Cain's Land

by Robert Frezza

  Coldewe sighed. “Just remember, if you run into trouble, pull out. This is just a probe. If we want to go in and disassemble everything movable, we'll do that later. Right now, it’s more important to keep them oblivious to our snooping.”

  “If we have to shoot anybody, do we bring them back?”Kemp inquired

  Snyman looked at Coldewe helplessly. “Hell, yes.”

  L-Day plus 63 [4-lake Rain 13]

  “IT LOOKS PRETTY OVERCAST,” SECTION SERGEANT MARKUS ALARIESTO COMMENTED. “Tonight would be a good night to get close-ups from the village and maybe some more plant samples.”

  The village in question was a small one with twenty houses and outbuildings, and perhaps two hundred souls. Alariesto and Chris Heunis had spent enough hours on the village's fringes to assume a proprietary interest.

  Heunis rode his bike over a rock and skillfully leaned his weight forward to clear it with the least amount of effort. “Collecting sick plants, and more peeping in windows. My father caught me peeping in windows when I was twelve, and after he finished whipping me, he swore I was going straight to hell. You know, I would hate to live as close to my neighbors as these people do.”

  Alariesto snickered. “I grew up in a fifth-floor flat in Turku. You'd have really hated that.” Turning his bike into the forest, he noticed three well-nourished shrubs growing beside a shallow depression, and a memory tugged at him. “Hold on.”

  “What is it?” Heunis asked. Hansel, the team's scout dog, trotted to the edge of the depression and whined softly.

  Alariesto put his bike aside and knelt down. Pulling out his kukri, he shoved it into the soil to test its texture and then began scraping at the surface. “Remember what Colonel Hans said about finding a cemetery?”

  Heunis nodded. “I'm beginning to think the Blues don't have cemeteries.”

  Alariesto gouged out a chunk of dirt and pointed to a weathered object whose tip had been resting almost unnoticed on the surface. He tapped it with the heavy Gurkha knife. “Leg bone.”

  Hennis frowned. “You don't think it’s an animal bone, do you?”

  “You don't either.” Alariesto grinned mirthlessly.

  Hennis solemnly unstrapped his camera and recorded the image on a laser disk. “This is worth a balloon. You dig. I'll take pictures. The big brains up top are going to want us to record the position of every bone to help them figure out how the skeleton got here.”

  “Skeleton, huh?” Alariesto's grin widened as he began scooping away at the humus overlaying the shallow grave. On Cyclade, where Alariesto had served, the Provisional Army concealed bodies of people they murdered as a neat exercise in psychological warfare. He remembered quite a few graves in odd comers. “I think I know how it got here. And what makes you think there's only one?”

  L-Day plus 66 [7-lake Rain 13]

  “WHAT’S WRONG?” COEN KEMP ASKED SECTION SERGEANT VSEVOLOD ZEREBTSOV as they crouched together in the darkness observing the missile complex.

  “I don't know. Something is, that’s all.” Zerebtsov took a reading from the portable sensor unit he was carrying and spent a few seconds obliterating a stray boot print.

  “Colonel Hans said-”

  “I know what Colonel Hans said, but this is important. All right, here's what we'll do. You stay here. I'll try to get close up to the buildings. After I take a quick look around, we'll both get out of here and come back another night.”

  Without waiting for Kemp to reply, Zerebtsov began moving forward, spider fashion. About fifty meters from the building, he gasped and fell on his face. He didn't move.

  Kemp keyed his radio. “Battalion point one. Break. Kemp here. Zerebtsov looks dead. and I am aborting. I don't think we're compromised. I'm pulling his body out, but I'm going to need pick-up at LZ Akita Chiba” Uncoiling a length of rope to loop around Zerebtsov's ankle, he hesitated for a second “To save you from asking, I have no idea what killed him.”

  L-Day plus 72 [4-brook Rain 13]

  “WHAT WORK DOES YOUR FATHER PERFORM?” MARAIS ASKED MENIOLAGOMEKA, the junior of the two naturales who had assigned themselves to him. He made the appropriate signs.

  Ekpalawehud and Meniolagomeka discussed the question in a series of short trills, then Ekpalawehud, who always spoke first, replied, “Meniolagomeka is scholar.”

