GROUND / CH. 14: RETURNING HOME

YASFORT

The probe hovered over the village square; the people of the village had got used to that, it seemed to do a that so often these days it wasn't worth commenting on. Really, after the excitement of the aliens' return had been blunted by the distinct lack of them doing anything exciting, the novelty had worn off entirely.

Then, unusually, it was joined by another one. That raised a few glances, and more than the normal number of people wondered what had happened to young Jakav and Aza. Shouldn't they have been back from looking at their cave by now?

Half an hour later, Jakav and Aza were back, riding on a probe, and carrying a podling. No, people corrected themselves, hearing it's wordless cry of hunger, a mixling. They were greeted by a growing crowd, and asked what was happening.

“Absolutely no idea, except that little Magdalena is hungry,” Jakav said.

“Don't blame me,” Aza said. “This probe seems to think that regular feeding times aren't important.”

“You've not heard any mysterious voices, then?” someone asked.

“No, just Magdalena's,” Aza said, and kissing her little bundle of joy, sat beside the wall and started to do just what her little mixling wanted.

“But Tung was right,” Jakav said, “there is another picture on the cave wall, and it wasn't there last month.”

“What does it show?” one well-wisher asked.

“A broken ship, overgrown with forest creepers.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don't know. Has that probe been doing that for long?”

“What?”

They all turned and looked. The probe was drawing a map of the village on the side of the theatre building. There was a circle where the square was, and a dot that seemed to be tracing an arc, swinging backwards and forwards like a pendulum. Then some of the alien numbers appeared, counting down.

“Well, that's a bit clearer then isn't it?” Jakav said.

“What?”

“Something's going to happen, I guess when that count gets to zero.” Jakav said.

“But what?”

“No idea.”

“Oh look! There's little dots going from the square and getting more dots!” someone else pointed out.

“They want a village meeting?” her neighbour asked.

“It sure looks like it to me,” Jakav agreed.

“Why didn't they just ring the village bell?”

“No one's explained that to them yet, I guess.”

“Nice of them to invite us, then.” Aza said.

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SPACE

“Having fun with the pictures?” Rachel asked the linguists.

“I believe we are communicating,” James answered pointedly.

“How are you coming with the writing system?”

“Not looking forward to having my friend Mick and his friend come and explain it to us, but on the other hand, not very far.”

“There's just not enough repetition in the text,” Stephen, another linguist, said. “We don't even know if they write left to right or right to left.”

“Or centre to edges.”

“Really?”

“Probably not. Some peoples have done that though. Now edges to center would be a real challenge for hand-written text.”

“Pretty though.”

“How do you know it's not up and down?” Rachel asked.

“Whoever used the rock-cutter centered the text horizontally, but there's no vertical alignment.”

“OK, so horizontal it is,” Rachel agreed. “You could just start with a guess that words and numbers go the same way though, couldn't you? As in the first contact video?”

“I thought that was just geometry?”

“Let me bring up the bit I'm thinking of,” Rachel offered.

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GROUND, YASFORT VILLAGE SQUARE.

Two strangers entered the square just as the timer reached zero. One, who was small enough to be a podling but was obviously an adult female, flew.

The other walked. They approached the platform where the village mayor was.

“I see the aliens managed to call the whole village together,” Kalak said.

“They did. Do you know why?”

“I asked them to,” Lana said. “My friend here has something to say.”

“I am known, now, as Kalak, an astronomer from the University, where I was just yesterday morning. It seems far longer ago than that. As you can guess, the aliens brought us. But mostly I don't want to talk about that. I said I'm now known as Kalak, but when I was a mixling, I wore a different name.

I am old. Older than you will guess, for I was born curious and have never stopped being curious. Before I chose the name Kalak, I wore the name Unf. That is not a popular name any more, so after my imprisonment, and I chose to be called Kalak. But Unf was not my podling name either. As at least one here knows, and I will make clear to all, Unf the astronomer reacted very badly when provoked, and entered war-form. Full war-form. It was not my first time entering war-form. And when I first took it on I did not enter it as a grieving parent, but deliberately, and with care. Hence Unf the astronomer did not kill. But war-form marks me still; the words of my war-thought are etched into my bone organisms: 'stop the disrespect'.

