by Selina Rosen
"I realize that some of us are happy as long as we're getting three square meals and two good screwings a day, but speaking solely from the experience of someone who hasn't had a really good fucking in something close to thirteen years, some of us are interested in something more than three square meals a day. We want to explore this planet to see . . ."
"If a multi-tentacled, three-butted, one-eyed lizard woman would screw you?" RJ suggested.
"Well, yes," Topaz said incredulously.
They all laughed—even the robot. Then RJ walked over to Topaz and patted his cheek. "A little patience, Topaz. Making contact with these creatures, whatever they might look like, isn't going to be as easy as making contact with the Beta 4 humanoids. Some of them spoke our language, and you actually spoke theirs. They, as it turned out, were at least part human. There is going to be no spoken language between these creatures and us, and there will be no shared DNA. They are completely alien to us, and we to them. We don't want a violent first contact. We have to convince them that we mean them no harm, but are capable of harming them if our hand is forced. We need the upper hand, but we don't want to scare them. We certainly don't want them to attack us."
"You aren't afraid of them, are you?" Levits asked in disbelief.
RJ shook her head. "No, there aren't many things I actually fear. However, consider this. They know what we look like, but we have no idea what they look like, and what if they were able to do the same thing with people that they did to plants?"
"Then they'd all be edible and highly nutritious!" Topaz exclaimed, and then went off—no doubt to look for something he hadn't lost yet.
Levits shook his head and smiled in spite of himself.
RJ sighed deeply. "They'd all be GSH's. I may not be stronger than they are." She suddenly snapped her fingers and looked in the direction Topaz had just gone. "I just now figured it out. His brain fizzes out when it's reached the saturation point. When what he's just realized is too much for him."
"Well, duh," Poley said hollowly from where he stood carving on a piece of wood he had taken from the surface.
"You know, I think I liked you better when you were more like a robot and less like us," RJ teased.
"Really?" Poley inquired, looking suddenly hurt.
"No, not really." She walked over and kissed his cheek. "Come on, I just had an idea."
RJ and Poley left the ship carrying full packs, closing and securing the hatch behind them. They walked away from the ship towards the heart of the city.
"What now?" Poley asked.
"We wait for them to get close. Take your pack off and put it down."
Poley nodded, and RJ followed suit. Then she stretched and rubbed at her lower back.
"Act like your back hurts."
Poley copied her actions almost too closely. "We'll act like they got too heavy and we decided to go on without them and come back for them later." As she talked she made hand gestures, which suggested what she was saying. "Act like you don't think it's such a good idea."
"But it was the plan."
"Poley, just . . . act like Levits does when I tell him to do something he doesn't want to do."
Poley started throwing his arms around in dramatic sweeps and screaming. "That's the stupidest freaking thing I've ever heard. Are you freaking out of your tiny little genetically superior brain? You crazy bitch, you can't leave your pack here for any idiot, tentacled, slime-eating alien to come and pilfer and . . ."
"Alright, that's enough!" RJ yelled back. "You've done very well but now it's time for you to walk after me and pout. I know you know how to pout because you do it all the time." RJ started walking.
"Because everyone treats me like a machine," Poley said, as he followed her with a pout.
"We do not," RJ said with a laugh.
"Sometimes you do."
"Well, sometimes you act like it."
"Do not," he mumbled, more or less proving his point.
They walked on through the ruins for another hour just checking things out. "Look here," RJ said, kneeling down and pointing to a plant limb that was growing at a right angle against the ground.
"We most probably stepped on it when we walked this way three days ago," Poley said, leaning down to look at the plant with interest. "It has already healed."
"Better than healed, it's starting to put out a new branch at the break, see?" She pointed. "It's compensating for the damage, even though the plant has healed."
"They are very hardy."
RJ nodded, looking thoughtful but saying nothing more as she took off walking again. They walked for another thirty minutes. going much further into the city than they had ever been before.
"Hey look," Poley called out as he rolled a rock the size of a hay bale aside and pointed to the skeleton he'd just found underneath it.
RJ scampered over the rocks and looked at it. She nodded. "So much for Topaz's theory."
"Bipedal, two armed," Poley supplied.
RJ nodded and crawled over the rubble to kneel beside the skeleton and get a closer look. There only seemed to be four digits on the hand, one of which was an opposable thumb, but there were six finger joints. The chest cavity was larger than that of a human, showing that the race had most probably developed at a time when the atmosphere wasn't quite as oxygen rich. Of course it was hard to tell exactly how large it might have been because it had been crushed by the rock, and she was going strictly on the size and amount of the crushed fragments. The skull was definitely different. There was a thick bone plate on the forehead and a flap of bone covered both cheeks. She picked one of these up, guessing that it had been connected by tissue and cartilage. There were similar bones around where the throat would have been. The stomach area also had been covered in similar bone plates.
