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Chapter Ten

RJ stepped from the cryogenic chamber and started to scrape the blue-green sludge from her face and body. She had been slowly revitalized so that she wasn't cold, and the apparatus had sucked the cryogenic liquid from her airways and lungs so she wasn't having any trouble breathing. She knew that her vision would clear shortly, that she was going to be all right. But she felt as if she had awakened from one, long, horrible nightmare, one that she couldn't remember but that had left her feeling raw, exposed and filthy. The slime didn't help.

"Come, RJ, I'll lead you to the shower." Poley took her arm and started to guide her through the hallways of the ship, which was good because she still couldn't see. As she started to walk she realized just how incredibly disoriented she was.

She tried to speak and found that she actually had to think about it to make it happen. "The . . . the others?"

"Fine, but I'll need your help to revive them. I thought it best we get you up first."

RJ nodded silently. He was right. If she was having this much trouble it would be much worse for Levits and even Topaz.

Poley helped her into the bathroom and over to one of the showerheads. The water smelled stale, but that was to be expected, it hadn't been used in . . . "How long?" she asked as the warm water started to beat down on her.

"Twelve years, three months, two weeks, three days, fourteen hours, three minutes, and forty two seconds. I'm so happy to have you out walking around." He hugged her, getting wet in the process.

"It's good to be out," RJ said. Her vision was coming back to her, and so were her other senses. The strength was returning to her legs. "Where are we, Poley?"

"A nice small Earth-class planet . . . actually it's a moon, but that's really splitting hairs, isn't it? There are plants and animal life and water and air with the correct mixture of oxygen to hydrocarbons . . . All right, there is a little too much oxygen, but nothing you shouldn't be able to adapt to."

He was talking very fast. She thought at first it was some malfunction, but then as he hugged her yet again she realized that the robot was just excited. She smiled and turned the water off. She looked at Poley. He was, as always, clean and well dressed, but there was something different about his face, something she couldn't quite put a finger on because it didn't make any sense. He looked as if he had aged.

He smiled broadly. "I added some wrinkles," he said proudly.

"Why?" RJ asked with a laugh.

"I really like your laugh," Poley said ignoring her question.

"Poley . . . why did you give yourself wrinkles?"

"I felt older. I wanted to look older. I missed you, I was very bored and very lonely, aren't those the sort of things that they say ages people?"

"Well, yes, but . . ."

"I felt aged, so I wanted to look aged." He led her towards a bench in the room. He pointed down at the sleeveless black coveralls and the section of chain. "I put your clothes out for you."

"Thanks, Poley." She slipped into the coveralls and then wrapped her chain around her waist, gently fingering the links. It felt like it had been twelve years. In cryo-sleep you weren't supposed to be aware of anything, much less the passage of time, but she was different from a normal human. Maybe, just maybe, she did feel the passage of time. She felt like she did. "Come on, let's go wake the others."

Poley nodded eagerly and led her into the hall. She stopped flat and just stared. All the walls, every inch of ceiling, every inch of floor, had been etched with photo-perfect life-sized precision with pictures of herself, Levits, Topaz, David, Stewart . . . in fact, most probably anyone Poley had ever had direct contact with.

"My god!" she breathed.

"Do you like them?" Poley asked excitedly.

"Like them, Poley? They are amazing! How much . . ."

"Most of the ship. I filled over seventeen thirty-two gallon plastic garbage bags with the paint chips made from the etchings."

"Twelve years," RJ said in a distant voice. Seeing what Poley had accomplished in that time, all that he had done, brought home the reality of the loss of time. She realized that she really hadn't felt the passage of time at all. Not twelve years worth.

"I told you I was bored," Poley said. "Come on, I want to show Topaz and Levits."

RJ nodded and followed him. Twelve years, and where were they now? What sort of world awaited them outside the ship? What of their own world? What was happening at home, on Beta 4? She might never know. If this planet could sustain life, their life, that didn't mean they would find a suitable fuel supply for their ship. She could be stuck on this planet for the rest of her rather long life.

The Reliance might have taken back all they had won on Earth and on Beta 4. Or perhaps the New Alliance had succeeded in driving the Reliance from Earth. There was no way of knowing.

Twelve years.

Twelve years! It seemed so surreal. All the time that had passed since the moment she had crashed into David Grant in the woods till the moment they'd dodged the Reliance fleet by driving their ship out of hyperspace and into an uncharted galaxy had come to just over eight years. What had happened in the twelve years they'd been asleep?

"RJ?" Poley prompted, and RJ realized only then that she had stopped moving, and was just staring at a picture of Mickey riding on Whitey's shoulder.

She couldn't seem to walk away. She had known Whitey for such a short period of time, yet he had changed her forever. In twelve years what might they have accomplished, what joys might they have shared, and what of Mickey? He had been alive when she left, but there was no guarantee that he still was. Twelve years on a planet that might very well be at war, without her help, without Topaz or Levits or Poley. She had left him alone to face an unknown future and had taken all the people who could help him.

Her plan had completely and utterly failed. She hadn't made it to Deakard. That being the case, what chance did Mickey and the New Alliance have of holding onto New Freedom?

"Do you . . . do you know where we are in relation to real space?" RJ asked, reaching out to trace the lines of Whitey's picture with her finger.

"This is real space, RJ."

"You know what I mean, Tin Pants, have you seen any constellations that look like our space, our galaxy?"

"Yes, but it would take us another five years to reach it and two years after that to reach the nearest jumpgate. We don't have enough fuel."

"Well, ain't that a kick in the pants. Let's keep that knowledge between you and me, all right?"

"Why?" Poley asked.

She sighed, "Because it's better to lose a race by three yards than by two inches."

"I don't understand."

RJ sighed again. "If we find a suitable power source then we'll tell them how close we are. Till then we'll just say we don't know."

"But that's a lie."

RJ laughed. "Yes, it is. But it's a good lie. I'll teach you about that later." She frowned suddenly, let her hand fall away from the picture and just stared at it for a minute.

"Does my picture make you sad, RJ?" Poley asked.

RJ looked at him and smiled. "No Poley, your picture does not make me sad. Missing them makes me sad."

"It's very hard to miss people," he said.

"Yes it is."

