Raan’s resolve wavered. Qasalas had a point. His peoples attempt to deal last time hadn’t worked out so well, and if his crew could learn to work together … maybe …
Kaj took Raan by one of his arms and Nashira by the other, pulling him into their circle.
“You taught us these things,” Kaj said. “With Sita’s help we can defeat the Conquerors and live free of fear.”
Raan shook his head to clear his thoughts. “Sita, how did the Humans defeat the Conquerors?” Somehow they hadn’t gotten around to asking that vital question yet.
Sita smiled. “There was some strategy involved that I will share, but essentially, we pulled all of humanity’s different factions and ships into one fleet, assigned a talented commander and …” She hesitated. “We all worked together. We had a large enough fleet that together we could stand against them. Their strategy is to divide and conquer. It doesn’t work when everyone cooperates and fights back together.”
Raan stared. That was the big secret? Ridiculous. But … all the changes he’d seen on the ship, simply because they had tried to emulate Humanity. Maybe they could stand together long enough to defeat their enemy.
“Raan, we can do it. Together, we will do what the Humans did, and with Sita’s guidance we can defeat the Conquerors,” Qasalas said.
Strangely, Raan started to feel a shard of hope. It went against all reason, but if his crew could learn to work together peacefully, perhaps the rest of their peoples could as well.
He put his arms over Nashira and Kaj’s shoulders, returning the hug. He let the feelings of togetherness bolster his growing hope. “Yes. We can. I will alter our course. By doing what the Humans did we will gain our freedom—together.”
When my people made first contact with the Earthens, they anticipated there’d be panic. They anticipated the possibility of war, and outrage, and crisis—it’s quite the unsettling thing, learning you are not alone in the universe. It’s dangerous, introducing yourself to an isolated species, but necessary. If you don’t introduce yourself, the backlash of them finding you on their own can be catastrophic.
My father was on the mission to acclimate the Earthens to intergalactic existence; he was among the party responsible for technological assessment. With all the satellites and baubles they’d been sending into their space, the decision to acclimate Earthens was more precautionary than out of a strict desire to meet them. If left alone any longer, they might have found us themselves. He used to tell me stories, about those early days, when they started to realize the Earthens were not like anything they’d known before.
“They’re so curious,” he told me once. “They’re so curious, some of them dedicate their lives trying to learn what happened to people dead for centuries.”
They thought it silly--all the members of integrated space. They thought it silly, all the way up to the moment the first archeology teams touched down on their home planets. Sifting and sorting the dirt and rubble of the past into narratives so real, you could almost hear the voices of the ages gone whispering in your ear.
In those early years, they called the Earthens the Child Species, because of the unrelenting, incessant curiosity they carried with pride. And they treated them like children; humoring silly whims, and dumbing things down to unnecessarily simple levels.
And when no one was looking, the Earthens seeped into every crack of the accessible universe.
“You know, they don’t call themselves Earthens,” my dad told me once, over dinner. “They call themselves humans. Isn’t that an odd thing? For a species with such an uncanny ability to live anywhere, pleasant or not, they get attached to their homes. Rebuild them, even if nature knocks it down over and over … and yet they don’t even link themselves to their planet.”
I’d heard a lot about Earthens growing up on Zarsis. Father was always going away to work with them, bringing back stories and trinkets. Most of the trinkets were silly little things that the Earthens had given father as parting gifts, or as presents to pass on. Bracelets and charms, and culturally significant items that meant nothing to me but a lot to them. But if I was really lucky, I’d get a picture. Photographs were the epitome of human sentiment—a memory wasn’t enough, they needed a snapshot of time and space on a glossy card to truly, happily remember the past.
Despite all I knew and had, it wasn’t until I left Zarsis with a small exploration team that I truly got to know the Child Species.
There was an archeologist on board the ship, with pink skin and yellow hair and green eyes. She was all color and exuberance. A nasty scar tore a line up her neck, and a past adventure had cost her two fingers on her left hand, but she still smiled and joked, like it wasn’t painful or permanent or ugly.
“Now I’m always spreading love,” she said once, like missing her middle and ring finger had anything to do with emotion. But it made her laugh, and that laugh was music, and color, and vibrance.
That surprised me most about the humans; the color. So many different colors on their body, and not all humans had the same skin or hair or eyes, each one was a unique mix of textures and colors. They were born with so many colors, and then they added more with patterned clothes or jewelry. The Archeologist, Ginny Adams, had three holes in each earlobe. Holes she put there, to fit even more baubles on her body.
I went down onto a planet with Ginny once, for something called an excavation. She tried to explain it to me, but as far as I could tell, it was grave robbing people who had been dead a very long time.
Kenzic 17 was one of many previously inhabited planets in the Orsus Galaxy. The civilizations had died out long ago, and no other intelligent life was developed enough in that system to warrant going back there. That is until the humans came, with endless questions and curiosity.
“You see, burial rituals can tell you a lot about a culture.” Ginny said, taking pictures of an old, dusty tomb.