"The study of war-form is not a common topic for anyone, but let me tell you a little of it. It is not my mind organisms, but my bone organisms that take that choice of entering war-form, unless my brain-organisms can convince them disrespect will stop without them taking over. If I see, or experience, disrespect, and there is none other to stop it for me, then I cannot even stop myself breathing to prevent the transition to war-form. My bone organisms need little air, and they will step in to protect my brain organisms, and shout the war-thought above all reason. That is what war-form does, young ones. And compared to me, you are all young. So I beg you, good people of Yasfort, listen well to me. I have been asked to speak to you. I do not do it very willingly, because the very young tend to disrespect. Parents, I beg you: do not let disrespect occur, or if it occurs do not let it continue. When in war-form I have killed, when in war-form as Unf, I have wounded, very seriously. I have spent most of my life hiding from people who might trigger the war-thought rising up within me and turning me into a monster. Not as much a thoughtless destroyer as those who enter war-form through grief or rage, I have a little control. Because, as I said, I willingly entered warform. Why, you might ask, you should ask, would a person enter war-form willingly? The answer is simple, and I assure you it is true: I finished podling school just before the last war.

“Let me tell you a story of the time when person killed person in the name of respect. A story of horror, of tradition, of betrayal, of disrespect.

"But first, are there any here who will agree with me that this village is not, in fact, Yasfort, but Little Yasfort?” Kalak asked.

The village mayor stood, “I have indeed seen the name on old documents.”

“This village is Little Yasfort. Yasfort is a cave in the dessert. I was curious, hearing of Jakav's cave, but it is not the same one. In the cave of Yasfort, Yas, my grandfather, made his fort, expecting war. There, he and his people defied the prophets in the name of tradition, and continued the sacrifice of dumb animals. There, he and his people, convinced that the One would bless them for ignoring the prophets, slowly starved as many of their crops withered in the heat, until finally the predators that the sacrifices had tempted to the desert decided to eat my grandfather and the animal he had been preparing to sacrifice. My father became the leader then, and he moved the people here, where crops grow well and there is water the whole year round, vowing to return to Yasfort if war ever came here. But of course, war never came this far south. The prophets did not come so far from the city either.

“Here, in the far south, I and my classmates at podling school heard biased propaganda, tales of altars broken and desecrated with the blood of predators. In the North, the biased propaganda spoke of altars repaired and people sacrificed instead of dumb beasts. And so a generation grew up on tales of horror and disrespect. And I was the son of the village leader, the son of the son of Yas, the great anti-prophet. I hope you've forgotten Yas, he might have given your home a name, but he founded a community in a stupid place, and he was an arrogant bully. When I was still at podling school, my father led maybe half the males of the village to battle for tradition and respect. Most did not return, but my father did, with a desperate and haunted look in his eyes. A podling asked too loudly if the reason he looked haunted and had survived but the podling's father had not was because he was a coward. The answer was swift, and brutal; his war-form, which he had entered in unprepared ignorance, took over. The unthinking war-form that inhabited my father's body crushed the skull of the podling, and mixed his brain organisms with the soil. No one was disrespectful to my father after that, no one accused him of being a coward. No one spoke to him after that. Except my mother, my sisters, and me. It was his request. He knew what happened when he was called a coward. That was his war-thought, you see, that he was no coward. In schools you learn of the first war and the second war and the third war. Well... maybe. But the first war was really a little series of minor skirmishes. My father fought in the second war, which was better organised, and I fought in the third war, the great war, which had leaders and tactics, and no one won. I repeat that, no one won it. The two sides fought for different purposes. The city-folk fought to stamp out the sacrifices of people, which were not happening. The outer villages fought to stamp out the desecration of altars, which was not happening. How can someone win such a war? No one won the second war either, but that war was not a war with principles and objectives, that was simply a war of rage. And it stopped when the rage had been vented, when the soldiers ran out of food, when harvest was due and the predators were around and the soldiers realised that their families would starve if they didn't go home.

“So, my father came home. He had seen how his own rage-born war-form was out of control, but he had also spoken to others, who had chosen to enter war-form, and learned how they could have some degree of control. And all of us knew that the war my father had fought in would not be the last, that it had simply stopped because people could not forget their responsibilities. And so it was that I was taught how to enter war-form, when I was barely out of podling school. And because I was curious, I was sent to be a spy, and an assassin. “You have heard of the prophet Zah, I hope. The last great prophet from the time before the war. My father had learned where he was staying, and I was sent to kill him, to root out the so-called infection that was destroying tradition. I found the prophet, and he welcomed me. He told me that I was no servant of the One, that I had no faith, and that it was disrespectful for me to claim faith.

