Ground: A very long way from home
GROUND / PRELUDE
DIRECTOR'S OFFICE, EXOPLANET INVESTIGATION PROJECT
“Rachel... come in, sit.” the director said, looking at his notes and then frowning slightly. “As you know, there were four openings this year, with four young men and yourself applying for a field run. Unless you decide to withdraw, then I'll be assigning you to fly with Dr Magdalena Karella John. Have you met her?”
“No.”
“I'm not surprised. She tends to avoid Christians.”
“But...” Rachel was too surprised to hold her tongue. “Her name sounds Mer.”
“She is, at least... that's the side of her ancestry she favours.”
“I thought all Mer were Christians,” Rachel blurted.
“You wouldn't be here if you didn't know how dangerous assumptions are: flowers can kill you, and so on. Remember that applies in humans as well, and you'll go far. Well, you'll be going far anyway. Maggie is a good pilot, one of the best we have. She may or may not tell you other things about herself, it's certainly not my place to. What I can tell you, must tell you, is that her flight-plan possibly carries some additional risk. You'll be going as far or further than anyone else has gone, following the path of a ship which didn't return.”
“Didn't return? We'll be looking for traces of their Majesty's grandson?”
The director raised an eyebrow, wondering who had broken silence. The Restored Kingdom wouldn't be impressed. “I wasn't aware that anything had been made public.”
“Oh. Urm, no, it hasn't. But... he was almost clan...” Rachel's eye's opened wide as names clicked into place, “I met his and Magdalena's parents, once.”
“You will have ample time to discuss such meetings, if you both desire. Remember, that Dr Magdalena is as much a Martian citizen as you are, with an absolute right to privacy.”
“Of course, sir.”
“I hadn't realised you had that connection, though. Obviously, if you find any trace of the missing ship it'll bring some closure to the grieving relatives, but whether you do or not, you will be bringing back interesting data about the systems you visit: the astronomers insist you write a paper of results, as part of their support for the project. Of course if you find any life it'll be good material for your doctoral thesis, but I remind you that there are no guarantees, you know that. You still might well find yourself investigating someone else's samples.”
“I understand, sir. Thank you for the opportunity to try.”
“Hmm. You might not say that after six month's of Maggie's tongue. It's almost as sharp as her knives. Given the extra risk element, you have an extra twenty-four hours to discuss the assignment with family members.”
“I don't need them, sir. I have the next week to get to know her anyway, don't I?”
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“So, do I have a passenger, or do I give up on this project and go shark-hunting?” Maggie asked, striding into the director's office without ceremony.
“You have an assigned researcher.”
“Well, finally!”
“It's only been a few months, Maggie.”
“It felt longer.”
“You could have socialised with the up-coming bunch.”
“Why would I want to do that? Three quarters get scared of me or the risks and decide to stay in the nice safe lab, and most of the others think their muscles and male body-odor will impress me. What's this guy like? Do you think I'll get past Jupiter with this one, before I need to turn round or castrate him?” She was exaggerating, but she had needed to cut her previous trip to half the planned length. The enforced proximity of ship-board life had become too much for her assigned student, and she'd heard not just romantic thoughts from him, but him deciding that it would be a lovely surprise for his parents when he presented her as his wife on their return to the Solar system.
“She is quite determined, and I'd say she'll go a long long way.”
“You've found me a girl? Really?”
“Rachel Ngbila. She says she's met your parents.”
“Rupert's daughter?” Maggie asked, surprised, remembering a determined five or six year-old bypassing the fridge's child-lock while humming 'Yes, Jesus loves me'.
“Relatives are a matter of privacy.”
“Of course they are. I suspect her faith isn't. Oh well, at least as a clan-member she's going to be used to being around thought-hearers.”
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GROUND / CH1. RUNNING
GROUND
He ran, and he could hear them chasing him — predators. They were faster, of course, he was smarter, more adaptable. One on one, the predator would be the one running. But there were three of them. It was a temporary alliance, they weren't a true pack, he could tell. They weren't communicating at all. Just running. Running with the joy of being a multicelular organism, running with the goal of food. He, on the other hand, was trying to stay in one piece, and the same shape he was. He didn't want to change; let alone bud. Budding was a last resort, giving them some of himself to eat. It was the ultimate betrayal of his species — training the hunters they could get fed without much risk, just from running. A betrayal of his muscles, of cooperation. Fighting was better than that, or changing, of course. But changing took time, and left you slow. So he ran, there were some trees ahead, and he knew the predators didn't climb trees. He switched gait, a last sprint, and he leapt at the branch, and swung himself up, safe. Yes, this was a good shape. He climbed further up, and picked some fruit. Energy for his exhausted leg muscles. Cooperation had its rewards, and his arms, saved by his legs, now saved his legs from being chewed up. Yeah yeah, said his legs, and what about the brain, eh? When's that going to do some heavy lifting?
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SPACE
“What's he doing now?” Rachel asked, as Maggie was still blocking the screen. Rachel had been taking notes, anyway.
“Sitting in the tree like the typical arboreal, eating some fruit. I told you he wasn't tool-user.”
