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.Yes, if the captain so ordered, I could lock the controls and conduct themission without human mediation.""And if the captain were insane?" Marygay asked."And the two co-captains?""You know the answer to that, Captain."file:///D|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Ha.0Forever%20War%2002%20-%20Forever%20Free.txt (60 of 114) [7/12/2004 12:54:35 PM]file:///D|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Haldeman,%20Joe%20-%20Forever%20War%2002%20-%20Forever%20Free.txtPage 60 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html"I do," she said quietly, and took a sip of wine."And you know what? I findit depressing."--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Chapter sixteenThe next day, we had something more depressing to worry about than depression.I was in my office on the common floor, doing the flunky job of tallyingpeople's requests for various movies for afternoon and evening showings.Mostof them I'd never heard of.Two people asked for A Night to Remember andTitanic, which would do wonders for morale.Space icebergs.Hadn't worried about them in days.The Tauran appeared at my door.I croaked a greeting at it, and glanced at mywatch.Five minutes later and I would have escaped to lunch."I did not know whether to bring this problem to you or the captain or thesheriff.""The sheriff?""You were closest.""What problem?"It made an agitated little dance."A human has tried to kill me.""Good God!" I stood up."Who is it?""He is the one called Charlton."Cal, of course."Okay.I'll get the sheriff and we'll go find him.""He is in my quarters, dead.""You killed him?""Of course.Wouldn't you?"I called Marygay and the sheriff and told them to come down immediately."Werethere any witnesses?""No.He was alone.He said he wanted to talk to me.""Well, the ship will have seen it."It bobbed its head."To my knowledge, the ship does not monitor my quarters."I kissed for the ship and asked it."That's correct.The Tauran's quarterswere improvised out of storage.I was not designed to monitor storage.""Did you see Cal Charlton headed in that direction recently?""Charlton got on the lift at 11:32 and it went down to the storage level.""Was he armed?""I could not tell."file:///D|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Ha.0Forever%20War%2002%20-%20Forever%20Free.txt (61 of 114) [7/12/2004 12:54:35 PM]file:///D|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Haldeman,%20Joe%20-%20Forever%20War%2002%20-%20Forever%20Free.txt"He tried to kill me with an axe," the Tauran said."I heard glass break, andhe came running in.He got the axe from the fire station outside my quarters.""Ship, can you confirm that?""No.If he had pulled the fire alarm, I would have known that." Well, that wasan interesting fact."So you took the axe away from him?""It was simple.I heard the glass break, and correctly interpreted that.Istepped behind the door.He never saw me.""So you killed him with the axe.""Not actually.I believe I broke his neck." It demonstrated with a convincingkarate-like stroke."Well, that's.it could be worse.""Then, to be sure, I took the axe and severed his head." It made a gesturelike a shrug."That's where the brain is."Page 61 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlYou don't want to be disrespectful of the dead, but it was a good thing theTauran hadn't killed someone anybody liked.Cal was kind of a loose cannonwhen he was younger, and although he seemed to have calmed down in recentyears, he did have outbursts.Married three times, never for very long.Inretrospect, it's clear we shouldn't have brought him along; if he hadn't beenin on it from the beginning, he probably wouldn't have been chosen, in spiteof his many useful talents.He was one of Diana's depression patients, it turned out, but when we lookedover his belongings we found that he had taken one pill and then quit.Twodays later, he tried to killAntres 906.If everyone aboard had liked Cal, we would have had a lynch mob.As it was,the council agreed with the sheriff that it was an unambiguous case ofself-defense, and there was no public disagreement with that.So we werespared the knotty problem of a trial between species.No Tauran had evercommitted a crime on MF.Antres 906 claimed that the Taurans had no equivalentto the human legal system, and it appeared to me that it didn't really graspwhat a trial was.If there are no individuals in your race, what constitutescrime and punishment--or morality or ethics, for that matter?Anyhow, Antres 906 was in a kind of existential solitary confinement already,by choice.Whatever "choice" means to a Tauran; I suppose they normally have theirequivalent of the WholeTree, and just follow its orders without question.In solitary, but not alone.One of the council was always with it for severaldays after the killing, protecting it, armed with the tranquilizer rifle.Itwas a lot more time than I'd ever spent with a Tauran, and Antres 906 didn'tmind talking.One time, I brought along the five-page document from Earth, sentencing us tostay out of space.I asked it about that mysterious last line: "Inside theforeign, the unknown; inside that, the unknowable.""I don't understand this," I said."Is it supposed to be a general statementabout reality?"It rubbed its neck in an almost human gesture, which I knew meant I'mthinking."No.Not at all." It lightly ran its long finger over the Brailletwice more."Our languages are very different, and the written language is subtle.Thetranslation is incomplete, because." It rubbed the line again."I don't understand human jokes, but I think this is something like a joke.When you say something and mean something different."file:///D|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Ha.0Forever%20War%2002%20-%20Forever%20Free.txt (62 of 114) [7/12/2004 12:54:35 PM]file:///D|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Haldeman,%20Joe%20-%20Forever%20War%2002%20-%20Forever%20Free.txt"What words would you use?""Words? The words are accurate.They are familiar, a saying in what you wouldcall our religion."But when we use them, they are not inflected this way, which is what makes methink of your jokes.The word 'unknowable' here, it means, or rhymes with,'unnamable,' or `nameless.' Which is sort of like fate, or God, in humanterms.""It's supposed to be funny?""Not at all, no, not in this inflection." It handed the paper back to me."Normally, it is meant to be an expression about the complexity of theuniverse.""That's reasonable enough.""But this inflection is not a generalization
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