He stood now in a fraction of an e-gee, his head toward the axis, in a room with a ceiling slightly narrower than the floor, but otherwise apparently a cube. A door slid closed behind him. Atmosphere pumped into the room: oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur dioxide and a lot of organics and methane. He could breathe it, if he had to, but he kept his suit on.
When the pressure neared Earth normal, another door parted. He stepped into a corridor of black stone streaked with crystalline patterns of nickel and iron. Diodes glowed brightly in a line set waist high. He walked a few dozen meters, to where the corridor intersected three other corridors that stretched in each direction: straight forward, curving upward to the left, and curving upward to the right. Three paths into the Labyrinth, most holy relic of the OnUnAn race. He could see in each direction that open gaps in the walls gave entrance to other passages. If he had to walk, which way should he go?
But then, as Gowgoroup had promised, an image shimmered and took on the appearance of a solid form before him: a hologram of an OnUnAn, a colony being composed of several slug-like organisms each about the size of a large Terran dog. The heap of slugs waved six pairs of eye stalks at him in curiosity. This OnUnAn had the typical members: two “travelers,” two slightly larger “warriors,” a leader on the top of the heap, and a blind and mute coordinator or functionary in the center of the heap. Their combined hive mind would be—if Tarkos’s experience with the OnUnAn Gowgoroup proved typical—unpredictable, contentious, and fluidly willing to change.
Several of the slugs made guttural sounds, which his suit picked up on exterior microphones and piped into his helmet. The translation software of Tarkos’s suit struggled to keep up. Across his faceplate streamed a message. I am the Priest of Beginnings. Here starts your search, pilgrim.
A standard greeting that meant nothing, he suspected. But at least it granted his claim to be a pilgrim.
“I am Harmonizer Amir Tarkos,” he said, talking in Galactic, the lingua franca of the Alliance, and telling his suit to transmit it in sound and also on the radio frequency he’d used outside. “I request immediate audience with the Oracle.”
“Negation, negation!” two of the slugs near the bottom of the heap gurgled. Tarkos felt a surge of relief: the slugs answered in Galactic. He would not have been well able to negotiate in the OnUnAn language, given that his translationware seemed inadequate to the task. The slug on top of the heap added, “There are no human Harmonizers.” A slug just below it shouted, “The Alliance is not recognized here!”
“I am a Harmonizer,” Tarkos repeated. “And surely you can tell that my form is typical of a human being.”
“Humans are a primitive race,” gurgled one of the dark diplomat slugs that had been silent. “No human has come so far.” But the lead slug asked, “What is your question for the Oracle?”
Gowgoroup had told Tarkos that he must not answer this question. Telling the priest why he had come, Gowgoroup had promised Tarkos, would result in violence.
So Tarkos did just the opposite of what Gowgoroup had recommended. He told the truth. “I seek the location of the World Hammer, the wandering planet pair that passed near your homeworld Onus, three thousand years ago.”
“Why?” the lead slug gurgled.
“I will find these worlds, and go there, and challenge the surviving Ulltrian warriors to surrender or die.”
The slugs acted in unison, shrinking back and half retracting their eye stalks. Tarkos knew enough of OnUnAn behavior from his experience with his prisoner to recognize the expression of shock and fear. The priest said, with most of its mouths speaking in unison, “We shall not be part of war with the Ulltrians.”
“Good luck with that,” Tarkos said in English, indulging himself because he knew no one outside Earth understood the language. “Ain’t no one going to sit this war out.”
The leader of the colony, the slug atop the heap, said in a loud voice, “I have located your ship.”
“I thought you might,” Tarkos said in English.
“We will now destroy it,” the slug added.
Tarkos nodded. “I thought you might do that, too.”
Continued in Evolution Commandos: World Hammer (Predator Space Chronicles II) . Here’s a link to the US Amazon store page for the book.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Craig DeLancey is a writer and philosopher. He has published dozens of short stories in magazines like Analog, Lightspeed, Cosmos, Shimmer, The Mississippi Review Online, and Nature Physics. His novel Gods of Earth is available now with 47North Press. He also writes plays, many of which have received staged readings and performances in New York, Los Angeles, Sydney, Melbourne, and elsewhere. His short story “Julie is Three” won the Anlab Readers’ Choice award in 2012 and his short play “My Tunguska Event“ was a finalist in 2011 for the Heideman Award, given by the Actors Theatre of Louisville. Born in Pittsburgh, PA, he now makes his home in upstate New York and, in addition to writing, teaches philosophy at Oswego State, part of the State University of New York (SUNY).
This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, and events herein are products of the author’s immensely potent imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual business establishments, places, events, or persons living or dead or undead is coincidental. However, the author does take all credit, and lays claim to all relevant copyrights and patents, for descriptions of future conditions and technologies that later prove to come true.
EVOLUTION COMMANDOS:
WELL OF FURIES
Predator Space Chronicles, Number 1
Copyright 2017, Craig DeLancey
496 Perfect Number Press
Seventh edition
This eBook was handcrafted by Book Coders.
Cover by Ivan Zaretsky.
Special thanks to Keely Walsh.
Well of Furies Page 18
