by Mel Keegan
Jazinsky released the display, and a moment later swore quietly. “Here comes bio data. Oh … my gods.”
The Veldn were as different from the Zunshu as the Zunshu were different from humans and Resalq. Marin knew Lai’a would be streaming bio data on human and Resalq even now, and the Veldn must be astounded by the fragility, the awful delicacy they saw.
They were exoskeletal, which made sense on a world where the gravity was so high, a human could not even stand up for long before he must collapse like a bunch of noodles. They wore armor on six stout legs which supported the barrel of the body under such gravity, and from the spine and sides sprouted great diaphanous sails of chitinous material, perforated by diamond-shaped apertures lined with fine, fluttering cilia, which Lai’a identified as cooling veins.
At one end of the body was a short, thick tail which counterweighted the ‘head.’ A definite skull reared on a thick, pole-like neck which was armored by plates; these wide, flat scales telescoped to allow the neck to extend up to a height of almost a meter above the body and then settle back down to the shoulders, conserving energy under fierce gravity. Around the juncture of head and shoulders sprouted six arms – two almost vestigial, tiny and not quite flimsy, two massively muscled for bearing loads, two a little shorter and much more slender, and all six with delicate ‘hands’ of armored, articulated, six-jointed fingers. Marin saw no thumb, but a creature with twelve digits arranged in a circle around each wrist had no need of thumbs.
The ‘face’ – and he struggled with the word – was a cluster of sensory organs: twelve tiny eyes with bony lids; six great orifices of ear channels, shielded by armored petals; no nose he could see, but a lipless mouth like a valve was filled with fine tendrils which constantly sampled the air for chemical signatures. Marin might have wondered how the creatures breathed, but a moment later he saw the double-rows of alveoli ranged down the spine and flanks, scores of dark, oval apertures guarded by fluttering scales.
“They don’t have lungs as we know them,” Mark was saying as he studied the internal structure. “See here? They use multiple bellows down the flanks, driven by clusters of muscles. Any movement at all would have the action of force-feeding … what is this?”
“It’s a lot like a sponge,” Rusch said, hushed with fascination, “filled with chemistry that filches what it wants from the incoming breath, lets the rest flow through. Damnit, they don’t breathe out through the same vents they use to inhale! It’s one airstream, in through the intake vents in the top row of breathers, here, out through the lower vents, there.”
“Halfway to gills,” Jazinsky added, “and it explains their language. They never pause for breath. One note, oscillating, wandering through a close range of tones … generated by the breathing apparatus.”
“I’m not seeing vocal organs at all,” Mark added. “Nothing that corresponds to anything we know. I guess they learned to whistle.”
“Is that possible?” Hubler asked. “I mean, to base a language on?”
“Not just possible,” Jazinsky said, preoccupied, “but highly efficient. You ever heard of Morse code? A way of encoding spoken language for transmission by flashes of light, clicks, taps, discrete pulses of radio carrier wave, corresponding to dots and dashes, or ‘on’ and ‘off.’ You can recite poetry by snapping your fingers. Of course, communicating that way would be tediously slow for us, but any creature that evolved a whistled language could trill, and understand it, far faster than we can talk. And if you want to consider how fast computers can send, receive and decode something that comes right back down to zeroes and ones –”
Lai’a spoke softly, but the sound made Marin jump. “A common language has been developed and validated. Syntax is complete. The Veldn convey cordial greetings from the Peoples of the Worlds of the Second Star. They have reviewed the biological data of Resalq and humans and acknowledge that your species share no environmental compatibility. May two representatives of the Guardian ship Hshtor board the habitation module?”
Vaurien’s face was a mask of astonishment. “Tell the Veldn … say we’ve reviewed the bio data on their people also,” he said slowly, “and we believe our environment would be lethal to them.”
“This presents no difficulty,” Lai’a said serenely. “The Veldn have assessed your environment and measures are being fabricated at this time.”
“Suits,” Jazinsky whispered. She stepped closer to Vaurien. “They have to be talking about environment suits. These guys are big, Richard. Add full-on suits to their body mass – the only part of this habitation module that’ll handle two of them, and a few of us, is the main hangar, if we ship the Harlequin out.”
