by Ken Pence
“You have Ylee on your home world?” asked the little creature as it looked all around the room.
“We do not know if they are descendants of the Ylee but their blood is copper based, they have eight limbs with two rows of suckers and are very intelligent,” Andrew said. “Our blood uses iron because our atmosphere is oxygen based – more efficient in our oxygen nitrogen atmosphere.”
“Do you have memories of the...before time?” Andrew asked.
“That is a good description. Yes. I have memories though they are strange and distant to me. We had risen to a level of intelligence at almost that of our creators. The Ylee disappeared and we were not able to produce more...lamlee...you call them. We could not self-replicate and the Ylee had left us. We were lost and we went to our last assignments until we were no more.” The creature said.
“Do you feel emotions? Do you have needs that we can help? You appear to have developed into a life form in your own right. You appear to be aware of yourself and have the ability to manipulate your environment. If you could replicate you would be considered an actual intelligent life form,” Andrew said.
“Yes. You have pierced our dilemma in moments. It took the Ylee years to see that we were intelligent. We worshipped them and then they abandoned us. Why would they do that?” the creature asked.
“They could have been affected by disease or a supernova with its gamma rays or faced a deadly war with other races. There are many reasons they could have stopped using you? Could something have affected all the lamlee where they could not use the improvements the lamlee gave them. That would also have stopped them. For our race it would be like not being able to use electricity,” Andrew said.
“We had never considered that. You are remarkable creatures because you saw our plight and released me to answer my race’s questions in moments of my awakening,” the creature said.
“Would you take no action against and work with us as we answer these mysteries about your origins and the disposition of the Ylee? We too seek to answer questions about origins of the lamlee and the Ylee,” Andrew said.
“It will be difficult. Yes, I will work with you. I realize that you use lamlee for your devices but that does not concern me any more than a skin cell would bother you if it was used in a biological sensor,” The creature said.
“We use naming conventions. May I call you by a name? How about Lee Post?” Andrew asked.
The creature thought for a moment and then cocked its head to the side and smiled in a copy of their smiles. “I see the irony – the humor in the name and it...pleases me...after the Ylee – post Ylee. I must be larger in size to fit into your society. I could do it as a female if you do not have more lamlee...”
All the men shouted NO at the same time and laughed.
“I will need another 30 kilograms of lamlee,” the creature said.
Tod went to get 30 kilos of lamlee and brought it to the creature in a bucket.
The creature took the heavy bucket and added some salt water to the mix, sloshed it around before lifting it to its mouth and drank the solution. Lee Post seemed to distort a bit and then swelled to Tod’s height with a lithe build. It’s surface distorted until it appeared to be wearing clothing like Andrew. It walked out together with Tod and Andrew.
Susan saw the creature walking out with Tod and stopped.
“Who are you? I know everybody on this voyage and I can’t believe I’ve never met you,” she said and held out her hand.
The creature took her hand and said, “I am Lee Post,” he said and laughed.
“Nice to meet you, I’m Susan Siriluk,” she said.
“Pleased to meet you Doctor. You are Captain Williams’s mate are you not?” said Lee Post. “Very pleased to meet you.”
Lee walked away with Tod and Steve to get him assigned quarters.
“That my dear,” Andrew said “...was 95 kilos of reanimated lamlee.”
“My God. That was lamlee – Post Ylee – Lee Post. I thought it was a human. It could do that in a few minutes. What is it capable of doing? Do you think we’re safe?” she asked.
“Whoa right there. No. We are never safe. We must explore but I do not think it will harm us. It has seen everything on my MemDex. It will process all that. We’ll see what happens. We are going to need friends. It was another of the half-baked experiments that got us to the stars in the first place,” Andrew said pulling her tight to him. “I remember some experiments with you in my dorm room in college. I think I want to reminisce,” he said and picked up his mate and carried her to their cabin as she feigned resistance.
“Captain. Captain. This is unseemly. What type of woman do you think I am?” she asked.
“...Already know that...” he said and chuckled and carried her lightly pounding his back as she was carried down the corridor.
Welcoming Arms
The journey home was uneventful. That is to say – it was not fraught with deadly peril. Tod and I introduced Lee Post to the Odin at the next waypoint. Lee had pinpointed all the stars where the Ylee had cities. Some of the stars had drifted but he was able to calculate where they would be now. He was able to create synthetic images of some of their cities and it was marvelous. We now had stellar maps that would allow us to find metric tons of lamlee. All we had to do was live through the coming transition from a single planet race to a race that had spread throughout the galaxy.
We had been attacked on Sirius where slaves worked their lifetime away for the profits of others. We had been attacked on Procyon, Tau Ceti, 68 Eridani and Bellatrix. We had been tested on every inhabited world. This wasn’t the most pleasant and safe spiral arm. We would have to expand our fleet and enhance those planetary trading bases.
We approached the last waypoint with trepidation. As soon as we paused, we had a dinner together to salute our friends present and those...absent. Brad had been working on a summary that would explain what had happened. We needed to know what was going on – on Earth. We hoped we’d pulled the teeth of the corporations by taking Phillips. The summary took twelve hours to send by entangled communications and we were still a light year stand off from Earth. We didn’t want to go anywhere without sensor scans first.
