First Salik War 2: The V'Dan

by Jean Johnson

The holokinetic images stopped moving, but the landscape itself expanded, enlarging and focusing on a gentleman with almost blue-black skin and light beige clothes digging painstakingly carefully in roped-off sections of desert rock. He looked up from his pit, smiled, waved, and spoke in lightly accented Terranglo, with a translation in V’Dan floating over his head, along with his name, Professor Massey Mdee, Director of the Department of Paleoanthropological Studies, University of Dar es Salaam Prefecture, Tanzania Province.

  This could have been done by flatpic screens—Terran 3-D screens required the viewers be seated within a much closer range than most everyone in the stands around the Plazas, though that would have given some of the attending aliens a headache—but even with three-dimensional holography, it just wasn’t as immediate, as real-feeling as holokinesis in the hands of a high-ranked psi. The man, his surroundings, and the translation of his words were as big as five duplicate houses, carefully replicated from the First—and Imperial—Plazas to the Fifth. Yet despite the oversized image, everything from the folds and weaving of his clothes to the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, each individual, tightly curled strand of his hair, the realistic way he smiled patiently as he worked, spoke of the soul of the moment.

  Energized by Li’eth, who was still patiently feeding her energy drawn up from the stones beneath them, Jackie discreetly hit the PLAY button again, and broadcast sonokinetically what she heard through her headset earbuds, resuming the visual displays.

  “Aloha, people of V’Dan. I suppose you want to know about our shared Human origins, yes? The paleological records of our evolutionary ancestors stretch back 65 million years to the first vaguely primate-like species, Plesiadapsis, and they were everywhere, on every continent that could sustain life at that time.” A skeleton model of an animal with a tail clinging to a tree trunk floated blithely over his head. “Over the eons, the offspring of those precursors eventually evolved into various species, splitting into three branches. The first became the monkeys.”

  Again, an image of several different tail-bearing creatures floated past, their paws possessing primitive thumbs that clung to tree branches and rocks. The director paused, smiled, and continued his lecture.

  “The second branch became the great apes.” Another pause, and this time larger, more-powerful-looking creatures, tailless, furless, and with somewhat humanoid faces and larger, more humanoid hands, came into view, lolling among tall grass and trees, some picking at fruits. “And of course, the third branch, that one became the ancestors of the ancient Humans, starting with the arrival of a species we call Sahelanthropus tchadensis, and evolving toward Australopithecus afarensis . . . and the very famous partial skeleton named ‘Lucy,’ who is over 3.2 million years old.”

  The skeleton that floated unnoticed over his head was indeed partial at best, but it came with an image approximating what the creature might have looked like when alive, along with the words Artist’s extrapolation appended. Dr. Mdee pointed at the soil next to him, and the bones exposed by his painstaking work.

  “I am currently working on excavating the skeleton of a species named Homo habilis,” he stated. Above floated a brief explanation, Homo = Man; Habilis = Skilled. “There is still some contention after several centuries of discovery and examination as to what should be grouped where, but these beings are believed to be our earliest Human-like ancestors. Homo habilis are among the first definitive developers and users of stone tools. From them, our people evolved through a few other variations and side cousins into Homo erectus, which means ‘Upright Man.’

  “It is believed that by shifting to a two-footed gait, our ancestors freed their hands for greater tool use, which stimulated greater capacity for intelligent thought.” He grinned and dipped his head. “Of course, it could have been the enlarging brain that caused a greater need to walk and carry tools. We will never know, of course, but we can always try to test our theories based on the evidence at hand. From Homo erectus came a few more species, until we reach the final split in the family tree of tool-users. That split went from the species Homo heidelbergensis into the now-extinct Homo neanderthalensis, our long-lost cousins who died out over thirty thousand years ago, and the branch known as Homo sapiens, the scientific name for our modern Human species, approximately two hundred thousand years ago.”

  Overhead the words Sapiens = Wise floated by. Oblivious to it, Dr. Mdee continued speaking.

  “The progress of Human evolution was slow; it is only in the last few breaths in the timeline of the universe itself that we as a species have begun to evolve our technologies and our understandings. And of course, we are still searching for the meanings of life, the universe, and everything in between,” Dr. Mdee continued. “But we do know a few things.

