All right!
“How was your Christmas party?”
“It was good. Here, I brought you some egg nog.”
“Is this a new way to cook eggs?”
“No. It's a sort of drink.”
I eagerly accepted, putting some of the drink into my human mouth. Good. Strange, but tasty.
“Oh, and here's a Kiss.”
I moved my human mouth for a moment, excitedly, and then had occasion to move it all the more as I received a small piece of chocolate. Chocolate is a wonderful human food that comes in many shapes. But, in spite of chocolate's important place in human culture, my translator chip is not sufficiently advanced to distinguish between “Kiss” (one particular shape of chocolate) and “kiss” (display of affection, involving mouths when humans carry it out). “Thank you!”
“Oh, sure. I'd have gotten more, but they were running out.”
“That is okay. I can purchase my own.”
“I'm sure you can. What have you been working on here?”
I rotated my modified computer screen so we could both see it. “Analyzing the orbits of the planets in your solar system.”
“Huh? Is anything...wrong?”
“Nothing's wrong. Just...looking. See? This is Jupiter, and here's Saturn.”
Actually that was stretching things a bit. I had stock images of Jupiter and Saturn open in the background; they were nice, but irrelevant to what I was doing. The main window was zoomed in on what only looked like two dots. I had written the program, and it was more of a model than anything based on actual photography. Still, it was transfixing.
“Is that what it would look like right now, if the sun wasn't in the way?”
“No. This...I came across an article about the astronomy of your solar system, I am trying to corroborate it. The computations look correct.”
I kept playing with the orbits, and sipping the egg nog, but was left in peace. When I am working on the computer my human friends often give me “a lot of space.” I don't see how this is important. I can do just as much when they are in close proximity to me.
After a while, I decided that I had inputted all the variables I cared about. If I had access to Andalite astronomical data, perhaps I could have added more information from across the galaxy, but I was getting tired. “Thank you for the chocolate.”
“You're welcome. Can I read the article?”
“What article?”
“Oh, whatever one got you started on this thing. If it's written by a human at least I might have a chance of understanding it. Unless it's some astronomy professor...”
“Oh no. Well, yes, it is an astronomy professor, but from context I have inferred that it is meant for a general audience.” I handed over the paper.
“Huh.” A quick skim. “Do...do Andalites have anything like Christmas? I know there are rituals, those are...kind of a religious thing?”
“Not the same,” I said darkly, rotating my head around the vertical axis. It is a human gesture that means “No.” “In the military we do many rituals. And we also have festivals in the civilian world. And there are stories about the ancient gods. But none of these have much to do with each other.”
“Huh. Okay.”
“The rituals...say much about honor and duty. From the perspective of the military leaders, they seem like a good idea. When arisths like myself are trained in repeating rituals, doing their commanders' will, perhaps they will become used to it, ready to do the honorable thing when it is necessary.” This was more than I'd said about my life as an aristh in a long time. In retrospect, the physiological effect of the egg nog may have been influencing this. The biodiversity of Earth has led to many intriguing chemical combinations.
“But you don't think so.”
Although I have morphed a human, I do not have as many human instincts—such as interpreting tone of voice—as natural humans, and sometimes I am surprised at their ability to draw conclusions from my speech. “When the time comes to act honorably, the situation is likely one you will have never seen before. Beef! Or.” Yes, the egg nog was certainly influencing my behavior.
“Do you think so? I feel like we need to act honorably a lot.”
“Well, when the stakes are very high. High-aye-aye-aye.”
“Like the angels?”
“These are creatures in human mythology?”
“The angels we have heard on high? It's a Christmas song.”
“Oh.” The human festival of Christmas is characterized by many songs. I am quite partial to one that had been playing on the radio (a human device for transmitting sound to many locations simultaneously). “Like the one about the chestnuts roasting on an open–nope!–fire?”
“Er, not quite.”
“It is hard to understand what could be better to sing about than delicious chestnuts.” I drank some more egg nog. Maybe that was better to sing about.
“Well, this one is from church. There's lots of carols, you know. My mom always took us on Christmas Eve, but that was before...things got messed up.”
“Would you like to worship? Sssshhhhip this year?”
“I don't know. Maybe. Do you?”
“Yes,” I realized. “I would like to learn about your mere—mere—miracles. And starsh.”
“So you think it's true? That the Star of Bethlehem was this...conjunction of the planets?”
I looked at the screen again. “I don't know,” I admitted. “But it is beautiful. You know, my—the Andalite homeworld is the only planet in that solar system. I have never seen a conjunction before.”
We stared at the screen for a long time. Then Loren took my hand in hers. “All right, Al, it's a date.”
