Please Remain Seated

“Please remain seated,” the mediator said.

My chair walked away from the table.

It had six short legs and a pace that suggested I was late for something. I gripped its sides. Across the chamber, Captain Szabo held up one hand as though she could halt it by being disappointed.

“Nelric,” she said.

“I remain seated.”

“Come back.”

“I am not doing this.”

The chair stopped beside an open doorway near the window. Below us, freight ships waited in orbit around the port moon. Our ship was one of them. We had grain to unload, replacement parts to collect and enough fuel to go home. If this meeting failed, the next loading season was six months away.

My cabin had no window. I had been thinking about that fact for nine weeks.

Delegate Ruum clicked two plates of her shell together. A band of blue moved down her back. Knot, our machine mediator, turned her words into speech.

“Your presence at this table is generous,” it said.

“Thank you,” I replied from the window.

Szabo pushed her chair toward the table with her boots. It pushed back.

Ruum watched. The blue band went gray.

“Is that an insult?” Szabo asked quietly.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“That is why we brought you.”

“You brought me for written agreements. You brought Knot for speech.”

Knot spoke from a flat white box between us. “The words contain no insult.”

“The chair does,” I said. “Possibly.”

I was forty-six. I had translated seven trade agreements and one marriage contract that became a trade agreement halfway through. This was my first meeting with the people of the port moon. Their visitor notes said that color, objects and movement could carry meaning. I had read those notes aloud on the ship. Szabo had asked whether the objects included bills.

Ruum moved her own chair. She did not sit in it. Her long body rested on three folded feet beside it, and she used one narrow hand to shift it away from the model landing pad at the center of the table.

Szabo placed our unloading schedule on the pad.

“We request the existing freight approach,” she said. “The cargo is safe. The grain is sealed.”

Knot gave Ruum the speech. Ruum replied. Knot said, “The ships may land. The way must remain empty.”

She pointed at the round stones on our port chart. Szabo nodded at them, then slid her schedule over that part of the picture. Ruum appeared to think the point had been understood.

“Fine,” Szabo said. “We keep other ships out.”

Ruum shifted her chair farther away. My chair took three steps toward the door.

I planted both feet on the floor. The chair waited patiently for me to be sensible.

“Don’t hold it,” Ruum said through Knot.

“Why is it taking me away?” I asked.

She looked at the mediator box. Then at me.

“It offers you a place. You can move it somewhere else or stand up. Staying in it means you accept.”

“I haven’t given an answer.”

“You stay upon it.”

I stood immediately. The chair went to the door alone. Its empty seat looked accusing, but at least it no longer accused me personally.

Szabo rose too. Her chair hurried over to mine. They might have been friends.

“Knot,” I said, “are you translating their positions?”

“No movement meanings were supplied in my training packet. I can record positions. I cannot assign agreed meanings.”

“Then we haven’t finished a single sentence.”

Szabo rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Ask what she wants.”

“I want,” Ruum said, “you to stop offering an empty way where my young live.”

That needed no chair.

Our port chart showed adult homes high along the crater walls. The freight approach crossed the flat ground beneath them. There were no buildings there, only rows of small round stones.

“Those are homes?” I asked.

“Nests.”

Szabo looked at the chart. “The thrusters never touch down over that ground. We come through high.”

Ruum’s shell went pale.

“They do not need to touch.”

I pulled the landing model closer, slowly, so she could stop me.

“Please show us,” I said. “With this. We are making mistakes with words.”

Ruum opened a small drawer in the table. Inside lay dozens of tiny chairs. She placed six along the freight path, then passed the model ship over them. As its little shadow crossed, she tipped the chairs on their sides.

Szabo’s mouth tightened.

“The sound,” she said.

“And air pushed down,” Ruum replied. “The young cannot close their shells.”

The captain picked up her schedule again. “Daylight approach, then. The notes say the nests are empty during exercise hours.”

“They travel beside the nests then.”

“Could they travel elsewhere for three days?”

Ruum looked at her for a long time. Knot translated the answer without smoothing it.

“No.”

Our chairs moved farther from the table.

I had a sudden desire to kick mine. It knew far too much about how this meeting was going.

Knot displayed the port’s quiet freight route. It ran behind a long ridge and opened only at night, after small passenger vessels stopped using it. The journey from that landing place to the grain store would take two days instead of an afternoon. Knot had the times, distances and fuel figures. Those, at least, did not depend on furniture.

Szabo read them.

“We miss our fast return slot.”

“Not the season,” I said.

“No. The slot. We’d wait twelve days.”

Twelve more days in the cabin without a window. Twelve days of a crew asking what had gone wrong. I could almost hear myself explaining that their translator had failed to get a straight answer from a chair.

I moved my empty chair toward the quiet route on the chart.

Ruum stopped me with a lifted hand.

“Ask first,” she said.

“Does this mean I accept that route?”

“It means you are considering it. If you sit there, you accept.”

“Captain?”

Szabo examined the fuel total again. “One trial landing. No full unloading until the delegate confirms it.”

Ruum moved her chair beside the ridge.

“Accepted,” Knot said.

Nobody sat.

Knot added, “Verbally accepted. Awaiting position confirmation.”

I sat. Szabo did too. Ruum folded herself against her chair, a move that could not have been comfortable but appeared official.

For the first time that morning, all three chairs stayed still.

We agreed on the trial, the night route and the right to stop unloading if the nests were disturbed. Szabo would lose money. The young would keep their homes. Ruum did not thank us for that part, and I did not ask her to.

Knot read the finished agreement in both forms of speech. Ruum corrected one phrase. Szabo corrected a figure. I checked the written copy against the spoken one, which was work I understood.

When we finished, Ruum’s shell turned a warm yellow. Someone opened a door, and the smell of food came through it. My chair rose beneath me and walked toward a second room.

I stood so fast it nearly left me on the floor.

“Is this lunch?” I asked.

Ruum made a sound Knot did not translate at once.

Then the box said, “Yes. It was lunch the first time also. You seemed determined to hold your meeting hungry.”