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The sun beat down like a physical force, and even with his coolsuit, Urle felt overheated.

The ambient air temperature was just shy of 66, and there was no shade in this region.

It would have been called a savannah on Earth, and in some ways it looked similar.  But there were differences.

The craggy trees were actually some kind of hard-skinned mushroom, whose mycelium spread out through the earth for tens of meters around them, sucking up every molecule of water they could find.

It made digging up the dirt difficult; the dense web of mycelium served to pack the earth tight.

If not for the large burrowing creatures that looked like hairy mole crickets, the soil might have turned into a dead hardpan.

But nature provided, and life created the conditions for yet more life.

Where the numerous mole bugs churned up the earth, sprung up the seedgrasses.

Around him, the Hessa, the !Xomyi who lived here, continued to labor.

They all wore light clothing, just a basic poncho woven from the stiffening fibers inside the grass.  On their heads were very large hats, almost comically so, their brims extending far to give each person their own shade.

I should have accepted when they offered me one, he thought.  The Hessa had offered many gifts, and he had not wanted to intrude on their hospitality too much.  Perhaps they’d show him how to make one.  It couldn’t hurt to have a little shade.

They’d spent all morning cutting down seedgrass.  It grew wildly in clumps wherever there was heavy mole bug activity.  What drew them to certain spots, Urle did not know.  He may have to ask about that, too.

He’d never scythed before, and he was impressed with the skill with which they’d made their scythes; curved sticks with neat flecks of flint inset, their edges incredibly sharp.  The trees here were very hard, much harder than on Earth, and the tools broke often.  When the flint chips broke, one could just pull them out and put in a new one.

One of his had broken, and he yanked it out.  One of the Hessa watched him.

“Do not get cut,” the woman said.  “The edges are sharp.”

It was his metal hand.  “Thank you, I’m fine,” he said.  Reaching into a pocket on his belt, he found a well-sized piece of flint and then fitted it in.

His pack was larger than the others, and already nearly full.

He stopped, taking a handful of seedgrass stems, and cutting them with his tool.  Seeds sprinkled from the top with each movement.

The cycle of life continued, he thought.

The Hessa did not sow any seeds themselves.  The seedgrasses were all naturally occurring, the conditions here were simply perfect for them to spread.

It seemed almost too convenient, but he knew his history; this was how agriculture had begun on Earth, too.

His basket was packed full, and the sound of a blowing horn came from the direction of the village itself.

“Ah, finally!” the Hessa woman near him said.  “The sun was getting very high!”

Near noon, when the heat got to its worst, even too much for the !Xomyi, they came into the shade to rest in the village.

He wasn’t sure if it really qualified as a village or not, to be honest.  It was a collection of huts, one collective longhouse and a storehouse.  There was one other building, whose function he was not clear on.  It was not spoken of much, and they seemed protective of it.  He guessed it may be some sort of temple or holy site.

He only really saw Hessa near it when some cleaning needed to be done.

There was no true leader, but people knew the roles that needed to be done and seemed to take on tasks for themselves or the group very naturally.

Yet he could see how signs of social class had already begun.  Some people gravitated towards the roles of guidance or even speaking to spirits.

They followed in the footsteps of parents, and the others accorded them with great respect.

The man who had blown the horn was one such figure; the Hornblower was both his name and title, and he was the only one who ever blew the horn.  Whether it was taboo or not for others to do so, Urle didn’t know.

One day, he thought, Hornblower might be the title of the hereditary ruler.  Or perhaps even a religious title, the Hessa attributing to horns a spiritual power.

They filtered back into the village, which had no name, dropping off their packs in the central long house.  Most would retire then to their private huts for a rest, before the grueling work of threshing and grinding the seeds began.

Urle lingered in the longhouse.  In here was the wise woman, Ukn!aa.  Her daughters, whose names were simply First Daughter, Second Daughter, and Third Daughter, were emptying the baskets, spreading the stalks out on the floor.

Ukn!aa walked among them, shaking a rattle over them.  Her eyes were nearly closed, as she contemplated the spirits for portents.

Urle kept a respectful silence, hoping his presence was not rude.  No one had commented, at least.

Hornblower came in loudly.

Urle had seen glances between the two that showed both rivalry for influence and also attraction.  Neither, he thought, were selfish or greedy, but they had slightly differing thoughts on their people.

It made Urle’s position difficult.  If he won over one, it might make the other oppose him.  He had to make himself a trusted friend to both.

“Outlander,” Hornblower said to him with a nod.

“Hornblower,” Urle said, politely.

The !Xomyi man looked to Ukn!aa.  “What do the spirits say?” he demanded.

Ukn!aa said nothing, continuing her trance-like dance.  Her eldest daughter approached Hornblower.

“My mother is still speaking to the spirits,” she said.  “They are disquiet.”

“Why?”

The daughter’s eyes flickered, briefly, to Urle.  “She is still trying to learn.  The Sky is angry.  The Moon looks down on us and is not pleased with what it sees.”

Hornblower’s gaze also flickered towards Urle.

There had yet to be an outward hostility to him.  But he was a change, to a people who had a predictable way of life.  That was enough to put some concern in their minds.

“How do we please the moon?” Hornblower asked.

“She will learn,” the eldest daughter insisted.

Urle felt eyes on him again from the two younger daughters of Ukn!aa.  They were not staring, but simply glancing at him, nervously.

He had been hoping to speak to the shaman woman, and then start helping with the threshing and grinding.

But perhaps it would be better for him to step out.  For now.

< Ep 12 part 24 | Ep 12 part 26 >

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

The next dawn, the !A!amo camp was gone.

Before light had even come, they had broken down their camp, taking just an hour, and set out through the jungle.

Brooks was with them.

He joined their group just before they left.  All of their rope dwellings had been brought down, wrapped around limbs or bodies.  Even the children, save for the very young Picky Little One, were carrying packs or skeins of rope.

They truly did not possess much in the way of goods.  Much of the food they had gathered had seemed to disappear, though Brooks spied several freshly-dug holes in the ground.  Perhaps, he thought, they had cached some of the foods.

They still carried some containers; they had a handful of clay pots, and also a few plastic containers that they had apparently scrounged from Brooks’s own camp.

Their value hadn’t occurred to him, but they clearly appreciated their light weight and great strength, and through their clear sides he could see strips of meat wrapped in leaves and dried berries.

He offered to carry some ropes, and the !A!amo seemed put off by it.

“You are coming?” Tracker asked.

“Yes,” Brooks replied.  “I will travel with you.”

Tracker’s ears had gone back, a sign of confusion.  “Spirits usually dwell in one place.”

“I never said I was a spirit.  Only that I came from the sky.”

Tracker laughed at that.  “Maybe you are not a spirit.  But you are too strange to be !Xomyi, No Wings.”

“I thought you would be very surprised at how I look different when we first met,” Brooks commented.  “I thought you might be afraid.”

Tracker made an approximation of a shrug.  “There are many different things in the world.  You have a face, so you have a soul.  What is there to be afraid of if you have a soul?”

A face equalled a soul, eh?  That was worth remembering.  His system made a note of it.

Many cultures associated the soul with a certain part of the body – the head, the heart, the eyes, the pineal gland.

It likely varied between different !Xomyi cultures as widely as it did on Earth.

Or, a part of him wondered, was their cultural separation still so recent in times that there would be shared ideas?  That concept of ur-culture, a first culture of a people, was a heady idea.  No one could truly say if it was even real – not among humanity, Dessei, Sepht, or even Bicet, who recorded everything.  An ur-culture, if it ever existed, had existed before the written word had even been dreamed of.

The march through the jungle was a difficult affair, the thick growths of mushrooms, some of them with strange, fleshy webs between them, slowed them to a crawl.

Brooks realized he was the loudest of them all, even carrying nothing.

Part of it was because he was so much larger than the !Xomyi, but even more was his own ineptitude at traversing the jungle.  He could not well-judge which was the quietest and surest place to step on the path, he was not used to weaving through the undergrowth.

He set his system to analyzing the environment and the !Xomyi both.  It would not give him that muscle-training on its own, but he could garner tips that way at least.

Tracker seemed amused.

“A sky spirit does not know the jungle,” he said.

“It’s true,” Brooks said.  “The sky is very open.”

“But full of clouds!  I have always wondered; how does a cloud feel?”

“Like nothing at all,” Brooks told him.

He sensed a presence on his other side.  Turning quickly, he saw that Knows the World was there.

“You know the clouds?” the being asked, cryptically.

“He says they feel like nothing!” Tracker ventured.

