He cocked his head at her words.
“Doesn’t he look like a bird when he does that?” Nako asked softly.
“How old do you think he is?” I asked her.
“He might be our age, but he’s way too capable and confident. You saw how he threw that man down on the road. He must be older than us.”
“I think he’s around the same age?” I told her.
“Could be,” Nako agreed, she gave me a curious look. “He is an alien, after all, Atoma. They might live for hundreds of years.”
The boy tilted his head, his eyes dancing over me.
I felt my cheeks redden and turned away from his gaze.
38
Not Different
“Isn’t it weird how they have words that could just as well be from an Earth language?” Nako asked.
“Why is it weird they speak words?” I asked.
“Oh, come on,” Nako exclaimed. “It is not a coincidence that I can speak a whole sentence that they recognize. That can’t be mere chance.”
“I suppose not,” I said. “They are human like us. It’s not like they have six legs and a tail. So, of course, they are going to have a language.”
“The double pupils are definitely freaky, you have to admit,” she replied. “The gangly body is strange, and how about their hair?”
“I’ve seen photos of people with double pupils just like these on the Net,” I told her. “It’s always explained away as a mutation.”
“It’s the hair, Atoma. Flat hair isn’t human.”
“How do you know?” I asked. “They are not even from our galaxy. They live in a different environment. The low gravity might explain why they are all so tall and slim. The hair must be an adaptation to something else we don’t know about yet.”
“Do you think we could have babies with them?” Nako asked. “That’s would be the real decider, wouldn’t it?”
“It’s a bit earlier to go down that road, don’t you think?” I asked with a nervous laugh.
Nako rolled her eyes.
“I’m sure you’ll think more about that as time goes on.”
The boy’s mother called us and gestured that we should join the boy at a low table on a raised platform in the center of the room. She gestured for us to sit on the flat cushions on the floor next to where the boy sat and we did. Then she set down steaming bowls of broth in front of us.
The brown liquid smelled of mushroom and a whiff of fish. We watched the boy and his mother for a while before we took a sip. They took a gulp of broth ate a handful of the large fluffy white blobs from a bowl the woman had placed in the center of the table.
I picked up the bowl and tried not to inhale. I was going to need some time to get used to the aroma of the soup.
“Look happy while you eat it,” Nako advised.
“There you go again,” I told her. “Why do we bother to whisper?”
She ignored me and took a sip.
“If you hold your breath while you sip it’s not too bad,” she said.
The white blobs looked like nothing so much as the old-time popcorn I had seen in holovids. They tasted bland by themselves, but good enough eaten with the pungent soup.
I watched her as tipped the bowl to get the last gulp then pause. She stared at what was left of her meal, let at a wail and ran outside. I could hear her throwing up on the road.
Lying in the puddle on the tabletop among the broken pieces of crockery was a long gray and very dead fat worm. The biggest damn caterpillar I had ever seen. My stomach heaved, but I stayed put as the boy and his mother turned in concern to catch a glimpse of Nako.
She was shaking when she came back inside.
“We got to do this, don’t we?” She muttered as she sat down beside me and stared at the remains of her meal. “This is what we are going to be eating, isn’t it?”
The mother had done what mothers do when accidents happen and swept the tabletop clean.
Nako gazed at the wiped surface.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Who are you thanking?” I asked gently.
“Whoever took that horrible thing away and saved me from having to eat it. Not today, anyway.”
The woman returned and holding a large crockery ball with four straws protruding from the side. The boy took a sip.
We watched the orange liquid run up the straw.
He turned with a smile for Nako and pointed at a straw.
The woman gestured to Nako to take a sip. When she saw her guest hesitate, she rubbed her stomach and made a cooing sound.
“Here we go again,” Nako grumbled, but she took a small sip while I watched.
“It’s not too bad,” she said.
“It doesn’t taste strange?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“It’s juice, and it tastes yummy.”
I took a cautious sip.
“I told you,” she said. “It’s good, isn’t it?”
We nodded our approval to our hosts and saw the relief on their faces.
After our meal, the woman showed us to a long narrow room with a pale glow coming from the glowing ceiling and walls. There was enough light for us to see what we were doing.
Two thin mattresses waited for us on the smooth soft floor. Shiny woven material with ornate geometric patterns decorated the covers. Although the beds did not look all that comfortable, they gave off an aroma of fresh herbs that was pleasant. I lay down and felt a warmth radiate from the mattress. In no time, my body relaxed for the first time since I landed on Attaapa. My mind though was going to need a little more persuasion.
“We’re in trouble,” I said to Nako.
“What makes you say that?” She asked.
“Didn’t that parade we saw tonight look like a war party returning home to you?”
“Mm,” she replied. “Hopefully we are on the winning side.”
