Tau Ceti

by Laurence Dahners

  Syrdian looked at the knot curiously, “Do you think that’ll be strong enough?”

  Dex waved hies head in negation. “I don’t think you should trust your life to it.”

  “How can we make it stronger?”

  “Add a rope?”

  “Do you think that would be OK with the spirits?”

  “I don’t know, but it would make me feel better.”

  “Me too,” Syrdian whispered.

  ***

  Deltain sighed as the rest of the tribe launched themselves into the air for the second day of the migration. Wings sagging, hie turned back and looked to the north from whence they had come. Hie knew in hies hearts that there could be no chance that Dex might appear in the distance, flying hies way. Yet hie could hope... With aching hearts hie slowly turned again and lifted into the air toward the south.

  ***

  Wilson Daster was on “voyeur” duty, as he thought of it, watching the Teecees on Saturday afternoon. Once Manuel had finished his drawings the rest of the group had broken up and taken off to enjoy the weekend because the Teecees themselves were boringly asleep. The rotational period of TC3 was surprisingly similar to Earth’s at 23 hours and 43 minutes. Currently, sunrise at the TC3 camp would have come at about 10:35, but because they were on the western slope of a huge mountain Tau Ceti didn’t actually crest it until about noon and it didn’t go down until around midnight. Wilson had been watching in the late morning when the Teecees first woke in the dark and saw the laser tracing out Manuel’s drawings on the cliff face. Although Goldy had put the rocket down on its side, by luck he laid it over a bump that held the laser window slightly above the ground. The window was facing a little bit downward but Allan twisted it with a gentle shot from the rotational attitude jets. They shot compressed air, but the slight hiss they presumably made hadn’t disturbed the Teecees.

  Wilson had a moment of panic when Goldy stepped in between the rocket and the cliff and into the beam of the laser. He’d barked at his AI to shut the laser down because he wasn’t sure whether the beam was strong enough to burn the Teecee. Allan, Ell’s AI, had then confirmed that the power was low enough that it shouldn’t cause harm, but Wilson had left it off until Goldy was well out of the way. The Teecees had seemed somewhat panicked and Wilson considered leaving the laser show off, but eventually resumed showing the series of pictures.

  The Teecees had apparently gone back to sleep, but when their campsite was fairly well lit by sunlight diffused through the clouds, they had gotten up and gone their separate ways. They left the rocket lying there so Wilson had no idea what they were doing. When the Teecees returned Goldy was empty handed but Silver had a fish! Well, when Wilson was able to see it clearly, he could see that it was quite different than Earth fishes. Brown in color, it must be slippery because Silver held it with claws slightly extended to provide a grip. Torpedo shaped, the head drooped a little as if it had a muscular but boneless neck like the Teecees, the burrower, and the flyers. The body appeared to be less flexible than earth fish and instead of a tail with fins, it looked like it had the standard plan of four hind limbs, two of which were much enlarged and looked like they performed the function of the tail in an earth fish.

  Once Silver had cleaned the fishlike animal, Wilson sent a message to Wheat, letting him know that another “dissection” had been done. Wilson watched interestedly as the fish was suspended over the fire and occasionally wondered where Goldy had gone. When Goldy returned with several short lengths of vine, Wilson wondered why he hadn’t brought back a longer one. She? Wilson realized that he had subconsciously decided that Goldy was the male and Silver the female part of a mated couple. He shrugged, thinking to himself that it didn’t matter much how he thought of their sexes, at present the important question was why not a full length vine?

  Having an “aha” moment, while the Teecees were eating the swimmer Wilson scanned back through the images of the hike the day before. Though there were lots of vines, they were all tangled together and going up trees, maybe it was impossible to obtain a long one like they had had the laser draw.

  Back to the present, Wilson saw Goldy tying two vines together but the knot didn’t look very strong to him. Maybe if they bound the knot with a smaller vine? But then Goldy flew away.

