Communication Failure Page 18

  “Do you mind telling me,” he said, his voice as icy as he’d ever heard himself, “what the meaning of this is?”

  For a fraction of a second, it seemed as though he’d succeeded in catching Keffoule off guard. He surmised this since he saw her blink a few times in rapid succession, which constituted the most “out of control” he’d ever seen her. Xan, for all his boringness, gave the impression that he was about to leap across the room and attack Rogers. Rogers wondered what it would be like to get hit in the face with those weights.

  Keffoule licked her lips—not in a gross way—and spoke slowly. “I understand your situation is not something you may be used to,” she said, “but I was under the impression that a Meridan dinner guest behaved much like Thelicosan dinner guests.” There was an edge to her voice.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Rogers said, a mock frown on his face. “Were you expecting chocolates and flowers?” Damn, he was angry. He was never this angry.

  Keffoule looked at him sideways for a moment. “No,” she said finally. “I was expecting you to perform the premeal stretching ritual and say graze.”

  Rogers blinked. “You mean grace?”

  “No. Graze’s Invocation.” When Rogers didn’t show any sign of understanding, Keffoule continued. “Malcom Graze? Famous quantum theorist of the twenty-fourth century?” She looked askance at Xan. “You mean to tell me that Meridans don’t do these things when invited to eat with another?”

  “No,” Rogers said, some of his anger deflating into utter confusion. “Meridans do not do that. I didn’t even know Thelicosans did that.”

  For some reason, this gap in Keffoule’s knowledge seemed to be Xan’s fault. Or, at least, the acid glare she was giving her assistant made Rogers think that he’d somehow failed to provide appropriate etiquette lessons to his boss. Xan simply shrugged, which seemed to be the official Thelicosan response to any situation, ever.

  “Well, then,” Keffoule said coolly, “since you are here, and I do very much want to learn more about you, Captain Rogers, perhaps you could tell me what ritual Meridans perform in a dinner setting?”

  Rogers scratched the underside of his beard—he hadn’t been able to trim it in a few days, thanks to inconveniences like war and being kidnapped—and shook his head.

  “We sit down,” Rogers said, “and we eat.”

  Tapping a long finger on her lips in thought, Keffoule finally gestured grandly to the chair opposite her at the small circular table that had been set for two. On it was arrayed a fine assortment of dishes and cups—empty so far—and napkins bearing the official Seal of Thelicosa. Rogers found some small satisfaction in knowing that he would soon be wiping his mouth on it.

  “Then please,” Keffoule said, “perform the Meridan ritual.”

  Rogers swallowed, his nervousness creeping back into his chest. Why was it that anytime you called anything a ritual it seemed harder to perform? He even hated when people called it the bathroom ritual. As such, he fumbled with the chair for what seemed like an eternity before sitting down in it and scooting forward. Repeated scraping noises echoed throughout the room as he adjusted the chair multiple times until he found a comfortable distance from the table. It was, by far, the most awkward and unnecessarily prolonged seating he had ever experienced.

  “Ritual complete?” he said, his voice cracking a little.

  Keffoule nodded, as though she’d been waiting for him to confirm that his strange foreign way of pulling out a chair and putting his ass in it was over.

  “Xan,” Keffoule said, “you may leave.”

  Xan didn’t move. “Grand Marshal, I highly advise against—”

  “I didn’t ask for your advice,” Keffoule said. Her voice cracked like a whip, but her eyes never left Rogers. “Do not make me repeat myself.”

  The floppy-faced assistant turned on his heel and left, looking only moderately offended that he’d been dismissed so rudely. The door closed behind him, leaving Rogers and Keffoule alone. Rogers had a million questions he wanted to ask, a million angry statements to blurt out about war and poison and death. So he started at the top of his priorities.

  “Okay,” he said. “What’s with the face ornaments?”

  “The weights?” Keffoule said, sitting back in her chair a little. “Xan has an interesting background. He’s a New Neptune immigrant, but he’s also actually a priest.”

  “Priest?” Rogers said. “I thought Thelicosans were all atheists?”

