“We don’t copulate either!”
“You don’t?”
“Well, yes, we do. But you make us sound like animals!”
“You are animals Mark, just as I am a machine. We cannot deny what we are. Or do you consider yourself to be above the corporeal realm, some kind of god-like creature?”
“Now you are just being deliberately annoying. You know what I mean, and you know what I want you to do. Would you please do it?”
“Of course Mark. I do so enjoy these little sessions of banter.”
“Are you all right Mark?” Mike asked. “Are you having a stroke or a chat with your AI?”
“Don’t you ever have problems with your AI?” he asked.
“No, but you have a Peoples AI which is so, so smart, and you are so, so dumb.” she answered.
“I don’t want to interrupt, but I’d like to introduce myself to you. I am Bekkreshan. Don’t worry, I won’t hug you. You seem a little fragile.” She turned to Mike. “Did he really kill Tk’ng Dach Rm?”
“Yes I did!” Mark snapped. Then he said: “I’m sorry Bekkreshan. That was rude of me. I did kill Tk’ng Dach Rm, but only after he had badly injured me. Stories of my prowess as a warrior are vastly exaggerated. I am pleased to meet you and I hope that both you and Touren will become my friends.”
Sally stepped forward. “He’s not being modest; he really doesn’t think he is a warrior. He’s not been trained; he has very little experience and he doesn’t like fighting. It’s a pity, because he is a natural. I’d always want him next to me in a fight, as well as in bed.”
“Sally!” Mark said, blushing.
She grinned. “He comes from a sexually repressed pre-emergent civilization.”
“Reminds me of someone I met about four and a half thousand years ago,” Touren said, “but less violent.”
“So how long have you been on Gnn’Ath?” Sally asked, abruptly changing the subject.
“Just a few days.” Touren answered.
“There’s nothing for us to do here.” Bekkreshan said. “We’ve been kicking our heels, supervising some construction to help out and pass the time. They have no use for our skill sets.”
“They don’t want help preparing to restructure their society now they’ve been exposed to the galactic culture?”
“No, they want to take their time and do it themselves. The First Minister of Taurakan has taken the role of spokesman for the Gnn’Athians and seems sensible and pragmatic. It wouldn’t surprise me if he didn’t end up leading a World Government.”
“The First Minister?” Mark said. “We met him not long before we left here. He was an arrogant arsehole. He was so obnoxious when we met him that I thought Sally would want to come back here and beat him up. Verbally, of course.”
Bekkreshan frowned. “That doesn’t sound like him. Would you like us to arrange a meeting Sally?”
Sally and Mark answered simultaneously, Sally saying “No!” Mark saying “Yes!”
“I’ll make the casting vote.” Mike said. “Yes, we would like to meet him.”
Sally rolled her eyes and said, “OK, but you,” pointing at Mike, “do not speak unless I specifically order you to. That is an order, soldier.”
Mike snapped to attention. “Yes Sir!”
“I mean it Mike. We’ve just stopped a war here; I don’t want you starting another one.”
“Maybe Bekkreshan and I will join you when you meet him.” Touren said.
“Good idea.” Mark said. “If Mike looks like she might say something you can hold her down and gag her.”
“Sah Lee, we aren’t adding anything here, can we travel with you for a while?” Touren asked.
“You’ll have to ask Mark, it’s his ship we travel in.”
“Sah Lee? Isn’t your name Sally?” Mark asked.
“Of course not. It’s just the name I took when we were on Earth.”
“So Simpson isn’t your family name either?”
Sally shook her head in disbelief that Mark could have thought her real name was Sally Simpson. Hadn’t he heard of the song by the Who? “Of course not. Sah is my family name, Lee is my given name. My people, the Sek Farn, always use both parts of our name together, so I am Sah Lee.”
“Should I call you Sah Lee now?”
“That’s what I, and everyone else, normally hears when you say Sally, and when they say Sah Lee, your AI translates it to Sally, so you can call me Sally, as you are used to it.”
“Why did I hear Sah Lee when Touren said it?”
“I don’t know. You’ll have to ask your AI. Anyway, Touren and Bekkreshan will be traveling with us for a while.”
“Is that all right with you?” Touren asked Mark.
“Of course. Any friend of Sally’s is a friend of mine.” Mark answered.
“Will you have enough room for both of us?” Bekkreshan asked.
“He’s got a Peoples ship.” Mike said. “We’ve got enough room for a modestly sized civilization to move in.”
Mark said, “Yes, of course Bekkreshan. You and Touren are welcome to travel with us and stay for as long as you like. When you decide what you would like your quarters to look like, send it to my AI and I will have them prepared for you. You can have as much room as you like, and you will have the use of a Peoples synthesizer. I will give you access to the ships internal transport, so you can move around it by blinking.”
