Retread Shop 1: First Contact

by T. Jackson King

  Grethel smiled at him and shook her head, one hand picking up a fruit from the refreshment tray. Head-shaking, he knew, was definitely an affected human mannerism. What else had these aliens learned over 30 years?

  “Jack, you may be too optimistic,” Grethel said, her tone sympathetic. “Did your species change your ways after developing cannons and automatic weapons? Did you change after developing artificial biowar viruses capable of decimating whole populations? And your India and Pakistan actually fought a limited nuclear war. No Jack, you Humans are what you are.” Her manner turned thoughtful. “It’s one of the tenets of Xenosapientology that the essential alienness of each species is the result of a primary biological theme or themes in each species’ evolutionary history, not the result of any willful like or dislike toward other sapients.” Grethel rested her chin on pulled-up knees, her gaze making him think of being a kind of lab specimen. “Your evolution as a species from hominid forms over the last four million years has been a continuous record of adaptation, territorial defense and expulsion of the Stranger, of any individual not part of your social grouping. It’s very clearly stated in Rule 11 of our Xenosapientology that ‘Environment molds form and evolution yields culture.’” The female werewolf looked appraisingly at him—an alien grandmother smarter than most humans. “Basically, you Humans are warriors because it is survival adaptive for both individuals and for groups.”

  “What’s this xenosapientology? I’ve never heard of it?” he asked, wondering at her insights. Sun Tzu couldn’t have said it better.

  “Jack, in a way you have. Xenosapientology is simply the study of thinking alien lifeforms.” Grethel raised a brown-furred, four-fingered left hand to wave at the mingling crowd of Horem and lively Colleen. “Your anthropologists and sociologists have developed many similar ideas in their research into Human inter-group actions and normative rules. Do you want to know the 15 Rules of Xenosapientology? They’re mostly aphorisms, but experience has verified the factual reality of their existence as basic sociocultural parameters.”

  Did he? Maybe if he understood what made the aliens tick, he could better understand his duties as a Liaison for them and humans. And maybe they had some insight in evolutionary patterns based on the knowledge of eight separate species. He nodded. “Sure, lay them on me.”

  Grethel smiled, then closed her eyes briefly in recollection. She began reciting to him as if remembering a childhood nursery rhyme.

  “Rule 1—There are many cultural ways of achieving the same end.

  “Rule 2—What is right for your culture may be wrong for another, or simply incomprehensible to a third culture.

  “Rule 3—When in doubt, think.”

  He grinned at her—that one sure sounded familiar!

  “Rule 4—If you think you know better how to run someone else’s culture than they do, it’s time to leave.

  “Rule 5—Whatever can be misunderstood, will be.

  “Rule 6—Every culture is valid unto itself, even if you don’t understand it.

  “Rule 7—The only interspecies cultural absolutes are curiosity, territoriality, sex, survival and hunger—everything else are simply variations on a theme.” She shrugged. “Though I would add creativity as a universal absolute, but our academics subsume it under curiosity.”

  Where did they get all this? Is this really how the universe is organized? Grethel took a deep and continued reciting.

  “Rule 8—Communications within any group larger than three are bound to be imperfect.

  “Rule 9—The universe is stranger than we can think.

  “Rule 10—Given a number of civilizations existing in a defined area of space in the same evolutionary time, every cultural variation imaginable will be both extant and will have been attempted by most of the cultures.

  “Rule 11 you’ve already heard.” Grethel smiled at him. Why did a female werewolf grin at humanly inappropriate times?

  “Rule 12—The imposition of the moral absolutes of one culture upon another culture invariably leads to conflict.

  “Rule 13—In most cases of individual Contact, getting together in a group is invaluable to disposing of preconceptions. In a few cases getting together directly results in individual insanity.”

  Shit! Was that what flipped out Duvalier?

  “Rule 14—Sapient life is often perverse in its attitudes and the rules of logic rarely rule sapient societies.

  “Rule 15—There is always at least one Sapient exception to every Rule.”

