Family Law 2: The Long Voyage of the Little Fleet (15 page)

"Four fingers and a thumb like Humans," Gordon noticed.

"They are seen in a lot of video behind consoles or doing things that look administrative. We saw some footage that we think is inside the space station, because they cut away to an exterior view and back inside. We know it's this station because the planet in the background is recognizable."

"What is the inside like?"

"It isn't curved and it doesn't rotate. So we have concluded they must have some form of gravity manipulation."

"Oh-ho! Well we know what we'll be trying to trade for don't we? We're still pretty far out. Do you already have images of the planet that good, to know it's the one by the station?"

"Yes, because the polar ice cap is very distinctive. It is tilted towards us a bit and as  it rotates there is a big arch of ice that extends down into lower latitudes from the round portion."

"What would cause that?"

"Consensus is there must be a huge mountain range or plateau high enough to be cold."

"That has to do some weird things to the climate in that hemisphere. Well, we know it's a water world at least, even if somebody else claimed it first."

"These fellows with the pointy nose or muzzle maybe, some of the guys wanted to call Rats. I put a stop to that very quickly and insisted we call them Badgers. We're probably going to mingle with these folks and trade with them. They appear to have a slight majority in the videos. I can just see their reaction when they realized what a rat is and how our cultures regards them. Besides, they have a stripe or sometimes several and are black not grey and we have yet to see one from the rear. I'd bet if they have a tail it isn't naked."

"What was anybody thinking, to open their mouth and let that fall out?" Gordon did a double face palm, shaking his head. He got over it and lifted his head. "We tried to recruit very carefully and we still get stuff like this."

"I know. I'm also just about convinced somebody took one of our recruiting posters to a Gamblers Anonymous meeting. But in fairness, how many have seen a badger? I have because my dad used to take me to the zoo. But unfortunately just about everybody has seen a rat."

"Yeah, those are one gift from Earth we could have done without. My Mothers give any kid who brings in a dead rat a tenth bit coin and he gets to pick the desserts for the next day."

"The Badgers show up some of the same places as the Sasquatch, sitting behind consoles, looking like the supervisor in some scenes. I find their gaze very direct, but that might just be me."

"Look at this one," Gordon pointed out a figure in the distance. "They
do
have a bit of a tail. Looks pretty solid too, not skinny. And this one has a sort of a tool belt. He looks like maybe a techie."

"I bet they can go down on all four to move faster too. I haven't seen that yet, just guessing from their form. The bottom, or back, leg in particular. They have incisors too."

"What do you call these?" Gordon asked of the next field.

"Well the Humans wanted to call
one
a Platypus. There's an Australian animal that has a bill like that. The body is completely different. But the discussion devolved into such a heated argument about what the proper plural form is that I nixed that name too. We're going to refer to them as Bills if I have to break some folks of rank and put them on filter duty."

"Ah, have you been talking to Thor?"

"Not about the Bills, does he have some opinion about this race already?" Luke asked confused.

"No, nothing about the Bills. It's just he'd approve of your administrative style."

"Sometimes you need to knock some heads together," he agreed with a shrug.

"Do they have fur or is that skin?" he asked, squinting at the monitor.

"We're not sure. If it fur it's very fine and dense. It might be dark skin. There aren't as many of these guys as the other races. We see them sitting and watching a lot, not doing stuff like the Badgers. They do wear clothing more, so maybe it is skin. They seem to carry more things that might be com or cameras. And they almost all have some kind of weapons. If they have a knife they always have two."

"Well when you have eight limbs... It looks like they have manipulative digits on all of them too."

"Yeah, here let me show you video of one walking."

"Wow. I bet they can really move when they want to. Why do I have this perverse desire to see what one looks like trying to walk drunk with eight legs?"

"Because you've been close to Thor too long," Luke answered without hesitation. "The race we saw the least in the videos is this one," he displayed a still of two of the creatures. "That is the only pic of them except in the extreme distance in a few crowd scenes."

