by Huskyteer
“Geologists won’t fix this!” Druthel exclaimed.
“The geologists can suggest ways to counteract the seismic shifting…”
“Bandages,” Druthel said, ignoring Rhiannon’s and the translator’s words. “We need a cure not a bandage. We need our moon back or, over time, our whole world will die.”
Rhiannon didn’t tell Druthel what a long shot that was, pulling their moon back from the depths of hyperspace. They both knew he was hoping for a miracle. A miracle to counteract a catastrophe. But, then, the Wromabarran Empire, a single planet’s worth of reclusive winged sapients, wouldn’t have given up their pride and come asking for help if they weren’t at the very end of their options. Druthel had been sent to the Human Expansion; another ambassador was sent to the Lintar Oligarchy; a third had been sent to wrangle any possible help from the diffuse and disorganized Srellick Mercenary Syndicate.
Of those options, Druthel truly felt that the small female primate in front of him was his people’s best hope.
The reptilian srellick were brilliant, but it was unlikely that their most relevant scientists could be located in time. The methane-breathing lintar were simply too alien. Druthel didn’t think that their scientists and his own could learn to work together…perhaps ever. And that’s assuming they’d deign to come. Nonetheless, his people were losing their independence, merely to ask for the unlikely chance of help.
“My planet needs you,” Druthel said.
Rhiannon wrapped her stick-like arms, bare of the expanse of wing-skin on a wrombarran, about her body. Her shoulders lifted and dropped. Her down-turned mouth, her downcast eyes…everything about her bespoke depression.
More importantly, Druthel realized, his pleas weren’t working. “Fine,” Druthel said. He would change tactics. It would help if he knew what was upsetting this human… There were so many possibilities, and he wasn’t even an expert at understanding the emotions of his own race. Let alone the emotions of an alien. “You do not wish to help an alien race,” he said, testing for her reaction.
At that, her eyes flashed up. She stared at him for a long moment before speaking. “Your people have their own scientists.” The words were slow, measured. “You’re a scientist.”
Druthel averred.
“Then you fix it,” Rhiannon said.
Druthel didn’t know if her tone was harsh, but her words certainly were. “I am doing everything I know how,” Druthel said, fighting the pain and anger. “If I can fix this, believe me, I will.” His tall ears were flat against his head, but his eyes held steady on her alien face. “Right now, Rhiannon, that means convincing you to come to Wrombarra.”
Rhiannon twisted her short, webless fingers together. “Scientists trifling with science got you into this,” she said. “What makes you think one more scientist will help?”
Druthel’s ears straightened. He rearranged his long arms on the uncomfortably flat surface. With nothing for his fingertips to cling to, the expanses of his wings were forced to rest, distorted on the mattress. He wanted this conversation to be over. He wanted Rhiannon to be safely ensconced in a hammock on his ship, so he could take her back to Wrombarra, where he could show her the records of his work—his fateful work—and pick her brain for ideas at leisure. Well, as much leisure as the death throes of his world would afford them.
“What else,” Druthel said, “do you suggest? I came all this way, at a time when my world needs me more than ever, to hear your suggestions. So, please, tell me. If you have a better idea than pleading for help from the Wespirtech expert on hyper-spatial quantum chemistry, then I would be honored to hear it.” The sarcastic ring to his voice would not translate, but Druthel hoped she’d infer it. Assuming these humans understood sarcasm.
Rhiannon’s mouth opened as if to speak, but she hesitated instead. Then, too quietly for the translator to pick up, she mouthed the words, “Quit trifling with science. But, then, that’s not really an option for you now. Besides, it’s really advice for me.” When she raised her voice, she simply said, “I’ll come.”
Though, she thought, this may be the last work of science I commit.
* * * *
Back on the ship, Druthel made sure the humans were all settled in their hammocks before take-off. The sensation of gravity rose and then fell as Druthel piloted the ship up to the proper speed for threading its way into the shallowest layer of hyperspace, barely skimming the surface of that parallel dimension. He set the controls on auto-pilot, and then he went back to join the humans.
