Kali's Children (Kali Trilogy Book 1)

by Craig Allen

  She sighed and continued to help me modify recipes. It was the only thing left we could do.

  ~~~

  On the fifth day of altering recipes, we received new guests.

  Several frogs entered. Behind them, they dragged winged creatures similar to vultures that were much larger and had no beaks. Along their top sides, they had fuzz of the same reddish hue the frogs had. On their undersides, between their massive folded wings, each had an arm curled up against its body.

  The frogs pushed half a dozen of the vultures into the large cargo bay one at a time. The guards outside the control room stood outside the cargo bay. Only Marie and I were in the control room.

  Marie grimaced. “What are they?”

  One hobbled toward the control room door. I stood between it and Marie, but the vulture didn’t pay attention to either of us. It just stared through the window at the factory machinery. One of the others squeezed inside while the other four looked through the window from the cargo bay. They must have stared for five minutes straight.

  Convinced they weren’t an immediate threat, I finally sat down. I continued to run the recipes while Marie altered them. When the factory finished with a particular recipe, I stacked the resulting part next to the door leading to the cargo area. After I had completed six parts, the vultures reached over and picked them up. They could carry only one at a time because their wings were too cumbersome to do much more. They carried the parts outside then returned.

  “They’re intelligent,” Marie said. “Just like the frogs.”

  She was right. They knew what to do, which meant someone had taught them. I thought of the creatures digging holes outside. Someone must’ve told them to do that, and they all worked together. I was just trying to keep us alive. The mammoths had dug the beginning of the hole. Then the small rats broke up the dirt. Then the bulbous blob creatures carried out the dirt. They had worked together as a team.

  The plants avoided us, though they seemed inquisitive. The red reed-like growths that circled and filled the encampment acted curious, but were quick to disappear into the ground if we got too close.

  “I think there are lots of intelligent creatures here,” I said. “I haven’t seen any that aren’t intelligent. They may all be.”

  “Amazing.” She watched as one of the vultures stared at her holographic console. “How could that happen?”

  “I don’t know, honey.” At the time, I didn’t care. The only thing on my mind was survival.

  She touched my arm. “Babe, can you go to the med-pod real quick?”

  For a split second, I was alarmed. “Why?”

  “There’s a viewer there, isn’t there?” She gestured toward the cargo bay. “It’s a medical one, but I think it’ll work.”

  “Work for what?”

  “I want to teach them.” She pointed at the vultures as they returned. “I want to teach them English.”

  ~~~

  I operated the factory while Marie taught the vultures. I wasn’t sure if they could really learn our language. They had their own way of communication, which we probably couldn’t grasp. Teaching them basic vocabulary wasn’t enough. They had to learn to think in a new way. Two humans from separate cultures could learn each other’s language because humans share similar brains. The brains of these vulture creatures had evolved in an alien ocean. They saw their world in completely different ways from how humans saw it. Marie’s teaching them English was like a spider teaching a fish how to spin a web.

  I told her all of this, but she wouldn’t hear it. She pursued the task eagerly. There were countless setbacks. I doubt they learned a thing the first day. They may not have even understood what she was trying to do. But it set her mind at ease. The constant fear from before had mostly melted away. At any rate, teaching them took her mind off what had happened to us—and what had happened to her. That alone made the effort worthwhile.

  Even better, she eventually proved me wrong.

  ~~~

  She frowned and waved her finger back and forth. “No. Human. Hu-man.” She pointed to the word on the viewer. The vulture stared at her finger. “No, not my finger. The word. Human. That’s what I am. That’s what we are.” She gestured at me. “Humans.”

  The vulture took the viewer from Marie. It held it up to one of its yellow eyes. At first, I was concerned they wouldn’t be able to discern the lettering because I wasn’t sure which wavelengths their eyes detected. Yet it stared at the viewer, tilting its head back and forth. The vulture showed the viewer to another standing nearby, and it, too, stared at the image.

  Marie smiled. “Babe, I think they’re getting it.”

  The vulture turned the viewer around and stared at the underside just as intently. It held the viewer upside down.

  Marie’s shoulders slumped. “Oh, hell.”

  ~~~

  Marie played with the color schemes. She found that a black background with large white letters seemed to work the best. It was a week into the lessons before she had any success.

  “Human.”

  All six vultures had somehow managed to fit in the control room. They each unfurled one wing and waved it at her then me.

  “Console.”

  They pointed a wingtip at the main console.

  “Floor.”

  They gestured at the floor below them.

  I laughed. “Holy shit. They’re getting it.”

  Their necks elongated in a gesture I suspected meant confusion.