 

Topaz awoke with a start, spit the last of the blue green slime from his mouth and croaked out in an unused voice, "Bitchin'!" After he took a moment to try to find his whole voice he said, "I can't see shit, is that normal?"

His speech centers were actually coming back faster than hers had, which RJ found annoying for some reason she couldn't quite put her finger on. "It usually lasts four to six hours. Mine only lasted about fifteen minutes. I have no idea how long yours will last. Poley will take you down to the showers while I wake Levits up."

"So, Tin Pants, did you miss us?" she heard Topaz ask as they walked away.

"You have no idea," she mumbled as she worked the controls that would bring Levits back from the sleep of death.

That was what it was, too. Like being dead for twelve years and then waking up and . . . Where the hell were they? For a second she debated whether it was kinder to just let Levits sleep, and then she selfishly decided she wanted him to be with her.

The process of reviving took about thirty minutes. Levits was slowly warmed to 98.6 then the gel was sucked out of the tube he was in and then out of his airways. When this was done the electrodes attached to his chest were activated and his body was shocked back to life.

When Levits' heart started beating normally, his blood pressure stabilized and his breathing became normal, RJ opened the tube and carefully removed the tubes that ran down his nose into his lungs. Then she removed the electrodes from his chest. She took a wet towel and wiped the goo from Levits' face, and his eyes opened.

"You're all right, Levits," RJ assured him.

He tried to speak but nothing came out. He tried again.

On his third try he stammered out, "God I hate this shit."

"I know," RJ said gently. She ran her finger over his still slightly blue lips. It was taking a while for circulation to return. It was normal, because unlike her and Topaz, Levits was normal.

He had wanted to stay on Earth. He had wanted her to stay on Earth with him. Now they were . . . wherever the hell they were, because she had wanted to be anywhere but Earth. Twelve years had passed while they slept in blue-green slimy shit, and they were probably never going home.

"I'm sorry," RJ said gently.

"Why . . . sorry?"

"Because if I had done what you wanted to do you'd be safe on Earth enjoying the free country we helped create."

"No, we'd be fighting an army of Beta 4 humanoids trained to kill us. Besides, as mushy and un-me as this is going to sound, I'd rather be anywhere with you than on Earth without you."

"Remember that when you find out where we aren't and just how long we've been asleep."

 

Levits' vision had taken six hours to return, and after eight his legs still didn't want to hold him, so RJ helped him to the bridge where Topaz and Poley were waiting.

"I know this is going to sound stupid because we've been asleep for . . . how long again?" Levits asked, as RJ helped him to set in the pilot's chair.

"Twelve years," the other three said at once.

"Anyway, I'm tired. I've been sleeping for twelve years and I feel like I could take a nap."

"Actually, me too, believe it or not," RJ said.

Levits looked at Poley through squinted eyes. "So, etch and sketch boy, you want to tell me why I'm screaming in every single picture you've done of me?"

Poley shrugged. "It's how I best remembered you."

Levits mumbled something under his breath.

"So let's have a look at our new home." RJ pressed a button and the blast doors opened. They found themselves looking at the badly overgrown ruins of what must have once been a very large high tech city. Some small, primate-looking, fur-bearing creatures were hanging in vines looking at the ship and apparently screeching, though they couldn't hear them. RJ engaged the audio equipment and they heard the animal's cry, which she thought sounded more like bird song than monkey chatter. As if on cue, a bird of some type flew toward the port, and RJ actually ducked.

"That can't be good," Topaz said.

"It's just a freaking bird," Levits said in disbelief.

"He's talking about the ruins," RJ said. "Where are the beings that built this city? Where did they go? What happened to them?"

"I monitored this planet for years. As I got closer there were signs of life. I saw the cities, but there are no signs that civilization still exists. No sign of motor vehicles, planes or even radio waves. No satellites, nothing to imply that beings this advanced still live here. No signs of anything mechanical. No power plants. From the patterns I saw from space I suspect a meteor shower wiped out the intelligent life form. In fact, I would go so far as to say there was a mass extinction," Poley said.

"If the buildings made it, at least in part, through the holocaust, what makes you think the humanoid population didn't?" Levits asked.

"Why do you naturally assume they were humanoid?" Topaz asked, an aggravated tone to his voice.

RJ ignored him and answered Levits' question. "Buildings don't care about climate or air quality. If the population survived, then why are there no signs of the civilization they obviously once lived in? Unless they've devolved into something more primitive, or mutated."

Levits nodded.

"I found nothing toxic to humans in my examination of the air. Below Earth normal radiation levels," Poley said.

"Nothing we know is toxic to us," Levits corrected.

"He's right," Topaz said. "This is an alien world. Our equipment can't have knowledge of compounds that have never been encountered by humans. We don't know what substances or chemicals we might find here . . . Hey! I wonder if my brush is here?" He wandered across the bridge and out the door.

"Freaking beautiful!" Levits yelled.

"See what I mean?" Poley said to RJ.

RJ smiled a crocked smile and nodded. "Poley, go after Topaz and make sure he doesn't leave the ship."

Poley left chiming as he went after Topaz. "Your brush couldn't be here, Topaz. You have never been here before. Your thought is illogical."

"So?" Levits asked.

RJ shrugged. "This is a big planet, a moon actually, but not much smaller in size than Earth. The air seems good; the gravitational pull is close to Earth normal. The animal life we can see certainly doesn't look dangerous . . ."

"But?" Levits prompted.

"As you suggested, just because this city is in ruins doesn't mean that every intelligent being on the planet is dead."

"Just their civilization. If they had survived surely they would have made an attempt to rebuild what they lost. You heard what Tin Pants said. No signs of intelligent life," Levits reminded.

"That's not what he said, he said he detected no radio waves, no working motor vehicles, no satellites. Technology does not necessarily equal intelligence, and the lack of technology does not necessarily rule out the presence of intelligent life. Don't forget the Beta 4 humanoids, they were so ignorant of technology that they thought thermo generators where gods, but they were by no means stupid."

"Alright they may be smart, but if they don't have technology . . ."

"Maybe they have found some energy source so different from our traditional sources that our equipment can't detect it, any more than it can give us any information about compounds it doesn't understand. Of course that's mostly just wishful thinking on my part."

