The Sky People

by S. M. Stirling

  Blair missed a stride, almost stumbling. "Excuse me? Nes' is cloud and 'ber' is mountain? How would you spell those?"

  "Weh," Marc said, and did, transliterating phonetically.

  "Extraordinary," Blair breathed. "Of course, it could be a coincidence."

  Cynthia and Marc looked at him. "Sugar, what are you on about?" she asked.

  "Those words…" He turned to Marc. "Could you tell me a few other common words? Numerals, that sort of thing?"

  "Sure. Counting up, ai, tah, tro, keti, pekki, sews, eff, owok, neh, tek—"

  For the first time, he considered the shape of the language he'd acquired in a finger snap. His jaw dropped as he mentally transposed the syllables into phonetic print.

  "—hey, wait a minute! You're not serious!"

  "What's 'mother'?" Blair went on.

  "'Ma.' But hell, that doesn't mean a thing. The Chinese for 'mother' is 'ma.' Bebettes, they all say that."

  Blair nodded, a hunter's keenness in his handsome face. "Give me a few common words."

  "'Piwur,' father. 'Taiz,' sky. 'Tektek' for one hundred… that's not… wait a minute; 'ten' is 'tek'! Holy shit!" he said, awed. "Chris ol' buddy, your fame is made!"

  "Initial d becomes t!" Blair shouted, running in a small circle and punching his fist into the sky. "Consistent sound shift!"

  A few of the Cloud Mountain folk looked over at him, puzzled; others leveled their spears and looked around for a threat or danger.

  "Will you two jokers tell me what's going on?" Cynthia complained.

  The two men halted and began talking; Blair was actually waving his hands in excitement, and Marc let him take up the thread. It was his field, after all.

  "None of the languages we've met here on Venus—or on

  Mars—has any relation at all that we can find to any of the languages on Earth," he told her, words stumbling over one another.

  "Well, yeah," she said. "They're different planets, dude! Thirty million miles distance."

  "Hoist by your own petard, my dear," he said, grinning from ear to ear. "You were the one going on about how the life-forms here were too similar to Earthly ones and that it made some sort of alien intervention the only believable explanation."

  "Mostly extinct Earthly ones, yeah," she said cautiously. Then her eyes went wide, white in the ebony face. "Wait a minute!"

  "Yes! Yes! Yes! This language is related to one on Earth!"

  "Which one, lover?"

  "To ours. To French and Latin and Hindi! It's an Indo-European language, I'd bet the skin off my arse! Kentum subfamily at that! One of the sound shifts is identical to one in Proto-Germanic, but that could be a coincidence."

  He grabbed Marc by the arm. "I've got to learn it! You've got to teach me! Or could Teesa do the same thing with me—"

  Cynthia stared at him. "Oh, shit," she said quietly after a moment.

  Blair's grin faded slightly. "What's the matter?"

  "I thought aliens must have seeded Venus and Mars, right? Transporting all those life-forms here. And human beings, too, or at least hominids; theoretically they could have evolved into full sapients here. So all that means the unbelievably powerful aliens were in our solar system within the last couple of million years."

  "What of it?" Blair said, visions of Nobel Prizes all but dancing in his eyes.

  Marc saw the point first. "Chris, old bean, how recently would the… oh, call them the Lords of Creation… have had to bring people here for this language to be recognizably Indo-European? What's the possible time frame?"

  Blair's scholarly ecstasy faded. "Oh… difficult to tell… offhand I can't say if it's related to any known daughter language… if it is, quite recently, a few thousand years. If it's not, then possibly as much as six thousand years, or perhaps a spot more or less, depending on how you date the period of Proto-Indo-European linguistic unity."

  "Weh," Marc said. "Which means aliens have been visiting Earth within Jüstoric times. And grabbing people from the Volga steppes and dumping them here."

  "Does this alarm you, old chap?"

  "'Cause if it don't, it should," Cynthia cut in. "Because it means they're not some ancient millions-of-years-ago thang. It means they could come back tomorrow for all we know, and find us camping out in their zoo, prodding the exhibits with sticks and doing barbeques. And hey, we're exhibits here, too—does that give you a clue about our status with the Man?"

