Prodigals, page 14
The hold where a brace of A'jeii technicians were waiting for them was surprisingly small. It took Dev a moment to realize it was the same one via which they had arrived prior to their unforeseen and much-lamented hasty departure from Earth. A swirl of alien automatons were finishing preparations for the landing craft’s departure. The fact that no portal for the landing craft was visible in its side did not surprise Dev or any of his companions. By now they were more than familiar with that particular miracle of alien technology.
Surprising Dev, the usually reticent Reed grabbed his hand firmly. “Be careful down there. I’m glad you’re wanting to do this.”
Dev frowned as the big man released his fingers. “Why?”
Reed’s reply was as sincere as it was candid. “Because it means I don’t have to.” As he stepped back, Chiasa Katou-Zimmer came forward. For a second time she surprised Dev by wrapping her arms around him and hugged tightly before releasing her grip.
“Take care down there, follow instructions, observe, learn, and be ready to tell us everything you see and experience. Most importantly, if you can find out, try to discover why the A'jeii insist that you go at all,” she concluded with a reassuring, almost maternal smile.
“Don’t worry,” he promised her. “All my life I have been dreaming of doing something like this. I never thought it would amount to anything more than idle fantasies.” The thought made him smile. “First, we encounter an alien landing party, on Earth, and now I’m part of an alien landing party. As one of the aliens. It will be interesting to see if the Mozehna react to Vantolos the same way our kind did.”
Reed glanced over to where the Olone stood conversing with Runoyii. “Maybe you can calm him down a little.”
“You know that is not how this gang, if they can be called that, works.” Dev followed the other man’s gaze. “Anyway, I do not speak Mozehna. Keep quiet, stay in the background, and try to look confident and intimidating. That is what I have been told to do. In other words, just be my alien self. Represent an unknown sentient being. That is all I am supposed to be.” When no one offered a comment, he added, “I am sure everything will go smoothly. The A'jeii are very confident.”
Reed rolled his eyes but said nothing. Then Dev’s view of his companions was partially blocked by a mass of yellow material beneath which crawled still unknown small shapes. That, and a tentacle that waved hypnotically back and forth in front of his face.
“Time to go.” Vantolos’ attitude and tone were not exactly conciliatory, but they were less pugnacious than usual.
As the expected portal appeared in front of them, Dev followed the Olone into the landing vehicle. Two A'jeii pilots sat forward while the pair of Kaijank settled themselves in back, their domed heads just clearing the ceiling. A last look out the entry portal showed Dev’s companions standing and staring back at him: the Zimmers in front, Reed towering behind them. Then the wall of the hull reformed, shutting them off from sight.
A sudden thought spurred him to use a hand to trace an outline in the wall on his left. Sure enough, a viewport appeared. But Reed and the Zimmers were gone. As he looked on, a much larger opening appeared in the side of the alien mothership. There was a very slight lurch. Space subsumed the view as the landing craft silently slid out of the hold. There was no sense of motion as the view rotated crazily, blackness and stars being replaced by the curve of a world below. He caught his breath. Were there any inhabitable worlds that were not beautiful, or was the presence of air, water, and greenery the ultimate expression of magnificence throughout the galaxy?
Nothing could go wrong, he told himself as the landing craft commenced its descent. There might be some tension, as there had been when the landing party headed by Vantolos had first arrived on Earth, but nothing cataclysmic was likely to occur. The A'jeii, Olone, and Kaijank might be thieves, but they were not fools. Being slightly more advanced than human society, the Mozehna might immediately comply with the Olone’s demands.
In contrast to the heat and humidity of coastal Texas, the landing party set down in a small valley surrounded by low, rounded hills. A mix of green and purple scrub furred the slopes, occasionally broken by an isolated tall growth that was scarcely a meter wide at the base. The pleasantly cool, ozone-rich air smelled slightly of overcooked asparagus and the sky showed a green tint that was decidedly foreign. Startled by the arrival of the landing craft, several pencil-thin creatures with large membranous wings lifted off the scrub and soared away to the east.
