"So then the early teaching is by groups of elders, and then there's probably a more formal schooling after that, right?"

"More or less. Children are raised singly and in groups at the same time. There will be a group of them raised more or less together. But each child will spend a certain amount of time each day with just one elder, learning about different roles and occupations within our society. Or it will be tutoring in a subject the child is having difficulty with.

"Childhood is the time with Rich'ti are given the most leniency. In the beginning they are helped when they stumble. As they get older, it is expected that they will find their weaknesses and work to correct them."

"So, aside from children and adults and elders, are there social groups with their own group identities and roles?"

Sarsh'ta leaned her head to one side, tilting one ear slightly away from him. Kevan interpreted it as a thoughtful look, and she did pause before answering.

"I am not sure how best to explain it. Rich'ti are not as much judged by the group they belong in as much as their position within that group. Status and social standing are judged for each individual.

"Within a group of ten might be ten levels of standing, a hierarchy of sorts. The members of that group determine amongst themselves who defers to who. There will always be one of more prominence, and then the rest will compete to be next in line, on down to the one at the bottom, who will be given the more menial tasks until he or she can prove worthy of better.

"Members of one group would compare their positions to the relative position of members of another group. One naturally defers to one in a higher relative position in another group, unless one can demonstrate superiority in one way or another. In the end, all status is relative to each individual. Things aboard ship get more competitive because of the close proximity for longer times. In a city, for example, one is less likely to keep encountering the same Rich’ti from other groups, so there is less need to determine cross-group status.

“I stand in a unique role on the ship. I am the only government representative here, so my position is less clear. I will have a certain amount of authority until I overstep it and the captain is forced to intervene. After that any are fair to question my authority."

"If two Rich'ti are from very different occupations, how can you tell which is higher ranking?" Kevan asked.

"Well, for one, every job is important," she explained. "We recognize that. But certain jobs are more difficult to do or require more education before they can be performed. In many ways, the harder it is to accomplish the more status one has when they have achieved it. The longer a single Rich'ti can maintain a high ranking position, the more respect they earn from the community as a whole."

"You make it sound as if your job is at risk of being taken from you at any time," he asked, confused. He finished combing the last bit of one foot and realized he had done all the washing. He set the sponge and comb aside and picked up the finer comb. She sat down on the mat again, and he moved back to start at the top of her head as he had done before. He carefully began combing the soft hair out, noting that it became even softer in the process.

"Technically, it is," she admitted. "There is the possibility that one of my colleagues could take my position from me and become the one you deal directly with. However, most of them understand that it would not be a prudent thing to do at this time. Among the scholarly communities, challenges are often made once a project has ended, so that the project itself will not be disrupted by a change of command. Or, if it seems as if the one running the project is making poor decisions, a challenge could be made with the intent to save the project. In most communities, there are similar unwritten rules. There are always those who make challenges when it is not appropriate. It is fairly common that they do not manage to hold positions of authority for very long though. Not only will someone take the position away from them, but they will not earn any respect from those who rank below them if they refuse to wait until a prudent time to do so."

"How is such a challenge made?" Kevan found that the combing was easier this time than it had been before. Few tangles remained after the washing and previous combing, so most of the hair could be combed out rather quickly.

She took a moment to think before answering. He found himself paused in combing as well. He went back to his combing.

"Challenges are made in a variety of ways. Among males, they are most commonly direct, physical confrontations. Or they might be contests. Most contests will tend to start with a verbal confrontation. One might declare himself stronger, or more capable of something. The two will then have to show which is the stronger or more capable or lose status. It is better to accept a challenge and fail than refuse the challenge.

"Especially among our military these challenges are commonplace. The strongest and most capable hold positions of authority, and we have very capable warriors as a result.

"Among females, or some more scholarly occupations, challenges can come in a wider variety. If a project runs too long without results, for example, one might challenge the project leader to explain why. Not having an acceptable response lowers the leader's status. Most times one won't make a challenge like that without a plan for improvement, though.

"The one who made the challenge gains some degree of status, but only if he or she can do better. Not being able to offer some suggestion for improvement implies that the challenge was without merit. A counter-challenge about that brings the character, and not the competence, of the original challenge into question.

"So, explain something to me then," he asked her. "Yesterday, when Rek'at demanded my seat, was that a challenge?"

"I believe that Rek'at was merely trying to imply that he ranked higher than you. He treated you as if your rank was inferior to his. Because Trorkash intervened, he proved little. It is known that you need to learn our ways. I have made it clear to Agronet that Rek'at's actions were petty at best."

"I see," he thought for a moment while he combed. "How am I going to prove my standing here? I don't think I'm as physically strong as the average Rich'ti."

"Most challenges don't come down to brute strength," she explained. "If one becomes physical, you will find it to be more like your wresting or boxing. You will want to stay fit and quick on your feet. Your background with Gravball ought to help you get through it. That was another point in your favor when choosing you."

"Most of the time it will be how you handle yourself in negotiations that will help determine your status," she continued. "How your government responds to the requests you put through to them, and how you handle discussions with our government. How quickly you learn to adapt to our ways will likely be viewed as well. We've never had an alien visitor before, much less arranged for any trade or alliance with one. There is no precedent for any of this yet. You and I will hopefully set that precedent."

She exhaled in a manner that seemed to Kevan like a heavy sigh.

"How bad will it be for you if I fail?" he asked. He stopped combing to come around and look at her directly again. "How much of your career is depending on this?"

"I have put myself in a very prominent position to do this," she replied, meeting his eyes. "A lot of Rich'ti know my name now, and what I am doing. If this falls apart, I will probably lose most of my status, if not all of it. The most important thing I must ask is that you do not lie to us, or try to deceive us in any way Kevan. My people are very suspicious right now. Most don't believe that you will negotiate fairly and honestly. If you lie to us, your lie becomes my own. You will be sent back to your people, negotiations will come to an end, and I will take on the punishment for your crime."

"I don't have any intentions on lying or decieving you, but that hardly seems fair!" he exclaimed. "I am responsible for my actions, not you."

"It is what I have agreed to, in order to bring you here, Kevan. It is what I am willing to do in the hopes that together our people can defeat the Brey-hahd."

Author's Note

Due to some technical challenges there won't be posts today.

Sorry...

"You see," he said, resuming his combing, "humans place higher emphasis on personal responsibility."

"Yet aboard ship your captains are responsible for the actions of their subordinates."

"Well, yes, but that’s one small group, not representative of the whole."

"Your culture has crimes we don’t even have words for. It seems as though there is a lot of crime among your people. Have you considered that perhaps your ideas of personal responsibility don’t work all that well?"

He paused in his combing, saying, "There really isn’t that much crime. Yes, there is some. Yes, in the past there was a larger amount of it, but that’s the past. We’ve moved past the majority of it."

He wanted to change the subject. The easiest ways all seemed more confrontational than he wanted. He didn’t want to debate. He returned to the combing. The motions and the soft fur in his fingers were soothing.

"Well, I will do my best not to offend anyone, he eventually said. "Actually, the biggest concern I think I have is that I don’t know all the laws and the unwritten rules. It’s harder to work within rules you don’t know."

"And the way you deal with that will tell my people a lot about you."

"Somehow that’s not exactly comforting," he said, suppressing a smile.

He finished the remainder of the combing in silence, thinking on some of the answers he was getting. It's survival of the fittest, he concluded privately. The strongest of the pack leads. But what happens to the weakest? Among animals, they are left behind or become easy prey. And it's not just about physical strength here. It seems as if intellect and moral strength are measured too. The physical and intellectual I can understand, but the moral requires that I understand what they consider to be right or wrong.

