He frowned. It really didn’t matter in the long run. The fact that the natives had somehow been overlooked by the colonization surveys was unfortunate, but made no difference. Their presence meant the colonists would have to be relocated – forcibly, if necessary. The realization struck him like a physical blow. Someone must have leaked the report the governor general had sent to the Colonization Board, which explained why the rebels were trying to break away from the Republic. Not that that would make any difference. They’d still have to be deported.
Colt looked at the small being next to him. How long had the colonists known about the natives? There must be some form of contact, because this little one spoke English.
When Uujii turned back to face him, Colt asked, “Where did you learn to speak my language?”
It squatted down next to him. “I meet others who teach me some words. I watch and listen from trees. I listen to radio. Do I speak well?”
Colt was startled to realize that he was talking with an adolescent, and, as he later confirmed, a female. She was obviously proud of her ability to speak English. “You speak very well. I hope someday I can learn your language as well as you speak mine,” Colt replied.
Later that morning the doctor came in and sat cross-legged beside him. He ran the med-scanner over Colt’s injuries, making noises to himself. Finally, he folded the med-scanner shut and looked at Uujii. He spoke to her for several seconds, finishing by nodding his head toward Colt. Uujii hesitated; then she spoke briefly to the doctor. He said something that sounded very much like what he said the first time. Uujii looked at Colt, “Doctor says you have ...” She held up her three fingers, “... broke bones ... here.” She lightly touched his side. “And broke bone here.” She touched his injured leg. “Doctor says you getting better.”
“Healing,” Colt said.
“Healing,” Uujii echoed. “Doctor says tiny machines that fix you are working, but he must be careful since they are not made for your kind. Healing will take many days. He will be back later to make sure they continue to work.”
Colt recognized that the “tiny machines” were nanites, microscopic robots. He was even more perplexed by the level of sophistication they represented. How could these people be so primitive and yet have nanotechnology?
He asked Uujii to thank the doctor. Then, when the doctor had left, he settled down to work on improving both her understanding of English and his understanding of her language. To prepare for another assignment years before, he had taken a conditioning program in linguistic absorption. He dredged up those techniques now to help him quickly understand the words and structure of the local language. He learned words for various parts of the breakfast that Olowan offered him, and found himself trying to teach Uujii how to conjugate verbs. His hosts called themselves several different names that were all similar to Lodaanii, which, not surprisingly, translated to “people,” although they referred to their ancestors as Nidacheen — which also translated to “people.” The Lodaanii had a complex language, full of technical words for things that didn’t seem to exist in the settlement, such as television. They did have a radio receiver that he later saw; however, he didn’t see any evidence that they had the technology to make it, and it clearly wasn’t of human origin. The more he learned about this community the more he was intrigued by the paradoxes it represented: an inexplicable combination of primitive and sophisticated. Was their technology supplied by someone else? Surely, there wasn’t a third sentient race on the planet.
As the day progressed he couldn’t help thinking about this conundrum. No one could really blame the current human population for keeping the Lodaanii secret, but had a survey crew found them and deliberately not reported them? How could the Lodaanii have such a combination of advanced technology and primitive living conditions? Were they a decaying civilization? The remnants of the industrial base needed to produce some of the technology he had seen should be detectable. None of it made sense, and it was distracting him from his language lessons.
He looked at Uujii. “Tell me about your people,” he said. “Do it in Lodaanii so I can continue to learn the language.”
For a moment a strange expression lingered on Uujii’s face. Colt finally realized she was puzzled as she asked, “What is there to tell? We are the people. We live in the mountains. We thank the over-being every day that we have a good life.”
“Have you always lived in these mountains?”
“There are stories that we once lived somewhere far away – the other side of the big water, but that cannot be true. How would we get here if that was so?” She looked at him, and the strange expression came back briefly.
Colt just nodded. “Where do you get your … ?” He couldn’t find a word for technology. “Your radios?”
“We have always had our radios,” she answered.
“What about your lights?” He pointed at one of the incandescent bulbs. “Araduii, the light maker and her mate make them. I was told we used to have lights that were cool to the touch, but they wore out and no one knew how to make them anymore.”
The more questions Colt asked the more intrigued he became. He asked other Lodaanii similar questions. They all indicated the same thing: that no one knew where the technological developments had come from and many were failing as they wore out, and that no one knew much about their past. As far as Colt could tell their history started a little over one hundred local years before, roughly the time the first humans began settling the planet. That was a chilling thought. Had the early colonists destroyed the Lodaanii civilization and wiped out any evidence of it? He couldn’t accept that.
As the day wound down, his thoughts turned to his own situation. He needed to get back to human civilization soon, not just to report in but also to find out how these people had been overlooked. And what had happened to the Invincible? Besides the shuttle crew, were there any other crew members on the planet when it happened? Where was the shuttle crew? Were they still alive? Were they being held prisoner somewhere? What could he do about it?
