The attack force screamed in, heading toward one building, and raced in circles around it. The cambot pickup showed Borrelia peering out a window, a phone in his hand. He retreated backward into the room when Morales’ lighter stopped and hovered not six meters from the window. He jumped back more when an intense point of light appeared over the desk he’d left, and crackled and expanded, to reveal a holographic image of a Pokoniry, in full battle gear, floating there in the air about the surface.
“Do not leave,” the amplified voice commanded, as Borrelia dropped the phone and eased back toward the outer door. Screams and pandemonium there, as the rest of the staff fled. “Remain where you are, so I might speak with you, Borrelia,” the animation continued. To his credit, Lori thought, Borrelia stopped, crouching a little, but held his place.
“Now, in response to the broadcast call, we, the star travelers will be pleased to meet with you. Feel free to prepare whatever bill of particulars you wish, we will consider discussion of your concerns. But you will hear ours also. We did not travel between the voids for our esteemed leader to be set upon by deceitful thugs and rogues. Such behavior bodes ill for the future of whoever is in charge of this section of this world.”
The speaker held out an open hand, and a model of the planet appeared there, in full color, and rotated slowly. “Be advised, this is a large world, and we may choose where we go, who we will trade with, and what we will do. Your territory is but a minute part of the whole.” The hand closed and the globe vanished.
“So, in one bright hence, I will summon you. You may bring a few aides if you wish, no more than five in number. No military. No arms. No deceit. No treachery. Do you understand?”
Borrelia stared at the figure hovering in the air before him, and did not answer.
More loudly, the Pokoniry said again, “Did you hear? Do you understand?”
Now Borrelia, shaking a bit, said, his voice sounding low and weak, translated, “Yes, I heard. I think.”
“Do you have questions?”
“When...where will we meet? Here?”
“No. Your hospitality is beneath contempt. Assembly below on the ground, in the open. I will summon you forth from where you are, and bring you to the place we choose. There you will meet us.”
Borrelia said, in the same quavering voice, “How will I know?”
“Next bright. We will come for you. Be prepared in early mid-bright. And beware: any treachery, or attempts to attack our people, will be met with total annihilation.” A brief flash, and a simulation of the hell-burner grew on the open outstretched hand of the holographic image. “Do you understand?”
“Yes,” a weak and fearful voice said.
“And hear this–any assault on the place of the destroyed prison will result in bombardment of your cities from space. Make no attempt to attack that place.”
Without waiting for more questions, the image shrank to a bright dot, and vanished. Outside, the air cars began moving again, circling the building, picking up speed, and with multiple sonic booms, rocketed upward and out of sight.
Lori nodded. “That was good,” she said, “very good.”
On the screen, Borrelia backed away, and hurried to a side room, to a toilet they noticed. He still crouched inside when security people, heavily armed, eased into the outer office. Hearing them call for him, Borrelia hastily left, waved a hand from behind the door, assuring them he was alone, the aliens had left as quickly as they appeared. Only then did the security team rush inside the office, to look at everything, even closely examining the window for breaks or entry marks. Borrelia by then was back on the phone to someone, speaking too low for the pickup to catch. With the security people on alert, the expedition controller left the micro-bot in place, up on the ceiling, watching.
“Do we have a meeting place yet?” Lori asked.
“Yes,” Hunter said.
“Far away from that damned prison?”
“Yes, very far away. And this time, you’ll have an escort.”
Lori nodded.
Borrelia soon left the office, hurrying to a sleek ground vehicle, which drove him to a nearby airport, a small one, where he climbed into a military helicopter. A micro-bot slide in with him, and others traveled along, above, out of sight, too small for the radar. The visitors watched from space, too.
The helicopter turned east, flew for a while, then north, climbed over a high, snowy pass in the mountain range, and dropped into a valley. Here autumn had settled, turning the vegetation to amber and brown. They flew on, directly toward another mountainous region, and soon landed near a massive cliff, on a tiny pad, that appeared below as camouflage materials slid off it. Armed guards checked Borrelia as he descended, and four of them escorted him inside, through two check points, and on into another area, deeper into the solid rock.
The video image began to break up, and was immediately lost.
“Does that micro-bot have recording capability?” Lori asked.
An answer came back soon. “Limited. Maybe 20 minutes or so. It will track the quarry, and transmit the last 20 minutes once it re-establishes contact with the relay.”
“So, we wait,” Lori said to no one in particular.
They waited well over two hours, and eventually, Borrelia reappeared, and hurried back into the copter, and returned to his office.
The recording proved disappointing, the two sitting together at a table laden with food, and eating, while discussing sports, apparently, and a few females. The farewell was quite prolonged, with someone whom they now thought to be T’ming walking Borrelia back to the exit, one arm loosely over his shoulder. T’ming’s image matched the numerous photos of him in all the media.
“That doesn’t give us much.”
“No matter,” Lori said, “We know where that T-ming hides out now, be sure someone keeps an eye on him. He’ll come out of that hole in the ground sooner or later, I suspect.”
