Chapter 60

Meiersdottir glared at the native; a human would have recognized the fire in her eyes instantly, though the Edenite might not. "Shall we leave, then?" she challenged. "We can call the lander back now and be gone quickly, is that what you want?"

"You will come back," muttered Akakha. "You came back before."

"Others may come back, that's not for us to say," she retorted. "We won't come back, not where we're not welcome. We've come because we promised we would, and because we want your friendship. True friendship, not false. Why do you say false?"

"You lie to us. You say you go to our nest for safety. That is not true. You were safe in the way, in the path. You had no need to go further. Why did you go where you were not asked, where you were not wanted?"

"Ask your mothers," she snapped. "Ask Gagugakhing and the others."

"That is name you may not speak," said Akakha abruptly.

"Gagugakhing herself told me that name," she flared. "It is a name you may not forbid me to speak!" She took a calming breath. "You say you think together, but where is together now? It was when you couldn't think together because of the storm that Gagugakhing and your other mothers in that nest showed more sense than you have today. They heard us in the passage to your nest. They were afraid. They might have refused us light; they gave it to us. They might have told us not to enter, and we wouldn't have entered; they told us instead to come forward. Why don't you know this?"

"Mothers alone cannot think well. They did not know—"

Igwanda had the flavor of her responses now, and knew even better than she the power of the verbal whipsaw. "They knew more than you do now," he said flatly. "In the passage we were unknown, we were unseen, and what is unknown and unseen is frightening more than what can be known and seen, even if it is dreadful. They lit the passage to invite us to where they could see us, know us. They asked if we had come to kill. We told them we had not. They told us to come in to where they could see us and know us and be less afraid. When we went in they asked us to stay near the entrance and to be still and quiet and wait, and we did that. And they asked us to leave as soon as we could and we did that, too. We did as they asked. Do you challenge your mothers?"

There was a lengthy silence. Igwanda could see Meiersdottir begin to bend to the pressure; he touched her hand to silence her. They waited.

"It is as you say." This time it was Joe who spoke. "Gagugakhing tells that you did no hurt."

"You don't all really think together as one, do you, Joe?" asked Meiersdottir wonderingly. "Your mothers aren't completely a part of your thinking, are they?"

Another pause, but much shorter. "Mothers remember. Mothers let us think together. But it is we who think. We are here, we are in the world outside, we decide. Mothers not always part. This is very difficult to speak. If I ask how you think, how you decide, can you answer? We do not know the words to say how we do.

"It is Gagugakhing who speaks now. Mothers make speak slow, but she say speak for her." The grammar was going south again. "She say—" There was another pause, quite short this time, and then Joe began to talk more strongly. "She says that you have spoken right, that she believes you mean true friendship and that she wishes to talk again with you. She says—"

Again the pause, this one extended. Then, with almost a rush, Joe finished. "She says that we should bring you to the nest!"

"Then we will go," said Meiersdottir without hesitation.

But it was Joe and Akakha who hesitated, in more uncertainty than the humans had ever seen. They seemed frozen in place, and it was clear that a lot of cerebral activity was going on in the background. The stillness dragged on for more than a full minute.

"Joe?" said Meiersdottir finally. Still no response. "Joe?" she said, more pressingly.

"It is difficult," the native said at length. "You must wait."

There was another minute or more before he spoke again.

"You tell us now," he said abruptly. "Gagugakhing say too. Tell about explosions in sky. You say lie before. Tell true."

She took a deep breath; it was time. "Yes, we lied. You'll know why when we tell you the truth." She could hear murmurs from the Gardener over her communicator. "Shut up, or I'll turn the transmitter off," she snapped. Then she returned to Joe. "You remember we've told you that singles who don't think together may have different points of view—different ways of thinking?"

She waited, but there was no response.

"You remember we've also told you that sometimes people who think one way think so strongly that they'll try to force others to think the same way? That they'll even do things to hurt the ones who don't think the way they do?"

Still no response.

"When have we told you about this, Joe?" she demanded.

"You tell us not long ago. Part one time, part another time, you tell us," the native responded.

"Did we tell you this before the explosions in the sky?" she asked.

The response came more slowly. "Perhaps, small part. Most after."

"Yes," she said. "Most after. That's why we didn't tell you the truth about the explosions in the sky at that time. We were afraid you wouldn't understand. We're still afraid you won't understand."

She took a deep breath. "There are fifty of us on the mothership, Joe," she began. "Forty-eight of us think one way: we want to know you, to be your friends, to teach you and learn from you." She paused again to collect her thoughts; this was treacherous territory.

"Two others," prompted Joe.

"Yes. Two others. Those two were afraid of you."

"Afraid us? Why? You have strength, weapons, can kill us. We many, but not strong, not good weapons. What we can do make afraid?"

"I can't explain entirely," she said. "It isn't altogether reasonable. But you know that singles must trust each other. Some humans, a few, cannot trust well. When such a person finds something that's very different it makes that person afraid, just because it's different. You're different from us, you think together. And you also attacked us more than once. That made these two very afraid. It made them so afraid that— Joe, they wanted to kill you. All of you."

Both aliens' eyes flared wide.

"The explosions in the sky were when they tried to kill you."

For a moment there was silence. Then it was Akakha who spoke. "You say two want kill us, but forty-eight want be friend. Why forty-eight not stop two?"

"We did," Igwanda said flatly. "That is why you saw only harmless explosions in your sky."

"Not understand."

The colonel looked at Meiersdottir for direction. She held up her palm to him. "Joe, Akakha, we have terrible weapons. We have weapons much worse than what you've seen—weapons so strong they could destroy all of what you have, and all of you, in an instant.

"We didn't bring such weapons with us. We didn't come to kill. We only brought weapons strong enough to protect us if you attacked. That's all. We've told you before, even if you kill us we won't retaliate—we won't try to kill you or your mothers. We showed you that when the storm came. You hurt each one of us, you tried to kill all of us, but we didn't kill even one of you. When we went to your nest we could have hurt your mothers, killed them. We didn't do so."

"We make mistake," muttered Akakha.

"Was it?" she challenged. "I've been with you for many days. I've seen how quickly you learn. We humans forget things; you don't. You didn't forget you had made that program for each of you to kill us if you couldn't think together. And you've been in bad storms before, like the one that came; you know they can make it so you can't think together.

"But you left that program in place, you left it so each one would want to kill us. Even when you saw the storm coming, when you saw the lightning and heard the thunder coming nearer and you knew you might not be able to think together, you still didn't deactivate the program. Only when the storm was here, when it began that you couldn't think together, only then did you finally tell us to run and hide because it was too late for you to stop what happened."

She waited briefly to let her point sink in. "I don't believe you actually wanted to kill us. Yes, it was a mistake. But it was a mistake you could have prevented. You didn't prevent it because you didn't trust us enough; your distrust was so strong that it was more important to you than what might happen to us because of it.

"And so you attacked us. For the third time you attacked us. Yet we didn't fight back; we could have killed many of you, hurt many more, but we didn't. Carlos told everyone not to use their weapons except to save our lives. Because he understood. You hurt us, you hurt some of us badly as you saw, but we didn't try to hurt you." She turned directly to Akakha. "Akakha, the first thing you said to Carlos and me today was did we come with false friendship. You tell me now, who was the false friend in that storm and who was the true friend?"