39
Bravado
The orange sun was already high above the horizon when I woke. I could hear squawks, clicks, and voices of birds outside our window. When I peered through the egg-shaped opening in the wall that served as a window I saw there were people outside. I snuck out of bed and peeped around the corner of the door-less bedroom.
The house was empty. I walked to the front doorway onto the street. A man sat cross-legged under the awning with his back to the wall. He stared up at me with wide eyes before jumping to his feet.
I saw a more cautious crowd of onlookers further down the street. They were standing in a semi-circle not more than two yards from us. I suppose it seemed to them to be a safe enough distance from the aliens.
As I stood watching, the group parted and a small entourage came through. The boy and his mother were several paces behind an officious looking older woman and two surly looking older men. All three were dressed in long flowing robes.
One of the two men was powerfully built with staring eyes that were fierce to behold. He had a beard that had a bluish tint, and like the boy’s father was pleated to a point above his thick chests. The other man was skinny with a definite bookish look.
The party stopped in front of me.
The boy and his mother zipped past the stern-faced trio and hurried into the house. When they came out again they carried our spacesuits bundled in their arms. With great care and frequent glances at Nako and I, perhaps in case, we should become enraged, they laid our suits on the long bench at the front of the house. The three strangers walked up and down the bench, stopping sometimes to lift an arm of a suit, or to run their hands over the material.
A crowd that gathered around us talking in excited half-whispers, pointing at the two of us and at the suits.
We did our best to ignore them, and they kept their distance from us and the three guests, but their numbers were quickly building.
The bookish man peered into the metal ring of the neck to get a closer view of the interior. He wrinkled his nose at the clinging stale smell of body odor, and deciding not to bother exami
ning the suit any further, he dropped it back onto the bench and straightened up.
The old woman had turned to the boy’s mother and spoke rapidly, her voice carrying a machine gun quality. Clearly, she did not intend to be interrupted until she had finished all she had to say. The boy’s mother bowed and went quickly back into the house. When she came back out, our bedding was rolled and bound in her arms. She and the boy headed off up the road without a second glance in our direction.
She pointed to the house, then at the boy, and she waved her hand before her face. She looked up the road and pointed up the road to a group of smaller houses.
“I get that seeing the two of us, together with the boy in the same house, isn’t working for the old lady,” I said to Nako.
The officious woman turned to the boy’s mother and spoke rapidly, her voice carrying the harsh staccato quality of a machine gun firing. Clearly, she did not intend to be interrupted until she had finished all she had to say. The boy’s mother bowed and went quickly back into the house. When she came back out, our bedding was rolled and bound in her arms. She and the boy headed off up the road without a second glance in our direction.
Later they would take us by the hands like we were small children and lead us to a small house where they had carried our bedding.
We were greeted at the door by the scar-faced woman. She gave us a polite nod of her head, but she barely looked at Nako and I as she led us to our room.
40
An Audience of Elders
The older houses in the town were made almost entirely of wood. Next to them were the newer structures built mostly of stone and ceramic tiles. The windows were egg-shaped with no glass, instead there were wooden shutters pulled back against the walls. The doorways were high and narrow and without any doors. There were no doors inside the house either, and this made their homes beautifully airy.
Although our new home was almost bare of furnishings and of a smaller size, it was otherwise no different to the house we had left. There was a stone oven beneath a chimney at one end of the main living space, and a raised platform with a low table where we would eat our meals in the center. Our bedroom ran off the side of the living room and I guessed the Scarface’s bedroom ran off the other end. In this way, the house formed a squared U shape around an oblong courtyard. The courtyard was closed off from the neighbor's house by a stone wall.
Not far from the house, the main street ran into a road encircling the hill with the steps we had seen the soldiers ascend the night before. At the far end of the street was the gate with the two watchtowers at the entrance to the village.
Our destination turned out to be the administration building of the village. These looked like the kind of place where meetings were held for large numbers of people. It was a long building that followed the curve of the circular road. It was with a doubt the most impressive building we had seen in the village. It stood two floors high and was built of polished wood. Every surface inside and outside the ornate structure was so clean of dust that it shone.
“Look at all these people they have cleaning and sweeping!” Nako said as we passed by people furiously polishing the wooden surfaces.
I hadn’t noticed. People doing mundane things became invisible after a few minutes. Attaapa was no different to Earth like that.
“It must be cleaning day,” I said.
We walked through the middle of the building to a large courtyard where we found an audience of some fifty people. They sat on mats before a stepped stage with two levels. At the top, a line of eleven somber looking figures sat on cushions. In the center of the line, the same muscular older man with the pointy beard we had seen with the other two officials examining the spacesuits.
Scarface led us to the back of the stage and pointed to a set of stairs. We found ourselves on the first level, looking down on the audience. We could see the anticipation in their faces and it made us nervous. They were not pointing and staring like those who had gathered at the front of the house in the morning. They were all older men and women and they sat with straight backs, full of their own authority.