The hyperspace trip would take three days, and he hoped to learn a little about the different personalities of the human scientists in that time. Ideally, he would have liked to begin working with them, but, realistically, they’d need at least that much time to catch up on the records of the state of wrombarran research concerning their missing moon stored in the ship’s computer banks.
Druthel helped the humans out of their hammocks, and he showed them how to work the computers. All the records had already been translated into Solanese, albeit quickly and shoddily. There wasn’t time for anything better. So, for a start, that would have to do. Druthel could help them when they got stuck.
“Well, look at —”
“Will you…—…?”
“Wouldn’t you…”
“Huh, that’s really—”
Druthel’s ears skewed. One flattened against his head, and the other, he forced to stand tall. He tried to listen to the human scientists. He really did. But, his little electronic translator simply couldn’t keep up with so many different voices talking at once.
The longer Druthel listened, the more he began to panic. He could tell that the geologists were excited about something, and the scientist named Einray seemed from his posture to be in a deep debate with Ivan… But, Druthel simply couldn’t make out their words. This would be a big problem, presenting an insufferable bottleneck to communication when they were all back on Wrombarra. There would be twice as many scientists speaking at once there—all these humans, and even more wrombarrans. Hopefully a few srellick or lintar…
It would not be good. They would all have to take turns, speaking slowly, and it would take forever to get anything done.
Deeply troubled, Druthel left the humans to their incomprehensible confusion of work and headed to the helm. He couldn’t help them directly, but, he could try to make them more comfortable. The human scientists looked awkward in zero gee. They had trouble grappling with the wrombarran hammocks, and their wingless arms gave them little traction against the atmosphere.
After his stay at Wespirtech, Druthel sympathized, but he didn’t have artificial gravity to offer them on this ship. So, he turned the temperature down lower than he’d have liked in deference to what he knew of their preferred climate. He adjusted their course, and then set the controls back on autopilot.
He knew he couldn’t understand what the humans were saying, but, maybe he could learn more about their personalities by observing them. He was about to go back to the hold to check on the humans when three brightly colored avians, each about the size of his head, came flapping into the helm of the ship.
“No pets!” Druthel exclaimed. “No pets!” He realized immediately where they’d come from: one of the geologists, along with his backpack of personal effects, had brought a large, gilded cage when he boarded the ship. Druthel would have objected when he first saw it, but the cage had been covered with a cloth. And Druthel lacked the cultural knowledge necessary to realize what was inside.
Of course, the ship was already threading through hyperspace now, so it was too late to take the birds back. They would have to stay, but Druthel planned to tell the humans they had to keep the birds in their cage.
Before Druthel made a move, however, the first of the three birds, perching with its claws clasping the netting of Druthel’s hammock said, “We’re not pets.” The bird, with its brilliant red-and-green plumage, spoke in Solanese, but Druthel’s electronic translator repeated the words in W
rimbrin.
The second bird—this one had flat gray colored feathers—said, “We’re here to learn your language.”
“We’re called Keats,” said the third bird, a blue-and-gold creature. “We’re genetically engineered for facility with languages. If you’ll talk to us in yours, then we can learn it before we reach Wrombarra.”
Druthel looked at the little animals. They were, in a strange way, less alien than the humans. Despite their diminutive sizes, the Keats’ winged bodies made them more similar to wrombarrans. “Can you really do that?” Druthel asked, barely daring to hope. He didn’t see how a pet bird could do better than his electronic translator, but, if there was even a chance…
All three birds bobbed their heads enthusiastically in the gesture humans used for ‘yes.’ “Oh, definitely!” the blue-and-gold bird said.
“All right,” Druthel said. It was certainly worth a try. “What am I supposed to talk about?”
The red-and-green bird cocked its head, listening to both Druthel’s words and the translation. “Anything!” it said.
“Everything!” the blue-and-gold bird added.
The gray bird introduced the three of them as Coco, Lulu, and Joni, gesturing with her beak toward the red-and-green bird, the blue-and-gold bird, and herself, respectively.
