Tau Ceti

by Laurence Dahners

  Dex grinned, “If you’re so sure we’re going to get one, it’d be a good idea, yeah.”

  “I think it’ll bring bad luck to go up there without the travois. We don’t want the spirits to think we don’t expect to have a good hunt.”

  Soon they were hiking up the mountain pulling their two empty travois. They made a short detour to pick up their spears from the place they’d hidden them, then took a game trail through a brief stretch of forest into the meadow where Dex had seen the zornits.

  Dex’s wings sagged in relief when hie saw the zornits were still there. They were pretty close to where the game trail came out onto the meadow so they set the travois down and took their spears back down the trail to the open area on the other side of the forested area.

  “Ready?” Dex asked. When Syrdian dipped hies head Dex beat into the air, thinking how nice it was to be flying at this lower altitude again. Once hie had enough altitude, hie checked on Syrdian with hies back eyes then swept out and back around to drop into the meadow just over the tree line, stooping on the zornits. As usual the zornits scattered before himr. Hie chose one, beating wing after it, then flaring over it to slam hies spear down over its shoulder. The spear hit a rib and bounced off relatively harmlessly. Dex wheeled right, switching the second spear hie’d been carrying to hies right hand. Syrdian, sailed over the zornit, slamming a spear home and wheeling left. Dex finished hies turn and beat hard after the panicked zornit successfully plunging hies second spear into place. It must have hit the brain because the zornit immediately dropped skidding and quivering to the ground.

  As per their tradition Dex and Syrdian landed by the zornit embracing in celebration and dancing up and down. This was their tenth zornit hunt but only their fourth successful one. Syrdian unwrapped hies neck from Dex’s and said, “It is a wonderful omen that we had this fruitful hunt right before the tribe’s return.”

  ***

  Done up as Raquel, Ell walked up the walk to the little house Shan shared with Ryan. The door opened and Ryan came out. “Hi Ryan. Are you leaving?”

  “Yes,” he rolled his eyes, “banished from my own home so that my roommate can have his way with you. It’s shameful.”

  “Oh! Don’t go on my behalf. I’d be happy to split my dinner with you.”

  “Hah, no you wouldn’t! Shan’s told me how much you eat.”

  Ell blushed.

  He leaned close and whispered, “Besides I’m happy to go. He’s been acting like a moony eyed fool. ‘Raquel this and Raquel that.’” He winked, “I can hardly stand being around him in this state.”

  Shan appeared in the doorway, an oven mitt on his hand. “Ryan, you promised you’d get out of here without harassing my new girlfriend.”

  Ryan winked at Ell, then turned to say, “Your girlfriend? She’s just agreed to go out with me tomorrow night. You’d better hope your cooking’s better than your usual if you want to keep her.” He headed on down to the sidewalk.

  Ell climbed the steps to Shan who put his arms around her. “Don’t leave me for that guy. No matter how bad you think my cooking is, his is a lot worse.”

  “Girlfriend?” she asked.

  “You’re the one who called me your ‘intended boyfriend,’” he grinned, then drew himself up and put a hand on his chest, “I accept.” He looked down at the dish in her hand, “You brought something?” he narrowed his eyes, “Just in case my lasagna isn’t edible?”

  “Dessert, I knew you wouldn’t have enough for a growing girl like me.”

  Shan laughed and led her inside.

  To Ell’s surprise the lasagna was excellent. She lifted her last forkful at him, “This is amazing. A mathematician clogger, who plays basketball and can cook? Who would have thought?”

  “Ah Raquel, Raquel,” he shook his head despairingly, “I have depths you haven’t even come close to plumbing.”

  “Good to hear that there’s a little mystery left,” she said, eyes crinkling. “I’ll hope to discover those depths a little at a time, so as to keep me interested?”

  “Yeah,” he grinned ruefully. “I’ll have to reveal them one micron at a time so you don’t realize just how shallow they are.”

  “So you were going to tell me what Donsaii thought of the issues you had with her math?”

  “She is amazing you know?” Then at the appearance of an arched eyebrow he hurried to say, “Though not as amazing as Raquel Blandon, the girl I love.”