Internal armor. The sort of thing a genetic engineer might do, and she was almost afraid to pick up one of the leg bones for her next test. But it easily crumbled to dust in her hand. "Not GSH's," RJ said.
"What about the armor?"
"Like the plates on some lizard's back. They evolved that way."
"How can you be so sure, RJ?" Poley asked.
"I would have thought you'd figure that out on your own. If you're going to go to all the trouble to create a GSH with armor plates, why wouldn't you make them as strong as steel?"
"Some might consider that overkill, or perhaps they simply weren't able to accomplish it," Poley suggested, then changing the subject. "They aren't following us anymore."
"I know. Come on, let's go find them." RJ touched a button on her wrist com, and it started beeping. "Yep, our gear's on the move, and you know it isn't doing that on its own. Let's move."
RJ was impressed. Had it not been for their sophisticated locating equipment she never would have been able to follow the trail they left. They left things so undisturbed in their wake that it was as if they walked just above the ground.
The earpiece she had in place helped her hear what they were saying, not that she could actually understand them, but given just a little time she would. Their language was sophisticated, stern sounding with hard edges. There was nothing guttural about it. Each word was spoken with perfect diction—more proof that they had been at one time a sophisticated civilization.
They soon reached their encampment. RJ and Poley stopped on the outskirts of the camp, squatted down out of sight, and watched the natives with calculated interest.
As she had thought they would, they were going through the bags. For this reason she had sewn the transmitters into the linings and put into the bags what she wanted them to know about herself and her crew. Some fruits she'd found on their planet to show them that they ate, canteens full of water to show their need for rehydration. A jacket to indicate that they needed protection against the elements, a knife to show that they had weapons and could defend themselves. Pictures RJ had Poley etch into two small pieces of the ship's ceiling tiles of the male and female of the human species nude—though RJ was pretty sure that the fact
that Poley had used his own form for the male of the species was going to cause instant feelings of inadequacy in the local male population if they had similar genitalia, and RJ had a feeling they did.
Their village was several miles away from the ruins, but not so far that they wouldn't have noticed a huge spaceship landing. They were obviously interested in RJ and her crew or they wouldn't have shadowed them since their arrival. So she was helping them learn about her as she was in turn learning about them.
Their village was constructed of native materials mixed with materials that had been taken from the lost civilization. Nothing looked very sturdy or substantial. What had obviously once been some sort of vehicle was now the roof of a building made of trees and stacked stones. The whole place had a sort of "half" essence to it. Half the old, half the new, with that which was new looking like what should have been old. This was a post-apocalyptic society. Something catastrophic had happened to this world and this was what had risen from the ashes. This was what had survived.
But why build way out here? Why not reconstruct the city, when much of it was obviously salvageable? Why had they seemingly lost all knowledge of technology?
It smacked of plague, logical since disease often followed a natural disaster—any disaster, actually. Water systems got polluted, sewer systems didn't work, and normal healthcare and hygiene were often impossible. Disease ran rampant. If you were afraid an area was contaminated you certainly wouldn't want to live there.
Of course if that was the case you wouldn't hunt there either, and they obviously did.
RJ agreed with Poley's meteor theory. It explained all the massive damage, and how a skeleton got under a piece of fallen building. Of course it could have happened much later. He might not have been killed during the initial disaster; he could have died hundreds of years later. He might have been hunting in the ruins, been in the wrong place at the wrong time and had a piece of building fall on top of him.
No, that didn't work because his chest had been huge, indicating a need to filter large amounts of air to get the oxygen he needed. As she was looking at these people she could see that they had much smaller chest cavities. They had already evolved, they had grown up in the planet's now oxygen-rich atmosphere. That hadn't happened over night.
So many questions. Why were they living out here? Why had they abandoned the cities? Where had all their technology gone?
The only way she was going to get any solid answers was to learn their language. RJ listened intently to the words they spoke and defined the words by what they were taking from their packs, what they were looking at, and how they were relating to one another. Their emotions were easily read—excitement, fear, and hope.
It was this last one that puzzled her. Why hope? What did they think she and the others might offer them? Did they realize that their world had once had so much more? Did they understand that the technology of the spaceship meant that RJ and the others might be able to tell them how to achieve it? That they might be able to bring the planet back to what it had once been?