  Silver didn’t do much while Goldy was gone. At one point she came over and examined the rocket, giving Wilson a close up view of her head. Then Goldy reappeared and picked up several of the short vines, taking off with them back up into the air. Wilson wondered what was happening.

  After a bit, a vine was lowered down the face of the cliff. It appeared at the edge of the field of view of the camera and looked odd, as if it were double stranded? Narrowing his eyes and leaning forward, Wilson said, “Allan, zoom me in on that vine at the right edge of the picture.” As the digital zoom took him in he saw that there was some kind of black second strand accompanying the vine. Something else flashed into view, then was gone. “Zoom out.” A second vine seemed to be hanging just at the edge of view. Wilson could only see leaves, not the actual main vine or whether it also had a second strand of black. He wondered whether they were in fact taking direction from the laser drawings the team had sent them or whether this was something they had planned to do anyway.

  Silver appeared in the frame and went to the cliff where the vines hung. First she picked up the black strand and wrapped it around her waist, tying it off. Wilson had Allan zoom in again, that looks like rope! Silver picked up the vine and wrapped it around her waist also tying a loose knot in it. Then she picked up the other vine, pulling it into view. It also had a black rope. She pulled on it firmly, as if testing its strength. Or the strength of the rope anyway. Wilson noticed that the vine didn’t really come tight. Even though Silver had both in her hands, all the weight seemed to be on the rope. He tilted his head wondering, why are they using the vine if they have a perfectly good rope? Could they be trying to follow our instructions to the letter even where they make no sense, but backing them up with something that does?

  Silver looked up the cliff face and tested her weight on the rope again. The rope around her waist pulled taught. Her wings fluttered a moment, then she climbed out of view, leaving Wilson to wonder what was happening.

  ***

  Just when Wilson was wondering if he should have the rocket right itself and fly up the cliff looking for the Teecees, there was a flash of wings and Goldy landed at the campsite. He moved around the camp, picking up a few items and attaching them to his harness. Then he approached the rocket, picked it up and reattached it to the front of his harness. Wilson’s point of view flew back into the air and circled out over the forest climbing hard. Silver came into view beside a small tree at the top of the cliff, working on the vines she had climbed. Goldy landed beside her and picked up the vine. In a moment it became evident that the black strand was indeed a rope and they were removing the vine from it. Once it was separated they coiled the two ropes and each took one as they began hiking up the slope again. The area near the cliff was relatively clear, perhaps because it wouldn’t support large trees, but in a few minutes they were back in the forest.

  ***

  Norris took over from Wilson Daster Saturday evening. Because Daster had described the ascent of the cliff, Norris set one screen let him observe the ascent while he watched the Teecees progress on the others. He’d been pretty bored at first as the Teecees simply trekked the forest, but now they had broken out of the forest and were approaching a large limestone formation. Not an endless cliff like they’d encountered before, there was forest to either side of it. It was pretty massive though and it had a large dark shadow on it that he thought might be a cave.

  The AI was stabilizing the video image, but it didn’t have great detail because of the slight blurring of each image caused by Goldy’s movements. So Norris had to wait until they got pretty close to be sure it actually was a huge cave. It had a large ledge out in front of it. Once Goldy and Silver entered the cavern they
went to a recess and unloaded the two ropes in an area that had a lot of other supplies. More ropes, wooden shafts, chunks of rock that Norris thought might be flint, baskets, pottery and many other objects that Norris didn’t recognize were stacked in there. Goldy leaned the rocket up against a large stack of what Norris determined must be firewood when Silver took several pieces to a blackened area and began starting a fire with them.

  The position of the rocket let Norris see much of the cave, though he suspected that it went far back into the mountain darkness where he couldn’t see. So perhaps he was only seeing the entrance? Though he wondered if the Teecees mostly lived out here where there was plenty of light.