The more he thought about the Invincible the angrier he got. He had close friends aboard. The explosion could have killed over four thousand men and women. And you just don’t go around taking that many lives without payback! He promised himself that whoever did it was going to get theirs. He needed to start finding answers, but that meant he had to get back to humanity. Right now he was far too weak to travel. He was feeling better every day, but he seemed to be getting weaker at the same time. When would he start feeling stronger, and how long would it take him to recover?
###
The following morning as Colt sat on the open floor of the hut stretching his injured leg, he looked up to see Uujii flanked by two adults.
“This Ahlonjii and Jomara,” she said. “Mother and Father.”
Using crutches the doctor had brought him earlier that morning, Colt struggled to a standing position. As soon as the wave of weakness passed, he attempted the half bowing gesture Lodaanii used when they met one another and briefly grasped each of them by a hand.
“Cote, I greet you.” Ahlonjii said in broken English. Jomara spoke to Colt in Lodaanii.
“It is good to meet the parents of my amazing helper,” Colt replied in Lodaanii.
He glanced at Uujii and saw what he guessed was the equivalent to a smirk. “I believe you have had contact with other humans — my people,” he said to Ahlonjii.
“That is correct. I have traded with the beings in the grass sea at the foot of the mountains.”
“I hope they were not too impolite.”
“They are not Lodaanii, but most do the best they are able,” Ahlonjii responded.
“I must thank you for allowing Uujii to work with me. She is very helpful, and I am learning much from her.”
“Now if she would apply as much energy to her schooling,” Ahlonjii said.
Colt smiled, briefly wondering what they thought of a human smile. “I understand that you want her to go to the human school in
First Landing.”
“Yes. She learns very quickly and our teaching equipment is wearing out. Many of the programs are no longer complete. The one she wants to study from is no longer working at all and the school in First Landing has it.”
“What do you want to study, Uujii?” Colt asked.
“I believe the word is interspecies. I want to learn interspecies relations.”
Her response staggered Colt. There were too many things about this village that didn’t make sense, and now Uujii wanted to study a subject that the teaching equipment once had but was no longer available, a subject that could not have been developed without contact with other sentient species. Yet the Republic had no record of a native sentient race, much less of one that had dealings with other races.
###
Over the next few days as the nanites worked to reconstruct his damaged body, Colt continued to feel better but remained too weak to leave the village. He fumed about not being able to strike out on his own to find out what had happened to his crew.
He spent most of his time with Uujii. When he felt able, he asked her to help him move to the front step of the hut. Sitting just outside the door, he could see much of the village. It occupied a roughly circular clearing with several large trees spread through it. The intertwined branches of the trees formed a dense canopy. Diffused sunlight filtered through, somehow sustaining a wide variety of plants. Small, colorful gardens grew near most of the huts. The bright red, yellow, and gold provided decoration as well as food. Near the center of the village, a few houses away, a brick platform held two square wooden columns that supported a large metal bell. Markings that might have been writing covered the bell, but Colt sat too far away to make out individual characters. On one side of the clearing he heard the splashing of a small stream. On all sides dense brush made it impossible to see any distance out of the clearing. Even the main trail took a quick turn once it left the village and disappeared behind the brush.
During the day Lodaanii coming and going kept the trail constantly busy. Occasionally a heavy cart pulled by one of the hairless draft animals would emerge from the trail, and the villagers would rush out to see what it carried. Sometimes they would exchange goods. Sometimes they would invite the driver in for a meal. And all day long passersby looked at Colt in apparent curiosity. Uujii helped him learn how to greet them, and to continue to develop his ability to speak their language. Despite the significant differences in the vocal cavity between humans and Lodaanii, he quickly learned to pronounce their words well enough to be understood, although he did occasionally get a sound from Uujii that could only be a snicker.
Chapter 14
Colt found more and more that Uujii reminded him of his own daughter. To help her with her English he told her stories. When he tried to explain about a boyhood fishing trip he took with his father, she surprised him by showing that she knew nothing about fish. In fact, Uujii laughed aloud when he first tried to describe them. Patiently he explained about creatures that live and breathe underwater. Although Uujii stopped laughing as he explained about gills and the oxygen captured in the water, he could see that she remained skeptical.
“I’ve always loved the water. I remember spending summers on the lake at my family’s home in New Hampshire. In fact, I had my own sailboat by the time I was eleven.”
As far as Colt could tell Uujii was more than a little puzzled. She said, “What is a sailboat?”
“It’s a boat that uses a large piece of cloth called a sail to get the wind to push it.”
“What is a boat?”
“It’s a craft that floats on water and carries people.”
Uujii was aghast. “You mean that people go out in the water on your world?”
“Sure. We travel on the water. We catch fish from boats. We …”
“You are making a joke, yes?”
