RAEFF (Jim Able: Offworld Book 6)

by Ed Charlton

  “No, really,” Jim continued as friendly he could manage. “Look at this. On Earth, if you make this gesture”—Jim held up his middle finger—”you’re being insulting. On one planet I visited, doing this”—Jim turned three fingers sideways—”means the same thing. Of course, they only have three fingers to start with.”

  The canid laughed and shook his head. “You travel the galaxy to learn to insult people?”

  “Sure. How can you communicate properly without the gestures? Standard doesn’t have nearly enough ways to swear. You need to back it up with the right signs.”

  The soldier sitting next to Tamric was laughing. “Try this!” he called. He turned up a paw and, extending his claws, clicked them all together twice.

  The captain laughed and said, “That’s what Maglan would do to tell you he was ready to screw you!”

  “Ah,” said Jim with enthusiasm, “you see, I need to know that! I definitely don’t want to give him any ideas by making the wrong gestures.”

  The soldiers in front were beginning to relax and turned to join in. One of them asked if the Jorrs had a gesture like that, but no one seemed to know. The other brought out what looked like cigarettes.

  He looked back at his captain and nodded toward Jim.

  “Gra, what do you think?”

  The captain frowned and started to answer but laughed, unbuckled his seat belt, held out his paw, and took one. He offered it to Jim and said, “Ever had Lak-weed?”

  “What sort of thing is it?”

  “You smoke it—for fun!”

  “No, I don’t think I have. But I wonder if it’s safe for me. Our body chemistries are different.”

  “Yeah, you probably couldn’t handle it.” He put the cigarette into the corner of his long mouth, and his underling held out a lighter that burned with a green flame.

  Sweet smoke filled the compartment. The other soldiers lit their own Lak-weed and said nothing.

  “So,” said Jim, finally getting to his point, “if I really wanted to insult a Gul, you know, really upset him, what gesture would I use?”

  The captain laughed, a little longer than before, and gave a little whoop. “Why?”

  “So I know not to do it, of course! I’m a diplomat; I have to be careful.”

  The Gul flicked ash onto the floor. “Okay. Okay. Watch this.”

  He raised his paw and, arranging three of his claws opposite his thumb, curled the equivalent of his index finger and drew it repeatedly into the gap.

  “Got it?”

  Jim, with allowances for different bone structure, managed a fair imitation.

  “Yeah, yeah, you got it!” He reached over his paw and held Jim’s wrist. “Enough. Don’t do it.”

  “Okay,” said Jim, brightly. “What does it mean?”

  The question brought long laughs and whoops from all four of the canids.

  The captain barked lightly twice, elbowed the soldier next to him, and said, “You tell him!”

  The soldier lolled his head from one shoulder to the other.

  “Okay. Here’s what it is. In the old days, in our...like...old, old days...when our ancestors had boats with sticks—”

  “You mean ‘oars’?” asked Jim, smiling.

  “Yeah, yeah, oars.”

  The others whooped and barked at this, but he continued. “Anyway, it was the mother’s job to row—always the mother. The father’s job...he provided the oars. So, this...,” he held up the three claws opposite his thumb, “is the place they put the oar. And this...,” he moved his index finger, “is all the different oars from all the different fathers.”

  The soldiers thought his account hilarious.

  “Oh, I get it,” said Jim. “All very phallic.”

  The captain elbowed Jim in the ribs and laughed and coughed at the same time.

  “So you see,” he said when he had recovered enough, “you not only insult the mother but all the litters too. It is as bad as you can get—insulting the whole clan.”

  “Sure,” said Jim. “I understand.”

  The soldiers began to banter with each other about something Jim could not follow. Tamric’s voice interrupted them.

  “Tell me, how long are your generations?”

  “What?” asked the soldier next to him. “What did you say, monkey?”

  “How long are your generations? How many years do you live?”

  “What a strange question! My first-father is fifteen; my second-father was twenty-five when he died.”

  “Mine lived to be twenty-nine!” called one of the soldiers in front.

  Tamric frowned and asked, “’Second-father’ is your first-father’s father?”

  “Of course. Yes.” The soldier nodded.

  “I see. Thank you. Less than thirty years...interesting.”

  The soldier gave Tamric a sideways look and turned to talk to his comrades in the front.

  Jim smiled, looked out the window, and breathed in the thick sweet Lak-weed smoke.

  “What happened to your ship?” the captain asked Tamric.

  “We came through the storm. I think we were hit by something. There was a hole in the wing.”