They did watch, and it proved soon, the next day, and happened in conjunction with the news report that a new invitation for the aliens to send a delegation to the province had been issued by Prince T’ming himself. The prince, the reports said, personally issued the invitation, wanted to discuss trade and diplomatic matters, but, fearful of the terrible weapons, and aggressive nature of the aliens, asked, respectfully the reporter said, for a small group only at first. He announced that a landing by the aliens, in some force, had been driven away with no losses to his military, and that as a result, the aliens now again agreed to parlay.
Another clip opened, showing several military people holding up tattered and blackened cloth, and a couple of other items. These were purported to be possessions of one of the aliens, damaged in a unfortunate flash fire in the reception area where they were left, and would be returned to the visitors when next the aliens appeared. Lori recognized most of the stuff as hers–a jacket, the pack, her damaged hat. But not her watch, or jewelry. No rings, no necklace.
Later that day, the medical team cleared Lori and Hunter to leave quarantine, and return to the Koyaanisqatsi. They did not enter the ship itself, but went from the isolation area directly back to Eagle One in the landing bay. The crew gave her a friendly send off, and a lighter awaited her in the docking bay. She and Hunter flew Eagle One into the lighter, and relaxed on the brief trip over to the Koya. There, another happy welcome awaited her, though she and Hunter had to run through the ship’s own quarantine station.
The Anawoka medical team reviewed her records, and Dr. Parus said that nothing seemed too amiss, that the surface held no microbes of immediate concern, they would do some follow up work, recommended against eating or drinking anything native for the moment, and already had a vaccine in development for the one intestinal bug still found in Lori’s gut. Her breast milk worried them, however. Lori succeeded in convincing them to pasteurize it, so she could feed it to Eric once more, until they gave it the OK.
After an hour, she was reunited with her son, who wiggled and tore at her shirt, trying t
o get at her suddenly overflowing breasts. She mollified him with the last of her stored milk, and he seemed pleased. Tari doted on her, waiting on her every wish, even brushing her hair softly and tenderly, as she sat with her son.
Lori still moved slowly and stiffly, her muscles sore where bruised, her legs and back especially aching, her lip and face still puffy. But after a night’s sleep in her own bed, she felt well enough to agree to the next meeting on the surface, with the Borrelia character, and the rest of her expedition. She told Morales she was ready, set it up, and looked forward to that, actually.
A cool brisk day greeted them on landing. The wind blew steadily and felt chilly on their skin, but the sun in mid-morning provided some warmth.
“Like New England in May,” Hunter said to Lori, as he gave her a hand while she stepped slowly and stiffly from the air car. “Or in the Fall.”
She looked around. A dozen-odd air cars sat parked in the tall, wavering grass of the open meadow. Beyond, scattered fields lay between them and a small village some distance away. To the east, the tall spire of a brightly patterned tent stood next to a smaller one, the canvas snapping in the strong breeze. More air cars flew overhead, and a few cambots hovered near her. She saw no natives anywhere in the vicinity. Morales’ troops, all of them, she knew, patrolled a short distance away.
Hunter led the way into the smaller tent, found Lori a seat at one of the tables, and she sat down slowly. A Kobi brought her a cup of hot tea from the mess area behind them, and coffee for Hunter. They waited for the native delegation to arrive.
Soon, someone pointed to the monitor nearby, and Lori watched as the native representative and his party arrived in a Pokoniry lighter, which landed not far from the north end of the larger tent. The Pokoniry ushered them inside. A small table faced a series of cloth-covered low tables that formed an oval, widest at the sides. The Pokoniry escort showed the “guests” to the table set with pitchers of water and some light food, but the head of the delegation of six ignored it, just looked up and down and around at the empty tent. The leader appeared to be one of the most polished and groomed natives Lori had ever seen, especially in contrast to the ones in the prison. His fur was slicked back and shone with oil or ointment of some sort. A badge of rank, probably, hung over his neck. Nothing else. His assistants, in contrast, were far less groomed, and all carried waist pouches, hand satchels, and some backpacks as well.
Lori let him stew there for a good ten minutes while she finished her tea, then signaled for the allied people to enter the main tent. They did so from the far end. First the Pokoniry, then the bigboys, moving to the right side. The Kobi followed going to the left side closest to the aliens. The natives stared at the strange looking beings, their heads swivelling from side to side as they looked at the alien creatures, who said nothing. Anawoka followed, even stranger creatures, stopping next to the Kobi, hopping up on short poles a half meter above the ground. Lori entered, with Hunter, Captain George and Major Morales, going to the chairs next to the bigboys on the right. They sat, looking straight ahead. Finally, the illi-illi arrived, walking in stiffly, and stopping at the center, directly across from the invitees. The natives stared at the illi-illi, murmuring to themselves, milling about, looking and acting nervous.
Before the planned program could begin, the head of the native delegation thumped the table, not hard, but forcefully enough to get everyone’s attention, and said something loudly. The translators at each species’ station immediately said, “I demand to know where I am.”
Lori flicked her eyes to the illi-illi, and nodded. One began chirping, and the translation began, to further compound the guests’ unease. “You are where you are, this will show you.” It pointed in the air in front of itself, where a large flat screen drifted down from the center of the roof of the tent, and, after a swirl of color, began to run a video. Lori and the others monitored it on the screens before them.
