Kexx was no elder of the faith, and didn’t feel qualified to question their proclamations, but ze still couldn’t shake the feeling that there wasn’t enough known about any of this for anyone to make such exacting, contradictory conclusions with the unflappable confidence the elders so often displayed.
A cool ocean breeze blew across Kexx, sending a small shiver through zer body. The skin on zer arms and in the folds of zer flattened headcrests was still damp from the water of the evening’s cleansing ritual. A new storm front was moving toward the village, ze knew the feeling in zer air bladders. Kexx held zer hands up into the wind and spread zer fingers to let the salty smell of the ocean play through them.
Something on the wind caught zer attention. An unfamiliar smell mingled with the aroma of the sea. Kexx spread zer arms wide, trying to get an indication of the direction the strange smell was coming from, but the wind had churned it up too much to get a bearing. It didn’t matter. A moment later, a warning howl pierced the night’s quiet. One of the uliks had spotted something, and it didn’t like what it saw one bit.
Kexx sprang up from the ground and grabbed the shaft of zer half-spear. The pack was a short run down the beach, flashing undulating waves of light over their skin in a typical threat display. Whatever the source of the smell was, it had spooked an entire ulik pack. Cautiously, Kexx crouched down and stalked off in their direction, the soft blue lights in zer skin shrinking down to pinpricks. The pack had arranged itself in a straight line on the beach facing the ocean, trying to make itself look as large and intimidating as possible.
Ze scanned the waves, looking for whatever had frightened the pack. Kexx spotted the hole in the water a moment later. A black void as dark as a cloudy night floated on the surface. It was easily as large as a bulo carcass. An enormous translucent triangular crest sprang from the creature’s back and billowed in the wind.
The pack leader’s skin-glow changed abruptly as the creature continued to approach without slowing. Its nerve broken, one ulik spun around and darted for the cover of the crop fields with the rest of the pack in hot pursuit. Kexx’s instincts screamed at zer to follow their example, but curiosity kept zer feet planted to the sandy beach. As long as ze stayed out of the water, the enormous creature was no threat.
That’s what Kexx kept saying to zerself as the creature plowed straight into the shore with enough force to gouge out a furrow in the sand. Thoroughly beached, the mysterious creature leaned onto its side with a shuddering gasp like creaking wood. With the muscles in zer legs tensed for a quick escape, Kexx watched the creature intently, quietly praying to Xis, or even Cuut, that it didn’t suddenly sprout legs and run zer down. For its part, the enormous nightmare remained motionless.
Animal calls drifted across the night air. Soft at first, confused, like someone waking up, but they grew in both volume and number. They were high pitched, almost like children. Even more bizarrely, they seemed to be coming from inside the beached creature.
Swallowing a gasp, Kexx gripped the shaft of the half-spear tightly as the first figure emerged from the creature. Silhouetted against the night sky, the figure looked too short to be an adult. It was more the size of an adolescent, much like the voice, but the proportions and the way it moved were… unnatural.
The single figure was quickly joined by two more, then four. Soon, more than a fullhand of them stood atop the creature’s back. Was it a creature at all? Before Kexx had time to ponder the question, a brilliant light erupted from one of the figure’s hands, so bright that Kexx had to shift zer gaze to avoid night blindness. Three others joined in, white light streaming from their hands like tiny suns, brighter and purer than any campfire. They swept the beams of light up and down the beach as if searching for something. Beams, Kexx realized, that looked very much like the thread of light reaching down from the new stars to the west.
Kexx dropped prone, making zerself as small as possible. No animal’s skin-glow was that bright. Whatever the strangers were, they weren’t G’tel, from another village on the road network, or even Dwellers. The realization raced through Kexx’s mind, leaving a wake of bone-gripping fear as it went. Too terrified to move, yet too curious to look away, Kexx studied the small creatures as they jumped down to the sand and made their way down the beach.
Now and then, one of the creatures shone its light on another while they talked, giving Kexx a clear view of them. Their skin was smooth and pale, like corpses, empty of the shifting patterns and colors of living flesh. Absent too was any skin-glow, except for the lights coming from their hands. They had two arms and two legs, but they were knobby, stiff. Their hands and feet were broad and flat. Long black strands covered the tops of their heads where display crests should be.
