The Lonoki Solution

by Sharon L Reddy

  "Oops?"

  "Warren Taylor, the human who is chief engineer on the Evrun Ship Builders space construction dock, inadvertently taught Kiev a large group of human words when he dropped a tool on his toes. We subsequently learned them when she stubbed hers. She reminded us several times those words were impolite and some others should be avoided as inappropriate for public newscasts. Why does that remind me I should check on Yan?"

  "Dane, go see how Yan is doing."

  "On my way, Kiev."

  Yan was doing fine. He had five comm numbers. Dane got there just as he started to explain the lonoki sex drive and that he was bisexual, but didn't have sex with males outside the family. As soon as he saw Dane coming, he remembered he wasn't supposed to talk about it in the way he'd been about to. He grinned and Dane shook his head. Yan told him he'd been pretty good, but it had been a close thing.

  Dane sat down beside him and they talked about working together and the way the love and sharing of their lives increased the smoothness of it. They were on comps giving a demonstration, with Yan working equations and Dane supplying values for constants, to derive numeric solutions, as they progressed. Suddenly Yan yelled for everyone to get on a comp. He'd seen something.

  Kiev, Taral, Mal and Kano nearly dove for comps. Yan had chosen the gravity equations to work with because they were so well known. Less than a minute after they'd gotten on them, Taral whooped and Kano and Mal both used words they weren't supposed to say and rather loudly. Yan pointed out to Dane that he hadn't said them.

  Kiev stopped solving equations, got in with the engineers and whooped. She asked Dane to get cams off screens and the human camera people grinned. They'd already figured that out and their audiences would be lots more interested in the beautiful people than the numbers. It had been hard to envision them as the engineers and scientists who'd made a discovery that would change the relationship of all peoples, until they dove for comp terminals.

  Yan started to giggle and Dane grinned and turned back to the interviewers. It took him a moment to figure out what to say. They had something and were quite sure of it because Taral had seen how to build something to use it. He didn't know the play of expression across his face as he decided how to put it drew every camera to him.

  "Yan gets going a bit fast at times. He gets quite a ways along before he notices he's done something odd. Suddenly he's getting strange results, but the equation is solving nicely. He glances back and yells for everyone to get on a computer. If Taral suddenly starts designing something, it's going to work. That's not in doubt. Really good engineers have an instinct about such things. We will state we were working in the gravity equations and the result won't change the universe, but might be nicely profitable.

  "I did it on purpose, Dane. This time it wasn't an accident. I actually saw a possibility. I know what I'm doing now. I didn't when I started working on the Holoss equations. I just extended a path and found out it's a shortcut. Taral's figuring out how to get across it. Well, I wouldn't have seen the possibility if I hadn't solved the equations with a new value, so I suppose that counts."

  "You intended to stick that function in there?"

  "There was a hole big enough for it, Dane. I just can't resist filling a pretty hole with something that fits. It feels so nice."

  Dane groaned and the interviewers laughed. Yan had left no doubt he wasn't thinking about equations. Taral, Kano and Mal had left no doubt they found women very interesting either. All were just as adamant about not being referred to as men. They were lonoki, not human, and all explained calling them men and Kiev a woman confused people. They weren't the same species they'd been eight hundred years ago and that one hadn't been human either. They were no more like humans than the kellup was like the horse. They looked a great deal alike and were physiologically similar, but they were not "just like" humans in anything but gross terms, which would fit the taldik almost as well. Their similarities were of course stressed. One did that with anyone with whom one wanted peaceful commerce and friendship, but they would not masquerade as humans in any way, even inadvertently, and they would not hide their sex drive.

  Chapter Eleven

  Commentators chose to use the lonoki words for male and female, nok and lon. Dane's statement it had been hard for the lonoki to keep from calling them the womani made it simple for people to remember how the name of their people came apart. Editors put together stories from the interview for every type of news program from ten second pieces for news updates to hour long in-depth studies of the lonoki.

  Kiev accepted an invitation to appear on a talk show, took her five with her, all dressed in lonoki formal attire, and carried a music transcription and Dane's kend herself. He'd been working on a way to forget them most of the day. The talk-show host wasn't really prepared for them.

  "I didn't realize you would all be coming or I'd have assured their were more chairs."

  "We know, Mondale. You invited me and I brought along the most interesting thing I have to share with your audience, my household. They don't mind sitting on the floor. It keeps them out of camera range most of the time."

  "That's an interesting drum."

  "It's a kend and I'm carrying it because Kiev Dane would have forgotten it. He forgets things when he gets nervous. Telling him he's playing for an audience makes him nervous so he works to make the thing he forgets solve his nervousness."

  "I do not. I just put it out of my mind completely, and hope I get away with it."

  "Mondale, we want to play the piece of music Kiev gave us."

