Kaijunaut

by Doug Goodman

  While they waited, Cole tried to listen to the Jedik-ikik warriors, but his hearing wasn’t good enough. He could make out that they were arguing about something, and he could guess what they were arguing about, but whether things were looking good or bad for the crew, he couldn’t tell.

  “I can’t hear anything, can you?” he asked Emily.

  “Yes.” Since she still had the translator around her neck, and since Jedik-ikik guards stood nearby, she wouldn’t say anything more. But when the leader and his council came back, she stood up straight like an officer about to hear her death sentence.

  “You’ve made your decision?”

  “We have decided you cannot be Rentok, but we do not know if you are Kroern yet. So we are taking you back to Ximortikrim to figure this out. We have several leaders there, and many scientists. They will help us understand who you are and what your goals are here on our planet.”

  2

  The march was long and took almost the entire day to return to Ximortikrim. But their handcuffs were removed, and they were allowed to move around and talk as much as they pleased.

  “I have a language question, leader of the warriors,” Cole said to T’tlit.

  “You can call me formally T’tlit-klipfritchitipi-t’tltritz.”

  “Thank you. That is my question, though. I work with linguists, people who study language. We have studied your language for years, trying to understand it. You say ‘T’tlit-klipfritchitipi-tlirtz-ikik.’”

  “T’tlit-klipfritchitipi-t’tltritz-ikik.”

  “Right. My apologies. That is a hard word for my mouth to make. But the final part, ikik, I thought it was a part of naming nomenclature. Like saying ‘Mr. Musgrove.’ But I think I am not quite right. I think it means more than Mister. That this is a formal name. An ikik name.”

  The leader thought about this, not slowing his stride. “Names are the most important words to my people. That is what ikik means. To not use ikik means that your name is worthless, and that you are worth nothing in the world. You are zeroed out. For example, the Rentok do not get the proper name. They are worthless to the Jedik-ikik. To give them that word gives them power they do not deserve. They are nothing more than a bunch of zree monsters.”

  “Can you tell us more about them?” Emily asked.

  “I can, but I think it is more appropriate that better minded Jedik-ikik than me tell you. I am not a conqueror. I am the conquered.”

  The warriors shouted out, repeating what T’tlit said. Trik Kilkree. The Conquered.

  3

  The difference between Ximortikrim when they first entered it and Ximortikrim the second time they entered was as vast as the difference between a ghost town and an Olympic village at the height of the Olympics. Banners hung from freshly painted walls, streets were cleared of dust and debris, and fires were lit in the cauldrons. On more than one occasion, as they were escorted through the streets, they happened to see Jedik-ikik dancing and singing to the crashing of cymbals and drums and very complex flutes that required all four hands to play.

  From time to time, Jedik-ikik would stop and stare and point at the astronauts. At one point, an old Jedik-ikik approached them, screaming and spitting at C.C. One of the warriors removed the elder form the area.

  C.C. said, “They think we are Kroern, don’t they?”

  “We will teach them the difference,” Cole said.

  “And when they don’t believe us, what do we do then?”

  “They will believe us. They have no reason not to.”

  “Part of being an astronaut is about planning for the worst things to happen.”

  “C.C. has a point,” Emily muttered. “But now is not the time to discuss it. Just keep your eyes and ears open for possibilities.”

  Fortunately, the warriors were too taken aback by the revelry to hear Emily’s words. The astronauts were delivered to the First Pyramid. There, T’tlit showed them to a room on the first floor, down the same hallway they had entered just two days ago. Had that much changed in two days? Emily wondered.

  The room was sparsely decorated, but at the far end stood a table full of plant matter that the astronauts understood to be food. The room had been cleaned for them.

  T’tlit said, “We are going to put you in this room. You will be taken care of. As a sign of trust, there are no guards, but please do not move from the room. I would not take pleasure from placing you in one of our only remaining holding cells at the Military Hall.”

  When they were alone, Emily removed the translator and pocketed it. “Thank you, Mathieu. That was a great idea.”