"Wishful thinking?" Levits asked in confusion.

"If there isn't any intelligent population, then there is no energy source. There will be no one to help us, and we'll never get off this planet," RJ said.

"In which case we might as well walk out on the surface without any protective gear, because I for one don't plan to spend my life cooped up in this tin can."

"The rest of us could leave the ship without protective gear, but you should wear it just in case. The ship will be able to filter the air and . . ."

"For how long?" Levits demanded. "Twelve years in space, even with most systems shut down, solar cells at maximum, and using the gold in the fusion reactor, how much stored fuel do you think we actually have left? A year's worth, two, three, ten? And what about food rations? We've got six months worth at the most . . ."

"Actually closer to twenty years."

Levits was momentarily taken aback, but only momentarily. "Yeah, but it all tastes like crap, and I plan on living longer than twenty years. Eventually we're going to have to find food here, and there's no guarantee that even after the computer analyzes and says it's safe that there won't be something in it that will kill us. I'm sick to death of being the weak link in your chain, RJ. No, I don't have superhuman abilities like the rest of you, but I'm not exactly a sniveling, pants-shitting infant, either. I'd rather die if I'm going to die, and get it over with. I don't want to sit any longer with death hanging over my head. We just spent twelve years sleeping in goo waiting for this. Waiting to find a planet that might sustain us. This is it; it's our only shot. We will most probably be stuck here for the rest of our lives, the rest of my life at the very least. So as soon as we've had some time to rest, eat and have sex, not necessarily in that order, I want to leave the ship without a suit and check out this planet of ours."

 

Well rested and sated on all levels, RJ opened the airlock. The air was heavy in oxygen content and for a minute she saw Levits waver.

"You all right?" she asked.

"Give me a second to adjust," Levits said with a smile. "I'm not really used to good air."

"My god it smells wonderful here," Topaz said, starting down the gangplank.

"Nothing toxic. I believe that smell is flowers," Poley announced.

"I didn't say it smelled toxic you tin idiot," Topaz hissed in Poley's direction.

"For the record, I'm not really made of tin," Poley corrected, sounding ever so slightly put out.

Topaz ignored him and stepped off the gangplank.

"Don't wander off," RJ warned.

She watched as the primate-looking animals swung quickly through the trees away from them. "Did you see that?" she asked no one in particular.

"What?" Topaz asked, returning reluctantly to the group still at the top of the gangplank.

"How the little monkey things ran from us," RJ said.

"So?" Topaz shrugged and moved away from them again.

"Why would they run from us unless they had seen something like us before? Unless they have been hunted by something like us," Poley said.

"Oh, I don't know, RJ, maybe because we're twenty times their size and look nothing like anything they've seen before." Topaz stepped on the planet again and this time they followed him. Poley had landed the ship in a large flat area in the middle of the ruined city where the plant growth wasn't as dense. Topaz got down on the ground and brushed the leaves away with his hand and under it found a hard concrete-like surface. "RJ, what do you make of this?"

She looked at the spot of ground and then around at the circle they had landed in. It wasn't that big, in fact not much bigger than their ship. Poley had no doubt used the landing program on the ship to find the best possible spot. On a planet that was mostly ocean and jungle, this would have been it. "It might have been a parking lot."

"Oh yes, of course," Topaz said in a superior tone. "Because of course anything intelligent, any advanced civilization must be humanoid. I suppose you have also deduced that they must have two arms, two legs, two eyes, and hair on their head and around their privates, which of course are exactly like ours as well." He started walking while continuing his tirade. RJ looked at Levits and smiled. He rolled his eyes and took her hand as they walked.

Topaz ranted on. "I used to watch all those stupid science-fiction movies and read all those stupid science-fiction books and I used to wonder why no one was ever bright enough to figure out that not all intelligent life would be humanoid. I used to wonder why every alien they found on Star Trek was always bipedal and exactly like us, except for bigger brains, ridges on their foreheads or pointed ears."

"Perhaps because they were visionary. After all the Argy are humanoid, so much like us that we can interbreed. In fact, to date all intelligent life we've found has had basically a similar body design to ours," RJ said. "Besides this planet has those little primate type creatures we've already seen, and they naturally would have evolved into something humanoid."

Poley continued where his sister had stopped. "It's logical to assume that any Earth-type planet would evolve in a similar fashion to our own. That being the case, the flora, fauna and intelligent species would be very similar. It's a good design, the whole two arms, two legs, two eyes thing. I mean what would be done with, say, a third leg? Tentacles certainly wouldn't be as versatile as hands . . ."

"I expect such narrow-mindedness from something so unimaginative," Topaz snapped at the robot. Not paying any attention to where he was going, he tripped over something knee high and fell. He landed on his ass. He jumped up and turned to investigate the offending obstacle that had been hidden from view by plant life. "Well, shit," he said as he looked at what was obviously an ancient commode.

 

They explored deep into the heart of the ruined city where some of the structures were still twenty stories tall and looked like they had been sheared off at the top. Age, weather and plants were ripping the buildings apart, and RJ had suggested early on that they steer clear of the taller buildings to keep from being crushed by falling debris, which littered the streets and had to be climbed over.

"Are we looking for anything in particular?" Levits asked after they had been walking for several hours.

"Just looking," RJ answered. "Why, do you feel bad? Do we need to go back to the ship?"

"I feel fine," Levits snapped. He was not about to tell them that he felt nauseous and was tired. No doubt from doing this much exercise so soon after a twelve-year hibernation. He was going to have to learn to keep up with the superhumans and the robot or he was going to find himself constantly left behind. Much to his amazement he found himself wishing that David was here, so he wouldn't be the only normal human around.

RJ stopped abruptly and threw her arms out. They all knew what that meant, so they stopped and listened.

"Poley what is that?" she asked.

"I hear breathing. A larger animal, and more than one of them."

RJ nodded. "We are being watched."

"By what?" Levits whispered back.

"How the hell would I know? But I can tell you this. Whatever they are they have emotions, because I felt them before I heard them," RJ said. "They are curious about us, and afraid."

"So something has survived?" Topaz whispered.

"Yes." She turned around and started back the way they had come.