  “Yes, but is his father also a scholar?” Marais asked

  Although nearly as proficient as Spoagusa or Nessenletam, who had attached themselves to Dr. Seki, Ekpalawehud was either confused or irritated by the question. “He is scholar. Father am scholar.”

  Marais still wasn't sure whether the word father meant the same to the Blues as it did to humans, but he sensed that he was on to something. “My father is a farmer. He grows food plants.”

  Ekpalawehud appeared agitated. “Are you farmer? Do you grow food plants?”

  “I am a scholar. My father is a farmer.” Marais mentally crossed his fingers. “Is Meniolagomeka's father a scholar?”

  The down on Ekpalawehud's neck and shoulders rose--a gesture Marais had learned to associate with irritation--and he made a gesture to keep Meniolagomeka from responding. “Pochteca decides.” Ek:palawehud clicked his teeth together with a finality that Marais had come to loathe. The Pochteca was an undefined governmental authority, and the response “Pochteca decides,” accompanied by a click, was intended to end discussion.

  “Drink to friendship. Why must Pochteca decide?” Marais asked bluntly. “I am a scholar, my father is a farmer.”

  Clearly disconcerted, Ekpalawehud reached for Marais's mug instead of his own, gulped from it, and immediately spit up. Choking, with foam flecking his nostrils, he ran from the tent.

  Spilled beer dripped to the tent floor. Marais half rose to follow, appalled. Meniolagomeka watched with no expression that Marais could read. “Why you come here?” he asked suddenly.

  “To meet with your people. To establish friendly relations,”Marais said automatically, realizing that this was the first time he had ever seen a naturale alone.

  “Doctorseki state. Doctorseki the wrist, Wanjau the hand. Variag the brain.” Meniolagomeka said without moving his eyes from the entrance to the tent. “Pochteca not believe Doctorseki.”

  He turned his head slowly, moving his hands as he spoke.

  “Doctorseki state you have many spheres.”

  “Planets,” Marais corrected automatically.

  “Plan-ets,” Meniolagomeka repeated, storing the word away. “We have one planet. No changes. Why. You come. Changes.” Meniolagomeka searched for more words than he knew. “You come.”

  “We don't mean to change things. We want to exchange ideas, exchange technologies. Learn things about you and your planet”

  Meniolagomeka trimmed Marais's explanation with a brusque gesture. “Not understand. Why. You come,” Meniolagomeka repeated. “Pochteca not understand. Not believe Doctorseki.”

  The conversation terminated abruptly as Spoagusa and Nessenletam both entered the tent.

  The following day, a naturale named Kanyase replaced Meniolagomeka. Ekpalawehud refused to say why.

  In Orbit, HIMS Zuiho [7-brook Rain 13]

  “THE SKELETONS WERE DISARTICULATED. FROM THE BROKEN ENDS, DR. SOLCHAVA and I think someone used an ax,” Simon Beetje explained to Coldewe, Kolomeitsev, and Pia Szuba as he laid out the graying bones for examination. “I am not a pathologist, but judging from the sizes, we probably have a male and two females here, although it is conceivable that the females are actually juveniles.”

  “Is it possible that the disarticulation is part of a ritual?” Szuba asked, with a fraction of her usual assurance.

  Hans Coldewe handed her a skull and pointed to a hole. “Occam's razor being what it is, I know where I'd put my money. Poor Dr. Seki has himself half-convinced that the naturales are inherently peaceful. As Raul Sanmartin used to say, so many wonderful theories are ambushed by nasty little facts.”

  “Perhaps we should
not try to make too much of a single grave,” Pia Szuba said, replacing the skull on the table.

  “That’s true,” Coldewe agreed, “however, statistically speaking, if we found one grave, there are probably more of them out there. This could be how the Blues normally dispose of their dead. or it could be something else, which, upon reflection, is not a reassuring thought”

  Using echolocation and the dogs, a team had found an underground cable at the spot where Zerebtsov died, and Coldewe was less than pleased at the progress the physical sciences work ing group was making in umaveling its mysteries.

  “Have you spoken with Commissioner Vereshchagin? How did his meeting with Hokiundoquen go?” Szuba asked.