The group moved closer to Kexx’s hiding place. Had ze been spotted? Kexx held up a hand cautiously to sample the air. The strange smell that had drawn zer down to the beach was strong on the breeze, wafting off the creatures like a dux’ah at the height of mating season. They moved strangely on their rigid legs, haltingly and without fluidity. Everything about them screamed foreignness.
One of the creatures stopped suddenly and pointed their light beam directly into Kexx’s face. It was like staring into the midday sun. Kexx winced and threw a hand over zer eyes out of reflex. The creatures shouted at each other in alarm. Now there was no question that ze’d been spotted. Zer muscles shaking with panic, Kexx jumped up to zer full height and shook zer half-spear menacingly, hoping ze terrified them half as much as they did zer.
The one that had spotted zer stepped forward and hushed the rest, then signaled for them to spread out into a semicircle with Kexx at its center. Their coordination sent a trembling quake through Kexx’s muscles and joints. These were not merely clever animals like the ulik that had scattered into the night, their crests tucked tightly to their skulls. Nor were their sounds mere animal calls. The strangers were talking to each other, just as G’tel did, but in a tongue unlike any Kexx had ever heard. They were intelligent, and therefore, infinitely more dangerous.
The trading scale in Kexx’s mind tilted decisively from curiosity to retreat. Ze spun around toward the cover of the yulka field and took off at a dead run, but as soon as ze took the first step, one of zer toes caught on a root protruding from the sand, sending zer toppling onto the back face of the dune. Kexx reached out to break zer fall, but the ground rose up and knocked the wind from zer air sacks like a well-landed punch. Kexx watched in horror as zer half-spear rolled down the dune and out of reach.
Footsteps surrounded zer. Kexx flipped around and sat up just in time to see the strangers swarming down the dune from all directions at once. Even on the shifting sands and with their jerky gaits, they moved unnervingly fast. Kexx lunged down the dune and made a wild grab for zer spear, but one of the strangers had apparently moved to flank zer and snatched it up first. The circle closed around zer. Kexx held up zer hands while a pattern of slow glowing waves radiated across zer skin from zer chest out to zer fingers in the universal sign of submission.
At least Kexx hoped it was universal.
The stranger with Kexx’s spear stood at the ready, but didn’t point it at zer. That had to count for something. The one who’d discovered zer walked up slowly. Ze was smaller than the others, and softer somehow. Ze moved with more care and grace than the others, despite zer strange legs with their knobby protrusions. Ze stopped just short of where Kexx sat and held out an open hand. In zer other hand, Kexx saw a yellow cylinder and realized it, not their hands, was the source of the light beams. It was a… a tool?
Awe welled up inside Kexx’s chest in a way ze hadn’t felt since zer first cleansing ceremony, barely a year out of zer larval phase. These strangers had been sent by Varr, they must’ve been. Who else had the power to capture a piece of the sun? Kexx put zer hands flat and dropped zer forehead to the sand and started to chant a prayer, but this seemed to confuse and upset the strangers more than anything.
The small stranger standing in front of
Kexx shook her head in a gesture Kexx didn’t recognize, then held out zer open hand again.
“Watashin onamae ha Mei Nakama desu. Onamae wa?”
Kexx stared up at the stranger uncomprehendingly. Ze wasn’t even sure zer mouth could mimic the sounds. The stranger’s face twisted up in an expression Kexx couldn’t interpret. Then, ze pointed a single finger back at zer own chest.
“Mei,” ze said simply.
“Mmm,” Kexx struggled to wrap zer mouth around the unnatural sound. “Mmuaeee?”
The stranger’s mouth tugged up at the corners. “Hai! Mei.” Ze tapped a finger on zer chest for emphasis, then pointed back at Kexx and paused expectantly.
A name. “Mei” was the stranger’s name. And now ze was asking for a name in return.
“Kexx,” ze said quietly.
