Retread Shop 1: First Contact

by T. Jackson King

  Looseen, having extended a foreleg to touch-taste Torik at the end of his commentary, left her sense-pad on his forehead as she asked further about crew feelings. He shivered to her touch.

  “The Arrik female flyer, why do you think the news of another sapient race in this part of the spiral arm affected her so strongly?” Looseen’s foreleg pulled him slowly toward her. “After all, their individual lifespan is such that most non-Suspended Arrik will live past this new Contact.”

  Torik shuddered at the strange yearning embodied in the new scent and in Looseen’s foreleg touch. Too soon. Too soon! He tried to talk coherently.

  “By . . . by your leave, Eminence, these Arrik are so alien their thought processes may not parallel ours.” Looseen’s perceptor stalks showed irritation. “Perhaps she looked forward to aggressive contact with another primitive species? These Arrik built military bases all through their home system. Or perhaps she looked forward to meeting a technologically inferior race so hers could feel superior? Perhaps she felt anticipation toward their first experience at Contact and the chance to Trade?” His bowels felt loose, his three hearts thudded to enzymes flooding through green blood, and foreboding changed—inexplicably—to exhilaration as his time approached. Now, he yearned for her. For the strangeness soon to come.

  “Well done, Torik, Grade 5 Sensor Technician, co-maker of a new cohort,” softly clacked his lover Looseen. “Come. Rejoice with me. Live the commandments of the Prime Law. You are become immortal!”

  Torik felt Looseen tighten her suction-pad grip on his forehead exoskeleton, pulling his limp and weightless form toward her feeding orifice. She did not even spray him with neuromotor paralysis mist—the diffuse cloud of mating pheromones that surrounded them along with his own genetically inbred docility to authority sufficed to immobilize him.

  Strangeness came. Why should one welcome death?

  The last thing Torik saw before his perceptor stalks were ripped from his body was an oval mouth fringed with steel-hard masticating palps capable of cracking his carapace. He died. Willingly. His last rebellious thoughts were of his birth-cohort.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Her nutriment taken, Looseen floated on a maglev disk out of the Mating Chamber dome, already planning the DNA shape of hers and Torik’s children. She emerged into the red light of the Zik habitat dome and moved across a sandy courtyard toward the distant central Control building of the Zik race.

  The Control building had the appearance of a large egg mass of white globes. It hung in mid-air, suspended above a salty sea-lake by gravity nullification. Her disk rode the linear-induction pylon road that provided access to the tall, conical structure. Looseen quickly entered a lower portal and took her personal gravtube to the Decisions Chamber. Once in her chamber at the center of the Control building, she touched a pressure switch to summon Thinker Lerik. She had questions. Too many questions.

  Looseen settled down onto the warm sand floor of her personal office. The brown sand stretched before and around her, broken only here and there by the irregular shapes of gray, water-worn granite blocks. Pieces of calcium-carbonate from the exoskeletons of small sea creatures lay intermixed with the sand, making for white spots on a brown beach. The walls and ceilings of titanium steel flickered with infrared and far infrared pictures of Tidehome. The only technology was a granite boulder to one side of her. Its flattened bulk held her command, control and communications circuits, outputs for all of the monitoring devices she and Zikeen had spread through the Ship, records on the numbers and base DNA codings for every Zik birth-cohort either living or in Suspense, and her own tachyonic communicator. The boulder also contained pressor and tractor force field generators in case her security were ever threatened.

  A chime sounded. One pincer-foot touched a stud on the command boulder, allowing entry through the security screening chamber. Thinker Lerik hobbled in on age-weakened legs.

  She watched him, carefully observant.

  Thinker Lerik entered from the far wall, obviously old, his 72 years making him a double-generation rarity among her cohorts. Although of an age to easily warrant providing nutrients to a birth-cohort of future Thinkers, she had withheld her favor. Training Thinker replacements took time. Eventually, she must find such time, despite her mother’s pride in the quality of his DNA pattern.

  “By your leave, Eminence, what is your desire today?” wheezed Lerik in the formal address, High Speech mode required when conversing with a brood-ruler of the Ziks. He swayed on ten outstretched chitin-legs, appearing feeble and weak. Only the alertness of his perceptor stalks belied such an impression.

  Looseen sensed his lack of interest in formalities. Lerik was preoccupied with his research—an effort to predict stellar systems likely to contain planets with the saline oceans, large tide-producing moon, moderate gravity, 39 degree axial tilt and warm red light that constituted survival conditions for the Zik race back on Tidehome. She understood commitment. She respected it. Even in a servant.

  The need to find a suitable colony planet for the Ziks aboard Hekar had become pressing. Looseen worried much. The egg production of a Zik brood-ruler could be diverted to Suspense storage only for a finite period of time. Already, the interior asteroid Suspense chambers allocated to the Zik were more than half-full with eggs, even with her and Zikeen alternating time in Suspense so that both were not producing eggs at the same time. Since a conscious brood-ruler could not avoid creating specialized birth-cohorts of Technicians, Thinkers, Feeder Drones, Defenders and Workers, the Ziks aboard Hekar faced a problem. She faced a problem. Where to birth her children, her cohorts, her young ones.

