Alien Alliance (24 page)

“Yes but how much is it?”

“I don’t know Karl but it’s got to be
cheaper. Think of the saving in labour. Maybe we could swap it for
music recordings. They seem to like our music. It’s that it can
keep each animal confined to an area. A fence that will keep the
cattle in one paddock and the sheep in another, let the dog go
everywhere, let the pigs into the orchard but not the garden, let
the cat go everywhere except the goldfish pond and all done by
tuning electrode things that you just stick in the ground. When I
think how much trouble we went to, to stop the cattle eating the
shelter belt and the orchard. And some of these posts are a
kilometre away from the next one, no wires between. Just a sort of
force field.”

“Yes but what’s the power source?”

“I don’t know. We would have to convert it
somehow. But what a fabulous system.”

“Be a bummer if someone set it wrong.”

“No worse than a hole in a conventional
fence or a short in an electric fence.” Julia was enthused and
determined not to be put off.

“Does it give an electric shock?”

“It seems to give something of the
sort.”

Bored, the kids had taken off and she saw
they were examining a balloon that was stuck in a bush. They seemed
to be the most numerous life form on this planet. The kids were
always seeking information about them but a lot of the adult Aliens
here ignored the kids. The Priskya didn’t though. The balloons were
called something unpronounceable. At first, they tried to pronounce
things properly but it wasn’t possible. Not even the kids could. So
balloons it was. Every Race called things by their own names so it
was a pointless exercise anyway. Many of the Aliens names were
unpronounceable. So they made up names, normally descriptive. The
Translators sorted it all out effortlessly and sorted out time,
day, date, length, weight, age etc.

No one seemed to mind the balloons being
attached to the children. There were no birds here, but there were
huge numbers of lizards, flying insects and, in fact, all kinds of
insects. Julia saw butterflies, or something that looked like them.
They kept moving up through the paddocks and the kids were
apprehensive about the big fuzzy brown things but Julia told them
they ate grass not kids and ignored Humans. The fuzzies were about
twice the size of a large sheep. Julia saw other creatures in other
paddocks. These apparently made up the protein in the goop and for
the proper food dispensers of the ‘kitchens’ for want of a better
word. The kitchens could make up food that was ordered and deliver
it to a machine in an apartment. How, seemed to be a trade secret.
They had all found out, the hard way, that the food didn’t look
nice because it was a soup or puree. It was, however, the
ingredients that were ordered. The kids just took it for granted
and thought it was no big deal. They had seen it in science fiction
movies anyway. Getting fed in the ‘hotel’ they had stayed in had
been quite an experience. Luckily, they had mostly eaten their own
food because that little bit of experimentation had added to their
debt as they found out later.

They had looked at proper restaurants but
there was a problem the science fiction books hadn’t anticipated. A
lot of the food looked awful and smelled terrible. Obviously other
Races thought the same way. Inter-racial dinner parties were rare
they were told. Diners were not in a single large room but in lots
of little rooms. There were also, of course, lots of different
restaurants for different Races. They were told that when Torroxell
was colonised by multiple Races, they brought their own cooks,
servants and slaves after the buildings were built. Apparently, the
Ridianit, the Race that signed the Treaty with the Priskya, built
the buildings to order, then on sold them. Torroxell’s main
industries were a mixture of agriculture, mining, medicine,
tourism, education, commerce and conferences as they had found out
from the various places that had free ‘lectures’. But their chief
problem had been that they had no money. Which rather limited what
they could buy…

They had learnt that Torroxell had some
large native animals, some grazers and carnivores, but over time
the latter had been hunted to near extinction. Some survived only
in the zoos and had not been seen in the wilds for years. From all
the information in the zoo, walking out of the city seemed to be
safe or so Julia hoped.

