I wanted to bristle at the tone, but I was starting to understand. It wasn't meant as derogatory. It was just...they don't know any better. "People. Other kinds of people."
It seemed that it was her turn to pry into my life. I was oddly okay with that. "What did you call them?"
"Ehkin and Qitani, but to be fair we really met many others. Those are the only two cultures we found a way to communicate with."
"The Ehkins are the blob people?"
I gave a three count in my head, fighting back the instant feeling of offense. "Yes," I tried to say as calmly as possible. They do look like blobs, after all. She was being descriptive, not prejudice. "Though once you get to know them, you'll figure out that the blob shape is only the skin. Underneath they have very complex cartilage systems." I surprised myself with the technical sounding language. I suppose I paid more attention than any of us thought. I bet Mother would have been very pleased.
"And they can speak?"
No talking about inspeaking. It was a clear no-no. "We found a way to communicate. However, Mother wasn't very interested in them, so we only stayed on v-2445 for a little less than a year before the Qitani invited us to Laak'sa."
Lynette pulled her legs up and hugged them, getting comfortable. "Why wasn't your mom into the Ehkin?"
"They weren't very developed in terms of technology. They didn't mine their planet." Lynette looked as if she expected more. "No mining, no minerals. No minerals, no..."
"Metal," she said when it dawned on her.
"Exactly. They build with plant materials only."
"So they're primitive."
That did rub me the wrong way. She sounded like Mother. "No, they aren't. They choose a life of peace and simplicity to give them enough time to devote to their art and studies."
She held her hands up quickly. "Hold on. I wasn't trying to push your buttons, Jake. No need to get defensive. You've got to understand, in terms of humanity and our way of thinking, advancement means tools, mining, smelting ores to make better tools, weapons, technology. There's an established pattern of advancement."
"And you assume that's how it has to be everywhere."
Lynette laughed. "Why not? We haven't learned anything else. I have to judge and guess by what I know."
"Bad science."
"I'm not a scientist."
I had to smile even though I wanted to be annoyed. I said that to Mother all the time. "No. You're not."
"So if that's not how it works everywhere, then tell me how it does work. How can they be so advanced if they have no tools?"
Uh oh. We were back in dangerous territory. Ehkin manipulated their environments, just not in the same ways we do. I'm sure it's too close to inspeaking for me to talk about. "They are very artistic." That's a safe side. "They'd much prefer to spend the day contemplating the universe than building fancy cities or ships. They don't need much in the way of tools, because there isn't much to build. What they need, the marshy lands supply. Little Blob..."
"Oh, so you can call him a blob but I can't?" She was giving me a wry smile.
I shrugged. "It's the closest word out loud we could come up with. A more direct translation would probably be something like... 'little amorphous gelatinous progeny'. To make it shorter, we just called him Little Blob. They name with descriptions. His father's name would roughly be along the lines of 'great mass with one unusual lump to the left of the primary hump'."
"Doesn't exactly roll of the tongue."
I laughed. "No. I guess not." But they don't say it out loud, so it doesn't need to. They only feel it. That's why they are more advanced, because they are connected to everything. They don't look at their trees...they feel them. They create their art in homage to the beauty of a universe we can only actually look at and never fully accept. They don't kill because they can feel the loss of a single atom. They don't need metal because the land is perfect untouched. They don't say, they feel. They do. The pray and sing because they have figured it all out.
I wished I could tell Lynette. I thought she may actually understand in a way that Mother never did. Success doesn't have to be the same for every tribe. The Qitani understood the beauty and place of the Ehkin. They allowed themselves to learn so much, and Mother made us so limited.
"Did I say something to make you mad?"
She was frowning, biting her lip. I flashed a quick smile. "No. Just thinking. Sorry."
"You miss them, don't you?"
I shrugged. "Wouldn't you?" I leaned back and laid in the chair again, putting my hands behind my head and staring up into the void of space above us in the night skies of Mars. "I was in a ship with twenty seven other people my whole life. Mother, Dad, Ralph, Daniel, Stefan, Angie, Clara, Alex... They were all I knew. How to explain it? Okay, you went to school, you were in a classroom, right? How many were in your class?"
"Before I left Earth? I don't know. Thirty, I guess."
"Right. And how many other people did you see every day? I'm not talking about people you know. I'm talking about population, swarming around you every single day. Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands?"
"Sure."
"And I had twenty seven. And only twenty seven. There was no one I passed on the way to school, because there wasn't school. I didn't meet new people in the store, because there wasn't a store to go to. And even if there was a store on ship, which I suppose there was of sorts, the only people I could ever possibly run into were the twenty seven I already knew."
"It sounds lonely."
I shrugged. "I don't know. It was just how my life was. I didn't think of it as lonely. You can't think of things you have no concept of, you know? I was a good ten, eleven before it dawned on me that there honestly was a planet filled with billions and what that might be like."
"You didn't know about Earth?"
I flashed her a grin. "Of course I knew about it from my folks, my HuTA. But it wasn't until we landed in the same region of the Ehkin homeworld and Laak'sa that I got to see life. Real life. Teeming life. There are many inhabitable planets in that sector. It lies near a nursery. Many young solar systems with perfect suns. Anyway, I believe I was ten the first time I stepped out into a real planet. I'd been on plenty of dead ones. Some large asteroids, too. It was fun. But it was still only twenty seven possible relationships in the void of space."
"Until Ehkin."
I shook my head. "No. The Ehkin were a little later. It was a small planet, in a system of seven. There was life on it. Animals. Real animals, the first I ever saw. Nothing Mother could communicate with, and there were no signs of organized civilization, so we didn't stay. But we stepped out and something got curious."
"What?" Lynette almost whispered. I glanced over because of her tone and was pleased to see she was interested in knowing. She almost hovered on the edge of her seat.
"I don't know. We didn't even stay long enough to name them. Mother would have taken one for a sample, but Dad talked her out of it. They were small bipeds with enormous eyes. I think it was the eyes that got to Dad. You could see the thoughts there. They were intelligent. Like Earth apes. Intelligent, and no doubt if we could get back there in a few million years they could shake our hands and invite us in for coffee." I grinned again. "That's what Dad said, anyway."
"So the were little monkeys?"
"Sort of. They had no fur, though. Completely bald because of their environment. It was a very hot planet. And musty. We couldn't remove our gear because it tested too low for our oxygen needs. But we kept having to wipe the visors because they fogged up in the humidity. We landed and just stood there looking around. Mother and Alex were taking measurements of temperatures, gathering soil samples. The only reason we landed in the first place is because Dad was set on at least sampling the land even if it didn't have people. The first one came up to us and was not at all afraid. Dad said that was because he saw no signs of large predators."