  Teesa came running back along the line of her tribesfolk. "What is the matter?" she called to Marc in English—with a distinct Cajun accent, he noticed again. "Is there some danger?"

  Weh, there is, here, he thought. Cynthia shot him a warning look. And weh, yes, I realize we have to be cautious. That Cave of the Mysteries you've got, it's one scary place! Aloud, he explained, "My companion is happy because he has found new knowledge. He is…" Marc searched his new tongue for a word. "He is a loremaster, a scholar, we Sky People would say. And he has found that your Cloud Mountain tongue is kin to ours."

  "Really?" she said, obviously interested. "Languages have kinfolk?"

  Just then Tahyo decided the stranger was too close to the boss and growled at her. "Friend!" Marc said sharply, and grabbed him by the ruff, shaking him sharply. "Let him sniff your hand," he went on, poised to grab.

  She did, fearlessly, which made him sweat a little. Having the bearer of the Mystery's hand taken off at the wrist didn't bear thinking about. The animal put his quivering black nostrils to her slim fingers, then looked questioningly up at Marc. He supposed she and the Cloud Mountain People all smelled a little different from Terrans.

  "Friend!" he said firmly.

  Tahyo sniffed the hand again, then did the same with Zore. His it's-a-puppy! reflex cut in, and he made the play-gesture. The two dashed off, Zore squealing with glee. Marc hoped sincerely that the greatwolf wouldn't decide that the tame fluff-tail looked too appetizing.

  "How do you make a greatwolf obey you?" Teesa asked. "That is a strong magic."

  "It's no magic. I rescued him when his mother was drowned in a flood, and fed him and disciplined him as his mother and her pack-mates would have done. So to him, I am his mother and his father and the leader of his pack… his clan, his tribe."

  Teesa frowned. "That is a strong magic," she said. "So… could you do that with any animal? With the great chieftain-lizards? The raka-ewhin."

  Marc shook his head. Blair's ears pricked up as she dropped a Cloud Mountain word into her English. The term for "chieftain" was "raka," and for lizard "ewhin."

  "No. They're too stupid, and they don't live with their parents. And they're too big. What I was speaking of works best with…"

  Marc paused. There wasn't any way to say "mammal" in the Cloud Mountain tongue—

  Wait a minute. There is.

  "—with animals-of-fur."

  The Cloud Mountain woman nodded. "Do your people uummm—"

  A faraway look came over her face; Marc suspected it was the same one he wore when he was consulting his new language for something unfamiliar.

  "Do your people, ummm, tame many animals so?" She wrinkled her nose and laughed. "Like Zore and her fluff-tail. Or like the pigs and fowl we keep around our settlements?"

  Marc chuckled with her. "Perhaps it started that way, very long ago. But yes, we raise dogs, which are like greatwolves, but smaller—"

  "Good!" she said. "That Tahyo of yours, he will be very large!"

  Marc nodded; something the size of a small lion didn't have to be malicious to do damage, just startled or angry for a moment, and he worried about that.

  "—and we use them to guard, and hunt with us. And churr, we ride on their backs and make them carry loads for us. Tharg too, to pull loads, and of course we eat them."

  "You don't have to hunt them?" Teesa said. "They just stand there and let you kill them?"

  "Well… we keep the tharg in fenced enclosures, and take one out when we need it."

  "And riding on the backs of churr!" Teesa marveled, her turquoi
se eyes sparkling. "I would give much to see that! I would like to do that. It would be like… like being a bird! If folk could ride so, they could hunt so much better, and they could carry their kills further… and different clans could trade with each other so much more easily… and many, many other things they could do… that would be a great thing!"

  Weh, that settles that; she's sharp as a tack.

  "Perhaps you can show me, when we've driven out the beastmen and taken back the Cave of the Mysteries," she said happily. "The very Gods have sent you to help us!"

