Koban: Rise of the Kobani

by Stephen W Bennett

  Coldar made no response, but even eyes on stalks could convey curiosity.

  “Wister is speaking of abilities we have acquired, via genetic modifications, from some of the life forms on Koban. Many of us have their strength and speed of reactions. Others have also acquired increased sense of smell, night vision, and can hear the high speech of the Krall.”

  Bradley promptly spoke up. “I can hear the words you just spoke Coldar, and understand many, but I am not fluent in that language. I am the only one present here that has all of the genetic modifications just listed.”

  “Coldar, we have an ability that seems to be unique to any other world except Koban, taken from creatures we call rippers. They are predators on Koban that hunt in groups of four to ten, and live mostly on the open grasslands, killing animals that live in herds. We have become friends with them, and have two of them with us, but they did not come on our shuttle today, for fear they would frighten you.”

  “We know of these animals, but because we never lived close to where they hunt, we may never have seen them. What is unusual about them that you have borrowed or copied? What did the Prada mean when he said for one of you to Mind Tap one of us?”

  “The group ability you Torki have by use of the Olt devices, sounded similar to some of the things rippers can do to share thoughts and mind pictures, but only when they are in physical contact. We humans discovered this ability, and inserted the genetics for this into ourselves. We can exchange emotions, mind pictures, even words, by making physical contact with other creatures. So far, it has worked on any animal or intelligent creature we have tested. We sense their thoughts, emotions, see the images in their minds, and we can share our own thoughts with them. It has even been done with the Krall.”

  That statement virtually froze Wister. The subject of mental contact with a Krall had not been broached with him because of the questions that could arise about still having some of their “Rulers” as prisoners.

  “When did you do that?” he demanded.

  “Wister, it was not on this world. We can talk of it later. I want to satisfy the curiosity of Coldar and the other Torki, and my own curiosity. I don’t know how this will work with their species.”

  The Torki had a question. “How is it done? You said physical contact. We have hard shells that are very insulating. Will it work through that?”

  “I don’t know, but it may work to a limited extent. We normally use our hands,” she waved them, “because there is a high concentration of nerve endings there for good contact. It works on most tissue that has a high density of nerve endings. I’d think for a first test, a more insulated place, such as your shell would be best. We touch hands with the Prada. I point out that if you have thoughts you do not want me to receive, it is possible to block sending them to me.”

  In the first sign of exasperation she had seen from the usually patient little Prada, he said, “Excellent. Warn the crab before you touch him. Let the poor Prada look like a crazy animal.”

  “Excuse him, Coldar; he has not gotten over the shock of our first confrontational meeting. He tried to attack me, as he believed a good subject of his Krall Rulers should do, and I had to get rough with him. I then read his mind without warning him first, as I have warned you I will do.”

  “I would think he would have sent some of their animals to go after you first. The Prada are not good fighters.”

  Without saying anything, Maggi simply looked at Wister. He had the good sense to remain quite.

  The Torki held forth its smaller left claw, and advanced closer for her to touch. “There is some sense of feel in the larger two claws, but if that doesn’t work, my smaller maxillipeds or mandibles are very sensitive, as are my eyestalks.”

  Maggi noticed that the Torki had three pairs of fine little claws close to its mouthparts, and there were the four button size black eyes, inset slightly in its carapace, directly over where its small manipulators would meet. The Prada had said the Torki were masters at working with small delicate circuitry.

  She extended her hand, and touched the backside of the three-foot pincher claw, deliberately withholding any transmittable mental image, opening her mind to receive thoughts. There was a murmur of mental sound, sort of white noise, and a faint sense of curiosity.

  “Coldar, I sense many distant voices, and curiosity, but it is not very strong. I’ll try to send a mental image of some plants of the countryside around where I live, and which I have studied.”

  She pictured a sunny morning on Koban, after a night shower, and the water dripping from the tall teal grass, into blue, yellow, and red six-inch wide bell shaped flowers, holding an inch or so of water in the base of the flowers. Beautiful looking, but the sweet tasting liquid was laced with a toxin that numbed the nervous system of insects that drank from them. Otherwise, the superconducting nerves made the insects too fast for the carnivorous Grabber plant’s flowers to curl in fast enough to catch them.

  Then she visualized the Fly Spear plant. It had a sweet type of nectar also, but it wasn’t toxic. If the wrong kind of fly came to drink, the spring loaded three-inch shaft of the stamen would dart down into the narrow neck of the plant, and stab the unfortunate insect, letting the impaled creature die over the next day or so, as enzymes in the “spear” helped break down the exoskeleton to release the nutrients inside. If it missed the target prey, the spring reset in about ten minutes to wait for the next opportunity. If the insect were the pollinator that had evolved with that plant, it would stroke the spear before entering the narrow neck to get the nectar, leaving a spore-like pollen equivalent on the stamen from its last flower, the chemical contact keeping the stamen locked in place. If the spear was launched anyway, the long legs of the slender bodied insect held it well to the side. It was seldom impaled.

  The biologist in Maggi liked these plants, and they seemed like safe images to try to share, which would be different from anything the Torki had ever seen.

  “I sense colored plants and insects, and a surprise, but it is not clear.” Coldar told her.

  “Do you wish to try a more nerve sensitive area?”

  “Yes.” It extended the left side’s three foot-long grasper, leaving the two shorter pairs held close to its lower carapace.

  Not particularly squeamish, Maggi nevertheless did not grasp the hard two-inch pincher claw, thinking that it might not have as much nerve sensitivity as the “arm” to which it was attached. This was a wise decision regarding her fingers. The larger claws were another matter entirely.

  The Fly Spear was the last picture she had tried sending. That being the freshest image in her mind, she started with that one to send this time. She was blocking the previous “white noise” input from the Torki, trying to impress Coldar with a clear mental image this time.

  She sent the image of the delicate looking orange flower with the long slender neck, its curved yellow stamen poised over the flared bell of the flower, and the sharp “spear” aimed down the tube. She visualized an insect forcing its way into the narrow flower tube to reach the enticing nectar. The lack of a chemical signal to hold the spear’s “spring” locked released the stamen. Her eyes closed, to allow the sharpest possible image to fill her mind, the deadly stamen stabbed into the body of the insect.

  All hell broke loose, as she was knocked violently and painfully aside. Her eyes being closed had prevented her from seeing the huge right claw swinging at her left side, and the smaller right claw opening to reach under the Torki’s body, snapping open and closed. Had the large claw not knocked her down, the smaller one might well have decapitated her.

  Not knowing what was happening, she kicked up at the flat surface of the heavy crab, wildly swinging its claws under its abdomen, opening and closing convulsively. Using her Kobani strengthened muscles in this low gravity, she easily flipped the six hundred pound crab into the air and onto its back.

  She leaped to her feet, ignoring the bruising she felt, and turned to run to the shuttle. That was when she realized
that all of the Torki were behaving like Coldar. Bradley leaped over a Torki that was spinning between her and the shuttle, as it kept reaching under its carapace with its claws, snatching at something. He landed by Maggi and bodily lifted her and leaped back over the spinning crab and landed by the shuttle’s open hatch and shoved her inside. She instantly saw that Wister was cowering in a seat, looking terrified. Marlyn was limping up the aisle to the cockpit, and Hakeem was closing the hatch behind Bradley.

  There were a number of hard thumps on the shuttle sides, but Maggi needed to stop Marlyn from starting the thrusters. She was afraid she was trying to get them away, and might harm the Torki in the process. She was the only one that knew what was wrong.

  “Everyone, stop! Marlyn, don’t activate the thrusters. This will end in a moment.”

  “The Torki went insane,” Wister said. “Before I could move, I was grabbed and shoved into here by your young male. The others were pushed on top of me. I did nothing wrong.”

  Bradley explained. “Aunt Maggi, you and I are the only TGs here. I had to get the others inside as fast as possible before I could help you. I was a little rough.”

  “Bradley, you did right, and the fault, indirectly, is mine. I started that mad house out there. I hope none of them were hurt.” She looked through the side windows and the leaping, spinning and claw snapping had ended, and the Torki were each inspecting one another, top and bottom sides.

  Marlyn called back, “What are they looking for now on their bodies? They seem to have calmed down.”

  Maggi shook her head in dismay. “They are looking for a giant Fly Spear sticking through their bodies. Coldar thought he had been pierced, and therefore all of them did as well, because of the Olt link they share. They all must have been trying hard to sense what Coldar experienced.”

  Hakeem stared at her. “What the hell did you show him?”

  “Flowers. In particular, the Fly Spear the second time.”

  “That fits in the palm of a hand.” Bradley pointed out. “Why did they all go berserk over that?”

  “We need to give them another moment. All of you hold my hand and I’ll let you see what I showed, so you will understand.”

  Wister was reluctant, but had experienced enough mental images that he drew confidence in his ability to comprehend what he would see. She had placed it in context. The flower was small.

  They all watched as the plump insect forced its way into the flower, and saw the image of the spear plunging at them as if they had the insect’s viewpoint. Then it pierced the body as if they were off to the side to see. Only Wister jerked, because he was not familiar with the plants actions, but the forewarning was enough to ward off real fear.

  He made the telling comment. “It looked very large in the mental image when the sharp object struck, but you showed the flower as smaller first.”

  “Yes, this time I did. For Coldar, I only used the mental image I had when we used a miniature camera, to watch this in a recording. It looked huge to him, and I closed my eyes to keep the image sharp and clear so he could see how effective this form of communication can be.”

  Marlyn understood. “They all thought they had been pierced. Wow. How do we fix this?”

  Hakeem had an idea. “If they will ever talk with us again, I can put that recording on my tissue sample computer. Kap can send it to me if we need the proof. It must be in his library.”

  “Do that Hakeem. In the meantime, Brad, open the hatch again please.” Maggi owed some apologies, and already felt the bruising she decided she deserved for the miscalculation.

  Coldar was standing thirty feet away again, and this time he and all the other Torki had claw arms elevated, with the pinchers rotated down, tips on the ground. To Maggi it vaguely reminded her of the positions of linemen in the now defunct sport of twentieth century American football, ready to charge forward.

  Wister was helpful without being asked. “That is a position of shame. Not of you, but of themselves. They know their reaction was wrong.”

  Maggi stepped out, and knowing she looked ridiculous, bent over and placed her fists on the ground in as close an approximation to the Torki posture as she could manage, and held that pose for ten seconds.

  Standing up, she called out. “I am sorry. The fault is mine. You have never experienced a mind-to-mind image before.”

  Coldar, holding his distance, replied. “I failed to detect the proper scale of the event, to see that it was on a very small size, as when seen very close. I have harmed you. In my fear I made all of those connected through my Olt react the same way.

  “This has never happened with the Olt in this way, to share our thoughts so clearly, what one of us is seeing so sharply. My emotions became those of all the others, not just the sense of all of our feelings on average. It connected us more strongly than we have ever experienced. When we checked our memories for what we each saw, we discovered a new section of the library within the Olts, which has opened to us for the first time. We will start to explore that information now. This opening of a new part of the library has happened in times past, when we reached a new threshold of development.

  “When we were ready for fusion power, and created it ourselves, the Olts of those involved in the work revealed new information on how to use the new knowledge. It happened again when we first reached space, also when we discovered how to draw energy from the Universe where all matter moves faster than light.

  “The Olt’kitapi, through the Olt, has continued to help us each time we were ready. This mind sharing today opened another part of the library. We owe you a great debt for this wonder, and I nearly killed you in my panic.”

  “Coldar, it was a clumsy accident on my part. Consider it a gift if it proves to be good for your people. You may not have reached a new stage in development on your own, so you may not be as ready as you believe for the new knowledge. We humans have also leaped ahead in development, and may not be ready for where this ability will lead us. However, we know the ability will help us oppose the Krall, and perhaps save our species.”

  “You may be able to do what you say against the Krall. For a small creature, you almost broke my shell when you threw me into the air and turned me on my back.” There was a general scraping sound all around them that raised the hairs on the human’s arms and necks.

  Maggi winced. “Wister, what is that sound?”

  “I have only heard it described, I never heard the sound myself. You have amused the Torki. I think I can wait a very long time to hear this unpleasant laughter again.” From a Prada, with an indefinite life span, that was saying a lot.

  ****

  A day later, the Torki were at ease with the Mind Tap images from Maggi, and their Olts had considerable information concerning how to use the devices for electronic mind sharing between the crabs. Tellingly, the Kobani learned that the range of the Olt device’s communication between Torki was 121 feet. The same range as for the Olt’kitapi made Katusha and the Raspani made Rolperry tools, which was a sign that this was also some short-range quantum effect. Coldar told them that there had never been any electromagnetic signals detected from the Olts, and that they appeared to require no power source. The Torki on the other side of the bay, being out of Olt linkage range, had not experienced the panic of those clustered around the shuttle.

  Maggi posed a question. “Coldar, why do you think the Olt’kitapi built those complex devices to migrate to your brains when consumed, and then provide a connection and a source of information between your people? It would have seemed less invasive to simply teach you themselves.”

  “Our species was not a true community when we were found by the Olt’kitapi. We lived in groupings, but had no society, no cooperation. We believe the devices were how they helped us slowly to become a people, to share group feelings. They did not fill our minds with knowledge we were not ready to use before we had discovered the science ourselves. Then the information to use the new technology safely was revealed to us. They did not have to be pr
esent for those thousands of years as we developed a civilization.”

  “That was quite an involved invention, for a newly discovered species.”

  “The Olt wasn’t invented for us. The Olt’kitapi already had more advanced versions in their own bodies. There was another version for the Raspani, and one for the Krall.”

  “What?” Maggi was startled. “The Krall have something like that inside them? I’ve seen scans of their bodies, and I never saw the objects I can see inside the translucent shells of your Torkedia.”

  “The Krall you have met, the same ones the Prada call Rulers, do not have them. They were only given to some of the early Krall that were working to become more civilized. Those Krall that first went to the stars to live and work with the Olt’kitapi. They are the ones that the Krall you have met now refer to as the ‘Soft Krall.’ We believe it was the offer to help them develop mentally, with the guidance of an Olt device custom designed for their race, which pushed the barbarian majority of the original Krall to stage the surprise rebellion.”

  “Where is the so-called Soft Krall now?”

  “I assume the barbarian warrior Krall destroyed them, along with the Olt’kitapi. Both were gone from the stars thousands of years before the Krall found us. We have no direct memories of either of them.”

  “How do you know about this if it all happened before you encountered the Krall?”

  “There are references to them in old Olt libraries. When we achieved Jump travel, as you call it, we found we could access limited information about alien races near us that we might meet. The only species in our internal library that we knew of and which still survived when the Krall enslaved us was the Prada and the Raspani.”

  “If the Raspani have an Olt-like device inside them, why did they lose their intelligence? You have retained your knowledge after the Krall defeated you.”

  “We Torki have examined Raspani remains after the Krall have slaughtered them for food, here and on other worlds. We found no signs of Olts in any of their bodies. Without resources, tools, and knowledge contained in an Olt, they cannot make new ones, as we make ours, so they may all have been lost long ago when the original owners were killed and eaten.”