by S. H. Jucha
-37-
From the Unsere Menschen’s bridge, Eric watched the Freedom and the Rêveur exit the Hellébore system. He was proud of his efforts. The President had handed him what had seemed a daunting task, and he had managed to complete his tasks before Chief Brandon had completed his efforts.
Under Eric’s guidance, engineers had stripped the seats from the Outward Bound and installed a bladder system. A temporary runway had been laid west of Espero’s future city center, near the cliffs, and seawater had been pumped into the shuttle’s bladder. Afterward, the shuttle delivered its load to the Freedom to fill Mickey’s pool.
To complete his second task, Eric had visited the spectacular cliffs that fell over fifty meters to beaches of fine black and white crystal. He needed 500 kilos of fresh, live seafood. Exhibiting one of his newfound talents, Eric had begun his quest with Z. Eric had sent, transmitting his signal via the shuttle’s comm as he stared at the far horizon across the ocean’s waves.
Z had responded.
Z had to admit that the question ranked as one of the more unique queries he had received, but he was determined not to fail Eric Stroheim for personal reasons. Z had found the answer in the pioneers’ bio-IDs. Several of them had enjoyed fishing the rivers and oceans of New Terra for sport, releasing their catch after landing it. When the pioneers had heard the request, they had helped engineers fashion seine nets to cast from the beach. The ocean waters were extremely fecund with hundreds of species of small fish and crustaceans, which inhabited the vegetation-dense shallow waters. It had taken four New Terrans just an hour of casting their nets to deliver the amount of catch Ambassador Stroheim had requested.
Standing at the cliff’s edge, Eric had watched the crewmen haul the catch to the cliff tops in barrels designed to support them until the Swei Swee “test tasted” them. The thought had made Eric’s stomach queasy. Watching the crew work, the cool ocean breeze on his face, Eric had surveyed the coastal ridge, pleased with the solution the Assembly had reached to one of their more ticklish challenges.
Tomas, who often chaired the Assembly meetings and prioritized their agenda, had led the discussion. The President had asked for a small piece of land at the cliff’s edge for him and Renée. He had requested a location that allowed him to oversee the site he hoped the Swei Swee might accept. Tomas and Eric had translated the word “oversee” as “protect.”
The Assembly had agonized over their response. Land ownership was a new concept to the Méridiens, and the New Terrans understood only the concept of land purchase. Neither group was prepared to devise a plan to allocate land to Haraken’s settlers, so the Representatives consulted the SADEs for ideas. The final decision was to allocate one square kilometer to each Haraken colonist. They could trade or sell their land if they chose to make other arrangements.
However, the Assembly still had the quandary of the President’s request for a small slice of land, two kilometers along the cliffs and extending a few hundred meters inland. The Méridiens on the Assembly had thought in terms of their egalitarian society, an equal portion for each citizen. That had been until Eric shared with Tomas, who in turn shared with the Assembly, the privileges that had been allocated to the House Leaders. It had taken several moments before order was restored. The New Terrans had sat back and watched their Méridien colleagues fume and argue.
Both Katie Racine and Pia Sabine struggled to keep their thoughts to themselves. If each had voiced her opinion, a swath of land would have been cut from the seacoast to gift the ex-Co-Leaders. But both knew their opinions would be considered favoritism, so they remained silent.
Captain Azasdau offered a solution to the dilemma. “Consider this, Sers,” he began, “that we are not participating in a privileged allocation. Julien has shared with me a concept that New Terrans have employed. They often rewarded a citizen who made significant contributions to their people without expecting personal gain in credits or assets. Consider that our new bank will be started with our President’s New Terran credits, which are at risk for their value. In addition, Ser de Guirnon has lost access to her House’s financial power. Furthermore, neither of them has gained credits or assets in return for all they have accomplished for us. Does this not qualify as individuals who deserve our largesse?”
Tomas had curtailed his desire to roll his eyes when the Assembly considered awarding a quarter of the western plain to Alex and Renée. It wasn’t that Tomas had disagreed with their sentiments, but he felt he had come to understand their young leaders to a certain extent. He believed Alex and Renée wouldn’t have accepted the Assembly’s generosity.
As Julien was the President’s close friend, the Representatives had been willing to hear the SADE’s thoughts. Julien studied the seacoast and noted that Alex’s primary concern involved protecting the Swei Swee’s proposed habitat. That the cliff top would be Alex’s residence was a secondary consideration. Julien outlined an image of the seacoast on the Assembly’s holo-vid and included the temporary shuttle runway in his outline. The cliffs extended for thirteen kilometers in a flattened C-shape, whose tips pointed toward the ocean. The Assembly accepted Julien’s logic and carved a section of seacoast, thirteen kilometers long and five kilometers deep, for Haraken’s President and First Lady.
