The cold-sleep process was designed to go fast, so it could be activated in case of sudden emergency aboard ship. As Jennifer hooked the male of the pair up to the system, she said, "What are they going to do when we get them back to human space? Nobody's had to deal with human primitives for hundreds of years; it must be a lost art."
"I haven't the slightest idea what they'll do," Greenberg answered. "I'm not going to worry about it, either. Whatever it is, it has to be better than life as experimental animals for the Foitani."
"You're right about that," Jennifer said. Just as she was connecting the nerve-retarder net, the communicator buzzed. "No, damn it, not now," she shouted at it. "We're not even screwing!"
The communicator ignored her. The words that came from it were more like snarls than speech. The translator turned them into flat Spanglish. "Answer me, you pestilential sub-Foitani creatures. When Voskop W Wurd deigns to speak with you, you are to take it as a privilege."
"Oh, shut up for a minute," Jennifer said, enjoying the license given her by a good many thousand kilometers of empty space between herself and the Rof Golani warleader. When the CroMagnons' pod retreated into its storage bay, she decided to notice the communicator again. "Now, what is it you want, Voskop W Wurd?"
"Whatever documents you have passed on to the Oderna and the kwopillot," Voskop W Wurd answered.
"Oh," Jennifer said. "Yes, I can do that. I would have done it sooner, but it never occurred to me that you might want them, Voskop W Wurd. You hadn't shown much use for humans, you know." You haven't shown much use for anything, you know, she added mentally.
The warleader said, "If my potential allies and my enemies have these data, I should be privy to them as well. Explain to me why the Oderna and kwopillot are interested in these long effusions by sub-Foitani."
"I love you, too, Voskop W Wurd," Jennifer said sweetly. But the more minds trying to find avoid a new round of Suicide Wars, the better, so she did explain to the warleader the concept of science fiction and its potential application here. Voskop W Wurd was vicious, but not stupid. Jennifer finished, "The books and stories are examples intended to turn your thinking in the appropriate direction."
Voskop W Wurd remained silent for some time after she was through. At last, he said, "This new concept will have to be analyzed. We on Rof Golan write and declaim sagas of great warriors of the past, but have nothing to do with the set of organized lies you term fiction, still less with using it as if it were fact."
"Let me know what you think when you've looked at the documents," Jennifer said. "You might also want to talk to Aissur Aissur Rus. He comes fairly close to being able to grasp another race's point of view."
Voskop W Wurd switched off without replying?typical Foitani manners, Jennifer thought. But she remained more cheerful than otherwise. The Rof Golani hadn't dismissed the concept of trying SF techniques to extrapolate ways in which kwopillot and vodranet could live together in the same galaxy. From him, that was an excellent sign.
Greenberg said, "The primitives are down and freezing. Assuming we ever get to leave?and assuming we don't run into any more leftover weapons from the Suicide Wars?we shouldn't have any trouble getting them back to Saugus."
"Saugus? Why Saugus?" Jennifer said.
"For one thing, it's the planet you live on these days. For another, I assume the university where you're teaching is a good one." He waited for her to nod, then went on, "It ought to have some good anthropologists, then. I can't think of any people better suited to helping show our unwilling passengers how the world has changed since they were last around to look at it."
"Makes sense," Jennifer said.
"Saugus also ought to have a merchants' guild hall." Again, Greenberg waited for a nod before continuing. "In that case, I can do a couple of things. First, I can recommend you for master status." He held up a hand to forestall whatever she might say. "You've earned it, you ought to have it, and you're going to get it. If we do manage to get out of this mess, it'll be thanks to your expertise. And we'll show a profit, and a good-sized one. You qualify."
"All right." The only thing Jennifer really wanted was to get back to teaching and research, but she'd learned that having something else to fell back on could come in handy. She said, "That's one thing. What turns it into a couple?"
Greenberg hesitated before he answered. "The other thing I was thinking of was transferring my base of operations to Saugus. That is, if you want to turn us into a couple once we're back."
"Oh." She felt her face twist into a new expression as the implications of that sank in. The expression was an enormous grin. "Sure!" She hugged him.
"I don't want you to leap into this, you know," he said seriously. "I'm not going to stop trading, which means we may be apart big stretches of time. And I know you'd sooner stay at the university."
She shrugged. "We'll do the best we can for as long as we can. That's all we can do?that's all anyone can do. Right now, I don't want to worry about complications, except the ones that are keeping us stuck in Foitani space."
"Sounds sensible to me," he said. "People who borrow trouble usually end up repaying it at high interest." He yawned. "I wouldn't mind going into cold sleep myself. I'm far enough behind on the regular sort that I guess that's the only way I'm likely to catch up. Shall we try to gain on what we can?"
"When going to sleep sounds like a better idea than going to bed, does that mean the romance is starting to fade?" Jennifer asked. Greenberg had just pulled his shirt off over his head. He bunched it up and threw it at her. She tossed it aside, undressed, and settled down on her foam pad. She didn't care about romance right this second, only about how tired she was. Greenberg told the computer to turn down the lights. Sleep hit her like a club.
The communicator hauled Jennifer and Greenberg back to life after about five hours of sleep?just enough to leave them both painfully aware they needed more. A Foitani voice roared from the speaker. "Answer, humans," the translator supplied.
"What is it now, Voskop W Wurd?" Jennifer asked, rubbing her eyes and thinking wistfully of coffee.
"This is not Voskop W Wurd. This is Yulvot L Reat. The warleader ordered me to evaluate your concept of scientific lying."
Jennifer wondered whether the translator was hiccuping or whether Voskop W Wurd had given that name to the Middle English literature as he assigned it to his subordinate. That didn't really matter. "What do you think of it, Yulvot W Reat?"
"To my surprise, I find myself quite impressed," the Rof Golani Foitan answered. "It serves to make extrapolation palatable, and by extension even speculates logically about the consequences of propositions known to be false, something I had not imagined possible."
"Then you think it might let you find a way to live with the kwopillot aboard the Vengeance?" Jennifer asked hopefully.
"It might let us look for a way," Yulvot L Reat said. "I take that for progress. So will the warleader Voskop W Wurd, since we never imagined?"
Yulvot L Reat's voice vanished from the speaker. A moment later, that of a different Foitan replaced it. "Humans, this is Solut Mek Kem. We have detected ships emerging from hyperdrive in this system. Your presence compromises Vengeance's defenses, to say nothing of the fact that your drive energies could be used as a suicide weapon against us. You will leave immediately."