He found himself thinking of the Nostretta. The bird-like race was not specifically at war with humankind, but tension was high and trade treaties impossible. The Nostretta had seemed an interesting match when they had first been met. Their science team had arrived to study a planet that a human expedition was already researching. Initial contact had gone well, and both sides had sent ambassadors to the planet to conduct negotiations for friendly relations. Then, their mating season began, and negotiations had come to a screeching halt as the human ambassadors looked on in horror.

Initial details had been that the Nostretta were a small-numbered race, due to breeding 'difficulties' that had remained undisclosed. Each Nostretta had both male and female genitals. When mating season began, they went into heat like animals, each one seeking out another to perform the female portion of the mating process. The trouble was, the process of bearing children killed the Nostretta when the young began to eat their way out of the mother after a certain amount of gestation had passed. The death was slow - the young seemed to know not to eat anything vital until they were breaking free. Thus, none of the Nostretta actually wanted to bear children. So when mating season began, they would become all but homicidal, attempting to beat one another into submission to lay their seed. Once they had succeeded and were no longer in heat, a Nostretta would go into hiding to prevent the same thing from happening to them.

After seeing this, human scientists jumped in with suggestions on how they might be able to breed without death or resorting to violence. The offer of help was seen as offensive by the Nostretta, who responded by brutally murdering every human on the planet. Messages were sent warning the humans away, stating that any human who attempted to come into Nostretta space would be killed, and their flesh fed to the Nostretta young. If it weren't for the timing of the Brey-hahd attacks on the outer colonies, Kevan felt sure that war would have started with the Nostretta instead. The reports he had read suggested that the Nostretta found nothing wrong with their mating 'ritual' except for while it was actually happening. There had been an outrage over it by the human community, who'd found it to be barbaric in nature, causing the scientific scramble to offer alternatives in the first place.

He wondered if he'd find anything amongst the Rich'ti that would offend humanity so much that it could damage negotiations. He worried more that the Rich'ti would be offended by Human ways. Their isolation seemed to make them less able to comprehend the reasons why anyone would do things differently than the Rich'ti did. Sarsh'ta was a noted exception.

He finished the last of the combing and realized he'd managed to make it through the entire process without being embarassed by it. He resolved himself to try to be as similarly distracted while the tables were turned.

"Let me get fresh water, then I shall bathe you next," Sarsh'ta told him, taking the bowl from the desk. "On the planet, this is done in a shallow pool of water that cycles fresh into it, but on ships we must make do with bowls instead. I will return in a moment." He nodded silently and she left the room. It did not take her very long to return.

He remained standing while she moved behind him to start on his hair. She tended to it just like he had tended to her fur. The last time someone else had washed his hair was for his last haircut. That had been an impersonal, nearly mechanical act. This was much more personal. Her movements all had a very deliberate, almost ritualistic quality to them.

“Your hair is odd,” she said.

“Oh?”

“Yes. In our fur we have different kinds of hairs. There are shorter, finer ones for insulating, and longer, thicker hairs to, in essence, protect the rest--to help resist rain, for one. Obviously during seasonal changes the ratio of one to the other changes. Your hair, on the other hand, is. Well, for one the hairs on your head are different from what little you have on the rest of your body. All the hair on your head is the same kind.”

“Different evolutional adaptations, I guess,” he said, trying to ignore her comparing the hair around his body.

The rest of his body she washed similarly to how her abdomen had been washed. First the wet sponge and then again with a dry one.

“These are reproductive parts, aren’t they?” she asked when she got to them.

“Yes,” he said, pointedly keeping eye contact. There’s nothing sexual or erotic going on,he reminded himself, just like a medical exam.

“Ours remain internal when not in use. Doesn’t having this dangle out make it more susceptible to injury.”

“And that right there would be a good part of the reasons for the coverings we wear.”

He gritted his teeth, trying to think of anything other than his current situation as she gently sponged him clean. It didn't help that the soft fur on the back of her hands kept brushing against his thighs while she did.

"They seem especially sensitive," she commented. "Don't the coverings chafe as well?"

"It's been theorized that the sensitivity helps keep us interested in mating," he answered. "The covering I wear directly over that area is softer, and keeps other coverings from rubbing against the area and chafing."

"I see," she said. She continued down, washing his thighs and buttocks next. He kept reminding himself that she was an alien and trying to think of the situation in more clinical terms, to keep from having to make more embarrassing explanations.

"This is making you exceptionally uncomfortable," she suddenly said in a questioning voice.

"The last time anyone washed me," he explained, trying not to let a visual of the woman enter his mind, "was as um... at the beginning of a mating ritual. Otherwise, it is not something we commonly do unless someone is injured and unable to bathe themselves."

"I thought mothers washed their children. Could you not think of this in that context?"

"I am trying to, but in our culture mothers stop washing thier children once the children are capable of bathing themselves. It has been a very long time since my own mother bathed me."

"They must be very sensitive indeed to cause so much complication and embarrassment," she said, inspecting his genitals again. He gritted his teeth again, not having expected further contact. She saw his expression and let go, returning to washing the rest of his legs instead.

"I am sorry," she told him. "I did not mean for this to be so difficult for you."

"I am sure it will become routine soon enough," he reassured her. "My discomfort comes from being unaccustomed to it is all. My people usually bathe daily. If it is no trouble to do so, we can have plenty of opportunity for me to be more comfortable with this before we reach the planet."

"I have fewer duties on this ship than the rest of the crew. Although I do help out, and I am expected to do so, I am mainly a passenger here, like you. We can...practice this as often as you like. I agree that you will need to become fairly comfortable with it before planetfall."

"Thank you for being so patient with me," he said, frowning. All this trouble and we're not even there yet...

"Fortunately I understand more about your people than most of mine do, so I understand the need for patience. I think that you and I understand each other at least relatively well. We both have the same motivations. We both want this to work. That will not be the case with everyone you meet."

"Okay, so some will probably want me to fail. That's usually the case with diplomatic matters. There's always some other agenda. What would be the primary motivations for this?"

"The first alien race we encountered was the Drorash."

"--The who? I don't think I've heard of them before."

"The Drorash are now extinct. They were a bizarre race with a culture most races found difficult to understand, or in some cases tolerate. When we met them we had only just colonized our second star system. They came and orbited the colony and introduced themselves.

"What no one knew at the time, not even the Drorash, was that they were carrying an extremely contagious disease. Their religious and mating practices involved sharing blood with each other very frequently. It both spread the disease and somehow managed to delay its incubation.

"It was also an airborne disease, however. In us, without the constant infusions of blood for the disease to counter, it incubated and reached its maturity. Within months every Rich'ti on the colony had died. The planet has since become safe to live on. The disease requires a level of biological complexity beyond the native fauna. But still we do not go there.

"Ever since that encounter, we have minimized contact with other races. It isn't that we fear other races will have the same effect. It is more that we cannot entirely predict what other effects there might be. With each race we encounter we see traits and histories that only encourage isolationism. So far human-kind has been less objectionable than most. Also times have changed. People are more receptive to new ideas. And then there are the Brey-hahd."

"Though we may be fiercely competitive, we also understand the importance of teamwork," she continued. "Many tasks could be performed by one individual, but the work will go more quickly and be more enjoyable when done by a team. The inclusion of more minds can also bring further innovations to better the methods of performing the task. I used this point on several occasions to make others understand the importance of contacting other races battling the Brey-hahd. Humans are the only other race we know of that are in direct conflict with them at the moment. Which is why I was the one making the speeches in the first place, of course. I have studied other races as well, but Humans have always been my primary interest."