"Ah, that should make the Humans happy. They've always wanted a cat race. It's a staple in their speculative fiction."

"There's a superficial resemblance, but there's no telling how they act of course. I'm Human, but I'm not a cat person myself."

"Do you like dogs then?"

"It isn't an either – or thing. I was raised without pets. We lived in a twenty seventh floor condo in the city. I've seen people all my life who can't go on vacation because their dog goes nuts in the kennel and won't eat. Vacation? I've worked with people who can't even go to dinner after work, because they have to go home and give their cat its medicine. I think a lot of pets are just unhealthy substitutes for children. If you are a farmer and have to get up early every morning for the cows at least you get the benefit of some milk."

"I have to admit Derf have no custom of keeping animals as a recreational thing. Have you seen any indication on the videos any of our new races here keep pets?"

Brownie interrupted from her console, sounding irritated."It's species really, not races. Races are a variations in a species like blond or cinnamon Derf or short lemon crested or long red crested Hinth or black or white Humans."

"I'm sure that's technically true if you are a biologist," Luke agreed."I'm not writing any scholarly papers, and I'm not going to bang my head against the bulkhead trying to change the common usage of our crews when everybody understands what they mean. They are lazy and will use a one syllable word over a two syllable word every time even if it is wrong. And no, I haven't seen any animals at all," Luke said going back to Thor's question. "I wouldn't have thought to look for them though. Come to think of it I haven't seen any indication they keep livestock either."

"What do you want to bet they are censoring that, until they know what we look like? Just like you didn't want to hang the rat label on the Badgers, they probably don't want to upset or confuse us by showing any animals that look like us."

"We may shock them a little when they see they are dealing with three new races, not one. It looks like they are feeding us instructions for one language. I wonder if it's like English? Perhaps the race it's native to is the dominant one," he speculated. "Ah, we're ready to shoot video."

Chapter 8

 The video was sent, labels over each person lit up when they said their name and touched their chest. A bright box formed around each group as they declared themselves Hinth, Human, or Derf and the word for that race lit up. At the end a box formed around all of them and they were all declared people, which they said in turn. Gordon and Luke agreed it would be hard to make it any plainer. And then they waited for the aliens to digest that.

"I'd like to send some video of scenes from Earth, Derfhome and Hin," Luke requested.

"OK, but have several people look at each segment before you send it with an eye to potential problems."

"Would you have time to look at them yourself?"

"No, but I'll make time. This is probably more important than reviewing things my department heads are routinely handling fine. Put in a few shots of our home worlds without people, you know, like a resort ad with some impressive waterfalls and snow capped mountains. A big flock of water birds. Maybe a shot of a coral reef full of fish and a rugged coast with lots of surf breaking."

"Are we fishing for tourists?" Luke asked, amused.

"Why not? They may not be interested in buying toasters or beer mugs from us, but even the Hinth went nuts playing tourist after the war and they were free to travel. I bet they like to see new places and relax away from what they are accustomed to every day. If they didn't like to travel we wouldn't be seeing ships and a space station, they'd have stayed at home like the Elves and the Beavers."

"Which brings up that question. Should we show them pix of the aboriginal races?"

"I can't see any advantage to it yet. Why don't you hold off on that? It would just waste our time explaining they chose not to have much to do with us. I'll get back to you when we start getting some response to our pix."

* * *

"Gordon, about five minutes after our wave front hit the planet and station they started sending out video incorporating avatars of our three races. I consider that pretty snappy. The next interesting thing is that they clearly showed trade taking place between their races and linked it to the language they've been sending. In fact I'd label the language itself as Trade. I think it is a composite, maybe a pidgin or a creole. We've dumped a lot of language back to them. We'll see how quickly they can use English."