"What are we doing?" Topaz asked, still talking in a whisper.

"Going back to the ship," RJ said. "Stop whispering. They won't be able to understand us, and if we start whispering they're going to know something's wrong."

"Is something wrong?" Levits asked.

"Well they were stalking us, tracking us. They are no doubt hunters, and we don't know what weapons they have. Could be anything from stone axes to sophisticated weapons left over from this crumbled civilization. Don't forget the thing we found in the ancient Argy ship that damn near killed you all."

Levits doubled his pace and had soon passed RJ.

 

Two weeks later, though they'd set up monitoring equipment and had gone on several expeditions, they were no closer to putting a face on the beings they shared the planet with.

"Well they certainly aren't stupid," RJ said, as she watched the screen go dead; yet another monitor had been taken out. "They know we're trying to see them, and they know what the cameras do."

"Why don't you force a confrontation?" Topaz asked. He was growing more impatient by the day. He wanted to meet the creatures they shared the planet with, because as he kept saying . . . "They are so different from us that they find our form hideous and repulsive." He wanted very much to have his theory proven true. "You could catch one, RJ."

"If these creatures lack technology, and I'm sort of guessing they do, then they aren't going to be able to help us get fuel to get our craft off this planet even if we don't piss them off. As such we will be stuck here. Since we're going to be stuck here with them, and I'm guessing there are a hell of a lot more of them than there are of us, I don't think forcing a confrontation is a very good idea."

"So far they have allowed us to leave the ship and run our tests for edible food without even attempting to attack us. This means one of two things. Either they are as curious about us as we are about them, or they are sizing us up making sure there aren't any more of us in this big-assed contraption before they attack."

"Well that's a comforting thought," Levits said from where he and Poley were running tests on some plant samples they had brought back to the ship on their last expedition.

"Any data yet on exactly what catastrophe caused the collapse of this society?" RJ asked Poley.

"Nothing concrete, but I'm still ninety-five percent sure it's meteor destruction. Little else would have done so much damage. This was a very advanced civilization. In many ways more advanced than our own," Poley said, not bothering to look up from what he was doing.

"Why do you say that, Tin Pants?" Topaz asked.

"Well every single plant we have tested has not only been edible but has also been filled with nutritional value and highly digestible . . ."

"Don't taste too bad, either," Levits said walking away from the lab bench and dropping into a nearby chair.

"The chances of this being natural selection are highly unlikely . . ."

"I'm so proud, did you notice he didn't spit out numbers?" Topaz asked.

"I don't see why you should be proud," Poley said, sounding almost angry. "You didn't build me with the ability to learn and to deduce that it annoyed people when I gave them the exact numbers contained in a probability factor."

"Please finish what you were saying, Poley," RJ pleaded.

"These plants have been genetically engineered in such a way that they have reproduced themselves identically from the time they were created. They have in many generations killed off all other forms of plant life on the planet. They have done so without either cross-pollinating with the native plants or each other. Each plant is still what it was originally created to be. Humans have never been able to do that with their gene tampering. We were never able to create a genetically engineered plant whose seeds came up true."

RJ nodded. "I've also noticed that the plants seem to have an uncanny ability to adapt to their surroundings. I've seen the same variety of plant doing just as well in full sun as full shade. There are plants growing inside buildings whose roofs still don't leak, so the ground inside is dry. Yet the plants are doing just as well there as they are doing out on the surface where it rains three and four times a week."

"What does that have to do with anything?" Topaz asked.

"Nothing, I guess," RJ shrugged. "I just thought it was interesting."

"A civilization as advanced as Poley says this one was might have had space travel. There might be pieces of that technology available on this world. These survivors might not even know what it is, but we will if we find it. We still may be able to get off this planet and back home," Levits said excitedly.

"I hate to be a nay-sayer, but not every race finds it necessary to explore space. If they had space flight the logical thing would have been to evacuate the planet when they saw the comet approaching. Since there is still intelligent life here, I assume they didn't do so, which implies they probably didn't have that ability. However if they had space flight and they did evacuate the planet then they certainly wouldn't have left anything that was capable of flight here," RJ said.

"Actually I think you quite like being a nay-sayer. The truth is we aren't going to find out anything until we make contact," Topaz said haughtily.

"You know, Dumbass," Levits said, making it sound like Topaz's name, as had been his habit the last few days that Topaz had been driving them all as crazy as he was. "It might not be so easy to make contact with this multi-tentacled, three butted, one eyed lizard, with a horn growing out of his dick."

"I realize that some of us are happy as long as we're getting three square meals and two good screwings a day, but speaking solely from the experience of someone who hasn't had a really good fucking in something close to thirteen years, some of us are interested in something more than three square meals a day. We want to explore this planet to see . . ."

"If a multi-tentacled, three-butted, one-eyed lizard woman would screw you?" RJ suggested.

"Well, yes," Topaz said incredulously.

They all laughed—even the robot. Then RJ walked over to Topaz and patted his cheek. "A little patience, Topaz. Making contact with these creatures, whatever they might look like, isn't going to be as easy as making contact with the Beta 4 humanoids. Some of them spoke our language, and you actually spoke theirs. They, as it turned out, were at least part human. There is going to be no spoken language between these creatures and us, and there will be no shared DNA. They are completely alien to us, and we to them. We don't want a violent first contact. We have to convince them that we mean them no harm, but are capable of harming them if our hand is forced. We need the upper hand, but we don't want to scare them. We certainly don't want them to attack us."

"You aren't afraid of them, are you?" Levits asked in disbelief.

RJ shook her head. "No, there aren't many things I actually fear. However, consider this. They know what we look like, but we have no idea what they look like, and what if they were able to do the same thing with people that they did to plants?"

"Then they'd all be edible and highly nutritious!" Topaz exclaimed, and then went off—no doubt to look for something he hadn't lost yet.

Levits shook his head and smiled in spite of himself.

RJ sighed deeply. "They'd all be GSH's. I may not be stronger than they are." She suddenly snapped her fingers and looked in the direction Topaz had just gone. "I just now figured it out. His brain fizzes out when it's reached the saturation point. When what he's just realized is too much for him."

"Well, duh," Poley said hollowly from where he stood carving on a piece of wood he had taken from the surface.

