Chapter 9 - What Is Acceptable? (Two For All?)

"You have to realize that MNU isn't all bad."

MNU was what we were most afraid of, the enemy, representative of all that was bad in humans. The captor. The controller.

"I know that you don't like being in the District, and if I were you, I wouldn't like it either. I know it's not right for you, and it could be better, and I'll try to help you in any way that I can, but, tell me, what other option is there? What else can we do?"

I stood, listening. A light breeze rose and drifted between us on the night air.

"You just can't live with humans. I love you and respect you and your species and all that...I really do...but I also have to face the real world, here, and you have to understand that too. Prawns cause problems for humans. That's the truth. We're too different to get along together—to live together, like you say—and I know that that's not going to change. How can you expect it to? We're from different species. It's no one's fault, but it is a problem.

"As for living by yourselves in some forest somewhere...it's a nice idea, but it's just not going to work."

I shouldn't have told him what I had really been thinking of—my most precious dreams and fantasies. I needed to believe in those. Another rule, then: always keep the most delicate and important thoughts and dreams secret.

"Hard as it is, you need us. The situation, our situation, is as simple as that."

He stops talking. I attempt to bring the conversation back onto familiar ground that I can argue. "But things can't keep going the way they are—" I feel slightly dizzy.

"No, they can't," the human cuts in. "You—your end, prawns—have got to learn to stop hurting and hating us...did you hear about what happened a couple of nights ago?"

"No. I don't think so." My heart beats rapidly as I hold still. "Or maybe I did. What was it?"

"A couple prawns decided to throw rocks through the windows of some cars and an office building. No provocation, no cause, no humans anywhere. The press loved it." He runs one hand through his hair and looks at the ground. "Makes my job a lot harder, telling people to stay calm, to keep an open mind, not to attack you, when you're attacking us—not that that's strictly my job, by the way. Makes me unsure of just what I'm doing here, talking to you, and MNU and every other human like me who tries to be nice is thinking the exact same thing. You—"

"I didn't do anything wrong!" I scream at him. Can't let him think I had anything to do with it. You want to help me and I want to help you, but we're also members of our respective species, and that's the way it's always going to be.

"I didn't go along with it, but I know for a fact—and I found this out after it happened, mind you—I know that the one who did its' brother had been killed by a human car!"

"A lot of damage for one prawn to do all by himself," the human responds coolly. "And I'll bet that his friends didn't have a reason as noble."

His response—no sympathy whatsoever for the killed poleepkwa—sickens me slightly. But then, how could a human be expected to feel sympathy for one of us that he didn't know? "You're right, he brought his friends along, but the fact is the same...if one of us, somehow, killed one of you—"

"You have." His voice stays cool, but his eyes are harder now. "Prawns aren't innocent, Cory. Don't pretend like you are."

"I am...but that's not the point...what I'm trying to say, is, what would you have done? What would humans have done, for that matter? Would you have smashed up some of our houses...or would you have gotten true revenge? We restrained ourselves." The fate of James' brother had, mostly, bounced indifferently off the ears of those he had tried to tell about it. Everyone has their own problems.

Against the silence that followed, I become aware that I am breathing hard, and regret the outburst. The human has no reason to be here, other than his own feelings. We can't argue. Our conversation has to be kept constructive. "Besides, the rocks were supposed to have little pieces of paper tied to them. Messages." How many possible futures hang on the words that I say?

The human takes a step back and considers me. "You were involved with this somehow, weren't you. How else would you know that?"

"All right…look, I heard about this, and I wrote the messages for them. That's all." I've crossed a line. Now I can never be entirely innocent in this human's eyes again.

"What did these messages say?"

"Let us go."

Quiet, and then Brian sighs.

"We can't 'let you go', Cory. No matter how much I wish we could, it's not going to happen. Believe me, it's going to hurt us in the long run, too, having to look after all of you and support you as well, especially with how destructive you can be."

