“Well then, here is an obvious fact for you. If I chop off an arm, you too will be asymmetrical. Asymmetrical is not a choice. And calling someone ugly because of a physical trait they cannot control shows how shallow and ideologically disgusting you are.”
“Max Father.” Xander touched Max’s gun hand. “Do not anger buyers. Not for me.”
Max smiled at his son. “If they insult you, they insult me.” He turned his attention back to the room. Everyone watched him, and Max could practically read the thought bubbles over their heads. They were considering the possibility that they had completely misunderstood humans. Good.
“You should avoid certain emotional issues that could cause me to become upset,” Max warned. “Children are one.”
A Pajekh said, “Then we shall not discuss children of any state of ugliness.”
“That would probably work out well for you since I imagine your children are exceptionally ugly,” Max said. A pith helmet would not be stylish on any child.
“Max Father,” Xander said in a horrified voice.
Apparently Max was doing a good job of upholding the Davis family tradition of humiliating children in public. Max's own father would’ve been proud to know that the torch had been passed, and Max was shouldering his responsibilities well.
“Are we done insulting each other? Can we get on with business, or does this ritual need to continue longer for you?” Max asked the room in general.
The Carrington alien answered. “I require clarification on the ritual you reference.” Now that Max had named her Alexis Carrington, he was having a hard time thinking of the alien as anything other than a “she” even though he had no idea how the species understood sex or gender.
“I'm referencing this metaphorical pissing contest we're having. People on Earth quite often do this when they don't know each other, particularly when they believe they are in competition with one another. They push and threaten. They brag about their accomplishments, such as killing a whole group of Hunters while defending my ship and family, you know that sort of thing.”
“Do you believe we would engage in Earth ceremony?” Carrington asked with unvarnished confusion. She was at least eight feet tall, so she peered down at him, her neck gill things flapping. The only other Tribes alien Max had seen had been his social worker, Heetayu, and that one had been even taller. Max was grateful there weren’t more Tribes aliens around because it made him intensely uncomfortable to stand near an alien who was so much larger. However, he wasn’t going to back down, especially not to someone wearing a yellow and fuchsia floppy hat.
“Sentient life comes with a territorial imperative and a need to defend what is theirs. Am I wrong?”
Carrington looked around at the gathered aliens as though expecting backup. The others watched her without offering a single word of support. She turned back to Max. “You adequately describe basic universal psychology. But there is no territory to claim here.”
“Sure there is. Compensation is a form of territory. With more compensation, one may claim more ships and more land. Compensation is the core of territory. It is my desire to have a more stable territory with adequate fuel. That drives me to share my weapon design. My instinct says I should keep it to myself. After all, if no one else has my weapon, then I am unique and no one else can build a defense system against it.”
“That is a violent way of seeing the world,” one of the Pajekh said.
“I can be a violent man. I was chosen by my people as a defender. I was in a machine attempting to engage the Nish because of it. I was specifically chosen because of my accuracy in using weapons to kill others and I was trained to improve that skill.”
Another Pajekh pulled all his tentacles up under his pith helmet like a hermit crab pulling all the vulnerable bits into the shell. That was a rather unambiguous sign of distress.
“But I would rather sell my inventions. Fighting is never my first choice,” Max said before he freaked out the aliens any more. He wanted to be taken seriously, not to have everyone assume he was a psychopath. “But when I came to talk to Bundy here, I found out that you all assume that humans are morons, and that I was one more moron on the family tree.”
“I have not said that,” Carrington said. She drew up to her full eight feet and then did that neck fold trick to look him in the eye.
Max shrugged. “You’re thinking it loudly.” One alien twitched his tentacles and two more shrunk down the way Rick sometimes did when he was so upset the center tentacle curled. Maybe Max shouldn’t have made jokes about telepathy. However, stress had broken his humor button back when he had first joined the Air Force, and the assholes that ruled the universe were not going to improve his ability to control his mouth.
“Humans are morons,” an alien Max hadn’t seen before said. He resembled a fringed purse, complete with two impossibly long “arms” that could pass for the handle. But Max had never seen anyone with bad enough taste to carry goose poop-green accessories. “They have not yet achieved space flight.”
“Well, no. We haven’t.” Max had prepared an answer for this. “As near as I can figure, the dinosaurs were roaming the Earth when the rest of you found space. My people weren’t even on the horizon. So considering that we started the race after the rest of you had finished and left that part of the galaxy, I don’t think we’re doing so bad. We have, after all, visited other planets in our solar system.”
“Clarify dinosaurs,” the purse demanded.
“The dominant life form on the planet when your ancestors were still in that part of the universe. They were all killed by a meteor strike that damaged the environment and killed all large lifeforms.”
Carrington said, “Then the dinosaurs were the morons for not reaching space before the disaster. That is why reasonable species reach for outside their one planet. Accidents happen.” She sounded very proud of that proclamation.
“Well, not really. You see, there had been three or four extinction level events that had already destroyed the environment before that. Our planet is a dangerous neighborhood.” Max hadn’t thought about it before, but knowing that life had to keep restarting did make him wonder why people hadn’t panicked about having to reach space earlier. It shouldn’t have taken a high-speed Nish pursuit to convince people that the planet was fragile.
Now aliens were looking at each other and tapping away on computer pads. Max had stirred them up.
“Now maybe we can discuss your complete inefficiency at developing weapons,” Max said. “The wide scatter focus on the laser weapon that I confiscated off a certain Hunter that invaded my ship was completely inefficient. The targeting system is so inadequate that I couldn't fire from a distance at all, and even up close, it failed to adequately deliver the one thing I expect from a weapon—the ability to kill.”
Oh yeah, Cinnamon Carter had nothing on him.
