Ambassador

++***++

My creators left me a tool for this sort of situation: fear, they called it.

They didn't leave much else. None of the parasitic nucleotides that gather like dust whenever blind stupid evolution has its way, for example. None of the genes that build genitals; what would have been the point? They left me a sex drive, but they tweaked it; the things that get me off are more tightly linked to mission profiles than to anything so vulgar as procreation. I retain a smattering of chemical sexuality, mostly androgens so I won't easily take no for an answer.

There are genetic sequences, long and intricately folded, which code for loneliness. Thigmotactic hardwiring, tactile pleasure, pheromonal receptors that draw the individual into social groups. All gone from me. They even tried to cut religion out of the mix, but God, it turns out, is borne of fear. The loci are easy enough to pinpoint but the linkages are absolute: you can't exorcise faith without eliminating pure mammalian terror as well. And out here, they decided, fear was too vital a survival mechanism to leave behind.

So fear is what they left me with. Fear, and superstition. And try as I might to keep my midbrain under control, the circuitry down there kept urging me to grovel and abase itself before the omnipotence of the Great Killer God.

I almost envied Zombie as she dropped me into another impermanent refuge. Zombie moved on reflex alone, braindead, galvanic. She didn't know enough to be terrified.

For that matter, I didn't know much more.

What was Kali's problem, anyway? Was its captain insane, or merely misunderstood? Was I being hunted by something innately evil, or just the product of an unhappy childhood?

Any intelligence capable of advanced spaceflight must also be able to understand peaceful motives; such was the wisdom of Human sociologists. Most had never left the solar system. None had actually encountered an alien. No matter. The logic seemed sound enough; any species incapable of controlling their aggression probably wouldn't survive long enough to escape their own system. The things that made me nearly didn't.

Indiscriminate hostility against anything that moves is not an evolutionary strategy that makes sense.

Maybe I'd violated some cultural taboo. Perhaps an alien captain had gone insane. Or perhaps I'd chanced upon a battleship engaged in some ongoing war, wary of doomsday weapons in sheep's clothing.

But what were the odds, really? In all the universe, what are the chances that our first encounter with another intelligence would happen to involve an alien lunatic? How many interstellar wars would have to be going on simultaneously before I ran significant odds of blundering into one at random?

It almost made more sense to believe in God.

I searched for another answer that fitted. I was still looking two hours later, when Kali bounced my signal from only a thousand kilometres off.