  “You can explain that word to them yourself, hon,” Marie said.

  ~~~

  I should have learned long ago not to underestimate her.

  Within a week, the vultures had a basic vocabulary. If I said, “tool outside,” they would take whatever new and strange item the factory developed out of the ship. A week after that, they grasped more complex phrases such as, “Take all five tools outside, please.”

  “This is incredible.” Marie stared at the vultures as they carried the tools away. “How can they learn so quickly?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” I said. “We have yet to see a species that’s not intelligent, right? If the prey you hunt is as smart as you are, you have to be smarter.”

  “And if those that hunt you are smart, you have to be even smarter.”

  “Amazing, isn’t it?”

  “I would’ve said it was impossible if I hadn’t seen it for myself.” She looked at the vultures as they communed with each other. “In all of known space, we’ve encountered two other intelligent species. Here on this world, everything is sentient. What could trigger every creature on a planet to evolve into intelligence?”

  Before long, the vultures spoke to us by entering text on the viewer. Over time, the viewer adapted to the physiology of the vultures, and they began typing out whole sentences… more or less.

  One day, a vulture handed Marie the viewer.

  Hard learning talk of people with no sight but happy are we to.

  “People with no sight?” Marie asked. “What do you mean by no sight?”

  They scribbled on the viewer again.

  You are good but do not see. See sky, see noise, see air, not see talk.

  “I think they’re saying they like us even though we’re blind as bats,” I said. “That’s encouraging.”

  “But what is it we’re not seeing? What is it they’re doing that we don’t see?”

  At that moment, the deck vibrated under my feet. “Marie, there it is again.”

  She leaned over in her chair and placed her hand against the floor grates. “What is that? The fusion plant?”

  I ran through diagnostics. “No, it’s fine.” I leaned over and put my hand on the floor. “The floor grates are vibrating again.”

  “What’s causing that?”

  The vulture scribbled something new.

  We talk now and you not see.

  “You think they’re doing that?” I asked.

  They scribbled again.

  You talk noise. We t
alk feel.

  “I’m going to try something.” I stood.

  Marie tensed. “Babe, where you going?”

  “I won’t be long.” I leaned over and kissed her. I squeezed between the vultures. They stunk of rot, but so did everything on this world. They moved aside as much as they could in the small control room and let me pass.

  The cargo bay was empty. The frogs came through periodically, but they mostly left us alone. I guess they figured I couldn’t get very far with Marie in her condition.

  I headed to my tool cabinet and pulled out my multi-scanner. I used it to scan components of a fusion reactor for radiation and pretty much anything in the electromagnetic spectrum. It also helped detect the status of the magnetic bottle that held the deuterium in place inside a reactor.

  I switched it on. The scanner screamed that it was picking up a magnetic field that was out of alignment. I clicked off the warning alarm. No matter where I went, the scanner detected a measurable degree of electromagnetic activity. It was as if someone had thrown magnets over every inch of the cargo bay. Nothing in the cargo bay could cause such a reading. Either we landed on some magnetized rock or the world had extensive amounts of raw magnetic activity, many times more powerful than the magnetic fields of Earth.

  I walked back into the control room. Marie raised an eyebrow. “What are you doing with that?”

  “Just an idea,” I said. “They’re communicating, and we can’t detect it. Maybe they’re doing it on a level we can’t see. So I was hoping—”

  The scanner’s magnetic reader beeped. Marie jumped. She knew as well as I did that the sound meant a magnetic bottle was leaking, which meant a very big boom if it continued. “What is it?”

  “It’s not the reactor.” I turned around. Magnetism had increased. The indicators showed that the nearby magnetism was well outside operating parameters, but the magnetism wasn’t coming from a fusion bottle.

  The vultures regarded one another, as if communing. The frogs had done the same. As they did this, the scanner still showed higher levels of magnetism, higher than that in the cargo bay.

  “Is it them?” she asked.

  I nodded. “There’s low-level magnetism all across the cargo bay. I don’t think it’s the ship. I think it’s the planet. It must have a very powerful magnetic core, probably denser than Earth’s.”

  “Of course,” she said. “The metal strips on the frogs’ heads. And the brown sheen these guys have. Well, other than the reddish fuzz they have. If this planet is rich in metals, it may be in the food they eat, too.”

  “They may be sensitive to it.” I held the scanner close to one of the vultures, and the magnetic readings increased. “You know, I think they can see the magnetic waves.” I stared at the flying creatures. “I think they speak using the natural magnetism of this world.”

  The vulture ran its central claw over the viewer.

  Do you see our talk now?

  ~~~

  Marie spent more time teaching them—and learning from them. They didn’t really have a name for themselves. They just referred to themselves as people. The frogs, the mammoths, the mammoth riders, and the amoeba-like things that dug holes were all simply “others.”

  Marie showed a vulture how to operate the food synthesizer. They could eat turkey okay, but only if they let it rot a bit first. Whenever it was time to eat, they left the room. I was grateful for that. Once, I caught sight of them eating in the cargo bay. The creature they were eating had obviously been dead for days. The vultures threw up their digestive juices on their meal and then inhaled the remains. I nearly got sick on the spot. I was sure they found our eating equally disgusting.

  Marie, however, had no such compunctions about asking them about how they ate. “Did you kill it?”

  They fluttered their wings rapidly

  No No No No. We kill not. We find them dead by other means and we consume. Never kill for ourselves.