Knows the World did not reply.  Brooks had thought the wise man might contradict him, tell some fable of the clouds and how they would feel.  But to his credit, Knows the World did not do that.

“How does the sky smell?” the wise man asked.

“It smells of very little,” Brooks said.  “The air moves, and takes with it all scents.”

“Mm,” Knows the World grunted, turning and walking ahead.

Brooks watched him, then scanned over the rest of the group.

They were all nervous, he realized.  Watching outward, not inward, and those who were armed fingered their weapons, keeping them ready for instant action.

“What is it that your people fear?” Brooks asked.  The question was open-ended, but he’d learned that they took as a default that one spoke of the moment, rather than generalities or other times.

“They are nervous because of the Day Stalker,” Tracker told him.

“Day Stalker,” Brooks repeated.  His system picked the word out, and he tried to say it with his true voice.

“Keko!un,” he said, trying the actual word.  His mask, catching that the word was in the !A!amo language, let it come out unfiltered.

Tracker tilted his head curiously for a moment, perhaps hearing that something was different in his voice.

“You do not know keko!un?” Tracker asked earnestly.

“They do not live in the sky,” Brooks told him.  “They are new to me.”

“Oh, that sounds like a very nice place!” Tracker said, making a sound Brooks had come to realize was akin to laughter.

“Would you want to see it?” Brooks asked, feeling his heart rate pick up.  Was this an in?  A way to at least start putting the idea in their minds?

“Oh no, today is for walking,” Tracker said.

“Well, perhaps tomorrow.  Or another day?”

“Haha, tomorrow is for hunting hamomo!” Tracker replied, smiling again.

He began to move away, and Brooks followed him.

“Perhaps another day after that?” Brooks suggested.

Tracker seemed to find the question odd.  “Tomorrow I must worry about hunting hamomo,” he insisted.  It was a clear dismissal.

“So these keko!un are dangerous?” Brooks asked, changing the topic.

“Oh yes,” Tracker said.  “You do not know so I must tell you.  But we do not speak of them among ourselves – all know, and to speak of them is bad keotli.”

Brooks noted that word – it did not translate.  Luck, perhaps?

Tracker kept talking.  “When we stay in one place too long, keko!un appear.  Slowly !A!amo disappear.  Sometimes just one, sometimes many of us, leaving only memory.  We are smart, but keko!un are smart as well.  Sometimes they come alone, when the sun is brightest and we see poorly.  No other predator is smart enough to attack us in the day, only sometimes big heavy stompers.”  Tracker emulated a huge creature walking, making thumping noises and deep cries.  “But we hear them and can avoid them.  We are small meals to them, anyway.  Not worth the trouble we give.”  He grinned and held up his spear.

“So they only attack in the day?” Brooks asked.

“They attack when they will.  Sometimes they come at night to take us unexpectedly.  Sometimes they even come in groups.  Groups of Keko!un are much worse, they plan.”

“They plan and hunt in groups?” Brooks asked.  “Are they intelligent?”

Again, Tracker reacted oddly.  “They plan,” he said.  “I must move ahead to keep watch,” he added after a moment.

No Day Stalkers attacked during the trip, Brooks noted.  The group made it to their new spot without much difficulty, though two of the children fell in a stream not long before arrival.  They were pulled out and yelled at by their mothers.

Brooks found it amusing, until he saw how much real fear there was in the parents.

There was no doctor to summon if they had been hurt.  There was no help, no resources beyond the group and what they carried.

Sobered, he stayed at the edge of the camp, trying to be out of their way as the !A!amo set up their small tents and dug a fire pit.

“Kai,” he radioed.  “Do you have a fix on my location?”

“Yes,” she called.  “Bringing our new camp, found another location a few hundred meters away.  Will be set up within the hour.”

“I’ll be staying with the !A!amo in their camp if I can,” he said.

She sounded a little annoyed.  “I wish you’d let me walk with you.”

“Someone needed to set up the camp.  But we can ingratiate you with them if you really want.”

“Not really,” she replied.  “I’m not a people person anymore.  I don’t think I’d be a help in making them like us.”

Brooks wondered what Kai’s real reason was; she was just as personable as him if she tried.  But she had kept up walls, and that did make her a liability in this endeavor, even though it would be better for them to become comfortable with multiple humans.

After the new camp took shape, Brooks watched in fascination as the !A!amo got to work.

No one need give an order, other than some of the parents to their children.

The men started chipping pieces of rock – flint, he realized.  They did not produce a whole head, but instead just flakes which they fitted laboriously into a stick shaft along the side.

The women took these tools and fanned out, cutting down tall bladed grass that grew in the gaps among the trees.

Which were themselves surprising.  The jungle in most other places he’d seen had been so dense that there were few gaps for such grass to grow.

The climate was changing, he realized.  Just how, or what the cause might be, he did not know.  The processes involved would be complex.

But where the trees thinned and grass grew, this made a good spot for the !Xomyi.

That their sickles were still straight sticks, not even the half-circle curves that were more efficient, Brooks surmised that this gathering of grass must be a relatively new innovation.

After they had made their grass cutters, the men began to spread out into the jungle.  Off to hunt, perhaps?

As the women brought back the grass, the children quickly began to take it up and weave it into ropes.

“Will you help?” Sweet Child asked him.

“I’ve never done that before,” he said.

“Really?  I will show you.”

The child’s fingers were tiny compared to his, far more deft.  He watched her work, weaving the blades together quickly.

He tried to do the same, and she laughed without cruelty.  “You really haven’t done this before!”

He just smiled.  “My skills lay elsewhere.”

Sweet Child looked slightly puzzled, but then went back to focusing on her rope.

Brooks left the children working, observing some of the women in the camp.

They were digging in the ground, and he wasn’t sure why until one pulled something large from the ground.

At first he thought it was some sort of tuber, almost perfectly round, but then he realized that it was a clay pot, sticky with soil.

How had it gotten buried?  He came closer, watching.

There was a flat lid, that had been sealed with something that looked like wax mixed with tar.  They peeled it open, and a strong smell hit him, even from here.

It was tantalizingly familiar to something he’d smelled before, and despite it being nearly unbearably strong he wasn’t put off by it.

Fermentation, he realized.

It smelled stronger than anything fermented he’d ever had, and in this climate he’d never thought it could be safely done.

But this wasn’t Earth, it was Ko.  With its own slightly different organic chemistry set and an entirely different set of microbes.

The women each took some of whatever was in the jar – it reminded him of kimchi – and tasted it, seeming satisfied.

They noticed him watching.

“Taste?” one asked, offering a handful of the food.

He politely declined and they just shrugged.

Walking out of the camp, he looked around for the men, but could not see them.

Squatting in place, he checked the drones.  The whole spy group had travelled along with them, and through their eyes he could see the entire area from any angle, choosing to look down from above.

The !Xomyi appeared as red dots superimposed over the map, and his system sorted out the men.

They had spread out in all directions in small groups.  Foraging?

One set of two suddenly moved quickly, in a short burst.  He switched to a drone view of them on the ground.

It was Brave Hunter and Diver.  The latter of them had some small creature, like a lizard but with six limbs, impaled on his spear.

So they were just taking small, easy game to fill their bellies for the night, he realized.

A group of females moved past him.  He watched them for a time, but they did not travel far, only digging into the ground.  They weren’t digging up any more jars, but sometimes he saw them come up with tubers.

“May I see that?” he asked one.  His system identified her as Soon Mother . . . and living up to her name, he realized that she was pregnant.  Her stomach was larger than most !Xomyi, though it was subtler than on a human woman.

Soon Mother offered him the tuber.

He took from his pocket a small device.  It was just a small control board with a sensor and screen – a chemosensor.  He scanned the tuber.  After a moment the device beeped.

“Thanks,” he said.  Feeding its data into his headset, he looked out.

“There’s three buried together here,” he said, walking over and pointing.

Soon Mother came over, frowning at him, but then digging at the spot.  She came up a moment later with a tuber.  Two more were visible in the ground.

She raised her head, large eyes going even wider, filled with awe.

“Keotli,” she breathed.  “You are a spirit!  How did you know?”

That word again, he noticed.  But it was a mystery he’d have to solve later.

“It is a tool,” he said, kneeling next to her.  He showed her the chemosensor.  “It can smell the tubers.  Just point and look through the screen.  They will appear as a glow.”

Soon Mother seemed shocked, looking from him to the chemosensor.  With unsure hands she took the device.  “It is keotli,” she said.  She held it up, looking around, then let out a yelp as she saw something.  Hurrying over, she dug and pulled up a tuber.

“Come!” she cried to the other women.  “Come and see No Wings’s keotli!”