“Of course he's a tool user, look at his belt,” Rachel said.
“Ha. You're still fascinated by what's under it,” Maggie teased the younger woman.
“It's just odd. We've seen plenty of overt genitalia in the lower animals, now here we've got a bipedal tool-user who's as asexual as a child's doll.”
“You're assuming that bipedal means intelligent, again, Rach,” Maggie said, then gave a low whistle. “Wow. OK. I'll give you tool user.”
“What?”
“He's just hacked a branch off that tree with some kind of axe from his belt, ripped the leaves off with one hand, stuffed them in his mouth and shoved the cut end of the branch right down the gullet of one of the hunters. All in, like, ten seconds. Can I change my bet?”
“I never accepted it anyway. I hope you've marked up that sequence for replay.”
“Of course I have. And this one.”
“What's he doing?”
“Eating leaves, making another spear. This one he's sharpening. With his teeth.”
“So, vegetarian tool user with a crazy digestive system.”
“Spitting out the wood.”
“That, I find encouraging,” Rachel said, noting it down.
“He's sighting along the spear, this time. Oh wow. Doggie kebab. Carnivores zero, bipedal prey species three.”
“Prey species?”
“Highly adaptable, tool using prey species. Uh oh.”
“What?”
“He's just spotted our drone.”
“And?”
“Urm, taken out a note pad and started sketching.”
“A note pad?”
“Looks like it. I'd say we've got drawing skills, here.”
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GROUND
The strange creature was there again. Had it followed him? Interesting. What was it? He'd have to ask people if they'd seen anything like it. It was too small to be a person. And of course it was flying with no wings his eyes pointed out. That was pretty impressive if it was true. He focussed on it fully. God's universe was even stranger than he'd known! Metal. There was certainly metal on that 'creature'. So... unknown technology. Jakav — for that was his name — was so glad he hadn't changed, he'd have missed this.
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SPACE
“Oh no!” Maggie exclaimed, “This cannot be happening. “.
“What?”
“Geometry. I hate geometry.”
“What do you mean, geometry?”
“Triagles. Square of the hypotenuse. He's doing a first contact protocol on us.”
“No outbound communication devices on that probe, are there?”
“No. I could get it to flash the first few digits of Pi at him.”
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GROUND
Jakav saw the strange flying object start to flash. Three flashes, one flash, four flashes. Then there was a pause and it repeated, and the probe went in circles. Jakav frowned. What was that supposed to mean? It wasn't any number he recognised. If it had been three one eight, that would have made some sense, the first few digits of the circle number. He drew on the soil once more. A circle, a radius, and the circle number, first in numbers, then, in dots. Three, one, eight.
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SPACE
“Rach, look at this, tell me what you see.” Maggie said.
“Oh help.” Rachel said, “He doesn't think in decimal.”
“What?”
“His counting system's not decimal. Three point one four only works if you think in tenths and hundredths. Get the probe to count to ten, he might get the point.”
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GROUND
The light flashed from one to ten, and stopped, and repeated itself. Jakav got the idea. They didn't know the circle number because they used base ten.
See, muscles? There were benefits to brains. Predator meat to take home, as well as information. The people who made flying machines without propellers counted in base ten. He wondered why.
He wrote the numbers zero to eleven on the ground, put dots under some of them, so they might get the point and then settled down to gut the predators.
First contact with an alien species was all very well, but there were hungry people back home. He idly wondered if they were multicellular organisms or multi-organism cooperations. More importantly, were they really going to tell the people about what God had done? He'd wondered, earlier that day, if he'd misunderstood where God had wanted him to go, when he'd found himself being chased by three carnivores, but two butchered carnivores meant protein, which was nice, and three dead meant extra safety for slow people, which was even better. And the thought of maybe learning what God had done was just amazing.
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SPACE
“This makes no sense,” Rachel said, looking at his path.
“What doesn't?” Maggie asked.
“He's heading back to the area we called the menagerie.”
“Maybe he's the zoo-keeper.”
“Hmm.” Rachel reviewed the observations quickly on her screen. “I think we misclassified it. It's his home town.”
“What?”
“For a given value of road and building, I'm now seeing roads and buildings.”
“But we didn't see any two creatures alike!” Maggie said.
“I know. I wish photons were quicker. I don't want to leave, but I do want to call home. It's all very well hopping through warped space and finding new species, but it'd be nice to be able to say hey guys, our probe has just met this intelligent being who wasn't phased one bit by a hovering probe, inflicted geometry on us and counts in base twelve. And none of the beings at his home look anything like him.”
“I wouldn't mind James calling in for an update,” Maggie said.
“Really? I thought you told him to get lost and not bother you any more last time he talked to you.”
“That was two weeks ago. A girl can change her mind, can't she? I've got an estimate on his ground speed from the video, by the way.”
“Go on,” Rachel prompted.
“His long distance run was about eight kilometers an hour, or a pretty slow jog, and his sprint was nothing special either, in human terms.”
“That's reassuring if we ever need to run away,” Rachel said, thinking the chances of that were zero.
“But his hand speed and dexterity are crazy. It's like his hands didn't need telling what to do. And by the way, he doesn't always use his eyes together.”
