“I believe we can come to an agreement with the Prada eventually. Any people that can display so much affection and empathy for animals, as this Prada does, should have the ability to understand and cooperate with other intelligent species. Give me a bit of time today. I’ll move around to where you can see us.”
“I’ll leave negotiations up to you. Assuming toting their presumed ambassador around by the scruff of the neck and kicking his dog is a form of diplomacy.” She laughed at how that sounded.
“By the way, could you rotate your button camera to straighten out our image?”
Maggi glanced at her disheveled tunic. “I will, as soon as we stand up. I’ll walk him around the corner of the house where we’re sitting, so you can see us. While we are sharing mental images, it might get quiet up here sometimes, so don’t get antsy. This Mind Tap ability is going to revolutionize human and alien diplomacy, and first contact situations if we ever have any others.
“Mr. Wister here is in a daze from all the shocks he has just had in the last few minutes. Not to mention the fact that I grabbed him by the balls when I slammed him to the ground. He’s doing a Dillon thing, holding his legs together. I’ll help him stand.”
At the shuttle, the button camera’s picture tilted and rotated as she stood up and adjusted her tunic. They saw her reach down to help the Prada stand, who made it more difficult by keeping his knees together. Obviously, he learned faster than did Dillon, to guard his “jewelry” when this alien was around.
Having TG abilities or not, she directed Wister to precede her on the board walkway around the house. One strong hand on a small sloping shoulder was a reminder she was close behind him. She had his knife and whistle, but she had not sensed any lessening of his desire for the humans to leave now, so she would not turn her back on him.
She had sensed he was worried the “Rulers,” as he had called them in low Krall, would return to punish the village if they didn’t oppose an obvious alien enemy. He didn’t use the name Krall when he spoke aloud, but they were in the mental images of his thoughts.
The suspended walkway swayed and bounced as they walked, and she saw the Prada’s knees and hips move to counter the motion as it walked, so that its upper body and head remained nearly steady. She mimicked that, and in a matter of seconds had a gait as smooth as did the Prada on the jouncy walkway.
She prompted him to walk out to the center of another walkway strung between two of the giant trees, and grasped his shoulder to stop him midway across. They were in plain sight of the shuttle, as well as the now eight marsh dogs, which had followed below them as they moved, yipping, but no longer growling or howling.
Maggi glanced down to look at them. Although probably related to the larger werewolves, they had the thinner body shape of coyotes on Earth, or the dune dogs on Rhama. These animals were built for running and agility, with a sort of paddle-footed paw that would make running on mushy marshland easier. They probably could “dog paddle” in water rather well.
When they didn’t have their fangs exposed in a snarl, they looked very much like a large dog, with an elongated snout similar to the German shepherd breed, with pink tongues hanging out as they recovered from the run to get back here. They even had a long hairy tail, which swished from side to side, probably like a counter weight when chasing prey that was turning and twisting to avoid being run to ground.
Maggi immediately empathized with Wister’s feelings for them, because she had been a “dog person” back at home on Rhama. She thought often about what became of her two pets, Murphy, a dachshund, and Bentley, a mixed breed lap dog. She had left them with a niece for the time she would be at Midwife. After twenty years, they were both long dead. Humans had never tinkered with dog longevity, despite tinkering with almost everything else about their most faithful companions.
In low Krall, she said, “We will now get to know more about each other’s clan. Also about the Rulers, whom you still obey and fear. Sit here and I will share my mind with you.” From time spent with TG1s and rippers, she already was a master at holding back thoughts and images she didn’t care to share. This Prada’s thoughts were completely open to her each time she made a suggestion of what to discuss and share. The alien was about to spill their innermost secrets. Maggi shivered with anticipation. Damn this was fun!
****
Two tiring hours later, she realized she needed to eat and drink, and so did the Prada. It was hungry for a… bark grub? She pushed away the unpleasant thought of Wister, using his specialized long middle finger, digging out a plump white grub from the bark of a smaller variety of tree at the edge of the woods. Those grub trees were not the giant “Temple” trees on which they built their houses, which were resistant to most wood pests. The Prada had no religion now, but in their remote pre spaceflight era on their former home world, they had built tall narrow structures to reach towards their sun god. That ancient tale had inspired comparing the giants of the forest to those temples, from a life and world long lost to them.
Maggi released the Prada’s hand, and stood. She told him in low Krall, “Wister, you and I need to eat and think, and share with our clans what we have learned. I have seen your young ones watching us, as well as their parents. They do not understand what you and I have been doing.”
He replied in the only language she now knew he spoke, low Krall. “I do know what we have been doing, but I do not understand how it is done. How can I convince the other old ones to disobey the Ruler’s instructions? I don’t know if I can do that myself, even with your mind pictures to help. When you leave here, I may doubt what I was shown. It seems a trick that is hard to believe.”
“If you will meet us at the edge of the woods tomorrow, with other Prada, we can show them as well. We can show you where this ability came from, how it was developed naturally on Koban. Not by us, because we only copied the ability. Here is your whistle, and your knife. I think you know that you are not fast or strong enough to beat one of us in a fight, but we do not want to be your enemy, and we will not try to force you to be our friends. We are not here to replace your Rulers.”