So they were walking through the protein
source and heading for the first of the cereal crops. According to
the zoo lectures, plants were not planted one type to a paddock,
but planted so that one paddock ripened all together with multiple
different crops. So the paddocks were smallish. Did that mean they
didn’t grow anything that took an unusually long or short time to
grow, Julia wondered. Masses of flavourings were used and most
Aliens brought these with them. The trouble was, Julia only found
this out in the hotel. And a lot of the flavourings had been left
on the ship as the People who helped with the Translators had told
them they could leave stuff on the ship for the return journey. So,
of course, they had.

Predictably, by this time, each child had a
balloon. Julia noticed Bea’s one made a funny trilling sound; not a
hum or a purr but something between the two. Harsha said,

“They have some kind of intelligence. The
Priskya say you can teach them some tricks. The bigger ones can
fetch. They have been known to catch fish and deliver them. They
eat lots of stuff, but they have their favourites. Sarah bought
some in one night that had no tendrils. We’ve been having a lot of
fun feeding them. We don’t know how long it will take them to grow
more tendrils and we don’t know how they reproduce yet.”

Julia knew that the Aliens who ran this
planet were not the Priskya that owned it. The Priskya had to go on
land in bubble things. Different Races trundled them off to
lectures. They did not seem to have any technology of their own.
Their bubbles were also not self propelled. This was a problem.
Often they were kept waiting. The kids loved to help push them but
it took several kids. They were heavy. The bubbles were full of
water and the fish weighed more than a human.

“How much further?” puffed Karl.

“Over that ridge and in the valley beyond.
Downhill from the ridge. The caves are at the base. It’s all smooth
going,” said Ilse sympathetically.

By this time they had passed several more
fields of plants and animals. Some paddocks had animal type things
but were bare of vegetation. Julia puzzled aloud over this but
Harsha had the answer.

“Their food is imported cos they can’t eat
the grass stuff on this world. It’s probably in those tubs over
there.”

Karl marvelled at the knowledge of the
children and how much they had soaked up in such a short space of
time. Although very apprehensive about going into a cave, he was
looking forward to meeting a race of Aliens that wanted to meet
Terrans. A lot of other Races were completely indifferent to them
and their plight. He suspected that the children learned very fast,
which Aliens to ask. Adults tended to think that if they asked a
question, someone would be polite enough to answer. It wasn’t
always that way though. Some Aliens obviously thought Terrans
weren’t worthy of answers. Many were arrogant and rude. Some didn’t
even answer. Karl wondered if that had been the problem for these
cave dwelling Aliens.

Finally, they reached the entrance to the
caves. The kids were up front, impatiently waiting for the adults.
As they reached the kids, they scampered into the caves and down
the passage. The adults followed. The passage was wide enough for
two to walk side by side. A soft green light sparkled on the roof
and sides of the cave. They looked up. It looked a bit like a glow
worm type of glow.

“I wonder what they come here for?” Karl
said.

There was a series of clicks and other
peculiar sounds and they whirled to see a creature standing in the
shadow. The translation followed, “We came because we wanted to see
the wildlife that lives in these caves. We love caves of any sort
and we love to explore them. We often collect wildlife that lives
in caves and take it back with us. We have been doing this for
centuries. For instance we have all colours of these,” it said
pointing to the ‘glow worms’. “We are so pleased you have come.
Very few ever come to see us. We are so thankful to you for paying
our communication debt. We have, thanks to you, been able to send
messages off and have heard that our ship is delayed. This is a
huge relief to us.”

It moved forward walking on two legs and
Karl saw a creature the size of a large human, the shape of a thin
bear, but with an odd looking head with two very large black eyes
and no visible ears. It looked almost like a seal head on a skinny
bear. And it had hands with thick fingers. Karl was puzzled, “I
thought the Translator only translated for the person carrying it
but I heard you from here.” Karl was well behind the others.

