“Actually, I think I’ll use it to cover the door until I can make a new one. That one’s getting pretty crumbly.”
He looked disgusted. “Whatever. Look, seriously, let me try to get you inside somewhere, at least. If you catch pneumonia out here, you won’t be proving anything to anyone. If you insist, I’ll even see if I can scrape up a bed of nails for you to sleep on.”
It took an effort, but I refrained from rolling my eyes. “Thanks, but no thanks. I feel fine so far.”
He unfastened the front of his parka. “It is warmer in here than I thought it’d be,” he admitted.
“As long as Hresah brings me wood and food, I’ll be fine.”
Ronald snorted. “Huh… I’m glad you’re happy. Some of the rest of us are up against a wall.”
“The contact group? What’s wrong?”
“Everything. We’ve never gotten past learning the names of the Onalbi. Every time we try to move on to other issues, like what to do about you, the Onalbi seem to want to talk to someone else. They keep acting as though we’re just flunkies.”
Being the cook means that I know everyone on board. The corollary is that I have opinions about their worth. “Do you blame them? You guys all act like politicians trolling for votes.”
He jerked as though I’d slapped him. “What would you do, put the scientists in charge?” he demanded scornfully.
I shrugged. “Maybe. Overall, they’re pretty good people, with the possible exception of Farak. Him, I’d keep as far away from the Onalbi as possible.” To get him off my back, I shifted topics. “How about the linguistics—”
“Oh, now there’s a success story for you. To hear them tell it, the Onalbi they’re paired with are born linguists. All they have to do is just barely get started on an idea, and the Onalbi take it and run. Eileen says they have an intuitive grasp of things—even things they’ve never seen—that’s almost scary. She was describing our history of transportation to them, working backwards. She told them about cars, then horses, then all of a sudden her Onalbi comes up with the idea for a wagon, being a wheeled vehicle powered by a horse instead of electricity, and wants to know what we called it. That’s in spite of the Onalbi never having used any sort of draft animal at all. They did everything themselves until they invented machines to do it for them.”
“Pity the scientists can’t get anyone like that to work with.”
“Oh, supposedly the Onalbi are waiting for someone. Until that someone gets here, our scientists are on their own. Even the linguist who derived the concept of a wagon won’t talk to them, in spite of the fact that he sounds like a pretty smart cookie. The sociologists are saying it’s a caste system and they can’t step out of their area.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so. I’ve met several and they’ve acted pretty equal towards each other.”
He sneered. “The ship’s cook speaks with authority. I’m sure they’ll be waiting with bated breath for your assessment when I get back.”
I guess I deserved it—I’d insulted his contact group. “If it’s a caste system, I’ll be real surprised.”
“They think it explains why the contact group can’t get anywhere. Somehow, we’re the wrong caste.”
“Not so much of a caste… more like a peer group, and your contact group may not measure up to their idea of someone they’d want as a peer.” I confess… I did that on purpose.
“Well, if you get to chose a jury of your peers,” he snapped, “you’d better get started, because it may take a while to find twelve Onalbi cooks.”
As time went on, I cared less and less for the behavior of my own kind. Maybe I was going native. Perhaps I was trying to distance myself from the fallible human who had killed a sentient alien just because he didn’t look “normal.” Then again, maybe humans aren’t such great company after all.
Not that I was angry with Hickok for his sarcasm. I’d gone out of my way to bait him. The reason it stung was because he had prodded my feelings of inferiority.
Still, I felt faintly soiled after his visit, so I crept out of my hut and started walking towards the guard post. I thought I could see Hresah, but couldn’t be sure. The snow was falling less thickly now, but still hard enough to obscure my vision.
With no gloves, my hands quickly became numb from the cold, and climbing the last part of the wall was difficult. By the time I crawled over the rim, I was having bouts of violent shivering.
The guard post had a bit of an overhanging roof so I pressed my back against the central column and scrunched my legs in as close as I could, then wrapped myself in the blanket Hickok had brought, which I had carried lashed to my back.
“Are you well?” Hresah asked.
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“You move.”
I started to correct him by saying that I was sitting still until it occurred to me that he meant the chattering of my teeth. “It’s called shivering. It’s a natural human reaction to cold. The muscle movement generates heat and helps to keep us warm.”
“Then you’ll need more food since you are being more active. I shall send to your ship for more of your food.” He lifted his secondaries and started fiddling at the side of the kiosk.
Just another example of the Onalbi seeing side effects and repercussions more quickly and completely than humans. This time, Hresah had done it with just two facts—a sort of minimalist approach that would have been frightening if I hadn’t learned to trust him to be right, first time, every time. He was awfully smart for a guard.
Hresah finished his fiddling—I thought of it as typing, although it certainly wasn’t a keyboard—and sent the information from the computer in the kiosk to the main one at the human camp and wherever the Onalbi did their data processing. Transcripts of everything that Hresah and 1 said were sent to the linguists and scientists to let them know what Hresah and I were learning about each other. Presumably, a rudimentary definition of shivering had just been entered into the Onalbi master database. More grist for the mill.
The ground underneath me was hard and cold. The metal shell of the kiosk was hard and cold. Even the air felt hard and cold. I wrapped the blanket tighter around me and tried to concentrate, but ended up just watching the snowflakes drift to the ground. Up here on the rim, there was a slight breeze. Every so often, the snow would twirl into eddies and dance in response to subtle air currents I could scarcely feel.
Hresah poked the side of the kiosk, then said, “Your people are inquiring about your health. I am told that it is not good for you to be exposed to this much cold.”
“Well, it’s not exactly Miami in the middle of August.”
“I’m sorry. That didn’t translate well. The computer thinks that you were making a comparison, but I have no referent.”
I grunted. “Miami is a place on Earth where it is warm. August is the name of a time period when it is warm. To be in Miami during August means you will be warm.”
“And it is not warm here, now. I understand. Do you wish to be warmer?”
I sighed. “Do I wish to be warmer? Yes. However, I wish even more to atone for killing Grenabeloso. Eventually, you will decide what to do about the situation. Then I will face whatever punishment you think is necessary with as much dignity as I can muster. I made a mistake. Now, I must accept the consequences.”
He was quiet for quite some time after that. I watched the snow accumulate on the lower edge of my blanket where it stuck out from under the overhanging roof. After a while I said, “Hresah, I have been thinking about what we were saying yesterday.”