by DG SIDNA
And then I see them.
From behind several trees and bushes, children materialize, little boys, each holding a spear pointed in our direction.
The swampies.
We're surrounded. Careena has Old Bessie in hand. Fortunately, the standoff lasts only a moment.
One boy shouts, "It's Hagen! Hagen's come back!"
Another boy, less pleased, responds, "But he's brought wifefolk with'em!"
Hagen lowers his spear. "They ain't wives, Alberich. They visitors."
This boy Alberich is suspicious. He is the stoutest of the group. "We know all about the visitors, man. They no good."
"Not these visitors. I can vouch for them."
"Fine," Alberich concedes. Everyone lowers their spears.
"Why you back, Hagen?" the first little boy asks.
"We're looking for Sapphira," he tells them.
"Whatch'you want her for?"
He points to us. "She's got something these folks need. And before you say nothing, we're fixing to trade. We brought some good stuff."
"China Jesus?" one of the littlest boys asks in a squeaky voice.
Hagen reaches into his satchel and produces a small porcelain statue of Jesus. No doubt the words Made in China are stamped on its feet. "I got China Jesus right here, bud."
The tiny boy looks excited. "Oh boy, oh boy. Spoons and firecrackers! China Jesus is real mighty good luck, you know."
I look around at the boys. There are about seven in all. They're dirty and unkempt, though not as wild as I feared. Slowly they come out of the bushes to present themselves.
Their clothes are tattered, but there's a youthful innocence in their eyes. Each wears a necklace with various trinkets attached, often haphazardly so. On those twine chains are all sorts of things; rings, bracelets, crucifixes, old pocket watches, in one case even a medallion of the Hindu goddess Kali and a tiny bust of Darth Vader. It's obvious the children have ascribed special meaning to these items.
"First things first," Hagen says, as he puts Jesus back in his satchel. "We need to see Sapphira."
The tiny boy, who I overhear being called Gunther, steps forward. I'm not sure, but now that I see him more closely, I'm pretty sure he's the one that tasered Careena. I hope for his sake that the old woman didn't get a good look at the little rapscallion during our last encounter.
"Sapphira ain't here, Hagen," he says.
"Where is she?"
Gunther explains. "The other visitors got her. Almost got Fasolt too. But don't worry, man. We got one of them! Got her down at camp right now. Tomorrow we was fixing to offer them the big trade. We give them their meanie in return for Sapphira."
Careena cuts in. "Excuse me, but what the hell is a meanie?"
Gunther looks up to the old woman like she's an idiot. "A person that is mean."
Another boy calls out from the back, too afraid to show himself. "You look like a meanie!"
"Yeah!"
"Yeah, man!"
"Right on!"
"Yeah!"
I smile. I like these boys.
A lot.
Careena is unfazed by the accusation. "And what do these meanies want exactly?"
Gunther answers, "I reckon I don't rightly know. They set up a space temple near the Lord's Sea and run us off anytime we come near. As best we can tell, they're digging in the sea, but if they keep that up they gonna upset Dave something mighty."
Another adds, "And they took our fishing spot! Spit on’em!"
All the boys spit into the dirt and chant, "Spit on’em!"
Careena seems more worried now. "Just what does this meanie you got look like?"
"We might could show you. We got her locked up down in the Hole. Just watch out. She's dangerous. Strong as a hammer."
"And she's got silver bones!" another little boy yells out.
"Silver bones?" I ask.
"Yeah! Yeah!" a boy says. "She tried to run off but she fell down Muffit Cliff, she did. Broke her arm. Bone came right out of her elbow! We all saw it. I almost hurled my guts."
Careena's eyes furrow. "And the bone was silver?"
"Yes, ma'am, no lie. Silver as silver can be. And not just that, but this morning her arm was halfway healed. That ain't natural! Not even a prayer to Mister Chairman Mao can do that for you. And believe us, we've tried asking him. By now we've rubbed the paint right off his bald head."
"I'd like to see this meanie you got," Careena says.
The tribe of boys, rather excited to show off their prisoner to someone who might appreciate the effort it took to catch her, lead us to their camp, which is a surprisingly well constructed village of grass tents under alien trees, complete with straw beds, fire pits, and benches for games.
The hole where they kept their prisoner was aptly named. It was nothing more than a muddy hole in the ground with a bamboo covering tied down with twine.
Down in this hole sits a girl; she looks almost exactly my age, seventeen or so. Her gaze is pensive and angry, though she's looking at nothing in particular. She's in a black leather jacket with an insignia that I can't read on the shoulder.
I'm not sure what to make of her. She has sharp, attractive features, naturally tanned skin, and jet-black hair straight as an arrow, quite the contrast to my own crazy waves and curls. She's athletic, with the posture of a ballerina. And those eyes. They're like dark hazel crystals under black eyebrows.
After a moment, we all back away from the hole to be out of earshot of the girl. I turn to Careena but the old woman's face is a mask of worry. She knows who this girl is, that much I can see in her eyes.
"Who is she, Careena?"
"The worst kind of trouble."
"Military?" I ask.
"No, too young. She's some cadet or trainee. Unless I miss my mark, that space temple the kids told us about is a mining operation."