“Eh?”
“Independent eye control, like a Chameleon,” Maggie expanded. “And when he noticed the probe, I'd say that he zoomed in on it.”
“You're joking.”
“Nope. Probe imagery suggests he's got multi-lens optics in his eyeballs. Nice trick if you can manage it.”
“So... Super dexterous, bionic vision, good brain, and just-about-good-enough leg muscles.”
“That's about what I've worked out, yes.” Maggie agreed.
“So, Captain. Do we follow, and risk botching first contact, or do we need to run home and let someone else earn that credit?”
“Let's pray everyone's got a forgiving nature. I mean he did the first contact thing. I imagine he's planning to tell people all about this alien probe he met.”
Rachel bit her lip rather than reply; Maggie had so frequently declared she didn't believe in God that Rachel really wanted to pounce on the suggestion that they pray. But she didn't want the barriers to come up yet again, they'd been getting on so well in the last few days.
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GROUND
“Hey, Aza, can you get my parents?” Jakav called to one of his friends, who'd decided to grow wings since he'd last seen her.
“Do I get some of the meat?”
“Sure, or the glory. Spot the alien machine, yet?”
“What alien machine?”
“Just up there. It thinks the circle number is three dot one four.”
“That's stupid. It's three dot one eight!” Aza said.
“I think it uses base ten.” Jakav said.
“Ten? What a crazy number.” Aza exclaimed. “Who'd think of that? They can't even divide by three!”
“Hey, don't blame me. I didn't invent the thing.”
Aza flew up to look at the strange machine. “It's pretty small, isn't it?” she called down to Jakav.
“I know that,”
“You think there are beings inside it?”
“I doubt it. Any idea what keeps it up?”
“No wings, no jets.” She prodded the probe with a stick. “It does react though, doesn't it?”
“Someone probably doesn't want it broken.”
“Yeah, yeah. Strange flying machine. I'll go get your parents, weirdling.”
It was an old jibe, Jakav was used to it. Like most people, Aza had been formed as a podling — a mixing of cells — not a mixling. Her parents had each contributed some of themselves, part of her her father's muscles, part of her mother's mind, and so on. Mix and match like that was easy when you were a multi-organism cooperation, but it did reduce the abilities of the parents, at least temporarily, if they gave their best, or reduce the abilities of the podling if they didn't. His parents had done it the other way; mixing genetic material, and allowing for entropy, blessing, uncertainty, newness, variety, strangeness. Unlike Aza, who was just like a stronger version of her mother in many ways, Jakav wasn't just like anyone else; he was all himself, unique, strange, weird. There weren't many people like him in the town, and none who were older. His parents had been... pioneers of reinventing an old way. The really old way had involved finding a nice damp hole they could hide in for a few weeks, and carried significant risks, but they weren't barbarians now; hygiene had done wonders for their population size.
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SPACE
“I see inter-species cooperation,” Rachel said, “and curiosity about the probe.”
“No fear at all, is there.” Maggie observed.
“Not yet. Hey! The one with wings has just stuck a stick at the probe.”
“You said they were curious. Probe the probe with a prod. I would too, probably.”
“Don't you mean prodably?”
“Hey, Rachel, ignore the wings, compare and contrast those two faces.”
“You don't think we're seeing some kind of gender-based dimorphism do you?” Rachel asked, “Or an age thing? Maybe they're different stages of life?”
“Who knows.” Maggie said. “Oh, the flying one's gone.”
“Should I follow?” Rachel asked.
“I presume he's waiting here for a reason. Hey, zoom in on that drawing he's doing now, will you?” Maggie asked, “I think recognise that symbol.”
“Probably. Three-fold interlocking pattern.” Rachel replied. “Either pretty geometry or religious symbol of the trinity.”
“You reckon we've flown, I don't remember how many, light-years from home and we're meeting people who believe in your God?” Maggie asked, a dangerous look in her eyes.
“Maggie, do you need me to point out to you that every time James thinks to you you're on the receiving end of a miracle? Shouldn't people here believe in the same creator of the universe as at home? It raises a theological question though.”
“Go on.”
“What if there's been no fall here? If there's been no fall, then they'd have no fear.”
“He seemed pretty afraid of those dog-like things.”
“Not the same. Avoiding getting eaten doesn't mean that intelligent life might wish you harm.”
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GROUND
“Jakav, Aza said you'd killed two predators and found something else?” Jakav's father asked.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“Up there, Dad.” Jakav pointed out the probe, “Metal, floating without visible support. It can flash a light and counts in base ten.”
“Interesting. You haven't tried to capture it?”
“No. Dad, I felt the One leading me to a certain patch of ground, three carnivores chased me, right into the view of that thing. I dropped a sharpened branch on one, and then speared these two properly while they were eating their comrade.”
“Three carnivores, eh? Well done. Your experiment seems to be working.”
“It is. I feel like I'm faster each day.”
“Well, I'll leave you to your experiment and have a look at this myself.”
“Your choice, Dad. I think its masters are curious about us.”
“I'm pretty curious about them too. You don't think they're inside?”
