Ell introduced the rest of them around. “Dr. Wheat had a pretty good idea last night. Remember how we’ve wondered about why Goldy and Silver are walking through the forest when they have wings and can fly?”
The group nodded, then Ell waved a hand at Wheat. “Fill them in.”
“Um, well, I think that only Goldy can fly. As far as I’ve been able to see from your notes, Silver’s never been off the ground. Have any of you seen Silver flying?”
They all looked at one another, shaking their heads.
“Look at this zoomed image,” Wheat continued, pointing at the big screen which zoomed in to show an enlargement of Silver’s wing.
“Oh,” Emma said, “those look like stitches! I thought it was a tattoo or some other kind of decoration when I saw it before.”
“Exactly!” Wheat said, “I think Silver’s injured and Goldy’s accompanying it somewhere. Now near the end of my shift watching them, they reached a cliff,” he pointed to the big screen showing the cliff in the rocket’s camera as Goldy flew over it. “Goldy took off and flew along it, first one way, then the other. I believe, looking for a way up. So far it seems to have stymied them. Goldy made a brief attempt to climb the cliff but it seems to be made of soft material, at least on the surface and Goldy’s claw holds broke quickly. Then they tried climbing trees but the bark on the local trees tore loose when they sunk their claws into them. I had the strong impression that they’d never tried climbing anything before. Why would they? After all, normally they can just fly to the top of anything, rather than having to climb at all. If they did have experience climbing trees, they’d probably just rip off the bark and sink those impressive claws into the deeper layers.”
Roger said, “So they weren’t able to get up the cliff?”
“No, and I think we could get a start on making friends with them because of this situation.”
Ell turned to him curiously, “Really? You didn’t tell me about that.”
“Yeah,” Wheat said excitedly, “gesturing at the cliff on the screen. We know how to climb cliffs. They’ve never had any reason to so they don’t have any ideas. Isn’t there any way we could show them how to do it?”
Ell raised her eyebrows and turned to the others.
“Really? Should we be interfering in their lives?” Emma asked.
Ell shrugged.
Norris said, “Hmmm, first communication with an alien intelligence. It might be that the government has some rules or regulations about how it’s to be done.”
“I looked that up the first day we saw Goldy and Silver,” Roger said, “There have been think tank discussions and the military has worked out protocols, but no laws have been passed restricting what we can or can’t do as private citizens.”
“I don’t know; a lot of harm befell primitive societies here on earth when advanced civilizations made contact with them.”
Manuel looked around at the group, “Oh there’s no doubt that Columbus brought some nasty diseases to the Western hemisphere and that the Europeans subjugated, enslaved and exterminated the Native Americans… but we’re doing everything we can think of to keep from transmitting disease and we can hardly exploit them when we can’t even get there.” He shrugged, “Also, even though some of my ancestors were ill-used, I myself am happy to be living in a modern society. It’s a two way street with some bad things and some good things on it.”
Wheat said, “Personally, if some alien was watching me struggle with a difficult problem, I’d certainly appreciate a little help. Those people who think that the lives of primitive peoples were noble and peaceful should look into how most of them actually lived. I’m not saying that primitives are bad people. I’m saying that living without modern technology would suck. Big time. In the United States today, even the poor have access to bathrooms, sewers, immunizations, antibiotics, communications, entertainment, air conditioning, spices and innumerable conveniences that the kings of yore would have been ecstatic to have. Anyway, I think one of the best ways for us to make contact would be to help them solve a small problem. We don’t have to give them blueprints for how to build a steam engine and hook it up to an elevator; we could just show them how to use a vine as a rope.”
Ell looked around the group, “Just knowing that Goldy is helping Silver when she’s injured is making me feel pretty kindly toward these two. I don’t know if they are representative of their people, but I like them and want to help them if I can. Does anyone have a serious objection to trying to provide simple suggestions?”
Shrugs and shakes of the head greeted her query. “But how are we going to suggest anything to them? So far we can’t even hear them, much less talk to them.”