"You know, I think I liked you better when you were more like a robot and less like us," RJ teased.

"Really?" Poley inquired, looking suddenly hurt.

"No, not really." She walked over and kissed his cheek. "Come on, I just had an idea."

 

RJ and Poley left the ship carrying full packs, closing and securing the hatch behind them. They walked away from the ship towards the heart of the city.

"What now?" Poley asked.

"We wait for them to get close. Take your pack off and put it down."

Poley nodded, and RJ followed suit. Then she stretched and rubbed at her lower back.

"Act like your back hurts."

Poley copied her actions almost too closely. "We'll act like they got too heavy and we decided to go on without them and come back for them later." As she talked she made hand gestures, which suggested what she was saying. "Act like you don't think it's such a good idea."

"But it was the plan."

"Poley, just . . . act like Levits does when I tell him to do something he doesn't want to do."

Poley started throwing his arms around in dramatic sweeps and screaming. "That's the stupidest freaking thing I've ever heard. Are you freaking out of your tiny little genetically superior brain? You crazy bitch, you can't leave your pack here for any idiot, tentacled, slime-eating alien to come and pilfer and . . ."

"Alright, that's enough!" RJ yelled back. "You've done very well but now it's time for you to walk after me and pout. I know you know how to pout because you do it all the time." RJ started walking.

"Because everyone treats me like a machine," Poley said, as he followed her with a pout.

"We do not," RJ said with a laugh.

"Sometimes you do."

"Well, sometimes you act like it."

"Do not," he mumbled, more or less proving his point.

They walked on through the ruins for another hour just checking things out. "Look here," RJ said, kneeling down and pointing to a plant limb that was growing at a right angle against the ground.

"We most probably stepped on it when we walked this way three days ago," Poley said, leaning down to look at the plant with interest. "It has already healed."

"Better than healed, it's starting to put out a new branch at the break, see?" She pointed. "It's compensating for the damage, even though the plant has healed."

"They are very hardy."

RJ nodded, looking thoughtful but saying nothing more as she took off walking again. They walked for another thirty minutes. going much further into the city than they had ever been before.

"Hey look," Poley called out as he rolled a rock the size of a hay bale aside and pointed to the skeleton he'd just found underneath it.

RJ scampered over the rocks and looked at it. She nodded. "So much for Topaz's theory."

"Bipedal, two armed," Poley supplied.

RJ nodded and crawled over the rubble to kneel beside the skeleton and get a closer look. There only seemed to be four digits on the hand, one of which was an opposable thumb, but there were six finger joints. The chest cavity was larger than that of a human, showing that the race had most probably developed at a time when the atmosphere wasn't quite as oxygen rich. Of course it was hard to tell exactly how large it might have been because it had been crushed by the rock, and she was going strictly on the size and amount of the crushed fragments. The skull was definitely different. There was a thick bone plate on the forehead and a flap of bone covered both cheeks. She picked one of these up, guessing that it had been connected by tissue and cartilage. There were similar bones around where the throat would have been. The stomach area also had been covered in similar bone plates.

Internal armor. The sort of thing a genetic engineer might do, and she was almost afraid to pick up one of the leg bones for her next test. But it easily crumbled to dust in her hand. "Not GSH's," RJ said.

"What about the armor?"

"Like the plates on some lizard's back. They evolved that way."

"How can you be so sure, RJ?" Poley asked.

"I would have thought you'd figure that out on your own. If you're going to go to all the trouble to create a GSH with armor plates, why wouldn't you make them as strong as steel?"

"Some might consider that overkill, or perhaps they simply weren't able to accomplish it," Poley suggested, then changing the subject. "They aren't following us anymore."

"I know. Come on, let's go find them." RJ touched a button on her wrist com, and it started beeping. "Yep, our gear's on the move, and you know it isn't doing that on its own. Let's move."

 

RJ was impressed. Had it not been for their sophisticated locating equipment she never would have been able to follow the trail they left. They left things so undisturbed in their wake that it was as if they walked just above the ground.

The earpiece she had in place helped her hear what they were saying, not that she could actually understand them, but given just a little time she would. Their language was sophisticated, stern sounding with hard edges. There was nothing guttural about it. Each word was spoken with perfect diction—more proof that they had been at one time a sophisticated civilization.

They soon reached their encampment. RJ and Poley stopped on the outskirts of the camp, squatted down out of sight, and watched the natives with calculated interest.

As she had thought they would, they were going through the bags. For this reason she had sewn the transmitters into the linings and put into the bags what she wanted them to know about herself and her crew. Some fruits she'd found on their planet to show them that they ate, canteens full of water to show their need for rehydration. A jacket to indicate that they needed protection against the elements, a knife to show that they had weapons and could defend themselves. Pictures RJ had Poley etch into two small pieces of the ship's ceiling tiles of the male and female of the human species nude—though RJ was pretty sure that the fact that Poley had used his own form for the male of the species was going to cause instant feelings of inadequacy in the local male population if they had similar genitalia, and RJ had a feeling they did.

Their village was several miles away from the ruins, but not so far that they wouldn't have noticed a huge spaceship landing. They were obviously interested in RJ and her crew or they wouldn't have shadowed them since their arrival. So she was helping them learn about her as she was in turn learning about them.

Their village was constructed of native materials mixed with materials that had been taken from the lost civilization. Nothing looked very sturdy or substantial. What had obviously once been some sort of vehicle was now the roof of a building made of trees and stacked stones. The whole place had a sort of "half" essence to it. Half the old, half the new, with that which was new looking like what should have been old. This was a post-apocalyptic society. Something catastrophic had happened to this world and this was what had risen from the ashes. This was what had survived.

But why build way out here? Why not reconstruct the city, when much of it was obviously salvageable? Why had they seemingly lost all knowledge of technology?

It smacked of plague, logical since disease often followed a natural disaster—any disaster, actually. Water systems got polluted, sewer systems didn't work, and normal healthcare and hygiene were often impossible. Disease ran rampant. If you were afraid an area was contaminated you certainly wouldn't want to live there.

Of course if that was the case you wouldn't hunt there either, and they obviously did.