  Lerik waited silently.

  “Thinker, our course has changed recently toward a G2 star 26.2 light years away to make Contact with new sapients.” She paused, settling her great bulk more comfortably into the warm sand. “What are our chances of passing near to a suitable M series star with a probability of colony planets?”

  Lerik collapsed onto the sand before her, all formality gone. “Encouraging, my ruler.” The cast of his palps showed revived interest. “We must pass an M0 star at l3 light years out from the target star, then an M5e star also at l3 lights, followed by an M4 star at l2.3 lights, an M3e-M4e double system at ll.7 and a K2 system at l0.7 light years—all before we arrive at the target star. A promising M5 system lies just 6 light years beyond the G2,” he reassured her. “We can request that expendable probes be dispatched on suitable vectors toward any of these systems since the arc angle diversion from our current vector is minimal this far out.” His eyestalks leaned inward over his upper carapace, signaling his thoughtful preoccupation. “If the probes or our sensor systems aboard this ship detect suitable planets, we can either seek a course change for Hekar before rendezvous, or a side-trip to the M5 system after arrival in the G2 system.” Lerik paused, one pincer-claw pulling out a metallic record scroll from under his lower carapace. “Also, a suitable planet—except for the primary’s disgusting yellow light—may be present in the target system.” Looseen shuddered at the image—yellow sheens on delicately colored Zik carapaces! An abomination! The Dynasty had carefully modified the race’s genome millennia ago to contrast visually in a perfect manner with the irradiation of Tidehome’s red star. Only red light matched their carapace colors. So it had been for l9,000 years. So it would ever be. Lerik saw her mood change and spoke up. “Mistress, I suggest we launch diverging probes at the M0V and the M4V stars to find colony planets. The odds are good for success.”

  “You guarantee success?”

  Lerik’s perceptor stalks wilted, his age showing. “No, Mistress. The universe and existence are not susceptible to guarantees about reality. Only probabilities.”

  Looseen felt amusement. Good Lerik had always had a dryland wit about him. He had always been able to amuse her even amidst the most intractable problems.

  “Lerik—any evidence the G2 target star has a planet with oceans?”

  Lerik’s perceptor stalks wavered. “Not yet. Ma
ybe the deciphered audiovisual images will tell us?”

  She could not depend on luck. On the odds of a G2 yellow star system having two habitable planets, one of them without sapients and with oceans. Her brain produced cascades of decision nexi. She chose.

  “Lerik, produce a data chip with relevant probe fuel data, sensor attachments and launch vectors for the stars you suggest. However, include detailed information on the minimum supplies and tools needed to sustain a Zik colony and a basic design for a colonizing ship which could transport our sleeping ones.” She must prepare for all eventualities. “Provide it to me by the end of this light period so I may discuss it at the Compact Council meeting tomorrow. Dismissed.”

  “Yes, Mistress.” He departed, somewhat more slowly than he had entered. She was once more alone.

  Looseen settled down further into the warm sand of her office. The discussion of a new colony home had reminded her of Tidehome and of how the Zik had come to join the Compact. Favored with genetically augmented memory capabilities, Looseen remembered every detail of nearly everything that had ever happened to her. Sighing, she looked into those sharp, detailed memories for relaxation, for the familiar, for a sense of the well-spring of her race. Once again, she remembered.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Tidehome was the third of six planets circling an M0III star billions of years older than the stars of most other Compact species. The two innermost planets, Zorek and Tark, orbited within the star’s zone of tidal lock and always kept one face toward Hekeen, the life star. Beyond them orbited Tidehome in the third orbital position, its oceans properly perturbed by a large moon. Next out in the fourth orbital circled a small, rocky planet of negligible atmosphere, no water and great barrenness. The fifth planet in the Hekeen system was a very large gas giant called Sot. It bulked nearly 50 times larger than Tidehome, had four inner particle rings and held captive eleven moons. Last came a small, ice-covered planet of eccentric orbit that might have once been a moon of Sot. Beyond these worlds, there was minimal solid debris in the Hekeen system, no asteroids and no other life larger than lichen on any of the other planets or moons of Hekeen.

  (She remembered well her race’s aloneness.)