“Kex,” Mei repeated, clipping the end and changing the meaning to a reddish, inedible fungus, but it was probably closer than ze had gotten to saying Mei properly on the first try.
“Kexx,” ze repeated back to Mei. The corners of the stranger’s mouth tugged up again, wider this time. Wide enough to make creases in zer cheeks. Then, without warning, the pale little stranger lunged forward and wrapped zer arms around Kexx’s shoulders. A hug. Ze was being hugged.
Kexx hugged the peculiar little creature named Mei back, and laughed in relief. Mei joined zer. They laughed together for a long time.
Two
Tau Ceti G, (Human designation: Gaia), Local Standard Year 3 pl (Post Landing)
Benson blew his whistle, then stepped onto the field. “Pass Interference. Defense. Number twenty-one.”
“What?” Korolev yelled. “I just pushed him out of the way.”
“Yeah,” Benson shouted. “That’s pass interference. You can’t interfere with an eligible receiver if they have a chance to make a fair catch outside of the first five meters.”
“But I’m supposed to keep them from catching the ball. That’s my whole job!”
“Yes, but… just not like that.”
“That doesn’t make any sense, chief.”
Benson threw up his arms. “Hey, I’m just reading out of the rulebook, OK? I didn’t write it. Now are we playing football or not?”
The twenty-two men wandering around the makeshift “field” murmured general agreement that they were in fact playing football and reset for the next down.
“OK, put the ball at the spot of the foul on the twenty seven-meter line,” Benson said.
“The twenty-seven?” Korolev objected. “That’s like a thirty meter penalty!”
“That’s the rule.”
“So I can get a late hit on the quarterback or drill a guy out of bounds and only get fifteen meters, but if I touch him in the open field before he touches the ball, it could be ninety meters?”
“I suppose, if your quarterback has a laser for an arm,” Benson admitted.
“That’s dumb.”
“That’s the game. Now c’mon, we’ve only got three more practices before we play the Dervishes.”
“I miss Zero,” their middle linebacker, Lindqvist, muttered. He was a Nordic mountain of a man who would have been better served by the universe if he’d been born in an age when breaking a wooden shield with a single ax swing was a highly prized skill.
“We all do,” Benson snapped. “But the Zero stadium is a little busy right now shipping food and supplies to keep all of us fat and happy, OK? It’s either this or soccer, kiddies.”
A chorus of groans let Benson know what the consensus on that possibility was.
“That’s what I thought. Now c’mon, line up on the twenty-seven!”
Coach Benson tucked the tablet he’d been referencing under an arm and watched the scene unfold. Tau Ceti G’s… Gaia’s first organized sports league was only five days away from its opening game, and American-style football was about to come roaring back from a two-and-a-half century hiatus. Sure, the old player stats and records from the days of the NFL and IAFL weren’t any good on a new planet with only ninety-five percent Earth gravity, but they’d decided to jettison the anachronistic imperial yard in favor of the slightly longer meter for the field, which would hopefully account for the lighter gravity to some degree.
After two weeks of practice, one thing was abundantly clear. Even in the lighter gravity, they had a long way to go before the old records were in any danger. Benson only hoped the coaches of the Dervishes, Yaoguai, and Spartans were experiencing similar setbacks.
Not that their trials should have come as any great surprise. Each of the four teams was only afforded an hour of practice per day on the single playing field. Acreage inside humanity’s rapidly-growing colony of Shambhala came at a premium, and Benson had called in more than one favor to get the field built in the first place. Professional players back on Earth drilled and trained as a fulltime job. Benson’s players were former Zero players, farm hands, construction techs, and one skinny-ass software coder who had somehow been graced with a leg that could kick a football through the uprights from almost sixty meters out, so long as the wind wasn’t blowing, which it nearly always was.
The play clock resumed, and the quarterback started his snap-count.
“Blue forty-two. Hut, hut. Hike!”
He’d barely dropped back into the pocket before Benson blew his whistle again.
“Holding. Offense. Number thirty. Ten meter penalty.”
“That’s bullshit,” Hoffman, playing number thirty, said. “Why is it ten meters when the offense gets called for a hold, but only five when the defense holds?”
