The Trafalgar Gambit (Ark Royal) by Christopher Nuttall Read Free Book Online

in front of his visitors.  It helped that they were very definitely not human.
     
    He sat up as water splashed around the entrance, then swung his legs over the side of the bed as an alien clambered up into the compartment.  As always, the alien seemed largely uncomfortable in the cell, even though the atmosphere was warm and moist enough to pass for Malaysia.  He couldn't help comparing its movements to a strange mixture of wet dog and wetter seal, before it turned to peer at him with bulging, utterly inhuman eyes.  Henry had the feeling that bright light would disorientate the alien – its eyes were designed to see underwater – but there was no way to be sure.  He didn’t have anything, apart from his wits.
     
    “Greetings,” the alien said.
     
    Henry rose to his feet and affected a bow.  “Greetings,” he replied.  “Have we seen each other before?”
     
    “Yes,” the alien said.
     
    There were humans, Henry knew, who would have been offended by the suggestion that every member of a particular ethnic group looked alike.  And it was stupid; it was quite easy to tell the difference between two different humans.  The only exception to that rule, at least in Henry’s experience, was an asteroid where every single person was a clone of the asteroid’s founder or his wife.  But the aliens didn't seem to care.  They all looked alike to him and, no matter what he did, he had never been able to even tell the difference between male and female aliens. 
     
    They might have the same problems with us , he told himself. 
     
    The alien seemed to flow into a sitting position.  “Sit,” it ordered.  “Please sit.”
     
    Henry nodded, wondering just where the aliens had learned their English.  His best guess was that they had recovered a tutoring console, perhaps from Vera Cruz or one of the other smaller colonies out along the rim of known space.  They seemed to have a good grasp on the basic structure of the language, but they had real problems with understanding the differences between requests, commands and warnings.  And that, he suspected, was just scratching the surface.  It was possible that humans and aliens would never come to understand one another.
     
    He sat cross-legged and faced the alien, wondering just what the alien saw when it looked at a human.  A faceless monster, an animal ... or another intelligent being?  Humans saw monsters when they looked at aliens, Henry knew, although he wasn't sure how much of that sensation had been dictated by experience.  He was looking at a representative of a race that had devastated several worlds, occupied more and taken countless humans as prisoners.
     
    “You will explain your government, please,” the alien said.  “How do they come into power?”
     
    Henry hesitated.  It was hard enough explaining democracy, let alone the strange combination of meritocracy and aristocracy that made up the British Government.  He rather doubted he could make it comprehensible to the aliens.  But he had to try.
     
    “When we want to select new leaders,” he said, “we ask people to support them.  The person with the most votes wins the election and becomes the leader for the next few years.”
     
    There was a long pause.  He wondered, suddenly, how the aliens handled their government.
     
    “Explain your government,” he ordered.  It had taken him some time to realise that the aliens responded better to bluntness than politeness.  He wasn't sure if they didn’t need the social lubricant politeness provided for humanity or if words like ‘please’ or ‘thank you’ confused them.  They’d certainly never punished him for asking questions or being rude.  “How does it work?”
     
    “All talk,” the alien said.  “All decide.  All do.”
     
    Henry frowned, puzzled.  Was the alien being deliberately evasive or was it unable to express its true meaning in English?  Or was he simply not understanding what he was being