"Why?" he asked. "What is it about us that has kept your attention over other races?" He tried to be casual about crossing the room and getting fresh clothes from one of the drawers. He slipped into a comfortable pair of pants and a casual short-sleeved shirt. He didn't worry about socks or shoes just yet, but followed by sitting across from her on the fur mat while she explained.

"You are not to different from us on the overall scope of things, actually," she said. "Your biology is a bit different, but there are many similarities. You birth your young instead of laying eggs, for example. You have a similar enough bone, muscle and circulatory structure to ours that it makes you seem less alien than other races. And then there is your emotions."

"Our emotions?" he asked, surprised. "Most races I've met have emotions. I don't understand."

"I'd have to say it is mostly your sense of humor that has always attracted me," she admitted. "It is not too unlike our own in many instances. You find humor in situations that could otherwise seem displeasant. Humans are stubborn and unwilling to give up or lose hope when the odds seem to be against them. These traits have always appealed to me. Especially now, when we are losing ground to the Brey-hahd. There has been much talk of surrender if the Brey-hahd get to a certain point. I want to believe that I can bring some human stubborness and hope to my people by bringing them together with yours. I want to believe that we are a strong enough race to win against the Brey-hahd. Strong enough to admit that we need help, when we are a people who believe that if you cannot do a job you should step back and follow another. From what I've heard, surrendering to the Brey-hahd is not an option. They only take slaves for as long as they strip the planet of its resources. After that, they kill them. They will only destroy us if we let them."

"I am sorry," she sighed. "I keep coming back to the war, when we are trying to cover ground on cultural differences so you will understand us better. I don't mean to keep getting off the topic."

"Not at all," he assured her. "I think it is just as important that I know what is going on with the Brey-hahd as it is for me to know about the Rich'ti ways. The Brey-hahd threat is the main reason I am here, from what I'm understanding. And my government is not yet aware of just what the Brey-hahd intend. They have not reached one of our planets yet. I have to warn them as well. It will actually help with negotiations, however. They will be more interested in allying themselves solidly against a common enemy, which will make many things easier in the end. I am hoping that my reports to them will help ease their suspicions of you. Your isolationism has made them believe you have something sinister to hide from us. I hope to convey the inaccuracy of that assumption."

"Yes, I suppose that a people who know deceit amongst themselves would worry that another race might keep secrets from them," she mused. "Especially when so many of the races do seem to be keeping secrets from each other."

"And yet there are large parts of your library denied to me," he interjected. "For example, I can't access anything about where your various colonies are."

"That's a security issue, I suppose."

"Yes, well, among other races that's not so different from 'keeping secrets'."

"Point taken."

The intercom panel chimed. "Sarsh'ta, come to the bridge right away." It was Agronet's voice.

"Excuse me, I must go," she apologized.

She rose gracefully and took the bowl with her when she left without another word.

Kevan stood with less grace, and grabbed up his palmpad to tap more notes into. Sarsh'ta had some duties on the ship, instead of being purely a passenger. He wondered if there wasn't some way that he could pitch in. It would give him something to do, a chance at some more social interaction, and maybe it would help the others see him as more than just an alien passenger.

He was able to rule out the medical bay. No, something small. He shrugged to himself and headed for the mess hall. Maybe there was something there he could help with.

He did not see Rosh'tur working anymore, but instead two other Rich'ti were busily cooking in the center of the room, amongst the various equipment. Since he was the only other person in the room, it did not take them long to notice him, and they seemed to exchange a look before one of them, a male, came over to the area of table where Kevan stood waiting.

"What do you need? It is not time for the meal yet. Do you need food?" Kevan noticed that the male was speaking somewhat loudly and choosing the most simple of words. He was suddenly reminded of people who would shout at blind people, as if their hearing was impaired as well, and barely managed to supress a sigh.

"I am trying to learn about various aspects of your culture," he tried, "and would be interested in learning more about the various dishes you prepare. I was hoping I might be able to help with some of the cooking in order to gain first-hand experience with the different foods?"

The Rich'ti looked surprised by the request.

"I do not know if that would be acceptable. I will make an inquiry and someone will let you know when you return for the next meal." The Rich'ti turned and walked back to the center, leaving no opportunity for argument. Kevan realized that he hadn't even gotten the Rich'ti's name. Frustrated, he turned and headed back out into the hallway. He headed back to the library instead of his room, to spend the remainder of the time until lunch doing research. He spent most of the time accessing as much information as he could on Rich'ti foods and how they were prepared. He was also able to get some details on the various equipment he had seen in the mess hall as well.

When he heard the double chime for the meal hour he closed out the data screens he had open and hopped to his feet. He made his way to the mess hall hoping he had something to look forward to.

The same two were there again. Kevan waited a moment and took a place at the end of the line that was being served one it looked like Rich'ti were done filtering in. He didn't want to put himself in a position where a male behind him might feel the need to assert himself by pushing Kevan out of the way.

"You again," the male said when Kevan reached him.

"Shurgrec, right?" Kevan said, thinking he recognized the sausage soup dish. "Half a serving, please." He was careful not to smile the grin he felt on the inside. The male gave him a suprised look that turned suspicious.

"I said I had come to learn, didn't I? Has there been any word about my request?" he asked, changing the subject deliberately.

"Yes. Rosh'tur has ...volunteered to allow you to assist her," the male said as he slopped a ladle of soup into the bowl. "On the first night shift," he added with what Kevan thought was a sneer.

Kevan paused a moment, calculating. Most races seemed to divide ship time into either three or four watch rotations. The twenty-hour Rich'ti day divided neatly by four. He counted out in his head trying to calculate.

"So in about six hours, then?"

"Yes."

Kevan thanked him and took his bowl to sit and eat, relieved that he had guessed the right time of day. If I can get used to waking up at different times of their day all the time I can do this, he thought as he picked an empty spot with room around it that he hoped wouldn't encroach on anyone else's space.

He felt some relief when he saw Sarsh'ta enter the mess hall and head directly towards him. She stopped briefly for a bowl of food, and he was surprised to see her bypass the line entirely and demand a bowl be brought to her directly. He saw the male Rich'ti look at her with a suspicious and calclating look before bringing her the shurgrec and returning to serving the others at the line. Kevan noticed that a few others in the room were watching Sarsh'ta. He didn't know whether to be relieved that they weren't all eyeing him, or concerned that the attention seemed to have been diverted to his one sure ally amongst them.

"Something wrong?" he asked tenatively, between mouthfuls of soup. He tried to sound casual, and not let the worry edge his voice.

"Agronet has challenged me on a decision. You will have to carry one of these while on the ship." She handed him a small wristband. He had seen that she wore one, but hadn't paid much attention to it. It was mostly hidden by the fur on her arms, but he had seen it during the bathing. He hadn't thought to comment on it then, having been distracted by other topics of conversation. Now, he looked over the small circlet of metal with what appeared to be a magnetic latch to close it.

"What is it?" he finally asked, before slipping it into place around his wrist and closing the latch.

"It is a locator band," she replied. "It is so that any crewmember can be found if they are needed at any given point. As you are not a member of this crew, I saw no reason for you to wear one. Especially since the ship's internal sensors have been able to make the distinction between human and Rich'ti ever since your initial medical scan was downloaded."

"I see," he said, raising an eyebrow. "I didn't realize the scans were for anything more than medical reasons."

"Neither had I. Agronet, however, considers you a security risk. He also seems to feel the need to impress himself upon this crew for the duration of his post to this ship. I had hoped to avoid to avoid some of this. I've found that I'm usually less likely to be challenged by someone I'm mating with."

Kevan couldn't help but spit out the soup in his mouth in astonishment.

"You're mating with him?" he asked, once he'd regained some composure.