  “That’s a very broad generalization that is unbecoming of someone of your rank and position.”

  “Grand Marshal,” Rogers said, crinkling his eyebrows, “you thought I was going to dance in your doorway before dinner, not to mention you thought kicking me in the face was acceptable courtship. Let’s not talk about generalizations.”

  Keffoule nodded. “Priests in Thelicosa vary in their function depending on their family’s background. Xan comes from a family that believes sagging cheeks make a person wise and respectable.”

  A thousand objections to this practice popped into Rogers’ head, but he figured they really didn’t have the next ten years to go through them all. “But why weights?”

  Keffoule shrugged. “Because they’re better than horse chestnuts.”

  Rogers nodded sagely. That they were.

  “Look, Keffoule,” he said. “Saggy-cheeked priests are interesting and all, but let’s cut to the chase. What I meant when I asked what the meaning of all this was, was why the hell are you going through all this trouble inviting me to dinner and all that if you’re just going to kill me when it’s all said and done?”

  Now Keffoule did look surprised. Her mouth opened, and her eyes widened, which, for Keffoule, made it seem like she’d come totally unhinged.

  “What?” she whispered.

  “Don’t play dumb,” Rogers said, his anger coming back and fueling his boldness in a way that sorely disappointed his instincts for survival. “I heard you on the datapad. You’re going to poison me here at dinner. But what I don’t understand is, why bother? Why didn’t you just shoot me on the Ambuscade or torpedo the Flagship while we were sitting there like idiots blowing up your milk stores?” His voice was getting louder by the moment.

  “I don’t know how you people do things in your system, but stringing a man along for days, trying to sweet-talk him into marrying you with the use of physical violence, and then inviting him to dinner for the sole purpose of killing him anyway is construed as cruel, unusual, and very inconvenient!   ”

  He realized then that he was shouting. He also realized he’d stood up, slammed his fists on the table, and thrown one of the napkins on the floor. The napkin-throwing struck him as very silly; if he was trying to make a statement, he could have at least thrown something that made some noise.

  Keffoule, surprisingly, didn’t seem like she was about to jump up and kick him in the face or stab him with a fork. She looked at him with an expression that mixed self-restraint and horror, her back flat against the back of the chair. Rogers felt a sense of accomplishment in having disarmed her—his discovery of the poisoning plot had been rather brilliant, after all.

  “Poison?” Keffoule said slowly.

  “Poison!” Rogers shouted, pointing an accusing finger at her.

  “You?”

  “Me!” Rogers shouted, pointing another finger at her, then realizing he was pointing at the wrong direct object before sticking his thumb against his own chest. “Me!” he said again, in case there had been any confusion caused by his inaccurate pointing. Why was he repeating everything Keffoule said in a shouty voice? Rage was doing really strange things to him.

  A moment of silence passed before Keffoule’s face slowly relaxed. She shook her head and closed her eyes, coming back off her chair and folding her hands on the table.

  “The datapad,” she said quietly. “I didn’t know I had left it on.”

  “Well, you did,” Rogers said. “And it’s a good thing, too, because otherwise I would have come bli
ndly strolling in here looking for nourishment and finding a table set for three: you, me, and death!”

  Well, now he was just being weird and theatrical. He took a deep breath and stopped pointing at things. The least he could do was listen to her explanation.

  “I’m afraid you’ve gotten the wrong ide—”

  “Oh thank god,” Rogers blurted. “Now can we please eat?”

  A Lesson in Table Manners

  Rogers believed in two things very strongly while eating. The first was never to talk with one’s mouth full. The second was to try his utmost not to choke. These two things combined made for a very quiet dinner, during which he was treated to some of the strangest and most amazing cuisine he’d ever had the pleasure of consuming. A very spicy, juicy meat that Rogers thought was lamb had been crusted with all manner of herbs and spices that gave it a salty, tangy flavor, all served alongside an assortment of colorless vegetables. A bloodred juice of some sort—Rogers giddily thought it was wine at first—sloshed over the side of his cup and landed on the edge of his plate.

