A green-blue Foitan with a hand weapon stood waiting for them. Jennifer was tired of aliens ordering her around with jerks of a gun barrel. It didn't stop happening just because she was tired of it. The Great One led her and Greenberg to a blank metal wall. He rapped on it. A door into a small chamber opened. He chivvied the two humans inside, then rapped on the wall again. The door disappeared, in the way Foitani doors had a habit of doing.
The guard spoke to the air. "The offices of Solut Mek Kem," the translator said. Jennifer felt no motion, but when the Foitan opened the doorway again, the small chamber was not where it had been.
Solut Mek Kem stood waiting. "Well, creatures, shall we get to the dickering?" he said. "What can you offer that might persuade us to give you copies of these other creatures of your kind, now maintained in our data store?"
"That's not all we want," Jennifer said. "Once we have these?copies?we also want you to erase the archetypes of the humans you have in your data bank, as long as you can do that without causing them any pain. Can you do that?"
"Yes, we can, but why should we?" Solut Mek Kem said. "I repeat, what will you give in exchange for this service? Be quick. I am not in the habit of bargaining with creatures. Were it not for the service you rendered in slowing the outbreak of a combat whose result is uncertain, I would not waste my time here, I assure you."
"Oh, I believe it," Jennifer said. "Your whole species is like that. If only you were a little bit more easygoing?"
"What exactly do you want from us?" Greenberg demanded. "I can provide trade goods from Odern, and others of human manufacture. I can also give you information about what this part of the galaxy is like these days. Just how much, of course, is what makes a dicker."
"These things may perhaps buy you copies of your fellow creatures," Solut Mek Kem said. "They will in no way persuade me to clear our patterns in the matrices. Your kind, evidently, is a part of the galaxy about which we shall require a good deal of information. If you expect us to forgo it, you will have to do better."
"I've told you what we have," Greenberg said slowly.
Jennifer felt her face twist into a scowl. She didn't want to leave any vestiges of the CroMagnons in Foitani hands. "What would it take?" she said. "Do you want us to tell you how to live in peace with all the modern Foitani, who'd like nothing more than seeing every last one of you dead?"
"If you can tell us how to live in peace with vodranet, creature, you will have earned what you seek."
Jennifer looked down at her shoes. If only she were a Middle English SF hero, the answer to that question would have been on the tip of her tongue. Would Miles Vorkosigan or Dominic Flandry just have stood there with nothing to say? "If only…" she said softly, and then, a moment later, more than a little surprised, "Well, maybe I can."
"Go ahead, then, creature," Solut Mek Kem said. "Tell me how I shall live in peace with beings for whom I have an instinctive antipathy. Instruct me. I shall be fascinated to imbibe of your wisdom." The kwopil used irony like a bludgeon.
"Actually, I can't specifically tell you how," Jennifer said. "But maybe, just maybe, I can tell you a way to go about finding the answer for yourselves, if you really want to." That was the rub, and she knew it. If kwopillot and vodranet wanted to fight, they would, and good intentions would only get in the way.
"Say on," Solut Mek Kem said, not revealing his thoughts.
"All right. You know by now that the Foitani from Odern brought humans?my people?to Odern because by themselves they couldn't safely enter what they called the Great Unknown?the area around your ship."
"We made sure prying vodranet would not be able to disturb us, yes."
"Fine," Jennifer said. "The reason the Foitani from Odern got me in particular is that I'm an expert in an old form of literature among my people, a form called science fiction. This was a literature that, in its purest form, extrapolated either from possible events deliberately taken to extremes or from premises known to be impossible, and speculated on what might happen if those impossible premises were in fact true."
Solut Mek Kem's ears twitched. "Why should I care if creatures choose to spend their lives deliberately speculating on the impossible? It strikes me as a waste of time, but with sub-Foitani creatures, the waste is minimal."
"It's not the way you're making it sound," Jennifer said. "Look?you know about military contingency plans, don't you?"
"Certainly," Solut Mek Kem said.
"I thought you would. If you're like humans at all, you make those plans even for cases you don't expect to happen. Sometimes you can learn things from those improbable plans, too, even if you don't directly use them. Am I right or wrong?"
"You are correct. How could you not be, in this instance? Of course data may be relevant in configurations other than the ones in which they are first envisioned. Any race with the minimal intelligence necessary to devise data base software learns the truth of this."
"Whatever you say, Solut Mek Kem. Do me one more favor, if you would: give me the connotations of the word this translator program uses to translate the term fiction."
The Great One paused before answering, "It means something like, tales for nestlings' ears. Another synonym might be, nonsense stories."
Jennifer nodded. A lot of races thought that way. With some, the only translation for fiction was lying. She said, "We use fiction for more things than the Foitani do, Solut Mek Kem. We use tales that we know to be false to entertain, yes, but also to cast light on true aspects of our characters and to help us gain insight into ourselves."
"And so?" Solut Mek Kem said. "What possible relevance does a creature's insight into itself have to the truly serious issue of vodranet?"
"Bear with me," Jennifer said. "More than a thousand years ago, back when humans were just starting to develop a technological society, they also developed the subform of fiction called science fiction."
"This strikes me as a contradiction in terms," Solut Mek Kem observed. "How can one have a nonsense story based on science?"
"Science fiction doesn't produce nonsense stories," Jennifer said, reflecting that Solut Mek Kem sounded like some of the contemporary critics of the genre. "It's sort of a fictional analogue of what you do when you develop a contingency plan. Conceive of it as a method for making thought experiments and projections when you don't have hard data, but need to substitute imagination instead. You kwopillot don't have hard data about living with vodranet, for instance; all you know is how to go about killing each other. You need all the imagination you can find, and you need a way to focus it. If imagination is light, think of the techniques of science fiction as a lens."
"I think of this entire line of talk as a waste of time," Solut Mek Kem said.
"Let me tell you this, then," Jennifer said quickly, before he could irrevocably reject her: "The Foitani from Odern sought me out and brought me here specifically because I'm an expert in this kind of fiction."
"The foibles of vodranet are not a recommendation," Solut Mek Kem said, and she was sure she had lost.
But Bernard Greenberg said, "Consider results, Solut Mek Kem. Before Jennifer got here, you had been dormant for twenty-eight thousand years. The Foitani from Odern weren't close to getting into the Great Unknown, let alone into the Vengeance by themselves. Look at all that's happened since Jennifer came to Gilver."