Chapter 4

Chapter 4

A n entire flock of angry predators invaded the clearing around my home, and they rebuked the little rainbow one. As the hisses, snarls, growls, and other sounds alarmed both bounder and ghost bird, I shut them both inside, waited, and when that didn’t quiet the cacophony, I whistled, a shrill and sharp sound that cut over their bickering. “You’re scaring away my supper, and I get mean without supper.”

I delivered my comment in a cool and calm voice, loud enough to be heard over the posturing predators. As I liked the one with the rainbow colors, I went to it, reached up, and scratched its crest. It lowered its head and bumped its muzzle against my stomach.

The other predators settled, some with their feathers still fluffed.

It would do.

I cleared my throat before saying, “I’m sure this one is somewhat sorry for wandering off in a storm. I rescued a bounder.” Aware they knew I ate them, I hesitated. Did they understand the concept of pets? “I ate its mother for dinner, and it’s old enough it doesn’t drink milk, but it’s too young to survive on its own. It would have died. I decided to keep it. I’ll set up a cage for it inside my home and another outside for when the weather is good enough. I’ve named it Stupid. It’s soft and fluffy, but it really is not intelligent.”

Stupid could have chewed through the string at any point, but it had accepted the string’s authority without question.

To indicate I didn’t mind the rainbow predator in my space, I scratched its crest again before giving it a brisk rub along its neck. Then, irritated I had no idea if I deal with male, female, or other, I asked, “I don’t suppose you have names and genders, do you?”

The predators hooted, a sound I recognized as their laughter, and they bobbed their heads.

The little one lifted its head, bobbed, and then lowered to the muddy ground, smoothing it before drawing a symbol I recognized, one we used to indicate male.

Then he wrote something using letters I didn’t recognize. I crouched to watch, and after a few more lines of writing things in characters I couldn’t decipher, he scribbled a name using an alphabet I could read. “Taesinn!”

He cooed, bobbed his head, and bumped me with his muzzle. “I am Kithya.”

“Kithya,” he repeated. Wiping his hand along the mud, he erased his previous work, scribbling a few things in combinations of the same letters, but in fashions I could not read. After at least thirty frustrating minutes, I recognized a word in the repeated sentence, although I didn’t know the rest. “Landfall. I do not know the other words.”

Taesinn tilted his head to the side, and then he erased all the words except the one I’d recognized. After a series of hoots and whistles, he began writing more words. When I recognized one, I pointed at it and said what it was.

His crest snapped up, and he pointed at one of the words I recognized and said a word. I realized he spoke the word, likely in a different tongue. I pointed at it and repeated the word as I knew it. “Gamble.”

After the back and forth, he said something in his language to the other predators. One of the larger ones lowered its head and heaved a sigh. Then it turned, gestured to one of the others, one with a green body, crimson crest, and ivory hands, feet, and tail. It jumped away and vanished into the woods.

How curious. I gestured to my fox ears before moving my hair aside to show Taesinn the metal cap covering the thing I’d had installed. “They put this thing in my head before I left for this world, but they never told me how to use it. They claimed it would let me talk to people. But those were lies — just like coming to this world would let us live away from our home was a lie.”

While the cap could come off, I’d never experimented with it. What happened if the stuff under the cap got wet? It never did anything, not even when freshly installed, well, beyond trigger intense headaches for several months until the surgery sites healed.

The tail and ears had created enough problems for me, and I still dodged my reflection.

For the most part, outside of when I dressed and made my clothes, I did my best to ignore how my home world had changed me in preparation for the doomed expedition.

Taesinn rose, headed in the direction of the river, and when he returned, he’d cleaned his feathers of the mud. With a careful touch, he examined the metal cap. I became aware of some pressure, and a moment later, he’d popped it off, holding it out to me.

I took it, staring at the metallic disc nestled in my palm.

The predators called to each other, and Taesinn led the conversation. After a few minutes, he took the cap back and reinstalled it. One of the larger ones with an emerald green body, head, and crest scurried off.

