“Our scientists have proven that we are the pinnacle of evolution,” he explained. “We are the only ones who have developed the capacity to understand that we are making choices. Thus we are the only ones with the spirit to take responsibility for those choices.”
“On Smau, yes,” Pattie said, unable to let that bit of elitism pass despite herself. “But could not the evolution of other worlds lead to the development of other people?”
Solal shrugged.
“We have found no other people on New Smau,” he said, as though that closed the issue.
Yet you’re comfortable conversing with a “talking animal,” Pattie thought. Undisturbed that it’s “animal” technology that makes that possible.
Much as she wanted to confront the massive conceit underlying Solal’s assumptions, Pattie forced herself to let the issue go. No ally was ever won over through religious debate. Not to mention the potential danger of reminding him the “talking animals” of New Smau were perceived as threat enough to warrant slaughter.
“So Sonandal leads in all things?” she asked.
“Any task which must be done, he must do first. The greater the responsibility, the greater the need for the leader to be first partaker.”
Pattie could see how this philosophy could lead to a sort of meritocracy. Leaders who did not dare take risks led no one anywhere and leaders who took foolish risks eventually removed themselves from the picture entirely.
Sonandal’s risk in leading the first one-way expedition to a world that might not have been inhabitable had been a big one. A potentially very foolish one, in fact. But one that had paid off with him becoming the planetary ruler. Or at least ruler of this growing colony.
Solal had been too young to be first among those who followed Sonandal. But he had been the first student of his university or trade school (the universal translator was not sure which) to meet the challenges and qualify to come.
Pattie revised her estimation of Solal’s intelligence. Apparently it was wisdom he lacked.
She did not follow all of his explanations of how he saw his personal career on New Smau leading to his becoming leader of his own colony or research facility; again Smau semantics confused the universal translator. However, she did pick up on the fact he thought being the first to study her species would be a major stepping-stone in his advancement.
That Solal was keeping her existence secret out of self-interest reassured Pattie. Altruism was far too amorphous and fickle a motive for her to trust. Her survival would have depended on his moment-to-moment perceptions of whether the greater good was protecting her or serving the mission. Solal would go to greater lengths to safeguard her if he believed this served his own ambitions.
However, if his subterfuge were discovered, it might put her in a worse position. What would he do to avoid discovery or punishment if found out? If she was in danger of being given up, or killed, she wanted some way to know what to expect.
She missed a good deal of his explanation of social life as she puzzled out how to bring up the subjects of crime and punishment. Preoccupied, she almost missed the opening when he offered it.
“A challenge of authority?” she asked, infusing her voice with several gigajoules of interest. “I’ve never heard of such a thing. How does it work?”
“If I have a better way of doing something than I have been told to do it, I can refuse to follow orders and do things my own way.” Solal struck a pose that Pattie thought suggested self-importance. “My supervisor can either acknowledge the superiority of my method or he can order me to conform. If he orders me to conform, I can challenge.”
“In my culture, such disputes are settled by presenting both sides of the issue to a mediator,” Pattie said. “Would that be a challenge?”
“Anyone who must rely on a mediator is failing to take responsibility for their own judgment,” Solal said tersely. “A challenge can be a comparison of data. Or a duel. Important challenges, challenges to honor or to leadership of the community, can be battles to the death.”
Apparently excited by his topic, Solal leapt to his feet, leaving the debris of his lunch where it fell. Pulling a cleaning cart, a lamp, and another chair into the clear area near Pattie’s cage, he marked out a rectangle about five meters by three.
“Actually, it’s a square,” he said, adjusting the position of his lunch chair, “but then I’d have to move the racks—of poles this high.” He indicated something just above his head—about two meters, Pattie estimated. “The one issuing the challenge stands here, in the center, and points to the one he challenges, then to the ground in front of him.” Solal pointed at an imaginary adversary somewhere to Pattie’s right, then to his feet. “The one being challenged selects the weapons, if any, and they fight.”
Solal leapt about the rectangle, evidently miming some form of martial art. The awkwardness of his movements caused Pattie to suspect he wasn’t very good at it.
“To the death?” she asked.
“Rarely,” Solal said, ending his bout in an apparent draw. “Sometimes points, sometimes first blood, usually when one admits defeat.”
“So, Solal,” came a woman’s voice from among the racks and shelves at the far side of the warehouse. “Who have you defeated?”
Pattie dropped to all eights, resisting the temptation to roll into a defensive ball.
“Uh, no one, Slilila,” Solal stammered, clumsy in confusion. “I was just—”
“Imagining great victories,” the woman finished for him as she stepped into the open area. “We all do it. Just most of us take more care not to be overheard. Or do you plan on challenging Sonandal over the eradication?”
“No!” Solal uttered his protest emphatically, apparently missing the teasing tone that even Pattie could discern. “The tree dog infestation is a danger that must be addressed thoroughly and directly.”
“You quote well.” Slilila chuckled. “Which is as directly and thoroughly as a youth exempted use of weapons can take responsibility for the solution.”