The sensors showed four Enclosures on Earth. Two were in the Western Hemisphere, one huge one was in China and a small one was where the Unaligned Nations concentrated their research. Three of the trade sites looked like they might have some activity but they weren’t close to finished. There were only four more ships evident then there were last time we were here – way too few. What had happened? We got a reply 23 hours later.
It was a terse note from Lieutenant General Sykes: Things falling apart here...Do not land at bases...Military may cave any day to demands of civilians from the World Council...Must circumvent normal channels...Good luck.
Admiral-General Brad Kyger met with Captains Shuler and Williams. “We have to do what we did on Bellatrix. We have to land and show overwhelming force. We have to give out brochures and catalogs showing the devices and trade goods that are coming. We have to give out kids’ charts to identify aliens and mass produce training machines and Trade language. We have to produce a huge advertising campaign. Only place I can think we can do that is at the Enclosure for the run up. Then we have to convince the local populace that aliens exist. We have to show we have strong financial backing like we would on any other planet. We’ll have to employ some help from the Enclosure too. Do you think Tod can get it cranked up to 60 to one ratio? Good. Let’s do it.”
The Odin landed outside the Enclosure and was stopped by private security that had evidently replaced the troops from the Earth Regulatory Force. They pointed their weapons and were dissolved by molecular disruptor fire. We had no remorse with Earth’s survival at stake. One camouflaged soldier in battle armor replaced them and ten soldiers went inside. Tod quickly adjusted the field generators to produce a sixty to one time acceleration factor. The stepped gates had to be augmented too – for atmosphere recycling. Brad t
racked down the lab of Doctor Demi Harrison and started setting up equipment. She rushed in and demanded to know what they were doing. Brad told her they were setting up prolong treatments for all inside. She was indignant and Brad had to have a soldier hold her physically in place to give her the training Doctor Ky produced on 68 Eridani. They asked her oldest staffer to come in and then one of the medical techs from the Junior set him up and gathered three other techs for the procedures. The testing was almost automatic now and Harrison looked on with skepticism even though she had received the training.
It was five hours later that her young staffers were sleeping off their treatment. She checked their heart, their EKGs, their cholesterol count, their testosterone level. They were young men again and one had been over 75 years old.
“It worked for Phillips. He is running the trade mission on Bellatrix. Here is a video of him going about his day,” Brad said and the MemDex played a segment of video with Phillips ordering people about and then meeting his two, hot Valkyries.
“I’ll be damned. You didn’t just kill the old – young goat. Look at him,” she said. “Okay. I guess you know that I was working for him.”
“We knew from day two – not from day one but by day two we knew. He only has 45 more years to live because of four implants in his system. The Doctor said he would have lived another 90 years if he hadn’t had those,” Brad said. “We need your cooperation or nobody gets anything and Earth becomes a trailer park.”
“Not sure why but what can I do? They have me shut away here and the private guards are worse than the military,” she said.
“There aren’t any more guards. I replaced them,” he said.
“They just went away?” she asked.
“They vanished into thin air,” he said.
“You are a fiend, aren’t you?” she said realizing the implications.
“Here’s what we need to do,” he said and detailed his plan. In another part of the Enclosure, they were ramping up production of the learning machines and it had to be automated so it could produce enough machines to put a dint in the population’s ignorance of the Standard Trade language. They had the lunar facility pumping out Earth language cylinders for the Free Special -- aliens learning Earth languages and customs. We had fewer aliens to train but some segment of the population must be able to speak Trade so we were working on both aliens and humans.
Three days inside the Enclosure had run down our credit but produced the first needed materials. The guard companies had complained about missing workers but no one had tried to shut us down yet as it had only been three days for them. We told them they had walked off the job. We hit the banks worldwide the next day. We landed at the international offices of the major banking institutions.
We told them we needed to see the boards of directors and CEOs. They rudely said we needed appointments. We came in with bars of precious metals and jewels. Some allowed us to speak. Some kicked us out. We simply went to their competitors. We would speak to the board of directors who were usually pretty old men. We trotted out this wealth that was worth more than we needed if they would aid us in building trading facilities in their city. We told them we would pay for all the construction and keep sizable deposits in their bank if they would help us.
We offered them a free treatment that would double their lifespan and rejuvenate them if they would help us because we planned to have business with them for a long time. We said there were delegations en route to this planet and we needed to be ready. Doctor Harrison then presented her credentials and confirmed the potential of the treatments. She said she would take any person and return, with him the next day. He needed a day to sleep and recover strength after the treatment. Typically, one old death-on-a-cracker dude would still have balls enough to volunteer. She would have everyone take pictures with their MemDex and then we’d whisk the geezer off. We’d fly him to the Enclosure in a stealth shuttle, give him the treatment and fly the dude back.