  Cynthia and Blair turned and glared at him. Marc winced.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Encyclopedia Britannica, 16th Edition University of Chicago Press, 1988

  TOURISM: The first paying tourist flight to Earth orbit took place in 1981, when four passengers paid two hundred and fifty thousand dollars each to spend three days at America's von Braun Station. Curiously, the next flight was from Baikonur, as the EastBloc offered discounted tickets to help with their ongoing foreign-exchange problems…

  Jadviga Binkis shivered as she stumbled along. The filthy village of the subhumans was terrifying as they straggled up through the little valley towards the cave-pierced cliff, with the stench of excrement and sweat and rotting meat and badly cured leather, and the human skulls and bones fixed over the doorways of the stone huts. The females and young clamored about the warrior-hunters as they returned, screeching, grunting, and howling in a demon chorus that stunned her ears. Some—probably those whose mates had not returned—made little rushes towards her, black-nailed hands out-reached. The males beat them off, with fists and kicks and blows from the shafts of spears—one gray-haired female fell senseless with her split scalp pouring blood.

  The gray-haired, one-eyed elder male who seemed to be senior among the Neanderthals grunted and gestured. Franziskus replied in the same manner, and her scalp crawled to see the casual fluency he used. Then he waved towards a hut larger than the others; it was enclosed with a head-high palisade of shamboo, and the surroundings had been swept clean. The elder and her husband led the way in under the shade of a veranda. The Neanderthal crouched on his hams; Franziskus sat in a chair of shamboo and hides, and indicated another for Jadviga. She sat in it, clenching her hands on the rests.

  A young Neanderthaler female came at a clap of Franziskus' hands and set out wooden cups of clean water and a jug made from a section of shamboo. Then she took the man's weapons and scuttled away with them into the hut. Jadviga drank thirstily and poured herself more.

  "Franziskus…" she said in their native language. "What… what is going on?"

  The familiar face turned towards her. He was in good condition—his skin was glossy with health, and his naked torso had more muscle on it than his usual lanky thinness. Yet his face looked… was … a death-mask carved out of lard, and it turned towards her like a turret.

  "Security precautions are taken," he said. "Disturbances have required the expenditure of energy. Levels of awareness have been updated with data stream."

  Then, for an instant, something flickered in the gray eyes, a hint of life, and a living man's inflection returned to his voice. "It is waking up."

  "What is waking up?"

  Franziskus went blank again. "Primary subroutines have been reactivated prematurely. Maintenance is overdue. Protocols have been violated. Corrective measures are required."

  "What do you mean?" she shouted, then sank back, appalled.

  The dead eyes looked at her, then blinked. "Semantic efficiency is insufficient. Receptor memetic-nets encountered are paradigmatically inadequate for metastochis. Low-level subroutines are incapable of sufficient discrimination to avoid undesirable contacts due to this contamination. Decision trees must be consulted. Primary subroutines may require contact with the primary species. Information has been transmitted."

  Oh, my Franziskus, what have they done to you? What has reached out of the Forbidden Zone to touch you, as it touched our machines?

  Minutes crawled by, and the dead eyes watched her. At precise intervals they would blink, as if some program was keeping the surfaces of the eyes moist according to a timetable. At last the old Neanderthal grunted something; Franziskus answered with two sweeping motions of his hands and what sounded like a dog barking. The one-eyed one went outside and began calling to the others. Franziskus resumed the eerie stare.

  "Come," he said abruptly, rising. "You are the pair of the dyadic unit. Your presence will increase unit functionality. Genetic algorithms must be accommodated in this scenario." A pause. "And you may have valuable data. Interface is inadequate. Holographic data storage has deteriorated as the unit is neurally stressed."

  He seized her by the arm and pushed her through into the long, dim interior of the hut. Her eyes took in a neat shamboo bedstead, racks, bits and pieces of equipment from the Riga. And against the far wall…

  "Kad tave zheme prarytu," she whispered. "Let the earth swallow them indeed! The fools sent it! They really sent it!"

  For a moment Franziskus was her man again. "Yes, they did. Velnio Ishpera—devil's spawn that they are. But—" His face crumpled. "I don't know what it will do with this. Help me, Jadviga! Help me!"

  "Pretty," Cynthia said, a bit grudgingly.

  Marc suspected that she was getting annoyed by children daring one another to rub at her arms and legs to see if the color came off; the third time, she made a horrible face and growled, and the toddler sat down abruptly, began to bawl, and then ran off screaming for its mother. Apart from that, the Cloud Mountain brats were fairly mannerly. The mother in question scooped her two-year-old up and gave it one smart slap on the bare fundament.