  “I think that he is of the opinion that Hokiundoquen is a personal name,” Coldewe commented. “Apart from that, I don't think he came away with a great deal.”

  Szuba nodded “I will study the recording.”

  “Simon,” The Iceman inquired crisply, “are you ready to explain what these bones tell us about the Blues?”

  “I'll try. Like lemur-ape bones, the pieces have an unusual composition. Under a microscope, they look more like mineralized cartilage than true bone.” Beetje took an arm bone in his hand and bent it in a very slight arc. “A lot of strength and a fair amount of flexibility, but less rigidity than I would have expected. Pia, did you want to say something?”

  “How much of this mineralization preceded death? Can we tell how long these bones have been in the ground?”

  “I wish I could. They aren't fresh, and based on the comparison of the lemur-ape bones, about 15 percent of the original calcium phosphate has been leached out. I asked Dr. Takanohu, but he refused to even speculate. These bones could have been five years in the ground, or fifty.”

  Coldewe gestured. “Can't you do tests? Carbon14 dating and that sort of thing?”

  Beetje smiled. “Even if I knew how to do radiocarbon dating, I'm not entirely sure how much carbon14 there should be in a normal sampling here. Besides, even under ideal conditions, the best margin of error I could hope for in a test like that would be plus or minus fifty years.”

  “Were there any traces of clothing or other artifacts?” Kolomeitsev asked.

  “None. I would have to speculate that the bodies were stripped before being buried.” Beetje continued, “Maria is comparing amino-acid sequences to see how closely DNA from the

  skeletons corresponds with lemur-ape DNA.”

  “Just how does that worlc?” Coldewe asked.

  “The technique is actually fairly simple. She first runs the samples through an enzyme solution and through electrically charged gelatin to fragment the DNA. She bathes the fragments in water laced with phosphorus32 and exposes X-ray film, which she can then use as a guide in selecting DNA strands to replicate. So far, she is seeing a 90 to 94 percent correlation, which suggests that lemur-apes and naturales shared a common ancestor eight or nine million years ago. I'm glad. I would have had some serious explaining to do otherwise.” He laid out a handful of finger bones.

  Coldewe looked at Szuba. “It’s probably a little late to ask this, but shouldn't we be a little hesitant about handling these? The rule I learned on alien microbes is that anything indiscriminating enough to attach itself to a human is likely to be seriously fatal.”

  Beetje smiled “I wouldn't worry. These have been pretty thoroughly sterilized--irradated, exposed to hard vacuum, and what have you. Maria was rather put out”

  Coldewe rubbed his head. “Your esteemed once and future wife can go put her head in a bucket of water and count to a hundred. What did you tell her?”

  “To put her head in a bucket of water and count to a hundred.”

  Coldewe laughed. “Simon, we're going to make a soldier out of you yet. Now, what are we looking for here?”

  “A couple of things.” Beetje held up four small bones. “This is a thumb. As you can see, the end of this bone is rounded, and it fits into this piece, which I'll call the central hand bone for want of a better term, like a ball and socket.”

  Coldewe tried to appear interested. “Of course, you're going to tell us what that means.”

  Simon held out the central hand bone for Coldewe and Kolomeitsev to examine. “While the central hand bone is fairly rigid, the fingers-- specially the thumb--make up for it by being flexible. Now look at the fingers, see how broad the ends are. Do you see these little ridges? That’s where fairly powerful muscles attach. So instead of holding things with the fingertips, the naturales prefer to hold things between the sides of two fingers, or between the thumb and the side of the index finger, which corresponds with the contact team's observations.”

  Next, Simon picked up a long leg bone. “This is a femur. Legs are generally sloppy affairs, a couple of bones slapped together with some muscles, but this is very neat.” He held up the

  narrow end. “There's no patella. Instead, the shaft of the tibia fits neatly into the groove between the two condyles--the bony bumps on the end here. Vety nicely engineered.”

  He picked up the larger of the two skulls. “I haven't had time to examine the skulls in detail, but this looks like an auditory tube running underneath what I will call the mastoid process, for the sake of argument.” He showed them an opening on the skull's lower left side. “Humans hear sounds vibrating at frequencies ranging from 20 hertz to about 20 kilohertz, with greatest sensitivity between 1000 and 4000 hertz. Computer modeling suggests the Blues have a similar range.”