"He chose me, Kevan," she replied, unphased. "I did not refuse. I thought it might ease things if I simply accepted. He is a strong male, I would be glad to bear his child. He is, however, a difficult one to deal with on a professional level."

"But doesn't that automatically put you in a position beneath him?" he wondered aloud.

"No, Kevan. If anything, it puts me in a higher position with the rest of the crew, as their ranking officer considers me worthy of bearing his offspring. Until today, I was easily maintaining a level position with him on this ship because of it."

"You see," he tried to clarify, "we humans feel it is a really bad idea to mix sex and politics. It makes things far more complicated for everyone when it happens."

"You humans also cannot seem to separate mating from affection, Kevan. I am mating with Agronet. I am not, as you would put it, in love with him."

"Okay, right," he said, still somewhat astonished at her admission. "I don't mind wearing the bracelet if it helps show that I am not a security risk."

"It's the principal of it," she said. "I made a decision. He has overturned it. That leaves me open to potential challenge by other crew members now, regardless of my current mating involvement. I will need to impress myself on the other crew in order to maintain my status here."

"It sounds a bit like a constant struggle. Doesn't the constant competition sometimes get in the way?"

"Now and then, perhaps. But it does encourage individual excellence. I have read that among your kind there are those who are supported by society yet contribute nothing. Those who are perfectly capable, that is."

"I suppose it would-- That's... not the same. We do have a a social welfare system, although it is not at all very widely used. There are times when people have needs, either after a disaster of some kind, or due to temporary unemployment. We take care of our people in times of need. And we also care for our elderly."

"As do we. The elderly were not what I was talking about. In your past in particular there have been many periods where large number of people subsisted solely on the support of others. Our culture has little room for those who cannot provide their own means with either a skill, or a trade, or labor.

"Your government has an office where people can go to request assistance, and they are cared for at the expense of the general public. To a Rich'ti, this would be devastatingly humiliating. Not being able to support one's self suggests terrible weakness. Major injury would be one exception, but even then most will work around an injury before admitting defeat."

"Then admitting that you're not winning against the Brey-hahd, and contacting another race for any kind of help must be very difficult. I can see why some of you would see my presence ...an embarrassment?"

"Technically, yes," she nodded. "But I have managed to convince my government that it is far less embarassing to build a relationship with another race than it is to be defeated by the Brey-hahd. There are some who have already accepted a defeat as probable and just want to die with dignity. Others are searching for ways to win on our own, rather than admit we need help. Fortunately, I have managed to convince our leader and a majority of his council that allying ourselves with your kind is a viable option. It helps that the current Takor is unwilling to leave any chances when it comes to our survival. He is entertaining a lot of ideas right now that would otherwise be unheard of."

"Such as?" Kevan wondered what could possibly seem more strange to them than himself.

"I'm not at liberty to say right now. Many of the things have not yet been disclosed to the general public for security reasons. While we rely on the communications networks of other races to know what they are doing, we do not wish the Brey-hahd to do the same to us. And while I might trust that you have no intent to deceive us, the majority of the council would rather be more cautious."

"I understand," he said.

"I don't remember 'cooking' as one of the highlights on your profile, Kevan," she said, abruptly changing the subject. "So why the sudden interest?"

"I am capable enough at it, I've been living alone for most of my adult life and managed to feed myself," he laughed. "Mostly it seemed a good way to start. You just said that Rich'ti have little room for those who cannot provide their own means. It also gives me a chance to interact with more Rich'ti than just you. I do need to have a feel for how I will be received when negotiations begin."

"Besides," he continued, "I can only spend so much time reading the news and encyclopedia entries when you have other duties. I need some duties of my own to break up the monotony of space travel."

"You had also mentioned having duties on the ship, not being 'just a passenger'," he continued. "I'd rather have some way to contribute. Otherwise I'm just going to end up feeling in the way. And if I can help avoid others seeing me that way then that's a good thing."

"Well, you were given to the least desirable shift."

"That depends entirely on perspective, and brings me to a question for you. How much time to Rich'ti spend sleeping?"

"Most often about nine hours a day. Some get by with as little as eight, some take closer to ten."

"Out of a twenty hour day."

"Yes."

"You see, in our twenty-four hour day, most sleep seven or eight. So I'd need about five of your hours for every sixteen of your hours. I'm guessing what would work best for me would end up being, from your perspective, a four hour night with maybe a two hour nap during the day. I don't know how well I'd be able to adapt to your sleep cycles. If nothing else, it means that I can adjust my sleeping schedule to fit any five-hour duty watch."

"So you only spend a third of your day sleeping? I wasn't aware of that."

"Some humans would see spending half your life asleep as wasted time."

"Our bodies require a certain amount of sleep," she replied. "Besides that, we are of the belief that we can perform our duties to the best of our abilities if we have had the appropriate amount of rest time. There is also the dreaming."

"Dreaming?"

"Yes. We believe that sleep is the time when our inner self can meditate and reflect. It is one time when we are truely at peace with ourselves while we are still in this living form. Dreaming is considered a sign of a successful meditation."

"Interesting," he said, pushing his nearly empty bowl aside and grabbing his palmtop from his pocket. "Some of human cultures have been known to incorporate dreaming in a similar framework. Some have even based their entire religious philosophy off of it, actually. Is there other things the Rich'ti believe in..." he looked up a word. "in concordance with this?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, what do you think happens to you when you die, for example? Is there any specific religion amongst the Rich'ti?" He realized that the fact they had a word for 'religion' suggested that they might have one. He'd noticed that religious beliefs were often the breaking point between two races. Human had fared well with this, however, because they had so many varied beliefs amongst themselves already. It was often easy to send someone of a similar enough belief to be the diplomat with another race. He'd always marvelled at how two races could develop independently and yet end up coming to nearly the same understanding when it came to explaining the purpose of life and what happens at the end of it. Usually the major difference of opinion was in how life originally began. Humans were the only race so far to believe in the existence of a god or gods.

"When we die we reach a final state of peace," she told him. "we become one with the stars. Some believe we become one with the entire universe."

"Are there some who believe differently?"

"There are a few slight variations of belief, but we all understand the same fundamentals," she replied.

"Gasses come together to form stars which eventually die and create other gasses. Our bodies are formed out of the same matter, and when we die our bodies decay back into that matter." She paused for a moment before continuing, "And we have a spirit, which is one tiny piece of a greater whole. We take what we experience and what we do back to the whole with us when we die.

"The universe is made up of our experiences and deeds. If we are generally good, then the universe will be a good place. If we are bitter and hateful, then the universe can be a dark and evil place. We believe that both good and evil exist, and that there will always be both. As we have ventured into the stars and met other races, some have been concerned that other races have not been doing their part to create balance."

"So to balance out the wicked aliens you have to be better, right?" Kevan teased.

"I might not have said it exactly like that... There is more to it than that, but I have never been very religious. I don't think I'm the one to explain it best. There are temples in the capital. Perhaps you should visit them after you've had some time to settle in when we arrive. They are beautiful, peaceful places. I have read about some temples and ...monasteries on Earth that might not be terribly dissimilar."

"I'll end up spending some library time on the subject first, but definitely."

"You are spending much of your free time at the library then?" she asked.

"Yes," he replied. "I'm trying to fill in the blanks and get some of the basics out of the way at least. I like to have a working knowledge of something before I start jumping headlong into it. There wasn't a whole lot more than language in the package that was sent to us. I learned to speak and read your language with the aid of a few linguistic experts, but little was mentioned on cultural aspects of the Rich'ti."

