Her face was slightly withered, lined with the creases normal for middle-aged Horem skin, and her pale brown fur showed the beginnings of age-blackening at the tips of the hairs. Her two rows of breasts sagged slightly with age and gravity underneath the simple folds of her handspun brown toga. But her light yellow eyes were uncovered, and her pupils enlarged in the semi-darkness of the alcove. They looked directly at him. Her red-striped headcrest flared slightly with an affectionate twitch, conveying a few silent thoughts in crest-language before she folded bare forearms over her slim waist and got down to business.
“The family Conclave has heard the news and is gathering to meet,” she said, her growls sounding supportive. “Are you ready to deal with them?”
“Yes.” He leaned forward, caressed the soft fur of her cheek and admired the trim lines of crest-feathers as they swept down the back of her neck to spread out to either shoulder. “I’ve anticipated the questions and doubts they must have about my decision. I will meet them eye-to-eye. I must have the Conclave’s support before I report to the Clan Coordinator. Do I have yours?”
Bethrin smiled warmly, turning her face to kiss the soft skin of his palm as he cupped her cheek.
“Of course, my mate-husband. And not just because I love you,” she murmured as she reached out and gripped his hand. “My duties as Mistress of the Core computer for Hekar have taught me to look beyond logic and software, beyond quantum networks and simulacrums—beyond, even, the opinions of self-aware computers.”
He finished pulling on a simple yellow and brown toga, and reached for her hand. “That is good to hear. Come, let us walk together to the garden.”
“As you wish,” she growled, moving to his side.
In her eyes, Bethrin’s swift intelligence soared with curiosity over his decision, but she held her tongue. Patience was one of her virtues. Among many.
Together, they turned into the curving main corridor of their stone-carved home, finding enough light for walking from the recessed glowlights resting in the peak of each hall archway. And from the memory of directing their home’s construction, stone block by stone block, tunnel by tunnel, plant by plant. Turning right at a side archway and stepping outside, they entered the unroofed, plant-strewn atrium at the hub of their home. White daylight shone down on them. The smell of flowers lifted his spirits. The gravel pathway crunched under his and Bethrin’s sandals as they approached their relatives. Guests and family looked up.
Gathered on floor cushions about a stone-rimmed pool of water in the center of the atrium were his father Salex, his mother Peilan, his father’s mated sister Lorilen, his uncle Maran—the family Liaison/Herald—and Grethel, to his delight. Each were welcome visions after long hours spent among aliens of bizarre but familiar shapes, with minds too strange to fully understand.
His father Salex sat cross-legged on a patterned cushion, wearing a red and yellow stripped toga, its single shoulder strap emblazoned with the combination comdisk and star emblem of a former Watch Commander. Black-tipped fur showed everywhere that wasn’t covered by the simple toga. Hard yellow eyes stared at him.
Peilan sat to his father’s mate’s left, also cross-legged on a cushion, but relaxed in her body posture. Her pale green toga seemed to bring out the colors of the atrium’s climbing vines, creepers and roundplants. His mother wore the flower emblem of the Farms on her toga. Peilan was looking intently into the petal-strewn waters of the bathing pond, perhaps seeing into the future like a mythical wakan-woman. Beside Peilan sprawled the relaxed form of his uncle Maran, family Herald and Liaison with the other Horem clans of the habitat. A four-fingered hand emblem denoted his Liaison work. Dressed in a glaring toga of purple and pink stripes, Maran belied the Horem love of soft pastel earth colors in their clothing and their decorative arts. But then, he’d always been a rebel. And a thorn in the side of his older brother Salex. But the man had always been a friend to Sargon as he grew up and then attended tech school in Pack City.
Rounding out the circle of family was his father’s sister Lorilen, mated with three nearly grown children. She wore a simple pale brown toga with the seven-spoked neuron emblem of the ship’s Library, the multi-species repository of all Compact knowledge. Some ship crew felt the Library was a greater accomplishment than all the Trade agreements ever reached to date. Others treated it only as a useful implement. Sargon knew better.
Last, and nearest to him and Bethrin, was Grethel. No longer wearing her bonnet, she grinned up at him from her cushion seat where she too sat cross-legged, yellow toga bunched up nearly to her thighs, her long limbs showing as she dangled claw-toed feet in the pond water. Little ripples spread outward, disturbing the pond petals, as she alternately lifted and lowered her toes. He did not see the red helix emblem of Biomedical, but he knew it adorned her left shoulder strap, proudly declaring to all who saw her that here was one who sought mastery over the secrets of life.