“This is not a difficulty,” Lai’a repeated. “Please view supplemental data, displaying at this time.”
Listening to the heavy beat of his heart, Marin turned back with Travers, hoping to make sense of the information. Schematics rotated slowly in the flatscreen, flanked by dense paragraphs, and he groaned. Travers lifted a brow at him, and he shook his head. “Way beyond me.”
“Anybody care to translate?” Travers invited.
“They’re …” Mark took his eyes from the screen for long enough to give Travers and Marin a smile of almost childlike delight. “They’re biosynthetic.”
“They’re – what?” Vidal demanded.
“These bodies they’re wearing, Michael,” Rusch gestured at the schematic, “are largely biosynthetic. They’re light years ahead of our crude biocyber devices, of course – forget anything you’re thinking about Major Hubler’s legs! – but the principle is the same. There’s a living biological nucleus … brain and organs … though I think I’m seeing the signatures of artificial organs, too.”
“You are.” Mark gestured at the screen. “Here, and here. The heart is definitely synthetic; and this, which is probably the liver. There’s as much synthetic as biological about them. Lai’a, do we know why?”
The AI spoke in a tone Marin would have called enchantment, if it had been human or Resalq. “These Veldn are spacefarers, Doctor. This crew are frontier scouts. Spacefarers are modified for a specific mission, upon assignment. The Veldn have been partially biosynthetic since they escaped the cataclysm that destroyed their home star system, a supernova event more than seven thousand years ago.”
“The Worlds of the Second Star,” Marin whispered. “They found a new home.”
“Correct,” Lai’a affirmed. “Their technology was struggling to develop an engine similar to the Auriga drive when astronomers predicted the death of their home star. The Veldn civilization was relocated at great cost and massive loss of life. Survivors of the exodus flights suffered severe radiation poisoning as a consequence of inadequate technology. Disease and mutation were rife. Lives were saved via biosynthetics, which became the norm for all future science, mining and exploration missions. The Veldn soon corrected their genetics to weed out all but the beneficial mutations; however, since the era of the Diaspora, spacefarers have been modified to permit compatibility with very alien environments. Do you wish,” Lai’a asked, “to commune with representatives from the Worlds of the Second Star?”
“Of course we do,” Vaurien said without a moment’s hesitation. “What do they need?”
“Access to a docking port,” Lai’a said simply.
Vaurien looked from face to face. The Sherratts, Rusch, Jazinsky, all were nodding. “Lai’a,” Vaurien said very quietly. “Risk assessment.”
“There is no risk. The Veldn AI invited information sharing without limit, as did I. Data transfer is complete; analysis has commenced.”
“Meaning, we’ll have access to every detail – their culture and ours.” Mark’s eyes shone with delight. “There’s a decade’s work in this, Richard! And if there were any threat, neither AI would have negotiated to this point. Don’t underestimate Lai’a – it knows how to protect itself, and us.”
“The doubt you’re feeling,” Rusch said softly, “is perfectly normal human paranoia, the result of
being hammered by the Zunshu … and we all bear that in common. Even the Veldn were assaulted, but they developed something comparable to the Auriga drive about seven thousand years before we did, and maybe five thousand years before the Resalq.”
“The Zunshu,” Jazinsky said darkly, “picked on somebody bigger than themselves – people who’d already been through a meat grinder. Their sun died, for godsakes! They weren’t likely to flinch when Zunshu hardware came calling.” She was still watching the datastream. “They’re an old people, Richard. The doubt you’re feeling … we’re still a young species, and an even younger technology. The Veldn outgrew racial paranoia when we were still trying to figure out how to rub two sticks together and start a fire.”
“The Veldn,” Vaurien said on a soft bass note, “took the Zunshu down almost to extinction level. They have a deep-seated capacity for violence, same as we all do.”
“A desire to survive,” Jazinsky argued. “We’d have done the same, if the Zunshu forced our hand. The choice was between them and the Deep Sky, our home, two cultures that’re flourishing in parallel, and the extinction of both. You know what our decision had to be.”
