Chapter Twenty-Four

I’m sure if they ever make a movie about our coffee session that evening they’ll compress the story so that we came up with the perfect solution within a few hours. Movies are like that, they compress real events that take weeks or months or years and make them into hours or even minutes. But for the proper historical record, we came up with nothing.

“Could you do something with the military? Like the thing with the embassy guy? You know, showing how we can work together that way?” Fauve asked, and I cocked my head so hard my ears briefly flopped.

“The military?” I asked her in return, placing special emphasis on the word. “Fauve, that might work well for relations with my world. But most intelligent races in the galaxy are prey races. Species like yours, mine, Ka’wik and Sxlith, and my other colleagues, that come from predator origins, are extremely rare. There’s no more than twenty of those out of the roughly one thousand known intelligent species, and that’s not counting the ones that look like they might develop higher intelligence at some point. Including those?” I had to shake my head at the idea, “Predators are outnumbered in the galaxy. Let alone real apex predators.”

She looked down at the table when I said that and reached for her spoon, predictably enough, at least to me, she kept sugar on the table, and after scooping a few spoonfuls in and stirring it her lips pursed thinly together while she took long slow breaths.

The metal spoon scraped against the glass with the steady slowness of grains of wheat being ground by oxen, and I could see that what I said did nothing to make her any happier. I didn’t have to wait for too long to find out why.

“In our history,” she said, “those who are outnumbered don’t come to good ends. Not most of the time. What would the Zenti have done if they found Earth before we got strong enough to protect ourselves?”

The answer was obvious, “Raid. Raid. And raid some more. If you were weak enough, maybe even occupy your world and make you plunder it for them. They’ve done it before.” She bit her lower lip, and I hesitated. I thought I went too far, that I scared her, and my immediate instinct was to reassure her.

“But you don’t have to worry about that. The Zenti are at peace now, and the human fleets, and soldiers, have a mighty reputation.” I reassured her, and it had the added benefit of being true. If the Zenti wouldn’t dare attack humans, nobody would.

“Still.” She said, “That sounds dangerous.”

I couldn’t really deny it, though I had no idea just how significant her three little words were in the human psyche at the time, and more importantly I could see it wasn’t going to make her happy, and making her happy was far more important to me than I ever imagined it could be when I was still far from Earth. “How about a game?” I suggested, “You could teach me some card games?” I proposed, and she perked up a little and got up to retrieve a deck while I got up to retrieve snacks.

For the next few hours the stress was forgotten. Fauve and I played cards using potato chips as ‘chips’, eating the winnings occasionally while we drained the coffee pot down to its last drop. Every now and then she got up, came over, and hugged me, like each one would be the last. It was as welcome as it was human, as were the head scratches that went with it.

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I admit I had yet to ‘initiate’ any physical affection with anyone, only received it, but it seemed my otherness, my alienness, let the humans put that aside as a quirk of my species, correctly, I might add.

But until that night, when the possibility of leaving forever, or at least for years, was spoken out loud, I never noticed that the only physicality I actually initiated was violence.

I was instinctively violent toward the failed human, but I was not instinctively affectionate toward even my obviously favorite human. More than that, I actually mentally withdrew myself from her for several days.

Drawing conclusions from this was difficult, as my statistics professor said, ‘If your sample size is small and your standard deviations are large, any conclusion other than no conclusion is bad, and you should feel bad.’ He was a very wise teacher, as teachers went.

So with only a sample size of one, and a known weakness in myself, it was hard to say much with certainty. Aggressive protection seems to be far and away easier to turn to though, than aggressive affection. I remarked this exact thing toward Fauve as our supply of both coffee and potato chips began to dwindle, leaving the white chip bowl nearly empty.

Fauve didn’t say anything right away, thoughtful answers or none seemed to be her preference, again a fine quality that I greatly appreciated. But when she did she asked, “Do you really think of ‘giving hugs’ to be aggressive affection?”

“I do.” I answered.

“Do you not like them?” She asked, and I could tell she was trying hard not to sound hurt, her eyes jerked away from me for a moment though and I almost jumped out of my skin to deny it.

“No, no they’re…” I rubbed the back of my head and wagged my tail while I fumbled for words, “They’re actually great. They feel warm, soft, and feel fuzzy… but in a good way! Ah, I like them a lot. Even more than head scratches!”

That settled her brief flash of anxiety, but I was surprised by what she said next. “Good. For a moment I thought you didn’t like it. I thought maybe I was just doing what that creature was doing. I don’t want to be that person, I keep forgetting you’re an alien, you might not always think the same way we do, feel the same way we do… I just kind of assumed you did, and I shouldn’t have. If I upset you, I’m sorry.”

“I’m still figuring people out.” I said, setting my cup down on the table, I noticed the way the remnants of tan liquid swished and swayed back and forth against the inner wall, “I don’t always know what to say myself. You humans, you’re funny, but… but in a good way,” I hastened to add those last two words, “you didn’t upset me. Not once. I don’t mean to say this is aggressive in a bad way, just that it is… like it’s very forward, close. You actually have to go to someone.” I emphasized that considerably and cocked my head a little. “We don’t do that much. You’ve seen how I respond to crowds. I am… what is that phrase you humans use? Not an air conditioner?”

“Not a fan, Bailey. Not a fan.” She corrected me, a little smile traced over her lips when she corrected my improper application of an idiom.

“Right. That.” I nodded emphatically.

“It just doesn’t feel that aggressive to me.” She replied and filled up her coffee cup. “Aggressive sounds ‘threatening’.” She said while the dark liquid sloshed around into the cup in front of her. “And if you care about somebody, and they like you too, what’s the threat?” She asked.

I got up, I don’t quite know what possessed me to do so, but I admit I felt like I’d neglected something important, accepting the affection of the entire Walker household and offering very little but politeness in return. I approached her side of the table, and though I couldn’t open my arms nearly as wide as a human, she got the point.

Fauve leaned to the side and I gave out my very first hug.