“I will try to explain to the village.”
“That is my request. Another is for you to send your pets away below. I truly do not wish to harm them, but if attacked we will be forced to kill or injure them.”
He made that forward head motion, his small pointed black nose aimed at her. A gesture equivalent to an affirmative head bob in most human cultures. He put the whistle in the side of his mouth and blew.
Bradley immediately called on the Link. “We heard what you said, and I can hear that whistle clearly from out here. The dogs are getting up and moving deeper into the trees. Do you want me to come in and escort you out?”
Maggi looked at Wister. “I have a communication device, and one of my clan mates knows we are departing here for today. He heard your signal, and asks if your guardian pets, which we call dogs, will stay away when I walk back alone.”
“Yes, they were sent to their sleeping and feeding area by my signal. You can also hear the sounds of the caller?” He held the whistle up. “I cannot hear it, but the Rulers can.”
“Only some of us can hear that today. We all will be able to hear it in the future.”
Another head dart move indicated he heard her words, but surely didn’t know just how it would be done.
He made the first considerate offer she had heard from him. “I can lower a ladder or rope for you to descend.”
Ready to impress him again she grinned and said, “Don’t bother. I will return tomorrow.” Then she vaulted one handed, lightly and gracefully over the rope rail, and dropped to the ground thirty feet below. She landed on the balls of her feet with a slight bending of her knees to absorb the shock. After all, this was only 59% of the Koban gravity she was accustomed to feeling, and the TG muscles were hardly tested by this short of a drop. It almost felt like slow motion to her new senses as she descended. Perhaps riding a rhinolo when she got home might be fun a
fter all.
She walked confidently back to the shuttle, while the others were preparing to return to the Beagle. Maggi asked to know what those at the Beagle had found today, but those in the shuttle wanted to know about the Prada. Marlyn compromised.
“The three truck teams have recorded a dozen grazing animal species, and four predators, including the wolves. One is a legless ten to eighteen-foot crocodile equivalent, living in that river. It’s an air breather, but can stay under for at least twenty minutes. We encountered another set of pack animals that resemble cousins of the marsh dogs, with gray and white coloring and normal sized paws. They found a lone jet-black hunter that has the shape of a wolverine, but is the size of a grizzly bear. It isn’t terribly fast, and Kobalt and Kit tormented the thing until it left the area. There are hundreds of birds.” She turned to Maggi.
“Now tell us about the Prada. Give. Except for your occasional questions in low Krall and his answers, most of the time you were holding hands, all chummy and exchanging mental pictures we couldn’t see. What did you learn about them, and what did he mean when he said he had been to Koban? When was that?”
“I’ll have to repeat this, you know, when we get back to the Beagle in fifteen minutes.”
“I know, but tell us anyway while I fly. Talk loud.” Marlyn urged, as she started the thrusters.
“OK. These Prada here are one of several clans that are supposed to be on this world. Following the Krall example, they describe themselves as a clan, each isolated and placed on different continents. The Prada call the Krall their Rulers. They all speak Low Krall, and have for thousands of years. They were only allowed to speak that tongue among themselves, as can the Torki. The crab bodied Torki are mentally different and they never forgot their own language, however the Prada lost theirs. The Prada assume there are multiple groups of Torki still living here, because they have done delicate electronic work for the Krall here and on Koban, and repair and adjust the systems on clanships and other spacecraft and weapons the Krall use.
“Wister believes there is a colony of Torki on the western coast of his landmass. The crabs don’t always obey Krall instructions when not watched, and the Prada do not fully trust them because of that. It appears that after so many thousands of years of servitude, the Prada virtually consider themselves part of the Krall Empire. They have difficulty doing things contrary to their master’s wishes. I think Prada society is naturally subservient to their species eldest leaders, and grant this instinctive obedience to the Krall as an elder race. They don’t want to be free of them, and wish they would return.”
“Why? We never saw any hint that the Krall particularly wanted the Prada around, or even kept them close. As far as we are aware, there aren’t any Prada on Koban. Of course, we have a great deal of territory to explore, but we’ve had satellite images for years, and saw no signs of them. It looks more as if the Krall kept most of their workers here, sending some of them to Koban when needed, and then returning them. Is that how what’s-his-name is able to remember Koban?”
Maggi indicated yes, with a caveat. “Wister was last on Koban perhaps sixty orbits ago, he says. However, there is something else you need to know.” She asked the AI a question first.
“Kap, this world has a two hundred seventy-six day year, isn’t that right?”
“Yes.” He answered on speaker, aware of the group listening.
“Sixty orbits would be how many Standard years ago Kap, in whole numbers.”
“Forty-five years, in Standard measure.”
“Wister spent ten years directing work on Koban all told, as sort of a senior builder foreman. This work was done in rotations that permitted physical recovery back here, and Prada replacements were sent to Koban from here. Koban was very tough and dangerous without the walled compounds they built later, as we would expect. They simply called this world a base. Following Krall convention, they have no name for this world or for the village, but I think they love the forest. They think of the giant trees as temples. Not as places of worship, but as tall slender buildings they revere.”