Grethel whistled. “My, oh my, aren’t we a crowd?”
His mother Peilan chuffed her amusement. “Yes, daughter, we are indeed a crowd of Horem!”
First to the attack was his father, who didn’t wait for him and Bethrin to sit.
“Sargon! Why the turn aside?” Salex’s yellow eyes flashed sharply, as if he still sat in the Command Dais, and his headcrest flared stiffly. “Is there any Trade advantage to be had from a species so tech primitive they lack fusion powered spaceflight? What justifies this hasty decision? You know we Horem bear a special responsibility to guide Hekar to the benefit of all Compact species! What of our position in the Compact? What makes you think these new sapients have or will have any technology, ideas or concepts worth Trading to us?”
He’d long ago learned to let his father run down. And this wasn’t his first confrontation with his powerful progenitor. But Sargon knew he was right. The decision, he intuited, would bring great barter credit to the Horem. And risks. Bethrin squeezed his hand, then moved to sit beside Grethel, his wife and sister patient while husband and father had it out. He moved to stand directly before his father.
“Honored Forebear and former Watch Commander, it’s true the signals indicate a minimally civilized race which is probably just starting to assert full planetary control.” He paused, hoping someone would support him. “However, consider this: the target star is still 26 light years away, which gives these new aliens at least 30 years of further development—until we enter system-braking by gravity-sling about their home star.” He let his point circle like a zorakeen before it dove to the attack. “Also, whatever signals we can decipher from these yellow star aliens reflect a culture that is 26 years in their past—not their present, not coequal to shiptime. At our speed, time dilation means we will not be in time-synch until we arrive in their home system and make our massive decel maneuver,” Sargon growled, feeling irritated at having to make points he knew his father well understood. “So don’t judge them just by their current signals. Things change rapidly in technological societies.”
“Yes, but such a primitive species—”
“Orbital satellites and fission power generation are not primitive,” he interrupted his father. “Next, if there are gas giants in the system we can replenish our deuterium and tritium isotope fuel levels from them and from the icy planetesimals that usually orbit such bodies. Even if these yellow star aliens have little worthwhile technology, the local sapients may still possess valuable plant foods and biologicals.” Both his mother Peilan and his sister Grethel looked up with intense interest. “These could prove useful in the Farms and Biomedical fields.”
His father held silent long enough for Sargon’s bemused uncle Maran to carefully thread a few words into the fray.
“Salex, your son has taken a reasonable gamble.” Uncle, bless you! “Everyone is aware the Sliss water breathers progressed quite quickly in both biological and physical sciences compared to some Compact species. Also, the cosmic ray flux in this part of the spiral arm is fairly high, perhaps favoring fast mutations over a specie
s’ evolutionary history,” Maran growled. “Lastly, the Thoranians never developed spaceflight. In fact—finding them was an accidental byproduct of stopping in their system for fuel.”
“Father,” Grethel said, forestalling her father’s angry look. “Seed virility in the Farms is declining, despite our best efforts at cross-breeding and inducing mutant strains. Even recombinant DNA efforts have their limits.” Grethel looked across at mother Peilan. “Only planetary evolution yields plant and animal life with the strength gained through millions of years of ruthless winnowing of the gene pool. Hekar is big, but our Farms and gene vats don’t come close to imitating a planetary biosphere. We need new crossbreeds. We need the medicinal biologicals that evolve in jungles, forest and deserts to advance our Biomedical work. We need Trade.”
His sister’s comments set it off, even as his father glowered. Lorilen chimed in with her Library point of view. Bethrin discussed the Communications implications of contact with an entirely new species. His mother Peilan raised her head to strongly endorse Grethel’s plea for plant genetics Trade. Shortly, all of Clan Arax was debating and arguing.
Sargon smiled and gingerly sat down between his uncle Maran and Lorilen. He looked across the pond to where Bethrin sat beside Grethel. His mate-wife’s lips quirked slightly in the look he knew to mean “Now we’re in for too much talk-talk!” He flared his headcrest back at her, careful to keep his father from seeing it. His father, however, was arguing with Maran. As usual.