* * *
The Freedom and the Rêveur settled into orbit over Libre. Aboard the Freedom, techs loaded a barrel of fresh seawater with a small specimen sample onto a shuttle. That shuttle and one from the Rêveur flew to the Swei Swee’s landing point on the cliff tops overlooking the Clarion Seas.
When Alex had donned his belt harness to communicate with the Swei Swee, he had accessed the translation program and had been surprised to discover the program’s vocabulary and syntax database had multiplied considerably in size.
Julien’s formal tone reminded Alex of a conversation he had been meaning to have with his friend.
Julien had halted key operations in mid-process and had reviewed the question. The answer had readily occurred to him, and he had replied,
Julien’s thought as Alex had closed the comm was that he had obtained a clearer and brighter focus, much to his pleasure.
* * *
Word of the Star Hunters’ return, announced by Julien over the Swei Swee telemetry station, had caused excitement among several hives. They had assembled on the cliff top to await the vessels’ arrival, the three Hive leaders standing foremost in the enclave.
Alex’s shuttle landed first, and he and his people set foot on Libre once again. The cliff top was warmed by the enormous red sun of Arnos. The smell of grass and sea were swept toward the group by a clean wind. Alex stopped and took a deep breath. When the second shuttle landed behind
them, the crew floated two barrels down the gangway ramp on grav-lifts.
As Alex hiked toward the Swei Swee, he passed the hulks of the dark travelers, stripped of their shells. The metal looked as pristine as the day the Swei Swee had first exposed them. When they neared the cliff top, the Swei Swee poured toward them, scuttling with their alarming speed and snapping their huge claws in excitement. The flotilla’s Hive First, recognizable by the markings on his carapace, focused on Alex, lifting his claws in greeting. Alex returned the gesture, placing his hands in claw fashion above the Hive First’s. The other two leaders were waiting, bobbing slowly up and down in anticipation, and Alex greeted both of them.
On the trip planetside, Alex had accessed the Swei Swee database, stringing together phrases he would require. When Alex sent his first phrase to his harness, the whistling tones of the Swei Swee emerged, requesting their Hive First “drink some endless waters from the Star Hunters’ world.” The Hive leaders let out shrill whistles that the entire company of Swei Swee echoed. The raucous response was earsplitting.
Alex led the Swei Swee toward the unloaded barrels. Although the humans were familiar with the Swei Swee’s habits, the way in which the aliens amiably intermixed, snapping their claws in anticipation, inevitably was disconcerting and required re-acclimation.
Two small Swei Swee younglings had recently hatched and rode atop a huge, scarred matron, her scraped and grooved carapace an indication of the amount of time she had spent tunneling for the Nua’ll. The sharp claw tips of a little male reached out and pinched Renée on the thigh, and she let out a yelp, jumping to Alex’s side. The matron let loose a shrill whistle that ended in a twitter.
As Renée rubbed her painful thigh, she asked Alex, “What did the female say?”
“She was remanding the youngling, Ser,” Alex replied. “She said, ‘Not food.’”
Humans and Swei Swee crowded around the first barrel. A large matron pushed forward and upended a Méridien crew member, who sat down heavily in the middle of her back. The female’s rapid bobbing forced the crewman to take several moments to descend from the back of the Swei Swee, who had been whistling a few notes over and over.
The embarrassed crew member turned to Alex and apologized profusely, asking, “Was the female angry with me, Ser President?”
“On the contrary, Ser,” Alex replied, “it seems she was making a joke. She was uttering ‘youngling’ over and over again as she bounced you up and down.”
Alex’s comment produced a round of laughter, and the tension among the humans visibly eased.
At the barrel, Alex squatted down and motioned the flotilla’s Hive First closer. Alex had to step to the side to allow the leader to get close to a tap near the bottom of the container, which he opened. The leader pushed his true hands into the stream and sipped from them. Alex turned off the tap as the leader backed up and issued a string of whistles, which were echoed by the assembly.
“Is that an approval, I detect?” asked Renée.
Their Hive First scuttled aside to make room for the other two leaders to test the waters. The result was the same for each one, and the assembly whistled louder with each approval.
The leader neatly clipped the head and tail from the fish with his claws, and his true hands rent the flesh from the fish’s skeleton and skin, then popped a piece into his mouth.
Some of the crew members turned green at the sight of the consumption of a living animal.