“I doubt it. It's too small, surely?”
“Well, I'll go have a look at it, then.”
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SPACE
“No way!” Maggie exclaimed.
“Now what?” Rachel asked, looking up from her report.
“The subject intelligences are shape-shifters,” Maggie said, formally.
“What?”
“This one, now hovering beside the probe and looking curiously at the probe's serial number, didn't used to have wings. He had some conversation with your friend the dog-killer, and I swear his arm-bones changed shape and suddenly he had wings.”
“I seriously hope you've got that on video,” Rachel said.
“Probe memory currently at five percent and filling with full resolution data. Ship-board memory currently at zero point one percent, so no problem at this end. We'll need to get closer for full band-width, though.”
“Why don't we go lower? See how they react.”
“Sure?”
“The worst that happens is they try to capture the probe,” Rachel pointed out, matter of factly.
“No,” Maggie corrected. “The worst that happens is they do capture the probe, and somehow get it to leak antimatter.”
“So, we'll put a forcefield tube or dome around it, so they can't.”
“OK.”
“And let's work out if we can use the sample laser to do some of our own drawings.”
“Through the forcefield?”
“Maybe not. Big tube?”
“Oof, my energy budget! OK.”
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GROUND
“What did you do, Dad?” Jakav asked, as the probe slowly went lower and lower.
“Nothing. It's got some strange symbols on the bottom, I was trying to look at them.”
“What's this thing?” Jakav's mother asked.
“Jana, this thing's either a prop from a very high budget theatre show I've never heard of or from another planet. Since it's floating without blades or anything, I'm guessing it's mostly some kind of very carefully controlled helium balloon.”
“It's very thin metal if it is,” Jakav said, “Hey, it hasn't done that before!” as a line of light shone from underneath it onto the ground.
“Light beam.” Jakav's mother said, “Impressive focus, too. You don't think it's one of those new laser things do you, Kov?”
“Maybe. Hey! Dad, look at the sand! Something's pushing it away!” Jakav exclaimed.
“Ultra invisible glass?” Kov suggested.
“Growing Ultra invisible glass? It's sort of squidgy, too.” Jakav said, pushing at the forcefield with a stick. The stick seemed undamaged, so he risked a fingertip. “It's invisible, it's smooth, and it pushes back. I think our visitors have force-fields, Mum.”
“What fun for you physicists. Lasers, forcefields, space travel.” Kov said, “I just hope they're friendly.”
“What is it doing with that light?” Jana asked.
“I think it's trying to write messages.” Kov said.
“On sand? That's not very clever.” she replied.
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SPACE
“I can't mark the sand without turning it to glass, and the forcefield's too coarse an instrument.” Maggie said. “Next idea?”
“Yes. Let's make a bid for his note-pad, or write on some rock.”
“Careful with the writing on rock.” Maggie said, “If he was asking if you were a messenger from God, that's potentially cultural interference.”
“So, stick men? Accurate biological drawings?” Rachel suggested.
“I thought you weren't allowed to draw human images for worship.”
“Fine. Let's start with physics and chemistry, then, rather than who we are?”
“Safer. He started geometry. Let's start with that.” Maggie said.
“I thought you hated it?”
“I do. It's still safer than breaking cultural taboos.”
“There were some rocks by the tree he climbed. It seems mostly sand here.”
“Hey, we could just go cut a bit off his tree, couldn't we?”
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GROUND
“It's given up trying to write on sand.” Jakav noticed.
“You could give it some paper to write on,” Aza suggested, who'd just flown in.
“It might be insulting if it doesn't work,” Jakav said.
“It might be thankful.” Kov pointed out.
“That laser's a heat tool; the paper might catch fire.” Jana said.
“Oooh, fun. Let's! First contact message goes up in smoke! Is it trying to draw the triangle law?” Jakav looked and said, “That's the first thing I drew for it.”
“You drew it geometry?” Aza asked.
“Why not? It shows I'm a rational being.”
“Well that's a claim not everyone would agree with,” she shot back. “You've been stuck in that same shape for weeks.”
“And I could outrun three predators because of it, and I could fashion the spear quicker than ever.”
“You're going to forget how to change, if you're not careful.” Aza accused. As if anyone could ever do that.
“And you're going to change so much one day you'll find you can't remember if you've got wings or gills and have a messy accident.” Jakav retorted, with far more history on his side.
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SPACE
“What do you think, are we witnessing an argument?” Maggie asked.
“You mean the way they're focusing their attention on one another, ignoring the probe, and voices seem to have been getting louder and louder? Maybe it's just some kind of friendly discussion. But yeah, I reckon it's an argument. I wish we had two way communication on this thing.”
“I wish we had some way of getting James to call in,” Maggie said, “So that we could ask him to help with communication.”
“Why don't you ask God for another miracle, that He'd tell James to call you, then?” Rachel suggested. It was an old, familiar, jibe.
“Because I don't believe in your God.”
“Can I ask a genuine question, Maggie? Do you mean in the sense that you don't believe God exists, you believe in another, incompatible, version of God, or you don't want to trust him?”