The debate continued for an hour longer as each of them weighed the risk, the Horem imperative to achieve successful Trade, and the actions of various Arax clan ancestors over the last few centuries. Sargon kept silent and squatted on a floor cushion, letting others debate his intuition. Finally, from l80 light years away, Arax Home Clan added its support in by means of the their habitat’s tachyonic Pylon—the only thing able to operate at a speed faster than light. Finally! His decision had won unanimous support from the Clan Conclave. Maran would later file it away with the central records modulus of the Horem in Pack City and on far-away Horem. Next, he knew, came the convincing of the local Clan Coordinator Sotet Alis Sarex and the other Horem clans on board Hekar. He sighed. One battle at a time. His father’s hard eyes impaled his unguarded expression.
“Sargon! What of the Arrik?” his father gruff-growled. “Have you computed their reaction into your intuition?”
The harshness of his father’s tone stung. “Yes. More or less. Their paranoia at outsiders should make them cleave even more closely to the Compact than otherwise. True?”
A flower petal struck the pond’s surface soundlessly as mother Peilan put a softening hand on his father’s knee, her expression somewhat bemused.
“Father—son—Torik of the Ziks was first to detect the new sapients, so the Ziks by Compact custom are entitled to extra Trade credit,” she said, her headcrest flaring in the assurance-knowledge pattern. “This places them as our natural allies in the many Command decisions which must be made in the future. It’s in their own self-interest for this Contact to occur, otherwise they accrue no barter credits.” His mother turned to Salex. “Husband, someone should visit their Maker-of-Eggs to propose an understanding.”
His father scowled, headcrest flattening. “True, but—”
The Remembrance tone sounded, echoing off the pink sandstone and white-veined granite of the atrium’s walls. All heads lifted. All headcrests stiffened. In sudden silence water ripples died out in the pond. A change came over his father’s aged, grizzled, black-tipped face fur. Both hands clapped suddenly.
“Time for Remembrance! Time for memories of Home,” Salex growled softly. “Sargon—make the alliance contact your mother suggests. Do it after Remembrance. Now family—to your memorynets go!”
“Yes, father,” he answered.
They all stood, calmed by the tolling recollection of Remembrance that came but four times each year. As custom demanded, they all dipped their right hands into the shallow, slightly scented water of the central bathing pool, touched their foreheads and left. One by one. Each to their own Remembrance alcove. This Remembrance service would be broadcast to every Horem and every Clan household in the habitat. No Horem, unless on Military or Crew duty, ever missed a Remembrance.
Hand-in-hand with Bethrin, Sargon walked the sun-warmed stones of his sunken home’s atrium, feeling deep yearning.
He yearned for a true planet. Not a memory. He yearned for understanding of his differences. Not just tolerance. Or worse, resentment. Most of all, he yearned for something he couldn’t name. Something undefined. Something that felt like a need to find an emotional soulmate among other peoples. Even aliens.
Were these new aliens romantics, as he was? Were they intensely emotional, as he and the Strelka were? Or were they hard-eyed merchant calculators like his father and nearly all Horem?
Time enough later to learn. For now, passing into the cool stone tunnels of his home, Sargon felt his inner self yearn for the unique sharing of memories in the Remembrance.
Whose memory would they share today?
CHAPTER THREE
Torik shook with passion as he rode atop the massive back of Maker-of-Eggs Looseen, locked in sexual union with his matriarch, ruler, lover and executioner-to-be. He didn’t wonder about his future. Only the endless pulses of pleasure surging through his body cells were real, were what mattered. Ecstasy ruled.
The two of them would have been an unusual image to the other Compact races if anyone besides Ziks were allowed into the high-domed Mating Chamber of the Zik race.
They would have seen Torik—a blue and green-dappled crustacean with ten legs whose oval shell of chiten enclosed his heart, lungs, gills, alimentary processes and, of course, his male sex organ. Outside the hard shell, four retractable perceptor stalks peaked out from under the protective overhang of his upper carapace. A nest of primary and secondary palps lay below the stalks and brought food into his mouth, in addition to serving as manipulators. But the passing on of his genes was the focus of their joining. To do that, a fleshy tube curved down from Torik’s posterior into the larger, tube-shaped body that was Looseen. She resembled Torik only at the forend, sharing similar appendages and stalks. But most of her body was a semi-rigid oblate mass of red-colored flesh with dots of orange that ran down her upper back. The back atop which Torik now lay.
They both floated in the gravity-free, salt-scented environment of the Mating Chamber, enjoying the primal sense of water weightlessness—the normal Zik mating environment on Tidehome.
But there were no other observers, not even Ziks, in the infrared-lit dome.
