by Ken Pence
Susan quizzed Hllouge on poisons and then decided to get him to make them a training cylinder on these poisons and knowledge of ceramics. They set the fields around this portion of the Junior to sixty and then started work. LeiLei had been ready with the recorder. They took him to the refresher on the Junior first and had a makeover session. They explained that he should not go back to the village wearing his hermit clothes and appearance. Susan had him find dress that was appropriate for the pre-fall natives on the planet and a crewman fabricated some new, form-fitting clothes that looked almost like a Greek toga. They were skeptical but did as Susan asked. He soon looked like a new being – handsome in a no-chinned way – she supposed.
They recorded a session with Hllouge. Susan and Andrew both took the session immediately. It evidently included Hllouge’s language. It was an enormously valuable session. They started jabbering away in his language. It was an incredibly rich language and had words that showed that this culture had had a pre-space technology. They planned the following day carefully and slept a solid eight hours. They then ate a large breakfast, loaded the Victoria with some special equipment – suited up and headed back to the area where the village men had been looking for Hllouge. The thermal imaging showed them clearly and they landed nearby. Hllouge got out and figured out how to walk with the field set at nearly 50 percent strength. Any more and he would be fully protected but wouldn’t have enough traction to walk. They landed between the spread out searchers and Hllouge called out to them. They started to converge. The Victoria and the soldiers were out in force but camouflaged.
Hllouge was startling to the searchers because he no longer looked like the bedraggled hermit from previous times. He looked like a drawing of their ancestors. Most came to him and he directed them to the location of the Victoria that materialized as they came close. He told them to go inside and most did it with no pressure but one had to be pushed inside. They then went to the sensor coordinates of the two remaining searchers and Hllouge approached them as before. The Victoria was hovering nearby and displaying the view on screens inside to the fascination of the natives. These guys were surprised but were talking about this and that technology that they had studied from the record keepers. They all said that Hllouge was not unstable and the leader was pushing his authority too far. They were silent when they spotted the last two searchers on the thermal display.
Hllouge approached the last searchers and the natives watching from the Victoria mentioned how brave he was to do so because these were close friends with the leader, Hffalam. Hllouge approached the two searchers. He said he would take them back to the village. They looked at each other and drew their bows. They both shot at the same time. The Victoria opened its cargo door and two soldiers flew out and shot the two searchers with stunners. The ones inside talked about whether they thought the two natives were dead and then they noticed that Hllouge was flying back to the shuttle. They all started talking when he came in carrying two arrows in his hands. The soldiers returned with the two unconscious natives and carelessly tossed them in the back of the shuttle. They asked Hllouge if they should just toss them out or kill them. He answered, no, in Trade.
Susan asked him in his native language if he indeed wanted to kill these two. She asked if Hffalam had family or children who might be a problem. Hllouge said he did not want them killed but watch out for Hffalam trying to poison them at a meal. His sister might be a problem. The trip to the village was quiet as the two natives in the back regained consciousness. They saw Hllouge. He asked them if they were willing to work with him in the future or should he just kill them now. They emphatically said they were just doing what Hffalam ordered. He asked them if they thought these beings were from their planet and they cowered and said no. He asked them if they could see that these beings were flying. They looked at the forward monitor and said yes.
They landed at the edge of the village and all the natives walked in with Susan, Andrew and Hllouge. Hllouge looked regal compared to the natives. Hffalam was shocked but welcomed them all to the village and said he had planned a feast.
It took two hours to prepare the feast. Hllouge walked around the village and reintroduced himself throughout the village wearing his new clothes and the prominent coin around his neck. The meal was finally set out on top of bolts of cloth laid out on low tables. There were fruits, vegetables, and cooked meats. There were pitchers and glasses of wines and juices.