The others came, marveling at the device.

Brooks smiled.  He had not intended it as a gift, but he was reminded of the old wisdom about teaching a man to fish.

They could keep the chemosensor.

< Ep 12 part 23 | Ep 12 part 25 >

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

The path to the camp of the !A!amo was a familiar one to Brooks now.

A few days after he had first visited them in their home, they had crossed the bridge and set up a new camp not far from his.

At first, their acceptance of him had been simply something of convenience; he had food to give them, and they were happy to take it.

Once he made clear that it was freely given, they accepted it as easily as they accepted any food from nature.  He saw them collect and eat berries with the same attitude as they came into his camp and took the rations he offered.

Kai looked upon their casual attitude with a little more concern.

“Things are going missing,” she said.  “Nothing important yet, but I’m concerned that one day we’ll wake up and they’ll have figured out how to take down the tents.”

“We’ll be vigilant.  Make sure you never set your rifle out of your sight,” he told her.

“I never do!” she said, nearly defensive.

Kai had yet to have to fire her rifle, but the !A!amo seemed to have figured out that it was a weapon.  Hard Biter had offered her a very nice spear for it, which she had spent some time declining.

“A gift of weapons,” he said with some confusion, something that had ritual significance to them.

“Mine is very special to me,” she had told him.

It had puzzled him to a degree, but after a time he had accepted it.

As their gift food ran low, Brooks began to offer them tools; they were simple things, axes and knives.  They took an interest in other tools – mostly the children.

“They’re playing with wrenches,” he noted to Kai, watching some of the younger !Xomyi flit about.

Grown !Xomyi could not fly or even glide, but the young could, and a common form of play involved climbing and leaping off to glide towards the ground.  There seemed some sort of rule set, and the young ones on the ground had taken to clinking metal tools together in time as another glided.

“We’re not running out, I guess they can keep them,” Kai said.  “I don’t think it’s a good idea to take things away from kids, anyway.”

Each day, he spent as much time as he could with and among them.

The children had accepted him as No Wings to a greater degree than the adults.  There were times they climbed up him like a tree trunk, standing once they were on his shoulders and then they would jump off.

He found he could only share their joy, laughing as they used him as a springboard.

The trust of the children did seem to help; while some of the women would at first keep watch around him very cautiously, within a few days they had accepted him as a caretaker.  They would frequently leave to go gather food and materials in the jungle while he stayed in camp.

It was not a lack of care, he could tell, but simply another way they took advantage of a valuable, limited resource: time.  The !Xomyi had a higher metabolism than a human, and ate a lot for their size.  Finding enough was difficult, and even as he gave them enough for days, they continued to collect food, drying meats and berries, and other things.

“Oh, this is very slow,” Tracker told him when Brooks asked about their busy work.  Among the adults, he was the most friendly, and seemed to find enjoyment in talking.  He would often come over to Brooks and they’d share some of the smoking sticks, which the !Xomyi called tsetet.  Y had declared them mostly harmless.  Mostly it was hard for Brooks to smoke them because of his mask, but it did have a small openable intake port.

“We are relaxing most of the time because you give much,” Tracker explained.  “It confused us very much that you would just give.  But there are stories of spirits like you.  We accept, and gladly, for we do not want to offend you and have you leave.”

There was no guile in his words that Brooks could find.

“I am happy to give all I have,” he told Tracker.  “But I soon I will be out.”

“Will you go hungry?” Tracker asked him.  “I have not seen you hunt.”

“No, I will not,” Brooks replied.

“What do you eat?” Tracker asked.

“My food is different,” he told Tracker, vaguely.  “You would not like it.”  He did not want to get too specific if he could help it; human food would be dangerous for !Xomyi.

“Ah,” Tracker replied.  “Spirit food.  Yes, we know of it.”

“And what is it that spirits eat?” Brooks asked with a smile.  They had quickly figured out the expression as showing amusement.

“Air and earth,” Tracker said.  “Blech!  Not fit for me.  Only spirits can live on it.”

They both laughed in their own ways, and Brooks wondered how much of what Tracker had said was just joking.

He – and most of the other !Xomyi – seemed to have a very positive outlook towards the world around them.

“No Wings, after you are out of food to give,” Tracker continued after a time, “We will be moving.  This is not a good place.”

He heard them call him No Wings from time to time, among many other epithets.  This one seemed to stick the most, and he was all right with it.  It seemed a jest at his expense, but a good-natured one.

Picky Little One, Tracker’s young daughter, came flitting over.  Brooks had spotted her up in the tree listening, and now she came gliding down, onto Brooks’s head.

“Oof, you’re a little heavy for using my head like that,” he said, not harshly.

“What?” the little one asked.  It was her favorite word.

“It’s fine,” Brooks said, helping her down onto his shoulder.  She weighed still about three kilograms, which seemed small to him, compared to the other children.

Tracker made a cooing sound to his daughter, reaching up to take her hand.

She made the same sing-song back to him, and Brooks felt privileged to see this moment.  There was no translation for their sounds, nor was it needed.

“Hakki!” the girl-child said, holding out empty hands.

Tracker reached into a leather pouch that hung from around his neck.  Rolled up in a leaf was some morsel that he gave to his daughter.  She eagerly took it, examined it.

That word again; he heard it frequently, always in the context of asking for something that was expected to be given.  So far they had not used it to him, which he took as a sign that he was not accepted as one of them, only a visitor they liked.

A distant cry caught Tracker’s attention.  “I will see you before the sun sleeps, No Wings,” he said, heading away.  “Goodbye.  I see you still live up to your name!” he added to his daughter, who was still examining the food carefully.

Brooks had wanted to learn more about their planned leaving, but there was time yet.  They were nomadic, and this was not unexpected.

“I’m going to write now,” he told Picky Little One.

She was finally nibbling the morsel of food, though with an expression he took to be skepticism.

She seemed to decide she did not like it, and simply held it.  “What’s writing?”

Brooks took out his tablet and a stylus.  He opened up his mission journal, and wrote a large version of his name.  “I use this stick to draw symbols.  They mean things, so that if I need to remember them later I can look back and see them.”

She seemed more interested in the food again, but cast a skeptical eye to the tablet.  “Why not just remember?” she asked.

“Sometimes there’s a lot to remember,” he said.

She looked a little skeptical again, watching him curiously, but then moved to look at the screen more.  “It looks pretty,” she said.

He made broad, sweeping strokes.  “This is my name,” he said.

“That’s not your name!  Your name is No Wings!”

He smiled and wrote that out.  “This means No Wings.”

There was further fluttering around them as a number of older !Xomyi children came in.

“What is that?” one asked.  He was an older boy, Brooks’s system identified him as Bold Child.

He came up and took the stylus from Brooks’s hand, studying it.

It was made of a white plastic.  He tried to flex it, found it would not bend, and then bit it.

“It’s not food,” Brooks said sternly.  “And it is mine.”  He knew he had to make a boundary or it would disappear.

He held out his hand, and Bold Child gave it back.  “I was only curious,” he said.

“That’s fine.  Now, this is a stylus, and I was writing . . .”

He explained it all again, writing his name, and then their names.

“May I try?” an older girl, who was known as Sweet Child, asked.

Brooks gave her the stylus.  She held it clumsily, but made a mark on the screen, pressing hard like it was a literal stick in mud.

“I did it!” she said excitedly.  She made another mark, next to it.

“Let me try!” Bold Child said, pushing in.

“One at a time,” Brooks said.  “Take turns.”

That idea was somewhat odd to them, but with a few commands he managed to set up some boundaries.  Each child took a turn.

“How many hamomo I will hunt soon!” Bold Child proclaimed as he made many marks.

Another child smiled slyly.  He was known as Causes Trouble.  “Very small hamomo.”

“Those don’t look like hamomo,” Wants to Hunt, another boy, said.  “They are just sticks.”  He took the stylus and made a shape.  It was somewhat like a potato.  He drew lines coming from it.  “That is a hamomo, a great one, that I will hunt very soon!”

“You two are not humble,” another said.  He was known as Slow Child, and Brooks was still trying to figure out if he was thought to be slow of mind or body, as he did not seem to display either trait.  If anything, he seemed rather clever.  “You bring bad luck to yourselves.”

The other two boys seemed immediately shamed.

“I want to have a jumping game,” Bold Child proclaimed.

He was very good at it, Brooks knew.  But as he and the other boys climbed a tree, Bold Child seemed to hold back, letting the others do better than him.

The other children all followed, either playing or watching and beating their stolen metal tools together.

Only Picky Little One stayed.