"I must apologize for that," she nodded. "When we put the package together, my colleagues and I were given strict instructions to keep it very basic and give you enough to be able to speak to us, and read our writings. We had a short time to put it together as it was. Including more would have been both difficult and politically complicated. I am actually quite impressed that you were able to achieve such a level of mastery in such a short time."

"The linguists were very impressed with what we had to work with, actually," he admitted. "We were able to get most of the basics of speaking Rich'ti down in the first month. After that, we purposely only spoke to each other in Rich'ti and began work on the written aspect. Most languages seem to have some fundamentals in sentence structure and grammar. Once those fundamentals have been learned it starts getting easier. I've always had a..." he sighed, momentarily wishing they had a word for 'knack' in Rich'ti. "an ability to learn languages with some ease," he finished.

"So there are already other humans with a similar mastery of the language then?" she tilted her head curiously.

"Three others actually. The top three experts in linguistics involving alien languages and dialects." He listed their names off in succession. "They will be taking what they've learned and teaching others who might be involved with negotiations, as well as updating the computer program we use to help translate for those who won't have time to learn."

"Some of the others will be impressed at how quickly your people are understanding our language."

"Well, it does help that you only have the one," he pointed out. "Because we have so many languages, we're more accustomed to learning others."

"I suppose that would be the case."

They chatted for a while before Rich'ti started filtering out. They headed to the exercise facility, which was largely empty. She showed him how most of the equipment worked while they compared physiology and which equipment would work properly enough for him and which would not.

Even Sarsh'ta was stronger than he was, he noticed with some disappointment. She was, like most Rich'ti, also more agile than he was as well. He did note that their center of gravity was higher proportionally, so his wrestling experience would be useful if he found himself needing it.

Some of the exercises he couldn't do properly because he was still recovering. As they talked he gathered the impression that they recovered from injury faster. It seemed like the longer they talked the more things there were that Rich'ti inherently did better.

Stamina was one place where it seemed humanity could keep up with, and it appeared the Rich'ti were less philosophical by nature than humans. His time on the debate team at university would likely come in handy, he concluded. Our strengths are our adaptability and creativity and intellectualism.

He was fairly sure he concealed his thinking from her well enough. She didn't seem to catch on to the conclusions he was coming to. If nothing else their expressions were different enough that his were likely just as much a mystery to her as her expressions and gestures were to him.

The time passed quickly, and he stopped on several occasions to tap quick notes into his palmtop. He knew he'd have to go in later and elaborate further, but gave himself enough to jog his memory on the things he specifically wanted to make note of for himself or in his report. He had initally planned to take a nap before the dinner chime, but was unwilling to forgo the chance to learn more from Sarsh'ta while she was available to him.

By the time the dinner bell chimed, they had gone back to his room and he had changed clothes in front of her without it even occurring to him to be embarassed. Between the bathing ritual from before and the intent conversation they were having, he hardly even realized what he was habitually doing until he was in fresh clothes. He chuckled inwardly at that, reassured that he might find the future bathing rituals less awkward after all.

He filled her in on some details and questions she had about Humans as well. That discussion spilled over into dinner, where an interesting point of contention came up.

"I have heard of these creatures you call dogs," she told him. "I understand you enslave them and keep them in your homes?"

"Yes. I had one myself. They are not slaves though, they are..." he couldn't find a Rich'ti word in his palmpad, and ended up using the human word for it, "pets. They live in our homes with us and we care for them and treat them as if they were members of the family," he explained.

"Do they wish this?"

"I don't know. They seem to like it well enough. They are not sentient as you and I are, so they cannot say it in words. My own dog is very affectionate though."

"Are these not wild animals normally?"

"Yes," he replied, nodding. "Although the ones we keep in our homes are tame. They would be unlikely to survive in the wild nowadays."

"Then why did you not allow them to remain free in the first place instead of confining them? This practice has always seemed very cruel to me. Why would you take a creature's freedom away like that? You also have something where you put animals into cages so that humans can come and stare at them while they are trapped. It sounds horrible!"

"No, it's not like that. For one thing, the cages are set up as proper habitats, not just a box. A lot of the animals would have ended up extinct otherwise. They're cared for and treated well, and given conditions to best approximate their wild conditions.

"And in the last ...hundred years or so," he said, not finding a specific word for century even in his palmpad, "we've been setting more and more land aside for wilderness preserves, returning it to it's natural states."

"That's another thing that doesn't make sense to us. We live in concert--in harmony with our environment. Your kind is controlling and destructive to the planets you live on. You have so many words for different kinds of 'pollution'... something we don't have so specific a word for."

"Most of the races we've encountered have gone through a similar industrialistic phase," he countered. "We're hardly unique in that aspect."

"Just because other races do something doesn't make it good."

"I didn't mean to say pollution was a good thing. It isn't. It's one of those mistakes that we didn't understand at the time. We're still working on cleaning it up, and if you look at our colonies in contrast to Earth you'll see it's not a pattern that's continuing."

"When we first started to industrialize," she said, leaning forward, "we worked with the natural laws. Yes, we burned fuels for power, but from the beginning we supplemented. We harnessed wind and water and solar energy. I have read about human energy consumption, about the kinds of energy processing done just to create heat--an amazingly wasteful process.

"In the earlier parts of our history the land and air and water were all sacred to us. We came from it, and we return to it, just as with the stars in the sky. We cared for it because it was a part of us, a part of who we were and who we are. This is still a value we carry with us. Our ships are more efficient than yours not purely because we have the technology to do so, but because we are not wasteful.

"Forgive me, I'm talking like a male," she said. "I do understand what you are saying. I bring these points up not only because I am curious about them, but to prepare you. You will find our females will listen to what you have to say and consider it. They will ask you questions trying to understand. The males, however, will more often try to put you on the defensive, to challenge you with an argument. I believe you have the skills to counter these arguments, to debate them in a non-threatening way, and that did play a part in your selection. I just want you to be prepared for them."

"Now that I better understand the more competitive nature within your culture, I will be less likely to step back if challenged," he told her. "I am not looking to engage anyone in a challenge, but if I am approached with one I will respond accordingly, I assure you."

"Just be careful," she said. "You don't know us well enough yet to really be able to read us. Body language can be a very important indicator on how intent the challenger is in winning. You are tough enough amongst your own kind, I am sure, but the physical differences between our races will make it more difficult for you to win a challenge that becomes physical in nature."

"I am aware of that," he nodded. "Perhaps after we have finished eating you could help me further in understanding the signals within Rich'ti body language?"

"I have about an hour more before I have... some things I will need to attend to before sleep," she replied. "We can see how much we can cover and then continue tomorrrow."

"Alright." He finished his meal quickly, anxious to begin.

He calculated that he could get a couple hours of sleep after she left and he uploaded his notes, so he would still be rested for his shift with Rosh'tur. He recognized most of the dinner from his research in the library. There was a meat, not unlike chicken, that they called 'eindech' and looked like a cross between a chicken and some reptile when it was in the wild. The eindech seemed like it had been baked in some herbs. He knew the names of some of the herbs, but didn't know yet what they all tasted like to be able to identify which they might be. On the side was a vegetable dish of a mashed 'ledund' which looked very much like acorn squash but tasted closer to carrots. He recognized the taste of nukra'tet sap mixed in with it, making it taste wonderful. There was also a pile of small yellow discs that looked like sliced carrots, ironically enough, but were crunchier like water chestnuts and tasted more like beets. He thought he recognized it as 'razido' but he wasn't positive.

After they had finished eating, they headed back to his room and began going through the various body language of the Rich'ti. Kevan would tell her a specific emotion or circumstance and she would adopt the appropriate attitude and physical stance. He put notes down for each that they covered, and stopped several times to discuss the differences. In the end, he was adopting the stances too so that they could compare the differences. They didn't get very far at all before she needed to leave.