  Jack laughed. “That sounds like an interstellar Murphy’s Law to me.” Grethel cocked her head in puzzlement at the unfamiliar reference. But it didn’t slow her down.

  “Whatever you call it Jack, it sorts out to a simple realization that just because someone acts differently and believes differently from you, they and their society are not automatically your territorial enemies,” Grethel said. “They are simply alien to your ways of thinking.”

  “Then,” he asked, “our multiplicity of languages, cultures and ethnic groups don’t bother you?”

  “Not really Jack,” said Grethel said, flaring her headcrest at a passing friend. “It would be easier dealing with a unified planetary cultural system,” she said wistfully. “But your diversity is adaptive for you Humans, and we will adjust to it. In a way the Gosay are even more fragmented than you Humans. Each Gosay is intensely individualistic, maintains a retreat homestead occupied solely by itself, and hunts its food live on the hoof in its own carefully defined territory. They are actually more territorial than you Humans. And they hate crowds!” That he sympathized with. A walk in the woods was his preference over a ride in a crowded maglev train. “But there is a biochemical phase in the life of each Gosay—about one-half its lifespan—when it’s neurologically able to join groups of other Gosay, to procreate, to share ideas and to engage in economic and industrial projects which require many specially trained sapients. Can you imagine the difficulties of building a technological civilization when any one individual can participate for only fifty years before abandoning all group relationships? And yet the Gosay entered space nearly 100 ship years ago.”

  Her brief Compact history lesson reminded Jack of something he had long wondered about. He threw out the question.

  “Grethel, there’s something I don’t understand. All you Compact races were in space and technological before we humans.” This was a question a YouTube talk show host had recently asked him. “Since radio waves travel faster than Hekar, we should have received your radio and TV signals. Heck, we’ve had radio since forever and our radiotelescopes have spent decades searching other stars for organized signals. Why didn’t we hear you before you got here?”

  Grethel looked a little bemused and very patient. “Two reasons. First, space is not empty. Second, we of the Compact don’t talk using your radio and TV modes,” Grethel said, waving to Persa as she walked by their island of intense discussion. “In the first case, the expanding wavefronts of various kinds of electromagnetic radiation are differentially attenuated by passage through the gas of interstellar space.” My god, what had he got himself into? He wasn’t an astrophysicist. “The gas, though very thin, serves to reduce the signal strength of any but the most energetic waveforms. Also, a planet’s atmosphere will block most radio signals unless they are in the megahertz range,” Grethel added. “Second, all our Compact societies long ago switched to tachyonic and other subatomic communications modes. We no longer use much of the electromagnetic spectrum like we once did.” What were tachyons? He recalled their mention by Sargon as a faster-than-light communication method. Grethel grabbed a piece of fruit and offered it to him. Jack accepted the alien strawberry. “In our experience, the period of heavy electromagnetic signal emissions by a planetary culture ranges from one hundred to three hundred ship years.”

  “Oh,” Jack said. “So we couldn’t hear you because our tech lagged behind yours.”

  Grethel nodded. “Nor could you hear any other species in the galaxy that is simi
lar to us. If one culture develops electromagnetic receptors after a nearby culture switches to other communications modes, then the less advanced culture will be unaware of the more advanced culture. Think of a pebble dropped into a pond where the radio ripples pass by only once,” Grethel said, patient with his slowness. “When you add in the requirement that the species must exist in the same temporal part of a three billion year evolutionary history and that both cultures must be technological in cultural orientation, then it’s really remarkable that we have found so many civilizations in such a short stretch of this spiral arm.” Grethel glanced over at nearby Colleen, then back at him. “But I talk too much of scientific things. What about you, Jack, what is your life like on Earth? Are you mated to Colleen? Do you have children? And what is it like to live among millions of people?”

  Did she sound wistful? Her English was British English, but he heard nuances in it. At least he was now on safe ground. His life had been a long, sometimes rocky road, but one which he relished like a fine whiskey. Jack leaned back on his right elbow and smiled at Grethel. He liked this sincere, friendly woman.