When the Smaunif spoke, Nasat tinkled from Pattie’s combadge, lying with its rag among Solal’s lunch trash. Fortunately, it was close enough to the cage that the sounds could seem to be coming from Pattie. She tried to help the illusion by waving her antennae every time the combadge repeated the Smaunifs’ words.
Solal belatedly realized what was happening. He hurriedly scooped up the combadge, bundling it tightly in the trash and rag, then stuffed the lot into the waste can on the cleaning cart. He had the wit to park the cart next to Pattie in case any further sounds emerged.
Solal left with Slilila, apparently already late for some shared chore, leaving Pattie with her combadge less than a meter away but completely inaccessible.
Chapter
11
The devastation covered several thousand acres.
A dense carpet of what looked like saplings, though Corsi realized they were trees built along a more normal scale, washed up around the base of the giant banyans. The abrupt demarcation between rain forest and what looked like conifers must have indicated something about the soil, but Corsi didn’t know what.
From her vantage point beside Copper on a low branch of one of the giant banyans, Corsi could see a giant rectangle of the conifers about a kilometer distant had been clear-cut. There were several low buildings of wood and metal near the center of the cleared area. Just beyond them was what looked like a broad straight road to nowhere. A landing strip, she decided, for something very large or something that needed as much margin of error as they could give it. To the right of the buildings a shallow basin, perhaps a hundred meters across, had been dug in the soil and lined with metal. The thin metal tower at its center confirmed her suspicion it was an antenna. Corsi was not an expert on agronomy, but much of the cleared land seemed to be in various stages of cultivation. Not so much a working farm, she decided, as an experiment to see what would grow.
Whoever these people were, they were here to stay.
More immediatel
y significant was a broad road, a dozen or so meters wide, that was being carved through the trees directly toward the rain forest. Progress appeared to have been slow, trees felled near the edge of the cleared area had had time to turn brown. But the leading edge of the incursion was close enough for Corsi to hear the thud of hand axes.
“How long have they been here?” Corsi asked.
Copper batted at his left ear. “Long enough to do what you see.”
“Many meals?” Corsi guessed. It was plain the K’k’tict didn’t measure time. “I’ve been meaning to ask: What does that left-ear gesture mean?”
“Surprise, embarrassment, confusion.”
“Ah. We do this for the same thing,” Corsi slapped her forehead.
“Yours is a violent people,” Copper said.
“Many would agree with you. But we have learned to moderate our violent nature through reason and compassion.” She indicated the clear-cut forest below. “That is not the work of my people.”
Copper batted at his left ear again.
“However, my people are not the only ones of this general design,” Corsi added, spreading her arms to indicate her two-arm, two-leg construction. “If we could get closer, I may be able to tell you who these rude guests of yours are.”
Copper began descending, which Corsi took as expressing a willingness to take her closer to the strangers.
The forest floor beneath the giant banyans was covered with a variety of fernlike plants, most only about knee-high; chest-high on K’k’tict. There was no real underbrush, and the areas between banyan root systems were like broad boulevards. It was Corsi’s impression the trees and ferns got larger closer to the volcanoes.
As soon as the invaders hacked their way to the edge of the banyan forest, it would be an easy march to the K’k’tict tree town.
“[unintelligible noise] and [unintelligible noise] will go with us,” Copper announced, indicating Spot and Lefty from among the several K’k’tict waiting at the base of the tree. “The experience will aid their [maturity/education].”
Corsi revised her earlier theory that Spot and Lefty had not spoken in the presence of the leaders because they were of a lower caste. Apparently they were youngsters.
The three immediately headed in the direction of the strangers. Some of the remainder settled down to await the expedition’s return, while a few headed back toward the tree town.
“Do your names mean anything?” Corsi asked after they had gone a short distance. If she was going to communicate, she’d have to address individuals as something besides hey, you. “Corsi is a shortened form of the name for an island my family came from.”
“Our names are our names,” Copper said, stopping. “We are who we are, not where we are.”
“I understand.” Corsi decided to set aside explaining that Domenica meant Sunday to a species that did not measure time. It was tempting to leave the name issue alone, but she had no idea how long she would be among the K’k’tict and clear communication was essential.
“My combadge does not comprehend, and renders your names as sounds I cannot emulate,” she explained. “Do you have simplified names?”
Blank stares all around.
“Would it be offensive if I gave you nicknames so that I might indicate individuals?”
“What names?” Copper asked.
“Well, your coloration is the feature most apparent to my eyes,” Corsi said cautiously, aware external coloration was the galaxy’s most common source of prejudice. Seeing only expectation in her listeners, she went on. “I think of you as Copper, you as Lefty, and you as Spot.”
Lefty bowed her head low to the ground and began shaking it back and forth. Spot began batting her left ear furiously. For his part Copper seemed content to watch the other two.
“What did I say?” Corsi asked, concerned. “Did I give offense?”
“Spot has been her [tease her name] since she emerged,” Lefty said. “She hates it.”
“Ah,” said Corsi, making a note that violent head-shaking near the ground indicated laughter. “Sorry about that.”
Though the smaller trees of the forest looked like pines, they were of much denser wood. Corsi found it impossible to bend any but the smallest saplings and branches could not be casually brushed aside. If the hand axes she had heard were the invaders’ only tools, she was impressed with their tenacity.
