“Not stupid, just ignorant,” said Prilicla, trying to maintain his stable hover in spite of the gale of strong emotion blowing up at him; “but ignorance is a temporary condition that can be relieved by the acquisition of knowledge. You have feelings of fear, anger, intense hatred, and loathing towards us. If you will tell me why you feel this way, I will tell you why there is no reason for the Sitikis to have these feelings. A simple exchange of knowledge about ourselves will solve the problem.”
“Your problem, not ours,” said Irisik, looking towards the injured glider pilot. “You will satisfy your curiosity regarding your victims as well as your hunger. In the end we will be eaten with the rest of your catch.”
“I’ve told it over and over again that we don’t eat people. …” Murchison began angrily, then stopped as Prilicla made the Cinrusskin gesture for silence.
“Please,” he said. “I want to hear this patient speaking to me and no one else. Irisik, what makes you think that we eat people?”
Irisik inclined its head, the only part of its body free of the litter restraints, towards Murchison. “This other stupid one,” it said, “has been telling me many things, including the lie that it wants us to go on living. That, a sane, adult, reasoning person cannot and will not believe. Don’t waste time telling me new and even more fantastic lies. You know the answer to your question, so don’t pretend that either one of us is stupid.”
Prilicla was silent for a moment. Considering the other’s emotional state, and in particular its behavior and verbal coherency in a situation that was unique in its experience and which it fully believed would have only a lethal outcome, he found Irisik’s behavior admirable. But not the feelings of solid self-certainty and disbelief that surrounded the creature’s mind like a stone wall.
Murchison, he knew, would already have given it a simplified version of the work of the Federation, the Monitor Corps, the hospital, and the special ambulance ship nearby and the duties its crew performed, clearly without success. He thought of explaining that he himself felt only sympathy for its fears which would in a short time be proved groundless. But he felt sure, and his feelings were rarely wrong, that the wall of certainty surrounding the other’s beliefs and disbeliefs was impervious to anything he could do or say.
Perhaps the wall could only be demolished from within.
“To the contrary,” he continued, “pretend that I and everyone else here is stupid. You are an intelligent, logical being who has good reasons for feeling and believing as you do, so share these reasons with us. Whether you believe what I am telling you now or not, we do not intend to do anything to anyone here, apart from feeding them, for the rest of the day. So if you were to talk about yourself, your world and your people and why you believe the things you do, the day or days will pass for us in an interesting manner. If what you tell us is particularly interesting, it may be that so much time will pass that…”
“Shades of Scheherazade,” said Murchison quietly.
No doubt it was an obscure reference from something in the pathologist’s Earth-human past, but this was not the time to go off on historical tangents. He went on. “… that your friends will be able to find a way of rescuing you. There is a saying among our people, Irisik, that while there is life there is hope.”
“We have a similar saying,” the other said.
“Then talk to us, Irisik,” said Prilicla. “Tell us the things you think we already know, and with them the many things that you know we don’t know. Is there anything we can do to make you feel more comfortable, apart from letting you go free, before you begin?”
“No,” said Irisik. “But how do you know I won’t tell you lies, or exaggerate the truth?”
“We won’t,” Prilicla replied, settling to the ground beside the other’s litter. “As strangers we might not be able to tell the difference, but the lies or exaggerated truth will be equally interesting to us. Please go on, and begin with the reason why you think we will eat you.”