As Torik expected, Looseen was pleased a Zik had detected new sapient life. His discovery was a Zik first even though the Ziks had been the second race discovered by the Horem-Strelka Trading expedition. Torik recalled how the Zik artificial gravity system, developed centuries before Hekar visited the M0III red star of Hekeen, had become a major trade item with the new Compact. The Horem and Strelka had paid many barter-credits to the race so gravity plates and gravnet systems could be installed throughout the asteroid. But that Contact had happened in ship year 112. Torik suspected Maker-of-Eggs Looseen was anxious to improve the barter-trade balance of the race. She moved underneath him.
“Torik, it is done,” she said sharply. “You have my leave to detach and come around to where I may see you.”
Torik complied. He was, after all, only a Grade 5 Sensor Technician birthed by Looseen’s brood-sister Zikeen when she came out of Suspense forty years ago. That was just after Looseen had gone to her Suspense rest. Soon, Torik would complete his genetically encoded duties to her and to the Zik race. He came to a free-floating rest in front of Looseen.
The Maker-Of-Egg’s great bulk shimmered in dark infrared images before his perceptor stalks. He realized again the basic unaltered Law of his destiny—the one who mates with Maker-of-Eggs necessarily provides nutrients for the next birth-cohort. It was a Prime Law of a Dynasty l9,000 years old.
“You know my ultimate Command, Technician!” The aged perceptor stalks of Looseen stiffened before him. “But—I wish to know more about the reaction on the Command Nest to your discovery. Speak to me of what you saw and tasted after your sensor-habitat was taken back into the Ship.”
Shock. Torik felt shock. He had always considered the Maker-of-Eggs to be nearly omnipotent. Especially considering the many spychips, soundseeds and fiber optic filters which she and her alternate co-ruler had spread throughout Hekar in the nearly one hundred fifty years of Zik residence. The Zik desire for knowledge, particularly the fixation of the race’s brood-rulers on commanding all data even remotely relevant to Zik racial interests, was well-known to the Compact. Still, it allowed Torik a few more seconds in which to savor his recent mating. He clattered chiten-feet against his lower carapace and spoke.
“Eminence, I heard and partly observed the Command Nest during the decision nexus.” What did she want to know? “The Horem Watch Commander Arix Sargon Arax asked for evaluation reports from his Strelka executive aide, from the Thoranian serving duty as Science Contemplator, and then decided to shift course toward these new sapients.” Looseen’s stalks wavered, showing impatience. “The technical data on the matter was transmitted to you immediately. The Watch Commander—”
“Yes, yes,” interrupted Looseen. “I already know these facts, young one. But what of the attitudes and feelings of the Command Nest crew. What did you sense. Tell me now!”
Torik tried to comply.
“I did not touch-taste any of the crew, Eminence, so I cannot be certain of my feelings-perception.” Daringly, he paused a moment, savoring the rare sensation of life control. “But it seemed as if the Watch Commander was unusually agitated or excited by the Contact—his overall infrared body radiance jumped by eleven percent over Horem-normal range. His Strelka assistant seemed more interested in the Commander than in the news.” Yes—this seemed to be what she wanted—how much more time remained to his life? “The Thoranian crystal, like all its kind, acted impassive. The Thix-Thet Navigator was indecipherable—who knows what those frozen silicon balls feel inside their tracglobes?” Torik paused once more, ordering his thoughts, marveling at the sensation of control, of choosing one’s own duty, of independence—almost. Looseen’s forelegs clacked against her carapace rim, hurrying him to obedience. “The Gosay Life Patterns specialist was somewhat more interested—based on his infrared pattern—but the rock-running carnivore cared more for assuring that Propulsion did not disturb any of the Suspended ones, I think. The Arrik winged flyer—” Looseen’s own infrared radiance jumped two-fold suddenly, shocking him at her interest in scaly flying things without the courtesy to breathe water like any intelligent creature. He continued. “The Arrik flyer serving at the Power pedestal was highly agitated, flapping her wings several times and her infrared pattern nearly tripled in intensity.” A strange scent began to fill the salt-laden air between Torik and Looseen, a scent that caused strange surges in his blood, in his feelings, in his moods, making him yearn for something . . . something terrible. “The . . . the Strelka serving Communications duty seemed intrigued by the news, but the Strelka are always interested in anything that presents a logic puzzle.” Limply, he stopped, eyeing the dark-glowing shape hanging in the air before him.
Retread Shop 1: First Contact Page 4