  The soldier between them laughed, “Probably a fireball. Stupid to fly through a storm. We never do it.”

  “What’s a fireball?” Tamric asked in return.

  “I don’t know what they’re made of, but they form in storms and blow up if they hit anything mechanical.”

  “They’re attracted to magnetic fields,” one of the others said.

  “And they happen a lot?”

  “Oh, sure. We’d never fly in a storm!”

  ***

  They reached a ramp that led them up onto the main road. While they waited for a convoy to pass, Jim noticed the external plates on nearly every vehicle. They were crude, bare metal sheets placed in a kind of shield down each side.

  “What are the plates for?”

  “What plates?” asked the captain with a frown.

  “Down the sides of your vehicles—metal plates.”

  “Oh, crash sheets.”

  “Crash sheets?”

  The captain nodded quickly. “When you have crashes, to stop the vehicles getting damaged. The sheets get mangled, but the shock is absorbed...most of the time.”

  “You guys crash a lot?”

  “All the time. Don’t you?”

  “Well, no, not really.”

  “We do. It’s no big deal.”

  He took a deep lungful of smoke and turned to talk quietly in his own language to the other soldier. Jim looked over at Tamric. The monk was blinking and tearing in the smoke. He did not look happy. Jim, however, felt great. He had a growing sense of extreme well-being.

  Within a few minutes they came to what Jim could see was one of the access points that Tamric had identified. It was a complex intersection of roads coming down from the north, all ending at this main highway. There was a phenomenal amount of traffic. The convoy they were following turned off at the first road. Another joined behind them at the second.

  Jim squinted out the window but could see nothing that looked like water. Tamric saw him staring and understood that they should be in a position to see the lake.

  “I thought there was a lake around here?” he said to no one in particular.

  The boisterous chatter of their guards stopped. They all looked to their captain for their lead. He smiled and said quietly, “That’s where you’re going...to the lake.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Tamric innocently. “I don’t understand.”

  “You will. There is no lake. Our base is under camouflage. Look up, monkey. Look up!”

  Tamric pressed his face against the glass to see upward.

  The support pylons along the road continued upward to a height of eighty or
a hundred feet. Suspended from their tops was a canopy. The underside seemed to be the same dull gray as the sky. Now that they were on the main road, and now that he knew what he was looking at, Tamric could see the canopy stretching on into the distance.

  “That’s amazing!” he said. “How does it let so much light through?”

  The captain shrugged. “How would I know? But it covers our base from prying eyes.”

  With that, he gave them both a suspicious look.

  “May I see?” asked Jim.

  Again the captain shrugged. Jim stood and steadied himself against the bench and made his way to the seat in front of Tamric.

  He stared for a while into the distance but could not work out any details. There were two lanes in each direction on the highway, and many vehicles were overtaking theirs. As they came near the next knot of intersections, the traffic got heavier and slowed. Several times the crash sheets brushed against those of another vehicle. Shock absorbers diminished the impact but not the noise.

  “What’s this I hear about a Gul-Raeff? Who is he?” Jim asked.

  “What?” asked the captain in surprise.

  “The Gul-Raeff, who is he?”

  “He’s our Raeff. The Muthlec-Raeff. Won the war, so he’s Gul-Raeff now. He’ll lead us all on to greater victories.”

  “He’s a strong character, I guess.”

  “Sure,” said the Gul. “You want to learn some things not to say? Try ‘he’s a calaba.’”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a sort of fruit—no, a nut. You pick it and...,” he held up his paw and shook it to and fro, “the nut rattles inside.”

  “His brains?”

  The captain nodded and said, “You’re smart for a monkey. You got it!”

  “But,” said Jim, frowning, “how did he get to be in charge?”

  It was the captain’s turn to frown. “Who else would you elect?”

  “If his brains are loose, how can you trust him?”

  The Gul seemed genuinely concerned that Jim did not understand. “No, no! It’s not like he’s so much a calaba that he thinks he’s a fish. We turn those out into the desert. No, he’s a Raeff, a prophet! They see things differently.”

  “Differently?”

  “He has the spark, the insight. He’ll take chances, act on things that no one else sees.”

  “Your leadership isn’t based on who has the money?”

  “Stench no!” He waved a paw in front of his nose. “We elevate the Raeffs because they are the ones who can put fire into society. Better to have someone with vision than a plug-butt! They stir up progress. They find ways to deal with problems that no one else would ever come up with.”

  Jim was impressed by the enthusiasm and clarity that had come over the captain. His regard for his commander was strong enough to cut through the Lak-weed-induced haze.