  “Okay, sorry,” she said. “That’s interesting.”

  “What’s interesting?”

  “They don’t kill for their food, but I bet the others do. I wonder how they feel about that?”

  We and others that eat long dead not kill. We only take already dead.

  “Oh, well, that’s good.” I pointed outside. They had also learned our body language. “What about our captors?”

  They kill or capture and kill later. All others kill and taking lives for food.

  Marie swallowed. “Do they… eat you, too?”

  Use us to find food afar. We do or they kill mate.

  “Kill mate,” I said. “They use your mate against you?”

  Just as they use teacher to force you to build impossible things.

  By “teacher,” they meant Marie. We were two species from two different worlds, yet we had so much in common.

  “That’s awful.” Marie was silent for a bit. “Babe?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I would have done the same.” She pointed at the stumps of her legs.

  I stopped operating the factory. I could only sit and watch her. So many more terrible things had happened to her, but still she remained vibrant. I didn’t deserve her at all. She was better than I was.

  She turned back to the vultures. “What are our captors going to do with us?”

  The vultures tapped a message in return.

  Don’t know. Provider ask and do strange things.

  “Provider?”

  Largest of greatest hunters who leads until someone better can.

  “I assume he’s the biggest frog,” I said.

  The thing did a little bounce, imitating a nod.

  Great Provider greater than any other provider perhaps more powerful than all.

  “Best ever, huh?” Marie said.

  Provider hunt farther than all others find more food more cattle and want to go farther than all others.

  “Cattle?”

  It gestured at itself and the others, then at Marie and me.

  Cattle.

  Marie’s face went ashen, and she began to shake. I wasn’t sure if she taught them that word or if it was in the database of the viewer, but it didn’t matter. Cattle were meant to be eaten.

  I had to get her out of there.

  ~~~

  Marie ran the recipes while I ventured outside for the first time in weeks. I hated going outside. I was used to the gravity by that point, but I hated other things about the planet. When it rained, the water came down in rivers, swirling the topsoil into large pools of mud. An unprotected human couldn’t possibly survive it. After the rain, the hot sun evaporated the moisture quickly. Dust kicked up in the high winds, making visibility and breathing difficult. The rot in the air was horrible, but I found myself growing used to it. Apparently convinced I wouldn’t leave without Marie, the frogs didn’t stop me from wandering around.

  Everything had changed. The pits had been finished, all eight of them. Each was about eight meters deep. They held members of several different species. My scanner detected them as they communicated with one another, even across different species. Thanks to the powerful magnetic fields of the planet, these creatures had a common method of communication.

  Next to each pit rested a red-and-purple log. I ran my hands across the surface one. It had hard ridges like a seashell. Little knobs lined each log. The creatures in the pit stared up at me as I examined the log. I pushed against the log, but it was too heavy for me to move.

  In the center of the eight pits sat a pool of stagnant water. I walked toward it, stopping a few meters short. A thin reddish film covered its surface. One frog hopped toward the pool. Ignoring me, it turned around and defecated into the pool then left.

  A few minutes later, something moved beneath the thin film that covered the water, pushing against it from the underside. After a moment, it poked a hole through it. The red film parted, making the hole much larger. A four-legged creature appeared through the hole. It did a little hop and turned over on its back, sending waves across the
red film. On its back was a smaller fifth limb. The little claw on it swung back and forth. It was only ten centimeters in length, but it was otherwise almost identical to the larger frogs. The creature promptly hopped toward a larger group of frogs. It circled their feet. After a moment, one of the frogs kicked the smaller one aside. The small frog finally moved away, but never strayed far from the other frogs.

  I walked along the edges of the pits. Magnetic disturbances rose as I approached, and then they ceased when one of them noticed me, only to resume once I had passed. The handful of creatures outside the pits wouldn’t approach me. If I came too close, they moved aside. The only exceptions were the mammoths and their insect-like riders. They didn’t react at all to my presence.

  The remains of the Kali stood as it had since the crash. Frogs swarmed around it and sometimes climbed on top of it. Any other creatures that came near it were threatened with the end of a spear.

  Three mammoths walked from the other side of the Kali, struggling with each step. I walked toward the ship peering around the stern. A fourth mammoth appeared, and then a fifth. They, too, struggled, as if walking were very difficult. The largest frog, Provider, led them, kicking at the struggling mammoths. Thick intertwined vines wrapped around the bodies of the mammoths so they could pull the massive object behind them.

  I moved farther around the remains of the Kali. My mouth fell open. The mammoths were dragging a hopper. Dents and gouges covered the scorched hull. The landing struts had been extended, so someone must’ve tried to land the thing. If the power plant was still operational, or if the fusion batteries still had juice, that would be good news. I started to walk toward it, but a claw grabbed my right shoulder. A frog pulled me back so hard I fell over. The impact hurt like hell in the high gravity. The frog hovered over me, its central arm on its underside reaching for me. It extended one finger-tentacle and waved it back and forth.