On Mars Pathfinder (The Mike Lane Stories Book 1)

by Jim Melanson

  While the Eridani had existed for only the last 1,500 Terran years, the genetic experiments and cloning process that originally created them hadn’t been perfected at the time by the Eben scientists responsible for it. There were mistakes, and genetic drift; and it wasn’t the type that brought about adaptations for the betterment of the new species. The original Eridani clones had a high incidence of Large Offspring Syndrome, and that condition persisted through the natural reproduction of the cast of Eridani Masters. It was also the chief cause of the statistically high maternal mortality rate during Eridani childbirth. Only three in twenty Eridani women survived childbirth, they had an 85% mortality rate. Needless to say, this was a very motivating factor in finding solutions, and in finding corrections. This investigation of biological and genetic solutions was, so far, the entire purpose of the Eridani society. Well, that and the headaches. Eridani males suffered what we call a migraine, almost constantly; from birth to death. Suicide was common amongst Eridani males, simply due to the lifetime of genetically inherited pain. They didn’t care about conquest; the Eridani cared about survival as a species. Planetary and territorial conquest was just a welcome by-product of this pursuit.

  Eridani males, while only about 165 cm tall, had enormous heads. It was like looking at a pumpkin head on an anorexic. Actually, that’s quite an apt description of the Eridani males. They had no hair and very pale skin. In many places the skin was translucent enough to see the circulatory system at work under their skin. Their large and sunken eyes, along with their pointed and jutting jaws gave them a haunting, nightmarish look, which the few humans who had seen them never forgot. Even the humans who were memory wiped often retained nightmare images of the Eridani face, well after encountering them,.

  The Eridani civilization, the Bsirutaeben (b-seer-ROO-tay-ben) in their own tongue (loosely, and politely translated as “Superior to Eben”), was initially created by Eben genetic experiments, hybridization experiments, and cloning processes about (as stated), 1,500 Terran years ago. Having a vastly superior jump start on species that simply evolved, the Eridani rapidly multiplied, and then took their independence from their Eben handlers, by deception. They then set out to grow and dominate the Orion Arm and the Sagittarius Arm of the Milky Way galaxy. Terra is located in the Orion arm, about two thirds of the way out from the galactic core. The Eben could have tried to stop them, but the fact that a cloned and hybridized life form had chosen to take their independence, was of more than a little scientific interest. The Eben put up a mild resistance to let the clones think they had actually outwitted their creators, and then the Eben spent the next thousand years watching the Eridani develop and grow as a society.

  By the time the Eben began to wonder if they should do something terminal about the Bsirutaeben, they were too large in numbers for an easy campaign. Besides, the Eben had other newer pursuits to focus on. The ancient war that had almost wiped out the Eben was still a very present part of their cultural memory. While the Eben were considered by most races in the three galaxies to be amongst the most effective and fearsome warriors known, their numbers had reduced so much that they hadn’t had the political will to launch an assault on the Bsirutaeben. The Eben also hadn’t had the sociological will to pursue a war with the Bsirutaeben either. At the most recent count, there are over 50,000 Eridani Masters spread throughout the Milky Way galaxy. There are even more in neighbouring galaxies.

  At this point in Eben history, the Bsirutaeben were a nuisance, not a threat. At least they weren’t a threat to the Eben. Lately though, relatively speaking, there had been closer scrutiny of their actions and the direction their research was taking. The Bsirutaeben were indeed a problem for the humans, and the Eben liked the humans, even though they kept the humans at arm’s length. While the Eben had stopped visiting Earth officially in the Terran year 1985, they still had assets on the ground, and they did have a significant presence at the Hybrid base on Mars. The Eben thought that humans had great potential. At a deep, sociological and philosophical level, the Eben found many similarities in the development of the humans to the ancient development of the Eben society over 10,000 years ago.