  “Sure thing, Emily. But what do we do now?”

  Cole fingered some of the plants on the table. He looked at Anna. “Are any of these safe to eat?”

  “That one will kill you slowly.” She pushed through the plants, most of which were leaves and berries. “The rest of these will kill you quickly. See this one?” She picked up something that looked like a raspberry, but the size of a strawberry. “It contains a lethal dose of cyanide.”

  She picked up a limp sprig that looked like day-old grass. “Ah! This is Tweed Grass. You can eat all of it that you want.”

  “We are going to have so many Flight Rules when we get back to the Anchor,” C.C. said. (Flight Rules were lessons learned for astronauts. Many years ago, they were provided after a mission, but on decades-long missions, they needed to be recorded as they were learned and documented in the Anchor’s computers for return to Earth.)

  “We can’t fight our way out,” Cole said.

  “Speak for yourself,” C.C. said. “Anna and Emily and I all served.”

  “I don’t think we can take on the whole Jedik-ikik army, do you?”

  C.C. did not respond.

  Emily said, “Okay, but we know our way around here, and we’ve been studying this place for the past decade, so let’s pull our information together and work the problem. I don’t know when the Jedik-ikik are returning, but in the meantime, I want to plan out every option of escape we can find. I don’t care if that means we’re hang gliding off their pyramids. I want ways out of here.”

  The astronauts had less than two hours to make their plans. They did not have enough time to fully flesh out all their ideas, but the ones they did have, they made sure they were as lock-proof as an un-simulated plan could get.

  T’tlit opened the wood-and-iron door. Five warriors stood with him.

  In his language, he said, “Cole-ikik, you and your crew can come with us now. Thank you for not leaving here. Please follow me.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Not far. I am taking you to visit our Trik Kree-kikik.”

  They walked out. Trik Kree-kikik. The Supreme Conqueror.

  4

  Planets, moons, and stars moved along their mechanical orbits around the planetarium. Once again, the astronauts found themselves amazed at the technical abilities of this alien society.

  Standing on a raised dais in the center of the room was Trik Kree-kikik. He had a bloated abdomen that weirdly reminded Cole of frogs. As they entered, T’tlit raised his arms above his head and placed his hands together, then bowed.

  “These are the alien conquerors, Trik Kree-kikik,” T’tlit said, motioning to the astronauts.

  Cole mimicked T’tlit, bowing and forming an “A” with his hands over his head. “Hello, Trik Kree-kikik,” he said in their alien language.

  “I have many eyes, and yet I have never seen a creature that talks through a bubble,” the Supreme Conqueror said.

  “Pardon us, Trik Kree-kikik, but we need these suits to help us breathe here. Without them, your air would be poisonous to us.”

  “Do you have enough air to tell me your story?”

  “Yes. These suits make your air clean for us. They don’t store air.”

  “Good. But before you tell me your story, I must tell you about my people and about myself. We are a scientific people. We have not mastered technology the way your species has, but we know muc
h about biology and medicine. I was ordained Trik Kree-kikik by the Scientific Council because my genetic code is cleaner and better than anyone else’s. I am the best of my species. As long as I remain the best of my species, I will be Trik Kree-kikik. I will guide my people in scientific exploits, I will lead them in war, and I will breed a new generation of the Jedik-ikik.”

  C.C., like Anna and Mathieu, had a difficult time understanding most of the conversation. But C.C. picked up enough to say, “Interesting you should say that. Where we come from, people like us—astronauts—we’re considered the best of the best. The cream of the crop.” He said the last part slowly as the metaphor twisted his ability to translate it.

  “The cream of the crop?” the Supreme Conqueror asked without understanding.

  “The pick of the litter,” Emily added.

  Cole gave his wife a sideways glance. He didn’t like where this was going. Idioms rarely translated well. At worst, they could be confusing and insulting. So Cole said, “What they mean is that astronauts undergo a rigorous selection and training process. Less than one percent of all astronaut candidates ever fly in space.”