Emma put her hands up, “I’ll have the laser acoustic pickup working early in the week and we’ve got most of the parts for our second rocket. But it’ll have to be assembled, then sterilized, then flown from the deep space portal to TC3. And don’t forget we need to put another intermediate pipe out there in a plunging solar orbit before we can use the new rocket.”
Ell said, “Hey, no one’s accusing you of being slow… though we do wish you could be faster,” she grinned, “but even after we have acoustic reception and eventually transmission it’ll probably take a long time to understand them and translate what we say into something they can comprehend. What I’m thinking is that there might be visual means of communication? Like hieroglyphics maybe?”
Manuel pulled his screen to himself and started marking on it like he often did when he was planning out how to build something.
Roger frowned, “Hieroglyphs weren’t really ‘word pictures’ the pictures were kind of like our letters, representing sounds.”
Ell said, “Yeah, but maybe we could make ‘word pictures’ work for us?”
“Couldn’t we just send them a drawing of someone climbing a cliff using a rope?” Wheat said, “Or not someone, it would need to be a Teecee. We’d need an artist.”
“Wait a minute, it’s all very well to talk about showing them pictures but there aren’t any vid screens on the rocket either you know?”
“But there is a window we can shine a laser through.” Ell waggled her eyebrows.
Manuel said, “How about this?” He slid the screen that he’d been drawing on out onto the table and eyebrows rose.
***
Dex woke up cold and reached over to pick up a couple sticks and stir the fire back to life. Once the tip of one of the sticks had caught from a coal, hie held the other one over the flame until it caught too and laid them together so that they would both burn. When they were burning brightly the heat warmed hies front. After a bit hie turned hies back to the fire to warm hies wings. As hie turned to face the cliff hies eyes flashed wide. Dex turned violently, pushing up, hies wings exploding from hies back, arching up to lift himr to safety. Syrdian, roused by Dex’s violent motion and the boom of hies wing extension also startled awake, wings lifting, then curling suddenly back down in reaction to pain from the sudden movement. Dex and Syrdian unconsciously shuffled together, staring at the cliffside where glowing red lines had appeared. “What is that?” Syrdian asked.
“I don’t know!” Dex whispered.
“I’ve never seen anything like it before! Do you think those glowing lines are on the face of the cliff every morning?”
Dex turned to look behind himr with hies fore eyes, for a moment thinking that the sun might be rising back there and shining through some kind of gaps in the trees to create the lines. But no, just as hie’d seen with hies back eyes, behind himr was still the darkness of the west where the sun had set. The sun would be coming up in front of himr to the east, on the other side of the cliff and the mountain. No one else had a fire burning that might cast that eerie glow either.
Dex turned back to look at the cliff itself. Could there be something in the cliff itself that glowed? There were a few faint bluish spots in the wall of the Yetany tribe’s cave that glowed for a while after sunset. Not as brightly as this though! Perhaps i
t was the spirit of an ancestor?
Syrdian said, “Dex! At the bottom... the red lines look like a dalin, seen from the side!”
Dex’s wings rose involuntarily and made a soft downbeat as hie looked at the lower lines. It does look like a dalin! Genex, Dex’s drunken parent, had been famed for scratching representations of animals into the limestone of the cave walls. Dex had taken some pride in the awe that visitors from other tribes demonstrated when they saw the images. Dex had occasionally tried scratching some images in the dirt himrself. But their scratched drawings... though more complex, weren’t as cleanly representative as the elegantly simple glowing lines on the cliff face in front of himr. And Genex had never drawn a dalin, only animals. Neither had Dex.
Dex and Syrdian both jumped a little in a startle reflex when another dalin appeared next to the first one, both of the drawn dalin’s appearing to be looking up at the cliff. The cliff! Dex suddenly realized that the lines in front of the dalins looked like the cliff would, seen from the side. The lines went up about six body lengths as compared to the drawn dalins, then showed the relatively flat area at the top of the cliff. Oh! And the lines behind the dalins in the drawing were trees! Dex looked around... like the trees surrounding Syrdian and himr. “Is that a drawing of you and I and the cliff?” hie whispered to Syrdian.
