Chapter Thirty-Nine

Thanks to self driving cars, I didn’t need a license or someone to drive me after I got back, but I wasn’t alone. Boatswain I insisted on having with me. The hum of the electric car was the only noise for the first few minutes of the drive, and I could feel the eye of the behemoth of my kind staring down at me even if he wasn’t acknowledging it.

I shifted in my seat and brought my tail into my lap and began fidgeting with it. I didn’t get the sense that he was angry, but something was clearly on his mind at least. I focused on watching the steering wheel’s autoturn and the road around us. I probably would have been happier sticking my head out the window, but the truth was I was so nervous about everything that I just didn’t think I could enjoy it.

Boatswain let out a huff, “You attract this much trouble back home?” He finally asked, breaking the quiet of our ride.

I saw no sense in denying it.

“No.” I answered, “I’ve never been more than a boring old academic. I promise.”

“I find that hard to believe. You know you’re going to have to explain her too.” He said.

“I have nothing to do with that, there’s no way I could have predicted a pirate fetishist would show up here. I didn’t even know anyone like her existed.” I was telling the absolute truth, but Boatswain, if he didn’t believe me, at least acted like he did.

“Even if that’s true-” He started to say, but I immediately interrupted.

“It is!” I insisted. “You can’t blame me for every have crazed member of our species who shows up to visit these wild scary primates!” I admit, I was a little angry when I said it, and it gave him pause.

“That may be true, but anything you do from here on out is going to be heavily scrutinized by the University, by the Embassy, by your Professor, and probably by the government of Dlamias. You got them involved. Not that I blame you, but I’ve been in fourteen major engagements, and every time they kicked off, there was talk of peace first. They might have been minor skirmishes for the most part, but I’ve learned a lot about human history from Byron. We and humans have more in common than not, and that can make for close allies… or bitter enemies.”

I swallowed hard. I was so foolish. I was so focused on me, and on what I wanted, and what I was afraid of, that the big picture was an afterthought to me. I’m so small minded sometimes, selfish… that might be the right word.

I criticized the angry humans for all their pointless fears and hatreds, but was I any better? All I cared about was what I wanted, staying with my humans. “I’m such a damn fool.” I clenched my fists and watched the traffic pass by.

“Yeah.” Boatswain agreed. “Some other species, this wouldn’t need to be said, but with humans? We have to be careful. I was modded to be like this.” He said and opened his meaty hand. “But Byron and the others? They barely required any modification at all. If you fail?” He let the question hang, but I wasn’t about to let it sit there that way.

“What?” I demanded to know his mind.

“Maybe nothing? Maybe someone else succeeds. Maybe you fail hard and that wild and beautiful Bonny Red does something stupid, or her crew does, and your ‘Battle of Waterland Park’ is just a tiny skirmish before a real conflict between our worlds breaks out. I like humans. I like Byron. I don’t want to think about dlamisan energy weapons vaporizing that house any more than I want to think about the terran space marines ripping their way through our citadels.”

“No pressure, though.” I said, it was a pathetic attempt at a joke, and I couldn’t even pretend it was amusing. It wasn’t. Fauve, William, Rebecca, Michael, they lived and worked in Earth’s capital, a major transportation hub. If it did come down to it, this city would be hit…

Boatswain stared at me, waiting for me to say something, anything.

“I never… I never imagined anything like that when I started. I’m just a student, I didn’t mean-” I stopped and took a deep breath, I forced my body to relax, I forced my mind to focus. ‘Don’t be such a self pitying idiot! There’s no time for that! There’s only one option here… and you’re Bailey Walker! Top of every classroom you’ve ever walked into!’ I thought about Fauve, how scared she must have been staring down at all those hostile reporters and telling her truth, with everybody else back behind her, ready to support her.

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And it hit me.

I wasn’t standing alone anymore.

I had them backing me, all of them. Everybody on both sides wanted something that would help, nobody wanted me to fail, and I had the strength of my humans, my dlamisans… I had everybody behind me ready to lend me their strength and cleverness and courage.

That was how she did it. The certainty that she was not completely alone.

And neither was I.

I raised my head and looked Boatswain in the eye. “I won’t fail. I understand what’s on the line here, and I will succeed. Bonny Red may seem… no, be the strangest of our kind that I’ve ever seen, but I will make it work with her and her crew. Nobody will suffer anything but some mild exhaustion.”

To be truthful, a promise like that wasn’t one I should have been making. I think it shows how much humans have influenced me that I made a reckless promise of that scale, but it says something about Boatswain that he accepted it without complaint.

Just then we pulled into the parking lot of the sporting goods store. “I expected something bigger.” He said, “Humans love their sports.” It was clearly something he approved of, from the way he stood and looked it over after we got out of the car.

“Oh, they used to have giant stores, but a few centuries ago they realized that bigger companies presented a danger to localized economies, driving out smaller businesses with low costs, buying them up, then raising prices again. To solve that, they took a page out of the Qatari and Philippine government playbooks. A company’s total owned or leased land area was restricted to its area of incorporation, and selling in any physical location outside of that required that they form ‘partnerships’ with locally owned companies and residents.”

“But don’t they shop for delivery stuff a lot?” Boatswain asked, “Couldn’t they get around that just by selling over their network?”

“Yes, and according to what I read, they did, so they started limiting the variety of goods any one online seller could market, and taxes increased on companies based on their sales. They could get around that by the partnerships that kept the local economies going and having local stores serve as fulfillment agents and splitting the profit. Now?” I inclined my head toward the simple box shaped store with the flashy sports posters on the front windows, “We’re only going in because I have to make absolutely sure we have what we need for tomorrow.”

“Hmpf, clever, I guess.” Boatswain remarked offhandedly and followed me in, “So what did you need me for?”

“You’re the athletic one, we need to pick out the right tools for this. Footballs, tennis balls, they have lots of options for us to work with.” I pointed out as soon as we entered the door.

Both of us began to nearly salivate, it was one thing to say it, but there were aisles full of equipment, our eyes homed in directly on the aisle filled with… well, I will just call them ‘throwables’.

“Just stay calm.” I cautioned Boatswain as we made our way to the aisle. He did his best, but his tail threatened to knock over more than one display as he went from item to item and began to handle it.

“Each of these has advantages…” He remarked as he went from tennis ball to foam football to regular sized football. “The thing is, each of them will be thrown somewhat differently. This,” he picked up a frisbee, “will stay in the air a long way and probably curve some, easy to see, relatively easy to catch.”

He then reluctantly set it down and picked up a baseball, “Straight ahead or lob, I guess, but it won’t go as far. But I will bet someone like Byron can throw it fast.”

“So, what do you suggest?” I asked.

“This.” He pointed to the aisle. “Take a bunch of them, remember the game at the park?” He asked.

I put my hand on my head and groaned, “No. And I am never drinking again.” I said.

Boatswain huffed, “Right, well since you don’t remember much, it didn’t take long for us to start coming up with different strategies. Adding more variety in throwables creates more strategic options.”

“Right… more thought requires better teamwork…” I understood his meaning and I was onboard with it immediately.

“Let me get a cart, no, two carts, we need enough for everybody.” I said, and he added.

“I’ll get two more. And some boxes to carry it all and to use in the game.” Boatswain’s sudden enthusiasm would have been surprising if it weren’t for two things.

I knew how much fun he had. And he knew exactly what was at stake.

And now so did I.