They looked almost human. They had hair of several different colors on their heads, and, RJ guessed with a smile, thinking how pissed off Topaz would be, around their privates. Two eyes, a nose, a mouth. Their foreheads were slightly pronounced, and if you knew to look for them you could see where the bone plates dwelt under their skin, but for the most part you could have dropped them on a Reliance colony planet and no one would have known the difference. Sort of blew all shit out of Topaz's little rant about them all having their collective heads up their asses concerning alien life forms. Of course any disappointment he was likely to feel was probably going to be washed away when he saw that not only did their females seem to be compatible, but they were also attractive.
In fact, they were a very attractive people. She smiled when she realized their skin was almost the same color as hers, that golden tanned look that wasn't really a tan at all. They were big and small and every size in between. They were young and old, weak and strong. More like humans than the Argy, in fact. Which meant they probably had no paranormal abilities. They were different because their emotions and thoughts were hidden from each other, and therefore their difference was in how they attracted a mate, made friends, and developed personal connections. Beings with telepathic and empathic powers almost always wound up looking more or less the same, because their needs, wants, and desires, the things that made them different, were obvious.
"Now what?" Poley asked in a whisper.
"We wait, watch and learn."
Poley nodded. He knew what she meant, because he was doing the same thing. Learning parts of their language by watching what words were associated with what objects and actions. Since neither of them was capable of forgetting, they would quickly learn the language.
The dim "night" began to fall, and some of the other natives started building up a big fire in a central pit. It wasn't really necessary for light, though, because reflected light from the planet's surface hit the moon at nightfall and almost always kept at least this side of the moon from falling into complete darkness. The only exception was when the planet eclipsed the sun, which happened about once every seventy-eight hours and lasted for about four hours.
The natives put the packs and their contents aside after very neatly repacking them, and started to prepare what she assumed was the evening meal. Big pots were hung over the fire and everyone, young and old, male and female started to chop up the native plant life and a couple of small animals and put equal measures into each pot. In a few minutes the contents of the pots were boiling and RJ's mouth started to water. It was the best food she'd smelled since they'd roasted water snails over a fire on Beta 4.
The vessels they used to cook and to eat from had obviously been gleaned from the dead civilization from which they had come. She wondered just how far this attachment to the past went, how much knowledge had been handed down. Did they know they were the same people whose dead cities they hunted in, or did they believe they were a different race? Did they know those cities had been built by their ancestors or did they believe they had been built by gods?
That they had lost the ability to create many of the things they used was obvious. They had spears and slingshot-like contraptions, and they had what appeared to be very old projectile firing type weapons, but she had to wonder if they actually still worked or were just for show.
Their dress was simple. Robes and pants made of cloth, no doubt made of plant fiber. More than likely one of these plants had been engineered for the sole purpose of making clothing. The cloth was in shades of green and brown. She thought at first it was its natural color, and then realized with a smile that it was camouflage. Their common everyday dress, from the youngest to the oldest, was camouflage. They were hunters, hunters with minimalist weapons, so they had to be stealthy, unseen. They were accustomed to hiding in plain sight. This is why they hadn't seen them. They were a careful people, but why?
Their demeanor seemed to imply that they were also hunted, yet RJ had seen no such predator, the ship's computers had detected no such animal. No doubt there were others who had survived, other little pockets of civilization that had made it through the holocaust. Maybe they had become tribal and fought over hunting and foraging land.
It seemed altogether absurd, considering that everything on the planet seemed to be edible and the planet was nothing but jungle. These beings did not look underfed.
But beings did weird, illogical things. They made up some stupid religion, then you had to believe what they said or you had to go. According to Topaz and all that she'd read, this was what had caused most of the wars on pre-Reliance Earth.
Ultimately, the Reliance had used religious wars to take over control of the world. They used religion to bring the world to its knees, and then they abolished it—since it was obviously so detrimental—and made the Reliance the people's god.
And the whole "my gods are better than your gods" hadn't just caused numerous wars on Earth,
but had caused them with a dozen other races on as many planets that she could think of. People wanted answers to things that couldn't really be answered, and so they made up things they could believe in that answered their questions. Since people seemed to be incapable of just agreeing to disagree, they always wound up fighting over something that none of them could prove. Few worlds had managed to avoid this.
There were other things people fought over as well: food, sports teams, borderlines, and freedom.
Whatever the cause, RJ was now sure that these people were at war with someone. This was no doubt the reason for their hope. They were hoping that RJ and her crew would have weapons with which they could defeat their enemy. They were hoping for some sort of alliance.
She frowned. How could she choose sides? She'd fought before without reason or purpose but simply because she was ordered to do so. She didn't want to do that again. How did she know these guys weren't the bad guys? She didn't want to fight over food on a planet covered with food, or over whose god was better.