  Raquel tilted her head, “You love me?” she asked huskily.

  ***

  Deltain daydreamed as hie flew near the back end of one of the “V” shaped flights of the Yetany tribe. In hies mind hie’d been planning out the locations hie would check one last time for evidence of Dex’s remains. Hie should be able to check them tomorrow, then head east for hies new life with the Olnetch tribe. Hie didn’t think hie’d be able to stand it, living at the Yetany’s cave with its constant reminders of Dex.

  Hie’d never really understood the depths of hies love for hies child while Dex was still alive. Hies heart ached with the memory of times when hie could and should have told Dex how proud hie was of himr. The beautiful harnesses that Dex made. Hies little insights into better ways to do things.

  They entered a long glide and Deltain realized they were finally coasting down toward the cave. Quite a few flights had already landed and dalin were crowding the big ledge in front of the cave. There were usually a lot of dalin on the ledge right after landing, but this seemed… different. They seemed excited? Or disturbed, or something? Deltain noticed there was a large fire in the fire pit, had someone flown ahead?

  As hie coasted in the last bit of the distance hies heart beat faster. Hie saw a distinctive silvery yellow color on a pair of wings. A color that few had and… only Syrdian had had such brilliant color. Could Syrdian have survived? Could Dex?! Hies eyes scanned rapidly over the crowd and then settled back on the strapping big golden brown dalin with the complex harness standing next to Syrdian!

  Deltain broke hies glide and beat wing to lift himrself up over the crowd, “Dex!” hie cried. “Dex!”

  Dex’s wings arched and spread in response. Hie stepped back, spread wings pushing dalin back to clear a space in front of himr where hie waved hies hands for Deltain to land.

  Deltain flared wing and settled in front of Dex. Tall Dex, standing proud, no longer looking cowed as hie had in the past. Standing like one confident in hies status. Dex strode the two steps to Deltain, throwing arms and wings around himr. Deltain felt overwhelmed but distantly noticed that Dex was suddenly significantly taller than Deltain was. They wrapped necks around one another, “Parent!” Dex said with a juddery voice.

  “Child!” Deltain said in juddery response. “How did you survive the summer?”

  “We went up the mountain to where it’s cooler.”

  “We?”

  “Syrdian and I. We’re mated now.”

  Deltain’s eyes widened, “But Syrdian…” Hie broke off turning to look at Syrdian. Syrdian stood with hies parents but was looking at Deltain. Syrdian lifted hies wings gently, spreading them. Deltain noticed large slightly rippled marks in Syrdian’s right wing with curious little dots along them. Hie’d never noticed those before

  Suddenly Bultaken, first among the Yetany stepped into their little tableau. “Syrdian! You’re alive! That’s wonderful! We thought that you were killed…” Hie stumbled to a stop, staring at Syrdian’s right wing which Syrdian had again lifted to display the funny marks. “What happened to your wing? Where did you spend the summer?”

  Syrdian drew himrself up, “My wing was torn by a talor. Ripped badly with enormous holes where you see these marks! Qes was there, but he fled.” Syrdian’s tone as hie said “fled” left little doubt about how Syrdian felt about Qes now. “While Qes flew away, leaving me to the talor, Dex arrived and killed it. Then, like hie does hies amazing leatherwork, Dex sewed up my wing.”

  The crowd had all had their fore eyes on Syrdian. Now they turned to star
e at Dex.

  Syrdian continued with disgust, “Qes left me for dead,” and with love, “but Dex stayed with me and kept me alive through the summer when I couldn’t fly south.”

  The crowd near Syrdian backed away from himr, a few muttering “dyatso.” Syrdian said, “I am not dyatso! With Dex’s magic sutures holding it, my wing healed and I can fly again.” In the space that had appeared around himr hie beat briefly into the air to the astonished moans of many of the dalin surrounding himr. Thier wings rose involuntarily in amazement.

  A commotion appeared in the crowd and then Qes pushed through to stare at Syrdian, then stole a glance at hies wing. Qes, who to Deltain’s disgust, over the summer had broken up the near-mating of Fantais and Malten by making evident hies wish to mate with Fantais now that Syrdian had been lost. “Syrdian!” hie cried, stepping forward, arms outstretched.