“Back on Earth, so much of the Ancient Egyptians is known primarily through their burial rights. What they thought was important, how they perceived the relationship between life and death. One of the oldest, grandest landmarks on Earth are the Pyramids of Giza, and when it comes right down to it, they’re just huge tombs for the Pharaohs.” She brushed dust off a large, ornate casket while she spoke, the small bristle brush sending clouds of dust into the air around her. “They filled the tomb with everything the Pharaoh would need in the afterlife. They separated the organs into canopic jars designed to look like protective deities. The bodies were mummified, because the Egyptians believed that in the afterlife the soul was reunited with the body, before Osiris. The only organ left in the body during mummification was the heart.”
“Why?” I asked, handing her the decontamination containers.
She smiled at me while she put the dressings and items from the tomb into their protective containers. I don’t know if it was a human thing or a Ginny thing, but she always seemed to leave something unstated when she got talking; a little piece to the story she didn’t disclose, just to see if you’d ask. A little test, to see if you’d leave it be, or seek out the extra knowledge.
“To be weighed, and judged, in the afterlife.”
It always made her happy when I sought out the unstated piece. It made her smile, a gentle lift of her lips without teeth which served no real purpose but to brighten the eyes. I liked when she smiled, but I liked when she didn’t more. When she was focusing on the tomb, or the rubble that meant something only to her, you could see her mind working. She scrunched her face up, rather than stretching it, and that was when I found Ginny the most pleasant.
After the excavation of Kenzic 17, you would be hard pressed to find Ginny anywhere outside her lab. She was always sketching and scribbling in notebooks, mumbling to herself about the objects and what they could mean. Humans liked to talk—even if only to themselves. She cleaned centuries of dirt off coins and jewelry with a touch I’d almost dare call loving, for the simple driving reason of curiosity. It would get so bad at times that so
meone would have to go in and drag her out for a meal. The Chef went into the lab once, with a plate of food, and he spent the next week cleaning it out of crevices no one knew he even had. No one repeated that endeavor—no one had the guts.
“You see, son,” dad had told me once when I was sick and bored, “humans get very possessive about things that don’t make sense. Once a human gets attached to something, no matter what it is, they’ll protect it with the ferocity most species preserve for protecting their young.”
“That’s weird,” I had replied, unable to wrap my head around the concept—especially when my mind was fuzzy with sickness.
“It’s odd, I’ll admit. But if a human gets attached to you? There is no companion who will do more or care more for you, than a human who considers you their friend. Even a human who considers you an acquaintance is a powerful ally.”
I always thought he was exaggerating. I should have known better, my father didn’t exaggerate anything. How happy he was, and not how mad he was—you could always know exactly where you stood with my father, so why would he say anything but the truth about the humans? It took Ginny Adams protecting her excavated artifacts like a wild animal protects their young, to prove that point to me.
The most interesting thing about Ginny’s companionship wasn’t how attached she got to me, or the artifacts. It wasn’t her propensity to stretch her face with smiles, or scrunch it up in concentration, or always—always—wanting to talk about something, or share a thought or knowledge. Rather, it was how I found myself enjoying that companionship.
Immensely.
Ginny brought me to a human colony during a two day leave at Ruzu. It was a temperate planet, with good light and nice swimming holes, where a lot of expeditions went for full crew leaves. A couple of human stores and services had quickly cropped up all over the galaxy once they were introduced to integrated space. This particular crop-up became a small colony that Ginny called Chinatown.
“This happens all the time.” she smiles, leading me by the hand through the crowds of people.
“Chinatown, Little Italy, Koreatown. Similar culture, similar beliefs, a common language; we seek out people who are like us when we’re in unfamiliar places. Makes us more comfortable.”
“Then why go anywhere?” I asked, distracted by a snippet of language I didn’t understand.
“Why not? People build little communities like this for comfort, but they’re still leaving for a reason. Financial stability. Curiosity. A better future for their children—America has places like this all over, but that doesn’t invalidate the purpose of moving.”
She stopped us in front of a store with pictures in the windows, and the glowing word TATTOO. She squeezed my hand, though I didn’t know why, and pushed through the door. A tiny little bell sounded. I didn’t know what a tattoo was, but there was an annoying buzzing filling the room, and pictures all over the walls.
Ginny Adams was expected.
She sat in a black chair coated in plastic after a brief conversation and a few signatures. I followed close behind her, feeling very much out of place and very confused. I couldn’t tell if Ginny didn’t tell me what she was doing because she assumed I’d know, or because she assumed I’d ask.
Ginny always did love questions.
“What is this place?” I finally asked after a man with medical gloves started to swab at her wrist.
“A tattoo parlor,” she said, like I had any clue what that was.
Something in my face must have given away my confusion, because her mouth stretched and her eyes compressed into a delightfully odd expression that I couldn’t put an emotion to. They have a wider range than any other species I’d ever met—some didn’t even have words in my native tongue. It was like looking right at a new color, observing its existence without being able to quantify it, or even describe it to yourself. It just was, and it was strange and uncomfortable, and kind of beautiful, too.