“The Translator translates voices coming
from a certain distance. It depends on how it is set.” The Kepi,
whose name was a pronounceable Trlin, took them down to a large
hall like room. They were greeted by many other adults who
expressed great joy at seeing adults. They had so much they wanted
to ask. The children meanwhile were sparking up a lively
conversation. Rani noticed six children, three of each Race,
playing a game with some things that resembled playing cards and
sticks. The balloons were a hit with all the children of both
Races, she noticed.

“How well can you see in here? We notice
your children seem to have no trouble,” noted Trlin.

“Our eyes can adjust to the pale light here
and the light outside,” answered Julia noticing that the Nedris
were now talking to another group.

“That’s unusual/remarkable in our
experience,” said a smaller Kepi. The Kepis were fascinated by how
Terrans had handled First Contact and how they were adjusting.

“The psychologists told us we would have
problems assimilating all the new experiences here. They told us
our brains have to sort out and catalogue data in order to handle
it and that we would be trying to compare things to familiar things
back home. They were right. We do. Also we need to judge when to
invent a new category. But mostly we stubbornly persist in trying
to compare an alien environment with home. Not a logical response
but apparently a common one. Sarah bought all this information with
her from SETI,” said Karl. He then had to explain SETI and
Sarah.

There were general comments from several
Kepis indicating that they coped in exactly the same way.

Julia continued, “The Psychologists said the
kids would cope a lot better because their minds are more flexible.
Again, they were right. The children are adapting much faster than
the adults. But some things seem to bug us more than others. The
colour of the sky and vegetation, we hardly notice any more. The
same with the extra moons and all the different sights. We are even
accepting of different Races, hugely more so than we thought we
would be.

Where we are having trouble is with the
longer day. The 28 1/2 hour day has thrown us. It’s only another 4
1/2 hours but it is just stuffing us up. It is so annoying when
these experts predict something, you think hey I can adjust to that
and I’m wrong and they’re right. Apparently it stuffs up something
called circadian rhythms which I’d never heard of before. That’s a
sort of body clock we have and it doesn’t like being disrupted. Of
course I knew about what we call jet lag, which is flying across
different time zones on our own planet. But this is way more than
that. It’s even affecting the children but they say we will adapt
and the kids will beat us to it. You wouldn’t think 4 1/2 hours
would be significant but it is. Many of us are having a lot of
trouble sleeping through the night and staying awake during the
day. So we’ve taken to napping during the afternoon and going to
bed later. It is helping.

Gender is another big confusion for us. We
have two genders. Most of the fauna on our planet has two. Nothing
has three genders. Some have only one gender or two in the same
creature. Intellectually, we had expected differences but the
variety has us gob smacked. I guess science fiction enthusiasts
might have done better than us but the reality of up to eleven
genders, and some needing two or three different species in order
to reproduce! Well that just has us floundering. For us, personal
pronouns are important. Not knowing the gender seems so wrong. We
noticed with some amusement that the Translators don’t even try and
just use ‘it’ for all personal pronouns. We learned to programme
the Translator on the way here. That ‘it’ had us puzzled. We
thought we were doing something wrong. Now, we understand.” She
paused as she remembered and handed the money card to Trlin.

“But our main problem is that we believed we
were invited here as guests for political and trade negotiations
and that now seems to have been a lie. We understand that we could
be in serious trouble.”

Karl went on to explain about the trader
Paswalda and what it had apparently done and what was apparently
intended to happen i.e. slavery. Trlin confirmed this type of thing
happened. Karl stressed that, “We can pay but we have no access to
any credit. We have no interstellar bank accounts. We did bring
some trade goods with us but don’t know where to sell them, nor how
to get a fair price. We don’t understand the trade rules here.”

The long afternoon continued with much talk
and the children kept themselves well amused with their new
friends. The Terrans had brought their own food. Companionably,
they all had a meal together as the Terrans were luckily not
nauseated by the Kepi’s food nor vice versa.

Trlin noted, “We see you drink water. We are
pleased to share ours. There are underground rivers in the caves
and we wash ourselves in water, drink it and cook in it.”