Colt began to wonder if Uujii understood any of what he was saying. The next day he found a way to show her. His broken bones were knitting rapidly, and he was able to use the simple wooden crutches the doctor had presented him to move about the village, despite his weakness. As he gained mobility he could move farther and farther away from the hut where he stayed. About two hundred meters away, he found the small stream that the Lodaanii used as a water source. Colt and Uujii had walked down to the edge of the stream when Colt spotted a fish swimming vigorously against the current. He remembered her skepticism and pointed at the movement beneath the surface. “That’s a fish,” he said.
Uujii looked confused. He realized she didn’t see it. Puzzled, he lowered himself onto his good knee, put one hand on a rock sticking out of the stream, and reached out across the water to where the fish swam. The fish didn’t look very earth-like, but from what he had read he knew that native water creatures were harmless to humans and most had been found to be highly edible. Carefully he lowered his hand into the water. To his surprise the fish didn’t seem to notice him. With a flick of his forearm he lifted the fish from the water and tossed it on shore.
Uujii gave out a shrill chirp and jumped back from the flopping creature. As it continued to thrash about she began to approach it curiously. “That was in the water?” she asked.
Colt nodded, a gesture she had learned to recognize. She continued to watch the fish with fascination. “But that is impossible,” she said. “Nothing can live underwater.”
Colt spotted a pool temporarily cut off from the main part of the stream. He caught up the fish and dropped it in the shallow water. “I told you about gills. It needs the water to breathe,” he said. The two dorsal fins stood out of the water, moving about in the pool as the fish recovered from its open air exposure. Colt watched as Uujii traced the movement of the fins and slowly began to recognize the outline and movement of the fish beneath the surface. Then she began to see other creatures flitting about in the water. She was almost giddy with the discovery. “I see other fish,” she said.
About that moment an adult Lodaanii shrieked, and Colt looked up. A short way down the stream a Lodaanii youngster thrashed about in the water. On the shore two adults frantically ran back and forth, flailing their arms and calling out, but not going in the water. The realization that the adults could not bring themselves to go in the water to save the child struck Colt like a blow. He climbed laboriously to his feet and hobbled to the spot as fast as he could on his crutches. He waded into the water, and by juggling his crutches he picked the child up. He carried the young Lodaanii to shore and handed him to his shocked parents. Then, as his weakness caught up with him, he sank to the grass beside the stream.
The parents and other Lodaanii gathered around him, asking concerned questions and offering to help him to his feet. When he was finally recovered enough to get back up, the parents effusively thanked him, and more Lodaanii gathered around them, whispering and pointing. One of the adults asked in Lodaanii, “Cote, how do you do this? Are you not frightened of the water?” Uujii translated for Colt.
For a moment Colt hesitated, wondering if the Lodaanii had some kind of taboo about water. Then he said, “My kind likes water. We are simply careful not to breathe it.” Uujii translated. She added, “There are creatures in the water. I have seen them.” The Lodaanii whispered among themselves again. One of the parents said in Lodaanii, “Your kind must have great charm. We are blessed to have you with us. Olowan and Ramaanii are twice blessed that you stay in their dwelling.”
“And I am grateful for their hospitality―for all your hospitality,” Colt responded. “Thank you.”
Soon all the Lodaanii had returned to their own business. Some of the children gathered along the edge of the stream, pointing at movement in the water, until their parents shooed them away. Colt was perplexed. They had accepted his explanation without question so it wasn’t a religious prohibition, and Uujii had responded positively to capturing the fish. But clearly the Lodaanii weren’t comfortable with the concept of getting in the water, and they believed his lack of fear was mystical. He thought back to Olow
an and Ramaanii’s hut. They had running water and a sink. Was it “big” water that bothered them? For a moment he stood silently, leaning on his crutches. Then he limped to the pool where the fish continued to swim about.
As he carefully lifted it out of the water, Uujii asked, “Can I touch?”
###
An hour later Colt and Uujii returned to the village. As they entered the dwelling Ramaanii greeted him at the door. “Greetings, Cote. We hear you walked in water to save Aaguaar’s life. The earth mother smiles on you, and because you stay with us perhaps she will smile on us as well.”
“That is my wish also,” Colt replied. Wearily he lowered himself to the mat he used for sleeping. “I didn’t realize how weak I am.”
Ramaanii handed him a mug of water, and then she hesitantly said, “You are very good with the young. Do you have a mate?”
“I had a mate,” he answered. “She’s dead now.” He paused.
Sensing his discomfort, Ramaanii said, “I’m sorry for your loss. Would it be inappropriate to ask what happened to her?” Uujii struggled with “inappropriate” and finally gave up. “May she ask what happened?”
Colt took a sip of the water. “Several years ago I had a wife and a daughter. We lived beside the ocean, and my wife was a terrific sailor. She won several sailboat races.” Uujii interrupted, “You told me about a sailboat, but I do not have the words for sailor.”
“Well, a sailor is someone who works on a boat. When I say my wife was a terrific sailor, I mean she knew how to control a sailboat very well. It takes great skill to win a sailboat race, and she won many.” He paused, closing his mind to the ache of the memory.
Peacemaker: The Corona Rebellion 2564 AD Page 10