Stepping out of the landing craft behind the last Kaijank, Dev was careful to remain behind the much taller biped. That did not prevent him from seeing that Vantolos was already deep in discussion with the representatives of the Mozehna who had been awaiting the Olone’s arrival. Not knowing what to expect and having been instructed to do essentially nothing, he was able to take some time to study their physical appearance.
The solitary Olone loomed over the locals, the tallest of whom might have come up to Dev’s shoulders. In height they were thus a little taller on average than the A'jeii, but more slender. So lean, in fact, that it set Dev to wondering if their correspondingly thin bones might contain a higher percentage of metallic elements than his own. Eyes mounted on short, flexible stalks protruded from each side of a head that was only marginally wider than the neck and body on which it was mounted, giving them a very wide range of vision. Stick-like hearing organs emerged from the tops of slightly oval heads. What he could see of skin that was not covered by shining, almost iridescent blue and yellow clothing was the color of aged oak mottled with vertical dark gray stripes. In four-fingered hands they held devices of surprising heft and unspecified purpose. Their size, Dev reflected, might not appropriately reflect their mass. If it did, the reedy Mozehna would not have been able to lift the instruments they carried.
As he looked on from his position behind the two Kaijank, the ongoing discourse between Vantolos and the locals grew steadily in volume, punctuated by occasional louder outbursts from both sides. For such willowy creatures, the Mozehna spoke in voices of surprising resonance. Their speech consisted largely of a rising and falling singsong interrupted by percussive exclamations that sounded like castanets.
Vantolos was now standing on two tentacles while gesticulating wildly with the other pair. Though Dev knew nothing of the Mozehna language or culture, the entire exhibition was highly suggestive of increasing agitation on both sides. The Olone’s performance alone was proof enough of that.
Abruptly, the screeching and shouting waned. Turning his body, Vantolos gestured as he spoke to the still concealed Dev.
“Come forward now, human. Let them see you.”
Wondering how his mere appearance was supposed to affect the ongoing parley, Dev complied, stepping out from behind the shielding bulk of the two Kaijank.
“It does not look like it is going too well,” he observed. “Are the locals not readily acceding to your demands or is this just the way conclusions are arrived at on Mozehn? Speaking from personal experience, might I suggest that a little less bellicosity in your part could be …”
He broke off. The assembled Mozehna, including the two prime negotiators, had immediately switched their focus from the Olone to the new arrival. Though far more massive than the bulkiest of the locals, Dev was bipedal like them, bisymmetrical like them, and even had manipulative digits not wholly dissimilar to theirs. They were all gesturing at him now, murmuring among themselves, clearly surprised by the new arrival. Vantolos resumed declaiming, perhaps reiterating his demands, as Dev halted slightly behind and to one side of the Olone.
“What are they saying?” Forgetting that he had been told not to speak, Dev was unable to repress his curiosity.
The sound of his voice caused the band of Mozehna to redouble their chattering. Thin but strong digits jabbed and fluttered in his direction. Their reaction, thought Dev, gave every indication of them having seen a human before. Which made no sense. Unless they’d had a previous encounter with another sentient species that closely resembled humans. That was a question he intended to put to Tilenyii as soon as he was back on the ship. It was intriguing, even exciting to think that another species that dwelled in this corner of the cosmos might closely resemble humankind, even to the tenor of its speech.
Choosing to ignore everything he had been told, he took a step forward with hands outstretched. “Hello. I know you cannot understand me, but I am called Devali and …”
If he expected Vantolos to reprove him he was surprised. Not only did the Olone not try to silence his human companion, he resumed gesticulating with the pair of tentacles he was not standing on. If anything, his latest gyrations were more rapid and encompassing than any that had preceded them. As rapidly as they could, the principal pair of Mozehna negotiators responded in kind. Dev looked on with interest.