“I know all that,” Vaurien allowed. “All I’m saying is, the fact the Veldn are an old species doesn’t make them any more harmless than we consider ourselves. There’s always a risk.”
“Us?” Vidal made sounds of cynical humor. “We’re about as harmless as a pride of starving lions with cubs to feed. We’ll fight for our own. It’s normal. Evolution never developed any model for a smart, competitive species that folds its paws and goes down without a fight.”
“And the Veldn display the same characteristics,” Mark added, “as we would predict. They’re survivors, just as we are – different as we are, we have that much in common. But we’re never likely to be competitors, Richard, because we’re too different. Wars are almost always fought over territory and resources. Their needs and ours are so disparate, the only factor that brought us together was the Zunshu.”
The argument was sound, and Vaurien would almost certainly have accepted it. Marin saw agreement in his face, but before he could speak the comm crackled sharply and a cool synthetic voice said,
“Captain Vaurien, my name is Shuleern. Your concerns are valid, and we share them. If you wish no contact between the Veldn Peoples of the Worlds of the Second Star and the Resalq-Humankind Amalgamation of the Nine Worlds Commonwealth of The Deep Sky, we will leave.”
“Richard!” Jazinsky growled.
“This is an opportunity that won’t come again,” Mark warned.
“Once in a lifetime,” Vidal said quickly.
Vaurien held up one hand. “I wasn’t about to turn down the offer! It’s just critical to know what we’re walking into.”
The synthetic voice spoke with an accent midway between Slingo and Resalq. “We concur with this analysis.” Shuleern paused. “We require only a docking port. We have identified such a port. Will you retract your armor to permit boarding?”
“We invite boarding,” Vaurien corrected, “and we apologize that we can offer no hospitality. Our species are … too different.”
“We are indeed,” Shuleern agreed in the sweet, cool synthetic voice, before the comm crackled once and returned to the background whisper of ship business.
“I have retracted the armor,” Lai’a reported. “Veldn will access the main hangar in approximately two minutes.”
“Armor?” Jazinsky hazarded.
“Oh, yes … but helmets off,” Vaurien said thoughtfully.
“Weapons?” Vidal’s brows arched. “The presence of them could be considered rude, the absence of them could seem weak.”
“Cultural perception,” Mark mused. “Lai’a?”
“Carry no weapons, Doctor,” Lai’a told him. “You are at no jeopardy and Veldn, by custom, have carried no personal weapons in more than six thousand years.”
“All right.” Vaurien picked up his helmet, balanced it between his hands. “The reception committee … Mark and Dario, obviously, representing the Resalq as a people, and the Resalq science team. Harrison, representing the Commonwealth, and myself as mission commander, whatever that means. Barb and Alexis – the human science team. Mick and Ernst – the human transspace veterans. Neil and Curtis – security. Just,” he said acerbically, “in case.” He took a breath, held it. “First contact. Merde. You’ll forgive me if I’m speechless in any language.”
“Damn,” Dario murmured as they left the makeshift Ops room, “I wish Tor was here. He’s going to be pissed as all hell to miss this.”
“Veldn will board in one minute,” Lai’a said calmly.
Marin envied the machine its composure. Shapiro would have used the words ‘pivot point of history,’ and Marin was not ashamed to admit to being overwhelmed. He had felt this before. As he walked with Travers and Vidal, his thoughts turned back to the evening many years before when he had realized, belatedly, disbelievingly and with a dawning delight, Mark was not human. The Resalq were not extinct, and the mentor who gave him back enough peace of mind to heal was –
Alien. Here, now, the Resalq had come to seem so similar, he was barely aware of their difference. The Zunshu were so completely alien, he doubted Shapiro could have found enough common ground to open a dialog with them, even if he had encountered them at the height of their brilliance. And the Veldn were almost as alien, with just enough similarity to permit communication, albeit through the medium of machines.
