Primal Estate: The Candidate Species

by Samuel Franklin

  Their fight would continue until one was injured, exhausted, or yielded to the other. Yootu had practiced his fighting skills while acting like he’d been beaten; he practiced his humility in the form of yielding when he knew he could win.

  Layrd started talking to Yootu in his own ancient tongue, as the Provenger were also masters at language. “Well, my old friend, how have you been?”

  “I’m alright,” Yootu droned, as they both walked toward each other, to one side of the columns, testing the fit of their gauntlets.

  “I hope you don’t mind using the level twos today, but I’m looking for a little more excitement than usual,” Layrd said especially loud so that his friend and the few Provenger milling about in the ring’s auditorium could hear.

  Because you’ll get a thrill out of cutting me up, Yootu thought as they slowly circled each other. “No, that’s okay,” Yootu replied. Maybe I’ll give him just a little surprise if he wants some excitement. I just want to see the look on his face. Then I’ll let him win.

  Layrd began speaking to Yootu, this time in perfect English. “Have you made the most of your five minutes prep time? You’d better, my big idiot. You’ve got a beating ahead of you.”

  Yootu faked a quizzical look. Now you’re definitely getting a surprise, you sadistic prick, Yootu thought.

  “Does the new language still sound strange to you?” Layrd continued, this time in Russian. “It shouldn’t. It is of your own planet. You know we are now back in your solar system, now subject to its language protocols. You are breaking our law if you refuse to speak it,” Layrd said with a smile.

  Yootu faked another curious look.

  “Or are you too stupid to understand?” Layrd asked in French.

  Now I really want to crack your skull. Yootu slowly backed away from Layrd as they circled each other, three times was the requisite before they could engage. Yootu had used this trick only twice before in the last five years. He was saving it for a special occasion and figured now would be as good as any. Layrd was special to him.

  As Yootu backed, Layrd sensed apprehension in his opponent, perhaps because they were using the level twos today. Layrd inched closer as they completed their third circle. As their center shifted closer to the columns, they completed their third circle. Yootu had timed his rotation perfectly to align his back to the column. As this happened he moved slightly toward Layrd, relaxed his guard and shifted to a flatfooted stance. Layrd immediately saw the opening and with blinding speed lunged at Yootu, positioning his left gauntlet high to block anything incoming and swiped, mid-level, with his right.

  Under normal circumstances, this would have been a devastating blow, but it happened to be exactly what Yootu had arranged. In a move that could only be accomplished with complete anticipation, Yootu sidestepped to his right then in toward his opponent. He hooked under Layrd’s blocking arm with his left, slashed across Layrd’s back with his right gauntlet, and used his knee and Layrd’s momentum to enhance his flight head first into the column that had been at Yootu’s back. Simultaneously, a slight sweep to Layrd’s foot had him almost air born when he hit. And, in a moment of brilliance that was in Yootu’s nature, he used the foot sweep to fake a trip and launched himself flying into the floor in the opposite direction.

  He’d learned to go to the ground when besting a Provenger. It calmed their pride a little while they were recovering. Yootu would make some faces, express some pain, massage a shoulder, and think about what fools they were.

  Yootu was worried for a moment when, lying on his stomach, he looked back at Layrd. First, there was no movement, then some, then a groan. Yootu had gone a little too far. Perhaps he wanted it too much? If Layrd is unconscious, I’ll just stay down so he sees me get up with him, Yootu thought.

  In a moment, Layrd stirred and brought himself to a sitting position as Yootu forged a moan and rolled onto his back, feeling a bit childish with his acting. “We both got the worst of that one,” Yootu muttered, loud enough for Layrd to hear. Layrd sat up and a trickle of blood ran down the side of his head. Yootu was worried. If he was injured too badly there would be an inquest, normally restricted recordings of the fight could be reviewed and Yootu might be discovered. His fights had been reviewed in the past, and only their confidence in Yootu’s limited intelligence had saved him.

  They both stood, recovered their bearing, and resumed the fight. Yootu was impressed with Layrd’s recovery. Damn he is tough, Yootu thought. Now I will get beaten, badly. I’ll have to make it look good after that stunt I just pulled.

  To the Provenger, Yootu was a guest/slave on their interstellar ship, kept under tight security and continual observation by both his keepers and school children on field trips. He was a forty-five year old man who, they thought they could tell, was beginning to show the effects of his species’ age.

  As a Paleolithic member of the early Homo sapiens, with a brain capacity slightly larger than the modern human, the Cro-Magnon was of a dense and powerful build. He was the progenitor of the smaller modern man, scourge of the mammoth that he would hunt to oblivion, and executioner of the Neanderthal. They were masters of the elements and the sole survivors of climactic changes and harsh environments that administered to the extinction of all their related species.

  Yootu was an exceptional example of this race. To his ancient tribe, he was known to be fathered by the sun. He was keeper of the red moon spirit, a hunter, warrior and their supreme shaman. To the current humans of Earth, Yootu was now a twelve thousand, eight-hundred and ninety-two year old Cro-Magnon stranger.