  Eridani society has three casts, plus the drones. The upper cast is the Masters, the Voiya as they are called. They were the Eridani proper. They were the descendants of the original hybrids and clones. They were the shortest of the three casts, standing an average of only 165 cm tall. The Voiya were very sensitive about their height since they were almost as short as the average Eben male. In fact, the Eben were the only race known to be, on average, shorter than the Voiya. Within the other casts, the Trigla (pronounced TREE-la) averaged 40 cm taller than the Voiya. The Vesna (pronounced VESH-na) ran on average, about the same height as the Voiya, but without the Napoleonic complex. The drones, of course, were all much shorter than the Masters, but they were merely chattel, they were not real Bsirutaeben.

  The Voiya always put themselves on elevated platforms, elevated walkways, or any position that would force others to look up to them, literally. Anything a Voiya could do to make itself appear taller than everyone around it, they considered it a good thing to do. At one point they tried mimicking the 70’s fad of platform shoes, but they kept tripping and falling down in them, so they gave them up.

  Only about fifteen percent of the adult Eridani were females. This was because of the unrealistically high maternal mortality rate I mentioned previously. About 40% of Voiya adolescents were females, but their high mortality rate burdened, burned and infuriated Eridani Society in general. The resulting glut of adult males created the sociological necessity for Voiya families to be polyandrous. One Eridani adult woman would bear the offspring of fifteen to thirty Eridani males, simply because there were not enough adult females to go around. A Voiya female would give birth to over one hundred offspring in her lifetime. There was only one female adult Eridani on Mars, plus about twenty adolescents, six of them female. They were all from the same household or “House”. The current Eridani Mission on Mars simply wasn’t of such a scale as to permit more than one House.

  Each male in the household considered himself kingly … no … godly in his own right. This probably leads to some pretty interesting dinner parties, I’m sure. Unfortunately, the Voiya and Vesna have no concept of God, or deity, or final cause within their understanding. It simply didn’t interest them to look at the origin of life and everything. They saw no gain or profit in such musings or theological considerations. Besides, the origin of life for the Voiya, based on appearances, was Eben scientists.

  The next two casts were quite different from the Voiya. While the Voiya considered the Trigla and the Vesna to be equivalent, within those two casts the Vesna considered themselves to be superior to the Trigla. The Vesna knew they were superior to the Voiya as well, but they would never think that out loud. The Trigla, the servant cast, happened to agree with the Vesna on the point of their superior stature/nature, and were happy to agree. Any screw-ups were the fault of the Vesna, “hey, we were just doing what we were told”. The Eben actually considered the Trigla to be very human like in temperament and societal constructs; though much more laid back and easy going individually, and as a society.

  The Trigla are those in service to the care and well-being of the Eridani Masters and the Vesna. The Trigla are household servants, cooks, chauffeurs, tailors, shopkeepers, builders, skilled factory workers, and professional warriors. They are also one of the species that the Eben had used in the original hybridization experiments that had created the Eridani to begin with. When the Eridani made good their escape from the Eben, as soon as they had built up their numbers and acquired some space travel, they immediately captured and subjugated the Trigla out of spite. The Trigla have been a cast within the Eridani society ever since. Needless to say, there are a great many hidden smiles and unshared mirthful thoughts amongst the Trigla when one of the Eridani Masters gets on about the superiority of their race, of their cast.

  The Trigla look nothing like the Vo
iya. They average, as I said, about 40 cm taller than the Voiya, they have extremely long necks, and their heads aren’t as disproportionately large. The Trigla are actually a sensitive and compassionate race, for the most part. Compassion doesn’t dominate their thoughts, but they often feel bad about the things they are involved in; kidnapping other races and performing experiments on them, and so on and so forth. The Trigla have to keep these feelings hidden. There are stories of Trigla being thrown in acid vats along with drones, merely for showing compassion to one of the experimentation subjects.