"Luke, Ernie Goddard said he asked for early copies of the natives tutorials with their avatars working out words and was told you weren't authorized to release them. We value ideas from crew. Even people who aren't specialists can have insights from their experience, not formal education. Go ahead and allow access to anyone who has an interest."

"If I do that we'll be flooded under with every cook's helper and filter changer who has an insight. We'll be answering them instead of making progress."

"You don't have to answer any of them. I said make the files available, not set up a hot line and give every one of them consideration. If past experience with the Bunnies was any example few spoke up and the ones who had serious ideas were persistent and they contacted me, not the translation team."

"Fine, I'll send an all hands com message, saying where the files are available but indicating we will actually respond to very few com messages due to the work load."

"That works just fine," Gordon agreed. Privately he thought Luke was a budding bureaucrat and would eventually alienate the crew if he revealed his disdain for the people who fed him and kept him breathing. But he was getting the job done and hadn't pushed things to the point Gordon would remove him. Yet.

* * *

Gordon spent a shift doing boring administrative tasks before Luke bothered him again. "They went to a lot of trouble to confirm what our measurements of length are. They checked what a meter is three ways before they were happy."

"Did they then share with us
their
common unit of length?"

"Yes and time units, mass and energy equivalence. Also color perception for each of their races. I wasn't even sure we had that data for us. But it was in files. I never gave it any thought before, dealing with Hinth or Derf."

"I'm sure the designers of our screens and the signs and labels on everything gave it a great deal of consideration. It would be a huge safety issue if something that was an important flashing alert wasn't a bright contrasting color to somebody who needed to see it."

"I never thought of that. We need to do audio ranges too then."

"Good idea. And while you are at it, find out what they use for money and the denominations."

* * *

Thor came in near shift end, grumpy looking. "This sitting having nothing to do is bad. I'm having to deal with petty arguments and personality clashes that wouldn't happen if they were busy. They don't have trouble when they are working, it's when they have free time."

"Doesn't all the video and information streaming in from the new people entertain them?"

"The ones it entertains, who got caught up in it, are the same ones who could already entertain themselves off duty. They are the ones who brought more books and music than they could read in twenty years, or like one fellow who has been composing music and laying down overlapping tracks as complex as any symphony orchestra. I have another lady who has already written two novels in her off hours and is well into a third." He paused and looked at Gordon. "It's
good
stuff too."

"You mean sitting here with a front row seat on history being made is of no special interest?"

Thor nodded, "I know, hard to believe, but it's true. Some of them are like, "Yeah that's great, don't bother me with the details, I have a poker game to get to." They will be interested if they can make money off them, or we ask they go shoot them dead. I mean, I know we already have multiple races and are sort of used to each other, but we don't know so many races it's become common to meet new ones. Where is the sense of wonder?"

"I guess people can get acclimated to anything," Gordon allowed. "I don't suppose you can create some make-work to keep them busy?"

"I have, but we selected too well. These people are smart and if it is too obviously make-work they see it as punishment and resent it."

"Well, let's hope we can progress to moving forward and either orbiting the planet, or maybe even visiting the space station."

"All of us?"

"No, one of the armed ships will remain here with the
Roadrunner
. No matter how friendly they appear I'm not going to be that trusting until we have known each other awhile."

* * *

"They've asked permission to send an unmanned drone and look closer at us," Luke said.

"Brownie, How close do
we
need to get a drone to see details of the station?" Gordon asked.

"Details like being able to see ships docked to their station, or like being able to tell which race is outside in pressure suits?"

"I'd like to snoop on what code they punch in a keypad to enter an airlock."

"That's not going to happen with any optics we brought or can make. Nobody saw any need for that kind of capability. You'd have to get our best telescope within a dozen kilometers to do that. I'm not even sure we could yank it out of the
Retribution
and mount it on a drone. I'd rather ask how far away would you want to be from one of our newer X-head missiles? How far away could one put multiple beams on all of us at once, if they used it to sneak a weapon close?"