“Oooh, finally an opener for an intelligent question on the whole faith front. And, wow, we've only been out here for what, three weeks? Amazing. Later, OK, Rach? I need to concentrate.”
“Sorry it's taken me so long to ask, Maggie,” Rachel said.
“Hey, be useful can you? I want some first contact sort of line-drawings I can program into the sampling laser; geometry, and then maths and then equations, physics, mechanics, chemistry, maybe atomic structure and stuff, Certainly nothing past E=mc^2. Maybe some astronomy? Can you look some up?”
“Of course.”
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GROUND
“Children,” Jana said, “believe it or not, your tender expressions of love for one another are not what this alien visitor came to see.”
“Love?” Aza exclaimed, seemingly shocked to the core.
“It's called irony, I think,” Jakav reassured her.
“No, that was just the 'tender expressions' part,” Jana corrected her son, with a smile.
“Jana, that's not funny.” Aza said, resolutely.
“Yes it is, and you know it.” Kov said, grinning, “You might have different experiences, not to mention different gender, but our mind-cells are the same. Almost everyone's mind-cells are the same. You know it's funny, Aza.”
“That's why your mum persuaded me it was time for mixing genetics,” Jana said, “as a town we were getting dangerously close to sharing a single cloned mind.”
“Mum persuaded you?”
“Yes. Now, what are we going to do beside teach the aliens how to argue?”
“I'll give it some paper,” Jakav said, embarrassed.
Jakav put a piece of paper on the ground, and stepped back. The probe shut off its forcefield, moved, and then reestablished the field. There was a flash of flickering light and some smoke. Suddenly, paper contained nine small images.
“Wow! It wrote that lot fast,” Jakav said.
“Some kind of pre-programmed thing?”
“Let's hope so.”
“What's it say?” Aza asked.
“Geometry. Oh, and I guess these are their numbering system?”
“I guess so. Zero to nine, then they add another digit. Then I guess these are their signs for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division?”
“Maybe. See this one? Periodic table of elements, you think?”
“It's upside down, but I guess so.”
“What are the dots and circles?” Aza asked.
“Orbits?” Jakav suggested.
“Seven planets going round the suns? I guess so.” Aza agreed.
“So, this is show and tell, I guess. What do we show it we know?”
“Physics? Chemistry? Biology?”
“I tried some symbolic theology,” Jakav said, “I didn't get a response.”
“It probably doesn't know the symbols. Their numbers are weird. But shouldn't we do something about your meat?” Aza asked. “Hey, what's that flashing light mean?”
“I don't know. Maybe it wants more paper?”
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SPACE
“OK, that was a disaster as a warning, now they're all looking at the probe. Next idea?” Rachel asked.
“Point the laser between the dead ones and the pack of live predators?”
“Through the forcefield?”
“Just use it at a minimal power. You might as well turn off the field, unless you just want to burn some holes in the predators?”
“I'm going to go higher for a better view.”
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GROUND
“Why is it shining a light on Jakav's meat, and then into the scrub?” Aza asked the world in general.
“I've no idea.” Kov answered. “But why's it giving two flashes at the meat and five at the scrub?”
“I hope it's not saying there's a pack of five out there.” Jana said.
Aza leapt into the air to see what she could, but the bush was too dense to do more than see shadows. Plus, of course, flying was hard, and she'd done quite a lot today, in other words, she was feeling worn out already, and didn't want to wait. “There's something moving over there,” she shouted. “I'll go sound the alarm.”
She locked her wings and glided towards the heart of the town.
“You out-ran them, Jakav?” Kov asked his son.
“Not really, Dad. But they didn't catch up very quickly. I had a head-start and climbed a tree, then I speared one. But they weren't a pack, so the other two just attacked the speared one.”
“Which of course a pack wouldn't do, not even a temporary one, say, formed when they've both got revenge on the brain.”
“Sorry, Dad, I got distracted by the alien. I didn't think what carrying the two home together might provoke them to. Let alone standing here.” It was one of the few things the predators really didn't like. Pred eat person, person eat pred, pred eat pred, that was all just fine. But pack enemies being butchered or killed next to each other, for some reason was a bad thing to what passed for pred thinking.
“We should have noticed,” Jana said, backing towards the village, while changing herself, “but I was never a runner.” She'd decided she wanted thick skin and claws.
“You could fly, love,” Kov suggested.
“Maybe. But I'd need a lot of protein to do that too, and I hate eating raw meat. Unless it's trying to eat me, anyway.” She added fangs to her wish list, and her tooth-organisms reorganised themselves. That was cooperation at work, symbiosis written large. The brain organised, and the rest did.
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SPACE
“Urm...” Rachel said, “Is that one we said looked like she might be mum doing what I think she's doing?”
“Growing fangs, claws and scales? Yes. We wondered about clothes. Now we know; they'd be a major inconvenience when you want to sprout wings or claws,”
Maggie said.
“The probe is getting that complex communication pattern we've heard before. It's from the dog-like things,” Rachel said.
“Oh great. So... we've got intelligent shape-shifting omnivores against maybe intelligent non-shape shifting carnivores,” Maggie summarised. “Some sort of ongoing war?”