Syrdian’s wings rose a little as hie stared. “It is?”
“I’m asking you?”
Syrdian’s head tilted one way, then the other as hie stared. “I think you might be right!” hie whispered back.
The drawing changed again, startling Dex and Syrdian into lifting their wings a bit again. This time one of the dalins was represented climbing the cliff side, hands and feet on it as if its claws were sunk in. The drawing changed to one showing the dalin back on the ground, rubble at hies feet and a defect in the cliff where the dalin’s claws would have been.
After a pause, the drawing shifted again. This time it showed one of the dalins flying near the top of the cliff with a rope… no a vine, dangling below it. Dex drew hies head up and back. This was amazing!
The drawing shifted. The upper dalin was tying the vine around the base of a tree while the other end dangled to the bottom of the cliff where the lower dalin held it. When the drawing shifted again the dalin was flying to the top of the cliff with a second dangling vine.
A final drawing appeared. This time the lower dalin appeared to be walking up the cliff. Hie had hies hands on the vine that was tied to the tree at the top of the cliff. The second vine looked to be tied around hies waist. The dalin at the top of the cliff was leaning back, pulling on that vine.
Dex stared in wonder. It was as if the drawings were telling himr and Syrdian how to get up the cliff! Hie stepped closer to the cliff to look at the drawing closer. Would there be more to see up close?
Suddenly part of the drawing disappeared, then the entire drawing disappeared! Syrdian cried out.
Dex stepped back, hoping that the drawing would reappear, maybe it had been frightened by hies approach. Hie also turned to see what had frightened Syrdian. Syrdian, eyes wide, was staring at Dex. “What?”
“How are you doing that?”
“I’m not doing anything!”
“You are! The red glowing lines appeared on your back instead of the cliff!”
“What! That can’t be!”
“They did.”
Dex stretched hies neck up and over to examine hies own back, “There aren’t any lines on me!”
“There were. They appeared on your back when they disappeared on the cliff. They looked like part of the picture from the cliff, just smaller. You can’t tell me you aren’t making them!”
Dex felt hies wings ripple in… excitement? Dread? Hie walked back around to where Syrdian had crouched by the fire. Hie put another stick on the fire and looked back at the dark cliff face. The sky over the mountain had lightened but everything not lit by their fire still was still black and indistinct. Syrdian touched hies leg. Dex looked down, Syrdian pointed at the cliff face. The glowing lines were back showing the dalin flying over the cliff face trailing a vine again. After a moment, it changed and the dalin was tying the vine to a tree. Then flying back up with another vine. Then the lower dalin was climbing the cliff by pulling on the vine tied to the tree while the upper dalin pulled on the vine tied to the lower dalin’s waist.
Dex looked at Syrdian. The glowing lines showed the flying dalin with the vine. They went on to repeat again. Dex crouched next to Syrdian, “I think the lines are trying to tell us how to get up the cliff,” hie whispered.
Syrdian nodded but said nothing.
Dex lay down, saying, “Maybe we’ll try it when it’s light.”
Syrdian said, “I’m hungry,” but Syrdian crouched down next to Dex as hie stared at the glowing lines repeating their pictures on the cliff face over and over.
When the glow in the clouds over the mountain had had brightened enough to see well, Syrdian got up and said, “I’ll try to get us some food.”
Dex said, “Shall I come with you?”
Syrdian said, “No, you get the vines shown in the pictures,” and walked off down the ridge into the forest carrying a pointed staff and Dex’s flyer swatter.
Dex shrugged hies wings and walked out into the forest looking for a vine. There were thousands of them but hie didn’t know how hie’d get one down from a tree. Dex cut one near its roots and pulled on it. It pulled loose from little rootlets and guided himr over to the tree it ascended. Hie pulled harder and harder to get it to come loose but when it was about a body’s length above himr it would no longer come loose from the tree. Other vines had entangled with it so that hie was actually trying to pull many vines loose. Hie leaned hard on it, it was strong enough to support hies weight as hie’d seen in the diagram but if hie climbed up and cut more of it loose, how would hie get back down?
