trans_9 | There are worse things out tonight than vampires

Zouichi sighed, looking away again. "Perhaps it's best if I explain more fully. In some cultures, it would have been perfectly acceptable behavior. But for someone who grew up in Japan, it was rather... forward of me. That is what I wanted to apologize for."

"I am also unaccustomed to being openly praised. It's just... a little unusual for me. I certainly did not mean to sound ungrateful or rude."

He frowned at her observation. "Well, it's not exactly uncommon knowledge in my area, but, I did enjoy listening to S-- to stories, as a child. Certain people within the project thought it was essential to give us a good basic grounding across subjects. Although I'm sure not everyone saw it as time well spent."

"And in the culture where I was raised, it would be unheard of for me to let an alien kiss my hand," she replied. "I've changed my opinion, since. Your apology is accepted, certainly." And if she didn't really feel an apology was called for, well, she wasn't going to stretch out the reminder of something that clearly embarrassed him. "And I'll confess to perhaps being fast to praise, but many times I've heard of personnel lost or dead and thought Oh, I never told them how well they did this, or how thankful I was that they did that...I'd rather be lavish with praise and stingy with criticism."

"If you enjoyed it, and learned from it, then it was time well spent. And your project people would have felt rather foolish if some vital information was not obvious to you because, say, the phrase 'face like a yuki-onna' meant nothing to you."

He nodded. "Point taken. It is unfair to expect others to observe social norms they are unaware of. I will try to move beyond my... concerns, in the future. And I do appreciate your sentiments. It is refreshing to talk to someone so open about their opinions."

Zouichi smiled at her comment, but his expression was a little complex this time. "I didn't have many missions in which such information proved to be valuable."

In fact, he had exactly 0 missions in which knowledge of folklore would have been relevant.

"However, I did enjoy the lessons, even the irrelevant ones."

"You can't take anything for granted when you are dealing with different species. Their mores and manners are always a mystery. Being open means fewer mistakes." If more embarrassment. But she tried to let that fall on her own head.

She shrugged. "Perhaps we will have a mission where we need to tell stories to get past some peril. If so, your lessons will be very useful. Not all fighting is by bullet and knife, or force and threat; sometimes a gift, a smile, or a kind word, can win the battle just as well."

Well, he wasn't sure about that one; he was sure there must be more retiring species out there who would appreciate more rather than less discretion.

Zouichi sighed. "If that happens, I'm sure there are people aboard the ship far better versed in stories or diplomacy than myself. Someone like you, perhaps? I'd be perfectly happy to avoid that particular spotlight."

He'd made quite a few strides talking to members of the crew since finding himself in that pod chamber, but...

"...I've probably spent more time speaking to people since coming to this ship than I have during the entire rest of my existence."

Members of such retiring species did not become rowdy space mercenaries - or if they did, they left their reticence behind.

"Is that a problem? You could always go back to using the omnicomm," she joked. Then she sobered. "You're doing very well, with talking that is, so far as I have seen."

Zouichi looked mildly exasperated at the mention of the Omnicomm, but let it pass without comment.

"I have certainly been giving it my best effort. It's just a little tiring at times. On Earth, Fuyu is usually the only person available to carry on a conversation with. We understand each other extremely well -- there are rarely misunderstandings, and she's already familiar with what I am." He actually spent a lot of time explaining to the crew what a Synthetic Human was. And usually left conversations under the impression that they still didn't quite understand.

"Oh, that sounds familiar." Anwei stood straight, and her fingers drummed an irregular rhythm on the back of the couch.

"I'm certain that I have spoken to Horanckk ten times more than I have ever spoken to anyone else. And in fact he would often be the one to remind me to go talk to this person or that about something. He sort of forced me to be social. And certainly, no one understood who I am as completely as he did."

He nodded. "Fuyu is more personable than I am in general -- I only wish that it was easier for her to get around on the ship. She often acts as a restraint for me, if she feels I'm acting too brashly. I do hope you can be reunited with Horanckk soon; I'm becoming more and more curious about him."

