Moon 514 || Blaze and the White Griffon

36 || Part 2: 3 Hours

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Last revision: 5-16/2013

“Your staff will be more dangerous for you than for them, even in cloaking mode.  Just leave it here.”  The words were matter-of-fact, lacking any emotion.  Evelia was too busy thinking through several complicated cultural details that might affect their trip to the alien ship to even consider that her words were a little blunt, almost commanding.  She simply noticed Blaze placing the staff by the door so he wouldn’t forget it and determined that he needed to be made aware that this would be a poor choice.

“You want to board an alien ship entirely unarmed?” Blaze responded, only half surprised.  It seemed that everything Evelia said lately was nearly the opposite of what he would have expected.  To an outsider, it may have made practical public relations sense not to bring weapons when invited to board an alien ship but the thought never would have occurred to Blaze.  In reality, he was still more of a warrior than a captain, more of a commander of troops than a leader of civilians.  Beyond his paradigm failure, Blaze had the ability to cloak his staff so that it would be undetected by any living eye – not bringing it seemed naïve, perhaps even foolhardy.  Then again, who knows what scanning technologies they may have, he began to reconsider, entirely missing Evelia’s point.

“It can only cause us trouble,” she assured him a second time.  “Hundreds of generations have deeply engrained into their culture a moral code that strictly forbids taking any intelligent life unless they are first threatened.  They wouldn’t even remotely consider killing any of us … unless of course, you brought a concealed weapon on board their ship.  And even if you did, Blaze,” she explained very gently, yet pointedly, “it wouldn’t do you any good.  This man is the leader of a very large ship.  They choose their leaders from those who possess the most extraordinary psionic abilities.  Only the most powerful are allowed to hold positions of authority.  In other words, he could completely control your every move if he wanted to.  But then again, he would never do that unless threatened.  Right now, he feels a little threatened because we are approaching his home planet without any invitation and he feels like we might be a violent species who would try to engage his planet in combat.  Bringing weapons would only confirm that in his mind.”

For a moment, Blaze began to feel that Evelia’s words were less informative than patronizing, more defensive in tone than pragmatic.  She immediately detected his unexpressed agitation and governed her tone of voice better.  She looked at him with unusual compassion considering the stress she was feeling.  “Our situation right now is not delicate but if you bring weapons, that could quickly change.  Their leader will want to avoid confrontation … but if necessary, he will control our actions, spare our lives, and then transport us to some place where we could viably survive … without any access to the technologies we now enjoy.” 

Evelia was pausing more than normal but Blaze did nothing to interrupt her string of thoughts.  “In other words,” she summarized, “he expects nothing more than a pleasantly short visit, after which he will ask us to peacefully return to our ship.  Undoubtedly, they are not remotely interested in our message.  Their leader is simply trying to be gracious.”  The last word fell heavily upon Blaze’s ears.  The alien seemed anything but gracious from his perspective – and why they would not be interested in a message from someone they accidentally left behind seemed anything but gracious.  But Evelia was not finished talking so he said nothing, asked nothing.

“We have no technology that interests them and they have reason to believe that we would only abuse their technologies so they will have no interest in exchanging knowledge with our species or in engaging in further relations unless we offer them reason to believe that we are different than they expect,” which is precisely what we intend to do, she silently added to herself.