  The soldier next to Tamric spoke up. “Besides, like your friend here asked, life is short. We don’t have time to waste. We’ll be handing over to our sons.” Jim saw a shadow pass over the young Gul’s face. “We need to make progress while we can.” He finished with a glance at his captain to see if he’d spoken out of turn.

  Jim thought for a moment about the things Marhan had told them. At the same time, he knew the Lak-weed was affecting him, but he could no longer think of that as negative. The edges of his thinking were beginning to blur in interesting ways. Invading their neighbors was just the sort of plan a madman might come up with. Marhan had talked of mating with Jorrs to save their species. That was in the same category. Jim’s thoughts began making their way to his mouth before he really wanted them to.

  “I heard a rumor that your population is shrinking,” he said quietly.

  The captain swore in his own language and gave Jim a deeply hostile stare. “What do you know of that?”

  “Nothing.” Jim shrugged and looked out the window.

  There was a pause as the captain studied the remains of his cigarette, and then the reply came.

  “Well, it’s true. Our females are failing us. There aren’t enough pups being born. That’s one of the main reasons we have to follow this Raeff. He’s mated with a Jorr! It’s never been done before—at least not without the pups going bad. He’s a first-father to a Gul-Jorr cross that can walk and talk at the same time!”

  “They go bad usually?”

  “Oh yeah, drooling idiots, every time.”

  He laughed and continued, stubbing out the end of his Lak-weed on the floor. “When we’ve invaded before, our forefathers always used to leave the females bearing as many as they could! No one thought it would ever work, you know, to have a good cross.”

  Jim waited, unwilling to interrupt, hoping for more.

  “This time we won’t be leaving them.”

  The soldier in front of Jim snapped his jaws at his captain. “Gra! You’ve said too much!”

  The captain looked up quickly and realized his mistake. He lunged across the benches and pinned Jim to the window. His claws ripped into Jim’s flight suit.

  “Clever monkey! You are a spy!”

  Their eyes were level, and Jim saw quick death staring from under the furry eyebrows. The Gul pressed his snout under Jim’s chin, and a deep growl vibrated through him.

  One of the soldiers whispered, “Gra! You can’t kill it yet. They’re waiting for it.”

  The canid turned his head slowly sideways, an eye fixed on Jim’s face. Jim felt the sharp points of teeth gently widen against his throat. The touch of a smooth tongue on his windpipe sent an unwelcome thrill through his body.

  The captain stood back and looked down at him. “Prepare for death, monkey; it won’t be long.” He turned to the two sitting in front and said, “Another.”

  They handed round more Lak-weed. The captain sat down and, with deliberate movements, strapped himself in again. He continued to stare malevolently at Jim over each long pull at his cigarette. Jim straightened up and rubbed the burning itch where the claws had cut him.

  “Are you okay?” asked Tamric quietly.

  “Sure,” Jim replied.

  They traveled on in silence.

  Tamric began to worry when Jim began talking in a language he had rarely heard.

  Jim was speaking English, saying, “Monkey, monkey, monkey. Look at the monkey!”

  Trying to avoid attracting attention, Tamric strained to see what Jim was looking at through the window. There was another vehicle alongside, traveling at the same speed.

  Jim continued in English, “Never seen one of those before, have you? Monkey, monkey...that’s it, look at the monkey!”

  Tamric’s apprehension grew rapidly as he watched Jim begin to gesticulate through the window at the driver.

  Jim muttered, “This monkey knows what gets you mad. Your mother’s a whore dog-face! Look at what the monkey can do...”

  Two things happened at once. One of the soldiers in front turned and called, “Hey, what’s it doing?” Then the other vehicle rammed them.

  The noise of the collision had all four canids shaking their heads to flap their ears. The shock sent Jim sliding across the bench, and Tamric slid hard into the bony elbow and shoulder next to him.

  The crash sheets crumpled and twisted round each other, locking the speeding vehicles together. After a few seconds, the noises of grinding metal and squealing tires rose to a deafening height. Then silence reigned, and the world spun around them.

  Next Time

  Our story continues in

  JORR

  Episode 7 of JIM ABLE: OFFWORLD

  where Tella attempts to contact the influential scientist, Gritta Mel,

  mother to the only Gul-Jorr hybrid.

  Jim gets his first sight of the Gul space fleet he is tasked to destroy.

  But, as on any mission, death waits a
round the next turn.

  #

  JIM ABLE: OFFWORLD

  Episode 7, JORR

  Jim Able: Offworld - Jorr

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