“Except the dog-like things are the aggressors, so far.”
“But maybe they're just out for revenge and the supposedly peace-loving shape shifters are a bunch of lying, oath-breaking child eaters?” Maggie pointed out, in her role as resident cynic.
“Do we lift the probe, or get involved somehow?”
“I think we are involved. He'd have been back home by now if they hadn't been thinking about the probe. How about we just try to keep them from tearing each other apart?”
“Cut some rock, you mean? I don't think we can cast a big enough forcefield.”
“If in doubt, apply flaming sword, and never mind the energy budget, we can always fill up with water somewhere.”
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GROUND
The machine moved to between Jakav and where the predators were whining at each other. Then there was a brilliant glare of blue-white light, and a line in the sand underneath the probe, maybe a hundred metres long, turned cherry red. The glowing line extended from a few millimeters wide to half a metre.
“I think that machine doesn't want a battle,” Jana said. “But on the other hand,” she said, looking at the glowing obsidian glass, “it's just made me a lovely cooking surface to flash fry a steak or two. Who's hungry?”
“You are mum.” Jakav said, “Something to do with all those changes you're doing. You really want me to start carving up one of these dead preds in front of the live ones?”
“It might mean survival, son, if it does come to a fight,” Kov pointed out. “You're sure you don't want to change?”
“I've got dexterity like never before, dad. That's a survival tool too. I don't want to lose that. I didn't revert my wing bones last time I had wings, so they're there if I need them.”
“That's a relief,” Jana said. “You look awfully vulnerable like that.”
“Don't worry about me, mum. I just hope you can move fast enough after all those changes to use those claws of yours.” Bone organisms locked together relatively slowly, but once in place they did fine; newly adjusted muscle organisms, however, didn't react very quickly, and didn't always get the message about what way they should be pulling. Brain organisms could be a bit of a disaster if you needed to rearrange them quickly; memories could get scrambled, or signals might go to the wrong place, so sensible people made sure their head shape changes happened very very slowly and carefully.
“Allow me to just cut myself a steak or two will you?” Jana said.
“Put them down separately, Jakav,” his father suggested.
“Of course.”
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SPACE
“It doesn't look like they trust us to stop the fight,” Maggie said.
“No, it doesn't. Oh, is he abandoning his catch, do you think? For the carnivores to fight over?” Rachel asked.
“I don't know. I'm seeing a bigger group of them now.” Maggie said, “I wonder if those calls were all about bringing the group together.”
“You know we thought the calls were territorial?” Rachel asked.
“They were. Five different call signatures, in different places.” Maggie pointed out.
“Now we've got two calls in the same hundred-meter square, but there's some kind of joint bit, according to the computer.”
“Kill the killer?” Maggie asked.
“Maybe. They didn't seem to have much trouble with a bit of cannibalism earlier, though, did they?” Rachel pointed out.
“Ah, no. Good point. So, maybe they're cross with him for not letting that ritual meal occur undisturbed, or something.” Maggie suggested, half joking. She'd noticed something she wanted to double check.
“Ritual meal? To me it looked like 'Oh, he's dead now, and I'm hungry!'”
Maggie was convinced. “Look at those fur markings. Coincidence?”
“You mean the red-stripes verses the red splotches. What is it?”
“Red stripes were around in territory one. Splotches in area two. We're hearing modified version of the calls from area one from stripes, and the area two calls from splotches. I think we've got two clans here.”
“Oooh, you're good.” Rachel complemented her co-worker.
“That's why they pay me. No way!” Maggie exclaimed, noticing what had happened on the civilized side of the line.
“What?”
“They're using the hot rock we've just made to have a barbecue.” Maggie said.
“Urm... that's crazy. Why not just leave?”
“Aliens numbers one and three are very watchful, number four is doing the cooking. Number one has reclaimed his spear and they put the two carcasses a long way apart, too. Hmmm, looking at the recording, they've never turned their back on the brush, not since number two — the flyer — left.”
“What does that tell us?”
“You turn your back, you get jumped on, maybe?” Maggie suggested.
“Those predators look a bit wolf like, yes?”
“Yes,” Maggie aggreed.
“On which basis, I'd, expect a long duration runner, with a pack-based opportunistic attack, run in and attack from behind. Does that agree with what we've seen? Fast lunges, plus pursuit of course, but no actual sprint?”
Rachel asked.
“I guess so, yes.”
“I wouldn't turn my back on a pack of wolves, I'd keep my back to some place safe, if I could.”
“How does that relate to the cooking?” Maggie asked.
“No idea. Yes I have. She's just eaten, and I'm seeing some more changes happening on her back.”
“So shape-shifting is hungry work?”
“I guess so,” Rachel said, “Surely, she can't have digested it already?”
“Pass.”
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GROUND
“I can't do it.” Jana said, as the message her bone organisms had been trying to tell her finally got through.
“Do what?”
“Make wings, and have a decent fighting skeleton.”
“Age old dilemma, yes,” Kov agreed, “solution is either hollowing out your bones or eat more calcium and grow more muscles to move it, and more muscles to move them, etcetera. And you can't digest predator bones fast enough now, can you, love?”