  Life on Tidehome had been provoked and molded by two major forces—the extreme axial tilt of Tidehome and the tide-producing gravitational pull of Zikspirit, Tidehome’s single large moon. Orbiting at a distance that was a hundred times the width of Tidehome, Zikspirit was one-third the mass and one-fourth the size of Tidehome. It generated planetary tidal surges that regularly pushed the shallow oceans of Tidehome across most of its surface, leaving dry just one-fifth of the planet. In these remaining archipelagos, plateaus, volcanic islands and the small continent of Zik, complemented by the planet-wide continental shelf, the Zik race had evolved quickly over a million years. Forced to contend with strong seasonal temperature changes, the regular inundation of large parts of the planet and the dominance of infrared wavelengths in Hekeen’s radiation output, a small crab-like creature arose in the rapidly changing coastal areas to both hunt and scavenge in the littoral lifezone. It quickly grew larger in size and developed the rudiments of sapience. Once self-aware, the Zik spread rapidly across Tidehome, filling the planet-wide ecotonal niche that had encouraged their evolution.

  Nearly 20,000 ship years before Hekar arrived, the Zik developed aggregated hunting and sea-farming communities. These led to the establishment of a culture of matriarch brood-rulers, able to biochemically alter their own DNA and produce Zik birth-cohorts of any desired specialization. A planet-wide race of highly intelligent, heavily industrialized, hierarchically-structured, amphibious crustaceans numbering nearly four billion was present on Tidehome at Contact.

  (The memory feel of many Zik was still strong: it guarded her from the sense of desolation she felt at being so far from Home.)

  Looseen clearly remembered her last day on Tidehome before departure on Hekar. Already swollen to a long tube as a result of birthing her first two cohorts of Technicians and Thinkers, she could barely move about on her own. Looseen returned to the Zorlerup Archipelago and sought a quiet cove on one of the small, formerly volcanic islands. Slowly traversing a steeply inclined black sand beach, she crawled out and down from the island’s high tide shoreline. She crawled further until she could no longer hear the thumping of the desalinization pumps, the whine of the sulphur separators, or the steady hum of the automatic fishing barges on the other side of the island. She looked outward at the saline sea waters far, far away and basked in the warmth of the dry sand as she awaited the equinoctial tide.

  It appeared far away on the surface of the ocean as a thick, curling comb of darker, cooler water rolling over the black glistening waters of the world sea. It rapidly approached her, pushed forward by the combined gravitational force of Zikspirit pulling in unison with the force of Hekeen as Tidehome approached perihelion. Glancing to either side, she saw thousands of Technicians, Thinkers, Defenders, Workers—even Feeder Drones—all gathered on the black sands as they awaited the rejuvenating flood. Her people. Her children, some of them. All of them under her care.

  The water smashed into her.

  It rolled over Looseen and her fellow Ziks. They all hung suspended in the after eddies of the Tide.

  Floating, feeling her secondary gills open, feeling the sheer multitudinous tastes of the brine, the protozoas, the minerals, the traces of life in the world sea—Looseen’s awareness expanded to include all Tidehome, to feel the rightness of all the life that pulsed around Tidehome.

  The sensation memory lasted only a short while, but it took her back in time and forward into the future of the Zik race—so long as one Zik brood-ruler and a male floated in the world sea, the Zik race would never end.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Looseen refocused her consciousness outward, out of her memories, into the pale simulacrum of Tidehome that was her office. She pondered the inadequacies of the artificial tides of the habitat’s sea-lake, the strict controls on free eating of the minimally varied fish and crustaceans in the sea-lake, the limited infrared spectrum of the habitat radiator, and the unknown loss suffered by all her children, her Ship-born cohorts who had never resonated with their entire being to the Tidal life-pulse of a world sea. She grieved for her people, whatever their station, that they had never known a true planetary home. She grieved for herself.

  We will find a new home! We must!

  With strengthened resolve and a fierce determination, Looseen cleared the surface opacity of the control boulder. She attached several sensors to her manipulator palps and rapidly reconnected herself to the complexities of rule that interwove about her in the hundreds of offices of the Control building. Memories still alive, she turned once more to the routine of governing a race.

  Grief marched along with her.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  In the early morning light of their bedroom, Bethrin moved atop Sargon, he inside her and she welcoming him, making love with him, caressing his cheek with one free hand, the other braced against the bedframe. Upward, then down, then upward again she moved, her groin wedded to his as his hands lightly touched her sensitive nipples, exciting her as much as when they had first made love over forty years ago. She moaned. He groaned. Their breath came hurriedly. The veins at her neck pulsed quickly. His two hearts beat to overtime tempo. Together, they were one in passion, in ecstasy, all their skin surfaces sensuously attuned to the slightest arousal. He surged upward, twisting sideways, moving them into a new front-to-front position as both lay on the firm mattress of their bed. Bethrin grinned, headcrest fluttering.

  “Don’t you get enough tumbling about in the exercise centrifuge?”

  He bit lightly her neck, her shoulder, then one of her upper breasts, causing Bethrin to gasp.

  “No—unless it’s making freefall love with you.”

  Bethrin pulled him on top, her legs wrapping around his hips, belly muscles squeezing his hardness inside of her. Almost to repletion. Almost there . . . .
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  “Beast!” she hissed.

  “Mistress of my dreams,” he whispered back.