RJ agreed with Poley's meteor theory. It explained all the massive damage, and how a skeleton got under a piece of fallen building. Of course it could have happened much later. He might not have been killed during the initial disaster; he could have died hundreds of years later. He might have been hunting in the ruins, been in the wrong place at the wrong time and had a piece of building fall on top of him.

No, that didn't work because his chest had been huge, indicating a need to filter large amounts of air to get the oxygen he needed. As she was looking at these people she could see that they had much smaller chest cavities. They had already evolved, they had grown up in the planet's now oxygen-rich atmosphere. That hadn't happened over night.

So many questions. Why were they living out here? Why had they abandoned the cities? Where had all their technology gone?

The only way she was going to get any solid answers was to learn their language. RJ listened intently to the words they spoke and defined the words by what they were taking from their packs, what they were looking at, and how they were relating to one another. Their emotions were easily read—excitement, fear, and hope.

It was this last one that puzzled her. Why hope? What did they think she and the others might offer them? Did they realize that their world had once had so much more? Did they understand that the technology of the spaceship meant that RJ and the others might be able to tell them how to achieve it? That they might be able to bring the planet back to what it had once been?

They looked almost human. They had hair of several different colors on their heads, and, RJ guessed with a smile, thinking how pissed off Topaz would be, around their privates. Two eyes, a nose, a mouth. Their foreheads were slightly pronounced, and if you knew to look for them you could see where the bone plates dwelt under their skin, but for the most part you could have dropped them on a Reliance colony planet and no one would have known the difference. Sort of blew all shit out of Topaz's little rant about them all having their collective heads up their asses concerning alien life forms. Of course any disappointment he was likely to feel was probably going to be washed away when he saw that not only did their females seem to be compatible, but they were also attractive.

In fact, they were a very attractive people. She smiled when she realized their skin was almost the same color as hers, that golden tanned look that wasn't really a tan at all. They were big and small and every size in between. They were young and old, weak and strong. More like humans than the Argy, in fact. Which meant they probably had no paranormal abilities. They were different because their emotions and thoughts were hidden from each other, and therefore their difference was in how they attracted a mate, made friends, and developed personal connections. Beings with telepathic and empathic powers almost always wound up looking more or less the same, because their needs, wants, and desires, the things that made them different, were obvious.

"Now what?" Poley asked in a whisper.

"We wait, watch and learn."

Poley nodded. He knew what she meant, because he was doing the same thing. Learning parts of their language by watching what words were associated with what objects and actions. Since neither of them was capable of forgetting, they would quickly learn the language.

The dim "night" began to fall, and some of the other natives started building up a big fire in a central pit. It wasn't really necessary for light, though, because reflected light from the planet's surface hit the moon at nightfall and almost always kept at least this side of the moon from falling into complete darkness. The only exception was when the planet eclipsed the sun, which happened about once every seventy-eight hours and lasted for about four hours.

The natives put the packs and their contents aside after very neatly repacking them, and started to prepare what she assumed was the evening meal. Big pots were hung over the fire and everyone, young and old, male and female started to chop up the native plant life and a couple of small animals and put equal measures into each pot. In a few minutes the contents of the pots were boiling and RJ's mouth started to water. It was the best food she'd smelled since they'd roasted water snails over a fire on Beta 4.

The vessels they used to cook and to eat from had obviously been gleaned from the dead civilization from which they had come. She wondered just how far this attachment to the past went, how much knowledge had been handed down. Did they know they were the same people whose dead cities they hunted in, or did they believe they were a different race? Did they know those cities had been built by their ancestors or did they believe they had been built by gods?

That they had lost the ability to create many of the things they used was obvious. They had spears and slingshot-like contraptions, and they had what appeared to be very old projectile firing type weapons, but she had to wonder if they actually still worked or were just for show.

Their dress was simple. Robes and pants made of cloth, no doubt made of plant fiber. More than likely one of these plants had been engineered for the sole purpose of making clothing. The cloth was in shades of green and brown. She thought at first it was its natural color, and then realized with a smile that it was camouflage. Their common everyday dress, from the youngest to the oldest, was camouflage. They were hunters, hunters with minimalist weapons, so they had to be stealthy, unseen. They were accustomed to hiding in plain sight. This is why they hadn't seen them. They were a careful people, but why?

Their demeanor seemed to imply that they were also hunted, yet RJ had seen no such predator, the ship's computers had detected no such animal. No doubt there were others who had survived, other little pockets of civilization that had made it through the holocaust. Maybe they had become tribal and fought over hunting and foraging land.

It seemed altogether absurd, considering that everything on the planet seemed to be edible and the planet was nothing but jungle. These beings did not look underfed.

But beings did weird, illogical things. They made up some stupid religion, then you had to believe what they said or you had to go. According to Topaz and all that she'd read, this was what had caused most of the wars on pre-Reliance Earth.

Ultimately, the Reliance had used religious wars to take over control of the world. They used religion to bring the world to its knees, and then they abolished it—since it was obviously so detrimental—and made the Reliance the people's god.

And the whole "my gods are better than your gods" hadn't just caused numerous wars on Earth, but had caused them with a dozen other races on as many planets that she could think of. People wanted answers to things that couldn't really be answered, and so they made up things they could believe in that answered their questions. Since people seemed to be incapable of just agreeing to disagree, they always wound up fighting over something that none of them could prove. Few worlds had managed to avoid this.

There were other things people fought over as well: food, sports teams, borderlines, and freedom.

Whatever the cause, RJ was now sure that these people were at war with someone. This was no doubt the reason for their hope. They were hoping that RJ and her crew would have weapons with which they could defeat their enemy. They were hoping for some sort of alliance.

She frowned. How could she choose sides? She'd fought before without reason or purpose but simply because she was ordered to do so. She didn't want to do that again. How did she know these guys weren't the bad guys? She didn't want to fight over food on a planet covered with food, or over whose god was better.

Suddenly she heard an electronic sound off in the distance. She took out her earpiece to be sure it wasn't just feedback. "Poley . . ."

"I hear it."

"I thought you said there were no active machines on this planet."

"There weren't. I monitored the planet for twenty-seven months and found nothing."

RJ put her earpiece back in, and started to com Levits to see if he had detected anything, but she didn't have to—he was yelling in her ear.