“Not a hamomo,” she said at the drawing Wants to Hunt had made.

Brooks did not actually know what a hamomo looked like, so he could not say.

He blanked the page, and the little girl gasped, reaching up to touch the screen.  “Hamomo gone,” she said.

“I can draw other things,” Brooks told her.  “Here’s a tree.”

He had practiced and studied line drawing in the past, but he was no artist; his talent was simple, and his sketch was basic.  But it was, he thought unmistakably, a tree.

“Not a tree,” Picky Little Child said.

“It’s just a drawing of one,” Brooks said.  “Do you ever draw with a stick in the mud?”

“I don’t know,” she muttered, looking at the food her father had given her again.

He looked back at it.  “These are the leaves.”  He pointed from the drawing to real leaves hanging from a tree branch nearby.

She looked.  Studied the image, then looked at the tree carefully.

“No,” she said.  Then, leaping from his shoulder, she floated away.

Brooks smiled and leaned back.  Soon, he would go to speak to another adult, but he did have a report to make.

And among the !Xomyi, he knew it would help to adjust to their timings and schedules.  He could not spend all his time seeking them out.  Giving them time might even help them to find they wanted to seek him.

He looked at the tree sketch again.  It was a decent enough sketch, he thought, and on a whim he saved it – along with the sketches the children had made.

Perhaps, he thought, the world looked different through their eyes.

< Ep 12 part 22 | Ep 12 part 24 >

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

40 Days until Evacuation

Perhaps some time he’ll give you permission.

It had been a month since Alisher had suggested that she ask Commander Cenz for permission to go on a shore team.  For one month she had been asking and Cenz had denied it.

“I’m sorry,” he had told her, with the same patience the tenth time as the first.  “We are pressed for time and these missions are crucial parts of understanding Ko’s biosphere.  You do not have the relevant training to justify your presence.”

He always sounded regretful; she wondered if he had heard just how much she had wanted to see the lifeforms on Ko.

They weren’t dinosaurs, it was true.  But they were like dinosaurs, the closest thing she’d ever get to seeing a real-life dinosaur.

It wasn’t, she had to admit, an important quest for humanity or !Xomyanity or any other -anity.  Except perhaps for her sanity.  How could she be this close and yet be denied the chance to see dinosaurs?

Today, Cenz had, it seemed, taken pity on her.

She owed it to Alisher.  He had recommended her.  “We’re just going on a field check of some equipment,” he said.  “I’d appreciate having even a novice medic along, and otherwise it’s a small team, so there’s space on the craft.”

“Very well,” Cenz had said with some gravity.  “Nor, please stay close to your team and follow all instructions.”

“Sir, yes sir!”

Cenz had seemed amused.  “Just call me Commander or Cenz.  Take care, Nor.”

The trip ashore was more difficult than she expected.

The winds were high enough to make a hovercraft inadvisable, and a boat would be crazy on the waves being whipped up.

There were only three others besides her; Alisher, and two techs.

They took an elevator down, far farther than she expected.  When the door opened, they were in a very small chamber.  The air was heavier here, she could feel it.

“Into here,” Alisher told her, pointing towards a ladder down a small tube.

It was cramped inside, their gear already stowed.  The rest of the team got in, and the vehicle started by itself.

There was a low rumbling, and she looked to Alisher quizzically.  “What is this?”

“Sea crawler,” he told her.  “When the waves are too high and winds too crazy, we use this.  It goes along the ocean bottom, avoiding all that.  And then we just crawl out onto shore.”

That was pretty cool, but it did make Apollonia wonder just how deep they were right now.  She looked around the tiny cabin nervously.

But the trip wasn’t that long; only ten minutes later, lights on the panels turned green and the hatch opened.

They were ashore, just within the tree line, and nearby was a landing pad with a hovercraft.  Drones moved their equipment over.

The crawler was just that; a wide and flat treaded vehicle that still had seaweed and mud stuck to it.

They got in the hovercraft and started skyward.

The winds were far calmer beyond the trees, and while the craft rocked slightly as it took off, its flight became considerably calmer as it flew inland.

“How far are we going?” she asked.

“About seven hundred klicks Southwest,” Alisher told her.  “Bottom of the island.”

“Big stuff down there,” one of the techs said.  Her name tag said Hawa.

“Like what?” Apollonia asked quickly.

She saw Alisher’s eyes flicker to her, and something like regret in them.  She felt abashed.

Hawa didn’t seem to catch that.  “Oh, there’s some Thumpers down there that we estimate at-“

“Thumpers?”

“Just what we nickname any big creature we don’t see that takes those earth-shaking steps,” the other tech, Liu, chipped in.

“They do it intentionally,” Hawa said.  “We think it’s some kind of territorial claim; walk hard and warn everything around how big you are just by how much you shake the ground.  Makes it hard to really get an estimate of their size, but we think some are over twenty tons.”

“Wow,” Apollonia said.

“We won’t see any of those, don’t worry,” Alisher said, watching her.

Apollonia didn’t say anything; she didn’t want to give away just how much she did want to see a big Thumper.

The trip was surprisingly quick, just a couple hours.

“Prepare for landing,” Alisher said.

“Hey, there’s a Thumper!” Hawa cried.

Apollonia crowded over.  “Where?!”

“Damn, sorry, it just went out of view,” Hawa said.  “It’s kinda hard to pick out, actually.  The ones around here are really long, kinda like a sauropod but stretched out and with an extra pair of legs-“

“Prepare for landing,” Alisher repeated, his voice a little firmer.

“Oh, right.”

Apollonia strapped herself in.

There was an artificial clearing.  There was equipment set up already on a concrete square.  Some parts poked into the sky like antenna, but others were clustered around the bottom.  It almost looked like a giant mechanical flower, Apollonia thought.

As they approached, a swarm of drones came out from a hive-like box at one side, scattering out in all directions.

Had to be their cover, she thought.  The drones that kept the wildlife away.

They landed.

As soon as the doors opened, she could hear the sounds; riotous music from the jungle.  Animal life of all kinds calling out to each other, singing, in a melody-less symphony.  There were things like crickets, repeating the same tune, but also things like birds making more complex songs, and deeper grunts or howls from individual larger animals crying out.  Every sound was different from anything she’d heard from any documentary about Earth, but combined they were startlingly familiar.

She felt no wind at all, the air was utterly still.  The humidity on the land was so intense that she had to quickly adjust her mask.  It felt like a compartment with a water leak, tolerable only because of the cooling suits.

But this wasn’t just damp station air; there were incredible scents, almost overwhelming.  There was a musty smell like she remembered from the forest on Earth, but others as well – acrid, disgusting, lovely.  It was almost as dense as the air itself.

“Everyone remain in visual range,” Alisher ordered.

“I’ll stay close,” she said.

The other two nodded, and Alisher looked to her.  She smiled back.

“Sitrep?” he asked one of the techs after a moment.

Hawa had a tablet out.  “We’ve got some damage to some cables and the data collectors, but the perimeter guard is in good shape.  Pickets are still spreading out, but no contacts yet.  We are clear to work.”

“Already, let’s get to it.  Liu, start on those cables, I’m going to take a look at the collectors.”

“What about me?” Apollonia asked.

“Stay with Liu, but come back if I call you,” Alisher told her.

Liu had started away, towards the edges of the clearing, and Apollonia hurried to catch up with him.

There wasn’t even grass here; some had started to grow up, but had been cut down within just a few centimeters of the ground.

It felt wrong, in a way.  There were signs of creatures that were all gone now.  They had depopulated this whole area for their convenience.

“What does this station do?” she asked Liu as she caught up with him.

The man glanced up at her briefly.  “It takes genetic samples from the life around here, studies the local ecology.”

“Just for curiosity?” Apollonia asked.

“Well, we hope that in a few thousand years we can utilize this information to help recover the biosphere of the world faster than it would otherwise.  Life is important, isn’t it?”

Apollonia found herself surprised – more so that she had been thinking so cynically than the reality.

They came to the edge of the clearing, and Liu squatted down to look at one spot.  There was something gray just under the surface.  Metal, she realized.  It had been damaged.

“Some Thumper came through here,” he said.

“Really?” Apollonia asked, her heart beat picking up.  So far this trip had been surprisingly dull.

“Yeah.  This is a footprint,” Liu said, tracing out a shape in the ground.

Apollonia could see the depression, but it took her a moment to puzzle out the footprint itself.  It was different from any dinosaur print, more round with six projections.

“Kinda weird.  Why did it come here?”

“Dunno.  Curious, maybe?  Xenobiology isn’t my forte,” Liu said.

Apollonia stepped deeper into the jungle.