  The Vesna are a race with a single gender. There is no chromosomal difference in the Vesna, they are all female but have what humans would call male dominant traits. They have no outward sexual organs, and don’t engage in any form of sexual activity. Reproduction is an endocrinal induced asexual process and can occur at any time, with no warning, after a Vesna reaches maturity. Occasionally, a Vesna adolescent will begin to show female dominant traits, as humans would define them. Vesna adolescents that develop this disease, as they see it, are immediately terminated. They don’t have a problem with females in other races; they just see this trait as defective within the Vesna culture. The Vesna also have no skin pigmentation. Their epidermis is evenly gray-white throughout their entire race, though the skin of older Vesna tends to darken slightly. The tone of the skin is usually the easiest way to determine which of the Vesna in a pod of five (usually), is the Mahal, or the leader of the pod.

  The Vesna are the intelligentsia of the three casts of Eridani society. The Vesna don’t “hate” the way the Voiya and drones do. They don’t suffer from compassion and caring the way the Trigla do. The Vesna are nature’s perfect embodiment of indifference; they are nature’s perfected example of sociopathic behaviour. Vesna have a well-defined concept of what is right and wrong, however, they simply don’t care about right and wrong. The Vesna are the scientist, the doctors, the researchers, the inventors, the architects, the engineers, the designers, and the warriors’ officers. The Vesna are responsible for all the mechanical, medical, and scientific advancements of the Eridani; including the genetic research that has been going on for more than a millennia. They are also responsible for the governmental and political machinations required by a large society. The Vesna come up with the ideas, the Voiya rubberstamp them, and the Trigla carry them out. It’s a perfectly symbiotic relationship without competition for primacy. The Voiya, the Eridani Masters, well, they generally just strut around imperiously and yell a lot.

  Earth culture through the 20th and 21st centuries would be familiar with the Vesna, by reputation if not appearance. Whenever there is a story of a UFO abduction and the abductees reported medical procedures by long-faced, white-skinned, indifferent aliens; it is the Vesna that are being described.

  All Eridani Masters, the Voiya, are telepathic to a point. They have to be aware of an individual being to establish connection; but once that connection is established, they can often exert control over that being and retain the ability to reconnect with that being at any time. This is how humans are often able to be abducted. The often reported paralysis is simply caused by a Voiya, somewhere in proximity, exerting mental control over them. One of two exceptions to that rule is the Vesna. The Voiya can communicate with the Vesna but have, so far, been unable to control them like they do with humans. There is a trick to escaping that telepathic control over a being, however, it requires careful instruction and takes practice. Telepathy is how the Voiya Masters communicate with drones, exclusively. They only use their voices communicating with non-telepathic species, such as the Trigla, and that is only out of necessity. Usually they just thought-speak into the Trigla’s mind to communicate. The Voiya exclusively communicate via telepathy with others in Eridani society, unless they are really, really, really pissed off. Then the social norms and niceties go out the window. The drones themselves are slightly telepathic. They can communicate simple thoughts and images amongst each other, but cannot force their thoughts on another, as the Voiya can. They cannot receive the thoughts of any other race except the Voiya and the Vesna. While the drones cannot project their thoughts to the Voiya, the Voiya and Vesna can easily read their thoughts.

  Trigla are not the slightest bit telepathic, and don’t want to be either.

  The Vesna, are the most powerful of the telepaths in this horde. No Vesna has actually spoken out loud for several hundred years. They communicate and share complex ideas and concepts solely through telepathic contact. However, they have to be in very close proximity to do this. They have a maximum telepathic range of about 7 metres, much closer than the Voiya range of about 200 metres. However, the Vesna have an unlimited telepathic range when communicating with other Vesna. There is a whole section of Vesna in the Eridani Society whose sole job is to provide communication links with the many outposts and research stations in these two arms of the Milky Way galaxy. They communicate Vesna to Vesna, and then pass on the information to messengers that pass on the messages locally.