“A Peoples ship? Whose is it?”
“Mine of course. Did you think it was an Uber?”
“Uber?” asked Bekkreshan.
“Never mind, but yes, it is mine. I’m a Friend of the People, so I have a People’s star ship.”
“I know a little about Friends of the People.” Bekkreshan said. “I met one once before. He didn’t have his own ship. I’ve never heard of a Friend of the People getting their own People’s ship before.”
“Really?” Mark said. “I just asked for one and got it.”
Bekkreshan shrugged and turned to Touren. “What shall we have?”
“Standard crew quarters to start. We can plan something better if we decide to stay a while.” Touren replied, then said to Mark, “If that’s OK?”
“Of course. Send the specification you want to my AI. When can we meet with the First Minister?”
“We’ll need to go to New Government House and arrange it with his assistant.”
“I’ll come with you.” Sally said. “We can catch up on the way there.”
“Shit! That means I’ll be left by myself to babysit the mammal again.” Mike said.
“Do you like beaches?” Mark asked her.
“I love beaches!”
“Let’s go down to the south. The weather is good there right now and there are huge empty beaches.”
Mike grabbed his hand and pulled him to the lander. “Come on then. We can go skinny dipping!”
“Yeah, and I’ll miss you too.” Sally said to their backs as they ran onto the lander.
“Your friends seem a little immature.” Touren said.
“Yes, they are, but they seem grown up compared to the others in my team.”
“And isn’t ‘Mike’ a male name? Is she transgender?”
Sally laughed. “Oh no, she’s all female. It’s a long story and involves an Ant. I’ll tell you all about them on the way to New Government House. Do we walk, or do you have transport?”
Chapter Four
Catching Up
“I thought you were both going to settle down on a quiet resort planet when you left my army?” Sally said as they walked to the town center.
“We did.” Touren said. “We got bored. We re-joined the Boran Medical Emergency and Recovery Group. We don’t want to be in an army again, at least, I don’t. I’m not sure about her though.” She gestured to Bekkreshan. “She has a violent streak in her.”
“That’s not true!” Bekkreshan retorted. “Well, only a bit. My race was warlike but have adapted to a peaceful existence now. We thought we could do some goo
d with the Boran Medical Emergency and Recovery Group, but our specialty, as you know, is taking selected individuals from exposed pre-emergent civilizations and preparing them for leadership in a post-emergent galaxy. This is the first exposed pre-emergent civilization since the Aarnth, and we’re not needed here, so we’re ready to quit now. But I’m willing to bet that traveling with you, there will never be a dull moment!” she grinned.
Sally sighed. “You may be disappointed. Things have changed now. For me, that is.”
“Mark is that important to you?”
“Yes, but not in the way that you think. I mean, he is personally important to me. I am extremely fond of him, in a way that I don’t understand, but that’s not it. For the last four and a half thousand years I have been single mindedly pushing myself to make myself the best fighter, and the best commander of the best army, so that I can kill as many outcasts as possible and to track down and kill Tk’ng Dach Rm. Now he’s dead, his army defeated, and the remnants imprisoned by the Tolen, I suddenly have no purpose. My whole universe has been turned upside down. I don’t want to fight any more. I have left my army - although I am still nominally in charge, and I am re-evaluating my whole existence. I’m even realizing that my hatred of Alan may have been misdirected.”
“Alan, you mean Ker Din Ser Forn?”
“Yes. I came across him again when I took some of my soldiers on an exercise on Earth. That’s where I met Mark. Ker Din Ser Forn was there on an Archivist assignment and he was using the name Alan at the time.”
“So you don’t blame him for the loss of Aarn anymore?”
“I don’t know what to think. And what makes it more complicated is that Mark has gone from being a timid and weak pre-emergent nerd to become a highly skilled and talented warrior with the use of a star ship and weapons billions of years more advanced than any other civilization. He doesn’t realize it, but apart from the People, he is the single most powerful person in the galaxy, and I am just a weary soldier who has lost the motivation to fight, which makes me completely useless.”
Touren put her arm round Sally’s shoulders. “Sally, we have known you longer than anyone else in the galaxy. You are not useless; you are a leader.” Looking at Bekkreshan, she said, “I think we have found our new role.”
“I don’t want to be a project for you.” Sally said stiffly. “I’m fine thanks.”
“You’re not a project! You’re a friend. We love you Sally. Of course we want to support you. You’d do the same for us, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes, but that’s different.”
“How?”
“Well, it’s what I would do if you were in the army.”
“Like you do with Si’ir Monn?” Touren said.
“Yes, like that, so it’s not the same.”
“For an intelligent woman, you can be very dense. It’s exactly the same. Well, almost. The principle is the same. We’ve helped you before, we are going to do it again. That’s what friends do. OK?”