“Careful,” Liu said.  “There are sudden drops and it’s easy to get hurt falling down them.”

“I can just do a sonar scan to find those,” Apollonia said, feeling proud she’d learned this one.  It seemed so obvious that they should have thought of it themselves . . .

“What?  No, don’t do that!” Liu said after a moment.

“Oh, too late.  Why not?” she asked.

Liu’s face went white.  “Our sonar pulses are audible to the Thumpers.  They . . . usually come when we set them off.”

Her eyes widened.  “Uh . . .”

Alisher’s voice came over the radio.  “Who just did a sonar pulse?”

Liu looked at her, and Apollonia took a moment to reply.  “It was me.  Sorry, I didn’t want to fall down a hill . . .”

Alisher’s voice sounded calmer as he spoke again.  “It’s okay,” he said.  “We should have warned you.  Just stay vigilant for Thumpers.  Liu?”

“I can get this done quickly, sir,” the man said.

He went to his work, and Apollonia looked guiltily out towards the jungle.

She didn’t hear or see anything, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there.  Hawa had said they could be quiet if they wanted.

Then, she felt it.

It wasn’t a thump like a footfall, but a low rumbling – so low that she could not really say she was hearing it, but feeling it.

In its wake, the jungle became quiet, the entire natural symphony falling quiet.

“Oh, I don’t like the sound of that at all,” Liu said.  “I think it’s still five kilometers out.”

“It sounds awesome,” Apollonia said.

Liu kept working, the sound of tools on metal the only noises now.

Then she felt a thump.  It was soft, but quickly there was another.  There was a rhythm to them, two sets of three close together, then a pause before another.

“Do you hear that?” she said.

“Yeah.  I think that might be a gigapede.”

“. . . you guys suck at naming these things,” Apollonia said.

Liu looked annoyed, and Apollonia felt a little chagrined.  This man didn’t know her well enough for her to joke like that.

“Sorry, just a bad joke,” she mumbled.

“Okay,” Liu said.  “I’m done.  Boss?”

Alisher’s voice came back.  “Almost done here.  We have a gigapede en route, two minutes out according to the drones.”

“Well, crap, if it comes trampling through here it might damage what we just fixed,” Liu said.

“I know.  I don’t want to cut things this close anyway, so I’m sending some sonar drones out to hopefully pull it away from here.”

“Okay.  We’ll get the ship prepped,” Liu said.  “Come on,” he said to Apollonia, waving her along.

She went after him.  She had kind of hoped they’d get to see this gigapede after they took off.

“Sorry for messing things up,” she said.

“Not your fault,” the man replied.  “We didn’t tell you what not to do.”

She had a feeling that he actually blamed Alisher, which pissed her off on some level.  But giving another look at the man and remembering her own wrong cynicism from earlier, perhaps he didn’t really blame anyone.

As he got in the hovercraft, she stopped to look around again.  It felt like this might be the last time she got to come out here.  She should remember it.

Once she got in, she took out her tablet.  “Show me a gigapede,” she said.

An image appeared; it was nothing like a dinosaur.  It was almost like a huge worm, but with six legs.  Down its flanks were rows of tentacles.  They were wide at the base, narrowed rapidly, and seemed to move independently.

“See?  It’s not named poorly, it’s like a centipede.  But huge,” Liu said.

Apollonia didn’t have the heart to disagree.  She could definitely come up with a better name, given a few minutes.  Nothing popped into her head right now, though.

“It’s . . . weird,” she said.

“Yeah,” Liu said.  “Life here is a lot more varied than on Earth.  There’s three main branches of terrestrial life on Ko; there’s the setopods, which have six primary limbs and multiple secondary limbs.  Some of them get quite big – ones like the gigapods are generalist feeders and really territorial.  There’s also the quadropods, they’re a lot more like the familiar mammals and reptiles.  The really big ones of those are all predators.  I think the !Xomyi come from that lineage.  And there’s also the Micropods, which remained small.”

“Sounds like you know a lot,” Apollonia said.

“It’s just basic information.  I bet more investigations would find a lot more complexity.”  He frowned.  “It’s unusual for two main lineages to have both survived, though.  On Earth the giant insects died out long ago and the tetrapods took over all the large niches early on.”

“Uh-huh,” she said.  “How big is this sucker?”

Her system spoke.  “Average length is between twenty and thirty meters.”

“Shit!  That’s huge!”

The doors opened, and Alisher got in in a hurry, followed by Hawa.  “It’s headed away, but let’s get out of here before it comes back.”

The ship was ready, leaping into the air easily.  Apollonia watched as the security drones returned to their housings, and she looked out as much as she could to maybe get a glimpse at the gigapede.

But she couldn’t find it, or any other large creatures, out before they began to pick up speed and it all became a blur.

< Ep 12 part 21 | Ep 12 part 23 >

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

Outpost Alexa, Apollonia found, was not the best place for privacy.

Word that she had gone on a date with Alisher seemed to spread like wildfire, to the point where Zey confronted her about it the very next morning.

“Did you really?” the woman asked, slapping both hands on the desk and leaning over it towards her.

Apollonia recoiled.  “Did I . . . what?”

“Go to dinner with Lt. Rasulov!”

“Yeah,” she admitted.

Zey raised her hands.  “Well.  Well, well, well.  Guess it’s none of my business but ohmygod, I can’t believe you!”

“Why?” Apollonia asked, feeling a sense of hopelessness and fear overwhelming her.  “Was that wrong?”

“Wrong?” Zey asked.  “No.  It’s just really good gossip!  Like, way better than I could have hoped for.”

Apollonia felt her negative emotions deflate, to be replaced with just a sense of disappointment.  “You had me going there.”

Zey grinned.  “What you do in your own time is your private affair!  I’m just going to talk about it to everyone, that’s all.”

Apple rolled her eyes.  “Gee, thanks.  Just don’t tell people we’re engaged.”

“Did you have fun?” Zey asked.

“Yeah,” Apollonia said.

Zey was already sending a message.  “She had fun!” she said out loud.

“Dark!  Who are you telling?”

“Ann,” Zey said.

“You know Ann?”

“Yeah, I go to Watchito’s!  You know she’s gossip central, right?  And I know she’s already your friend, so I thought she’d want to know.”

Apollonia took a deep, defeated breath.  “Let’s just get on with my training, okay?”

“Through there,” Zey said.  “I’ll be along to slap some stickers on you in a moment.”

“Better not be telling Ann I was up to anything . . . I don’t know, dirty.”

Walking into the other room, she peered back out.  “Or if it is, it better be awesome, not like . . . sick.”

Zey did not respond, and Apollonia went in to get prepared.

She found herself waiting, her annoyance growing.

“Zey forgot me,” she said out loud.

Hearing voices in the other room, she opened the door a crack to peer out.

Zey was talking to Rasulov.

Neither of them noticed her, and she ducked back, closing the door.

They couldn’t be talking about her, could they?  She opened the door again, just a tiny bit.

“. . . be fine after a course of treatment, it’s only a superficial laceration and he didn’t lose too much blood . . .”

Oh.  It was actual medical stuff.

She waited, feeling bad for eavesdropping.  There was an important privacy concern that her training had talked about, hippo or something, and she wondered if she was violating it by listening in.

Finally, though, she heard the unmistakable sound of a goodbye.

A moment later, she peered out.

“Sorry for the wait,” Zey said.  “Just had to sort out-“

“Was that Alisher?” Apollonia asked, pretending she had not been listening in.

“Yeah, he was-“

“Was he hurt?”

“Him?  No, one of the others on his crew got hurt on the mainland,” Zey told her.

“Was it from a dinosaur attack?” Apollonia asked, her eyes going wide.

Zey gave her a funny look.  “No, he just fell and got cut on a rock on the mainland.”

“Oh.”

“Not that exciting in real life, the drones keep the big lizards-“

“Dinosaurs.”

“Technically they’re not dinosaurs.  Or lizards, I guess.  But whatever they are, the drones keep them away when people go on shore.”

Apollonia shifted back and forth for a moment.

“I’ll be right back, Zey,” she finally said.

The woman arched an eyebrow.  “You’re fine, Apple.”

She darted out the door.

The heat and wind hit her like a wall when she went out, causing her to actually flinch.  But she pressed on, following Alisher.

“Hey!” she called in a lull in the wind.

Alisher somehow heard her, glancing back and stopping as he spied her.

“Apple,” he said.  “Good morning.”

“Are you, uh, doing all right?” she asked, suddenly unsure of why she had actually come out here.

“I am,” he said.  “If you heard some of that, it was someone else.  They’re fine, too, though.”

