and we are thankful that you have had Ship heal our bodies and provide all that you have — far beyond what any of us ever thought would happen, or what we deserved.

“Your teaching us to crew this fabulous Ship is proof beyond reason that you trust us. We will not let you down. I have told you how we view transference of authority. You do not know how deep that runs, and it may well be something similar to the reaction to the use of force from our females. The fact that they are actually doing some of the things you ask them to do, even though it obviously involves physical resistance, is proof, yet again, of that transfer of power. From childhood, we were brought up to obey, and the Captain of our ship is the ultimate authority. As I have repeatedly said, when you destroyed our ship, you became our ultimate authority — the Captain. If the Captain, or anyone he puts over us, tells us to do something, generally speaking, most Miadax will do everything possible to obey. That includes our females.

“Unfortunately, at least in my mind, the females are having to struggle with opposing ... shall we say, absolutes. One is practically instinct that tells them never to resist. The other is their Captain telling them to learn to resist. Perhaps their minds are trying to make both logical by allowing them to think that it is, indeed, a game.”

Jeff again sat back in his seat. “Crap.”

Mars

The day wore on as the interceptor crews made pass after pass, only to regroup in orbit as the AI linked the crews together virtually while they discussed what went wrong and suggested viable alternatives to make each pass look better.

After many hours of trial and error, they settled on a procedure for the first two beginning moments of the show. After the initial pass and starting from points spaced equally around the city, the interceptors would approach a central point. Just as a crash seemed inevitable, they would all snap into a vertical and slowly spiraling column of interceptors, their smoke trails intertwining as they spiraled toward space. Once they reached the apex of the move, they would disappear as far as the audience was concerned.

Of course, what actually happened was that they instantly kicked their speed up to a half-light, only to come back to their assigned positions a few hundred feet above the audience, where they would be ready for their next move. That disappearing and sudden reappearance was impressive, especially with the interceptors trailing ‘smoke.’ At the top of their spiral, they would disappear from sight. All they had to do was punch it up to a half-light, and with them so high, the disappearance wasn’t much of a trick. Then they would suddenly seem to reappear at the outskirts of the city to again cross the metropolis at their lowest level yet, and with each interceptor wingtip-to-wingtip with alternating interceptors upside-down relative to the ship beside them.

In their minds, they had long since stopped referring to it as a parade and had begun calling it the show. When they were too tired to learn or fly safely anymore, Arlene had them form up on her interceptor and head for home at a half-light, the AI’s in control.

When both young women, still in their flight suits, minus their helmets, practically staggered into the living room where the family had gathered after supper, Helen and Susan, sitting on either side of their husband, hastily moved to allow Jeff to scoop the teenagers into his arms. None of the women said a thing about the tears leaking from Arlene and Ann’s eyes, and neither did Jeff, who just pulled their bodies close to his as he slid down so his head was as close to theirs as he could manage.

They sat that way for several minutes while the teenagers quietly wept. Finally, Arlene spoke, her voice barely loud enough to be heard even by the excellent hearing of everyone in the room. “I am so tired that I want to scream, but I’m too tired to do that, even.”

“Me, too,” Ann quietly said. “I had no idea our practice would be so draining.”

“Did those two...” Jeff began, his voice tensing.