"So they're illegal miners?"
"Aye, but that's not what makes them dangerous."
What is she not telling me?
There is something, I know it. The old woman looks like she's seen the face of the Lucifer himself. I think back to the girl in the hole. How could a teenage girl scare Careena? Unless, maybe, the girl wasn't a girl. Maybe I'm not asking the right question.
"Careena, what is she?"
The old woman answers.
"Deary, she's a Khelt."
TWENTY
I will admit, I'm a little confused. I know little about these mysterious Khelts, other than the small tidbits I've picked up here and there. By the time of Careena's era, I know that humanity will have already waged two terrible wars against this wicked enemy, wars of such profound sacrifice that they will leave deep psychological wounds on the collective soul of humanity, scars that will last for centuries and generations to come.
Yet, I was led to believe, rightly or wrongly, that the Khelts were machines, some sort of artificial life-forms, a nightmarish foe that had terrified the human race so completely that they all but abandoned the steady march of evolution toward more technologically integrated forms. Perhaps I should be thankful for that. After all, it's likely the only reason I'm able to relate at all with the people of the 31st Century.
But this girl down in the hole, she doesn't look so different from me either. A tad bit more athletic than most girls my age, but then again, so am I.
She's pretty, if you're into the tall, dark, and handsome types. A little aloof maybe, but otherwise a normal girl, as far as I can tell. It never occurred to me that humanity's greatest villain would look so... ordinary.
I need answers.
"Careena, you told me the Khelts were machines."
"They are machines," the old woman shoots back. It's clear she's upset by this recent development. "Don't let that tin can down there fool you. Her skin and blood cells are entirely synthetic, like a damned rubber sex doll. And as these lads already found out, her bones are a specialized titanium alloy. You couldn't break her if you tried. I bet you two Burnt Sienna crayons that she b
roke her own arm."
It still makes little sense to me. "So why does she look like a human girl?"
"I am a human girl."
We both turn at once toward the hole. I thought we were far enough away not to be heard, but apparently not. Careena takes my arm and pulls me even further away while whispering in a low voice. Yet, something tells me not even this distance is good enough to have a private conversation. "Look, deary, I know it's strange."
"It's more than strange," I whisper back to her. "You made it sound like these Khelts were killer alien robots from another galaxy."
"No, not exactly. We never encountered any intelligences out in space. Well, no real intelligence anyway. The Khelts were of our own making."
I suppose I can imagine that. Plenty of science fiction has predicted a day when humanity creates military robots that go out of control, or armies of android slaves that rise up against their masters. Not for nothing, even during my own time, plenty of bright people have warned that artificial intelligence will be the single most worrisome existential threat that humanity will ever face.
Still, something doesn't seem right. "So why does she think she's a girl?"
Careena does some math in her head. "Let me see, it's 2481, yeah? So she probably still has a mostly organic brain, they haven't figured out how to completely replicate that yet. But they will, in a few decades from now."
This keeps getting more confusing. "So what you're saying is that she is a real girl, then?"
The old woman answers coldly. "Don't think of her that way. They gave up the right to call themselves human."
"You'll have to do better than that, Careena."
"Look, fine. They used to be like us. But at some point, we had to decide what we wanted to be, how far we wanted to go. We had everything available to us, computer-brain interfaces, virtual realities, genetic engineering, replicated organs, artificial enhancements. We were in danger of becoming an entirely different species. And maybe that's fine. Maybe we've always been the cocoon, meant to emerge one day as the butterfly. I admit, even now, I'm a little different from you. My genes have been polished and cleaned up a bit. But in the early years, we were spiraling completely out of control. Very quickly, we were becoming something we couldn't recognize. And worse than that, different folks were choosing to go off in different directions. We were becoming a lot of different things, splitting off into a multitude of differing branches, with no thought as to the ramifications."
"So what did you do?" I ask.
She explains. "A universal standard was adopted. We call it the 2161 Standard, named for the year it was ratified. We weren't against progress, not at all, but we decided there should be some direction to it, that it should be somewhat uniform, and that it should be slow and steady, so we'd always have the option to hit the brakes if things started to get out of control. So in 2161 they took the averages of the top quartile of all of humanity, in areas of intelligence, strength, height, and so on, and they made that the starting point. Then, using some complex algorithm, they decided how much humanity could improve itself every twelve years. Having a universal standard, one that was legally enforced, worked very well. It prevented an arms race between parents to engineer the smartest kids possible, while still allowing for incremental increases over time; this way parents could know that their little Ollies and Olgas would still be a tad brighter than the generation before them. Which is all most of them wanted. This is sort of ancient history to me, so I may not have all the details right, but it's been considered a success and is still in use in my day."
"Then who is she?"
"Well, there were always individuals who violated the standard, but as long as every world enforced the law, doing so effectively meant exile. Your children could never be enrolled in school, you'd never be able to apply for a job, or even board a starship. For a long time, that was pretty much all the deterrent needed. Which brings us to the colony on Kheltaris V. They'd been founded by a Scandinavian academy of philosophers and scientists. Their mission was to build the ideal secular society, based on science and reason, sort of the opposite of all those religious colonies that got founded out here early on. And they did a lot of good in the early years. Amazing achievements. They were attracting all the best researchers from across the human diaspora. We called it the Kheltaris brain drain. But with great minds came great ambition."