  Deltain felt a quiver run over Dex but Syrdian blocked Qes’ approach with an outstretched arm. “I’m mated to Dex now. Even if I weren’t I wouldn’t want to be with the dalin who left me when I was injured.”

  Qes said plaintively, “But you were dyatso!”

  “I fly, and I’m not dead!” Syrdian’s eyes turned lovingly to Dex, “Thanks to Dex.”

  “Is this a zornit?” someone cried from over near the fire pit. Eyes turned that way.

  Deltain realized that hie’d been smelling something wonderful ever since hie’d landed. Hie turned hies head and stretched hies neck up to look over the dalin behind himr. A very large animal had been broken down and was roasting over a large fire in the pit. Hie wondered briefly if someone had flown in a day early and found a zornit fallen off a cliff or something?

  Syrdian said, “Yes, that’s a zornit. Dex has learned how to hunt them. We killed it yesterday and began roasting it this morning to welcome you Yetany on your return.” Murmurs of awe and interjections of disbelief shot through the crowd.

  Deltain turned hies eyes searchingly to Dex, “Really?!”

  Dex dipped hies head yes.

  “And you repaired hies wing?”

  Dex dipped hies head again.

  Deltain frowned, “Who taught you to do that?”

  Dex grinned, wings quivering with mirth, “You did.”

  Deltain’s head went up and back in disbelief, “I?”

  “I did it just like a side to side joint in leather.”

  “Really?!”

  “Really.”

  Bultaken said unbelievingly, “How do you claim that you hunt zornit?”

  Syrdian drew himrself up, “We will probably teach you, but it will depend on the rank we are given in the tribe.”

  Tanif, one of Syrdian’s parents, reached out for Syrdian’s arm saying, “You still have high rank from us. We will not permit you to mate with Dex, hie is not of sufficient rank for us to even consider it.”

  Syrdian dodged Tanif’s hand and walked over to Dex. Hie stepped up to the other side of Dex from Deltain and put an arm around himr, “I told you, I’m already mated to Dex. You have not seen the amazing things hie can do—someday hie will be first among the Yetany… There is no doubt about that.

  I am proud to tell you that I carry hies child… and hie mine.”

  Deltain’s head whipped around to stare and hies eyes widened to hear this. For both members of a mated couple to carry child at the same time was a very rare and highly venerated omen… Deltain’s wings quivered with the joy hie felt to have gone from childless and lonely to being the parent of an enormously accomplished child… and to have two grandchildren on the way. Hies hearts sang…

  Epilogue

  In the morning, Shan woke to the sound of the shower running in the bathroom behind him. He felt indescribably happy and wondered why for a moment, then the events of the past few days washed over him.

  Could all this be true? Not a dream? Raquel, the wonderful Raquel, and the sweet joy of the time he’d been spending with her!

  His questions about weird extrapolations of Donsaii’s math, explained by the amazing Donsaii herself?

  The meeting of a lifetime with Ell Donsaii, surely something he’d remember for the rest of his life!

  Realizing that he loved Raquel.

  His advisor accepting his work with Donsaii’s math as worthy of his PhD dissertation.

  Last night…! Last night had been astonishing in ways he could never have believed before living through it…

  He stretched and rolled over to face the bathroom door, ready to enjoy looking at the love of his life again.

  After long minutes he was feeling frustrated, but then the door cracked open. He threw his arm up over his face, peering under and thinking to himself, I’ll pretend I’m still asleep as she enters the room.

  The door opened farther and two feet appeared in it, visible beneath his arm.

  They were paler and pinker than they should be!

  Confused, he slowly lifted his arm, peering under it. Lithe calves and knees, check, but also too lightly colored. Then brunette hair, the right color, but down by her knee?

  He wondered, is she bending over?

  She didn’t move so he raised his arm slowly as if he were stretching in his sleep. A light skinned hand appeared, holding a brunette wig.

  Wig?!

  Heart suddenly pounding he threw his arm back. Short strawberry blond hair!

  There, leaning in the doorframe of his bathroom, holding Raquel’s hair and wearing nothing but a towel was Ell Donsaii!