He had understood most of the bio data, but struggled with the concept of opportunistic omnivores who fed through multiple ‘mouths’ in the breast. Each mouth ingested raw food pushed directly into the enzyme-filled sac, and sent nutrient-dense liquid to the 30-kilo liver. Right behind the liver, at the mid-point of the main body’s thick barrel, was a vast, six-valved pump attached by membranes to the sponge-mass of the enormous single ‘lung.’ They breathed through vents in spine and flanks, ‘sang’ their language on a single, endless breath, and their spacefarers were biosynthetic.
Marin did not know what he had expected, but as the hangar cycled, blew back up to pressure, and he stepped onto the chilly, windy deck in the harsh shadows of the Harlequin, he saw two towering bipeds. They were not much under three meters tall, with wide limbs and an enormous thickness through the chest and abdomen.
“Suits,” Mark said quietly. “They’ve … abbreviated their bodies. Left some parts behind, the way Roark Hubler sometimes takes off the legs when he can’t bear the burden of them any longer. The Veldn could function in zero-gee, or in water, with superb efficiency by uncoupling what they don’t need. It’s brilliant.”
Legs and hindquarters were uncoupled, Marin thought with feverish attention to the details. The vestigial arms – which he now knew were for feeding, since they easily reached every ‘mouth’ – were folded in around the breast beneath the armor shell, as were the muscle-thick lifting limbs. The slender handling arms extended at the top of the torso, in a place roughly approximating shoulders. The telescoping neck was at half-stretch, and the sensor-cluster forming the Veldn face was aligned with the small, squat, stumpy ‘head’ above the suit’s massive shoulders. The most disconcerting aspect of the suit was a pseudo-face which visored the helmet, with the dark lenses of four camera eyes surrounded by audio and chemical receptors.
The two figures walked forward with the graceful bipedal motion of the machine while the living part of the Veldn held up both hands in greeting. Marin recognized the synthetic voice as Shuleern approached. “I bring you the salutations of the crew of the Guardian ship Hshtor, and the well wishes of our people. We salute you, who ride the Time-space-drift as do we, who defeated our weapons and walked the streets of the city of the Rhammee, whom you call Zunshu. The Phoenix explains, this is your ancestral word meaning enemy.”
The Phoenix? Marin gave a start as he remembered, it was the original meaning of Lai’a. The translation engine had cut through the Resalq language as well as the Veldn, and gone to
the fundamental term.
Harrison Shapiro had stepped forward as they approached. “May I offer greetings from the united peoples of the Deep Sky. I bring you the good wishes of humankind and the Resalq, from scores of worlds – all of us, survivors of the Zunshu. We came to this system to negotiate an armistice, and find you have trodden this path ahead of us. The Zunshu threat is spent.” He paused. “My name is Shapiro. I represent the government of humankind. Forgive me, Shuleern, but I don’t understand. You say we defeated your weapons, but we have not fought the Veldn – peace brings us here, we have no reason to fight you.”
For a moment Shuleern studied the ten armored figures, humans and Resalq, who were dwarfed by the Veldn. It was looking at faces, and Marin wondered what it made of them. How bizarre a face with a nose and mouth must seem to Veldn eyes. “You are the first,” it said then. “You found this star system. You met the challenge of the weapons … our weapons, Shapiro. We ranged them about the system and about the planet of The Enemy. The Rhammee.”
“You ranged them – to keep people out?” Shapiro asked.
“And for the confinement of the Rhammee,” Shuleern corrected. “You discovered the generation nest. The Phoenix deep scanned their biology, transferred the content of their computer core. You are aware that their race can restore its numbers in a single generation – two, if billions are desired.”
“But they’ve lost their technology,” Shapiro observed. “All they would breed is a billion primitives.”
“Primitive forms,” Shuleern countered, “with the most fantastically complex brains we have ever encountered. Brains which grow throughout life, given intellectual stimulation. The Zunshu live amid the ruins of a magnificent technology, Shapiro … with one brilliant individual their culture will certainly reawaken. It is estimated, they could recover the distance from the rebirth of chemistry and mathematics to the rediscovery of the interstellar engine in a single century.” Shuleern paused. “Do you possess awareness, Shapiro? Two Zunshu exploration ships were in transspace at the end of the war.