I can see where this is going. "They weren't too happy about the speed limit placed on human evolution."
"No, they weren't," she says. "The way they saw it, they could do humanity even more good with a little extra pep in their step. And maybe that was their sincere motivation. To help everyone. I don't know. But they started violating the 2161 Standard. And you know what happened after that? Their bloody immigration tripled overnight! Parents are the most corrupt lot in the universe. Shameless. All for super babies. Well, the planet was embargoed, but they were self-sufficient enough for it not to do much good. The Colonial Federate tossed around the idea of a full on invasion, but no one had the stomach for that. Really, what right did we have to impose our will on them? They weren't hurting anyone, after all. No one needed rescue. So we did nothing. Historians have long debated that decision. We could have enforced their charter, arrested their ministers, installed a new government; they were a nation of academics, they couldn't have done anything to stop us. But we did nothing. Just an embargo."
She goes on. "I guess, after that, we sort of forgot about them. Over the decades, isolation created a cultural rift between us. They continued unfettered in all their endeavors. Over the next century or two, their children grew up never having known their less evolved cousins. From what I heard, they were taught we were Luddites stuck in our ways, fools to be pitied, religious bumpkins who denied our children their full potential. It would have remained like that, but at some point they weren't content to be confined to just one solar system, not when there was an entire galaxy to be explored. Fifty years from now, their excursions will lead to the First Khelt War. I've only read about it in the history books, but humanity is going to start off thinking we're about to clean their clocks and set things right once and for all. After all, it will be almost two hundred worlds against one colony of arrogant nerds."
"I take it, it doesn't go as well as planned?"
"Not in the least. By the time an armistice is finally declared, the Khelts will have gained control of half an entire mandate. They'll go from controlling one system to more than a hundred, including seven with former colonies. That will create a massive refugee crisis with downstream effects. Anyway, after that, we never had relations with them again, diplomatic or otherwise."
I'm afraid to ask about the second war, the one she fought in. But I have to know. "And the second war?"
Careena's thoughts go somewhere else. "I don't know, luv. I really don't. By the time of that war, three and a half centuries later, they didn't even look human anymore. The beings I saw... you can't unsee them. Grey humanoids without faces, without clothes, without gender. Without mercy."
I decide not to push her any more on the topic.
That night we're offered beds of moss under leaf roofs. The swampies are excited to cook for us, an array of native vegetables and goose eggs from their one resident goose, snatched in the dead of night from Nyssa, a particularly talkative little fowl named Beetlegoose.
The boys sing songs around a fire, laughing together, creating and strengthening the bonds that have served them well in exile.
Gunther, the little one that shot Careena, stands up before the fire. "Tomorrow we make the big trade for Sapphira!" There's optimism in his voice. Or perhaps naive innocence. He'd seen the evil that can lurk in dark hearts before; indeed, he was exiled by it. But this evil that the boys will face tomorrow, I fear it will be something entirely different. I'm worried his enthusiasm is misplaced.
Someone else chimes in. "Maybe we'll even get a look inside their space temple!"
There's no holding back the boys now. "W
e'll show'em who's boss!"
"Spit on'em!"
"Spit on'em!" everyone yells while spitting on the ground.
I lean over to Careena. "Do they stand a chance?"
"Not a snowball's chance in hell," she says. "But the Khelts might take the trade regardless. I can't imagine they care much about this lot."
"I don't think you give the boys enough credit," I say in their defense. "They did manage to capture one of your fearsome Khelts, after all."
She laughs. "Hah! Is that what you think? That toaster oven they got down there has the reflexes of a jaguar and could wrestle a half ton bull to the ground. You think a bamboo gate and a few children with pointy sticks is keeping her here? She was sent to collect intel. And she's only a trainee, so that tells you the priority her bosses put on the mission. No, freckles, they're just curious why a bunch of feral kids are running around an alien world like some extraterrestrial adaptation of Lord of the Flies. I'm sure they weren't expecting that when they arrived here."
"How can you be so sure?"
The old woman takes a sip of swampie tea from a large wooden bowl we've been lent. She slurps a little too loudly. I hate it when people do that. Then she tells me casually, "Because she's transmitting everything she sees and hears back to her people."
"What?"
"She's got some fancy neurolink installed in her head."
I'm shocked. "So the Khelts know that we're here?"
"Well, not exactly. Not you and I anyway. Remember my magic earrings?" She points to her ears. "I've been blocking her transmissions. Not too hard, really. The Khelts have always been far more advanced than us, but even so, to me her tech is five hundred years old. She might as well be using smoke signals. Now we should get some sleep, deary. Tomorrow is going to a trial for all of us, I reckon."
I suppose she's right. The boys continue their songs around the fire, though in more subdued tones as the later hours arrive. I'm happy to see Dinah and Hagen sitting together with them, joining in with the storytelling and camaraderie, enjoying themselves on this grand adventure.