  "Georgia, the band would have its own show if they played everything they wanted to, but I'm very interested in hearing that drum played too. Georgia seems to think the band is ready, Kiev Dane."

  "Um, I may do this with my eyes closed. I'm not really used to cameras."

  The piece was as martial as the one he'd played for the judges, but of a quite different character. He'd arranged it for a human marching band, then again for the smaller numbers and addition of instruments which produced sound electronically in the show band. He'd chosen the piece for the rousing tone of it and simplicity of the task. It wasn't much more than assigning human instruments parts and having the computer translate the musical notation, or he didn't think of it as much more. He'd chosen the kend, when Kiev told him he'd be playing, because of the likeness of the march form to human marches. He actually enjoyed playing with the fine musicians and thanked them sincerely. The small human studio audience cheered and Mondale went over to the wings and got Dane a chair.

  "Incredible. I understand you have the equivalent of a doctorate in music performance."

  "I understand Kiev was whispering to you while I was playing. I do. That means I played three acoustic instruments well enough three professors enjoyed it enough to give me a good grade. I am not a professional performer. My job is allowing Kiev to be in two places at once. The ranking, what you call a degree, in music performance is part of the preparations for the social requirements of my task of being a resource when that is not necessary."

  "Kiev Dane holds eleven advanced rankings, the equivalent of your doctorates. They aren't honorary and only a few are in closely related fields. I have two, but mine are engineering and the business of it. Which, of course, is why I'm here and I have them with me. We have this great new invention and I'm the traveling salesperson. They're my promotional staff."

  "Besides, we'd have started building a ship to follow her if she'd left us behind."

  "I was told you made another discovery yesterday, Yan."

  "I did. It's just a little one though. I'm not going to be announcing I changed the laws of physics on a regular basis, but I expect several others will."

  "You do?"

  "Certainly. The translight equations define physical space beyond the speed of light. They don't exist outside physical reality; therefore, the limits of the current definitions of many physical laws are not really limits, but like one section of an extension ladder. We've just pushed an
other section up and locked it in place. Now we can climb higher and see farther. A great number of people are going to be quite busy describing the things that came into view for quite some time, basically every physicist in every species which has contact with us, and for at least forty or fifty years."

  "Then it's not just the speed of travel which was changed."

  "For most, it is. So far that's the only practical application of the solution. I don't really think there are more. Taral's power conversion system has uses in thousands, but they don't make use of the Holoss, translight, equations. A mower for your lawn could incorporate his design to attain and maintain a steady state of operation, but you hardly need it to do it faster than the speed of light. Though I've gotten wishful about it while mowing the lawn a few times. It's a very large lawn. It takes about ten of us a full day to get it done."

  "We don't let Yan run the mower controls. He likes to race the mowers. The rest of us prefer working in the yard without frequent yells to dive out of the path of a large, fast-moving piece of groundskeeping equipment. It would avoid us, but the flower beds would be unlikely to survive being mowed when it detoured to do so."

  "I only did it once, Kano."

  "Yes, but I clearly remember diving into the yellowthorns on two circuits of the track."

  "I apologized for not reading the specs. I thought it would make the turn that tight at that speed."

  "If you hadn't, there'd have been a yellowthorn every place you decided to sit, until I didn't notice there had been one where I was sitting when I sat down."

  "Wait a minute, Dane, I thought Kano was the one who dove into the yellowthorn."

  "Oh, I was, Mondale. Dane was among them pruning them. He looked like a much better choice of landing place than the yellowthorn bushes. Call them rose bushes with bright yellow thorns on large surface roots, along with the ones on the stems. I knew he'd pick the best landing place he could for both of us and I could see him."

  "Not to mention, if our first response to a situation is to yell, 'Oh shit,' our second is to dive for Dane."

  "Taral!"

  "Oops. Sorry, Dane."

  "Dane's very big for our people. We aren't that different in average size from humans, but you have a much larger variation on both sides of that average. To us, there's a great deal of difference in my one hundred eighty-three centimeters and his one hundred ninety-five. I'm an average-size nok. He's as big as my people get, and there aren't many his size. Yan's quite a bit smaller than average and he's only seven centimeters shorter than I am. We think of him as 'a cute little nok.' Kiev is a tall lon, even for a master, and they, on average, are a few centimeters taller than we are."

  "Stand up, noki. Let them see what Mal is telling them. See, Mondale? Taral, Mal and Kano are almost the same height. By comparison, Yan is noticeably smaller and Dane is very much bigger. Yan and Taral are both sure they can both hide behind him. Mal and Kano are sure all four of them can hide behind the two of us. They try to arrange it so we're standing close together so they'll all be hidden."

  "We've gotten good at it, Kiev. Dane helps. He likes standing beside you."