  “Yes, I have two children, now grown. Bill is a sportscaster in Memphis and Shirley’s a pediatrician in Portland. Shirley and her husband have three girls, who are my only grandkids.” He grinned at the memory of last Christmas in Portland, a time when Colleen had spent hours with his young granddaughters. “My wife Eloise was a good woman, an information tech who worked for our Department of Defense. When she died, it was a hard time for me.” Memories came, some good, some bad. But they were his memories. “I met Colleen seven years ago when I returned to Atlanta from running the CNN bureau in Istanbul. We aren’t married, but we are lovers. And fellow journalists. She’s the sat-vid producer for my vid-interviews of famous and infamous people.” His mention of her name and his kids had caused Colleen to look his way from where she was chatting with Corin and Persa. “I love Colleen a lot. I hope we will be together for the rest of our lives.” A happy look filled Colleen’s face and she turned back to her cohort of Horem, who did not mind the sat-vid unit on his lover’s shoulder.

  Grethel sighed. “I understand love. And its loss. My husband died a decade ago. But he gave me wonderful children.” Sargon’s sister shook herself. “What of your vid-interview work? Why do you do it? And what do you like about it?”

  Why had he studied journalism at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville? He bit his lip. “Well, I like to write. Stories that is. And working for newspapers and magazines was how I got my start. Then I joined CNN with my buddy Tommy Newsome. We covered the aftermath of the India-Pakistan nuke war.” Images of rad-burned people flooded his mind. Seeing little children unable to see or to walk had deeply wounded him. “I got some prizes for my video interviews of powerful or dangerous people. I keep on doing it cause in America our government system works best when the people, our voters, are decently informed. Of course we still do stupid things, but we think it’s a pretty good system.”

  “Your democratic republics are closer to how we Horem run our affairs on Horem.” Grethel settled back on her floor cushion, relaxing on her side as Horem children scampered by them and adults padded past on sharp-clawed feet. “We do not understand your theocracies, though.”

  Jack could believe that. He had a hard time understanding the rule-by-mullah that was the way Saudi Arabia, Islamic Caliphate and Iran still managed their societies. “Me neither. Though I’ve interviewed their former ayatollah, to me their system is insane and not rational.”

  Grethel’s yellow eyes blinked. “What’s it like to live among millions of other humans? We on Hekar only know about planet living through our Remembrance sessions, when we experience the recorded memories of our ancestors. Or living ancestors who send their memories to us by way of our tachyon Pylons.”

  Jack blinked. The Horem could sense someone else’s memories the way people read a book or watched a reality show on YouTube? Amazing. “Grethel, I prefer living in rural areas. But most of my life I’ve lived in cities or in other nations with dense populations. What’s it like? Crowded! Walking through New Delhi or Beijing or Pretoria is like running an obstacle course. You can’t walk in a straight line!” Grethel chuffed. Which he recalled was the Horem mode of laughing. “What about you Grethel, what’s your life like here? On Hekar?”

  Grethel looked away briefly, eyes watching Sargon and Bethrin as they talked to Maran and Persa across the crowded, noisy atrium of people and plants. “Jack, it’s like one of your old-time celluloid films.” Grethel looked back. “It’s made up of starts and stops stretching out over the centuries. I was born in ship year 293, long after we made Contact with the Ziks, while Sargon was born in ship year 280, but biologically I’m only 74 years old. About middle-aged for a Horem.” Jack blinked. She was middle-aged? How did they stay so young-looking? He felt achy at 60. “My parents knew a few members of the original Call of Acherex crew and of course I was out of Suspense for the Contacts with the Thoranians, Sliss, Gosay and Arrik. I belong to the Second Generation since Horem departure and even today there are Horem from the First Generation still living—like my mother Peilan.” Grethel looked around with obvious pleasure at the raucous party that very politely gave them their own quiet space. “It is a bit weird when First, Second, Third and Fourth Generation Horem are all together in the same temporal span—like today—but it’s also very reassuring. Our continuity as a species and as a Clan is visible here. What’s sad is one must usually wait for someone to die in order to have children.”