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He also told me that he'd stop breathing soon, that he'd delivered all the messages he had to give, except one, and I had no need to kill him, I had no need to damage my soul, but rather I should run and call his podling, Azak. Yes, the Azak who later came to Yasfort. You have, I expect, heard the last prophecy of Zah, but if not, I will repeat it, as I heard it with my own ears, before the third war. 'Yasfort little Yasfort, your time will come. The star you will not see, but the light of truth will burn. Yasfort's daughter, Yasfort's son, guard your borders well; through pain you'll learn salvation's song, with writing on the wall. The scholars foolish arguing, two heads will rise above. Stop shouting all your pettiness, and listen to what God's done!”

“I was there when it was pronounced. I was there when the prophet died, and his organisms flowed away. Yasfort's daughter and Yasfort's son, you know you have them among you, and many of you have, I hear, seen the writing on the wall. I also had the privilege to witness, no, to partake in the scholar's foolish arguing, and to see one with two heads, flying above the crowd, calling on them to stop shouting their petty reasons why they ought to be the next one to use the university telescope to look at the ball that's above our heads. But, I get ahead of myself.”

“I witnessed the death of the prophet, and his words troubled me. Indeed, they did. My village, figuring in a prophecy? But I didn't think about it for long, because as soon as I turned south I met people heading for the great army for tradition. I told them that the prophet was dead, I told them I was the son of Yakan, Yas's son. They knew of my mission, but I did not tell them that the prophet had stopped breathing to save me that stain on my soul. And I had been curious as a podling, and had been taught strategies and tactics, I knew scavenging, and I knew how it was important to enter war-form deliberately, before a battle, rather than in the midst of it. I soon found myself a leader among those soldiers, and after some battles I became a leader in the great army. We fought, for tradition, for pride, for lies, and many died. Those who entered war-form without preparation fought brutally, and those of us who entered war-form prepared could easily out-think them. But war-form is no good for cooking and eating. It is just not possible to eat in war-form, and a cannon shell hurled me from my campfire before I took my first bite. As I landed, I crashed into an already wounded enemy. So, I was wounded, and hungry, unable to change. Beside me was my enemy, also a leader, also badly wounded, also hungry. We could not fight, we could barely heal ourselves, but we could shout. And as we hurled insults at each other, we sat there with our wounds, and our insults turned into a denial, and denial debate, and our debate turned into shock, and our shock turned into resolution and friendship.

And our resolution and friendship turned into action, once we'd found a slime-creature and fried it, for that is the only way to eat a land slime-creature that is the least a bit palatable. He had the frying pan, I had a spark-maker and fuel. Slime creatures were quite common those days, for there were plenty of corpses for them to digest. I add that we carefully chose one that was not digesting any organisms, of course. And when I had recovered, when I had rejoined my commanders, I stopped the disrespect. I stopped the disrespectful lies, I stopped the disrespectful slanders, I stopped the disrespectful accusations, I stopped the disrespectful war. And then I stopped the disrespectful killing, and tried to convince myself that I had done good. You have learned that the great army of tradition disintegrated because of an attempted coup within the leadership. That is true, in some senses. But it was not that I, Takan, mixling of Yakan and Tana, was due any special respect, but I was shown disrespect when I told the other leaders that I had found we were fighting a pointless war, for lies and not honour. But I was shown respect after that, when I was the only leader to emerge from that tent. And I called for the lower commanders, and told them, the enemy have been told we sacrifice people. We have been told they defile altars with predators, but there are no altars there now, their broken pieces were removed years ago. The war is built on lies, and if you believe in God then you bring dishonor on his name, and if you don't then why are you fighting? And they said 'prove it'. So we dressed as normal people, as farmers, and I went with them, and we saw. We saw where the broken altars had been stacked, reverently, with the plaque saying 'their time has past, for the One has done a new thing, but treat them with respect, for here we once met with the One, and they are dedicated to Him.' We saw families huddled in their homes, terrified that the great army outside the city would take their daughters for sacrifice, and we saw no other altars. We also saw people praying for peace. And so we sent messages to the generals of the city, and said, 'We have been told lies about you, and you have been told lies about us. We are ashamed of the lies we believed, and to prove our shame, we return home to our farms. Let there be a political solution that shows respect, better roads so that truth travels faster than lies, and mixing of city an country-folk. You can guess, I hope, the name of my enemy who became my friend.”