  The Supreme Conqueror held his arms wide apart and stepped down off the dais. “You are genetically superior in your species? We must speak as equals, then!”

  As he approached them, he said, “Of course, you must understand that you are not truly my equal, for you see, you may be the cream of the crop, but there are five of you. One of you is better than the others genetically. If we were to mate, our offspring would create the best of both worlds.” He eyeballed C.C. as he said this.

  “I don’t think we would be compatible,” C.C. said in his fledgling language skills.

  “Besides, even if your offspring were to survive, they would likely be infertile,” Anna added. She, too, was having a difficult time.

  “I have an idea,” Emily said. She removed the translator and handed it to the Supreme Commander. “Use this. We picked it up from the Kroern. It will change your words into our words, and for you, it will turn every word you hear into the language of the Jedik-ikik.”

  “Nothing the Kroern made will touch my skin.”

  Cole said, “We can spend the next three weeks stumbling through conversation, or you can wear this and we will all be able to understand you, and you will be able to understand us perfectly.”

  The Supreme Conqueror growled. “There is logic in your principles. I will wear this, but only for the duration of our conversation. Then I will return it to you. The Kroern are zree to us. To accept this could be seen as an insult to those who are not as smart as me.”

  The Supreme Conqueror put the collar around his head, and then he pointed to the star map. There was a star fixated far in the upper corner of the Planetarium. “This point here. This is the home of the Rentok Riders. They came here many thousands of years ago. They fell from the sky, nearly destroying our sister city Mirkitromix in less than a day. They nearly destroyed Ximortikrim, but we had our Izz.” He held up the ceremonial blunt-edged spear. “Our engineers developed the Izz as a hunting weapon to kill giant Tititititilikikikiklit. We hunted them into extinction, and we tried to hunt the Rentok into extinction. We thought we did when we felled three of them, but when we dragged out their parasitic hosts, the Kroern, we learned to our disgust that the Kroern never give up on a world.”

  The Supreme Conqueror crossed the planetarium to the stairs. The astronauts and guards followed him to the wind tunnels overlooking the city. Cole remembered the room with the dead bodies. He wanted to ask the Supreme Conqueror about the bodies, but was recalcitrant to interrupt the leader. “So we looked for ways to defeat the Rentok Riders. We built this pyramid and erected the statues outside to remind us to always remain focused on the space-traveling invaders.”

  He pointed to the giant dome and to the aqueducts. “The Doomsday Engine was the first weapon. The Fire Path was the second. They helped us defeat the second and third invasions. Yesterday, some of those invaders rose up like the undead from their graves. Our Fire Path took down K’t’chimigalpa-kiritikikikee k’tang, that zree Rentok. Like we did so many years ago, we were able to forcefully remove the parasite from the host.”

  The Supreme Conqueror pointed to one of the Fire Path aqueducts. A single body hung in a noose from the stonework high above the streets of Ximortikrim. The alien, which looked similar to Renslot’s pilot, wore a pair of blacked-over goggles.

  “This is what we do to invaders,” the Supreme Conqueror hissed.

  “We are not invaders.”

  “We will find out soon.” His tone had shifted. He seemed to stand over them now, a hunched statue of a wasp wielding a giant scythe.

  “T’tlit-klipfritchitipi-t’tltritz-ikik, my warrior who found you, approves of you. He is a good conquered, but he is no conqueror. I will decide if you are here as a blessing from science or as something far more sinister. Where is your spaceship?”

  Emily said, “Supreme Conqueror, you will find that we come in peace. Our spaceship is in orbit above your planet.”

  The Supreme Conqueror snapped his fingers, and a strange telescope was presented.

  “Prove it.”

  C.C. tried to make eye contact with Emily, but she was too far away. He wanted to warn her, but there was no need.

  “Regrettably, I cannot do that. My orders are to never tell the location of the spaceship.”

  “That is wise. But is it important enough a secret to trade death to your conquereds?”

  “Don’t tell him,” Mathieu said.

  “Ditto,” Cole added.