"We will continue this tomorrow," she assured him as she left.

"I look forward to it," he replied before the door closed behind her. Afterwards he sat for a bit, flushing out his notes from the day before getting out his larger computer and uploading them onto it. He noted that he already had a good deal more than he'd had before coming aboard the Rich'ti ship. Their language had managed to tell him a few things about him, along with the brief bit that had warned him that they didn't shake hands, but he'd felt like he was entering their culture practically uninformed compared to his usual encounters with other races. He let his mind wander, sorting through some of what he now knew as he put the computer into it's case and tucked it away in the drawer. Then he set an alarm chime for himself and slipped out of his clothes to take a nap. Lying back on the soft fur mat he wondered how patient Rosh'tur would be with him compared to Sarsh'ta. When the ball's in play, be prepared for all the possible moves they could make, his father's voice rose up in his thoughts. If you hit the heavy grav and it brings you down hard on the field, just remember you've got a lighter grav again in the next strip. Somehow the words seemed to give him some reassurance as he drifted off to sleep.

Chapter 4

He arrived at the mess hall a few minutes early. Rosh'tur came in just moments after. She and the two cooks ending their shift exchanged nods and swapped places without a word. Kevan strode up and stood just inside the prep area.

"So, you are not late. That's a good start."

"I take this seriously. Being late would be ...disrespectful both of the opportunity and of you. I have been studying up on names of foods and the items used to prepare them. I'm expecting some different techniques, but I'm also expecting that some things are universal."

She paused at that. "Yes, I suppose some things might be. We'll see. We'll serve two meals during our five-hour shift. They will be dinner for some, breakfast for others. If you haven't noticed already, meals are rotated around. Today we'll be serving 'arckresh', which is a breakfast item, and 'kruteck', a dinner item."

Arckresh he was familiar with. It was somewhat similar to an omelet, and was one he happened to have read about. The other he wasn't familiar with, and he admitted so. She left it for later.

They had an hour to prepare the breakfast. Some of the time they spent reviewing the items and ingredients they'd use, along with technique. The eggs were whipped, and then cooked in oil with the ingredients folded in. A flour mixture was added as the whole thing was turned to give it a light breading.

Kevan explained the omelet to her, how it was made light and fluffy. To her credit, she seemed curious about it, and conceded that if he made her one later she would try it. The hour passed quickly before they started preparing in earnest before Rich'ti came in to eat.

He found that the cooking tools they used were not too different from ones that he might have used for similar purposes, except for their handles. Where handles on human cooking tools were usually long and slender, the Rich'ti ones were more of a curved half-circle that the hand fit into. His own hand didn't fit quite as comfortably as Rosh'tur's seemed to, but it was not uncomfortable. It took him some time to get used to the grip. Some had indentations where the individual fingers could rest to enhance the grip. He noted that Rosh'tur'si fingers were longer than his own. They also used wider, shallower bowls than he was accustomed to for mixing ingredients.

The long flat area he had thought was the grill, essentially was the same as he had seen in restaraunt kitchens back home. One area of it had slightly recessed circles that pans fit snugly into. There were short, flat handles off the sides of the pans for lifting them with, instead of the longer handles Kevan was used to. Lids for them had an area you could slip your fingers into to grip, instead of the usual human knob on top.

They didn't have to do much cutting of anything, he found. He'd read about the machine they had that prepared food items for cooking, which he'd associated in his mind as the mother-of-all food processors. It apparently trimmed fat off meat, cut nearly anything into cubes, slices, or strips, and could grind or crush things too. It was self-cleaning and had several drawers that would slide out to accept whatever you were needing tended to. Then you programmed it and another drawer slid out with a bowl containing the finished product. He found himself impressed by the uniform nature of the diced vegetables and meat they used in the arckresh. Rosh'tur explained that there were smaller versions of the machine in most places that could prepare one item at a time. This one was designed to handle the needs of a kitchen that served a larger group, and therefore could prepare several items at once, and in much larger quantities.

He found that he quickly became hot and sweaty while working in such close proximity to the grill. Rosh'tur, on the other hand, didn't seem to notice the heat any more than to be sure it was the right setting for cooking on. Most of the time, she worked silently and quickly, although he suspected that he was slowing her down just a bit. He hoped that he was making up for it with his own work. She watched over him with a sharp eye, especially in the beginning, to be sure he didn't overcook the Arckresh.

Rosh'tur explained that this was not a busy shift, so they would not be full to capacity for either of the meals they'd serve. Shortly before Rich'ti started filtering in she suggested he stand back and let her do most of the serving.

He ended up deciding it was good advice. Many of the patrons gave him mistrustful looks. Several of them seemed almost leery of the food, but they had no way to know how much or how little involvement he'd actually had and what Rosh'tur had done herself.

It occurred to him that Rosh'tur might have been the only cook to work solo. He wondered if that had to do with her or the least-busy shift.

"Is most cooking done by pairs of cooks?" he asked once the eating crew was mostly seated.

"Typically. On a ship this size, at any rate. Larger ships with larger crews either have larger mess hall with larger staffs, or they simply have more mess halls. In general this size of mess hall is preferable to larger, more impersonal ones. I have usually preferred to work alone, and the shift allows for it."

"Am I intruding on that?"

She laughed in response, more loudly than he might have liked. "No, I find you curious, and sometimes even amusing. I tend to see the same faces all the time. I like different perspectives, and we do not get guests often. Once you settle into the routine, we'll have some time to talk over the days before we drop you off."

"Now then," she continued scanning the eating crew members, "everyone is accounted for that usually comes in for this meal shift. If you are hungry, we will make two more servings for ourselves before we begin cleaning."

He nodded, realizing that the smell of all the food cooking had made his stomach take notice. He had been too distracted by conversation to finish eating most of the meals he'd had earlier. She stood back and had him cook the two servings without any assistance or comment from her and then seemed to be appraising it while she ate.

"How is it?" he asked between mouthfuls. To him, the Arckresh had looked like an omlet, but tasting it was an entirely different experience than he had expected. The meat they had added to it was very tender and had an almost smoked flavor to it. The three vegetables all had a slight crispness to them, and were mild in flavor. The other ingredient had not turned out to actually be eggs, however, and tasted more like a cross between mozzarella cheese and orange juice. She had explained that it was an 'excretion' from an animal. He fervently hoped that she meant something akin to milk. The whole thing wasn't half bad, but required a little getting used to.

"I thought for a moment there that you might overcook it, but I have to say you did rather well for your first time cooking our food," she replied.

He caught himself grinning as her expression changed to one of surprise. He quickly apologized, explaining the difference between Human and Rich'ti expressions for gladness.

"I'm still learning all the differences," he said. "So please forgive me if I make some strange gestures or had odd expressions."

"I will keep it in mind," she replied, seeming amused.

Once they had finished eating, they cleaned up the cooking area before gathering the bowls from where the other Rich'ti had left them, and washing them up. After seeing the food processor, he was surprised to find that they didn't have some marvellous machine to handle the cleanup. Instead he found they washed each dish by hand dunking them in a basin first as a rinse, then wiping over them with a strange, slightly gritty mixture that reminded him of sandy mud. Then they were dunked into two more rinse basins before being dried with a towel.

"When you're planetside, you'll find that the children get this responsibility," she explained when he asked about it. "These bowls are all wooden, which we prefer over metal wherever we can." He realized that the bowls they had used in cooking had been wooden too, and only the pan and grill had been metal. Even the wisk-like tool had been made of wood.