“Oh, well . . .  I’m glad.”

He was watching her with what she thought to be expectation, but said nothing.

“I’m training up, you know.  Do you think next time I could go on shore with you?” she blurted out.

Oh, great timing, she thought.  Right after one of his crew got hurt.

“It’s not up to me, but if it was, I would say of course,” he replied.  “But if you ask Commander Cenz, perhaps some time he’ll give you permission.  We go out every other day.”

She almost said that she barely knew anything, but that seemed a bad idea at the moment.

Instead, Apollonia just watched him quietly, trying to think of something to say.

The wind blew her hair into her face, and she reached up, pushing it out of the way, laughing a little.  She realized that she was twirling some of it around her finger.

Dark, she was acting like a schoolgirl with a crush!

“I’ll, uh, talk to you later,” she said, turning and hurrying away.

“Bye!” she barely heard.

She stopped after a moment, glancing back.  Alisher was already heading away.

She followed him again, staying far back enough that she didn’t think he’d notice her.

He went through a door.  That one led to a hall, she knew, and she gave him a few moments before peeking in.  He was going through another door down the hall, and she went down, putting her ear to it.

What was she expecting to hear?  She had no idea.

Through the door, she overheard talking.

Something, something about the injured tech . . . but then one spoke, more loudly.

“Were you talking to Specialist Nor out there?” a man asked.

“Yeah,” she heard Alisher say.

“Did you really go out with her the other night?” another asked.

“I did,” Alisher said.  “We had dinner.”

“Wow,” she heard the first voice say.

Frozen spikes seemed to thrust into her gut.  No one could believe that he’d go out with her, could they?

But even worse, what would Alisher say to that?  Would he laugh with his friends and agree that she was awful, that it was all just a joke?

“She’s always kept to herself,” the first voice said.  “I’m surprised she agreed.”

“Yeah, but I’m kind of great,” Alisher said, then laughed.  “She had a nice smile, and later I asked her.  I actually thought she was going to turn me down from how she looked, but then she said yes.”

“How’d it go?” the first speaker said.

“I’m not going to go into that,” Alisher replied.  “But I enjoyed talking to her.”

“Aren’t you nervous, though?  I mean, she’s close friends with Dr. Y and Commander Yaepanaya.”

“And don’t forget the Captain,” the third voice added.

“She was talking to Dr. Y on the drop-in,” Alisher said.  “I guess I didn’t think much of it.”

Not quite true, Apollonia recalled, thinking how shocked he’d been about how she’d spoken of Jaya.

“I don’t think I could forget,” the first man said.  “One wrong move and you might get reprocessor duty.”

“Yeah, well, you have your eyes on a captaincy,” Alisher replied with a laugh.  “I’m going just one step at a time.”

Apollonia pulled her ear away.  She’d heard more than enough.

Too much, really.  Because now she felt guilt seize her heart that she had doubted this man.

It wasn’t some grand declaration of love, though, was it?  He just had spoken about her like she was a normal girl . . . woman.

She crept back down the hall, heading back towards the medical bay, back into the crazed winds.

But it wasn’t the wind that made her feel light on her feet.

< Ep 12 part 19 | Ep 12 part 21 >

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

Urle’s HUD informed him that the heat was well past the danger point for a human body.  Nevertheless, he did not feel hot.

He’d had to trade out a lot of parts to come down here; things that could last for months with little to no maintenance, an outer casing that restored his human appearance.  Everything had to be able to tolerate the heat.

Normally that would be some issue for his equipment; he loved to overclock, and it made him run hot.  But building for maximum cooling had been interesting, and he may have even overdone it, as he was running quite cold, even in 65-degree weather.

“The Hessa are aware of our presence,” his system told him.

“We’ve been seen,” he told his assistant.  The man, named Hakim, was a junior diplomat.  He lacked the field experience to lead the team, but his diplomatic expertise would fill in gaps in Urle’s own skill set.

“Let’s slow down,” he continued.  “Don’t want to give them the wrong idea.”

“Do you think they might view us as attackers?” Hakim asked.

“It’s possible,” Urle said.  “No species has anything but indirect evidence from prehistory, but our own suggests that there may have been regular conflicts even in this stage.”

“I would like to hope one day we’ll meet more species who have not yet had to develop war,” Hakim said.  “Like the Corals or Star Angels.”

Urle did not reply, just thinking that natural selection and the competition for resources frequently made conflict inevitable in any species – sapient or not.

The village was a series of small, round mud huts with thatch roofs.  From a distance, they looked like they could have been a reconstruction from humanity’s early days.

He knew that these locals called themselves the Hessa, but the name of the settlement itself was not known yet.  They had decided to codename it Jericho.

A cluster of !Xomyi were gathering at the edge, watching their approach.

Urle knew that he and Hakim’s height was twice theirs, and so they might seem very frightening figures.  He slowed to a very easy walk.

Two of the locals came towards them.  One was taller, his body heavily muscled by !Xomyi standards.  The other was short, hunched with age.

“We give you greetings, Giants from Far Away,” the old one said.  He had a walking stick, leaning on it.

Urle stopped.  “I give you greetings in return, honored elder.  My name is Zach, and this is my friend Hakim.  We come in peace and friendship.  I offer you gifts to prove my good intentions.”

Urle took his bag, opening it and offering over a package.

The two Hessa paused, then the bigger one came forward to take it.

“It is flour meat,” he said to the elder.

It was a local food they had observed; meat dried and ground, added to a ground grain and then baked like bread.  It was dense, heavy with nutrients – and easy for them to create on the Craton.

The Elder seemed very interested, and took a piece, tasting it.

“You do us a great honor,” he said.  “Come and enter our village.”

< Ep 12 part 18 | Ep 12 part 20 >

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

When dawn came, Brooks was already prepared.  The longer day cycle of Ko allowed for a generous sleep period, but he’d risen early despite that.

The stimulants would let him go through the longer day without problem.  With those, one could go for a week without sleep if they observed certain careful behaviors, such as still taking time to sit and do little physical activity.  The brain, ultimately, could manage, albeit with some limitations, it was the body that would start to have problems if one kept active the whole time.

There was a lot to be done, though, he had to capitalize on the advancements of yesterday while it was still fresh.

Kai was up with him; perhaps even earlier, despite having taken the night watch.  She’d been on the front lines in two wars, and the old habits died hard.

Today he would cross the bridge himself and try to initiate communication with the !A!amo.  He would bring them gifts – food and tools made in a similar style to their own.

“Are we sure they’ll like this stuff?” Kai asked.

“No,” Brooks said.  “But other groups across the planet have appreciated them.”  He paused.  “Though one group in the Western desert rejected them.”

Kai made a hiss.  “Was that the group that killed the researcher?”

It had been, Brooks knew.  “As far as I know, that’s just a rumor,” he said.

Kai knew what he was doing.  “Rumor my ass,” she muttered, loudly enough for him to hear.

His white bag was still a problem.  But taking some matte brown tape, he wrapped it until it was completely covered outside.

“You know, the bright white was meant to help us find it – and you – in case something happened,” Kai said.

“I don’t want to look any stranger than I have to,” he replied.  “I have studied this sort of thing outside of this mission.”

“Was that before you were in the Union?” she asked.

He knew what she was wondering about.  There were a lot of stories, some true and some exaggerated, about the rim, and the things he’d done out there before he’d joined the Voidfleet.

“Yes,” he admitted.  “I didn’t make first contact on Bipon.  We were a later contact, and the first had been less than enlightened.”

“Pirates, I heard,” Kai said.

“Something like that.  The distinction is somewhat arbitrary on the fringes.  An honest trader can turn smuggler, pirate, or saint based on his circumstances.”

Kai truly seemed perplexed.  “They really have no ethics?”

“Those are a hard burden to carry when a wrong move might mean the end of your ship or life.  A lot of ships barely carry enough food, water, and air to reach their destinations – every bit of weight is something they’ll have to pay for with food and reaction mass.  A minor miscalculation, and . . .”  He shrugged.  “The math then becomes very stark.”

Kai took that in.  “So what happened on Bipon?”

“The local species were not a lot more developed, economically, than the !Xomyi.  They had farming, but that was it.  The first group to find them presented themselves as gods, and when that lie fell through they killed a lot of the locals on their way out.  Not all intentionally, they left a lot of stuff behind that wasn’t safe to handle – even had a radioactive dump pit just a few kilometers from the local village.

“My group wasn’t connected with those – ours was seeking new trade opportunities, and since pickings were slim we decided to see if these beings had anything that might have value on the market – artifacts, delicacies, art.”