“When you get a tattoo, a really fast moving needle injects ink under the skin. It’s something humans of all cultures have been doing for centuries, it’s just gotten a little different as technology evolved.”
That night I watched a man hurt Ginny over and over with a fast, tiny stabbing machine. I watched her scrunch her face up in pain—voluntary pain—while a small design appeared, the black ink burrowing into her skin. They would bead up, ink and blood, painting a vibrant, macabre abstract on her pale wrist. The beads were quickly wiped away, their brief existence giving life to the permanent fixture of ink under Ginny’s skin. It was a horrifying, magnificent spectacle.
“That’s permanent?” I asked, over a bowl of something called lo mein.
“Pretty permanent,” she snorted, using the sticks to eat like they were actually utensils and not starvation tools.
“What is it?”
The noodles I managed to balance slipped off the end of the stick, back into the bowl. Ginny snorted, and shoved a different utensil at me: one with prongs that was much more familiar. The food wasn’t bad, once I could actually get it to my mouth. Different, but not bad.
“It’s the Eye of Horus. An Ancient Egyptian symbol of health, and protection,” she said, pulling a small, curly pink thing out of the bowl. She popped it in her mouth, like she was giving herself a little time to think about whether she wanted to say anything more. Finally, she swallowed the mystery item I’d been picking around, and decided to divulge more. “My grammy did a lot of work with the Ancient Egyptians, in her day. She taught me all about them, even took me to see the pyramids. Grammy’s why I became an archeologist. The stories of Egypt, the tales of their lives and culture … it’s a huge part of my life. Makes me feel closer to her.… You know? Besides”—she smiled again, this time teeth and all— “it’s a big, cold universe out there. Couldn’t hurt to have a little extra protection along the way.”
Ginny, like most humans, was a walking paradox. Intuitive, realistic, and logical, but bursting with emotion and carrying the ever-present weight of unwarranted superstition. But superstition doesn’t always keep you safe. Humans had mixed feeling of the concept of fate and destiny, which to my people it is a fact. You cannot predict your fate, but it waits for you nonetheless.
It was destiny for the humans to integrate, and destiny for me to meet Ginny.
Ginny Adams, who taught me much about humans and color and easy joy. Ginny Adams, who smiled easily, and sought the answers to everything in dust and tombs. Ginny Adams, who saw the pyramids and stars, and excavated Kenzic 17. Ginny Adams, who put her faith in a symbol of the ancients, and it failed.
Emotions don’t come easily to me, or my people—not the happy ones, not the good ones. But Ginny showed me her soul, and though I didn’t show her mine, I felt it. I missed her companionship when she disappeared for weeks into the lab; I missed her stretched mouth and scrunched face. Humans grow attached easily to people and things, and there were billions of people in the universe like Ginny Adams, but none of them were Ginny Adams. Humans grow attached, and so did I.
But destiny is brutal and fickle, and it doesn’t care how you feel.
A close call with a meteor storm cracked our hull, barely a day's travel from our final destination. The old ship couldn’t sustain the damage, and the crack sprouted fingers and offshoots. The ship was so old only one emergency escape module worked. It would fly, but there was a major problem with it.
Ginny Adams was a smart girl, and she figured out the problem before anyone else. She remembered, in the heat of the moment, the warning they’d gotten when they started the mission. She hung back and, before anyone knew what had happened, sealed the module from the outside. The module’s automatic door operations were broken, and the only way to open or close the pod was from the outside. There wasn’t time to fight about who would survive and who would die, no time to hesitate or no one survived—and she knew that.
So she sealed us in, and it didn’t take long for the pilot to realize he couldn’t open the door. Everyone was fightin
g. It was a cacophony, everyone yelling at her to open the door, for the pilot to open the door.
“I can’t!”
For there to be a way, some way, any way.
“There has to be a way!”
“Just open the door!”
“There has to be—”
“Open the damn door!”
But there was no way.
The ship’s hull gave way, forcing the pilot to release the module into space before depressurization sucked us further in. Destiny brought me to Ginny Adams, and destiny took her back.
Ginny went to the stars to explore the mysteries of life. She lived for questions and curiosity; a member of the Child Species, taking to the stars with remarkable ease. Ginny Adams was warm, and bright.
And Ginny Adams died, held in the cold palm of the universe.
Sometimes, something happens in your lifetime so big you couldn’t imagine any other possibility. No one expected the humans, and no one wanted the humans. But once they were there? Once they stepped off that planet and into the stars, it was like you finally noticed something that had always been there.
My father grew up without humans, but the only childhood I can imagine without stories and baubles from them is a cold and lonely one. Ginny wasn’t all humans, and not all humans were Ginny. Some are bitter and cold and full of just as much hate as Ginny was full of light and happiness. Not all members of a species are one and the same, especially with the unusually diverse cultures that came from that one little planet.
But I didn’t meet those other humans. I met Ginny. And if anyone else had been there when the hull cracked and the module didn’t function properly, they would have hesitated. We all would have died. I would have spent my life with Ginny Adams without a second thought, but instead she gave me her years.
Humans Wanted Page 5