  Jack noticed Grethel’s headcrest seem to wilt a little. He remembered a biologist on Tekar saying something about a very finely balanced ecosystem. Grethel’s comment on children suggested just how tightly balanced it really was. He tuned back into her explanation.

  “—most of us are so used to Suspense that waking up after 40 ship years to see your grown child with a child of her own is normal for us,” Grethel said somberly, sitting upright and pulling her knees up to her chin. “Since the deep space passages are so boring, and since food is limited, most of us spend most of our time in Suspense. Right now, we’re all feeling a bit crowded with nearly every sapient awake, since everyone lives for the Contacts with other sapients.” She finally smiled again. “Contact time is also a period when all the sciences make great advances due to the infusion of new ideas, concepts, technologies and biologicals. So right now, I am enjoying our Contact with you Humans.”

  Just then toga-clad Colleen strode over to them. She nodded at Grethel, plopped down in his lap, bit his ear playfully, whispered a brief pornographic phrase in his ear, and leaned back into the hollow of his arms. The party was winding down. He noticed other couples heading off to interior bedrooms, children asleep on floor cushions amidst riotous green plants, and a few seniors enjoying the warmth of the central bathing pool. Nude, of course. Colleen grinned at Grethel.

  “Hey lady, mind if I swipe him from you? We have unfinished business.”

  Grethel’s slim face smiled. “I quite understand. I need to find my children, they’ve got to be around here somewhere. But soon I’d like to talk woman-to-woman with you, Colleen,” Grethel said, rising from the floor cushion.

  “Sure. I’d like that.” Colleen grabbed his ear and whispered another phrase in his ear. It was time, he thought, for these humans to rut. Jack looked up at a somewhat bemused Grethel.

  “Grethel, many thanks for your sharing. But I think I have a pressing engagement elsewhere. Give our regrets to Sargon.”

  “I will,” she said, turning to head across the atrium.

  Jack waved at Sargon across the nearly empty atrium, picked up his duffle and walked hand-in-hand with Colleen to their assigned quarters. Already he was anticipating several hours of lively love-making with Colleen. Tomorrow would be soon enough to hear about her adventures among the aliens! She leaned into his shoulder, quiet but happy.

  He didn’t remember then that everything has a price, a cost. And the coming of aliens to Earth
was no different.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Colleen smiled as Jack’s snoring grew louder. Their love-making in the stone-walled bedroom of Sargon’s home had been wonderful, but her lifemate had not slept well in the Tekar couch-seat during the four day trip. And the arrival at Hekar, with the death of the Frenchman, had been high stress for him. Sitting up, she looked around the triangle-shaped room. It lacked the skylights she was used to at her townhome in Whites Creek. But a pale green radiance shown from several ceiling strips as tiny sea creatures from Sargon’s world glowed softly. Organic light! She knew of the natural light produced by fire flies, and had seen a Nova vidcast about luminescent sea creatures of Earth, but this was the first time she’d lived among such critters. The rest of the room was normal. There was low furniture, a woven wall hanging, several potted plants and data cubes on shelves. A ceramic frieze of yellow, green and blue tiles ran in a strip along every wall. The room looked primitive. But it wasn’t. Her sat-vid unit’s signal had locked onto a local wifi and had continued to send imagery and sound to a surface radio transmitter. She’d shut it off of course after they entered the bedroom. Her CNN life might be public, but hers and Jack’s home life needed to stay private.

  But the lives of the Horem women gathered in the atrium had been shared with her, and with her worldwide online audience. Learning how Horem women raised their children, while also working at full-time jobs, had left her feeling . . . understood by them. She’d been amazed, though, when she learned that Persa was a combat-trained fighter pilot in the Horem defense fleet, while also working as a Biomedical researcher with her aunt Grethel. Course the longer lifespan of the Horem made multiple careers possible. Still, to think of Persa as a fighter jockey able to destroy enemy jets while dodging laser fire and rockets that sought to kill her was sobering. Maybe Persa would show her the fighter craft she claimed as her own. Maybe not. Sargon had been very limited in his sharing of Hekar’s defense capabilities.