"We have experimented with machines to handle the washing of dishes," she continued, "but most either wasted water or dried out the wood. In the end, it has always been best to just wash them with estro," she pointed at the muddy, sandy mixture.

They took some of the time between meals to clean all the eating surfaces, wiping them down. Kevan explained that humans used mostly metal and synthetic materials--not knowing if they had a word for plastic--for cooking and serving food, and that there were machines for almost all the washing. It made it easy to ensure everything was sanitary.

"Sanitary, sterile," Rosh'tur commented, "these are cold words. We prefer wood because it makes for a more enjoyable cooking experience. If I were preparing something for a special occasion I would even be doing the cutting and chopping by hand. It makes it more special and not so... processed and artificial."

"Most of our food is rather heavily processed. It makes the whole thing faster, more consistent, and more efficient for us. Not that there's anything wrong with taking time to do something right, it's just that we tend to have too much else going on. We do have some that specialize in cooking for others, and those are prized individuals."

"So your kind don't consider food something special? I know some races just eat nutrition paste with no flavor at all."

"Well, yes, mostly we do. And for special occasions and the like especially. And flavor is certainly something we all crave. But cooking isn't something everyone takes time to be good at. Some would rather someone do the cooking for them. But it isn't always practical, so if machines and technology can reduce the preparation time to just a few minutes, that's seen as an acceptable compromise."

"Well then. Next we will take some time to prepare food for others. We will take time to do it right, because to do so shows respect for others. An enjoyable meal is a gift we can present to the crew as an unspoken way of thanking them that we aren't the ones cleaning reactor spaces, for example."

Kevan laughed, having to turn his head away to conceal the smiling in the process. He regained his composure and turned back. "I agree completely. Let's cook."

They spent the next couple of hours preparing the kruteck, which reminded Kevan of a stir-fry meal back home. As if to prove her point, Rosh'tur insisted that they do all the cutting themselves instead of using the machine. He worked, undaunted by it, and found that the even rhythm he fell into with the knife was actually somewhat relaxing.

There were eight different items that went into the kruteck, along with five different spices. Most of the ingredients were vegetables, some of which he recognized from his research. There were two different kinds of meat as well. Like a stir-fry, they started by cooking the sliced strips of meat in some sort of oil and then added the vegetables in and order that Rosh'tur specified. He noted that the only real difference to a stir-fry was that there was no rice to serve with it. When he had the chance to taste it, after everyone had been served, he found that it actually didn't taste too different from a stir-fry either. He almost thought he tasted a hint of teryiaki to it.

After they had eaten small servings themselves, they cleaned the grill and the rest of the cooking area again before collecting and washing the dishes as people finished. He noted that this time she collected the bowls directly, and that the Rich'ti knew to leave it at the table instead of stack them.

"They know we are at the end of my shift," she told him when he inquired. "When we are in the middle of the shift, we have plenty of time to wash things up in-between. At the end of the shift we have less time to clean up before the next shift begins. It is a matter of pride to never leave a mess for the next shift. I always leave a clean kitchen for them."

He made a point of working hard in the cleaning effort. It did not take long. When they finished she thanked him for his help. He thanked her for the chance to be helpful.

The next shift showed up, one male and one female. The male went out of his way to inspect everything, as if searching for some kind of human contamination. Rosh'tur left without saying anything more, and Kevan left, knowing this next shift wasn't going to find anything to complain about.

Sarsh'ta would be asleep, he decided, calculating the time in his head as he walked back to his room. It was night time on the ship. The hall lighting was dimmed. The five Rich'ti hours was nearly eight human hours. He was a bit tired out. He could sleep through this shift, and wake up with the daytime crew.

He slept what to him felt like a regular night's sleep before meeting Sarsh'ta at breakfast.

"Four more days," she informed him.

"I'm hoping to be acclimated to your day cycle by then," he said. "My shoulder and ribs are already feeling quite a bit better, so I'm hoping to be able to do some heavier exercise for the rest of the trip. Between mess hall duty and working out and time split between you and the library, I think I have plenty to occupy my time..."

"Well, there's at least one shift per day you can have me mostly for yourself," she said.

"Perfect. We'll see if I ever run out of questions for you. I have a list of them for today. Maybe we can get started on some of them while bathing?"

To his surprise, the next four days seemed to fly by. He managed to avoid any altercations with the crew, and had Sarsh'ta answer a good majority of the initial questions he'd compiled. He also found himself getting more comfortable with the bathing ritual, although he suspected that a lot of it had to do with their conversation.

He found out some more information on where he'd be staying while living on the planet. Sarsh'ta had made arrangements with her own community to host him. He found that they had an even more communal society than he had thought. He would have a room to himself, which had been adapted to include a human-styled bathroom. However, the room was off of a communal center, with other rooms that Rich'ti lived in. He compared it to human apartment buildings, but found out that sleeping and mating were really all that the Rich'ti did in their private rooms, and that wasn't always the case with mating either. The Rich'ti spent most of their day grouped with other Rich'ti, either by profession or community.

The community that Sarsh'ta was a part of wasn't the one she had grown up in, but the one she had adopted while attending school for her career. Thus, the other "Human experts" would have a chance to meet him and compare notes. He momentarily had the words lab rat run through his mind when she mentioned it, but brushed it aside. He could understand their curiosity. He felt the same himself.

The community wasn't limited to just the Human experts, however. There were also some who had other professions. Like most communities, this one included the children of the males there or males who had been raised there, and the elders who had retired. Kevan came to understand that these communities ate together, played together, and spent most of the time that wasn't specifically devoted to their careers together. Sarsh'ta told him that it would be expected for him to be a part of the community and that the elders would be available to him to explain things when she was not. She mentioned that she would have to leave from time to time to handle things at the capital with the Takor and his other advisors, in order to start finding out what kind of negotiations they were planning to initiate with the Humans through Kevan.

The last night, before they were due to arrive on the planet, Kevan spent some time compiling a report to send home. He found that there were some details he chose to leave out, to begin with, not wanting to see his own kind immediately try to exploit the already untrusting Rich'ti. He did mention their dislike for lying and deceit, and advised that his government be nothing but direct in their dealings with the race, or they would lose out on the opportunity for some advanced technology. He knew that would get their attention, and described a few of the machines he'd seen that were more advanced than his own kind had achieved so far.

He genuinely enjoyed his last work shift with Rosh'tur. They made a slightly fancier dish. It was cubes of meat dipped in something resembling honey before being rolled in a flour and spice batter and fried in oil. They were served with small wooden skewers as eating utensils.

Many of the Rich'ti had gotten used to him by now. None scowled at him. A couple females even stopped to wish him luck on his assigment. One male even said, "You are an interesting alien. Not what I expected. I do hope you aren't a spy." Kevan understood that to be the closest to a compliment he should expect from that one.

"I have enjoyed our time together, Kevan," Rosh'tur admitted when the shift was over. In the past I have had this shift alone mostly by choice. It has been a pleasure to share it with you. If the rest of your kind are like you, then there is hope for you yet."

He did not smile at her, nodding their rolling nod instead. She did not attempt any human expression, which he took as a good sign. When Sarsh'ta had attempted a smile when they first met he had taken it as a gesture of trying to make him more comfortable. Now he didn't want them trying to mimic him. He didn't want to be seen as a source of change. Bringing them new ideas and new perspectives would be fine, but the last thing he wanted was for them to perceive him as some agent of infectious change. More and more he felt as though he would be able to succeed.