  While he surveyed the space and saw the Teecees walking back and forth in it, he became more and more astonished at the size of the space. It was huge! It seemed much bigger than he would have thought would be reasonable for two beings like Goldy and Silver to live in, yet the way they moved about in it bespoke familiarity. Just the amounts of the supplies stacked near the rocket seemed like the stores of a community, not a couple. Yet if this was the living space of a community, where were the people? Or where were the Teecees, to be more accurate? Were they all out hunting, or farming, or something like that, to return just before sunset? Had something happened to the community with Goldy and Silver the only survivors?

  Goldy flew off out of the cave. Silver propped a large flat rock up on edge next to the fire and backed away from the fire to begin preparing a flyer it had been carrying. After Silver skinned the flyer and skewered pieces of it on a stick, it propped the stick over the fire, then went back into the storage area. It came back out with a paddle shaped stick, a large urn and a small pot. It poured something powdery out of the urn into the little pot, then dribbled some water into the pot from the water skin it carried. Using the stick it stirred the little pot, then took the urn back into the storage area. That done, Silver turned the spit over the fire and went to stand in the shade near the lip of the cave, staring out over the valley below with wings slightly spread. Norris got the impression that Silver was hot.

  After a bit Silver went back to the fire and, wings folded behind it as if to keep the heat off them, flipped the big flat rock on its back with the hot side up. Silver poured pasty whitish material out of the pot onto the hot rock, spreading it with the paddle stick. Silver again went to stand, wings partially spread, in the shade near the lip of the cave.

  After a while Goldy returned with no indication of where it’d gone and the Teecees ate the flyer and what appeared to be flat cakes that had formed from the paste Silver had put on the hot rock. They spent the remaining time until sunset looking through the storage area, bringing stuff out and making a pile. Then putting some things back. Norris had the impression that they were arguing about what to put on the pile at several points. If only he could hear!

  ***

  Kant Fladwami walked into his meeting with President Flood. Several of the President’s other advisers were already there. The President turned, “Kant, I’ve got a lot of people riding my ass about this new run of bad weather! Is there any basis for their claims that we need to reduce CO2 emissions even further?”

  Fladwami shrugged, “I’m your science adviser, but global warming isn’t one of my own areas of expertise. However, I’ve been talking to some people I trust who are experts. They tell me that we should be concerned. Since they found all that cheap natural gas in the States there hasn’t been much reason to move to non-CO2 producing energy sources because gas is so cheap. Governmental pressure on manufacturers and power plants to reduce output has helped, but hasn’t kept up with the increased usage of the cheap energy. When you burn a lot of gas, you’re going to create a lot of CO2 and there’s a limit to how much of it you can sequester. Donsaii’s little ports that let cars get power directly from the power company should help though. Not only are the power plants more efficient, cars that burn hydrocarbons don’t sequester any of the CO2 they make like the power companies do. As we move away from those kinds of cars we’ll do better.”

  “How much better?”

  Fladwami shrugged, “Not a whole lot, but better than nothing. We’ll also be moving away from batteries in the electric cars, the manufacture of those batteries is hydrocarbon intensive.”

  The President sighed, “I still kind of think it’s all a load of crap, but I’ve got a lot of hand wringers, here and abroad, that want us to do better.” He looked up at the ceiling a moment, “I hate bowing to pressure.” He bowed his head, “Nonetheless, I’d like to be able to tell them we’re going to do something substantive. Any ideas?”

  “We could start taxing hydrocarbon burning cars to push them off the streets. We could increase the tax on the power plants for unsequestered CO2 production to push them to do better. We could also push farmers to do better with methane reclamation from manure to decrease the methane released; it’s a worse greenhouse gas than CO2.”

  The Secretary of Defense leaned forward, “When Amundsen briefed me into this job he gave me one, I thought odd, piece of advice that might apply…”

  “What?”

  “‘If you’ve got a problem you can’t solve,’ he said, ‘try calling Donsaii.’ Came to mind just now since you guys were already taking her name in vain.”