  “Our mutual ancestors’ earliest artworks, cave paintings and stone carvings, stem from over forty thousand years ago. Farming on a wide scale began just over ten to eleven thousand years ago—before your people somehow left our world,” he added, making it clear this recorded projection was meant for the V’Dan people to see and understand. “Copper tools were crafted seven thousand years ago, astronomy was being studied six thousand years ago, bronze alloys were smelted four and a half thousand years ago, and iron was in use three thousand years ago.

  “I do not know the history or progression of your people and their civilizations, but ours only reached into space 330 years ago with our first artificial satellite, Sputnik,” Mdee stated, bracing his forearm on his upraised knee, his posture and his expression that of a teacher confiding to a favorite student. “318 years ago, we landed the first Human on our moon, and 179 years ago, the first strong, fully recognized psychic walked barefoot on that same moon.

  “Which, I admit, is a very long way from the footprints that were left by this fellow here,” he added, turning just enough to tip his head at the skeleton he had partially excavated. “We haven’t found his or her exact footprints, of course, just some footprints of others like him. Such things lie at the mercy and the whims of fate, the right preserving circumstances, and luck. You can always take the time to view them on our data archives. Or perhaps even visit in person someday.

  “Most certainly, I have not covered all of the paleoarchaeological evidence of our joint species’ evolution on this world . . . but then you are not listening to this as students enrolled in one of my classes right now. Perhaps you might be one of my students some year. I think I will look forward to that.” He smiled and dipped his dark head. “As it is, I shall simply end this lecture here with a smile, with my thanks for your attention, and with a good-bye from Olduvai Gorge, in the Province of Tanzania, on the continent of Africa, in the oldest known birthplace of the Human race on the planet Earth, our Motherworld. I must get back to work, now. Aloha.”

  With that, the dark-skinned, beige-clad man turned back to his meticulous pick-and-brush work, gently excising the softer stone from the mineral-hardened bones in the ground. This time, Jackie didn’t have to pause the prepared audio she was projecting. She simply let the image shrink and fade into savannah. As the second movement of Vivaldi’s “Winter” began, she swept their view over the wild herds that were the fame of the continent, over the great gray bulks of elephants and long-necked giraffes, massive herds of grazing wildebeests and more.

  That view included the visually stunning zebras, which elicited started exclamations of appreciation above and beyond what Jackie had expected. She firmed her concentration, spooling past the savannahs to glimpses of the ancient stone terraces, plazas, and courtyards of the great Eastern African civilizations, interspersed with modern towns and cities. From there, it was a leap to the great island of Madagascar and some of its unusual, razor-sharp karst formations, then up over the Indian Ocean to the southern jungles of India, with its rich histories, giant cities, and colorful markets.

  Mumbai, Indian Subcontinent, Population 48,905,800+, Earth’s Most Heavily Populated City was the most important
of those. From there, they rose up into the snow-choked Himalayas—Mount Everest, Also Called Sagarmatha and Chomolungma, Highest Mountain Measured from Sea Level, Elevation 8,848 Meters—and its elevation in approximate V’Dan units.

  That image retreated westward locally, heading down the ever-broadening Tiers, but the view actually soared to the west Earth-wise, heading in a great loop over the drier regions of the ’Stans, provinces that still occasionally gave the Terran United Planets fits of religious conflicts. From there, they went to Istanbul, Formerly Constantinople, Seat of the (Eastern) Roman Empire, Which Lasted for 1,480 Years and Ended 834 Years Ago—on up to Moscow—Population 24,567,150+—past farmlands and taiga forests, all the way to the Arctic Ocean and its wintery cap of ice.

  Everywhere the images went, they paused now and then for a second or two to see people smiling and waving, sometimes shyly, sometimes enthusiastically. Every last Terran Human visible utterly lacked V’Dan jungen marks; skin tones ranged from pale creamy white to ruddy peach, olive tan to chocolate brown and the intense melanin of Dr. Mdee. In some places, the skin colors were mixed; in others, one shade or another predominated, and a few had freckles, or moles, but no unnaturally colorful marks, no unnatural shapes or patterns. Just Humans.

