by Nancy Kress
English class. That was it. That poem she’d been the only one in the class to like, Ode on a Grecian Urn by Keats. The vase in that poem was supposed to last forever too. How did that part go?
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe…
The Grecian vase had pictures on it, of a wedding party and musicians and trees. This had only an abstract design of broken lines in black paint. The Grecian vase sounded prettier.
“Hey, Sharon, are you coming to the cargo bay?” Billin called.
“Coming,” she said. She took the vase with her. If Annit could put flowers in it, so could she. Maybe it would cheer people up if they didn’t find the communication cube and the t-port.
No, that was stupid. If they didn’t find the t-port, nothing would cheer people up. Certainly not a bunch of flowers. Get real, she told herself and followed Billin to the cargo bay.
“What’s that?” Jofrid said, pushing her hair off her face. The day was warm, and she’d been bending over a fire made on the ground just outside the open main door of the Discovery. Delicious smells floated in the air.
“It’s a vase,” Sharon said.
“What’s that?”
They must not have vases in medieval Iceland. “A thing to put flowers in, Jofrid. To look pretty.”
“Oh,” Jofrid said. “Are you hungry?”
“Starved.” It was true. Searching all over the ship was hard work, especially carrying Tara. Jofrid didn’t ask if Sharon and her team had found the cube. She knows I’d mention it if we had, Sharon thought.
“This is strange food,” Jofrid said. “You don’t pick it or hunt it or prepare it. You heat water and add this magic powder, and soup appears. Do you think it’s black magic? Those twin boys have already eaten it, but some black magics take much time to work.”
“I’m sure it’s okay,” Sharon said. It just looked freeze-dried to Sharon.
She ate a bowl of the soup, which tasted wonderful. Tara liked it, too, eating a big bowl and then falling asleep on a blanket in the shade of the ship.
Sharon said to Jofrid, “Where’s the rest of your housekeeping team?”
“I sent them to gather fruit and potatoes and anything else we can test to eat. I wanted them to set snares for pigbirds, too, but they will not. They’re all Discovery people.” Jofrid sighed. "But they are likely to change their minds in time."
Jofrid looked pensive. “Sharon, we shouldn’t just rely on these magic food powders. If we do…” Her voice trembled, but she recovered and went on. “If we do in the end stay here forever, the powders will be used up someday. We must prepare. We must learn to farm. Find some animals that will give milk. Make a real homestead here.”
Sharon knew Jofrid was right, but she couldn’t bear to think about it. Stay here forever! Instead, she said, “Did you tell Jason this? What does he say?”
“He says we must all learn to play football.”
“What?”
“Yes,” Jofrid said, putting twigs onto the fire. “I said that football would not feed us. Jason said it would make us all, colonists and Yanks, into a true team. Once we are a true team, we will be able to solve the problems of building a homestead.”
“Football?”
“Also something called basketball. He said the big hangar deck is perfect for that.”
“You know what I think, Jofrid?” Sharon said.
“What?”
“I think it’s a guy thing.”
Jofrid giggled. Sharon found herself giggling, too. Jofrid said, “They are strange, men. I am handfasted, you know.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Betrothed, the English priest called it. To be married. To Thorfinn Egilson. We will marry in the summer.”
“Engaged! How old are you, Jofrid?”
“Fourteen. I should have been handfasted two years ago, but...but...” Suddenly Jofrid looked like she would cry.
Sharon got up and put her arm around her. Jofrid came only up to Sharon’s shoulders. “But what, Jofrid?”
“But no man asked for me because I’m not maidenly. I go up to the High Seat and talk to my father before he bids me speak. I say what I think. I look my father’s men in the eyes. Until Thorfinn asked for me, I thought I should never marry. And now...now...”
“Now what?” Sharon said. “What is it?”
The small girl’s shoulders shook. “I don’t like Thorfinn!”
“Then don’t marry him!” Sharon cried. “You shouldn’t marry somebody you don’t like. Wait for somebody you do like.”
Jofrid freed herself from Sharon’s arm and straightened up. “I shouldn’t talk of it now. If we don’t find the magic door, I will not be going home anyway. And it is not your problem, Sharon. Let’s talk of something else. You were going to teach me a song, like your skalds recite.”
Sharon couldn’t sing. She had an awful voice. But she had to do something to distract Jofrid. The metal vase sat on the ground beside the fire.
“Okay, Jofrid, I’ll recite a poem we learned in English class. Or part of it anyway. It’s about a vase, only the vase in the poem has pictures of a wedding on it. And the poet thinks that the wedding on the vase is better than the real thing, because on the vase the bride will never get old, and the couple will never fight or get divorced, and the wedding music will go on forever. Listen, it goes like this:
“Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the...something something something…
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone
Fair youth, beneath the trees thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold lover, never, never canst Thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal—yet do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss;
Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair!”
“Oh, I like that!” Jofrid said. “Will you teach it to me? Only what does the ‘something something something’ part mean?”
“That’s where I forgot the words,” Sharon said apologetically. “Maybe they’ll come to me.”
“The part about ‘winning near the goal’—is that the same manner of goal that Jason talks about in football?”