Dex tried a couple of other vines without success. One pulled loose to about three body lengths because it was young and new and mostly on top of the other vines but then it broke. Young, new and smaller didn’t look like a good choice since it wouldn’t be strong enough to bear Syrdian’s weight. Hie looked for one that ran along the ground so hie could cut it loose, but they all promptly went up trees. Dex climbed a tree, clinging to the vines instead of the bark while trying to cut a single vine loose. Hie had to beat hies wings to help climb while trying to cut a vine loose. It was exhausting and before hie had the six body lengths of vine hie needed, the vine became small and weak. Hie pulled it loose and fluttered to the ground.
Dex scratched the base of hies right hind wing and looked around. Hie wondered, why do the red line Spirits want us to use vines instead of rope? After some thought hie decided that even if the lines wanted them to use vines, that rope should work for the same purpose. Hie walked back to their little clearing and was about to take off when Syrdian came into view climbing up onto the ridge. Hie had a swimmer! Dex was bemused to realize that hie hadn’t believed that Syrdian had any chance of getting them food. “Syrdian! How did you get the swimmer?” Dex was pleased to see it looked large enough to feed both of them easily.
Syrdian shrugged hies wings, “I like catching swimmers. I saved a little of the flyer from last night for bait.”
“Really? How do you catch fish with bait?”
“I use this little bone spike I made, tied to a fiberlin string.” Syrdian pulled out a length of fiberlin with a sharp bony point aimed back along the string. “You put the bait over it to hold the point against the string and dangle it near the swimmer in the water. When the swimmer swallows the bait, you tug on the fiberlin and the little sharp end pops out to the side and catches in the swimmer’s stomach. Then you pull the swimmer out of the water with the fiberlin.”
Dex admired the swimmer a little more, glad that the morning wouldn’t be as hungry as hie had expected. “I’m going to fly up to the cave and get some rope. I can’t get any vines like the red lines show in their pictures. Well, I can’t
get pieces of vine that are long enough to reach the top of the cliff anyway.”
Syrdian frowned, “Maybe we’re supposed to tie several short pieces together to have ones long enough?”
“Do you really think it matters that we use vine instead of rope?”
Syrdian shrugged hies wings, “I’ve never had advice from the spirits before. But Bultaken always wants the tribe to do things exactly as hie saw them in hies spirit dreams.”
Dex raised hies head in surprise, “Do you think those were spirit dreams we had last night?”
Syrdian shrugged.
Dex said, “I’ve never heard of two dalins having the same dream. I saw glowing red lines on the cliff face, showing a dalin climbing a cliff using vines.” Hie tilted hies head, “Did you see the same thing?”
Syrdian dipped hies head yes.
Dex waved hies head uncertainly a moment, then said, “OK, I’ll get some pieces of vine to tie together, but I’m worried they won’t be strong enough.”
By the time Dex returned with several lengths of vine Syrdian had finished cooking the swimmer and had collected and chopped up a few small tubers from near the campsite. They ate with gusto, the crunch of the little tubers going well with the soft flesh of the swimmer. Syrdian had even filled a skin with water when hie was down at the stream so that they had something to drink.
They laid out two pieces of vine end to end. Dex said, “How do we tie them together?”
Syrdian’s head went up and back, “I don’t know! You’re the leatherworker.”
Dex tilted hies head, “Vines aren’t exactly like leather, you know,” he said quietly, picking up the two ends and wrapping them into the first throw of a knot. The vines were stiff and didn’t form a good knot. Hie looked at the knot a moment then said, “Pull on that end.”
Syrdian picked up the vine on the other side of the knot and began pulling. The knot cinched down but the vine started cracking and splintering as hie pulled hard. Eventually the vine pulled into something that resembled a knot but had corners and splinters rather than the smooth roundedness Dex was used to.
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