Alex caught two more fish for the other leaders. One fish he tossed, but the other was speared from his hand by the third leader. A screeching whistle from their Hive First froze the overanxious leader in mid-motion. A further set of tweets and warbles had the hasty leader bobbing slowly up and down. He scuttled close to Alex and lowered his body to the ground with a soft whistle and extended to Alex the bloody, wriggling fish still pinioned on the sharp point of the upper half of a claw.
Alex pulled the fish free, feeling its slick blood coat his fingers. He held the fish back out to the submissive Swei Swee, whistling, “Eat.”
A claw slowly reached back up and gently took the fish from Alex’s hand. As the chastised Swei Swee backed away from Alex with his meal, he was thwacked on the carapace by several matronly females, their heavy claws scratching his nearly pristine shell.
Renée sent privately.
Alex scooped up a handful of water and held it out to their Hive First. “Water good?” he signaled via his harness. The Swei Swee’s response signaled an affirmative. Alex picked up the severed head of a fish from the grass and held it out, repeating his question, and received the same answer.
Sorting through his preplanned phrases, Alex selected the one he needed. Whistles and tweets emanated from his harness, inviting the Swei Swee to come to his world.
Their Hive First’s response was a question that Alex’s program translated as “Search for Star Hunters or search for Swei Swee?” Alex wrestled with a way to respond. He wanted both, but he also wanted it to be the Swei Swee’s choice. Alex patched phrases together for his response and whistled, “Swei Swee search on Star Hunter’s world. Swei Swee search the endless seas for Swei Swee.”
For the tricky portion of his plan, Alex required an expanse of sand on which to draw his icons. He walked toward the cliff trail, and the hives scuttled out of his way. The leaders closely followed Alex down the cliff face, while his people, surrounded by the hives, trailed behind.
On the beach, Alex smoothed a square meter of sand. As he started to smooth more sand, a matron blocked his way. Her blunt claws motioned Alex aside then she spun to face the long stretch of beach and dumped her blunt body on the sand, splaying her legs up and out. She tweeted and warbled, and in response, two matrons scurried forward and grasped her blunt claws to haul her down the beach.
Alex laughed and applauded by snapping his fingers. The Swei Swee joined in with snapping claws and bobbing bodies.
Are the Swei Swee recognizing the moment’s levity or are they just imitating the Star Hunter First ... and does it matter? Renée wondered.
Alex drew a series of images down the beach, adding whistles and tweets to explain the icons. The entire point of the exercise was to investigate a shell’s tendency to decompose without the Swei Swee’s continued maintenance. When Alex finished the parade of drawings, he held up a small piece of the silver ship’s dark hull, which had continued to crumble even as he carried it.
Their Hive First plucked the shard from Alex’s hand, and his eyestalks bent to examine it. A sharp whistle brought one of the matrons forward. She took the piece of hull and stuffed it in her mouth. After a few moments, she spat it out and trilled to her leader, whose eyestalks were trained on the expectorated shard.
As fast as the Hive First coul
d move, which was unsettlingly quick for humans, he raced back to the start of Alex’s message. He crabbed sideways, his eyestalks trained on the icons as he walked the row of pictographs. At the end of Alex’s glyphs, the First stared at the shard in the sand, and his whistle pierced the air. He followed his whistle with a string of tweets and warbles, and the three hives erupted in a loud burst of noise, snapping claws and excitedly bobbing up and down.
Their First snatched up the dark shard with a true hand and raced up to Alex. He bobbed up and down, and then scurried toward the cliff face before turning around to face Alex and snapping his claws.
Alex hurried to catch up with the leader, who took a second path up the cliff face toward the Swei Swee’s homes. The organic shapes of their dwellings blended from one home to the next without any overall geometric pattern. He held up the dark shard and whistled, “Nua’ll positive.” Then he drew an outline of a silver ship in the sand. Pointing to the outlined ship and shaking the shard, he again whistled, “Nua’ll.”
Alex whistled an “Affirmative” to indicate he was following the discussion while at the same time wondering where this was headed.
Pointing to the outlined ship again, the First threw the shard down and spit on it. Then he tapped on the exquisite translucent blue-green surface of the first dwelling with a claw and whistled, “Star Hunters.”
Alex put the two ideas together and burst out in raucous laughter, twirling and snapping his fingers overhead. The First joined in the merriment, snapping and bobbing.
Down on the beach, the hives celebrated the sharing of their great secret with the Star Hunters, a secret maintained through eight generations of imprisonment. The males snapped their claws and danced around the humans. Matrons whistled and warbled, and the young ran along the beach and slid their bodies into the shallow waves.