  As the second movement came to an end, they settled briefly in a village on the edge of the Arctic Ocean, ice-blocked and lit only by streetlights. The inhabitants were willing to smile, though; pale-skinned, dark-haired, round-faced, the people of that village had braved the blowing snow and arctic breezes that were as much felt by telekinesis as seen, though the air that was stirred was warm, not icy-cold. They came outside and waved at the incipient Ambassador, giving her a view of their world. The winds slowed, and the snow switched from streaming past to swirling down out of the sky, dusting everything lightly.

  The music started up again in the third movement. Leaving behind that winter-locked fishing village, the images arched once more up into the troposphere and back down again, down to the meandering barrier of the Great Wall of China. Terraced rice paddies beyond its edges turned into karst mountains, and from there became jungle-cloaked mountains that turned into flatter terrain with waterways and ancient temples labeled as Angkor Wat, Cambodia. From there, the landscape turned to islands aplenty before reaching the continent of Australia, its animals, people.

  They swept around it and came back up through the islands, and from the coastlines of Vietnam and Korea to the great city of Beijing, China, Asian Continent, Population 46,722,550+ and its sprawling mix of buildings ancient and new. From there, they traveled up past glimpses of the herders of Mongolia into skies above the remote mountainous reaches of the Kamchatka Peninsula and the Bering Strait. Down over the upper reaches of Alaska and the start of the Rocky Mountains in the western Canadian provinces, to snowcapped peaks, evergreen trees, bright-spangled cities, vineyards, and fertile valleys, to sun-drenched beaches that turned into a leap across the Pacific once again.

  Once more, the viewpoint drew near the Hawai’ian Islands, only this time to see the world briefly turn into an illustration. With the ocean stripped away, the label on the Big Isle became Mauna Kea, Tallest Mountain on Earth from Base to Peak, 9,966 Meters (4,200 Above Sea Level) with the number translated into V’Dan measurements.

  Swerving up through the island chains to an island a bit north of the capital, the viewpoint glided down to one of a set of buildings amidst a sprawling city. Music Department, Honolulu University, Oahu, Hawai’ian Islands. Tucked into the building, through grand doors that opened up into a lobby, and into an indoor auditorium filled with red-cushioned seats facing a stage, the watching V’Dan got to see the actual musicians clad in black-and-white clothes. They performed sweetly on their violins, violas, cellos, bass violins, and, of course, the harpsichord.

  The moment those soft, sweet chords exploded abruptly into passionate, rapid nodes from the soloist, the ceiling vanished, and the world fell away. The view rose up through the sky, faster and faster, until the Earth itself fell away within just a few heartbeats; by the time the orchestra joined the soloist, the planet was nothing more than a marble, while the surface of the Moon zoomed in fast and close, eliciting startled gasps across the crowd. The surface spun rapidly, then slowed, showing primitive equipment abandoned alongside pristine-looking, barred bootprints in the gritty, barren, gray-white soil of a fenced-off area near a dome-sheltered colony.

  A voice-over—the only one during the music—came on the moment the dome and fence appeared. Since it was in English, the V’Dan version accompanied the location name. The words Apollo 11 Landing Site, Tranquility Base, Sea of Tranquility, Luna (Moon) were accompanied by beeping noises and a voice saying, “That’s one small step for Man . . . one giant leap for Mankind.” At that same moment, five screens popped up at each Plaza, showing the grainy, overblown, heavily shadowed image of the very first of the original visiting astronauts slowly and cautiously hopping down the short reach from the bottom of their lander to the lunar surface.

  Then all of that spun away, too, zooming over the terrain to another location with another dome, and another fenced-off area. This time, though, the footprints in the lunar soil were a mix of shoes with a much more complex imprint than bars, patently bare-foot marks replete with individual toes . . . and a lunar-soil version of a snow angel. There was no voice-over, but there was another billboard display, a close-up of the last line of a large, square, bronze-cast plaque near that grit-swept angel that read, “. . . Let the Men of Earth Never Underestimate the Power of a Woman Again.”