  Since their first arrival on Earth, the Provenger had picked a fight with the human race. As a child, Yootu’s first feeling for them was contempt. In adulthood, it became a spiritual hatred. Yootu was determined to avenge his father’s death, the destruction of the Earth’s small red moon, and free his people from the slavery they endured--big plans for an over-the-hill idiot.

  Meanwhile, somewhere else on the ship…

  Nwella was by any standard a beautiful creature, one of multitudes of a species that held physical beauty, youth, and health as some of their premier individual and collective values. Thought of as barely an adult by her long-lived kind, at thirty-seven she was ready to start her own household, but had found neither a partner nor domestic space. Her father’s position in the Perpetuant Cycle Project had delayed her progress. Potential suitors were skeptical over her father’s prospects at success and therefore cautious about her. Lodgings suitable for a young female even of her social stature were extremely limited due to the maturity of the Provenger Nation Ship. The population was packed into every available cell of this massive intergalactic voyager.

  Nwella didn’t hate her father for these converging circumstances, but there was resentment; for what, she was not sure. If only she could have been born at another time or in another ship, before the last war that marked the culmination of the Provenger golden age. She always felt she belonged in that era.

  They had just arrived in this system, adjacent to a massive gaseous planet with colorful rings of dust, stone, and ice circling it. The indigenous called it Saturn. They named it after a god from one of their ancient societies, a god who presided over agriculture, among other things. How appropriate, she thought.

  Provenger always took a few weeks to learn the languages of the systems they visited and use them while they were there, as long as they could form their sounds. The Provenger mastered so many languages that they had to mandate times for speaking only their own, lest it get lost to them. These humans, being very similar anatomically, were easy to imitate. She learned their dominant languages ten years ago during their first visit, and since that time well over twelve thousand years had passed on Earth. She now had to learn the new ones.

  Alone in her room, Nwella looked at the viewer and admired the planet with its orbiting ribbons and moons. She remembered the last time she was here in this system when she and her father went to a light green ocean. They swam in the warm water and
he promised they would be back some day. He’d been horribly injured by a wild animal during a hunt, and it had cut their adventure short.

  Nwella was anxious to see the success of her father and his project bring them into a new era when resources would be more plentiful. She could start her own dominion and have innumerable adventures available to her.

  If he failed, they, as a family, would drop into obscurity. This had always been a risk. It was the nature of their opportunity, as her father put it.

  Nwella knew she was expected in the common room to celebrate their arrival. She didn’t feel like going, but it was required of her position. She was looking her best. She had just completed a few minutes standing in the health light, had thoroughly oiled her hairless body, and had a vibrant glow across her skin. Provenger prized the tone of their skin as an indication of internal health, which it was, just as they tended to consider the roundness of their bald heads as an indication of their intelligence, which they knew it was not.

  Though she was thirty-seven, Nwella looked about seventeen years old due to the Recombinant technology that kept them young. Their walks through this wonder of science applied their wave technology to filter their DNA of errors. It made them young. It made Nwella who she was. She had deep brown eyes that dominated her surrounding delicate bone structure, and light features that concealed a volatile nature. She had a drive to possess something extraordinary, and an impulse to shock the structure in which she lived. She didn’t have many close friends and didn’t really know why. She felt she should have many, given her beauty, intelligence, and humility.

  She quickly finished dressing in her best public gown, a special one she had selected just for this occasion. It was even more revealing than the traditional type and would display the curves of her body well--her attempt to shock in a way that was allowed.

  It was incumbent upon a female of her position to exhibit her form, and she would not disappoint. As typical with the unmarried female’s public gown, her neckline began with a high, stiff collar decorated with blue and gold beads that, at the shoulders, plunged outside the breasts to below the navel, exposing her entire chest and flat stomach. Her long muscular legs were completely exposed on the right side to the waist while the gown dropped almost to the floor on the left. On formal or recreational occasions Provenger wore no shoes. Footwear was seen as an obstacle to the grounding of their body to the structure of the ship and to the foundation of their posture, both from an electrical and structural standpoint.

  Nwella assumed a pose and gave the verbal command, “freeze.” She then stepped away and looked back, making one last examination of her holographic image. There she was in perfect detail, her body and attire from all sides. She reached out her hand with a wave motion to spin the image and view it from all angles. She was satisfied. She left a few minutes late and walked out the door to the waiting shuttle. “Grand Common Room,” she said clearly, and the shuttle sped off down a massive corridor, filled with hundreds of vehicles and levels of walkways where Provenger lived, worked, strolled, and shopped.

  In the Grand Common Room there would be suitors lining the wall when she arrived--males on the right, females on the left. She would walk the right side, on her toes to make her calves look their best. They would all be focused on her, and whether she liked them or not, she would have to cheek the males. They would reach out to greet her, purposely brushing their arms across her exposed nipples, presuming to be oblivious of the fact. When she continued down the line, each would check to see if their touch had made them rigid and puckered. It was part of the game. Then they would walk away, concerned about being too close to her. The females would ignore her, and she would feel alone again.