The meeting carried on throughout the afternoon without any letup. We were on display like prime livestock. Perhaps freaks described the way they saw us better. Two women led us back down the stairs and through the gathering so that they could better gawk at our legs, our feet, and our hands. Then the two women they led us back to the stage, lifted our hair and took strands they examined under sheets of crystal. At first, they looked excited by the fine cylindrical hairs, but their fascination turned increasingly to worried looks shared between them and the line of stern-faced officials on the platform above us.
Three specialists were called to the stage. We knew they were surely specialists because they brought with them long flat boxes of instruments and placed them on the low table. They started with Nako, holding her hands and placing them on what looked like a flat gray bar with deep slits along one end.
They slotted several rectangular slivers of crystal into the instrument and peered at Nako’s hand through the slides. They swapped the slides out while they watched a pattern of colored light playing across the surface of each.
The crowd chirped in excitement. It was my turn, and they did the same to me. When they were finished with our hands, they started pulling at my clothes. I brushed my assailant away.
He gave me a small bow and pointed to the sash my waist that held my tunic in place. When I didn’t respond he tugged at the material.
“Nako, are they wanting to see us naked?”
“I’ve had enough of this,” she shouted. “Let’s throw them over the side of this stage headfirst.”
I gave the examiner standing in front of me a hard push. I watched in astonishment as he tumbled to the flagstones below the stage as though he might be a child toppled from their chair.
Laughter rose from the audience.
The three examiners were not going to give in easily, and they turned to Nako, bowing to her even as they reached out to her sash.
This was not going to be pretty.
She yelled in fury and kicked her assailant off the stage. The man hit on the hard stones of the courtyard hard. But the low gravity prevented what would surely have been a terrible injury on Earth. He got to his feet, rubbing his shins in obvious pain and stared up at Nako in bewilderment.
“Earth’s gravity gave us stronger muscles than they have,” Nako said in delight. “Oh, yes, you bastards! Feel our power.”
“Careful,” I said. “We don’t know how they are going to react.”
“I know how I’m going to react if they try that again,” she said.
“Let’s stand back-to-back,” I said knowing we faced overwhelming odds but inspired by Nako’s fiery defense. “That should show them we are more trouble than it’s worth.”
A woman in the crowd cupped her hands to her face and called to the eleven sitting above us.
The large man with the pointy beard rose to his feet and clapped his hands.
A hush descended on the courtyard.
We were bustled back down the stairs and out to a side room where a group of women put us through the whole routine again. This time we allowed them to remove our clothing.
They checked our strange bodies with barely a word spoken to each other. When they were done examining us, Scarface appeared to take us back to her house.
As we left the large chamber of village elders, we could hear a babble of voices inside as a debate unfolded. Without a doubt, they argued over what to do with us.
The lives of two Zeros lay in the long hands of aliens on a planet shaped like a donut.
41
Friends or Foes?
Chief Omatajinata stroked his pointed beard as he always did when lost in thought. He preferred listening to summaries rather than sitting in a meeting. He was restless and constantly shifted his weight on the cushion. He wanted to get on his feet to pace to and fro across the stage. However, the sight of the esteemed ele
cted chief of the village pacing before the council like a rumbustious warrior would only unsettle the elders.
Meetings were a chore he barely tolerated and particularly those that included the elders. Many of them were only there because their seniority and standing entitled them and they had nothing better to do. Many were too old and were incapable of working through the points. Everything needed to be explained slowly only to be then repeated minutes later. Others not as old didn’t have the experience or mental ability to contribute anything worthwhile.
The decision should not be so difficult. The outsiders could be left outside the village. Better still would be if they were taken to a remote area outside the valley and left to their own ends. They had found their way to the jungle from wherever they came from, so they could find their way back again.
Omatajinata’s first choice would have been to leave them on the edge of the polar band. That was close enough to where the boy named Ilyin said he found them.
It was the counselors who insisted they girls stay. They said there was much to learn from the girls they said. The Chief shook his head. How could they learn anything from them if no one spoke their language? The elders would never be certain the girls weren’t hiding their true intentions.
The origin of the outsiders was the one question the elders most wanted answered. The girls were either possible allies, or they were a threat to the valley. There was no two ways about this and knowing where they came from would provide a good part of the answer.
One thing was for certain. They were not like other known humans. There were clearly distinct physical differences between the outsiders and the Kai. There was the diminutive height, their strange hair, and their eyes were unlike those of any human they had heard of much less seen.
What really worried Chief Omatajinata was a terrible thought the village was hosting two spies. That they were from the Southern Hemisphere, the side of the planet no one had visited. An unknown place that was a mystery, the stuff of legends and scary children’s stories, and the source of Marauders.
Atoma and the Blockchain Game Page 15