  The settlement on its bare hilltop was obviously temporary, but equally obviously put together with care and skill. A small river dropped over a steep cuesta a quarter-mile to the eastward; the pool at the base was reserved for drawing drinking water, and all the residents washed daily downstream of that. Butchering and anything else smelly took place downwind and downslope, so the flies weren't too bad—and the wind of the uplands kept many others at bay. The huts were made of saplings bent into U-shapes with each end in the ground, and covered by woven mats of green reeds. Those had been trimmed into attractive patterns, and the cooking area in front of each had a neat hearth of stones and a bare area kept swept of rubbish.

  The Cloud Mountain folk had put up two for the newcomers, one for Blair and Cynthia and one for Marc and Tahyo. Tahyo found that thoroughly satisfactory; he had a strong territorial instinct. Marc was a little less enthusiastic, and not only because the greatwolf snored and twitched in his sleep and had a tendency to flatulence, but such was life.

  "Okay, we've got to take stock," Marc said abruptly, putting down his wooden cup of herbal tea. "We've got two jobs here: We've got to find out what the hell's going on with the, ah—"

  "Alien artifacts," Cynthia said helpfully, leaning on Blair's shoulder.

  "Weh. And then we've got to get home to tell the base."

  Blair poked at the low embers of the fire; local custom was to not let those go out, though it was a clear day and comfortable even here in the uplands.

  "Or, I suppose, we could simply go home with what we know, and let the proper authorities handle it," he said with a trace of reluctance in his voice.

  Marc snorted. "Heck, Chris, you don't believe that. First, we can't get home unless these folks help us. Want to try walking five thousand miles with just the three of us?"

  "I must admit, even Burton and Speke would have a problem with that."

  Marc nodded. "And the Cloud Mountain People are not going to help us unless we help them. They're in too much of a fix to do that even if they felt like it. Second, none of us could live with ourselves if we just bugged out."

  Blair shrugged. "Well, there is that, I suppose, but the issue had to be raised."

  "Okay," Cynthia said. "Let's tally our assets and theirs. The Wergu have hundreds of warriors, and forty or so assault rifles. Plus there's somet
hing very goddamn strange about friend Binkis."

  "Something which is the alien artifact at work, and which means he can shoot to ten-tenths of his weapon's capacity," Blair said thoughtfully. "We have one rifle, twenty rounds, one shotgun, eighteen rounds, and our pistols, with one spare magazine each—twenty-eight rounds. And however many there are of the Cloud Mountain People, which I assume is less than the Neanderthals. And that's assuming they all continue to like us, which is a bit optimistic."

  "Oh, we've got something more than that," Marc said, grinning.

  "There's our matchless knowledge and skills," Cynthia observed dryly. "We're Earth's elite, after all."

  "Weh, but besides that, one bit of our equipment seems to have survived. The Ice gear."

  "And just how do you expect to use that without the trank gun and capture kit?" Cynthia asked.

  "I don't know. But I'm thinking hard on it."

  Half the encampment was grouped around the impromptu bowyers' shop the Terrans had made of a spare hut, squatting and pointing and occasionally commenting. The matting of the hut had been rolled up to let in light and the mild, sweet upland air. From outside came a cheerful brabble of voices, children at play, and the smell of the noonday meal cooking. The sky was nearly blue, with only a trace of the usual high, white haze, though clouds hid the snow-peak heights on the southern horizon.

  "You come from three different tribes, then? You and your friends?" Teesa asked.

  "Not exactly," Marc replied, lashing the riser of the bow into the clamp and adding weights to the basket attached to the center of the string. "Cynthia and I are of the same tribe—"

  "You don't look much alike," Teesa pointed out. "Here, mostly people from the same tribe look alike. You look like the coast-town people. Blair looks a little like us, his hair and the color of his eyes, but not really—the eyes are the wrong shape and his skin is that funny pink color where he isn't sun-browned, and his nose is so big, like yours. And I've never even heard of any tribe that looks like his woman."