“No.”
“Mum, why don't you go home? I can fly if I need to and I almost out-ran three preds earlier today. Dad can fly off, too.”
“What, and lead them into the town?”
“They've known we're here for generations. And they can see the edge now.”
“Yes, but none has ever entered the town and lived to return to them, to pass anything on about the street layout, where the young are, that sort of thing.”
“They're not that clever, surely!” Jakav said.
“I don't know. Preds are pretty shrewd sometimes. And they've never had such a big concentration, this close to the town before. If they wanted to attack, some could make it out after a raid.”
“But if you took one of the carcasses home, mum, then maybe the offence would be gone, and they'd just leave.”
“Eat your meat, Jakav,” his father said, “you might need it.”
“OK, dad. I'll eat. You try to persuade mum she doesn't need to risk getting eaten.”
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SPACE
“The armoured chef is leaving with one of the carcases,” Maggie said. “What's happening on your side?” They'd decided to each concentrate on one side.
“I'm counting about fifteen red stripes and a similar number of splotches.”
“Thirty against two? That's a bit extreme! Oh, here come some reinforcements, and I'm guessing weapons.”
“Swords and things you mean?” Rachel asked.
“Long knives, anyway, a few bows too, and what rather looks like a bunch of excited kids pulling some kind of smallish canon,” Maggie said, “There's also someone holding what looks like a roll of garden fencing. So far, still no vehicles except the canon. So far, no two of them look the same, except the general facial features, and as we've seen, jaw shape can change too.”
“Sometime, we need to reassess all of our imagery of this planet, don't we?” Rachel asked.
“Not us. That's a classic job for an A.I. When we get home.” Maggie pointed out.
“Good point. You realise we're going to be famous, don't you? Confirmation of actual intelligent life!”
“Or infamous, if we get it wrong,” Maggie said.
“They're showing no fear of our probe at all, are they?” Rachel asked.
“Not even afraid of our little patch of glowing sand cum-grill.”
“But our first four were very cautious of the known threat. Do you think we should leave them to it?”
“I don't know. I think we certainly ought to keep up the flaming sword thing.”
“Even if it kills something?”
“I think if they start a shooting war, we ought to stop.”
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GROUND
Later on, it would be called 'the battle of first contact'. “Hey guys,” Kov greeted the civil defence corp. “What we have out there are two big packs of preds, and as you see there's also an alien machine making the sand melt. It's been doing that the past quarter of an hour, and was probably trying to work out our levels of science and stuff. For some reason it uses base ten.”
“Ten? I wonder why,” Someone said.
“Some other things,” Jakav said, “as you see, that thing's metal, but it can float in the air, and it can also make the air solid like there was some kind of glass sheet around it. And in case anyone asks, no, it's not doing it with magnets, as far as I can tell. And their periodic table has no gaps in it.”
“None?” the school chemistry teacher asked.
“None.”
“So much for that unstable nucleus theory.”
“Not necessarily, sir,” Jakav said, “Like I said, it's playing around with unknown forces, and has been melting the sand like that for quarter of an hour. It can't hold that much coal. Maybe it's using those unstable nuclei as a power source.”
“The people inside must be pretty small,”
“I'm pretty sure it's not much more than a clever machine. It hasn't tried to speak, or make any sound, after all. But it can use light like a pointer, or like a pencil to scorch paper, or to turn sand into molten glass, of course.”
“OK. Any guesses on how many preds there are?”
“Lots, last I heard.”
“I wonder what they're waiting for.”
“Well, I was hoping they'd go away when you guys came,” Kov said.
“Doesn't look like it,” Jakav said, then did a double take. “Oh wow.”
“Pack leaders,” Kov said, “Two pack leaders.”
“I thought pack leader's never risked fighting us!” Van, one of Jakav's friends said.
“Not for a long time,” Kov agreed.
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SPACE
“Maggie, can we try doing first contact on those two big dogs? See how they react to geometry?” Rachel asked.
“Sure. It'd be nice to make sure we're not in the middle of some equal war.”
“Maybe without stopping the flaming sword thing?” Rachel suggested.
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GROUND
“Dumb aliens! Predators don't know any geometry!” Van commented, laughing at the preds trying to bite the laser beams.
“I guess they're trying to decide whose side they should be on,” Kov said.
“The snarl of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the snarls on the other two sides?” Jakav suggested.
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SPACE
“I'm seeing an 'if it moves, eat it' reaction from the doggies.”
“Agreed. Hey!”
Infuriated at biting at nothing, one of two dog-like beings that had been chasing the light patterns sprang at the probe. The probe had been about five metres above the ground, which Maggie had thought was perfectly safe. It fastened its powerful jaws on the metal, and tried to crush it. The probe swung away from it's position and automatically cut off the beam.
“Probe is taking damage,” Rachel reported,
“Quick drop to just above ground level,” Maggie ordered. The microphones recorded the sound of powerful teeth chewing on the metal.
“Yes, maam. He's still biting, more punctures to skin detected.”
“Three gee up, to thirty meters. Ten gee stop, hold for two seconds, then five gee to a two hundred.”
