Looooong Day.
Apr. 23rd, 2008 06:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
swestrupIts been a very long day, and it took a while to wind down once it was over, but now I'm off to bed. However, there is one thing puzzling me, and a quick google search has not helped. Its the name and author of a Science Fiction story I'm looking for, but haven't been able to find.
It takes place on board a space ship at some alien planet where the human crew have been given the job of punishing an alien for an unintelligible crime. The alien turns out to be perfectly happy in a large number of different environments, so discomfiting it that way is useless. They do manage to infect it with a virus to make it ill, but it just gets sad and torpid, and it doesn't seem to work terribly well as a punishment.
The main character spends his time trying to sort out the strange 'panga' relationship grid that the aliens use to place themselves in society. There is also a 'panga box' which is somehow used to measure an alien's panga, but its not clear how for most of the short story.
In the end the hero works out that the aliens have to very strictly control their weights (for reasons I no longer remember) and are ALWAYS hungy. The term panga means something like 'weighs close to what I do', and the network of panga affiliations works as sort of weight watchers where the disapproval of ones panga set keeps one from eating.
Since the hero is the same weight as the alien, he tells him "I am panga to you, and I'm telling you that for the next 3 minutes you can do whatever you want!" The alien then goes on a feeding frenzy and nearly doubles in weight. The other aliens are very impressed and declare it to be an extremely good punishment, as the criminal is now almost certain to never manage to fit into a panga box.
---
So, does all of that ring any bells? Right now its driving me crazy trying to figure out what its call or who wrote it.
It takes place on board a space ship at some alien planet where the human crew have been given the job of punishing an alien for an unintelligible crime. The alien turns out to be perfectly happy in a large number of different environments, so discomfiting it that way is useless. They do manage to infect it with a virus to make it ill, but it just gets sad and torpid, and it doesn't seem to work terribly well as a punishment.
The main character spends his time trying to sort out the strange 'panga' relationship grid that the aliens use to place themselves in society. There is also a 'panga box' which is somehow used to measure an alien's panga, but its not clear how for most of the short story.
In the end the hero works out that the aliens have to very strictly control their weights (for reasons I no longer remember) and are ALWAYS hungy. The term panga means something like 'weighs close to what I do', and the network of panga affiliations works as sort of weight watchers where the disapproval of ones panga set keeps one from eating.
Since the hero is the same weight as the alien, he tells him "I am panga to you, and I'm telling you that for the next 3 minutes you can do whatever you want!" The alien then goes on a feeding frenzy and nearly doubles in weight. The other aliens are very impressed and declare it to be an extremely good punishment, as the criminal is now almost certain to never manage to fit into a panga box.
---
So, does all of that ring any bells? Right now its driving me crazy trying to figure out what its call or who wrote it.
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Date: 2008-04-24 04:26 am (UTC)