Expendable - James Alan Gardner [23]
And he did.
Chee’s Story
“Off in the Carsonal system,” Chee said, “there’s a planet with the stimulating name of Carsonal II. And living on Carsonal II was a species called the Greenstriders. Looked a lot like six-armed watermelons the size of a man, with long spindly legs.
“Now,” he continued, “the Greenstriders joined the League of Peoples long before humans did, but they aren’t one of the ancient races. They still have physical bodies, they still have to eat and excrete…in other words, they’re small potatoes compared to the big boys in the League. But the Greenstriders had pretensions; they did indeed. And for a long time, the only contact between them and humanity was the occasional communicator message: ‘You are attempting to colonize a planet in Greenstrider territory. Please to vacate it immediately.’
“The first time that happened, the Technocracy said, ‘Sorry,’ and left. The second time, we said, ‘All right, we’ll go, but give us a map of the territory you claim, so this won’t happen again.’ The third time, we said, ‘This planet wasn’t on your map, and it’s time we had a heart-to-heart talk…in front of League arbitrators.’
“That’s where I came in,” Chee told us, “because the Admiralty always sent as many people as it could to an arbitration. Not to take part, but to watch. Or to spy, if you want a more colorful word. A few were assigned to spy on the Greenstriders, but most of us kept our eyes on the three arbitrators, to gather as much information as possible about the high mucky-mucks who really hold power in the League. In this case, the tribunal was a cloud of red smoke, a glowing cube, and a chair that sure as hell looked empty. But forget it, that’s not the point.
“The point is that the hearing took place, the arbitrators asked a lot of questions, blah, blah, blah, everything you’d expect; and at the end, the tribunal decided the Greenstriders had been acting too highhanded. They got a slap on the wrist, and we got rights to colonize several new planets.
“Admiral Fewkes, who was fronting for our side, tried to soften the blow in good diplomatic style. Too bad, he said, that there were misunderstandings in the past, but now the problems had been straightened out, Fewkes hoped that humans and Greenstriders could open friendly diplomatic relations…. You can fill in the rest. And then Fewkes held out his hand for a cordial little handshake.
“Now you have to understand,” Chee said, “that as far as we knew, this was the first time humans and Greenstriders had ever been in the same place together. All previous communications were by radio and hypercom. And throughout the hearing, we had always been kept separate from the Greenstriders by order of the tribunal. Fewkes wanted this handshake to be a memorable moment, first contact, a photo-op to please the folks back home. But when the head strider chiggered over to shake the admiral’s hand, the moment was even more memorable than Fewkes expected. Within five seconds, he was lying on the floor gasping, and ten seconds later, he was dead.”
Yarrun and I nodded gravely. “Secretions on Greenstrider skin,” Yarrun said. “Their perspiration acts as a lethal nerve toxin on human beings. We learned that in the Academy.”
“Thank Fewkes for the information,” Chee replied. “He learned the hard way. Looked hellishly painful too, the way he screamed just before the end; but these things happen. It wouldn’t be the first time that alien lifeforms turned out to be intrinsically deadly to each other—just a tragic accident.
“But…the arbitrators were still in the hearing room, and the cloud of red smoke said, ‘That was a non-sentient act.’ Seems there had been previous contact between humans and Greenstriders, and the red smoke knew all the details. A pair of Explorers had met some strider scouts, when both sides were checking out