For their part, the K’k’tict moved silently through the thick and thorny underbrush. Corsi noted they did not travel in straight lines and they varied their pace, frequently pausing to listen. Remembering Copper’s question about why she was killing K’k’tict, Corsi wondered if this stealth was instinctive or a survival skill recently mastered.
She noticed they kept their large, lemur eyes squinted almost shut long after they’d left the twilight of the banyan forest. Apparently adaptation to life beneath a few hundred meters of shade tree meant even the dappled sunlight they were moving through was painfully bright.
Copper had led them in a curving route that brought the recon party to the edge of the cleared roadway several dozen meters behind the workers. They were indeed clearing the land with only hand tools, watched over by guards armed with what looked like stylized crossbows. At first Corsi thought she was looking at slave labor, then realized the guards were watching the underbrush, not the workers. They were protection.
The beings themselves were humanoid, with skin as gray as Cardassians’, but not scaled. They also seemed to share the Cardassian fondness for wearing black, but their hair color ranged from blonder than hers through orange and red to a maroon that was almost brown. When the closest guard glanced her way, she saw his eyes were a metallic yellow that looked almost artificial.
Zaire? Zoysia? Something. Corsi knew she’d seen a data file on these people, but they were advanced way beyond hand axes and crossbows. And they should not be here. Something was not right. She rocked back on her heels, unfocusing her eyes, and waited for the memory to fully develop. Nothing.
Giving up, she signaled Copper she had seen enough. The elder K’k’tict led them away from the strangers.
“I know of this species,” Corsi said as they regrouped in a small clearing, “though I have never seen them.”
She received understandably blank looks from the other three. However, she was not about to explain data files and life on other worlds to them.
“These are not my people,” she repeated, holding up one hand back toward them. “Coloration.”
The K’k’tict bobbed, acknowledging the point.
“Could we get closer to their camp?” Corsi asked. “Perhaps we can learn more about them.”
With a typically K’k’tict lack of comment, Copper turned and began moving silently through the underbrush in a new direction. Corsi followed, bent low to stay under the stiff branches of the trees, with Lefty and Spot behind her.
The clear-cut area was not as flat as it had appeared from the banyan tree. There were piles of logs apparently curing in the sun, the acidic tang of their resin threatening to trigger a sneeze with every breath. Conical mounds of smaller branches waited to be dry enough to burn. About two hundred meters from the buildings, however, near the edge of the shallow basin lined with metal, the cover ran out. Corsi wished for a set of binoculars, but made do with squinting.
By the long runway was what appeared to be the frame of a glider being carefully dismantled. Though it was large—she estimated it could have carried perhaps two dozen of the newcomers—it was not huge. Which meant the runway’s expanse was indeed to give the landers a wide margin of error.
Gliders arriving without power and cannibalized for parts and metal meant the—what is their name?—were making a one-way trip to get here. It also explained the hand tools and crossbows. Keeping mass to a minimum meant no heavy machinery and weapons that used locally available ammunition.
But while the details made sense, the overall picture was wrong. What were these people doing here?
As if
in answer, a column of blinding light descended from the sky.
Chapter
12
“It looks like weapons damage,” Corsi said, eyeing the warped access panel beneath her gloves.
“I would love to disagree with you,” Pattie’s musical notes sounded in the helmet of her EVA suit. “The thought of someone shooting a cloaked anthropological satellite is disturbing. Especially one orbiting a preindustrial world. But armor damage is consistent with a barrage by several very large lasers.”
Corsi nodded to herself as she keyed the release sequence on the access panel. She could have done this from the Shuttlecraft Shirley hanging a few dozen meters away, its rear hatch gaping toward them, but where was the fun in that? She enjoyed the EVA work.
Not as much as Pattie seemed to be enjoying Waldo Egg. The Nasat was delighted with what she called her demi-Work Bee.
Resembling an upright egg with four manipulative arms, the Nasat-specific design had been the brainchild—and personal project—of Louisa Weldon, an engineer with the S.C.E. team on the Khwarizmi. Her special interest was adaptive technologies to enable nonhumanoids to interact effectively aboard admittedly humanoid-centric Federation vessels. She’d known Pattie for years, Corsi had learned, and had designed Pattie’s special chairs aboard the da Vinci.
Her latest invention was allowing Pattie to be the main muscle as they uncased the anthropological satellite. An unaccustomed role she was clearly enjoying as she easily manipulated the massive sections of shielding.
For her part, Corsi was finding it a little tougher going than she would have liked.
When working this close to an atmosphere, Starfleet SOP required her to wear an emergency jump harness over the standard EVA suit. Little more than an ablative heat sheath that gloved over the suit proper with a rear-mounted chute harness, it was designed to get a spacewalker safely to the surface in an emergency.
She had jumped in an emergency rig before, of course, in training. Though it was nowhere near as maneuverable or versatile as an orbital jumpsuit, it got the job done. She also understood the logic behind using safety equipment, especially in such a hostile environment. What she hated about it was the fact that it was piggybacked on her regular EVA suit, adding stiffness and bulk she did not enjoy working against.
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