Hffalam stood up as all the males were seated and welcomed Hllouge back to the village. He then turned to Susan and Andrew and welcomed them. He started to speak but Susan stood up and took off her helmet to expose her face to the villagers for the first time. In the pause that ensued, she started speaking in the native’s language. There had been a gasp when she exposed her head and another when she spoke in their language. She told them that she had met Hllouge several years ago but had had to leave to go back to her home planet. It was getting dark and she pointed at Sol’s location in the sky and explained that her home system had eight large planets. She explained that she too lived on the third planet from the sun like they did here. Everyone stopped looking at Hffalam and paid rapt attention to her. Hffalam was not prepared to be usurped – especially not by an alien speaking his language.
Susan introduced her mate, Andrew, who also removed his helmet and said that their planet, Earth, once had females in a subservient role but they had progressed rapidly when equality was established. More was gained than was lost he said. Andrew pointed at Hllouge and said that the old writings said nothing that suggested that their ancestors had ever considered females as less than males. Female ancestors, according to Hllouge, had written many of the old manuscripts. Susan had been testing all her food and drink as well as Andrew’s while he talked. One drink and food dish was each laced with deadly poison. Susan stood up and said she would like to propose a toast. She said a toast was where a guest gave their host praise for upcoming trade. She handed her glass to Hffalam and took his glass in a lightning motion. “Here is to the leader of your village, Hffalam, who gave me this glass to drink just as he did to the previous leader. I give him mine like he gave your past leader. Please drink,” she said knowing she was pushing him hard. Hllouge had said the leader died young.
Hffalam looked at everyone who sat waiting for him to say or do anything. He threw down the drink and ran out of sight as Susan spoke into her radio. She received a reply and turned to the group.
“Hffalam apparently killed your previous leader to take his place and then tried to disgrace Hllouge who he saw as a rival. I have given a special light to Hllouge that will show the stains of others who were partners with Hffalam. Do not drink anything else until Hllouge has tested your food to make sure you would not be Hffalam’s next victim,” Susan said as Hllouge went down the tables testing the drinks and food. Both his food along with Andrew’s and Susan’s had been poisoned and he threw them out and tossed the utensils into a nearby fire. He then turned on the ultraviolet light on the hands of the serving crew and the pale greenish yellow telltale showed up only on one – Hffalam’s sister.
She started pleading but Hllouge grabbed her around the arms unexpectedly and flew up into the air. A few seconds after he disappeared into the night air they heard a very prolonged, descending scream and meaty thud in the woods. Hllouge flew back to the table.
Andrew and Susan looked at each other in a – that was unexpected look. They shrugged since they had ordered Hffalam dissolved by molecular disruptor as soon as he was out of view of the villagers and a soldier had done so already.
Hllouge started speaking. “As you can see – I was speaking the truth. These people are from another planet and traded me the ability to fly for information about our people. Hffalam wanted power for himself. I only want what is good for our people because the climate is getting warmer. These people helped me uncover the city of the pre-people and it is full of great wealth. These people traded teaching machines so we may learn the languages of the traders from th
e stars and about many other things. Our ancestors were ready to travel into space when the climate drastically changed. Our children or our children’s children will travel among the stars.” He passed around a box with lamlee in the bottom. “These are lamlee. We can trade lamlee for knowledge so we may live better lives.”
A bold one in the group shouted, “I see you are already living better with your rich clothes. How does that help me?” and Hllouge heard a murmur of assent from the group. “We do not want to trade one bad leader for another.”
Susan stood back up. “Hllouge wanted something else for the village,” she said and Hllouge looked at her strangely – surprised.
She waved her arm and two soldiers in black battle armor came pulling two sleds covered with canvas. They motioned Hllouge to uncover the carts and there really was a stunned cry from the group. The first sled had almost ten metric tons of iron bars on it. The people had to get up and look at it closer because metal – iron was very scarce and valuable.