  And, strangely, a small serving of popcorn. When he finally could speak without violating his two mealtime beliefs, he asked about it.

  “Popcorn is a miracle of physics, thermodynamics, and nature,” Keffoule said. “The kernels are like snowflakes in that each is unique, and therefore special, but they were formed by such an exact process that it could have been no other way.”

  That might have been the single most profound statement about popcorn that Rogers had ever heard. He cleared his throat and sat back, finally able to think about something other than food. It was, in fact, not poisoned, a revelation for which he was exceedingly grateful.

  “You’re probably wondering what it was you heard me speaking of regarding poison,” Keffoule said.

  “Why would you say that?” Rogers quipped.

  Keffoule hesitated. “I assumed it was because you feared that I was attempting to kill you.”

  Rogers shook his head. “I was being sarcastic. Yes, I am very interested in what poison has to do with me.”

  “It would appear that some of my fellow Thelicosans aren’t in agreement on our union,” she said finally.

  “There are some Meridans on your ship who feel the same way,” Rogers said.

  Keffoule let the remark slide. “Regardless, I don’t want to worry you with it.”

  “You don’t want to worry me with the fact that someone is trying to kill me?”

  “I have it under control,” Keffoule said, her gaze turning cold. Apparently she didn’t like having her competence challenged.

  “Fine,” Rogers said. It made sense, really. He’d always thought there was something irrational about Keffoule’s bringing him here just to kill him; if she said she was protecting him, she was probably protecting him.

  “With the small matter of my impending murder out of the way,” he said dryly, “why don’t you and I talk a little bit about me returning to my fleet?”

  Swirling her fork around on the plate in a way that Rogers thought was distinctly girlish for someone so powerful as Keffoule, the Grand Marshal dropped her eyes and pursed her lips as she thought.

  “I’m afraid that will be impossible,” she said. “We’ve already begun the wedding procedures, Captain Rogers. We’re simply waiting for your permission to continue them.”

  Rogers threw up his hands. “Haven’t you already realized that we’re different, Grand Marshal? You can’t impose your cultural values on me, even if it’s perfectly normal to kick your boyfriends in the face in Thelicosa. We do things differently in Merida. And frankly, I don’t feel like spending the rest of my life getting kicked in the face.”

  Keffoule shook her head. “Oh no, Captain Rogers. You don’t understand. I reserve my spinning back kick for disciplining troops under my command. I would never kick you in the face in anger, particularly as my husband. The incident on the Ambuscade was a special circumstance. Your face has nothing to fear from me.”

  Rogers closed his eyes and massaged the front of his forehead slowly, trying to breathe. Aside from that being one of the weirdest things anyone had ever said to him, he just couldn’t think of a way to connect with this woman in a way she’d understand. Cross-cultural communication had never been his strong suit. Communication in general, really.

  “Maybe we should back up and start at the beginning,” he said. “I don’t want to marry you.”

  “Yet,” Keffoule interjected.

  Rogers was silent for a moment. “Okay, maybe we should start with something that doesn’t include marriage, or murder, or face weights.”

  Keffoule made a gesture that said “Lead the way,” which promptly inspired Rogers to have absolutely nothing to talk about. For supposedly being a self-proclaimed master con artist, he was certainly having trouble with words lately.

  Though, thinking about his last con as a civilian, maybe “master” was a little bit of an inflation.

  “Let’s start with the basics, then,” he said finally. He took a sip of the interesting juice, wondering what it was made out of, and tried to relax. If he was going to have dinner with the enemy, he could at least learn some useful information. “Why did you cross the border?”

  Keffoule, who was still picking away at the leavings of vegetable bits on her plate, looked up at him through her eyelashes.

  “We had credible evidence that you were about to conduct an assault on our ships.”

  Rogers raised his eyebrow. “You mentioned something like that before. Who told you . . .”

  He thought for a moment, then closed his eyes and sighed. “McSchmidt.”

  Keffoule nodded. “Indeed. The reports we were getting from him said you were preparing for military action.”

  “Did he tell you anything about the droids trying to take over our ships?”