“They do have a name for our home, it’s called Koban.” Bradley pointed out.
“No, that is what we use for its name, but it was only a description to the Krall of what they used the world for. It translates as a training place, or perhaps a testing ground is a better meaning of the word. The early human captives latched onto the word to use as a name for where they were held.
“Initially the Krall tested their novices there, and established new finger clans to see if they would survive and flourish. The Prada came from here in teams, to assemble the domes for the trial settlements, built with materials shipped from other Krall production worlds. Then they were rotated back here as new, fresher teams were sent to finish or continue the work.”
“You mean the Krall actually conserved the Prada? They treated them better than us ‘expendable animals.’ I can hardly believe that level of consideration from them.” Francis said.
“Not much conservation or consideration actually, and nearly half that went to Koban died.” Maggi informed them. “They gradually grew sick and wore out in that gravity. It was more efficient, from a Krall standpoint, to send the live ones back here to recover for some years, and use fresh ones for the work on new domes and compounds. Wister did that rotation three times.”
“When did he start working on Koban, if the last time he was there was forty-five Standard years ago?”
“Right after he directed the construction of the dome we just passed over.” Maggi waited for that information to register.
Bradley snickered. “It’s a falling down wreck. He didn’t do a very good job.”
Marlyn caught on immediately, and asked a question. “The Krall abandoned this dome about three hundred years ago. If Wister directed the construction here, how long before it was abandoned did he do that? How the hell old is that little Prada?”
“That is exactly the key question.” Maggi told her. Then gave the best answer she had derived.
“Wister has lost track of measures of years, because he has lived or worked in three other Krall solar systems in his lifetime. He remembers what he did in all of them, but the length of local years was different each place, and in this system he split his time between two worlds with different year lengths. As well as I was able to estimate, based on rough guesses, Wister is well over a thousand years old. And he isn’t the oldest Prada in this one village.”
“They don’t die?” Hakeem asked, incredulous.
“They apparently don’t age.” She corrected him. “However, they die as easily as we do. From sickness, accidents, animal attacks, or by being shot or bombed while building Krall installations in a battle zone. Actually, I think we are healthier than they are, with our genetically enhanced immune system. But we age, and they apparently don’t, after reaching full adulthood.”
Hakeem asked the obvious question. “Are you sure he didn’t lie about that?”
She shook her head. “It was a Mind Tap, on an unprepared mind. I don’t think it knows how to block or fabricate a memory for me. It had detailed memories of other worlds, and multiple lifetimes of experiences readymade to share. He knows he has been lucky to live so long and avoid accidents or serious disease. When they have children, they seem to grow up at a normal pace, and mature and change until reaching adulthood. Then they simply stay the same, physically.
“Their reproduction is a puzzle to me, because they can have children at any age, per Wister’s thoughts. Therefore, their population pressure should force them to expand. Yet that is a small isolated village, and yet we saw about a dozen young ones. They may have some population management system. If they don’t, in order to maintain a stable population at the roughly eighteen hundred Prada that Wister claims lives in the village, they must have had a dozen fatalities this year, out of a small town of near immortals. Eventually they would be mating with some cousin or other that also outlived most of the small population.”
&nb
sp; The shuttle landed next to the Beagle, surrounded by a crowd, and all the news as Maggi had predicted had to be shared again. Marlyn reported the day’s events to Koban to spread the news, and had Kap save her the task of repeating everything, by letting Jake record it all for wider dissemination.
There was a new hot item of discussion at home on Koban, after the Beagle’s initial close up survey and discovery that Prada could survive there. With the revelation that the animal and plant life was largely suitable for human consumption, it added fuel to the fire. They heard there were empty Krall domes (no matter that they were falling apart from neglect), and there was a push by some Hub City residents to relocate.
These were mostly people that had steadfastly refused even the clone gene mods; therefore, gravity and climate were seriously wearing them down. The Raven was said to be approaching readiness for flight tests, and its large volume could move all of the people wishing to go in two Jumps.
Naturally, the proponents of immediate relocation were completely overlooking the fact that the Raven could not land. It was an orbital only transport, and shuttles could only carry just so much down. They would need a great deal in the way of material to establish safe and habitable conditions on a world completely wild. None of these people had experienced what Koban was like for the earliest human captives. They already had a place to live when they arrived, food and a developing infrastructure to support them.
Marlyn met with Maggi, Sarah and Francis, her primary confidants and planners for the mission to the Morning Star planet. She told them about the push to move people here, using the Raven. They discussed all of the immediate problems, and the time and effort it would take to resolve them. However, after all the discussion points started to wind down, Marlyn made a prediction.
“Eventually, the problems of settling here will be solved. It’s not as difficult or hazardous as the last twenty years was on Koban, so beyond a doubt we will have people living here. There are already Prada here, and they say there are also Torki, which would make this the only known planet, to us anyway, with multiple intelligent species living together.
Koban: Rise of the Kobani Page 32