Spinning his side of the story. It's real easy for him to say that, from the outside looking in. For you it's paying costs to keep your city safe; for me, it's an ongoing struggle to exist. I just want my Cat Food. And to go home.

"So." I've been everywhere with this human, from thinking that he was the savior of my race, to disappointment and anger. He had said that he respects and wants to understand us; now he brings the "real world" into it. "What do you want?"

He inhales deeply. "Cory…you need humans. Getting out of the District, us 'letting you go', isn't going to solve your problems. What will help, what's really going to change things for the better, will be you and us, prawns and humans, working together and keeping each other safe. That means that, for starters, you can't do anything more destructive—for a good cause or not. When we—humans—feel as though we need to do something, and when the rest of them out there feel the way I do—sympathy and respect and understanding and everything I want for you—that's when things are going to change. When you have true human support. When we want to help you. When we feel that we have to.

"It's going to happen within the District, and it may not be what you've been dreaming of, but it will be better. Take it or leave it."

I think it over. And I think I understand. But will the rest of them? It doesn't really matter right now.

"All right. How?"

"By putting positive pressure on the rest of the humans. By showing something that they can't ignore: proof that things are wrong here."

"How?"

He holds up a video camera. A video of me talking is my first thought, along with the knowledge that that wouldn't change anything, wouldn't create the hard impact we needed to.

The humans would need proof.

He left the choice up to me, and said that two MNU soldiers would be sent around to my shack at about noon tomorrow. He left the choice up to me, and said that they would be angry, looking to arrest the prawns responsible for the damage done to human property.

The damage they will inflict will be out of proportion to a few thrown rocks. That I am certain of. The damage these guards would do, these unarmed (I received assurances on this point; I couldn't go through with it if I knew that a fellow poleepkwa would be killed), angry guards (staying uninjured is the number-one priority for survival in the District) will be recorded by the camera up near the roof. They'd never expect that kind of a thing, not from a prawn and certainly not from a human committing his own betrayal.

These kinds of things happen. This time, all the humans will know about it.

Brian says that he'll pass it off to all the major news networks after it's put on the internet. Positive pressure. Proof. An ugly proof. A horrible, disgusting taste of what can happen here. Brian will meet me tonight and I'll have my own excuses ready, in case any poleepkwa asks. He told me to meet him tonight and we both knew that I wouldn't be volunteering for this mission. How I would get two poleepkwa into my shack at noon is a decision left up to me.

I asked him to guarantee me that no one gets killed, and he says that he can do that, as best as he possibly can. They will be hurt—the thought of it sickens me, drives me to my knees, but it has to be acknowledged; considered—but they will not be killed.

And the video of them, being kicked around and beaten up by these two guards, will act as fuel on the dim fire of non-human rights, will drive the humans, content with the way things are, into defense for us. No one will doubt it or its authenticity, after the poleepkwa are released and questioned in person. MNU will survive.

An act of violence that would have happened in some form anyway will be used to improve things and our lives will be better. I believe that; have to if I am going to go through with this. James didn't know what he was getting into; I think I do and am preparing myself for it. Things will be better. I believe that.

"James," I say. He has taken another dose of Cat Food. Perhaps Joshua brought it to him, and then left. He is lying on the floor of his shack.

His head rolls towards me. I stoop down so he can understand me.

Cat Food. An attempt to dull his guilt over the poleepkwa who didn't return? Well, he may join him in MNU, soon enough.

This is a cold thought.

Root what I say in truth. If he comes back and questions me, I can say that I was just trying to help the common cause. That is what these two conversations will be about; that is what I am doing is actually about. No poleepkwa could subdue their survival instinct and remain in that room while the minutes tick down before the guards enter; and yet they would both want the results that it will have. Perhaps all of this can be explained to them later.