"RJ do you read? Get the fuck out of there. Dammit are you listening?"

"Yes, and you can stop screaming, any time now," RJ said. "What the hell is that? I can hear something coming this way though it's still distant."

"I don't know what the hell it is, but there are three of them, they are huge, they are moving very fast, and they seemed to just walk up out of the ocean."

"Well that would explain why we didn't detect them. The water must have blocked the mechanical activity." Poley said.

"Shoddy-assed Reliance equipment, next time lets steal something better," RJ said with a smile.

"The computer image I'm getting makes them look like . . . Well, like huge spiders. Now get your ass back to the ship this minute." Levits ordered.

"Ah, alright," RJ said, not moving a muscle.

"Oh dammit! You aren't coming back, are you?"

"And you're surprised because I normally do everything you say? I want to see what it is," RJ replied.

"I was afraid you were going to fucking say that," Levits said. Then he was gone, and she could hear the locals again. They were obviously shouting warnings and probably obscenities at each other. Then they were throwing their food aside, and running and arming themselves with the projectile weapons, so RJ assumed they did actually still work. She doubted their hearing was as good as hers, so they hadn't heard them coming, they had felt them. She had noticed a slight trembling of the ground, and these beings seemed to have a heightened sense of touch. No doubt another reason they were able to move with such stealth.

"RJ," Poley said calmly at her side. "I think we should go. There are three of them, they are large, and they have some sort of plasma type weapon."

"You aren't afraid are you, Tin Pants?"

"Well I am less than thrilled at the prospect of you and me taking on three very large, armed robots."

"Robots?"

"Well, they move like robots," Poley explained.

RJ looked at him, eyebrows raised.

"I'm hardly a simple robot," he said, proving it by the fact that he had been able to read her body language.

RJ smiled, then nodded silently. After a few moments of screaming and what looked a whole lot like drawing straws, most of the natives had fled. Only a few holding the projectile weapons stayed. They were staying so that the others could make their getaway. Theirs was obviously a suicide mission, and she could tell by their body language that there was a very good chance that they were all going to take off running when whatever was coming got there.

"Come on," RJ said to Poley and she got up. He followed her right into the middle of the natives' camp. The ten natives left there turned and looked at them, startled and obviously wanting to run and hide from the strangers. Since they were here to die anyway, there was only a second when they thought about running from RJ and Poley. Then their duty to protect their people from the beasts that were rushing towards them won over fear of the strangers. However, they did aim their weapons at them.

RJ held her hands up quickly and Poley followed suit. She carefully used the words she had already learned and sign language to tell them what she interpreted as, "We want to help you kill the enemy." She must have gotten it right because the one she assumed was the leader looked at her and spit out a word she took to mean "OK", and the weapons turned away from her and Poley.

They were getting closer now. The noise rose in tempo, and the ground shook more. Then the trees parted, and there stood three twenty-foot tall six-legged metal "spiders." Each was topped with a glass dome and inside RJ could just make out three one-eyed alien creatures obviously controlling the machines.

"Well, this ought to make Topaz's day. He's going to get his monster and get compatible females, too," RJ mumbled.

The natives opened fire on the glass domes with the projectile weapons, and RJ knew instantly this must be their weak spot. Then the cowardly little bastards ran into the jungle, leaving her and Poley to fight the monsters themselves.

So they had either just stayed there to slow the things down, or they had decided to leave RJ and Poley to fight their suicide mission.

Blaster fire erupted from the machines, taking out one of the natives who hadn't been fast enough. RJ grabbed her blaster with one hand and whipped her chain off her waist with the other. She slung the end of her chain towards one of the legs of the closest metal-clad monster just as it lifted off the ground. She snagged it the first try and yanked with all her force. The monster faltered, almost falling. RJ leapt on top of the globe as blaster fire struck the ground where she had been standing only a moment before.

She crashed down on the clear dome with her fist but nothing happened, except a resounding ringing sound that was louder than even the blaster fire. She kept tension on the chain, keeping the leg up and throwing the machine off its normal gait. She could feel the terror of the creature inside the machine. He wasn't used to being in danger, he was at the top of the food chain. Around her she could see that the natives had come back, and while they weren't getting in close they were firing their weapons at the beasts. The projectiles were doing little more than bouncing off the clear domes, and annoying the hell out of her. In fact, one of them ricocheted into her arm, and she almost lost her grip on the chain.

She could see Poley running in a zigzag pattern at a high rate of speed, in and out of the legs of the metal-clad monsters, confounding their fire and movement. He stopped at a point under one, looked up and fired his laser. Sparks and red liquid rained down on Poley for his trouble, but the monster immediately started to lurch around spastically. He had targeted the machine's hydraulic system. Damn! She wished she'd thought of that. Still, she couldn't let her metal brother get the better of her. She shot the dome with her laser, holding a steady stream on it till it cracked. Then she smacked it again with her fist, full force. This time the dome busted and she found herself sitting on the slimy head of the alien inside—which she now knew had been covered by seawater. Exposed to air, the creature immediately started to die and his machine, which was apparently attached to him, started to lurch around wildly. RJ found herself flying through the air. She landed on her ass on the ground, her chain falling in a neat pile in her lap. She looked up to see the remaining fully mobile machine bearing down on her, its gun aimed right at her head. She rolled and it missed.

She was in the process of jumping to her feet when the entire machine blew up, covering her in a sludge of monster guts, seawater and hydraulic fluid. She wasn't vain enough to believe that it had gotten so scared it simply blew itself up rather than face her. She turned around to see one of the ship's skiffs hovering in the air above them.

"You're welcome," Levits said in her earpiece.

"I would have killed it," RJ said insistently, as she rose to her feet, dusting herself off.

"Would it absolutely kill you to say thank you, RJ?"

"It might, why risk it?" RJ answered with a grin. She wiped the goo off her face with her hand. It had the same consistency as the cryo-chamber goo, and a nose hair-singeing stench.

"You want me to blow that one?" Levits asked of the damaged one that was still lurching around.

"No, I'd like to see if we can catch one of these slimy things alive and check it out." The machine fell over as if on cue, and the natives grabbed clubs, ran in, and beat on the globe till it burst and the creature inside died. "Or not."

