Swelk rested on a soft platform, her wounded limb freshly bandaged. The bed was in luxurious contrast to last night's trek over the mountain ridge to Gustafson's house. Her scientific detachment proved to be something of an abstraction: clinging to an alien—even the man she had sought out—took a constant effort of will. The experience of dealing intimately with Smelly and Stinky had again served her well.
One of her good limbs held food freshly synthesized in the portable bioconverter she had dragged from the lifeboat. Its preprogrammed capabilities included a full menu of Krulchukor cuisine.
"A useful gadget," her host said now. Kyle sat in a chair watching her. "Don't leave your home planet without one."
He did not realize how useful. "Given an organic sample, it can convert almost any biomass to any other." She raised her bandaged limb, which still throbbed. "Such as skin, bone, muscle, and blood." She did not know the meaning of his sudden pallor and loud swallowing, so she continued. "My former shipmates would not rest until they found me, and any humans thought to have spoken with me could have been at risk."
"So you cut off your finger as a template for the synthesizer?"
Bit her digit off—there was no time to hunt for a knife. "And much of the emergency rations on board were the biomass it converted."
From what Kyle had told her, the robots had returned to the Consensus with "her" burnt remains: a perfect genetic match. Into the sack of synthesized tissues had also gone the garment she had worn onto the lifeboat, stained with Girillian feces. Grelben and Rualf would want to believe that she'd perished in the lifeboat, her body mangled and burnt beyond recognition in the crash. Swelk had made it as easy as she could for them to hold that belief.
Color slowly returned to Gustafson's face. "I think you should explain why you came here."
Swelk's host drank cup after cup of coffee, once she convinced him, on the basis of his first serving, that the strong odor was not offensive. Mildly odd, perhaps. She contented herself with tap water and a snack fresh from the converter.
Both were, for the moment, talked out. After comparing notes, each knew far more than before their meeting—and far less than they needed to know.
Keep telling yourself it's only a movie. What a concise explanation for the enigma that was the F'thk. What an indictment of Krulchukor ethics: that nuclear devastation of Earth and millions of human deaths were acceptable special effects for Rualf's film.
Any possible course of action was unclear. Krulchukor technology was advanced far beyond Earth's, beginning with fusion power, artificial gravity, bioconverters, and robotics. And the starship drive, of course. To Kyle's dismay, Swelk had only the vaguest idea how the drive worked. Her interests were in social, not physical, sciences. She thought she remembered once hearing that the drive tapped the base-level energy of a vacuum.
But she also brought good news . . . or if not good news, an upbeat inference. The Galactic mother ship, that so unresponsively and impressively orbited the moon, beyond human reach, could not possibly be what it appeared. Like the F'thk, it must be a prop, something improvised during the lunar stopover of the Consensus. A radar buoy embedded in a holographic projection, Kyle theorized—extremely impressive, and nothing humanity could reproduce, but not real. A special effect.
If Earth's scientists could prove there were no miles-across enemy vessel, it would mean mankind had only to deal with one spacecraft . . . and the Consensus was still in the habit, from time to time, of landing.
And anything that came to Earth, Kyle said, humanity had a chance to handle.
A helicopter was on its way. When it landed, Swelk would allow herself to be zipped into a duffel bag. Kyle would carry her aboard, and both would be flown in secrecy to the presidential retreat he called Camp David.
A small number of American and Russian officials already knew that the F'thk were not what they seemed. No more than a handful, Kyle had assured her, would be told that the F'thk were the teleoperated puppets of the xenophobic Krulirim—or that one very special, very brave Krul had defected to Earth.
One very frightened and guilt-wracked Krul, she would have said.
"Can I bring you anything?" He asked that a lot, and thanked her often for coming, as if he owed her something.
Swelk channel-surfed as they waited. The television evoked a simpler time, when knowledge of the humans had been hers alone, solitary and naively content on the starship's bridge . . . a time before she had brought here the threat of destruction. She stopped at the image of magnificent, giant creatures. "What are those?" The English translation came, muffled, from the other duffel in which were packed her few belongings.
"Elephants."
"I should like to see elephants, sometime." And nurture them. Who will take care of Stinky and Smelly?
"When it's possible, I will be delighted to escort you." A mechanical thp-thp-thp-ing sound intruded. "Swelk . . . our ride is almost here."
Swelk limped to the gaping duffel. Shunned by her own kind; now to be hidden from most of his. Humanity remained in terrible peril from her acts, the information she brought offering perhaps insight but no help. Incredibly, she felt . . . happy. Something had changed for the better. What?
Keep telling yourself it's only a movie, she had told Kyle. She had known humans had movies, but seen very few. Her quote now to Gustafson from one of his country's greatest films was unintentional but apt.
"This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship."