by Jim Rudnick
Tanner nodded.
He wished he could explain more to his friend—about the find he'd made on Ghayth, how he felt about the Lady St. August, and the fact that even though he'd had to defend the Ikarian virus from the Caliphate too, via his killing of Jocko—but much of it was still confidential. Yet, he also knew his PTSD somehow had skipped over that event—it posed him no problem to remember and relive the exchange of fire with Jocko. No problem at all, and he noticed he was no longer tapping his fingers.
Cured! he though and smiled. Hardly, but good to know.
"Craig, there is more. I wanted you to know that, but I'm under big orders to yap up—but soon as I can relate those matters to you, I will. You know that I both like you and respect you—and the Marwick crew too. And so nice to see that you've moved up Elliot to be your XO—good choice I think too!" he said.
They grinned since they both knew finding an XO who was good for the ship as well as good for the captain could be a difficult task. Both had done so pretty well and that shared memory was a good bond between them.
"UrPoPo—should one of us mention them yet?" Craig said.
Tanner knew what he meant. As soon as the probe and its message had been received at the RIM Confederacy Council, the explosion by this member had been immense. UrPoPo believed that as this Enki world was in their system, it belonged to them to try to bring Enki aboard as one of their realm planets. Under no circumstances would they allow anyone else to "poach" on their system worlds. UrPoPo would also be attending the First Contact meetings on Enki and, they would offer—as would the RIM—the offer to join them. The UrPoPo Council member had added that they'd offer a fifty percent participation in all things rather than the much, much smaller role of being one of the hundred or so planets in the RIM Confederacy.
He looked at Craig. "I know—well, we know that the UrPoPo contingent at First Contact will be interested in one thing only. To not allow Enki to join the RIM—but to join them instead—and to be honest, Craig, I don't give a damn. But we'd surely like to know more about them and why they took, what, almost seventy years to get back to us. Talk about taking your time in making a decision ..."
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Standing beside his Science officer, Tanner was just plain hot. The heat coming off the sands alone is hot enough to fry an egg. And we're the eggs, he thought as he looked at the more than forty RIM personnel as they were led from their shuttles to the large access ramp ahead. Couldn't we have put down a bit closer? He sighed and nudged Lieutenant Commander Sheldon as they walked in the loose line of visitors.
"Any idea just how hot this is?" he said with a whisper. Sweat was on his upper lip, and as he spoke, little drops of that sweat were flung out and down to the hot sands below their feet.
"Sir, my PDA says its 126 degrees Fahrenheit—course, it also says it's zero percent humidity; hence we're only mildly discomforted. Well, maybe a bit more than that," he said as he too swiped the sweat off his brow.
Like most of the RIM officers, he had worn his dress blues for this First Contact meeting, and the patches of darker blue sweat discolorations were huge under his arms and all across his back. Ahead, Tanner could see the rest of the uniforms, especially the dress grays of the RIM Navy, were no longer as gray as the sweat turned them almost completely charcoal. Most of the non-military administrators were at least much lighter dressed—with a couple of their aides in simple short-sleeved shirts and pants. Even so, they too were sweating and that was to be expected, Tanner surmised, as a part of this desert planet climate.
"Thanks, Karl—and yes, it's damn hot enough," Tanner said as they slowly climbed the small set of stairs to the larger downward facing set of much bigger stairs. As they reached that vantage point, the first Enkian who had greeted them at the shuttle landing spot a couple of hundred yards away stood to one side and simply pointed downward. Earlier when they'd landed, they had gotten out assuming they were going to be entering the large pyramid that lay closest to the shuttle landing spots. They had emptied out of their shuttles and been mystified that there was no greeting party at all. They milled around and the newly appointed Enkian Ambassador had finally called for quiet as everyone argued about what to do and where to go. Instead, the man looked around and noted that a hundred feet away, standing on the sands, which were getting uncomfortably hot, a creature stood. Not a creature, he had corrected someone who'd blurted that out, but an Enkian. He slowly walked across the sands toward this native as the First Contact scenario began to play out.
Instead, the Enkian kept his distance and walked away from the big pyramid close to them and toward a large stone ramp a bit away.
Tanner had watched this Enkian either ignore or not even understand any of the initial greetings and attempts to communicate. Instead, he had simply waved his arm, which the RIM group had thought meant to follow him. They'd followed him right up to this access ramp set of stairs and now he—or she, as no one had any idea—pointed downward.
About five feet tall, the Enkian was, at least as far as Tanner could tell, an avian-based alien. While the body had no wings, other factors said so to the layperson, he thought. A crest of colored feathers ran all across the alien's head and partially down the back on its neck. While the hands looked just about normal, there were only four fingers, and the few times he'd seen the Enkian's hands, they also appeared to have larger nails—almost small talons—at the end of each digit. And the feet—two large separate toe areas again had large talon-like nails and at the back was a bigger talon-like spur that protruded, and each of the feet was covered in what looked like a scaly-type skin.
While that meant the aliens were different from humans, the colorations really stood out. The crest of feathers around the head was two different colors, a bright fire-engine red and a pure white. The head feathers were in rows of the same color, and these rows were on opposite sides of the body, which gave the Enkian a striped look. And to match that color palette, the Enkian wore a pure white robe of some type from its neck down to its knees, with again a red and white striped chest sash.
Tanner had no idea if this was normal, usual, or if this was meant to signify something to the RIM group; all he knew was the Enkian didn't have a single drop of sweat on it anywhere—none on its face or armpits or anywhere. The heat obviously didn't seem to work on an Enkian. Wish it didn't work on us either. He sighed to himself as he slowly went down the stairs, made of a smooth brown stone, one by one. The temperature quickly went down and down, and soon it was not quite so uncomfortable heat-wise.
It took a bit more time, but eventually the RIM group reached a large landing where the stairs spun 180 degrees, and they went down another large set of stairs. Finally reaching the bottom, they were waved at by an Enkian well ahead in the large smooth stone corridor, and they proceeded down the long corridor. The corridor was cool at least, and that was a Godsend, Tanner thought as the RIM group trooped for a few hundred yards following the corridor as it went in a slow curve to first the right and then the left. As they rounded the final curve, there were more stairs, and they sighed and began to climb them slowly.
At least, Tanner thought, the temperature isn't rising at the same time. Maybe the Enkians used air-conditioning of some type. The group eventually came up on a huge wide-open level, which they knew was at grade as they could see out the blue-tinged windows.
"Sir, we're on the ground floor level of that pyramid, I believe," his Science officer said as they slowly moved away from the stairwell at one end of the huge area and toward the center raised dais that held a group of Enkians all standing and waiting.
As the RIM group moved toward the waiting Enkians, they realized that all around them were Enkians in huge seated bleachers. All were seated and all with those same red and white feathers. All quiet and solemn. All waiting.
Moving toward the center raised area, the RIM ambassador took the lead, and beside him was the small translation team. As the ambassador reached the dais, he went up the three stairs to the central s
tage area and stopped on one side, and the translators took up a secondary spot behind him. Tanner, along with the military part of the First Contact team, moved up as well to one side and stood beside Captain Templeton and his XO too.
No one spoke. Of all the twenty or so Enkians on the stage, five stepped forward and moved to face the ambassador. None of them had wrist PDAs or any sign of a translation team either. This is going to be interesting, he thought as the RIM ambassador cleared his throat and took a small half step forward.
"I am Ambassador Jonathan Harmon and I represent the RIM Confederacy as we greet you for the first time."
He slightly dipped his head, perhaps to show that he deferred to them, as a small sign of respect. I wonder if these aliens get our small gestures. Tanner would have an answer to that question in seconds.
One of the five Enkians stepped forward too. His head feathers rippled up and down for a couple of seconds and then quieted, but they were now held upright completely on edge. His hands came around from his sides so he could clasp them in front of him. At least I think it is a male. One of the five was a bit shorter and had the same color feather, but those feathers were shorter and didn't stand up as much. Female maybe, he wondered.
The Enkian, who had fairly normal looking skin, if a bit scaly, with two eyes and a nose with nostrils that were bigger than a human's, smiled.
At least Tanner thought it was a smile, as the ends of the mouth curved upward as facial muscles were flexed.
"We are happy to have you here, Ambassador, and on behalf of the Words Muse, we welcome you to Enki—and my name is Uigoeri Qor," the alien said in what was just about perfect spoken English.
That was surprising; the ambassador tilted his head to one side and nodded. Tanner thought that for whatever reason the Enkians had learned English, it had surely been a good thing, and he smiled. The RIM group smiled and the translators were the only ones whose smiles weren't as broad. "Out of a job," Tanner said to himself and he was glad of that, as being able to communicate was what made any First Contact session a real success.
As the Enkian group of five stepped forward to meet the ambassador on an individual basis, Tanner had his eye on the rest of the Enkians and noted a couple of differences. All had the same red and white feathered crest, but some had variations on the sash that went across their chests. Instead of the red and white colored stripes, some had blue or red on tan stripes, and still others had black and lavender colors. He had no idea what any of that meant, but there were at least three types of Enkians on the stage—four if you counted the shorter one of the five heads. He turned back to listen to the ambassador ask an early question.
"May I ask a question about the use of the term 'Words Muse' and what that might mean?" he said very politely.
The shorter one of the five stepped forward, and in a small voice, it gave what sounded like an answer, its feathered crest rippling slightly. "We suspected that this question might come to pass—so we have prepared a full presentation for you to see how our Enkian society has developed and what all of the five Muses mean. This can take some time to occur, so can you please hold that for later? Um—please would be the term, yes?" the Enkian said.
The ambassador nodded and said, "Yes, of course. Can you at least tell us how you came to learn our language? That too is of interest."
One of the other five head Enkians stepped forward and smiled again. At least it looks like a smile.
"Ambassador, yes, we have been studying your language now for almost seventy years—since you gave us, the Words Muse, the original offer to have us become RIM Confederacy members—which, of course, we cannot. But we did know that these talks would occur, and we knew we would have to learn English to be able to negotiate some kind of a venture to move forward. It has taken so very much time to learn and to study, and yes, we were also aided by capturing much radio and TV streaming communications from UrPoPo too. All of it helped and we hope that we do not make too many mistakes—and would ask that should that happen, you immediately correct us if possible? Would that be—okay I think you say?"
And the ambassador smiled and nodded too.
So far, Tanner thought, this had been a pretty easy First Contact session.
Tanner had many questions he was waiting for the answers to. Why, for instance, did Enki have no station in orbit? Where were all their Navy ships? Wonder where the surprises are and if I'll get the answers to all my questions, he thought as he joined the others to get closer to the Enkians and shake hands—if they did that—and looking ahead of him, he saw that, yes, they did that too.
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Uigoeri Qor, head of the Words Muse, made his way back to the center of the stage the next morning, and it was easy to see that he had had one hell of a night. His feathered crest was not as big and fluffy anymore, one sign for sure. Plus if my eyesight is still okay, there is a big stain on that sash of his, right across the red and white stripes. Odd, Tanner thought, but then hey, maybe he'd had syrup on his pancakes, or maybe not ...
"I greet you and thank you for attending us here again," he said formally. Slightly behind him once again were the same four—if Tanner could even identify them—as had backed him up yesterday at the First Contact session. It hadn't taken long, and they'd gone back to their shuttles to return to their ships up in orbit to wait for the next session, which was now, a day later. There had been some talk about asking if they could simply put down their ships on the sands around the Words Muse pyramid, but they had decided not to ask yet.
Tanner had taken the unexpected evening off to EYES ONLY with his favorite marine, Major Alver Stal, out on Ghayth, and they'd chatted about everything going on there. While their explorations were only about twenty percent complete, there were few signs of any more artifacts on the planet. But some odd readings were unexplainable at this point, and only further study and perhaps even some drilling would explain the readings. They commiserated about Tanner's time back on the Barony Hospital Ship and that he was barred from the OneTon bar for the future, but Alver opined that it wouldn't matter much. Any bar would work, he said and Tanner nodded even though he had his doubts. Still, good to chat and they signed off with the agreement to get together the first chance they had. Perhaps, Tanner vocalized, right after this Enki mission, and they left it at that.
He'd already had a short talk with Bram and knew that is Adept officer would be testing and checking every Enkian they met to see just how "readable" the race was. Bram looked at him and smiled, proving as usual that when Tanner thought directly about him, Bram would catch it for sure.
The ambassador and one of the administration team members took a few minutes to work out some details with the Enkians, and while they did, Tanner looked up. This pyramid was about fifty floors high, he figured, yet here in the interior, it was a soaring space way above their heads. Every so often, there were blue glass inserts all around the whole pyramid that the bright sunlight poured through but in blue tones. What could be seen from those higher vantage points was more sand. Lots of sand, and then another pyramid, and more sand and pyramids. Some of the smaller pyramids were joined together in an annex shape while still larger ones stood alone and tall. This one, called at least as far as they knew, the Words Muse pyramid, was one of the bigger ones. Tanner thought it must be air conditioned as the space within was comfortably cool.
The ambassador returned to the RIM group on the stage and waited until he had everyone's attention.
"So, we've been asked if a tour of the various different pyramids and their five muses might help us to understand what Enki is all about—and I've said yes. We will go, we will be observant, and we will ask few, if any, questions. Instead, we will await their explanations of what we are shown. We should always remember that we are guests—visitors in fact—here on Enki. So our deportment will be very polite, very civil, and we are looking for nothing to occur to be a hindrance to our discussions. Which, I've just been told, will occur next week. They have that presentation to make to us
in a formal manner at this event next week. 'Til then we will get occasional tours and visits to various factors of the Enki planet. I'm told we will also get to visit what they call Resources and then their Militia too—which should make some of you Navy personnel happy! Questions?" he said and there were none.
Travel arrangements had been made, and they all trooped off the stage, down the long stairs to the curved tunnels, all the way back to the access ramp, and then up, up, and up back to the sands. There was what looked like an odd bus. It ran on more than a dozen huge inflated tires, seated up to about sixty or seventy, and was driven by an Enkian who wore the same white robe they all did but had a sash that was black and lavender striped.
"Any ideas on what the colors mean on those sashes?" Tanner asked his Science officer who had shared a seat with him.
"Sir, I did ask earlier, and that sash denotes a Resources person, or acolyte or disciple—whatever the term is—or will be. Our Words Muse folks have that red and white one. Oh, and Militia has the blue and red on tan stripes ones. What either actually means is a crapshoot, Sir. But those colors appear to be correct," Sheldon said and Tanner was glad to get the recon.
The bus moved off and after a few swings around the Words Muse pyramid, the bus accelerated and moved off toward some pyramids in the distance near the horizon. The ride was surprisingly soft on those huge inflated tires. Tanner was happy to see the driver knew about inertia and dunes and how the climb of one could often fail, so much of the ride was a big swinging curve in one direction followed by a similar one to the other side too. After almost an hour of this, the bus pulled up beside another of those access ramps, and they disembarked and took to the stairs. Down and down the stairs they went, then along corridors that reminded Tanner of tunnels through the sand, and then back up and up to the interior of that pyramid.