At first, it showed the delegation, milling about before being herded into a lighter. The scene moved off as the lighter lifted, and higher still, to show a broad expanse of the landscape, the villages and settlements disappearing as it went higher still. A yellow line began on the map, a straight path to a spot many kilometers to the southwest. Now the display zoomed in again, falling at a speed that produced vertigo in Lori, and who knows what in the natives.
Suddenly, the field clarified, the lighters and air cars scattered about, the big white square of the tent in the center. Through skillful editing, the scene melded inside, to slow and stop with the view of the alien himself on the screen. He stared at his image for a long minute. His mouth opened, but it said nothing. The screen drifted upward.
The illi-illi gave a brief welcoming statement, explaining the purpose of the meeting, and hoping it would be productive. It said, “As the guest, you may make a statement now, of your own, or wait for another time, if you wish.”
The alien moved forcefully up to the edge of the table, and said loudly, “I am Borrelia, sole representative of the Hierarchy, and spokesman for Prince T’ming, exalted highness, savior of the people, prince of the realm, explorer of space,” and the titles went on and on, most meaningless. Lori endure it, her eyes flicking off the display before her only when it said, “And Ambassador to all the new worlds.”
He began a tirade, demanding apologies, criticizing the arrival, without invitation, of the foreigners, as he called them, reparations for damage done to the prison, replacement of the destroyed space station, replacement of all damage and destroyed air and space craft, repair of two military bases, and monetary compensation for each person killed, injured, or lost, both numbers not translated, but obviously high. This went on for some 12 minutes, while the allied delegates listened, and from time to time glanced at Lori. She sent a message to all the monitors, one before each person, “Let him vent, then we will proceed as planned.” People eased back, watching the performance.
Finally, slamming a think document that one of his aides handed him onto the table with another loud thump, he finished, took one step back, folded his arms over his chest, and began to scan the group around him, craning his head forward and around.
Still, no one responded, or said anything at all. Borrelia fixed his glaze on the illi-illi that had spoken earlier, but soon found the futility in that. The illi-illi stared back, unmoving.
After five minutes or so, time slowly ticking by, Lori watching the clock on the screen, she spoke, without looking at Borrelia.
“Before you are here gathered representatives of all the intelligent races, known to each other. We are traders, and explorers, searching the galaxy and beyond, past the thinning of the stars, and into the empty voids beyond, seeking life and green planets. We find few, and treasure those we do.”
The Borrelia one shifted his head to look at her.
“Long ago, long before you were born, or any of us, the people decided that life is too precious to waste in conflict, and far too valuable to squander in combat. And over what?”
Now, she looked up, but not at him.
“We find that each species here has special talents. Some are stronger than others, some smarter. Some faster. Some more daring. All are courageous. What we know for sure, is that without the special talents and contributions of all here assembled, we would not be here. We would still be living on our own worlds, in much more primitive conditions. Together, we are stronger, faster, smarter, better, wealthier, healthier, and happier than we would be, or could be, separately and alone.”
Lori pointed to her far right, just to the left side of the natives. She said, “The Pokoniry are from the planet Florez. They developed the anti-gravity device which brought you here.” The four members stood, faced Borrelia, and squatted down again.
“Next to them are the bigboys, from the heavy gravity planet Seram Laut. They are known galaxy wide for their physical strength, and strength of honor and character, which set the example all others strive to meet.” The bigboys also stood up, looked intensely
at Borrelia, and squatted down again.
“I am of the human race, from the planet Earth. Our explorers found the other races long ago, and helped devise a system under which we all live in peace.” The men with Lori stood and stared hard at Borrelia. She did not. After they sat down, she held a hand out to the illi-illi to her left. They immediately leaped up onto the edge of the table, four dark, leggy shapes facing the natives.
“These are the illi-illi, of the planet Ixixil. Surely the most different, yet the most like the rest of us. They are known for their ability to build things, in space and on planets. And for their patience.”
The illi-illi all extended themselves upward on their six legs, then jumped back down again.
“The Anawoka may soar in the air, and are the most intelligent of all the races. They provide much of the translation of speech for all the others, a skill in which they excel. The words you are hearing are a result of their knowledge and ease with languages. Their planet is called Lucipara. It is one of a pair, twin planets. Together with the thinkers and builders, in cooperation with others, they are responsible for much of what you see around you.”
The Anawoka opened their wings halfway, gave them a shake, and fluffed them back down again.
“The Kobi, from the planet Kalimanta, provide the labor and the sheer muscle to make the lives of all the rest of us comfortable, and productive. Their commitment to meeting agreements is exemplary. They share one of two planets, locked in tight orbit, with the Anawoka.” The Kobi, too, stood, looked at the natives, and squatted again.
“A challenge awaits you. Are you, the Damai, now mature and courageous enough to put behind the selfish and immature actions of a small species, and do you wish to accept the opportunity, and the responsibilities, that await those greater species who join us in our trade and exploration across the vacuum between the stars? Or do you wish to remain here, locked in a universe you think of as your own, yet it is but a small fraction of what exists?”
T-47 Book II (Saxon Saga 6) Page 33