Benson shook the rules tablet in the air angrily.
“I don’t fucking know, OK? It’s football, it’s not supposed to make sense! Now just move the ball back, we’re burning daylight.”
Forty-five sweaty and profanity-laden minutes later, the Mustangs’ practice was over, just in time for the Spartans to take their turn on the field. Benson slapped shoulders and gave a round of congratulations to his new team, then turned down the path toward his home. The setting sun hung low on the horizon, shining ever so slightly more brightly in his left eye.
The vat-grown eye, courtesy of Doctor Russell, was just a bit more sensitive than his right. It, along with extensive burns on his hands and face, as well as a lungful of plutonium dust, were the keepsakes he’d earned fighting an utter madman named David Kimura and his patron among the crew, Avelina da Silva. The lunatic had detonated one of the small implosion-triggered nukes the Ark used for propulsion. Only a stray bullet from Benson’s gun denting the explosive shell surrounding the plutonium pile inside had prevented it from going nuclear, throwing out a huge fireball of conventional explosives and a cloud of vaporized plutonium in the process.
However, considering he’d saved all of humanity in the process, Benson considered the injuries a fair trade. Like his eye, Dr Russell had expertly healed his burns and lungs. Only an occasional itching under the skin of his left cheek where the nerves in his clone skin grafts hadn’t quite lined up remained to remind him of the damage he’d sustained in the fight.
Still, some nights, it was enough. Certain kinds of wounds ran deeper than flesh.
He shook off the thought as he turned onto the city’s central boulevard. Not for the first time, Benson marveled at how quickly Shambhala had grown. It wouldn’t be long before walking from one end of the city to the other wouldn’t be feasible. Public transit would be needed before long. The politicians were already fighting over the whats and wheres.
Benson glanced into the Bay of Landing where the space elevator’s anchor station floated. Its thin, carbon-nanotube ribbon shimmered in the deep red-orange hues of sunset as it reached tens of thousands of kilometers up to the Ark floating in the null-g of geosynch. Benson’s beloved Zero stadium had reverted to its original purpose: a dock and maintenance bay for elevator cars, as well as a warehouse and staging area for all the people, material, and supplies that continued to move back and forth between the Ark and the planet on a near-dail
y basis. Continue up some tens of thousands of kilometers more and the Pathfinder probe sat, now serving as the elevator system’s counterweight.
Humanity’s home for the last two and a third centuries had undergone a metamorphosis since it arrived in orbit around Gaia. Its three kilometer-long pleated conical meteor shield had been ejected just before decelerating for the Tau Ceti system. Only a handful of helium-three tanks still studded the outside of the reactor bulb, enough to fuel the ship’s fusion reactors for another fifteen years, at most. Only five thousand people remained behind to maintain its systems and tend the farms. Its stockpile of nuclear bombs all but exhausted, it would never move again, save for the occasional station-keeping thruster firing. The Ark had been reborn as a space station.
However, this new role was no less important than its original one. While the majority of mankind had moved down to Gaia’s surface over the last three years, Shambhala was still dependent on the immense ship’s fusion generators for power, her navigational lasers to deflect the Tau Ceti system’s population of asteroids, and what remained of its farmland for food.
As a posthumous gift to mankind, Avelina da Silva, the genius geneticist who had been in charge of the team adapting food crops to Atlantis’s biosphere and the woman who had nearly succeeded in killing every last human alive, had sabotaged the first batches of staple crop seeds with time-bombs hidden in their DNA that turned the plants into black sludge less than a month after germination. Their best scientists were still busy cleaning up the mess, damn her.
Benson took a moment to admire human tenacity. Despite possibly the best example of Murphy’s Law since the phrase had been coined, in less than three years their beachhead on Gaia had grown from a handful of tents and latrines huddled around the first landing shuttles to a fully functional and expanding city of twenty-five thousand people, complete with power, running water, sewers, networked data systems and a desalinization plant, all with a workforce that had been cut by two fifths just a month before they’d arrived.
[Children of a Dead Earth 01.0] The Ark Page 33