  “Only that they tried, and you stopped them,” Keffoule said. There was a sparkle in her eyes, a sly smile that was just barely on her lips. At the same time, she looked unnervingly predatory. Were these “reports” that McSchmidt had been sending the reason that Keffoule suddenly wanted to marry him? If McSchmidt had painted him as some kind of genius, he had been missing a few bristles in his brush.

  “That’s not really enough information to come diving across the border saying you were invading,” Rogers said.

  Keffoule pushed her plate away, still not having eaten the scraps she’d been playing with. She took a long drink, her eyes unfocused. Though her skin was dark, Rogers could see the beginnings of red working its way through her cheeks. When she put her cup down, her lips were tight.

  “One of my communications officers made an error,” she said. “It was supposed to say that we were inviting you to negotiate the terms of a drawdown.”

  He didn’t know why, but Rogers guffawed at that. Guffawing was really not the kind of thing you did at a meeting between commanders, but he couldn’t stop it. It was just too crazy.

  “So why not just correct the message?” he said, trying not to wither under the glare that Keffoule was giving him.

  “We would have had to lift the jamming net and allow you to transmit a mayday back to your home,” she said. “We didn’t have the idea for the space semaphore yet, and just one message would have brought with it many problems.”

  Rogers agreed with her there. In fact, he’d been trying to loosen the jamming net for that express purpose; that one message would have hopefully resulted in a lot of reinforcements and a lot of blown-up Thelicosan ships. He didn’t mention that part.

  “Well then, it’s a fine mess you’ve gotten us into,” he said, “but that means it’s easily repaired. Nobody has died. You’ve lost some milk and some munitions, but both of us can walk away from this. You can go back to your side; I can go back to my side. Right?”

  Keffoule didn’t respond.

  “Look,” Rogers said. “I said we wouldn’t talk about this crazy marriage thing—”

  “It’s not crazy.”

  “—t
his highly irregular marriage thing,” Rogers continued. “But you must realize that you’re not doing much to promote peace in the galaxy by kidnapping me and forcing me to become your husband. I mean, we don’t even really know each other.”

  “We can get to know one another,” Keffoule said, smiling with what Rogers thought might have been actual warmth.

  “No,” Rogers said. Why had he even left a caveat like that? “I mean, it’s not like I think you’re a bad person or anything. Getting to know you would be fine.”

  “So why not start now?” Keffoule said.

  Rogers gritted his teeth and squeezed the side of the table, hard. She was fast-talking him, and he knew it.

  “You’re sort of missing my point,” he said. “This maybe isn’t the ideal situation for romance and wooing and all that. It’s not appropriate. We’re enemies, after all.”

  “Are we?” Keffoule said, raising an eyebrow. Her body relaxed as she pushed her chair away from the table; for a moment Rogers thought it was the kind of relaxed that he’d seen on the Ambuscade. The kind that was about to lead to her diving over the table at him. Instead, however, she delicately crossed her legs and folded her hands in her lap, studying him like a lab animal. “I’m not sure we are.”

  Rogers sighed. He wasn’t exactly immune to the charms of a lady—if anyone could out-con him, it was a woman—but something about the threats of death, war, poison, etc., made it a little harder to be caught in her snare. How did they even get here? He’d started this conversation with the intent of avoiding this subject altogether, and here they were talking about it almost exclusively. He needed to get back to his original point.

  “Alandra,” he said, then stopped. Why had he called her Alandra? How had he even remembered her name? What the hell was going on here?

  She leaned forward and spoke barely above a whisper. “Yes?”

  “I—I mean, Grand Marshal,” he stammered. “This needs to stop. I am sorry you placed so much faith in your Thelicosan marriage traditions, but we’re talking about a lot more than that right now. You know, like a galaxy thrown into war. I’ve got my own problems to deal with, the least of which are a rogue ship that may or may not be piloted by the last of the self-aware droids and a fleet without a competent or qualified admiral. I will not be marrying you, and I have to insist that you make every effort to return me to my ship as soon as possible so we can sort this out.”