"Hah!" Topaz screamed into her ear through his mouthpiece. "See? I was right! Slimy tentacled ocean-dwelling aliens."

"What about the others?" RJ asked, wanting to slap him for the temporary ringing in her ear.

"I was still right."

"If you say so. Levits, return to the ship."

"Are you sure? That could just be the first wave."

"They were the test," RJ said. "Now they know we can kill them, they'll have to process the data before they send more troops."

"You're thinking like a human, RJ, and those things aren't even humanoid, which of course proves that I was right, I'd like to remind you," Topaz said.

"In my experience all beings which wage wars do it in a similar fashion. All creatures that hunt, hunt in a similar fashion. If I'm wrong you can always come back and save me again, all the while singing out choruses of how right you were. I don't plan to stay here anyway. We'll meet you back at the ship."

"Okay," Levits said, and RJ watched as the ship flew away.

One of the natives walked up to her and yelled a bunch of stuff she couldn't understand. However she could feel that he was thankful, excited, and again there was the overriding emotional swell of hope. They had easily defeated these people's enemies, and so they had hope that they might finally overcome their oppressors.

The rest of the tribe rushed into the village and started hastily packing things. Here was the answer to why they hadn't chosen to rebuild in the city, why their village looked so temporary. They were nomadic. Not because they were following the feeding areas, but because they were always in hiding from their enemies.

RJ smiled. This wasn't so different from home after all.

She grabbed the one she assumed by his posture—and the fact that he seemed to be barking orders at the others—was their leader. He instinctively swung and struck her. She let him go and he jumped away, swinging his hand in the air.

"Sorry," she said, and assumed from his emotions and his posture that he returned the apology. "You," she indicated with a sweep of her hand him and all his people. "Follow." She walked away, then stopped, pointed in the direction she wanted to go and then at herself. "Me."

He nodded and hollered something to his people. They all stopped in their tracks and looked from him to her and back again. He spit something back, pointing at the creatures in the suits they had just killed. They all made a gesture with their right hand, placing it in front of them with palms up, which she assumed meant, all right if you say so.

"Poley!" she yelled and he ran over. "Take samples from the creatures, and make notes and images of the interior and exterior of the machines."

"RJ . . . You have photographic memory . . ."

"They aren't for me, they're for Topaz and Levits; and get our packs and all our gear. The less the enemy knows about us the better."

He nodded and went about the task. She would have liked to have taken one of the machines back to the ship, but was afraid that not even she and Poley would be able to drag one fast enough to avoid any aftershock guard the creatures might send. What she had told Levits and Topaz was true, but depending on what equipment the creatures might have, they might be able to assess damage and make plans much faster than, say, a Reliance crew.

The leader walked up beside her and indicated that his people were ready to follow. RJ held her hand out, palm upward, and took off walking. The others followed. Poley collected his samples and their gear and followed the last native.

 

There were a hundred and three of the natives in all. Since the ship had been a troop carrier there was plenty of room in the cargo bay for the natives' things, and plenty of room in the ship's quarters to house them.

They seemed impressed but not particularly in awe of any of the technology on the ship, so RJ assumed that they did, in fact, know their heritage. No doubt they had been forced to live the way they were because of the creatures.

Of course the million-dollar question was, where did the creatures come from? It was a sure bet this city hadn't been built by or for them.

She was learning the native's language quickly, because of what she was, but not quickly enough to suit her. So she grabbed the leader and took him to a viewscreen. She turned it on and he was excited but not shocked, thus confirming what she already believed to be true. They didn't have technology, but they knew what it was.

She programmed it for a picture of a man. "Man, human, him," she said pointing at the image.

The man nodded that he understood, and then gave her ten words for the male of their species.

One of the natives, a male, walked up to them and spit out some words. The leader nodded then looked at RJ. When he saw she was watching, he touched his mouth and then his belly.

RJ held her hand palm up and turned to Poley. "Poley, take some of the natives out of the ship with you and allow them to get food. Then take them to the kitchen and show them how to use the cooking appliances."

Poley nodded.

"RJ . . . Are you sure it's such a good idea to have these natives running amok on our ship?" Levits asked. "We know nothing about them."

"Like for instance RJ, how do we know who the bad guy really is?" Topaz asked in a harsh whisper.

"Are you agreeing with me?" Levits asked in mock surprise.

"Yes, go write it in your little calendar and put a gold star by it." Topaz turned away from him and glared at RJ. "How do you know that these people aren't the bad guys, and the guys in the suits aren't the good guys?"

"I don't really give a shit," RJ said, annoyed that they were taking time away from her language lesson. Until she learned their language she wasn't going to be able to learn everything she needed to know about this planet, these people, and their slimy ocean dwelling enemy.

"Are you serious?" Topaz asked in disbelief. "These people might have been the aggressors in this altercation. This attack might have been in retaliation."

"True, but those things are slimy and icky," RJ said in a coldly logical way.

"Speaking of which," Levits made a face, "were you planning on washing that shit off soon? You smell like six months of stale butt cheese."

"What does six months of stale butt cheese smell like?" RJ laughed.

"I'm guessing it smells the way you smell right now."

Topaz was outraged. "I . . . I can't believe you, either of you. Would you listen to what you said? You're going to condemn an entire race because it's ugly, different. Don't you even care how they feel, why they attacked?"

"No, I really don't. Now if you would both leave me alone so I could pick this man's language from his brain, then I could get a bath and find out whether or not we're aiding and abetting the bad guys a lot sooner."

"If nothing else, leaving you alone will get me further from the stench. If you need me, I'll be locked on the bridge in case the natives turn hostile," Levits said with a smile and walked off. Topaz just stood there with his arms crossed giving RJ a stern look.

"Isn't there something you've lost that you should go look for?" RJ asked with a crooked grin.

Topaz left apparently in a huff, mumbling, "Is there any real distinction between stale butt cheese and fresh butt cheese?" When he was no doubt half way down the hall he yelled out, "Don't think you've heard the end of this, RJ!"

She didn't really know whether he was talking about the whole alien thing or butt cheese, and she didn't really care; both were equally irrelevant to her at the moment.

 

 

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