He sighed.  “We landed.  They attacked.  We had expected that, but – well, you think that some primitives throwing spears is just pathetic, until you have it happen to you.  These beings – they still don’t have a formal name, but we called them Biss – they felt they were fighting for their lives.”

“So what did you do?”

“We set down goods, under cover of guardian drones, and then went back into the ships.  The Biss had become afraid of outsider goods, and they set fire to that first set.  We’d expected that, and the goods were cheap, so we put out more.  Just simple things; knives, hatchets, jewelry, simple rations.  They didn’t burn the second set, but just watched us.  We waited, and eventually they got curious enough to look at the stuff we’d left.  When they realized they were useful things, they took them.”

“And that was it?”

“No.  We didn’t leave, and it made them nervous.  Eventually, they brought out some gifts of their own – blankets, fetishes, things like that.  Anything that we thought might have value to collectors, we took, and left them more trade goods.  Then we left.  Their goods brought a good price from collectors, I’m told – my share was small, I was only a crewman.”

Kai had listened intently, warring emotions on her face.  Everything he had described flew in the face of the Union and its ideals.

And Brooks could not say he was proud of these things.  Yet that was where his life had led him at that time.  Now it had led him elsewhere.

“We made three trips to that world before I changed ships,” he added.  “Each time, we operated the same way.  Barely saw the Biss, just an exchange of gifts.  I like to hope that it continues that way, rather than turning to violence.”

“It disrupted their entire development,” Kai said.  “Do you really think it was okay?”

“I’ve asked myself that same question.  No, I don’t think it was.  But it happened then, it’s happened on other worlds, and it happened in human history.  We can’t change the past.”

He looked down at the bag and the goods he was bringing now.  “At least this time I have a better motive.”

He did not notice if Kai reacted to that or not, but he continued to prepare himself all the same.

Ten minutes later, they left the tent, slogging back towards the tree bridge.

The drones told him that the !A!amo had not left their camp, though they had started stirring an hour or so before.

“I want you to stay on this side of the bridge,” he told Kai.

“I can’t cover you that way,” she said.

“I know.  And we’ll introduce you to them soon.  But right now I don’t want to startle them when I cross.”

“Captain, I think I have to overrule you on this,” she said.  “You need some kind of defense.”

“I have the armor of bravery,” Brooks replied.

“You may need more than that,” she replied dryly.

“Come halfway across the bridge, watch from there.  Synchronize your scope with my drone, and you’ll be able to track me and know our exact position.”

“That’d be a hell of a shot if I need to take one.”

“If you have to shoot, just aim high.  The sound alone should startle them enough that I can get away, and hopefully won’t completely blow our chances.  Killing one will.”

Kai considered whether to continue to fight on this.

“I’ll stay halfway across the bridge,” she said.  “Unless things get iffy.  Then, if I think I’ll be unobserved, I’ll come across.”

Brooks knew she could overrule him on security matters.  It was only what she’d do if trouble brewed anyway.

“All right,” he said.

Taking off his boots, back in his moccasins, he crossed the bridge.  The give of the leather shoes let his feet grip the tree trunk securely.

He saw in his rear-vision cameras that Kai had moved halfway across and slung a camoflauged blanket over herself.  It adjusted its texture to match the moss on the tree perfectly, and she was suddenly gone – aside from the hint of her rifle barrel protruding, she was impossible to notice.

Jumping down, he moved slowly towards the !A!amo camp.

There was no path towards it.  The tribe was nomadic, and so such things did not come to be unless a large animal made them.

It was denser here than he’d experienced across the river.

The sunlight filtering from the canopy was slim, despite Bror being a brighter star.  The leaves were so dense that it was actually dark here on the forest floor.

It did not seem to be plants that ruled down here; these growths reminded him more of mushrooms, some with fat bodies and some with thin, but they all had that pale, fibrous look to them.

“Interestingly,” the drone said suddenly.  “The reflective leaves of many tall trees on Ko are theorized to be increasing the planet’s overall albedo to the point that in the timespan of millions of years it may lead to the planet cooling.”

“What?” Brooks said.  “Y, is that you?”

“Yes, Captain, and hello.  I sometimes think an interesting fact can help when we are stressed.  Your vital signs caught my attention.  They are not dangerous, but I still thought I would check in on you.”

“I’m fine,” he replied.  “But now is not a good time.  Making second contact.”

“Would you like me to stay and monitor the situation-“

“No,” he said.  “Thank you.  Next time, send me a silent alert if you’re worried.”

Y was quiet a moment.  “Of course, Captain.  Good skill.”

The drone went back to silence, and Brooks paused, taking a deep breath.  He could see signs of the camp ahead, about a hundred meters.  There was some kind of structure, it seemed.

He knew he’d been crashing through the undergrowth clumsily, so they surely knew he was coming.

Going slower, he picked the clearest path he could.

His spy drones told him that the !Xomyi were reacting to his approach.  Some were moving towards the far side of the camp.  Others towards the side near him.

He stopped ten meters out.

“I bring gifts,” he called out, the words translated into their language.

There was some shifting among the group, centered upon one or two others.  Knows the World, perhaps.

One of the !A!amo came closer, peering out at him.  He recognized it as Tracker.

He said nothing, just watching Brooks.

Slowly, Brooks took some steps forward.  Tracker did not react; there was no apparent hostility.

A few others, further back, appeared to watch him.  Some held spears, one even an atlatl and darts that he – or she, he could not be sure yet – seemed to be holding in a ready position.

He kept his pace even and slow.  When he gauged himself close enough not to seem cowardly in their eyes, he opened the pack, slowly taking out a container.

Opening it, he saw their noses twitch; the scent was strong, even to him, and they knew it.

Honey.

Or Ko’s closest approximation.  The creatures that made it were as long as his thumb and extremely aggressive, making the collection difficult for the !Xomyi.

But drones did not care about stings; and after some studies by the science team, creating it in a lab had proven feasible.

“A gift,” he said.  To help show it, he broke off a piece and put it into his mouth.

The sweetness was immediate; sugar was the same chemical here or anywhere.  But then came the stranger tastes; they were slightly bitter to him, with a hint of mint.

He held out the container so they all could see it, and hopefully understand that it was offered.

Tracker came in, taking a piece from the container.  He took a bite, pausing a moment.

“Very sweet,” he said.  “No grubs!” he called out to the others.

Brooks could not tell if that was good or bad; but evidently Tracker did not mind, as he kept eating, taking large bites.

“Sting hurt?” he said to Brooks.  Then he made an angry chittering sound, mimicking that made by the bee-like creatures.  He made a sound like a laugh.

Brooks tried to mimic his smile.  “I didn’t get stung,” he said.  “I was lucky.”

“Lucky!” Tracker said.  “Gift, not luck.”  He turned and called out.

“Honey Finder, he can teach you things!”

One of the others looked surprised.  They’d been hanging back, watching him guardedly, but then started to come forward.

One of the others spoke to him, Honey Finder made a gesture with his wings that Brooks’s system told him was like a shrug.  He continued closer.

“Honey?” he said, taking a piece and eating it.  “Strange honey.  What honey has no grubs?”

“Sweet kind,” Tracker said with a laugh.

More came forward.  They all seemed eager for the honey, taking large chunks and eating it.

One distant !Xomyi called out something that his system couldn’t translate.  “Hakki!”

It seemed to compel immediate reaction; several others standing distant called out the word as well, and the ones near him moved immediately.  They took more pieces of honey, splitting it out amongst themselves, but didn’t eat it.

Tracker stayed, not a part of the whole process.  He was licking the last of the honey off his hands, watching the others.

They hurried over, bringing honey to the ones who had called out.

As they did that, Knows the World slowly came forward.

“Who are you?” the wise man asked.

“My name is Ian Brooks,” he told him.

The !Xomyi studied him carefully.  “What are you?”

“I am a human.  I have come from far away.”

“There are more like you where you come from?” Knows the World asked him.

“Yes.  But there are only two of us here now.  My friend is across the bridge.”

Knows the World seemed to find that very interesting, but said nothing else.  He took some honey, the last piece, but did not eat it immediately.

The whole group began to move into the camp, and Brooks took this as an opportunity to enter as well.

It was, really, a very simple camp.  Cordage was woven everywhere, like a spiderweb.  Small structures were made simply with leaves woven together, over and around the ropes.

Of course, he thought.  The trees here had metals in them for stiffening; even the young ones would be too inflexible to bend over to form structures.

So the !A!amo had made do with what they could use.

What they would give for something so simple as young saplings with give, he thought.  But then; their vast quantities of cordage and rope seemed to be working at least as well.  Perhaps even better, since they could coil it all up and take it with them when they moved.