Susan shouted over the hum of voices. “Hllouge traded his own knowledge for these goods for all of you. You are all very wealthy. He also wanted something that would set your village apart from all others,” Susan extemporized. One of the soldiers interrupted Hllouge in his attempt to undo the coverings on the second sled and gave him a fairly heavy cloth bag. He looked in and there were duralloy coins for everyone in the village two times over. He held them up and started giving them to each of the villagers. They did not mob him like they would have on Earth but were very polite – definitely alien but it was still a big hit. One large man said he’d be happy to give them out if Hllouge would please uncover the second cart.
Hllouge pulled back the covering on the second sled and this time there were gasps of astonishment from every villager there. They did not show their aloofness this time. They were stunned. The sled was covered with bars of beautiful metals of all types and each type had two identical books with colored pictures printed on Riz. The books described what the metal looked like in natural form and how it was mined and refined. It had metals that they had never even dreamed of having. There were bars of silver, gold, platinum, aluminum, copper, tin, magnesium, titanium, zinc, nickel, chromium, tungsten, vanadium, even hard plastic tubes filled with mercury. There was a set of Metallurgy texts hastily printed on Riz.
Hllouge approached Susan. “I did not trade you for all of that. I can read this language, Trade, but no one else in the village can read it. We will need more than one teaching machine. I would not know how to fix it if it breaks. The metals are wonderful but we cannot extract many of them from our planet. How will we get more? Are you not taunting us with false hope?” he asked.
“Hllouge, I will leave you two teaching machines. The cylinder you made for us will help us and the lamlee were well worth the trade. There will be more lamlee in that city and there may be other artifacts. We will bring you more metals when we return in a few years. More traders will come too. We will leave you language cylinders for their languages too. In time, many traders will come and you need to become stronger so they will not just take what you have. We will hide your identity and location as long as we can. Your job is to educate your people as fast as you can.”
“I am not sure I should thank you for all this new knowledge?” he said. “You put my people at great risk.”
“That statement shows you are the being that needs to lead these people. You see truly – the good and the bad of it. It is my fault that Hffalam is dead but you are my friend. I could not let him destroy you or your knowledge and that is probably wrong...but you are a friend. We will leave you right after the feast. Would you tell everyone to come back and eat before all this gorgeous food spoils?” she said.
Hllouge waved everyone back to the tables. The evening degenerated again as many of the villagers got drunk, danced and sang. Couples, not always married to each other according to Hllouge, slipped off to dwellings.
Andrew nudged Susan, “That looks like a good idea to me. It’s time we beat a retreat. These soldiers have been eating rations while we’ve been eating and drinking – not necessarily good food – but interesting food.”
Susan saw a young male whisper in a girl’s ear and they ran off hand in hand. “Good idea,” she said to Andrew.
“We need to leave now Hllouge. Thank you for being our friend. We will try to visit again,” Susan said.
“Come back again,” Hllouge said and Andrew could swear his eyes were glistening.
They waved and climbed into the shuttle at the edge of the clearing, made sure all the gear and soldiers was counted and flew up into the night.
Hllouge looked at the faint star of Sol and held up both arms toward it. Some of the remainder of the revelers did they same.
***
Susan felt depressed as she boarded the Junior. “Tell me I did right,” she told Andrew.
“We brought that load of iron for Hllouge’s people from the first. We are immensely richer now with a new source for lamlee and who knows what else. We know the lamlee were probably made by cephalopods with eight tentacles. We know all kinds of cool ways to make ceramics. The rest of that metal was just some leftover from Phillips’ drone payments. Rett gets a bit if he can fit it into his new ship.”
“I know,” Susan said, “...but two people were killed and we radically influenced a culture. How is that right?”
“A good resource, Hllouge, was saved and we have a new port for trade. New trade means we can probably save the Earth Regulatory Force and with that – it’s Expeditionary Force – us. We’ve been racking up huge expenses without much to show for it before now. This trip will change all that but we have to make it back home safely. Phillips knew that and he’d never been in space. We need to crank him out of storage for our next stop,” Andrew said to Susan as he pulled her close.