Sarsh'ta had told him the time they expected to come into view of their homeworld, and agreed to take him to an observation bay where he could get a look at it from orbit. He spent the hour prior to that pulling his belongings back out of the various drawers and hammocks about the room, checking to be sure that his computer was securely nestled in its casing. He separated his dirty clothes from his clean ones, making note of which suitcase his laundry was stashed in. He dressed himself in a proper suit this time, instead of the jumpsuit he'd arrived on the ship in. He was just surveying his pile of luggage when the door chimed. He realized that Sarsh'ta was early as he opened the door panel for her to enter.

"I was going to help you pack, but it looks as if you have already finished," she said as she surveyed his efforts.

"I thought I'd get it out of the way," he replied. "I don't like to rush through things at the last minute if I can avoid it, and I wanted plenty of time to watch our approach to the planet."

"How much of a view do you want?" she asked.

"What do you mean?"

"There's plenty of areas of the ship that have windows to the outside, but the observation bay is a much larger view. There are some Rich'ti who are not comfortable with feeling that close to being out in open space."

He raised an eyebrow at that.

"I've never been out in open space myself," he admitted, "although I know that most of our ship crews are trained to handle it so they can make repairs to the ship if needed. I'd like to see what you are talking about, however. If I find myself uncomfortable with it, we can always relocate."

"Very well," she said. "Come with me then."

He followed her to another portion of the ship, one that he hadn't been in before. They went into a small, long room that he estimated would have held around twenty Rich'ti standing side-by-side. After the door had closed behind them, Sarsh'ta tapped at another panel, next to the one for the door, and the lights went out in the room. A moment later, half the room vanished and it seemed as if the room he was in had opened up into space. He could vaguely see the wall behind him, and the floor beneath him, but the wall in front of him and the ceiling seemed as if they were entirely gone. He found himself taking an instinctive step backwards before being caught up in the breathtaking view of their homeworld and it's two moons.

"No... this is good," he said, staring. The planet was blue and green striped with long, narrow strips of white and gray clouds. There were no indications of major storm centers, at least not on the visible side.

One moon, the smaller one, was in direct sun, showing a landscape of craters and mountain ranges. The other moon was larger and shaded by the planet. That moon's surface was dark gray but covered in a network of lights. He could make out what had to be cities almost sprinkled at random over the surface.

He looked back at the first. "You've only settled one of the moons? Or is it just at the other side of it?"

"That one is unstable physically. The settled one is mineral rich and has no atmosphere and less gravity. Most of our heavy industry is located there where there is no environment to damage. Toxic chemicals can be used and buried there without affecting anything. "

A group of ships approached. Most were of similar flying-wedge shapes, and all appeared larger. The lead ship looked almost like two ships put together perpendicularly, creating a cross shape seen head on. It was noticeably larger than the others.

"That is Agronet's flagship," Sarsh'ta explained. As the ship drew closer he was better able to judge its actual size. It was big. The human fleet had a couple of dreadnoughts about the same size, and only maybe three fighter carries that might have been slightly larger.

A shuttle came around from the back of it and started approaching. "The shuttle will take us to the planet. Agronet will accompany us and will be with us for your formal presentation. We should go meet him at the shuttle hangar," she said.

He blinked as the view behind him suddenly disappeared, replaced with the dark gray wall he'd seen on that side of the room when he'd entered. He now noticed that the whole side of the room seemed to be made up of tiny pieces of something that looked similar to a smoked glass. He wondered briefly how it worked.

"What about my belongings?" he asked as they left the room.

"They will be brought to the shuttle and then unloaded for you when we arrive where you'll be staying," she replied. "We will make a stop at the capital first, for your formal introduction to our leader and his other advisors. It will be brief, I'm sure. After that, we will go to where you will be living."

They stopped off at what seemed like a small office, to Kevan, to drop off their crew bracelets before going to one of the shuttle hangars. He had no way of knowing if it was the same hangar he had arrived in or not, as it looked identical.

Agronet stood off to one side, conferring with another Rich'ti that Kevan had not seen before. He saw two other Rich'ti maneuvering hovering carts that carried Kevan's luggage and some other crate-like boxes on them.

Unlike human shuttles, which often resembled ancient human aircraft by having slight wings and fins for aerodynamics when maneuvering within atmospheres, the Rich'ti shuttle looked more like a huge bullet. or a giant suppository, he thought wryly. It was the same black, metallic material that the ships were made of, and was like a shorter version of the tubes from the sections of the ship, but came to a point at both ends. Round hatchways in the sides opened up and ramps extended down out of them for easier loading. Sarsh'ta led him to one of the hatches where he was surprised to see what looked like fur-covered bucket seats in it. It was the first he'd seen of anything chair-like in Rich'ti culture.

"It is for the safety of the passengers," Sarsh'ta told him when he inquired. "I understand your kind do this as well."

"Yes, but it's the first time I've seen seating like this," he replied, realizing he didn't know a word for 'chair' in Rich'ti.

"We do not find it to be as comfortable, so we do not make a habit of it," she replied.

Their conversation came to an end as Agronet boarded the shuttle, with two more Rich'ti that Kevan didn't recognize. The two new Rich'ti took positions, one at either end of the shuttle, in what looked like pilot's seats. Agronet took one of the passenger seats. As the shuttle's engines powered up, and the hatchways closed, padded bars slid into place across his legs, stomach, and shoulders. He noted that the bars rested across legs, hips, and chest normally. He suspected that his shorter stature might result in injury if the shuttle were to actually get in some sort of an accident.

He closed his eyes for a moment as he felt the shift of the shuttle moving out of the hangar. He was disappointed that there were no visible windows in the shuttle, until he noticed discs similar to the ones he'd seen in the observation bay.

"Would it be possible to watch our descent?" he asked Sarsh'ta.

"Of course," she tapped at a console between them and the discs became panels of vivid window-like view. He let the beauty of the planet occupy his whirling mind as they moved closer to the planet, trying to wash away the worry over what would happen when he finally reached the Rich'ti homeworld.

Chapter 5

The city they approached was wide and mostly low. A few buildings really towered above the rest, but in all it didn't feel as tall as human cities. But it was glistening. Buildings were white or light gray or silver, and it all looked clean and fresh and pure.

They passed over green stretches of park, and he could see that two rivers flowed through the city. There was one small black tower that mostly looked out of place, but even it shined in the sunlight.

Sunlight glinted in windows, and he saw balconies with hanging plants. They passed low to the rooftops. There were no antennae all over, and no rising chimneys. The only more elegant city he'd ever seen was the hovering city of the avian Aethel.

The shuttle descended again approaching the tallest building. It was a number of towers set in a circle that all angled towards each other, merging in a single peak at the top. There was a large fountain in the open space in the center, and colored lights played in the water. He caught a glimpse of a line of Rich'ti before the shuttle turned to land.

He felt a small bump as the shuttle landed to one side of the towers in an area that looked as if it was paved for just such a purpose. As soon as the shuttle engines began to wind down, the bars across him slid open and retracted back into the sides of the seat. After a moment, the hatchway nearest them opened and the ramp descended out and down for them. He noticed that the pilots stayed in the shuttle and the engine seemed to be kept on standby.

I wonder if they're expecting trouble, he thought to himself as he followed Sarsh'ta's indication that he should walk just behind Agronet. He hoped that there weren't going to be any Rich'ti present that were so against his being there that they would challenge him at the onset.

He noticed that the air seemed cleaner as he walked. His own home planet of Tangra Prime was considered one of the "greener" of the human colonies, and there were many instances where buildings expanded underground in order to maintain the wildlife above. Here, however, he had a feeling that they were just living in harmony with the environment. He had to admit that them having all of their heavy industry on one of their moons probably helped. He could only think of one human colony that didn't have some sort of heavy industry somewhere on the planet, and that was because they didn't believe in industry as part of their way of life.