  "Yes, Kiev, it's real easy for them to convince me that's where I belong."

  "If it wasn't, you'd be where you did belong."

  Humans loved them. They ran into a few people who thought all other species should live by the rules of human culture, but they'd managed to separate themselves from humans in the minds of most. They weren't a visiting 'lost tribe.' They were another species much like humans and physiologically compatible, but not "humans who developed on that world," which was the most subtle danger inherent in the similarity. Kiev's flat statement large numbers of humans on their world would be a threat to the survival of their species because lonoki could fall in love with them, made them focus on the problem their similarity posed for the lonoki and why the embassy there refused to grant permits to visit to the thousands who had decided they wanted to go.

  Yan was "good." He had help. They did not let him go out alone. He didn't mind. If trouble was worthwhile, none of them could stay out of it. The only time he had to yell for help, it was because Kano got in trouble. He was 'with' Yan in the red solar and they met a woman engineer. Everyone else had known what vehicles they'd be taking. Two vehicles that held four made sense and Yan's and Taral's were gorgeous, as was Dane's Gravlord. That was important when selling technology was the object.

  The woman engineer was "crazy about" the car and Kano took it all apart and explained how everything worked, right there in the parking lot of the restaurant where they'd had a wonder called "apple pie ala mode." It wouldn't have been a problem if they hadn't needed to clean up afterward. They had time enough to reassemble it before going to the banquet, about twenty minutes, but they were both covered with lubricant and they had been laying on the ground quite a bit. Three minutes after they called for help, it got there.

  Dane thanked the mayor's pilot and walked over to Kano and Yan. Kano introduced him to the lady and Yan noted he'd gotten her comm code, so it was time well-invested. He told her he hoped she was going to be good help because they were going to reassemble the car while Yan and Kano cleaned up. He handed Kano one of the two ship bags he was carrying.

  "Being late for a televised event is impolite. Next time include digressions in your estimate of how long something will take, Kano."

  "Oh, he did, Dane. He just forgot to include big brown eyes as a factor."

  "She understood it all, Dane."

  "If she hadn't, you wouldn't have shown it all, Kano. Dremin, I'm Kiev Dane. I arranged showers for them at the hotel across the street, one-half block that way. I have coveralls for you when you get back. Kiev is driving my car in no hurry toward the banquet, Kano. You do want to be there when she gets there."

  "Uh, Dremin, I'm sure Dane has coveralls for you too. Would you please help reassemble the car?"

  "I think it'll be fun to see how much I did learn about it. Hand me a pair of coveralls, Dane. This way, I'll be sure he'll remember who that comm number belongs to."

  "I'm sure that was never a danger. Yan, Kano, aren't you supposed to be going somewhere in a hurry?"

  Dremin was good and she and Dane had a lot done by the time Yan and Kano got back. Both were rather surprised to be wearing human formal attire, but looked very good in the softly draped iridescent white shirts, crisp black pants and short red and black brocade jackets. Both had found the black throat scarves and waist sashes, but would put them on after they were done. They very quickly got into coveralls and got to work on the car.

  When the car had been reassembled, Dremin watched them drive off, then called her mother.

  "I got a kiss from Kano."

  "Use the wipes I gave you to get it all off and drop the lip gloss tube in an elemental recycler."

  "I hope it doesn't make them too miserable."

  "Very mild, short duration, not worth tracking the 'flu's' extended incubation period to find the source."

  "It's the right answer, Mom."

  "Your father knows them better than any other human."

  "Is there something in what the six of you did that will apply somewhere else?"

  "It doesn't need to be applied, or it already would be."

  "Mom, they're incredible, beautiful people. Dad fell in love with one, and they're going to fall in love with us, too."

  "Giving those, who do, children would have been easy. We've been doing it with animals for centuries. But no one knows that produces a new species better than an agra geneticist."

  "If we aren't a danger to their species, children between us won't be poignant. There will be no element of loss in the joy of a child of love."

  "And, for them, there always is love."

  "They gave us the galaxy to explore and wiping them out isn't a nice thank-you. Dad said they earned a wish, so granting it won't damage them."

  "It was when Kiev Dane said they still said 'becoming two species,' even though they know they are
two, that the others agreed it was the correct solution."

  "It's the only hard truth they don't work to be frank about. They will figure out someone did something fairly soon, Mom."

  "Yes, their wish was granted, because humans needed it to be. Fairy Godmothers Incorporated has departed the facilities of Kurtz Agra Research Laboratory. It has contracts to complete, and a cranky gene splicer.

  "I'm tired of rebuilding that control."

  "Your wish is granted, too. Pick up the new one at Holdman Biotech on your way here."

  "I wish I could see Dane's face when his master learns she's pregnant and the children are his."