“The next one will be the hard one won’t it,” she said and laid her head against his shoulder and cried a bit at having people killed under her orders.
“We’ll do fine. Let’s get cleaned up and rested so we can plan that trip to 68 Eridani,” Andrew said and sent the video feeds of their village experience to the Odin for review by Kyger and Shuler. They acknowledged the actions as proper after a few hours.
Heave to
It was Shiv that suggested we use the lamlee to boost the efficiency of our drive fields. We had once suggested that our maximum efficiency would be around 1,400 lights but currently we were only up to the 400 plus change in the Junior. We asked Shiv how it might be accomplished and she suggested we upgrade our cabling and use up to ten lamlee. We didn’t want to lose a ship so we did the best we could – I should say Joel and LeiLei collaborated while they cohabited and we adapted the shuttle Albert with the new setup. It was capable of about 60 lights at max but didn’t have the environmental systems for long voyages. Joel climbed into the Albert by himself when they finished and LeiLei saw him off. He moved a short distance away from the Junior and then kicked in the drive. He immediately dropped out of contact and that meant he had gotten over 100 lights speed – or – it just blew up. We waited a long time but couldn’t communicate with him. LeiLei became a little frantic – I think there must be some emotional attachment there. We couldn’t do anything but we’d wait as long as we could – up to a week if we had to wait. Late the next day we got a communication from Joel. He was okay but had overshot twice before he could get this close. He was going to use another lamlee to fine tune his navigation controls. They were too crude currently. He thought he’d finish in another 24 hours. Sixteen hours later, the Albert popped into existence beside the Junior.
Joel got a hero’s welcome from the crew and a personal welcome home from LeiLei. We debriefed him after he had showered and put on a clean jumpsuit. He touched his MemDex that detailed high points in his journey and design changes. The reconfiguration of the stressed space field drive by the lamlees was remarkable. Some had migrated to control points. The additional fine tuning of the navigation system tur
ned the navigation of the shuttle from a golf cart to a race car. Joel said he had gotten over 700 lights out of the shuttle. It was decided to upgrade all our systems after a great deal of deliberation. It finally came down to the ability to get away from an enemy rather than fighting. Cutting travel time was more important than anything else at the moment. The adaptation of the Victoria only took a few days but the alteration of the Junior and the Odin was another story altogether. More lamlee were used than before and their adaptation was recorded with electron microscopy. It showed rapid changes that would take quite a bit of skull sweat to figure out what was happening but it was recorded for later analysis. The navigation systems also benefitted from the same sort of adaptation. Both ships were ready in two weeks of accelerated time – about twelve hours of normal time – Brad noted.
Even Rett became interested in the adaptations and used some of his share of lamlee to upgrade his drone conversion. His drone ship was coming along and he had amassed a good cargo of trade goods and supply of grape juice for himself. The environmental systems were taking the longest and he was soon piddling around again on his ship.
The Odin and Junior were set to test their navigation and propulsion systems. They had rendezvous coordinates a light year from 68 Eridani and would wait there two weeks if they had to before backtracking. Both ships were finally ready to tackle the longest leg of their expedition so far – 82 light years. They both counted down and set off at the exact moment with shut down scheduled for five minutes later. The fields shut off and they were able to contact each other. Rough guess of velocity was in the 1,100 lights range. They decided to try an hour at full power and see where they stood. When they shut down after one hour of flight, they could still communicate but barely. The coordinates showed that the Odin hit over 1,200 lights and the Junior just topped 1,120 lights. The Junior moved up to the Odin in microbursts to calibrate their navigation upgrades. They set off together with the Odin not quite at maximum for an hour – this time with more accurate figures on which to base their velocities. When they dropped out, they were very close for stellar ranges. The systems showed no strain and they set off together with the coordinates for the approximately 3.8 week journey.