Short Fiction Complete, page 42
Stunned, I pause to reform my thinking. I permit the guard to rise, and he quivers and peers this way and that with widely opened light receptors. Then I ask, “The silhouette and crest? Means House of Venetry? Tony Randolph’s crest? Such a symbol causes automatic torture and killing?”
He nods. How difficult to control my faculties as anger burns deep. One hundred thousand of my Brethren? Tony Randolph? That likeable, unstable Human, Tony Randolph? My Brethren? Perhaps all dead because of this – this – irrationality?
After I jump the two back to my hostile cell, I began an overriding and anxious search for my Brethren. Again and yet again I halt, sweep widely for a touch, a flicker, an essence of the Ayor. Billions move with direct action: people, animals, ground and air vehicles.
Monstrously huge citadels pile up and up and down and down. There is no comparison with the small Tepen achievements. Machines and everywhere more machines. Machines that create machines that create machines, just as Tony Randolph had said. How can life so limited in accretion, growth, and twinning evolve into such complexities? Or is it that complexity varies directly with limitations? So simple are the Ayor, and so full with capacity.
And what of Human reproduction? Humans, I find, transport seed to egg by means of direct action! Now I began to understand Eme’s wonderment over my strange form and manner, and how she and the Brethren likened me to an animal – though not at all parallel to Enithra’s – so where did Eme find the thought?
Counters for food are set up in many places, which makes it easy for me to seize from afar. When night comes, I tire, though Feren’s gravity is lighter. Unlike the Tepen village, where every metal mound held space for specific uses, and was each utilized, empty buildings stare back at me like large holes. I chose one, popping easily inside where I at once sleep to dream: Predatory Ettels creep silently after the barrel shaped Cien, tearing it apart with clacks of jaw and snicks of teeth! My subconscious keeps me floating several feet above my chosen platform, as is my custom, and it also shocks me awake with the awareness that Humans are approaching, their shuffling and crackling and coughing and whispering starkly piercing my sleep, and especially the shrill giggling and Human guffaws.
Light glares into my opened light receptors. One, a strident-voiced Human, but not male, cries, “This is the best performance ever!”
“No clothes!” several shout now and then again. And all laugh or giggle according to their nature.
Of course. I should have remembered body covers, as Tony Randolph always used them.
But then, why hadn’t my captors covered me?
III
Whereas Enithra is about six thousand miles in diameter, Feren is perhaps but five thousand. At eighty mile jumps closer to seventy five when altitude is considered – it will take me roughly 2.4 x 107 divided by 6.4 x 103 or about three thousand jumps to make a systematic search for my Brethren.
But had any of my Brethren been within half million miles, they would already have sensed and come.
What of unknown Tepen-like telekinetic fields? Had I really learned enough of this strange, crawling almost nightmarish civilization?
Counting on one hundred jumps each day, I’d finish with the surface search after thirty days. I determined to be thorough. As I searched methodically, curiosity crawled, even scurried, following my senses here and there, probing, studying, reflecting, wondering–.
From time to time I note long-ranging missiles thundering toward my last position. With each jump the density of these noxious and dangerous spears increases. And another concern: they seem to predict my next appearance, streaking helter skelter to where I had not yet been.
I thought they will not destroy their own machinery, so I change tactics, jumping from point to point close to ground contour.
I learn much, that Feren has several large water bodies, that frozen water covers its poles, that land is cultivated and appears in even and wondrous checkered array from overhead . . .
But alas! Nowhere can I sense them.
Great sweeps along the surface are devoted to soldier activities and their roaring instruments: in cities, the countryside, on and in the sea where specially thick hulls patrol silently, and around and below farm regions, and throughout here and there specially built reservations on islands, by the coasts, inland, most everywhere.
Stark shiny and neatly streamlined missiles ring the planet capable of covering every square foot almost with the casualness of an adult Ayorian. Hot, penetrating beams criss-cross making me hug closer to ground.
One military citadel catches my attention: surrounded by ring upon ring of protective devices, its cavern-like construction reaches and roots to bedrock by means of complex and extensive hydraulic floatation machines that serve to hold upright the rare and peculiarly dense metal that surrounds and protects all. I mark the location.
There is but one place else to search: high up and far away, where had occurred the original explosion. Seizing the thought and the action together, I choose a large and obviously swift craft that closely resembles that of the House of Venetry in shape and instrumentation.
Persistent missiles climb and climb, only to crash back unexploded, while I, Spork of Ayor, have great fun flicking their insensitive and dead charges outward. I confuse ray and beam machines and they flicker and sputter and probe wrongly.
Later, although time has changed relative positions, I restructure spatial referents, an easy and natural chore for any Ayorian. I can sense the seventh planet one way while our ship’s dead and charred fragments speed elsewhere.
Faster and more sophisticated missiles paint long, brilliant, multi-hued lines of faltering flame toward me, and I, laughing zestfully, handle them one by one.
Shock waves buffet until, far from the last explosion, alone and silent, my mood and direction changes.