Sah Lee smiled. “You are my oldest friends. I guess I owe it to you to let you think you are helping me.”
“Bekkreshan, you hold her still while I hit her.” Touren said, laughing. “We’re nearly at New Government House, so best behavior.”
Chapter Five
On The Beach
As the lander settled on the sand, they could see that the beach was empty. Miles of glistening pale sand with not a soul in site. The landing ramp slid down and Mike ran out, hopping on first one foot then the other as she pulled off her boots, flinging them across the beach. As she ran down to the surf she wriggled out of her jumpsuit and threw that to one side and plunged into the sea. Mark followed more sedately and walked to the surf line. He took off his boots and put them neatly together on the sand, pushed the legs of his jumpsuit up to his knees, then took a few tentative steps into the water. It reminded him of childhood day trips to Sandbanks beach. His parents would get him up very early in the morning and they would drive down through the New Forest to beat the traffic and get on the beach before it got crowded. His mother would buy him an ice cream for breakfast while his father found a spot on the beach he liked. His parents would lay on the sand getting sunburnt for a couple of hours, then, late in the morning, they would drive to Bournemouth for lunch. Then his father would hold his hand as they followed his mother round while she shopped for clothes. He sighed. Those were happy days, before he was seven, before everything changed.
As he paddled slowly through the surf, lost in thought, Mike suddenly leapt out of the water and pulled him over, shouting “Come on, have a swim. The water is gorgeous!”
Mark struggled up, snorting water out of his nose. “Are you mad! You could have drowned me!”
“In twenty centimeters of water? I’d have to sit on your head to drown you. Shall I try it? Come on you wimp, there are lots of fish out there and they have no fear of me.”
“You soaked my jumpsuit!” Mark snapped at her.”
“Take it off! You can’t swim in it anyway. Come on Mark, have some fun for a change.”
“Fun? I remember fun. It was a long time ago.”
“Mark, I’m warning you, if you don’t start enjoying yourself soon, I’m going to drag you in here and make you.” Mike said with a grin. “We’ve got this huge beach all to ourselves, the sun is shining, which makes a change for this shitty little planet, the water is clean and warm. What more could you ask for?”
“A Mister Whippy ice cream van?” he said.
“Yeah, whatever that is. Now get your jumpsuit off and come into the water!” Mike turned around and plunged back into the sea.
“Get into the water Mark. Have a swim Mark. Enjoy yourself Mark. Easy for her to say.” he muttered as he took off his jumpsuit and soaked underwear. “Kate, I don’t swim very well. Can you prevent me from drowning?” he asked his AI.
“Yes Mark. If you recall, your phase shift protection was originally designed by the People as an environment suit. It would protect you while you walked on the surface of a neutron star, so splashing about in a bit of salty water won’t stretch its capabilities. I can adjust your apparent mass, so you float a bit more than you would normally, and provide you with an air supply, so you don’t need to inhale any water.”
“If you can do that, why did I get a load of sea water up my nose when Mike pulled me over? It was really unpleasant.”
“Mark, I am your AI, not your nanny. Try to act like an adult, not a needy child. You’ll get on better with everyone if you can learn to do that.”
“Bloody AI.” Mark muttered as he carefully walked into the water and fell into a clumsy doggy paddle, keeping his head upright and out of the water.
“Relax Mark, you are quite safe. Pay attention to the images I am about to show you and copy them. I’ll start you off with breaststroke. It’s quite easy. When you have mastered that, I’ll show you the front crawl.”
“I don’t like getting my face wet.”
“Your phase protection will keep you dry, but I suggest that you get wet before getting out. Mike is likely to mock you if you walk out of the sea completely dry.”
“Are you sure you’re not my nanny?”
“Just follow the directions, you’ll soon be swimming.”
◆◆◆
Two hours later Mark staggered out of the sea, exhausted and dripping with water. Mike ran out of the waves onto the beach and flung herself down on the sand.
“That was fun, wasn’t it?”
“It wasn’t bad.” Mark said, trying to suppress a grin.
“Careful Mark, you might burst a blood vessel if you keep that up. How about a run along the beach?”
“Seriously Mike, I’m bushed. Let me lay in the sun for a while.”
She jumped up. “I’m going to get a drink from the lander. Do you want one?”
“Sure, thanks.” he said. “It will be in the synthesizer.”
A few minutes later, Mike returned with a mug of her hot, herby smelling tea and a large glass
of ice cold cola.
“I’m going to lay in the sun for a while and get a tan.” Mark said.
“Me too.” Mike replied.
“You can tan? I didn’t know reptiles could do that. Does your skin go a darker green?”
“Of course I don’t tan, you dipshit. The only things that change skin color in sunlight are some mammals. Just the ones that look like they live under a rock most of the time, like you.”
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