  The Moon leaped away, vanishing along with the Earth into the starry night, lit only by the local star, which expanded back into normal, natural, V’Dan-style daylight as the last few notes of music played. Overhead, the clouds glowed gray-white, and only a few stray flakes could be seen wiggling their way downward. The great projection screens abruptly reordered themselves, switching from various wild angles aimed upward to zeroing in and focusing on the two Humans kneeling facing each other at the front of the lines of equally kneeling Terrans.

  For one single heartbeat, silence reigned supreme, broken only by tiny little zaps from overhead. Then a massive surge of sound crashed over them. Even the restrained First Tier attendees cheered and clapped palm to palm, and whistles could be heard from the Second Tier on back. Wave after wave of enthusiastic sound that pressed in all around.

  It was a good thing her performance didn’t have to move on to anything else right away. Master of Ceremonies didn’t even bother to raise and stretch out his hands for a full minute or more, and that gave Jackie and Li’eth time to replenish the energy she had used. Indeed, more was coming in all around them, a psychic storm of kinetic inergy being shed by living beings who were thrilled beyond decorum by what they had just seen. Even Jackie could see the aurastorm of enthusiasm, delight, awe, passion, curiosity, and more.

  Both of them had to shut their eyes and just breathe while they stabilized themselves. As the noise gradually died—very gradually—Li’eth managed to push to his feet and helped lift Jackie to hers. It took them both another half-minute to untangle their minds, but that was fine, since the crowd was still applauding with fervor.

  (I think my knees may threaten to give out when we stop touching,) he murmured in her mind. His gray-and-burgundy eyes were very bright. A little dazed, even. (That felt . . . riding along with your mind, giving you the energy to do all of that . . . That was very much like lovemaking . . . but without any sex whatsoever. I don’t . . . I’m not sure how to recover from that . . .)

  (I haven’t . . . I was told a Gestalt was intense,) she agreed. (I’ve been in multimind efforts, as many as twenty—no, twenty-four, that one time—but never a Gestalt. We were one for almost all of it. And now I have to face your mother with the knowledge that we have been as intimate as two minds can be without bodily acts . . . and I am trying very hard not to blush right now.)

  (. . . Do you think th
is will have affected the progression of our bond?) he asked hesitantly.

  Oddly enough, the question cleared her mind with the urge to make a tart retort. (Do you think?)

  Li’eth thought about it a moment, then bowed over their joined hands. (Good. I am growing tired of constantly having to retire from your presence. I’ll “encourage” Mother to assign me as swiftly as possible.)

  (Good.) The applause was finally dying down. She dipped him a curtsy though that was a Terran gesture, not a V’Dan one. (We do have to face her right now, though.)

  He snuck a peek at his mother. (Her aura is still almost as astounded and amazed as everyone else’s, though she has mastered her external expressions—I do think I saw her gaping by the time it all ended. Certainly, she was on her feet within seconds, applauding with the rest . . . Now that she is reseated, she’ll go back to being Empress again.)

  “Ambassador, we have pingback from Earth,” a voice murmured in her left ear. It was one of the technicians assigned to the robotic projection towers. “Three-second delay, going live in three . . . two . . . one . . .”

  “I am afraid that, after a performance like that, my own appearance may seem a bit anticlimactic,” a new, male voice stated in V’Dan.

  Imperfect V’Dan, with a lingering bit of Terran accent, but it was intelligible. The words were projected from the twin towers the Terrans had brought, accompanying an image of a face, unmarked and only mildly age-lined, on each of those rectangular, tri-part screens.

  “Nonetheless, I am Augustus Callan, Premiere of the Terran United Planets, leader of the many peoples of Earth, Mars, and beyond,” he stated, introducing himself. “Commander-in-Chief of the Terran United Planets Joint Armed Forces of the civilian Peacekeepers and the military Space Force, former Councilor of the Prefecture of Porto, descendant of the ancient kings and queens of Portugal and Europe . . . and I greet you, Eternal Empress Hanaaka of the V’Dan Empire, you and your people, in the name of the Terran United Planets, and with spirit of aloha.”