“Kovan” Kov said, naming his famous ancestor.

“Kovan, who married my sister Yana,” Kalak said, “and who invented the system of laws we have now. These days I am known as Kalak, I do not want honour for the terrible things I did, but I want you to understand the power of lies, and the power of truth. It is important that some people do.

“You may have heard of Lana here, some of you have met her, even. She rescued the brother of Magdalena, when his ship crashed. But a lie might be told about her that she grew a podling and withheld its freedom. Not so. She rescued an multicelular alien whose body had been smashed and taught him the joy we all know of being a community of organisms. She did not hold her enormous podling, she merely provided for his needs long enough until he could survive, as a good mother should, and it took a long time. You can understand this, I hope, this difference between truth and lie. But the city is a terrible place for lies spreading unchecked, and a mob cannot easily be taught the truth. I hope that you will understand the truth, and not show her any disrespect. I would find that hard to ignore.”

“You address us, then, in search of a welcome and shelter for academician Lana, son of Yasfort?”

“I do. I think she will find much to interest her here, and I am sure the aliens would find it useful if she were here, for she knows their language, as Mick knows ours. Lana will not lack for work or resources, I am sure.”

“And for yourself?”

“I do not know if Lana wishes me to stay. I am still curious, so I would be very happy to. But war-form still lurks. It would be better if I did not stay unless I had someone who would act as a buffer between my war-thought and others, as she has done once already. I admit, I have not spoken to her of this.”

“Do you ask me to act as a total buffer for you, as you and your family members did for your father?” Lana asked.

“I think I both ask for something more and less, Lana. I would not do you the disrespect of clarifying what I would ask in public, unless you ask me my conditions for staying.”

“I would like you to stay, gentle Kalak.” Lana said.

“Here, and in public?”

“I will try not to be disrespectful, unless of course, you ask me something disrespectful.”

“I find I am nervous,” Kalak whispered.

“Yes,” Lana agreed, “you are.” Then she whispered, “Yes to what I strongly suspect you're nervous about asking too; I will accept you as my suitor.”

Emboldened, he said, “Lana, if you will accept my firm intention to woo you, and agree that until we marry or we decide I hope in vain you will accompany me whenever I am away from the place I sleep, then I will stay.”

“I accept those conditions, Kalak.”

“Thank you, Lana.”

“So we must find two homes,” the mayor asked.

“I understand from Kov and Jana that the alien Magdalena has been made an honorary daughter of this village,” Lana said.

“That is true.”

“Then, as we are speaking of searching for homes, let me add that there are foods the aliens often eat and drink that are believed to be poison for the organisms of my podling Mick, Magdalena's brother. Until that is better known, he would be safer here too. This is a strange request, I know, to give welcome and shelter to an alien. If he stays here, then aliens will be a common sight here, coming and going, talking and trading. Moving faster than a predator, wielding strange tools, speaking strange languages. This is why the aliens asked the whole village to decide. If the village says it would be too strange, then Mick will live in Old Yasfort.”

“What will he eat?” someone asked.

“While the crops were not enough to feed a whole village, what still grows wild there looks enough to feed my podling. It is not too late to plant, either. For various reasons, the aliens do not like to eat predators, but they will happily trade dead predator for other meat. Last night Mick traded with a very surprised beast-herder; the haunch of a predator for the haunch of a full-grown herd-beast, both were very happy.”

Hearing the noises of disgust, Lana added “Their sense of smell and taste must be very different I guess. So, if Mick lives in Old Yasfort, he will happily eat what grows there, and the other aliens will also farm there, and trade predators that attack for dumb beasts we only really keep alive to make cheese and leather. If Mick lives here, then perhaps he will still farm at Old Yasfort, or perhaps there will be other trade. This is the other question for the village. The aliens wish to be friends, to stay, to talk, to learn, and do no harm. But they know their presence here will change things. They do not want to start a riot.”

“Why are they camping on our doorstep, not the doorstep of the city?”

“Maybe they want to be asked?” Kalak said, “Or maybe they're as cautious of us as we are of them? I have met two of them. Both wore helmets like I hear Madalena wore. They do not want to spread infection or be infected. They have visited planets where the most beautiful flowers gave off a gas that would have poisoned them.”