"You could check with Engineering; perhaps they could make some sort of self-powered framework that would let her move around with you. Or move herself, in case of some emergency." Now there was a breath of nightmare: the Vehicle Bay under fire, and Fuyu trapped because the motorcycle was damaged.

"I hate to say it, but I think I'm handling his absence better because I was stranded on Earth all that time without him. I'm used to missing him, as sad as that sounds. But," her voice caught for a moment, "I also hope we are reunited soon."

"Hmm. I can ask her how she feels about that, but she may not agree." He suspected Fuyu might have some objections to strangers fiddling about with her core. "Another solution might be modifying the XLA's tires to allow them to move around the fleshier portions of the ship more easily."

He nodded; it did sound terribly lonely, especially if the only people you had for company had no idea who you really were. "Were you able to interact with the human inhabitants, at least?"

"Horanckk would often go around in a casing about the size of a small briefcase, with arms and legs that ran off a separate power system. That way if I had to, I could just grab the handle, detach the limbs, and carry him inconspicuously. Modifying the XLA would probably work too - for all I know, someone here could put an antigravity engine in it and Fuyu could fly."

For that matter she could build an antigravity engine by rote - but only as a standalone unit for emergencies. And it probably wouldn't fit on the motorcycle anyway.

"To a certain extent. I had access to enough Earth currency to qualify as 'rich,' and as in many cultures, rich people are allowed to be more eccentric. Most of my interaction was virtual, via their phone and Internet systems; or buffered with the appropriate lawyers and security personnel. What face-to-face contact I had was often with random strangers, on the theory that if I forgot myself and did something like smile too wide, they wouldn't know how to trace me."

"Hmm. Minor modifications would be fine, but putting in something like an antigravity engine sounds like it might require someone to take it apart and put it back together." Which would be expressly against regulations and thus reserved only for extreme contingencies. The technology that went into it wasn't as carefully guarded as the GBE data, but it would still be a problem if it fell into the wrong hands. Plus, did he know anyone in Engineering well enough to trust them for the job? He wasn't sure.

"That sounds... incredibly isolating. You know, something you said reminded me of another story, considerably more recent. I'm not sure it would be appropriate, though."

"I can understand why you might not be happy with that level of modification." She imagined letting one of these random strangers touch Horanckk's code, and shivered inside for a moment. Not unless the need was very great.

Fortunately, under most circumstances Horanckk could protect himself.

"Appropriate to my circumstances, or appropriate overall? I assure you, after years of working with mercenaries, you aren't going to offend me." Far from it. It took physical pain or deep stress to offend her these days; it was easier just to let most slights roll off.

"Yes. But I'll certainly mention it to her."

"Well, I'll let you be the judge, then. There's an urban legend where I come from -- if you wander around the streets on a foggy night, you may meet with a beautiful woman wearing a face mask and holding a pair of scissors. She'll ask you if she's beautiful, and if you say yes, she removes her mask. Underneath is a wide, inhuman slit of a smile; she'll ask you the same question. Depending on your answer, you might end up with the exact same smile."

It was a little gruesome, but most urban legends were. "So perhaps if you slipped in the right place, you might have created a story or two of your own."

"A mask?" she puzzled. "I don't recall...maybe if the beautiful woman was wearing a hat. My species has some pretty wild hats."

Actually, she would expect some myth-echo of her to go around biting off people's faces, not slicing them up with scissors.

"And scissors aren't really something I think of as a useful street weapon. Of course it could just be that someone saw me, and made up the story to go with the smile."

He smiled a little. "I doubt that it refers to you; that would be quite a coincidence. But I think the point of the mask is that it covers her mouth from immediate view."

"Yes, it doesn't exactly stand up to logic, does it? But I suppose few urban legends make sense when you think about them." That didn't stop people from telling them, though. "People make up all kinds of stories about things that frighten them. I'm sure they'd have a field day with the crew."

Himself included, of course.

That was true; she remembered the first time she had sneezed on Earth, her nose reacting to the alien pollen; and the sight of her mouth opening like a trap door in a nearly window reflection. After that, she had been very careful about covering her mouth. "I can be pretty distinctive if I'm not careful."