  Lowest on the totem pole of Eridani society are the drones. In fact, the drones aren’t actually considered part of Eridani society. To put quite a fine point on it, the Voiya do not consider the drones to be Eridani. They aren’t even clones or clone descendants. The drones are genetically engineered life forms that started out as a form of semisentient plant, one that had a lot of genetic monkeying around (something the Vesna were very experienced with, though I wouldn’t say all that good at). The drones are grown from vine pods in maturation tanks, reaching maturity of development and size in about four Terran months. They are then painfully severed from the vine stalks as they are brought to consciousness, and then taken to an education facility. Here they are taught how to understand the Masters, how to communicate when permitted, and how to perform the skills and functions required of them.

  Many debates about the drones had taken place in Vesna circles over the centuries. The Vesna consider the drones to be sentient creatures, but barely so. There is no concept of supreme deity or of a Bsirutaeben soul in the Voiya mind. Therefore, there is not much more consideration given to the drones by the Eridani Masters; other than that a functioning drone is a useful tool. There is no such thing as medical treatment for a drone. There is no palliative care, no succour or nursing back to health of a damaged or injured drone. There is no burial for drones. Damaged drones and drones that fail to adequately carry out their Master’s Order of Action are simply tossed in vats of acid, to be dissolved. Sentient or not, drones feel pain. The Voiya lack of consideration, therefore, is an even further incentive, beyond obedience and loyalty, to be successful. Destroying a damaged, useless, or disappointing drone is no hardship for the Masters. They are very easily replaced. Proper caloric intake and lighting are vital to the drones’ long-term survival; but they have no culture, other than the ever-present mindset of servitude. Many drones simply die from old age, when their circulatory systems simply wear out. At any given time, each of the Eridani Masters average a den of two hundred active drones with a daily revolving door of new drones arriving, while useless drones are being dissolved in the acid vats. Dissolving of these damaged drones, or drones that have failed their Master, occurs daily; even to this day.

  The small size of the single Voiya household, or “House”, meant that there were only about 2,000 of the drones on Mars. There are, however, over 30,000,000 active drones in the Eridani Dominion.

  After four months in an education facility, a new drone is then handed over to the Drone Wrangler in the household of the Eridani Master that owns the drone. The genetic monkey-business of the drones’ development has produced two significant traits that are common to all drones, without exception. The first trait is that all drones are blindly and unfalteringly loyal to their Masters. A drone cannot conceive of violating their Master’s Order of Action. In the rare instances where this has happened, no true blood Eridani would even consider admitting that it had happened, because the concept of an Eridani Masters’ order not being followed
to the letter is, well, inconceivable.

  The second trait common to all drones is that they exist in a persistent state of hatred and rage of anything that is not of their Master. This trait is, coincidentally, also shared by all Voiya, adolescent or adult, both male and female. It is not uncommon for a group of drones to attack and kill another group of drones from a different household, for no other reason than they came into view. The Voiya are much better at showing restraint, though they have the same urges. For a period of time early on in the development of Eridani society, the Trigla and the Vesna were subject to these unprovoked killings by the drones. Since this definitely caused a problem, every Master issues the same first standing Order of Action to all new drones coming into their household which is, “No Vesna or Trigla may be killed for any reason, unless so ordered by Master”. This is always disappointing to the drones, because the drones’ highest form of pleasure and excitement is to kill something, kill it slowly, and then watch it die in agony. Consider cattle mutilations, as an example.

  I think you can better understand now why the Drone that had an Order of Action to monitor the human, was so consumed with grief and rage at failing the Master. After an orbit and a half and not being able to come up with something positive to salvage the mission, the Drone returned to Teviot Vallis and reported what had happened. Telling a lie was not possible for a drone, given the telepathic connection a Master established to communicate with the drones. Upon arrival, this Drone was immediately taken to audience with Master Rillixiwen of Chernasai. The Master, already by its nature in a state of wrath, ordered the Drone be dissolved and a new Drone was assigned to monitor the human. The Order of Action clearly stated the human was to be studied and not interfered with, as this was the Master’s pleasure.