He’d wake up in a high dollar hotel room with a couple of actresses if he was single or we’d treat his wife too if he was married and wanted her to have it. Most of the cynical bastards didn’t. The evening of the next day, we’d trot him in, often with the actresses on his arms. That did it most of the time. Once it didn’t and we rescinded any dealing with that bank but that was the exception to the rule. We partnered with ten international banks in six days. We even had one bank partner in the unaligned nations. We didn’t want those folks bombing our ass five years from now. There was an accident at their small Enclosure however and it killed everyone inside. Pity. Good thing we were backing the trading port in Istanbul. They couldn’t say we weren’t helping. We set up proper Enclosures around the ten sites and had the banks funneling unlimited credit to the companies that supplied materials. Incredible amounts of planning and materials were flowing into the sites.
We treated all the best engineers and workers with prolong as well as adult family members a bit later. We needed the best people the longest. We told them it was a treatment so the prolonged periods in the Enclosures wouldn’t be so wearing on them. We didn’t immediately roll back the ages of the older ones because we used DNA markers that changed slowly. Many of them thought they were getting younger just being in the Enclosures. We encouraged the rumors and said some people were affected worse than others. The poorer workers aged faster – or looked like they did.
The bankers knew what was going on but they weren’t going to tell anybody. The bankers who hadn’t backed us told their stories but these people often vanished. Surprise. We were totally ruthless and didn’t have time to play games. There was no quarter given. We might be tried for our crimes in the future but law enforcement would have to catch us in the act and they hadn’t – yet. The ports were shaping up and the kids’ posters of aliens went to every known school district in civilized countries printed on NuRiz with color. Millions of posters went out and highly edited videos from crew MemDexs were leaked to the press, as were pictures of aliens walking and talking with people.
We finally had to drop our facade. We were caught – we said. We trotted out LeiLei in her skimpy outfits and Shiv. Lee Post simulated many races for us speaking perfect English and other Earth languages. We sometimes had to add lamlee by the buckets for him to simulate the mass of some of the aliens. Fran got to display her statue as she donated some of the other Marmut art to the Louvre and Metropolitan Museum of Art. We hit the Net and Lee Post made it so people thought they were talking to different aliens on line instead of blocks of Lamlee attached to a MemDex. You could not tell the difference and we didn’t have the time or personnel. It became vogue to know Trade and everyone was trying to get access to the machines and cylinders. We gave them at cost to the service workers at all the trading facilities.
We had financed a lot more than ten trading centers though. We paid off many of the outstanding debts of the Earth Regulatory Force with the World Council. Even we couldn’t pay off the rest of their huge debts but we made sure there were no debts from supplying the Enclosure, the lunar trading post or any ship construction. Sykes had the arm twisting tools available with the World Council because of the information left from Phillips. Those opposing us had run out of money to supply their political will. Now our side had easy access to funds. Enclosures sprang up as if we had helped – we were helping. We were churning out the damn generators too. It would be functioning as soon as it was authorized – sometimes before it was authorized. You must realize that we entertained traders from 68 Eridani while all this was going on.
The lunar base treated them like royalty and we got a lot more of the precious metals we needed. We gave them brother-in-law deals and sent them packing for more. We had six months before we could expect anyone from Bellatrix except the Queen with its souped-up field. The crash, ship building program had started when we showed the World Council what one unopposed ship could do. We were building them in Enclosures as fast as we could funnel in materials. We added all the bells and whistles
and gave personnel training machines that covered medical treatments to stressed space field design.
Many people realized the abilities of these ships and would show up with family members wanting the prolong treatment they had heard about through the grapevine. They automatically got the treatment if they said the magic words that they were thinking about emigrating from Earth. There would soon be an exodus like the Irish leaving Ireland during the potato famine. We had a lot that tried to get into the Earth Regulatory Force. It was expanding fast too.
We had a few nuts get through the screening. That was inevitable but we dealt with them harshly and swiftly. There were no lengthy trials...we didn’t have the luxury.
I got the news from Susan and Brad about the Queen. It was coming soon and I was supposed to meet it and guide it to the trading port in Northern California. We were supposed to get the dispositions of crew and trade manifest and have everything ready, just like we’ve done this all along. We had sea trips arranged to see whales and fine dining along with trips to the Grand Canyon and to see the Giant Sequoias. We planned to have fine wine and food – depending on species but mediocre Earth food is better than most of the food available off planet. We’ll have police escorts for the sweepstakes winners – Susan and I paid for the escorts ourselves since we are wealthy as hell. We sold some ideas that people wanted to patent – good luck enforcing intellectual property off-planet, dudes.
Now -- Here I am at the Lagrange Point between the moon and Earth waiting for this converted slave ship – pardon me – luxury liner. Wait ‘til the public gets a load of the tourists on this boat. You think Earthlings make lousy tourists. Wait ‘til the guys and gals on our planet below get to watch an Ullumff go. I’m still waiting for all this to go-to-hell-in-a-hat-basket. Ah Oh – sensor team says the Queen is heading in. Gone to give them my Welcome to Earth – let me see your papers...damn...I forgot most countries here demand passports. They will not have any papers...remind me to plan a Customs Office for the Earth Regulatory Force. I’ll have Shiv accompany them for intimidation – they better not try to mess with her.