"James. When I came back from MNU, a poleepkwa named Alec, who controls a gang, brought me over to where he lives. He said that he wants to talk to you. He has a gang and knows that you had been trying to make one of your own, once. He wants to talk to you." Slow sentences, and James nods. This is getting through. I remind myself that I react differently to the Cat Food. I'm far more hooked on it and affected by it than any of the rest of them are.

"He will meet you at my shack at noon today." I see a black hole that I may disappear into and never find my way out of again, and am suddenly consumed by the need to do this right. I lean in closer. "Do you understand me, James?"

"I…understand." Slow, slurred speech that takes an effort to force out. I have been in that state before and feel disgusted with myself.

"He wants to talk to you. He wants to help you. And he is going to meet you at my shack at noon, when the sun is highest in the sky. Do you understand that?"

He nods.

"Will you be there?"

He nods again.

"Good."

We poleepkwa trust each other. We have to.

The next one, Alec, was more difficult, because he was thinking, and easier, in a way, because I wasn't friends with him like I had been with James once.

I felt doubt only once—in the time between when I walked in and when he appeared to see me, the same delay as last time. I tried to reassure and remind myself that I would do everything right; the camera was already in position and I knew what button I would have to press, the lies I would have to tell, the blessed justification to myself in the face of becoming a traitor (which was why I had ever come in contact with Alec at all, come to think of it). I would be branded one for sure in the eyes of my fellow poleepkwa, if they ever found out, and most of them would be incapable of understanding how this is going to help them.

This is the best option for us, and the result will justify anything that may happen to them. Or to me, if they ever find out.

This is the test, then—am I willing to risk their fury (being killed, myself) over this? Do I believe in what I am going to do strongly enough to run the same risk as those that I put in danger?

Yes. I do.

The meeting was simple. When he finally appeared and sat down in front of me for the second and hopefully last time, I asked if he was still interested in meeting James, talked about the compromise we had reached—my words on his rocks (Alec, I believe, thinks of me as a weak, peace-loving poleepkwa)—and how our last venture into the human city had been carried off successfully. What Alec dreamed of was poleepkwa domination, a dream that would be more even more impossible to realize than my fantasies of our own forests and cities. More dangerous, too. What he wanted meant that he might not like the idea of compromising with the humans through the messages I had written, but that part was coming from me, not James. He would realize that once he had partnered up with James the two of them could cut me out. This would be an appealing thought for him—both contact with James and me gone.

I told him that he could meet James at my shack at noon.

There was a pause, a moment's silence, as he considered my words.

Then, startlingly fast, he leaned forward and grabbed my head with one hand, my arms with the other. After the shock of being touched subsided I quieted my nerves and went limp in his hands.

He pulled me closer, staring into my opened eyes…

And stayed like that, as though searching for a hidden truth he had instinctively sensed in my last few words, the reason why I had really come to talk to him. I remained calm and stared right back, understanding his need for security and comfortable, above all, in the ultimate knowledge that I was doing the right thing.

"Will you be there?" he let me go and I sat back in my seat.

"He's going to be at your place. Will you be there too?"

"No." This is the delicate part. "I won't. This might not make a lot of sense to you, but I don't agree with what he's doing. Planning on doing. I won't stand in his way—he wanted to meet you and talk to you—and I won't prevent that from happening, but I won't support it either. He wanted to meet at my shack. Maybe his is a mess right now, I don't know. I can help him this much."

"So…what do you want?" unlike the last time we met, there is no menace in his voice. It is as though something passed between us and he feels like he can trust me now.

"I don't know." I get up and walk for the door. "Not this," meaning the shack and the District beyond it. "Not you, either."

And a sentence leaps unbidden from a deeper place in my mind, beyond conscious thought. A truly honest answer.

"I think…I want Cat Food." Alec reaches into the pocket of his jacket, withdraws a can and tosses it to me. I grasp it and feel the familiar urge.

"I've kind of fallen into this, you know? There's only a few things that I'm certain of." But the moment between us has passed, and I can sense that Alec's mind has moved on to other things.