And then missiles and beams sweep through and by my space again. Their source, a monstrous satellite citadel housing soldiers and specialists. Impudently I cast out their explosives and befuddle their dials, at last gaining the peace and freedom to again search outward – further, further – for the Brethren.
Seble pops loudly, but gently inside. We greet one another affectionately, Seble’s diaphragms buzzing and flipping, his whole beingness swelling and contracting, flitting from place to place with jumps and jerks, and I, standing Cien steady, hand outstretched, light receptors watering –.
“Follow,” he directs finally. “Our cavern is no more than our range.”
Within the half million miles Seble jumps the ship into their hollowed and barren cavern far below the planet’s raw atmosphere Cut to hemisphere they group one to another, and speak in unison: “Welcome back, Spork! “Their great booming voice bounds from peak to boulder to sodden floor. Again my light receptors water.
“When the missile struck, we jumped to this planet. Its surface is cold and lifeless and inhospitable to all. Crystals of frozen radicals: hydrogens, methanes, ammonia, water, all in combinations most deadly.
“Almost compulsively, perhaps instinctively, we hollowed this large and dreary place, manufacturing and stocking nutrients, some making up the atmosphere, some warmth, some moisture and food.
“Then we searched for you, and we found nothing but Human fragments scattered widely.”
I explain the interlude.
They, together, say: “Already we’ve begun a new ship and outside – well, Spork, you must sense the flowing changes?”
I reach upward, spreading sensitivity in fine weaved nets, and then I know. “You’re changing the atmosphere,” I credulously clamour. “From reducing to oxidizing!”
“We shall Enithraform the total planet, and colonize.”
Twinnings accelerate as problems are solved and their grand scheme carried forward. Meanwhile my personal twinning problem trugged: Who am I? What is my life’s purpose? Whereas I seemed no closer to solution, Tony Randolph’s tragic death by his own people bred increasing distrust of his civilization.
We could easily overcome the Ferenians, and their massive technological achievements without bloodshed, but is that way best? Will any race or species under domination, like beasts of burden I’d sensed, provide us with a future partnership?
Raw force is not an answer to our relationship with Humans or my twinning problem.
Newly twinned Ayorian children, uninterested in planet transformation, clamour for new and unusual twinning problems. When another time of grouping came, I was asked, “Spork. Where leads your twinning problem?”
“To Feren,” I quietly answer the assemblage.
“Will you take some along?”
“Yes, if their twinning lies that way.
“Very well,” they thunder. “Fifty thousand will accompany, and the other half elects to stay.”
Astounded, I ask, “How will we meet with the Ferenians?”
“Your body is biologically Human, and you’ve learned the language. Mix with them. Learn their ways. Pass as one of them –”
“I mean the remaining Ayor?”
“They shall be hidden until you call on them.”
For but a moment I struggle with my non-Ayorian emotions, frustrated with the thought that my biological antecedents had created a discriminating condition. Was I not Ayor? But only for a moment. “The suggestion is wise. I accept. May all twin well!”
“Good twinning to Spork!” they reply together.
IV
Gathered together en masse, we sweep through detection systems, my Brethren burrowing deeply within Feren’s shallow mantle, where our ship is also hidden.
I jump to a city nearby, choosing an empty canyon (streetway, called), thereafter briskly walking up and down various concrete pathways.
Humans walk in and out of specially designed buildings. One such, where they eat by forcing metal implements into food and stuffing same into mouths, is so popular that long lines form outside, waiting turns. I join, dragging my feet just so, holding my arms and shoulders a certain way, slowly, methodically working my way quite tediously to the place where lay fabricated trays. I select one, as has the man ahead of me. He dials and I do the same, already congratulating myself on the ease with which I have blended. He reaches into pockets, selecting certain metals and fibrous papers which he places in slots. They are taken with clicks and clacks, a small paper buzzes outward like a white tongue. It is torn off and pocketed, after which the man plods ahead to a table with his tray of tantalizing food. Odorous foods mingle and blend.
I have no small metals or fibrous paper.
The machine blinks and says, “That will be 1.56 Odell, Please!”
I sense such items in the pocket behind. Reaching inside and jumping them to my pockets, I then follow proper motions. I hand all the money to the machine.
“Oh my goodness,” it creaks, as though Human. “I said one point five six Odell, not one hundred and fifty six.”
Randolph had explained civilization’s monetary system. I had not understood. I understand even less now. So, thinking that I should root out the meaning of this manipulated abstraction, I approach the place where money is passed back and forth in volume. I sense its storage in large, costly and cumbersome chambers.
Perplexed with conflicts, I return to our cavern for rest and deep thought.
On the day next, the sun shining brilliantly but sans much ultraviolet, I determine to study money intensely. Most everyone seems to have it. Some work hard for it, spending long and often dangerous hours for some. Others seem to write notes ordering depositories to pay for them. Some hand it out for immediate use, while others appear not to work for it at all, acquiring anything they need by various and mysterious directions through Corporate structures. One place actually manufactures it, rolling the paper off with the ease of newspaper print, later spending great effort and force in transferring the printed sheets to protected depositories, where again it is stored and guarded. I reach deeply through and through such a place, disappointedly finding only inks and fibrous papers – nothing of real value.