It was one of the Kaijank who interrupted the increasingly animated debate, striding forward to murmur something to Vantolos. As the Olone looked up and past the Mozehna negotiators, Dev followed his gaze.
Coming over the slight rise behind the assembled group of Mozehna delegates and heading down the slope toward them was a trio of machines. Dev could not tell if they moved on wheels, tracks, a cushion of air, or via some means of combined support and propulsion utterly unknown to him. Each mechanism flaunted a webwork of feathery instrumentation on top. While these might have comprised communications devices or been designed to accomplish some other innocuous end, the manner in which Vantolos and the two Kaijank reacted to their approach suggested another, less benign purpose. Raising their weapons, the Kaijank began backing up in the direction of the landing craft. As Dev stood and stared, fascinated by the approach of the Mozehna mechanicals, he felt the end of one tentacle wrapping around his right wrist. Vantolos was likewise retreating and pulling Dev with him. Though he did not resist, a captivated Dev could not take his eyes off the advancing alien machines.
Unexpectedly confirming his earlier suppositions and those of his colleagues, one of the Kaijank triggered the long device he was carrying. A sound like an old-fashioned electric transformer blowing up filled the air, stunning Dev with its volume. The detonation appeared to have no effect on Vantolos. Scrub and soil erupted in front of one of the oncoming Mozehna vehicles. As they came to an abrupt halt, a number of locals scrambled to get on top of them. Vantolos increased the pace of his withdrawal, causing Dev to stumble a couple of times as he struggled to keep up. Meanwhile the second Kaijank also unleashed his weapon. Dirt and rocks erupted skyward in front of the Mozehna machines. Either the Kaijank had terrible aim, Dev decided, or else they were deliberately aiming not to hit anyone.
By now every member of the Mozehna negotiating party had fled in the direction of their machines. Heedless of the Kaijanks’ warning shots, several of their number now stood atop the vehicles, struggling with the feathery apparatus that was mounted on each.
Back on board the shuttle Vantolos did not wait for the human to settle himself into a seating pod: the Olone busied himself with his own liftoff preparations. So did the Kaijank, who were more agitated than Dev had ever seen representatives of their kind. As the landing craft rose, he leaned over to wipe open a port in the hull. Below, he could still see the Mozehna trying to angle their vehicle-mounted instrumentation upward. He never was able to tell if they managed to get off a shot, or deploy a ray of some kind, or unleash a sonic weapon, or threaten the small spacecraft in any way. Smearing the view, he turned in his pod to face Vantolos.
“Correct me if I am wrong, but that negotiation did not appear to proceed as you intended.”
Turning his upper body toward the human, Vantolos let loose with a stream of high-pitched babble that even by Olone standards Dev qualified as a rant. Then, realizing that the attentive biped could not understand anything that was being said, the mediator switched to English.
“I knew that bringing you along was a mistake. Your presence did not intimidate or confuse the Mozehna.”
“So, you think it would have gone better if I hadn’t been there?” The usually stable landing craft rocked slightly, suggesting that they were passing through some heavy atmospheric disturbance or else that the pilots were putting on extra speed.
“Certainly! Of course. But I followed instructions. To show you. You saw the result.”
Dev made a face. “Why would seeing me set them off like that if they’d never seen someone like me? What is it about my human appearance that led you and the A'jeii to think my appearance would coerce them?”
“As you say, it was an idea of the A'jeii. Myself—I expected your appearance to do nothing. Plainly, that was exactly the case.”
“No, it wasn’t.” Dev leaned toward the Olone. “While they were not intimidated, they did react strongly. Why did they have the reaction they did?”
Vantolos looked away from him. “The shock of the unexpected. Unfortunately, the shock did not produce the response for which the captain had hoped.”