  Chapter 5

  TuesdAy morning, Cortez, ColorAdo

  Rick was up early, as usual, going through his morning routine: feed Barnes and Nobelle, his two German Shepherds, do his “20 and 80” (twenty pull ups and eighty sit ups, Marine Corps style), sprint to the mailbox about two hundred yards down the driveway, get the mail, sprint back, and then do pushups. He did all this in the cold November morning wearing only shorts and boots.

  Rick’s home in Cortez was typical for a civil servant toward the end of his career. If it was seen as quality, it was due to his ability to make the most out of a modest but sufficient salary. If it was wanting in certain quality it would be due to the expenses of attorneys necessary for the many legal disputes of divorce. To someone driving by, it could be perceived as a sprawling adobe style ranch house on some beautiful high desert acreage with extensive views of the surrounding countryside.

  The general uphill slope to the north of the town of Cortez provided most homes, randomly situated, a sometimes outstanding view. Rick’s three bedroom, three bath, ranch house on twelve acres provided that luxury. On that general slope, Rick’s house sat atop a prominence providing slight downhill slopes on all sides. From his back patio and its adjacent small patch of struggling lawn, one could take in, with a casual scan to the southeast, Mesa Verde National Park and Sleeping Ute Mountain to the south, with the Four Corners nestled somewhere between them in the distance. Further to the right, to the southwest, was the gentle rise of a plateau hiding in its desiccated drainages some of the roughest desert canyon areas of Colorado, trailing further west into Utah. The house lived among the usual pinion pine and juniper cedar high desert forest that held a surprising number of mule deer, coyote, and jack rabbit, with the occasional mountain lion and bear. The privacy of his place was complete with much of his property surrounded by some irrigated fields and undeveloped land with only the occasional neighbor.

  Rick took advantage of the size and position of his land to shoot a variety of weapons to practice marksmanship, but he never took any game there. It was a kind of pact he had with the wildlife. He would live there in peace, and so would they. It provided him with the additional benefit of being able to simply observe their behavior.

  Rick was unusually well provisioned on his government salary, but only due to his frugal nature. He had a great collection of guns, one for every occasion. He had a wood shop adjacent to the house, a three-car garage complete with his old jeep, a newer Dodge Charger, and a pickup truck. Under a carport outside was his 17-foot fishing boat that served every purpose he could think of, from the nearby McPhee Reservoir to Utah’s Lake Powel, where he frequently camped. He had a John Deere tractor with a front end loader and a backhoe. And he had his health. He had seen to that. He had a short time to retirement with his work for the NSA and was intent on spending the rest of his life helping Carson get a good start. His free time would be spent fading into the mountains and desert wastes. The end.

  He was in the kitchen heating some venison stew left over from the night before, just starting to break a sweat from his quick workout and the warmer indoor temperature of his house, when Carson finally rolled out of bed and shuffled into the kitchen.

  “Morning, Dad.”

  “Morning, Carson, how’d you sleep?”

  “Okay, but I’ve been having the craziest dreams.” Carson rubbed his eyes, finding a seed in the left one. He tried to rub it out of the tear duct. “I can remember them when I first wake up, but then I fall back to sleep and I forget.”

  “Put a pad and pencil by your bed and write it down as soon as you wake up. Then if you go back to sleep…” Rick trailed off. “You want some stew?”

  “Yes, please.” Carson sat at the table as Barnes walked up, nosed him, and gave him a small lick on the elbow. Nobelle circled him and watched. “The funny thing is when I dream, it’s not like I’m imagining something, it’s like I’m remembering it. Does that make sense?”

  “I think I know what you mean. Maybe its genetic knowledge you’re becoming aware of.” Rick glared at his son, slowly cocking his head with raised eyebrows and whistling the Twilight Zone theme. Rick put a bowl of stew in front of him and stuck a raw carrot in it. “You ready for your test today? You weren’t up very late last night.”

  C
arson began to eat. “I’m ready, more ready than anyone else in my class, if I can judge by all the texts I got last night. For some reason, everyone was after me with questions.”

  “They needed your help. You’re a smart kid. Take after your dad, no doubt.” Rick sat down across from him and stared.

  “Are you going to eat?” Carson asked.

  “Nah. I ate yesterday,” Rick replied with a smile, “I’m just not hungry. Maybe dinner tonight with you. Today’s my fast day.”

  “So, I was talking yesterday with the guys at school.” Carson began randomly, “How many evil toddlers do you think you could take on, like in a fight?”

  Rick liked this kind of “what if” question, and he and Carson would often have fun with them. Rick looked at him as seriously as he could. “Toddlers, eh? Do I have a weapon?”

  “No weapons.”

  “Do they keep coming at me or do I have a rest period?”