“But Magdalena visited us,” Aza pointed out.

“She did, yes.” Lana agreed. “And she left some information, but not much. Mick lived on my shoulder for six years, and once we could talk gave me a some information. But mostly it was historical, not technological. They want to be careful, and they have reasons for that.”

“But you can tell us all about them!” Jakav exclaimed, excitedly.

“I can tell you about the planet they were created on and the planet they changed and are in the process of making livable, I can tell you they live unimaginably far away, I can tell you about their long history and their many wars. I can't tell you about the weapons they used in their wars, but I don't think it was their knives or their bows and arrows. I can tell you lots about their biology, and I have seen some of their medical technology at work, and I can tell you that only two of their lifetimes ago, when one of them lost a leg, an arm or an eye, they could not grow another, yet they are quite careless of the cells that make up their bodies, unless it brings permanent damage, and sometimes not even then. They are strange, and they are strange to one another.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean they are spread across the whole planet and because every one of them is a mixling, they do not all speak the same language, they do not even all have the same laws. Imagine something like the territoriality of the predators, across a whole planet, with some bits of land separated from others by the sea, with only one in ten or twenty acknowledging the One. That is the old history of their people that live on land. But there is a smaller group of them, who made the sea their home, who consider themselves a subspecies, and who hid unseen and afraid of a war between species that would destroy them. They avoided the wars that ravaged the land, they avoided detection, for thousands of years, until they decided it was time to make themselves known. That is the culture from which Mick and Magdalena come. We are the first aliens they have met, but they have also met one another recently. In some ways, they follow that pattern, in other ways... like that ship hanging up there in defiance of physicists, they do not.”

“And they do not know the stories that books and plays that tell about invading aliens,” Kalak said, “but they have their own.”

“They do,” Lana agreed, “And they have some that speak of things very much like slime-creatures, and others that speak of dangerous killers able to change their shape, others that speak of diseases spread by aliens by accident, others that speak of alien civilisations accidentally destroyed by diseases that are no worse to them than foot-itch is to us. So when Madalena came to Jakav's rescue, first she ensured that there were no bacteria on her skin, and when she returned she did the same, and then she restored the helpful bacteria that help her body fight infection. That is their rule. That is why they do not come often among us. Some of the chemicals they use to sterilise their skins are poison for our skin-organisms; and even they are harmful for her skin cells too. I asked one about that, she said that to kill some of her skin cells was not pleasant, but ultimately it was of little importance to her: her skin cells grow all the time, die all the time, in fact the outer layer of their skin is made up of dead cells, because their skin cells die when they are exposed to air.”

“But you traveled in their ship?” Aza asked.

“We, that is to say Mick my podling, the female Mick expected to marry before he crashed here, Kalak and I traveled in the part of their ship where these dangerous chemicals are used. A place between worlds. It was not very big, and I would not want to travel that way for long.”

“Mick does not expect to marry now?”

“Mick and Sathzakara have happy memories of one another, but that was a long time ago,” Kalak said. “When I went to the war, I expected to marry. But when I returned, I had caused many pointless deaths, and she thought war was something easily forgotten. She spoke of love and forgiveness and dreamed of the plains full of flowers. I spoke of politics and betrayal by those we trusted and dreamed of the plains full of horror. I knew she was a better wife for Azak, son of the prophet, than for me.”

“Famous son of Little Yasfort,” the mayor said, “Kovan always said that you played the greater part in ending the war than him, and that it was right that this your home village keep the house of your parents unused in case you returned, or failing that as a museum. Such it is today, a museum, swept and kept clean, but unchanged since your sister's death except that there are more books, more exhibits. Only the front rooms are the museum, the back rooms have been used to accommodate visitors, but not recently. I do not know if it would be a suitable home, or if it would stir bad memories.”

“Ah, what more suitable place for a relic such as I than a museum?” Kalak asked, smiling, “But perhaps I should visit it before deciding. It has been a long time, and long-forgotten memories might be pleasant or unpleasant. Perhaps it would be best if I explore my old home with Lana while the village decides on the home of her podling?”

“It would allow the conversation to be freer, I'm sure,” Lana agreed. “Will you find it, Kalak?”

“If I do not, then we can tour the village and then discretely ask someone,” Kalak said.