“Well, no,” Sharon said.
“What makes the two goals different?”
“Well, let me think.” Sharon was feeling confused. In English class, there was Mr. Daniels to explain hard meanings.
Jofrid said, “Is the goal in the poem the same as a ‘basketball goal,’ then? Jason says I must make a basket out of vines for that goal.”
“No, it―” Sharon didn’t get a chance to explain. At that moment, the girls heard shouting. The next minute, the eight kids who had gone to find the Panurish came over the closest hill, some running, some shouting.
“Sor is carrying someone!” Jofrid cried. “Oh, he’s carrying Robbie, and Robbie looks... Oh, Sharon! I think Robbie is dead!”
Chapter Eleven
At first, Jason thought they’d lucked out big-time.
Early in the morning, he’d left the Discovery with two teams of four kids each, to look for the Panurish. Over a quick breakfast, Jason had instructed his seven teammates about what they were supposed to do. He’d lain awake a long time last night, sweating it until he had a good plan.
“It’s going to take a while ‘til we find the P-dudes because they’ll be hiding. We’ll set off in four directions. Robbie, Wu, Cam, you’re the three scouts. You'll head for the high ground there...and there...and there. If any of you see them first, you don’t approach alone. Everybody clear on that? You come back to the main group. But if the main group finds ‘em, we’ll start negotiating, because there’ll be enough of us. Got that?”
Everyone nodded. Sor, Robbie, Cam, Deel, Annit, Wu, and Corio. Jason had been careful to learn all their names. Plus, of course, da Vinci.<
br />
“If nobody sees the Panurish, we report back to the ship at high noon, right? Remember, finding them is going to take time.”
They saw the Panurish ten minutes after leaving the ship.
It was weird. The aliens were walking in a straight, tight line like some kind of marching drill. There were eight of them, and beside each Panurish marched a robot. Silently Sor passed a flat thing from his tool pouch to Jason. It turned out to be amazing binoculars, so Jason got to see everything in close-up.
The Panurish were indeed smaller than humans, as Sor had said. They had two arms and two legs and a normal-looking body, dressed in clothes that looked like s-suits except they were a dull green. Their heads differed from humans the most, again just as Sor had described them: pushed-forward faces, thick necks, and reddish hair only on the tops of their heads.
Sor said, “There’s a third eye on the tops of their heads. We think they evolved on a world with lots of flying predators.”
“Keep your voice down!” Jason said. “They’ll hear you!”
“Oh, they already know we’re here, Jason. Their heat-detection equipment will have told them that. It’s quite good.”
“It is? How do you know?”
“Because it’s ours. The third robot in line is carrying it.”
Da Vinci said, “I have scanned and analyzed the Panurish robots. They are much more primitive than I am.” Jason would swear that da Vinci sounded pleased.
“Yeah?” Jason said. “What can they do? Can they attack?”
“Oh, almost certainly. But each ‘bot can probably carry out only one main function at a time, plus simple locomotion. Those robots are for protection.”
“Bodyguards,” Jason said. He looked closely at the robots, cylinders with long flexible tentacle arms, like da Vinci. But the Panurish robots had no head, which da Vinci did. Instead, they had broad flat tops on which they carried more stuff than would fit into their arms.
Jason said, “What else can you tell from your scans, da Vinci?”
“Nothing else.”
“Well, what are they doing?”
“I have no idea,” da Vinci said.
“Annit? Deel?”
Deel said, “We don’t know. We’ve only seen them once, remember, when they raided the ship.”
“Sor?”
“Little is known about the Panurish’s habits. Maybe they’re exercising. Or playing a game of some sort.”
It didn’t look like much of a game to Jason. March along, don’t talk, don’t look to either side. How would you know who won?
“Or,” da Vinci said, “it could be a religious ritual. Many cultures have those.”
“Well, whatever it is, we’re going to follow it,” Jason said. “All the way back to their base, so we know where it is. Then before they go in, we’re going to start negotiating.”
“About this negotiation,” Deel said. “‘Negotiating’ usually means that both parties offer something the other wants. We know what the Panurish have that we want: the communication cube. But why should they give it up?”
“Because they don’t know what it looks like, so we’re going to convince them it looks like a different thing, and we really want that other thing. Then we take the cube in default.”
Corio said, “I don’t understand.”
Jason turned to him to explain. “It’s a fake-out, see? Like, suppose you got a cool sweater I really want. I act like the sweater’s nothing, but I drool over your backpack and eye it a lot and act like I’m really into that backpack. I offer to trade it for something. You say no. I offer more and more. You keep refusing. Then finally I act all disappointed, but by that time, I had a chance to notice what you like about the stuff I’m offering to trade. Pretty soon, you’re trying to make a trade with me. Finally, acting a bit down, I agree to trade what you like for the sweater. Then I slink off with what I really wanted, only you let it go ‘cause you never caught on that I wanted it. See?”
“No,” Corio said, looking confused.
“Well, you’ll see it when we do it.”
“But,” Corio asked, “why should the Panurish trade with us for anything? They can just take whatever they want. We don’t have any weapons left.”