All the way back to the mothership Dev continued to press the Olone for additional details. If Vantolos had any to dispense, he chose not to do so. Just before they docked, Dev finally gave up. The negotiations had, to say the least, not gone well. As chief negotiator it was likely that the blame for that would fall on the Olone. Dev realized that for the moment it might be prudent for him to stop asking questions that might make the situation worse.
But for the life of him he could not understand how they could do so.
In the Zimmers’ cabin his colleagues regarded him with a mixture of confusion and curiosity. In that, he reflected, they were all of one accord.
“I have gone over the confrontation again and again in my head.” Though addressing all of them, Dev found himself focused on Katou-Zimmer. “I didn’t say a word. Just stepped out to show myself when Vantolos asked me to come forward.”
“And you say that was when the Mozehna reacted to your appearance?” Jakob Zimmer was stroking his beard, as deep in thought as Dev had ever seen the senior biologist.
Dev nodded. “Immediately.” He looked over at Reed. “What I am guessing is that their version of heavy weaponry arrived soon thereafter. Whether it was going to put in an appearance anyway and the timing of its arrival with my exposure was coincidence, or whether my stepping out galvanized the response, I cannot say.” He looked back to Katou-Zimmer. “The Mozehna did not just ‘react’ to my appearance. I would judge their response to have been a mixture of anxiety and aggression. It was almost as if they recognized me.”
“You mean your kind, your species,” she said quietly. “Not you personally.”
The look on Reed’s face was memorable as he jumped in. “That’s impossible. If anything, they might be familiar with another species that happens to resemble humankind. Based on what Dev has said, another species that the Mozehna regard with some awe. And maybe a little fear. Convergent evolution at work.”
“Maybe.” Dev was reluctant to agree. But what other possible explanation could there be? “If that is the case it could explain why the A'jeii wanted one of us to accompany the landing party. But if they thought my appearance was going to somehow intimidate the locals, they certainly had that element of the equation badly wrong. If anything, instead of intimidating them, my appearance went some way toward inspiring a hostile response.”
“We need to find out what this is all about,” Jakob concluded with finality. “I, for one, am tired of being treated like cargo. As if we should fall down on our knees in gratitude for not being killed outright.”
Actually, that was a real possibility that had long been on Dev’s mind, but he was not about to broach it. Not now that the elderly professor had asserted his defiance.
“We need to understand what happened down there. We need to know why the A'jeii thought your appearance might overawe the locals and why it provoked an entirely different reaction.” Katou-Zimmer was of the same mind as her husband. “We may be prisoners of these aliens, but that does not mean we should spend the rest of our lives as uninformed tools. We need to confront Tilenyii about this.”
“Or better still, Syrenii,” Jakob countered.
“Then we are agreed?” Katou-Zimmer looked at Dev.
“I want answers as badly as you do.” He glanced over at Reed. The big man shrugged.
“Gotta admit I’m curious. Maybe not as curious as the rest of you, but curious enough to go along.”
As they made their way resolutely toward the bridge, they drew curious stares from passing A'jeii. As usual, the numerous automatons they encountered in the corridors ignored them. Leading his colleagues, Dev deliberately did not alter his path to accommodate the machines, forcing several to dodge out of his way.
It was easy enough to locate the captain. As soon as the determined quartet of humans entered the always impressive open space, Dev espied the leader of the multispecies band of thieves seated in her usual location forward.
Noting their arrival, Tilenyii intercepted them as they tried to advance.
“What do you want here?” Wide eyes shifted to meet Dev’s own. “I know that your encounter did not go well. That is a pity. A remedial response is being prepared. As it does not involve you or any of your companions, you may return to your cabins.”
Not much taller than the A'jeii, Katou-Zimmer leaned toward the supervisor. “We’ve come to talk to Syrenii. About what happened down the surface. And about our situation. About our ultimate purpose on this ship.”
Gesturing forward, Tilenyii sounded irritated as she replied. “The captain is busy. The captain is always busy.”
“Then you can answer our questions,” Katou-Zimmer persisted.