  Coldewe grinned, seeing the bored look on The Iceman's face. “Simon, this is all fascinating, but is there anything actually useful in this?”

  “Oh, useful.” Beetje blew some air through his lips. “What the skeletons really do is show that some of our conclusions about the lemur-apes may also be applicable to the Blues.” He pointed to a pelvis. '“The pelvic bone, which consists of six other bones fused together, is essentially a scaled-up version of a lemur-ape pelvis. You see how narrow the birth canal is. It suggests that the Blues also give birth to infants that are basically in a larval state. Before I commit myself, I'd like to see some sociological data if I can. but that’s where my tentative conclusions lead me.”

  “Pia, how are your own inquiries coming?” Coldewe asked.

  Szuba shook her head “Much of the data we have been getting from the contact team is incomplete and.confused. Even basic facts about the social and political structure appear to elude

  us. I cannot help but think that the naturales do not trust us.”

  “Having been around people all your life, would you?” Coldewe asked.

  Concern etched lines into Szuba's doll-like face. “Failure to convince the naturales to lay aside their suspicions may make it impossible for us to carry out our mission.”

  “Of greater concern,” The Iceman observed, “it may get us killed.”

  L-Day plus 76 [8-brook Rain 13]

  “LET ME SEE HERE.” SUPERIOR PRIVATE DENYS GORDIMER PUNCHED NUMBERS into his wrist mount. “I make it 1,207,630 rand you owe me. Excuse me, that isn't right. One million, two

  hundred seven thousand, six hundred thirty rand and fifty cents. Want to play another hand?”

  ”You're just shot full of luck,” Blaar Schuur complained, his eye glued to the telephoto lens.

  Gordimer rubbed his fingernails against his breast and blew on them. “It comes from clean living.”

  “Clean living? Someone in here smells like a goat. and it isn't me.”

  Gordimer tilted his head with evident interest “You know, that’s an excellent idea. We could bet on which one of us smells the worst when we get to camp. Sergeant Alariesto can judge.” Schuur grinned. “You know what Alariesto is going to say.”

  The two of them echoed in chorus, “Both you moles smell like pig manure.”

  “You still counting the hours until we get out of here?” Gordimer asked. ·

  “Eleven hours, thirty-six minutes, and fourteen seconds,” Schuur stated w
ithout lifting his eyes.

  “You know, you really could try to improve your outlook on life,” Gordimer said, scratching his left shoulder blade against the framework of the hide. “I mean, if you think about it, most people have to commute to work.”

  “Hush up, Denys!” Schuur hissed, waving him to silence. “The peasants are restless.” He began recording.

  Gordimer elbowed forward.

  The noon sun illuminated the village in the valley with a harsh light In the far distance the surface of the Great River shimmered.

  Normally quiescent at noon, family by family, the village's inhabitants, tall males draped in red cloaks and petite females carrying infants and trailing toddlers, were spilling out into the diked fields.

  “Look at them all,” Gordimer murmured.

  “What are they doing?” Schuur asked the rocks and stones.

  Carrying white cloths, the Blues were tossing what looked like handfuls of dust into the air.

  “What are they doing?” Schuur repeated, lost in wonder.

  “Don't ask me,” Gordimer replied, to which the rocks and stones gave silent assent

  The scene was repeated elsewhere, in cities and villages across the continent. Although committed to a rigorously bebavioralistic and integrationalistic approach devoid of “value preferences,” Pia Szuba's social sciences working group carefully reviewed the gestures employed and concluded that the phenomenon represented a religious ritual. Rather testily, Szuba stood by her opinion when questioned.

  At midnight, ship's time, the backers of secular humanism threw in the allegorical towel and paid off at an average of seven to six.

  L-Day plus 78 [9-brook Rain 13]

  “THERE WAS A SMALL FIREFIGHT IN THE WOODS SOUTH OF HERE LAST NIGHT.” Company Sergeant Isaac Wanjau spooned his cereal. “I intend to visit the site if the Blues will allow it.”

  Dr. Connie Marais was making orange juice. He set the pitcher down. Thinking better of the impulse, he picked it back up and resumed stirring the mix. “Dear God! Are you sure?”