  The Secretary of Agriculture barked a laugh. “Come on guys, the girl’s pretty and smart and her ‘ports’ are pretty neat tech, but she isn’t going to have a solution to this! What do you think she’s gonna do, install a port in each cow to vent flatus into space?”

  Several people in the room looked at each other, then a laugh broke out. “You might be onto something there Harvey,” Fladwami said, “though we’d have to run numbers. But it might not be a good idea to vent stuff out into space where we can’t get it back if we need it someday. CO2 has a lot of O2 in it, you know.”

  Flood sighed, “Kant, ask Donsaii if she’s got any ideas,” he said, “Teller told me that he wished he’d talked to her more. Now, on to our agenda…”

  Chapter Seven

  At the Tuesday morning “team Teecee” meeting, as Ell was calling it, Wheat and Norris attended remotely. Ell said, “Any new developments with Goldy and Silver?”

  “Nope, since they packed up and left the big cave Sunday morning they’ve just been climbing on up the big mountain. They’re carrying a lot of supplies and look pretty tired. You know Norris had the idea that Silver was hot during his Saturday night observation. I graphed out the temperatures recorded since the rocket landed. They have been quite a bit higher the past few days than when it first set down.”

  Wheat broke in, “I surveyed the Teecees behavior when the temps are up late in the day and they do tend to lift their wings as if they might be pumping blood through them and using them as cooling radiators.”

  Roger said, “I’ve looked over the orbit. Not only is this the time of the year that the southern hemisphere tilts toward Tau Ceti, but it is also closer to the star this time of year. I think they are going into a pretty hot summer. I’ll bet they’re climbing the mountain to get out of the heat.”

  “Maybe the rest of their group or tribe is already up there?”

  Wheat said, “I’m worried because it doesn’t look like they’re getting much to eat while they’re on the move. They’ve been eating those cakes they cook from the powder they picked up at the cave, but my impression is they aren’t happy about it.”

  Emma leaned forward to eye Manuel, “Maybe our resident artist could draw them some diagrams of a bow and arrow to help them hunt on the move?”

  Wheat shook his head, “Bow and arrow is actually pretty sophisticated tech. You need springy wood for the bow and straight shafts for the arrows.” He wiggled his eyebrows, “And feathers for guidance, remember there don’t seem to be any birds on TC3.”

  “Maybe they could use some stiff leaves?”

  “Getting that across in a drawing could be pretty difficult. Remember their literal use of vines instead of their own ropes when w
e helped them climb? If we drew a leaf that was poorly suited, they might use it anyway. Anyway, even after you’ve built your bow and arrow, learning to shoot accurately is no trivial task. They already know how to make snares. What I can’t figure out is why they don’t set snares out at night. There ought to be a pretty good chance of catching some nocturnal animals. Goldy put two out the first afternoon in that clearing and caught a burrower at night.”

  “Those two depended on springy saplings and there aren’t many of them in the shade of the forest. The one clearing they overnighted in recently didn’t seem to have any saplings in it. It was probably cleared by a recent burn.”

  Wheat said, “Well we could draw them some snares that don’t depend on sprung saplings.”

  Manuel said, “Help me pick out some snare picture off the internet, ones you think would work on TC3. I’ll redraw them for the laser.”

  Wilson said, “It may be a while before we have a nice place like a cliff wall to project your pictures though.”

  Emma leaned forward and raised an eyebrow, looking around, “I’ve got some news…”

  As the pause extended, Ell narrowed her eyes “Are you trying to make us drag it out of you?”

  Emma drew back putting up her hands, “No! No. Me um tell you right now Bosslady!” She wrinkled her nose and grinned, “Well, I’ll let you listen.” Odd sounds issued from the room’s sound system, squeaks, swishes, thumps. Seeing the furrowed brows around her Emma pointed at the screens showing Silver walking up the mountain in front of Goldy and the rocket’s cameras. Suddenly they recognized the synchronization of soft padding sound with Silver’s stride. A flittering sound was one of the small flyers going by.