There was a central fire pit that some of the others sat around.  They left an opening, and looked at him with some expectation.

He sat down among them, trying to be mindful of the spacing.  He was so much larger than them, he had the feeling of sitting in a circle with children.

But these were fully-grown, intelligent beings.  Any one of them could put a spear into his face.  He did not yet even know how they viewed life and violence.

Some of the others, one of whom he could now see was holding a child, lingered at the periphery, staring.  It was hard to tell much difference yet, but he had a feeling that they were women.

“What are you doing just standing there for?” one of the older ones in the circle said to them, who Brooks thought was male.  “Go or come in, one or the other!”

Nervousness spread through the group of women, but two held their ground, grabbing the arms of the nervous ones to hold them there.

“What are you doing just sitting when there are hamomo around and our bellies are empty?”

The male grumbled.  “You haven’t even gotten any sticks to chew!  Ours are old and dry.”

For a moment, it seemed like an argument might break out, and Brooks hated to think he might be the root cause.

But just as quickly the woman said; “Hakki.”

And man echoed it; “Hakki.”

The tension disappeared.

Brooks wondered what the word meant; it clearly had a significance and power, and he would have to learn its meaning as soon as possible.

Some of the women moved away, with expressions Brooks could only guess at – annoyance, possibly.  But two of them moved to sit around the fire with them, including the one who had been talking to the man.

It was already so hot out that Brooks wondered why they would choose to sit around a fire, but very quickly a reason became apparent.  Some of the !Xomyi in the circle began to poke long sticks into the flames, and after put the ends into their mouths, chewing on them.

A narcotic, perhaps.  Or cleaning their teeth?  He was not sure.  But they must be the sticks that the man had mentioned.  The task of gathering them apparently fell to the women.

“Why have you come here?” Knows the World asked him.

All of the others watched him.

“I came to find your people,” Brooks said.

The circle looked at each other, then back to him.  He got the feeling they were alarmed.

“I do not understand,” the man who had been talking to the woman said.

“I wish to know you and your people,” Brooks said.

“Why?”

“Because I think we could be friends.  May I know your name?”

The male seemed to consider that for a time.  Then, he pounded himself on the chest with one hand.  “I do not know if we can be friends, but I am Old Hunter.  I am the eldest among us who strikes hard and kills what I hunt.”

“Old Hunter, it is nice to meet you,” Brooks said.

Old Hunter nodded, but still seemed somewhat put off.

“May I know the rest of your names?” he asked, looking around the circle.

They all introduced themselves.  The next to do so was one of the women, who seemed very old.  She said her name was Cool River.  The other female was Old Mother.

The rest were all male; he already knew Tracker and Brave Hunter, but he was introduced to Over Thinker, Hard Biter, and Honey Finder.

He took mental notes on each one, wanting to be able to discern them, even if his system could do it automatically.

“There are hamomo nearby,” Old Hunter said.  “We must take one and get meat.”

“I wish you good luck on your hunt,” Brooks said.  They did not react much to that, perhaps even taking some offense at it.  Most of the males left, save for Knows the World.  Besides him, the two women remained.

“Did you come from south of the river?” Cool River asked.  She did not seem quite as suspicious as Knows the World, but Brooks had a feeling that this was somewhat feigned; that she was testing him.

South of the river were other groups of !Xomyi.  They were extremely hostile to outsiders, and had launched darts at the drones that had been observing them.

So perhaps, he thought, she was trying to figure out if he had a connection to them.

“No,” he told her.

“Where did you come from, then?” she asked.

He pointed up, into the sky.

They reacted immediately, looking up, then back down at him with shock.

“You couldn’t have come from the sky,” Old Mother said.  “You don’t even have wings!”

Knows the World leaned closer.  “Are you one of the falling serpents?”

Brooks did not know how to interpret that.  “Serpents?” he asked.

Knows the World raised an arm, tracing a quick path through the sky.  “They come down in the night, psss, pssss.  They are silent, but I hear their hiss.  Sometimes they land and make a light, make a loud angry yell.”

Meteors, Brooks realized.  Their streaking tails, like the body of a snake.

“I did not fall,” he told Knows the World, trying to word himself carefully, though acutely aware that the translation was probably lacking.  His system had already made huge gains in understanding them from these short conversations, able to parse their words into real sentences rather than chopped up concepts, but it was still far way from a deep understanding.

“How, then?” Cool Mother asked.

“I walked,” he said.  It was all he could think to say.

Their faces shifted, and then they both started laughing.

He smiled and laughed a little with them.  And he had the feeling that he had passed the test.

“The sky is very full,” he said.  He was not sure what they’d make of such a strange and cryptic statement, but Knows the World became serious again.

“It may be so,” he replied.

“The largest . . .” Brooks said, and he turned, pointing towards the moon.  “What do you believe it is?”

The question did not seem to come through very well.  He saw confusion on their faces, and Cool River and Knows the World leaned together, speaking softly.  His system could not parse the whispers, though he wished he could eavesdrop.

They turned back.  “It is the Sky Child,” Cool River told him.  “Everyone knows this.”

< Ep 12 part 17 | Ep 12 part 19 >

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

“Captain, while I applaud your success in first contact with the !A!amo tribe, I must suggest that next time you wear proper boots.”

The voice of Y was rather small, coming out of the drone.

But Brooks did have to admit he had a point.

After he had left the bridge, he’d taken a walk and neglected to put his space boots back on.

The moccasins were comfortable – but were perhaps not enough for a world as wild as this.

He’d stepped on something – not even a living being, but a pointed stick, that had punctured the leather, and hence his foot.

“Just clean it and cover it,” he told Y.  “I’ll make the decisions regarding footwear.”

“Oh, yes, and leave me to fix your foot again later.  What should happen, Captain, if you are running from something dangerous when next it occurs?”

“I think I won’t have success outrunning something big here regardless of the shoes I have on,” he replied.

“Pish,” Y replied.  “You are fortunate that I am nothing if not versatile.  Among your medical supplies are combat-grade wound sealants.  With a few extra layers of it, we can protect your feet far better than mere leather.”

“If you take the liner from your boots and put it into those leather rags, they’ll be even better,” Kai suggested, looking very displeased.

It would reflect on her, she thought, that the Captain had gotten himself injured under her care.  But she couldn’t keep his foolhardiness entirely under check.

Y had cleaned the wound on his foot and then started spraying the sealant over the whole thing.  It felt odd; like his skin was getting thicker.  But it was composed of a flexible carbon layer, so it would be quite tough.

“You know,” Brooks said to Kai.  “I’m starting to think I should have brought you onto Gohhi with me when I went undercover.”

“You know I don’t do field work anymore,” she said.

“I’m a Star Captain who is supposed to be on a command deck.  And yet here we both are, in the field.”

She grimaced and looked down at her rifle, cleaning mud off the outside.

“At least the local mosquito analogues don’t seem to find us edible,” she noted.

“This is true,” Y said.  “However, local ectoparasites analogous to ticks will still attempt to burrow into your skin, so regular checks of your bodies are advised.  They are two centimeters long, so you will likely notice their presence.”

“Are they anything like the tree borers?” Brooks asked.

“The what?” Kai asked.

Brooks pointed up towards the nearest tree, where a short and spiked object poked out.  “See that?  It’s not a branch, it’s some kind of animal.  I saw the holes they left behind on that fallen tree.”

“Very perceptive, Captain,” Y said, stopping his spraying.  “Union scientists have called them Iron Borers, as they utilize metal grains within their drills to puncture the trees, which themselves use copper grains to help strengthen their trunks.  The borers are not related to the tick-analogues, as far as I know, however.”

“This world must be very rich in metals,” Kai said thoughtfully.

Y floated closer to Brooks’s eye level.  “I recommend that you follow Commander Fan’s advice and take the liners from your boots.  With that said, unless you have any other medical emergencies, I will end this telecommunication.  I have thirteen other teams that require some of my focus.”

“Thank you, doctor,” Brooks said.

“Goodbye,” Y replied, and the drone shifted slightly as its programming took back over.

Kai gestured towards the shelter.  “As head of security, you’re a risk if you go stumbling around again.  Go rest and let your foot heal, I’ll take watch.”

The drone looked to her. “You need not trouble yourself, Commander Fan, we can-“

“I’ll take first watch,” she said with finality.

The drone did not argue, and neither did Brooks.

“Thanks, Kai,” he said to her.  Then, still hobbling a little, he went back to the shelter.

< Ep 12 part 16 | Ep 12 part 18 >