"Tell me about how she died," Jane asked, just before the skip to Consu space.
"She was making waffles on a Sunday morning, and she had a stroke while she was looking for the vanilla," I said. "I was in the living room at the time. I remember her asking herself where she had put the vanilla and then a second later I heard a crash and a thump. I ran into the kitchen and she was lying on the floor, shaking and bleeding from where her head had connected with the edge of the counter. I called emergency services as I held her. I tried to stop the bleeding from the cut, and I told her I loved her and kept on telling her that until the paramedics arrived and pulled her away from me, although they let me hold her hand on the ambulance ride to the hospital. I was holding her hand when she died in the ambulance. I saw the light go out in her eyes, but I kept telling her how much I loved her until they took her away from me at the hospital."
"Why did you do that?" Jane asked.
"I needed to be sure that the last thing she heard was me telling her how much I loved her," I said.
"What is it like when you lose someone you love?" Jane asked.
"You die, too," I said. "And you wait around for your body to catch up."
"Is that what you're doing now?" Jane said. "Waiting for your body to catch up, I mean."
"No, not anymore," I said. "You eventually get to live again. You just live a different life, is all."
"So you're on your third life now," Jane said.
"I guess I am," I said.
"How do you like this life?" Jane asked.
"I like it," I said. "I like the people in it."
Out the window, the stars rearranged themselves. We were in Consu space. We sat there quietly, fading in with the silence of the rest of the ship.
SIXTEEN
"You may refer to me as Ambassador, unworthy though I am of the title," the Consu said. "I am a criminal, having disgraced myself in battle on Pahnshu, and therefore am made to speak to you in your tongue. For this shame I crave death and a term of just punishment before my rebirth. It is my hope that as a result of these proceedings I will be viewed as somewhat less unworthy, and will thus be released to death. It is why I soil myself by speaking to you."
"It's nice to meet you, too," I said.
We stood in the center of a football field–size dome that the Consu had constructed not an hour before. Of course, we humans could not be allowed to touch Consu ground, or be anywhere a Consu might again tread; upon our arrival, automated machines created the dome in a region of Consu space long quarantined to serve as a receiving area for unwelcome visitors such as ourselves. After our negotiations were completed, the dome would be imploded and launched toward the nearest black hole, so that none of its atoms would ever contaminate this particular universe again. I thought that last part was overkill.
"We understand you have questions you wish to ask concerning the Rraey," the ambassador said, "and that you wish to invoke our rites to earn the honor of speaking these questions to us."
"We do," I said. Fifteen meters behind me thirty-nine Special Forces soldiers stood at attention, all dressed for battle. Our information told us that the Consu would not consider this a meeting of equals, so there was little need for diplomatic niceties; also, inasmuch as any of our people could be selected to fight, they needed to be prepared for battle. I was dressed up a bit, although that was my choice; if I was going to pretend to be the leader of this little delegation, then by God I was at least going to look the part.
At an equal distance behind the Consu were five other Consu, each holding two long and scary-looking knives. I didn't have to ask what they were doing there.
"My great people acknowledge that you have correctly requested our rites and that you have presented yourselves in accordance to our requirements," said the ambassador. "Yet we would have still dismissed your request as unworthy, had you not also brought the one who so honorably dispatched our warriors to the cycle of rebirth. Is that one you?"
"I am he," I said.
The Consu paused and seemed to consider me. "Strange that a great warrior would appear so," the ambassador said.
"I feel that way, too," I said. Our information told us that once the request had been accepted, the Consu would honor it no matter how we comported ourselves at the negotiations, so long as we fought in the accepted fashion. So I felt comfortable being a little flip. The thinking on the matter, in fact, suggested the Consu preferred us that way; it helped reinforce their feelings of superiority. Whatever worked.
"Five criminals have been selected to compete with your soldiers," the ambassador said. "As humans lack the physical attributes of Consu, we have provided knives for your soldiers to use, if they so choose. Our participants have them, and by providing them to one of your soldiers they will choose who they will fight."
"I understand," I said.
"Should your soldier survive, it may keep the knives as a token of its victory," the ambassador said.
"Thanks," I said.
"We would not wish to have them back. They would be unclean," the ambassador said.
"Got it," I said.
"We will answer whatever questions you have earned after the contests," the ambassador said. "We will select opponents now." The ambassador grunted a shriek that would have shaved pavement off a road, and the five Consu behind him stepped forward, past it and me, and toward our soldiers, knives drawn. Not one flinched. That's discipline.
The Consu didn't spend much time selecting. They went in straight lines and handed the knives to whoever was directly in front of them. To them, one of us was as good as another. Knives were handed to Corporal Mendel, whom I had lunched with, Privates Joe Goodall and Jennifer Aquinas, Sergeant Fred Hawking and Lieutenant Jane Sagan. Wordlessly, each accepted their knives. The Consu retreated behind the ambassador, while the rest of our soldiers stepped back several meters from those who had been selected.
"You will begin each contest," the ambassador said, and then stepped back behind its fighters. Now there was nothing left but me and two lines of fighters fifteen meters from me on either side, patiently waiting to kill each other. I stepped to the side, still between the two rows, and pointed to the soldier and Consu closest to me.
"Begin," I said.
The Consu unfolded its slashing arms, revealing the flattened, razor-sharp blades of modified carapace and freeing again the smaller, almost human secondary arms and hands. It pierced the dome with a screech and stepped forward. Corporal Mendel dropped one of his knives, took the other in his left hand, and started straight at the Consu. When they got within three meters of each other, everything became a blur. Ten seconds after it started, Corporal Mendel had a slash across the length of his rib cage that went down to the bone, and the Consu had a knife jammed deeply into the soft part where its head melded with its carapace. Mendel had gotten his wound as he snuggled into the Consu's grasp, taking the cut for a clear shot at the Consu's most obvious weak spot. The Consu twitched as Mendel tugged the blade around, slicing the creature's nerve cord with a jerk, severing the secondary nerve bundle in the head from the primary brain in the thorax, as well as several major blood vessels. It collapsed. Mendel retrieved his knife and walked back to the rest of the Special Forces, keeping his right arm in to hold his side together.