  “If you are truly on a mission of peace and scientific discovery, prove it. Show me your space ship.”

  “You must trust me.”

  “The last aliens we trusted destroyed Mirkitromix, and nearly destroyed Ximortikrim. If you need, you will be provided. If you take, then home will be as unknown to you as the mind of the Rentok.”

  The threat was obvious. Emily was cool in the face of it, though internally she was trying to figure a way around this. She didn’t know why she hesitated to reveal the Anchor. The Jedik-ikik lacked the ability to fly into low Golgotha orbit. Their research would have uncovered that capability. So why was she hesitating?

  And what is that ringing in my ears? She’d never experienced tension headaches before. She was feeling one now.

  “We are not takers,” Emily said. “We are needers.” She checked her watch and pointed to the Northern hemisphere. “You can see it. You don’t need a telescope. The small blinking light in the sky? That is the Anchor.”

  “Amazing,” the Supreme Conqueror said. “You are truly a people of the impossible to have learned to fly into space. We have only been able to send things in space, not retrieve them. For example,” he gave an order to a guard who was holding a small mechanical flying machine. The guard wound up the flying machine and tossed it in the air. The machine sprouted wings and glided out of the wind tunnel toward the Doomsday Engine.

  “What are you doing?” Emily asked crossly.

  “Be calm,” the Supreme Conqueror said. The Jedik-ikik around them raised their blunt-edged spears, their Izz.

  “Watch.” He pointed his ceremonial spear to the center of the city. The winged machine fluttered, then descended into the open space where the dome was broken. Moments later, the dome began rotating.

  “Don’t do it,” Mathieu said, the reality of the situation dawning on him. “You will cut off all ties we have with our home world, hey.”

  Trik Kree-kikik held out two of his hands for the astronauts to examine. “Notice how steady my hands are? I point this out to you so that you know I am not angry or emotional. I have a genetic predisposition to even-tempered judgement. I want you to know this because I want you to know that I did not sentence you to spending the rest of your lives on my planet out of anger, but because it was the most sound logic to protect my Jedik-ikik.”

  But the astronauts were not looking at his arms. They watched the bright light
bursting out of the dome and streaking up into the sky. Cole held out hope that the Jedik-ikik had missed their spacecraft. The Anchor was listening to their every conversation. Perhaps it adjusted its flight pattern once the Supreme Conqueror described his plan?

  “We knew from our first encounters that the Kroern would come at us from the sky, so our engineers developed the Doomsday Engine to remove that threat. The Doomsday Engine was the cause of death of most of the Rentok that came after the first invasion. But we knew we would need a way to fight them from the ground. We built a network of aqueducts that could channel both magma and water. The result is the K’t’chimigalpa-kiritikikikee k’tang sitting out there.”

  He pointed back to the aqueduct. Cole thought that between the Doomsday Engine, the aqueducts, and the fallen Rentok, he was seeing a tryptic of doom. Or maybe the conquered and the conqueror? The cataclysmic view was capped off by the streaking pieces of the Anchor falling through the atmosphere in a fiery wave.

  “You monster!” Cole shouted. “You dumb, stupid monster. Do you realize what you’ve done?”

  The Supreme Conqueror pointed his Izz spear at Cole’s face. “I see not all of you are scientific minded. A pity.”

  “A pity?” Cole shot back. “And were you so callous when Mirkitromix was destroyed?” Cole began cussing in different languages.

  “Cole, shut up,” Anna grunted through her tears. “You’re going to get yourself killed.”

  Already, the Supreme Conquerors guards were approaching Cole.

  “He’s okay,” Emily said.

  “You should remove him from your equation before he kills you all,” Trik Kree-kikik said flatly.

  “I need him for my own multiplication.”

  The Supreme Conqueror stood there and digested Emily’s equation for a moment. Then he said, “I do not agree with your formula or your tactics. Perhaps in the years to come, I can help you to better understand how to best propagate your genetic code.”

  “How did you do it,” C.C. asked. “How did you hibernate for thousands of years?”