We Ayor had developed from our primitive beginnings a most complex science: we’d built space vehicles, and other things of like intricacy; we understand the marvels and detail of evolutionary biology, and the contradictions and profoundness of light and gravity. Yet how simple were all of these procedures and rules compared to those of the rules of civilized money!
Humans stepped or leaped or hopped aboard public vehicles following predictable pathways whenever they wished to move from city to city. At each station stood guards who demanded the viewing of small cards carried by each Human.
I mistakenly assumed these cards to be related to their monetary system in some yet unknown manner. Stepping easily aboard, and finding that I must produce my special card, and lacking same, I teleport one from a native’s purse behind me and into my pocket.
Reaching with my hands I pull out this card and naively hand it to the attendant.
I have failed, of course, to sense that each card has a likeness of each person printed thereon. The guard carefully scrutinizes both me and the likeness, and then asks the lady behind for her card. I jump into her purse a card from the man behind her. The guard again peers carefully, asking for the card of the man behind. Six cards later, the line is exhausted. Politely he hands the proper cards back to their respective owners, and he almost tiredly orders me, “Come,” gripping my arm tightly, as though I would resist.
Their strange manner-jailing one when certain rules are not obeyed – is so alien to our nature. And their jail regimen is boringly different from my earlier experience with their stiff-necked military.
I stay celled just long enough to lose interest.
Later I enroll in a place of teaching, specializing in adult education How slow they teach, and learn! At such rates dozens of years will pass, learning but two or three subjects, and then not very thoroughly
But I do meet books: psychology, sociology, political science, military science, economics, literature, art, music, history, and various odd and vibrant languages, none of which seems to correspond with Eme’s memory, the geometry of HEART OF THE HOUSE OF THE GALACTIC COUNCIL, nor the rhythmic cadence of my eidetic recall, “. . . place the baby in the life container now.”
Economics made some sense of their monetary system, but what starts the process? Energy, commodities, goods and services can not be added in vacua. So how can their symbols – money – come into being arbitrarily, and then just as arbitrarily be placed into isomorphic correspondence with things and itself? If that sounds confusing, then wonder with me how metal coins and papers of fibrous nature can increase themselves in the absence of replicating genes? Or – as would seem fundamental to Human society – if energy, commodities, goods and services are not increased numerically, then how does the increase in money make such. Fundamentally I believe that Humans are merely trying to repeal the law of conservation of matter-energy.
Whereas a monetary system based upon the total accessible energy makes sense, Human circumlocution and unreasoned and arbitrary logic, where each strives to take an advantage by increasing their symbols, deprives all of such a basic and clean solution.
Humans, of course, cannot reason from total system orientations, so I do come to comprehend why of their deficiency.
I am also emotionally perplexed by behavioural psychology and history where, in the latter, textbooks seem to reflect what is desirable, not what is. That, as paradoxes usually do, eventually points a way to better understanding of Tony’s civilization.
Thinking to learn faster, I approach a teacher, asking for explanations of Feren’s political paradoxes. I am again jailed, as if some kind of nefarious enemy against the state!
Again I release myself, disappearing from the view of many.
Later three instructors refuse to discuss my questions, but I persist until one day a very elderly Human with silver-greying hair and long gnarled fingers, raises the Human hush sign to lips. Quietly, in a most natural way, he writes out his address and hands it to me.
As I stand before his doorway, ready to press inward the button that makes doors to buzz, some to ring, others to chime, I wonder if I am again to be jailed. And, if so, for what? This door buzzes. He of the thatched silver-gray answers, standing tall with long whitened hair curling delicately at his ears. I sense four others inside.
He smiles with cheerful recognition, bushy-haired eyebrows raising slightly at each corner.
I am waved to a chair all covered with soft and springy materials, handed a sweetened and chilled drink, frozen water bobbing gently therein, and he explains with a sweeping hand wave, “These are my students, the only ones who have had the courage to question.”
“Since questions can lead to jail,” I brazenly reply, “can you be sure that I will not lead all of you there?”
“Oh!” he laughs. “I’ve had much dealing with police states. You are too awkward. You could not have passed their training programmes and remained so wide-eyed innocent!”
V
“Ah, but that’s the point,” Trod Gerard pendantically elucidates’ settling into soft cushions, and placing tapping fingers on arms built into the chair for resting Human appendages “Our Quations planetary system was once part of the distant confederation known as the Galactic Council. As the galactic civilization spread, communication and control problems became insurmountable between governing bodies.”
“But why – ah – specially bred?” one young and petite youth questions, the female’s hair flicking this way and that with each pause and enunciation. (It is then I realise that my hair hangs long and dangles with each motion of my Human body.)
“Co-ordination. As communication and co-ordination became exponentially complex, ordinary or average citizens can not cope. Thus, biology to the rescue. Galactic Co-ordinators, genetically bred, genetically designed, were faster with retentive memories, superior in co-ordination –.”
“Dr Gerard?” The burly and clean faced youth with rounded face and smiling disposition interposed both speech and hand before our tutor. “Even improved biology did not save the union, did it?”
