said, flicking her fingers impatiently. âYour mother wonât forbid you from helping all of humanity because she doesnât want to miss out on a year of baking cookies and tucking you in for night-night kisses.â
âDo you have children?â I asked.
She scowled. âWhat do you think?â
âI think you havenât been around this many people under eighteen since you graduated from high school.â
âCorrect.â
âIâll try not to get on your nerves,â I told her, giving her my best smile. It was more polite than saying You are both intense and super scary.
She sighed. âI wish we had better material to work with, but youâre what weâve got.â
âThanks,â I said. I packed up the smile and put it away.
âIâve read your school records. You seem to get into a lot of trouble.â
âI never cause those incidents,â I told her, hating how defensive I sounded.
She flicked an indifferent hand upward. She could not trouble herself to care. âThe president exerted a lot of influence to make certain the United States provided the adult permitted to accompany the delegation. We had to promise all kinds of beneficial trade deals with India and South Korea, and offer a great deal of aid to Uganda.â
âWelcome aboard?â I offered.
Her facial tic suggested I was, once again, too slow to get the point. âItâs also worth pointing out that the other species are not sending any sort of chaperone. Only Earth.â
âWhy?â
âBecause the other species didnât think to ask,â Ms. Price said. âAnd that is my point. Dr. Roop has allowed me to review certain data about the Confederation in advance of our departure, and I find some things both interesting and troubling. More than eighty percent of the member species evolved from herbivores. Almost none of the species eat primarily meat, and most of those that are omnivores eat mostly insects or other small, harmless creatures.â
âWhat are you telling me? That I should order a hamburger before I go?â
She sighed at my failure to understand her point. âDo you know what the symbol of the Confederation is? Itâs a gas giant, like Jupiter. Do you know why?â
I took a moment to consider what I knew about planets of that sort. âMaybe thereâs a gas giant in the outer solar system of every inhabited planet,â I proposed.
She squinted at me, maybe impressed, maybe suspicious. âHow could you know that?â
âIâm into this stuff,â I said. âGas giants are supposed to be a possible precondition for intelligent life. The gravity pulls bigstuff into the planetâs orbit. If we didnât have Jupiter to protect us, the Earth would constantly be getting smashed by asteroids and comets, like the one that killed the dinosaurs.â
She nodded. âCorrect, and their symbol is this thing that exists to protect them, not a thing they have done to protect themselves. Theyâre passive. Theyâre sheep .â Her voice grew quiet. âThey are nice and orderly and calm and helpful, but they are not innovators or inventors like we are. All of their technology comes from these ancient aliens, these Formers, and theyâve been recycling their old technology for centuries. They have very little crime, and even less violent crime, not because theyâve solved those problems but because they never had them in the first place. I donât know why they asked us to applyâweâre much more aggressive than most member species. So my point is that you are going to have to be on your best behavior. Iâm less worried about your average intellect and lack of useful skills than I am about your adolescent rebelliousness. You need to keep it in check. No fighting, no troublemaking, no rule breaking.â
âI am not a troublemaker,â I said. I didnât want to tell her
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