Rachel programmed that, and hit engage. Grimly, she selected the forcefield controls, knowing what was likely to come next. If the aggressive animal didn't get off, it was about to be killed by a forcefield. If anything, the shaking made it clamp down harder.
“Where's the damage?” Maggie asked.
“Centre, where the probe is thinnest.” The optics and antigravity drive were in the top half of the probe, the forcefield generator and lasers in the bottom. There was a 'neck' in between, and the predator had grabbed that.
“Urchin won't work then. OK, make sure we're aiming at the dog packs and defensive plan S. Let's send a message.” Plan S caused an upward cone, which ought to decapitate the thing, then it would rapidly transition through disk to a narrow downward cone. That's to say, it would crush the body into a fluid, spraying it at the attacker's friends.
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GROUND
“Stupidity over science,” Van said, as the probe fell to the ground.
“I guess preds don't like geometry,” Aza said, flying in to stand beside Jakav. She'd stopped to eat and was feeling much happier about life.
“That machine's not happy,” Jakav said, watching the predator being shaken up and down like a rag doll.
“Pack leaders don't give up, or they wouldn't be pack leaders.” Kov observed, as the probe went up higher than the tallest tree. A sudden red mist obscured the probe from view, and painted
the scrub red. The smell of predator blood filled the air. A second later, the head of the pack leader fell from the sky. The red-stripes howled their defiance and mourning, and charged across the clearing. Arrows flew, and three predators fell. The cannon fired, and five predators were shredded by the hail of stones. The 'garden fence' which had been unrolled as soon as it had arrived, was lifted high just as the predators reached it. Seven predators found themselves entangled in the wires. One, slower than his colleagues, just managed to jump over the net, after jumping over the glowing rock. It and landed clumsily just in front of Aza. Before it could get up on its feet, Jakav's knife had found its eyesocket and its brain.
Aza's blade had hardly begun to move before her eyes registered the demise of the predator, but Jakav jumped the twitching body and his spear finished off three predators entangled in the net. Van's sword decapitated the nearest predator, and, keeping going, sliced into the shoulder of its neighbour. He pushed it home to the creature's heart.
Kov's knife-thrust was slow, and missed its target. Before he could pull his arm back the predator took a bite out of his arm, even taking some of his bone-organisms. He leapt back in pain. Jakav's knife made sure that the predator wouldn't hurt anyone again, and he turned to look for another target, in time to see Aza's sword cutting the hind-legs off a predator that had somehow got free of the net and had been about to spring at his neck. It tried to turn on her, but she got her sword up and its bite found steel, not flesh. Jakav instinctively struck before it could have another go.
Looking up from the slaughter, Jakav realised the pack of red splotched predators had gone. The pack had leader decided they had other priorities, like defend their territory, plus take possession of a suddenly unoccupied territory and hunting grounds. Also, they'd need to see if there were any red-stripes left alive who needed killing. There were probably some nice tasty cubs hiding around somewhere, maybe even some fertile females who would choose to join to the pack-leader's harem rather than death. It was a pred-eat-pred world.
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SPACE
“Wow,” Rachel said, “That was... intense. And educational I expect.”
“Our sprinting friend was way faster than the other blade wielders,” Maggie said, surveying the carnage.
“What's happening down there, can you see?”
“Care of the wounded, I guess. Eeww, yuck, they've got the bit the dog bit off his arm. They don't think they can just stick him back together to they?”
In fascinated horror Rachel and Maggie looked on as Kov received what counted for first aid among them. Most of the organisms that had almost been lunch for the predator still lived — those not ripped or destroyed by the enzymes in the predator's saliva. And they had no desire to lose symbiosis, any more than Kov had any desire to lose them. Copious amounts of clean water washed away the poisonous saliva from the wound and the excised chunk. A sterile knife was drawn first across the hunk, and a puncture made in Kov's arm, just above the wound. A drop of his blood fell onto the cut in the hunk. The remaining muscle organisms, bone organisms and skin organisms that had survived separation from his body needed no more encouragement, and they flowed, moving towards this familiar biochemistry. After about a minute, the hunk of excised flesh was barely more than an empty bag. Kov was a lucky man, if the predator had been able to swallow the chunk, or even chew it, then he would have lost far far more of his arm.
Maggie shook her head in wonder, “They're symbiotic colonies! They've got to be. It explains everything.”
“Pardon?”
“I studied slime moulds for my Masters. In Earth slime moulds, each cell is a self-contained whole, able to survive on its own, but they work together, a symbiotic colony, able to move, react to stimuli, like a simple creature. I reckon we've far more in common with those predators, biologically speaking than these intelligent creatures. Did you see how little blood he lost? I bet that's because the organisms recognised they were in air and shut down the blood flow. And no wonder they've no visible genitalia. For all I know they reproduce by budding or sitting in the ground and growing a new sprout.”
“Hold on, you're saying that they're not multicellular organisms?”
“Some bits of them might be, I suppose. But I'll go out on a limb and say if we ever get to run a genetic analysis on one one we'll find that most of their cell types have different genetic signatures.”
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