* * * *
True to their word, the three Keats listened faithfully to anything and everything Druthel felt like telling them, and they quickly began to pick up his language. To begin with, Druthel tried to tell the Keats useful stories about the history of his world, but, before long, he found himself rambling to them about his own life.
While he was talking to the Keats, though, Druthel was watching Rhiannon. Her thick, dark mane shielded her pale face from him. She didn’t look at him. But, then, she didn’t look at the other humans either.
Druthel knew only the smallest fragments of Solanese himself, so he couldn’t catch any of the meaning in her infrequent conversations with the other scientists. But, he could see the patterns in her body language.
She sat apart from the others. She spoke less. Her shoulders stayed hunched; her limbs held close. She was a being turned inward, and Druthel found the mystery of what was happening inside that withdrawn, alien mind enthralling.
When they arrived at Wrombarra, Druthel’s living cargo—Keat and human—would be swept away in a storm of other wrombarran scientists. Ideally, the humans’ addition to the storm would spark lightning flashes of brilliance that could be used to save his planet by recalling their lost moon from the depths of hyperspace. But, Druthel was worried that Rhiannon, who he felt could be instrumental at the center of that storm, would instead keep to herself.
“Do you know the scientists you work with well?” Druthel asked the Keats on the last day of their flight. If he could only figure out what troubled her, maybe he could incite her to participate in the coming storm of scientific creative energy.
“I’ve worked with Karlingoff!” Joni answered. She’d learned enough of Druthel’s language already, the dominant language on Wrombarra, to answer without the help of his electronic translator.
The other two Keats demurred. “We’re younger,” Coco explained, arching her red-and-green wings. “Lulu and I, this is our first mission.”
“Though, none of us Keats have worked much with some of them,” Joni said. “Einray, for instance, almost never leaves Wespirtech.”
“What about Rhiannon?” Druthel asked, pressing for more information.
Joni turned to the other Keats. They conferred quickly in a language that didn’t sound like Solanese to Druthel, and his electronic translator certainly had no luck with it. He’d heard the Keats use it with each other during the last few days, and, his best guess was that it was some sort of pidgin, combining pieces of the massive number of languages each of the Keats knew. They were proficient not only in Solanese and now, largely, in Wrimbrin, but also in dozens more languages used by species scattered throughout the galaxy and many sub-cultures of the Human Expansion itself.
“Rhiannon is usually reclusive like Einray,” Coco said, switching back to Wrimbrin. “But, recently, she’s been working a lot with a biologist—”
“Her roommate,” Lulu interjected.
“—and their project involved more travel and networking,” Coco said, without acknowledging the interruption from her blue-and-gold compatriot.
“None of us three worked with them, though,” Joni said.
Druthel thought about the empty half of Rhiannon’s room back at Wespirtech. “Did her roommate leave?” he asked.
“Leave? Leave where?” Coco said.
“She’s a biologist,” Lulu said. “She didn’t leave with us, because she couldn’t help with your moon.”
“Unless it’s not really a moon!” Coco said. “Maybe it’s a giant space animal…”
“Like a Starwhal?” Coco asked. “They float through space subsisting on nebula dust and background radiation! I heard some of the scientists talking about them once.”
“Are you sure your moon wasn’t a Starwhal?” Coco asked, bobbing her head about, giddy with amusement. Her talons danced about on the mesh of the hammock. “Maybe it went away to take a nap in an asteroid belt and didn’t get pushed into hyperspace at all!”
“None of that makes sense!” Druthel snapped. He felt his tall ears turn backward, and his face twisted into a snarl. “Nor is it helpful,” he said, turning away from the giddy, cheerful little animals, trying too late to hide his unhappiness. The offense he felt at the way they made lighthearted fun of his world’s impending destruction was massive. At another time, under different circumstances, their jokes might have been funny. An epic tragedy, however, deserves a measure of solemnity.
Joni took charge of her younger compatriots, pecking each of them in turn on the nape of the neck. She screeched a few words in that pidgin language, and, suddenly, the younger Keats apologized.