“Well, maybe we got stuff they can’t take.”
Corio was persistent. “Like what?”
“I don’t know yet,” Jason said with careful patience. “Don’t you see? We gotta wait to see how it goes down.”
Corio was quiet, but he still looked confused. The others didn’t look too convinced about Jason’s plan, either. Well, nobody else was coming up with a better one! Sometimes you just had to play it by ear.
“Come on,” he said to everybody, “let’s go. We’ll follow the Panurish to wherever they live. That’s step one.”
The Panurish turned out to live fairly close, only about a mile from the Discovery. Their ship was much smaller than the human ship. In fact, it barely looked big enough for the eight Panurish, eight robots, and basic supplies. Well, that made sense, Jason thought. It wasn’t a colony ship, built to bring whole families to a new planet and sustain them while they built a town. The Panurish vessel was just a pirate ship. Yes, that’s exactly what it was: a pirate ship for raiding and stealing other people’s stuff and taking it home with them.
Except, how were they going to take it home? All the high-tech equipment from the Discovery was piled in a humongous heap beside the Panurish ship. The heap was taller than the ship and wider. It would never ever fit inside.
“Da Vinci,” Jason said, “tell me how the t-port... No, wait, not now. We got to start talking to the Panurish before they go inside their ship.”
Jason swallowed hard. This was it, then. He was going to talk to aliens. He hoped they wouldn’t fry him on the spot.
“Okay, team,” he said to the seven kids with him. “You know what to do.”
Cam and Corio moved as far away from the Panurish ship as they could get and still see what was happening. If there was violence, they’d run back to the Discovery to report it. Deel, Robbie, and Sor, the back-up crew, stayed in the middle ground. And Jason, Annit, and da Vinci walked toward the aliens. “Hey,” Jason said. “How you doin’?”
Not that he expected the Panurish to understand English, but he did expect them to stop, look at him, say something in their own language. They didn’t. They kept on walking toward their ship as if the humans didn’t exist.
“Don’t go inside,” Jason said. “We want to talk.” He pantomimed sitting down and talking.
The Panurish kept walking past.
“Hey, hello. My name is Jason. Jason, me.” He pointed at his chest.
The Panurish reached the pile of stolen equipment and started looking through it bit by bit, holding each piece close to one of the robots.
Da Vinci said softly, “They’re looking for the communication cube again. That robot is doing sensor scans for anything that looks like a communication program.”
Annit said, “It’s going to take them a long time. Every piece of equipment they stole has some kind of communication programming inside it, including the toys.”
“Yeah, well, we need a communication program with us,” Jason said. He was getting annoyed. It was creepy to feel like you didn’t even exist. “Hey, Panurish! Will you answer if I yell?”
The Panurish didn’t answer.
Jason started forward. Da Vinci said quickly, “Stop. I don’t know what the range is to set off the bodyguard robots, but don’t get any closer.”
“Okay,” Jason said, frustrated. “Then you try. See if their robots will talk to you.”
Da Vinci went very still. After a minute, Jason said, “Oh, man, he’s gone into contemplation again!”
“No, I don’t think so,” Annit said. “I think he’s just trying all communication channels, including ones we can’t detect. Wait just a...there, he’s done.”
Da Vinci said, “The Panurish robots are all functional. They detect my signals, but they wi
ll not respond.”
Now what? Jason thought. How did you communicate with beings who wouldn’t talk to you, you couldn’t physically approach, and didn’t acknowledge your existence?
You threw something at them. Something friendly. Jason took some of Jofrid’s vine-rope from off his belt. He bent down to gather some of the purple groundcover, wadded it tight, and wrapped the rope around it.
“What’s that?” Annit said.
“A football.”
“A what?”
“Watch,” Jason said. “Thirty-three, sixteen, forty-two, hike!” He threw the ball in a sweet high pass toward the pile of stolen equipment.
Almost faster than his eyes could follow, one of the Panurish robots swiveled around. A thin beam of light shot out of its body and hit the football. It fell to the ground as a blackened, burnt cinder.
No Panurish even appeared to notice.
Annit looked at the fried “football” and said, “It didn’t work.”
“I know it didn’t work!” Jason said. “And I’m fresh out of ideas! You got a better... Robbie! No!”
Too late. Robbie, who was supposed to be waiting safely in the middle distance, was crawling through the groundcover, low to the ground, toward the far side of the Panurish ship. He must have made a wide circle and sneaked up from the rear. Now he was almost next to the pile of stolen equipment, reaching out one grubby hand to do what he did best―steal things. Only Robbie didn’t know about the bodyguard robots. He didn’t know what the Panurish were like. He thought that because no Panurish or Panurish robot had appeared to notice him, they didn’t know he was there.
“Robbie! No!” Jason screamed.
Too late. Robbie’s hand and part of his arm were inside the invisible robot range. A beam of light shot out.
Robbie screamed and jerked backward. Still screaming, he writhed on the ground. Jason and Annit, then Deel and Sor from farther away, ran in a wide circle around the Panurish to get to him.
By the time they did, Robbie had stopped screaming.
“He’s dead!” Annit cried.