Traveler in the Dark

38

"You should never make a bet with a pilot, Blick. You should know that by now," laughed Liu. "We have too much time on our hands and only gambling to occupy it."

"Sure, you may have had practice," said Blick sorting the tokens on the magnetic table, "but I know two things you don't."

"And what's that?" Liu leaned his back against a stack of crates, his legs floating freely beneath the table.

"First, Titov is terrible at Trojan Relay. He's all yours. And second, I've got a secret weapon."

Issk'ath hissed and strained on the straps.

"Are you okay?" asked Rebecca, pushing herself up to hang in the air in front of Issk'ath's face.

"This one says he has a weapon," said Issk'ath.

Blick held up his arms. "Stay cosmic, my friend. It's only an expression. I don't really have anything that will hurt anyone. I might lighten Liu's credit stack a little, but it won't harm him."

"It's a joke, Issk'ath," said Rebecca, pressing it gently back. Issk'ath relented, sinking down.

"A joke?"

"An idiom. A social interaction that means something different to friends than it would to a stranger. Did your people have jokes?"

"Perhaps. They would not have told them to me. I was not a friend."

Liu shook his head with a low whistle. "That's cold," he said.

"Well, you're friends now," said Blick. "Lose a few rounds of Trojan Relay and you'll get the jokes."

"Thank you, Blick. But I am still uneasy about this secret weapon."

"Ah, don't worry, we'll keep you on our team. You can use Emery as your secret weapon too."

Liu laughed. "No offense, Emery, but you don't strike me as the bluffing type."

Rebecca smiled and pulled herself back to the table by the handrails. "You forget I'm an anthropologist. I don't need to bluff if I can read all your tells."

Liu squinted at her. "Hmm. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe you can bluff. I'll still take you all."

"Bluff— this is a game of deception?" asked Issk'ath.

"In part," conceded Rebecca, "it is part luck, part deception and part detecting deception in others."

"You deceive for entertainment?"

"Well when you put it that way," said Liu, "Kind of makes us sound pretty rotten."

"Didn't your people tell stories? Or play gambling games?" asked Rebecca.

"Yes, but they didn't involve deception."

"Wait," said Blick, "so none of your stories were made up or added on to?"

"I am not aware of any. Our stories were based in fact," said Issk'ath.

"What about the story you told us, the story of the first Issk'ath? You really believe there was a boy— uh, nymph that pushed a clutch of eggs into a campfire and burned them up?" asked Rebecca.

"Yes."

Liu leaned forward over the table. "So— I don't understand, can you lie— deceive at all?"

"We have spoken of this before. I have the capability, yes. As did the People. But we do not do it for entertainment."

Liu sniffed. "Glad it's on your team, then," he said with a smile as he rifled through his tokens.