"Whoever starts telling stories about this crew had better have a throat of steel," she said dryly. "They will talk from now until the stars go out, and never reach the end of it. And all the people in the pods, all their stories too."

He nodded. "Although to your credit, you make a rather convincing human. I believe the thing that most singles you out as nonhuman is your gesturing. You are unusually animate in conversation."

Well, that and the eye thing. He supposed the lack of animatedness was his personal giveaway.

"There are quite a few of us, aren't there?" he mused. "The ship must have had its hands full, clearing out all the media that pertained to each one of us."

"Oh that." She held up her hands and looked at them. "There's a sort of sign language that is used to communicate facial expression equivalents among the mercenaries. When I'm in a mixed species environment, I tend to use it. It's very useful for talking between species that have different meanings for their expressions, or no expressions at all." She thought of the chitinous faces of the Rom - yes, they definitely would have qualified.

"I wonder if she's got some sort of index that could be moved out of her systems and into static storage?" Anwei wondered aloud. "Because if she did, you could check the index after each arrival of new people, match it against Stacy, and see what had vanished. Hmmm, no," she decided after a moment's thought. "What you would really need is either to move all the media out - which would require exobytes of storage which I don't think we have - or to run some sort of summary of the characters based on the media in which they appear. And then you get into distorted portrayals, misinterpretations of the facts, parallel universes....no." She brooded for an instant. "No, I think that maybe Stacy is right, and we jut need to judge people on what we see of them, here and now."

"That sounds useful. Even species who don't necessarily have limbs might be able to deal with interpreting gestures rather than the subtleties of facial expressions." Or antennae or mandible expressions. "Does that mean I am a different species?"

Zouichi considered that idea. "Personally, I'd rather have more information about the people I work with, rather than less -- at least a record of their capabilities, or a basic dossier. But I suppose it would be awkward working with strangers about whom you knew intimate personal details."

"I just fall into it by reflex, actually. I meant no offense," she said. "Members of the same species might use the signs as well. Remember, I was raised to divide the universe into my own species and Other, and young habits grow old with you, as they say."

"Awkward might not be the right word. Let's say the urban legend you related, about the smiling woman with the scissors, was so powerful that there were multiple representations of it in the ship's media, that people had seen. When someone of my species arrived, those people's first association would be of that person being a monster. And no matter what happened to change their opinion, that first impression would be there at the base of all their memories, like a foundation."

She really hoped that when Stacy repodded people, she didn't automatically re-release the media about them back into the Library. Then the person wakes back up and finds out that everyone knows their worst side.

He nodded. "No offense taken; I was just curious as to whether I'd be considered my own 'species'. I don't believe I was considered one on Earth."

"Assuming, of course, that none of the representations of that person as anything other than a monster were included in the library. However, I have found that the crew, despite their prejudices toward various species on their homeworlds, have been remarkably open to the idea of similar species that are not quite as ill-behaved. For example, some people regard me with initial distrust when told I am synthetic, but they generally understand that I am not necessarily the kind of synthetic being they are familiar with."

Well, that would be unfortunate. And short-sighted on the part of the ship.

"Well, with the Vizsnunishne it would have been your own choice if you wanted to present as human, or as a distinct subspecies, or entirely unique. So long as your medical data was accurate, the rest would be considered your own business. I imagine that if your Earth was like the one I visited, 'human' and 'sentient' were used interchangeably, so the word tended to get very emotionally charged. To say someone was non-human would be an insult, implying that they were an animal or something."

"I find it reassuring that the crew is getting along together so well, and adapting so quickly. Especially since their common cause - fighting the Ohm - was something that was thrust upon them, not something they chose en masse."

"No, I believe things were similar on my version of Earth; I was not considered human, and I'm sure there were those who would view someone like Fuyu and I to be little more than glorified toasters." This was all said with no emotional inflection of any kind -- he wasn't angry about it; it was simply a fact.

He nodded. "Although apparently there's still some friction between certain species. I understand Merlin kidnapped another crew member because of this."

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