  Grinning at him!

  “Hi Shan,” she said quietly in Raquel’s voice…

  The End

  If you liked reading about the “primitives” in this book you might also like reading my novel “Bonesetter” about primitive humans. The first three chapters are provided as a sample at the end of this book.

  Hope you liked the book!

  If so, please give it a positive review on Amazon.

  Try the next in the series, to be published someday.

  Author’s Afterword

  This is a comment on the “science” in this science fiction novel. I have always been partial to science fiction that posed a “what if” question. Not everything in the story has to be scientifically possible, but you suspend your disbelief regarding one or two things that aren’t thought to be possible. Then you ask, what if something (such as faster than light travel) were possible, how might that change our world? Each of the Ell Donsaii stories asks at least one such question.

  “Tau Ceti” continues asking what kinds of cool things we could do with even small wormholes or “ports,” but it also asks, “what if” we actually reach another life bearing world out amongst the stars? How might it be different? A common assumption in science fiction is that Earth is the “typical” life bearing world and that the kinds of worlds that might bear life will be similar. For interest there might be some “odd” worlds that are different than Earth in some way. That there might be “heavy” worlds where the beings are massively muscled, or snowy worlds, farther from their suns but that they will be the oddballs.

  Here I’ve tried to consider the question “what if” the “Goldilocks zone” (where worlds are the right temperature for liquid water and presumably life) is farther out because the atmosphere on most worlds is denser and has a stronger greenhouse effect than Earth’s? Such a dense atmosphere would mean that more animals would fly right? Because it would be easier for even large animals to fly in dense air. Especially if that atmosphere had a high oxygen content which could support a hotter metabolism capable of driving those wings. One prevailing theory is that the reason large pterosaurs could fly back in the Triassic and Cretaceous (the biggest birds of today are much smaller than pterosaurs were and yet can barely take off) was because Earth’s atmosphere had a higher oxygen content, and that the atmosphere may have been denser back then too.

  Another interesting question is, “If you were a intelligent flying being who lived a much more three dimensional life than we humans do, wouldn’t you have a separate word f
or many of the different directions in your three dimensional life?” I’ve tried to give life to this concept by hyphenating a direction such as “back-up-right” thus implying that the teecees might have a separate word for that direction.

  I’ve often wondered if Earth might be at one extreme of the spectrum of life bearing worlds out there. What if Earth is at the big, heavy, thin atmosphered end of the spectrum of living worlds? What if, when we get out there, we turn out to be the “heavy worlders” who are heavily muscled and we’re among the very few intelligent species who can’t fly?

  Bummer.

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to acknowledge the editing and advice of Gail Gilman, Elene Trull, Kerry McIntyre and Nora Dahners, each of whom significantly improved this story.

  BONESETTER

  (Sample)

  By

  Laurence E Dahners

  Available at your e-book seller

  Pre-prologue

  “Bonesetter.”

  A humble childhood had the boy who would one day be known as such.

  He was born one cold and bitter winter night to a woman called Donte, who gathered and cooked for the Aldans tribe. His father Garen was a flint worker. Garen named his son Pell, a term in their language for a flake of flint.

  During Pell’s seventh winter, before Garen had taught his son more than the rudiments of flint working, Garen developed pains in stomach, then fevers, then agony. He died a few days later. When Garen knew that his death approached, he called to Pell. Mildly delirious from the fever, Garen gritted his teeth against the pain. He said, “I have seen the death spirit Pell—and know it comes for me.” Garen gasped a moment, but then continued, “I hope that you will become a great hunter. But… I have watched you playing with the other boys and ... I fear that you will not have the hunting skill. I didn’t and sons often take after their fathers. Thank the spirits, you don’t have the ‘clubbed foot’ like I did though. If you are like me, your ‘skill’ will be in the making of tools and in being able to see better ways to do things. The others of the tribe may not recognize such abilities as worthy skills. But Pell, whether the others recognize your value or not, where they are strong and quick, you must make and use tools…” He slipped away for a moment, then whispered, “I’m sorry—sorry I didn’t teach you how to work flint.” The boy sobbed as Garen’s consciousness lapsed.