“Please keep talking to us,” Joni said. “We need to learn more Wrimbrin before we get to Wrombarra. This is why science is for scientists. Language is for Keats. That’s the rule we live by, but it’s easy to forget. We learn a lot of science, superficially, through translating it. Sometimes, younger Keats forget how small our world on Wespirtech really is and how little we really know.”
Druthel’s posture relaxed, and his ears straightened out again. These little creatures—somewhere between genius pets and a species in their own right—had clearly meant no harm. And they would be invaluably useful. “True perspective,” he said, “is a hard-earned trait. My world has gained a lot of perspective in the wake of the disaster we continue to ride.” I hope, he thought, that we survive it. “But, let’s not talk about that,” he said. “There will be more than enough of that when we get to Wrombarra…”
* * * *
The planet Wrombarra loomed in front of Druthel’s small ship of alien visitors. He’d studied their worlds, and he knew his own planet was smaller, drier, and duller than most the humans chose to inhabit. Instead of emerald continents and sapphire spreads of ocean, dotted with thin webs of white clouds, Wrombarra was covered with swirls of thick gray masses, masking the dusty brown land. Very little of Wrombarra photosynthesized, and none of the wrombarran cities sparkled like diamonds at night, like the cities Druthel had seen shining up from planet Da Vinci. Wrombarrans saw with more of their senses than eyesight, relying a great deal more on sound and vibrations than humans, and they hadn’t the same need to light up the night.
Wrombarran civilization stretched in giant nets between ancient magma spires, riddled with caves that had grown in a long passed era on their world. Wrombarran pre-history. Within their recorded history, volcanoes were extremely uncommon on Wrombarra. Until recently…
Druthel’s heart ached to see the smears of sulphurous yellow, marring his planet’s face above all the newly resurrected volcanoes. There were giant new cracks, visible from space, that rent whole continents, as if an evil creature had raked giant claws ac
ross the planet. That creature was gravity, and it was tearing the planet Wrombarra apart from the inside.
As he tore his small ship down through the atmosphere, Druthel saw the bloody red magma spurting and dripping along the face of his world. And, in his mind, he saw the small human scientist, her naked arms wrapped bizarrely around her knees, sitting quietly in the corner of his ship’s main hold. She’d written a paper called, “The Hyper-spatial Quality of Isotopic Variation: An Investigation of the Layers of Hyperspace.” He knew she was the key. He would make her work with the other scientists. He would find a way.
The interstellar craft landed in what used to be an empty airfield, many miles from the nearest city. Evacuations had been underway the entire time that Druthel was gone, and whole cities of temporary, tent-like buildings had sprung up in the wilderness. As the grumbling growl of gravity awoke the burning heart of their world, fresh magma had bubbled up from the ground, filling in their cities in the ancient spires, and burning the edges of their net cities, which tore and collapsed, hanging like broken spider webs, dragging unnaturally down to the ground. It did not seem so wise, anymore, to build their homes on the husks of dead volcanoes. Lest those volcanoes arise, zombies intent on mindless killing. If only they’d known. If only they’d been more careful.
Druthel landed the spaceship and then led the human scientists and their three Keats through the tacky, temporary lean-tos of the refugee village to the premier wrombarran science institute. A conglomeration of cutting edge technical building spires, designed to mimic the shape of the giant magma spires that once housed their cities, surrounded the largest acoustiscope dish on the entire planet and an array of smaller echometers. The acoustiscope and echometers were parabolic dishes, shaped and colored like the discarded tips of broken eggshells. Except, they were arranged too neatly, too regularly, and were too massively large to truly be the remnants of eggshells in an abandoned nest.
Druthel walked along the ground through the shanty town beside the field of echometers, instead of flapping his powerful wings and taking to the sky. He wished it were only out of deference for the humans’ own incapacity, but, in truth, he was returning to a broken society, spread sadly across the horizontal face of his planet, instead of stretched proudly through the air. A few nets had been strung from the peaks of the spire buildings, but, there hadn’t been time for much.