I wondered at that — and if there had been some truth to the device in my head enabling me to speak to them.

I supposed time would tell. It always did.

***

The emerald predator with the pale hands, feet, and tail returned, and it carried a box with it. As it drew closer, I crouched, smoothed out some of the mud, and scribbled the symbols for male and female.

After pointing to female, she said, “Pearrilla.”

“Pearrilla,” I repeated, and I wondered how they converted their language of whistles, hisses, hoots, purrs, and other sounds into names I could understand.

Like Taesinn, she’d cleaned her hands of mud. She pointed at the box with a claw before pointing at my head. Puzzled, I lifted my hand, my fingers coming into contact with the metal cap. “You want to do something with this thing?”

She bobbed her head.

“Okay.” I turned my head so she had better access to the cap. Rather than hand it off to me, she gave it to Taesinn, who observed and hovered nearby. She opened the box to reveal a set of chips, similar to what we’d used to store data on a computer, although they were a different size and shape. The set contained four, and she eased the first out of the box, sliding it into the device behind my human ears. It clicked into place. A second one joined the first with another click, and she touched something inside, which made another clicking sound. Once done, she took the cap from Taesinn and returned it to its proper place. Then she gestured to the other side of her head with the box.

I turned my head to give her access to the other side.

The cap put up a fight, and I winced at the pressure before it popped off. The pair examined the cap, and after giving it a rub along the edge with her capped claw, she nodded. Once again, she installed two chips into the device, touched something inside, and made it click before restoring the cap.

Pearrilla let out a series of clicks, hoots, whistles, and coos. Something buzzed in my ears, and a moment later, an emotionless, disembodied voice whispered, “The thing they installed is a linker set, and with the right chips, it can serve as a translation tool.”

My eyes widened, and I lifted my hand to touch the metal behind my right ear. “It talked!”

Pearrilla bobbed her head. “It will translate my language for you into yours. Young Taesinn helped with the dialect so we knew what chips to install. You can understand my words, yes?”

“You make sense to me,” I replied, and my heart beat in a frantic pace as the realization settled in.

I wasn’t alone in the world anymore.

She cooed, and the device informed me it was a sound of comfort and reassurance, wordless but with meaning. “We all have similar links installed for we travel around much of the universe and need to understand those around us. But ours do not identify the specific dialect, and we have struggled somewhat with some of your words; they are not in our dictionary. But for the most part, we understand you. We do not understand the name of your home world, however. It is not in our dictionary.”

“Galeize. That is not the world’s original name, but I was never told what it is. But our ship had a name and a designation number.”

“Do you remember them?”

I didn’t, but I remembered where I had written it down so it might not be forgotten. It had been many a month since I had visited Emeliara’s grave and her beloved tree. I headed that way, gesturing for them to follow. “I will show you the ship and what remains of our failed colony.”

“How many of you were there?” Pearrilla asked.

“A thousand, and I am the only one left.”

“This is a world unsuitable for human life; the very air and the planet itself is hostile to human biology,” Pearrilla explained. “You must come from one of the obscure worlds. Most are aware that this planet is hostile to homo sapiens . Some branches of humanity are xenophobic, and once settled, the original owners of their worlds backed away, allowing humanity to do as humanity wished to do. But this also meant that they opted out of certain inclusions, such as planetary designations, which list if the world is hostile to certain lifeforms. Homo sapiens is a fascinating species. Of course, nobody had learned about the planet’s hostility until they’d come to live; other species had built the city for them. Then the people came, and most of them died from illness. We are immune to the illness — and it seems you are as well. But we will test that to learn the why of it.”

I could handle being tested to learn why I had survived and everyone else had not. “You know our scientific name?”

“ Homo sapiens are beloved pests of the universe. Numerous, plentiful — amusing. Bold and brave, like you. We could eat you, and you are more interested in petting us.” Pearrilla shot a glare at Taesinn, who fluffed his feathers. “And some of us have no shame and enjoy such things far more than he should!”

Taesinn hissed at Pearrilla, who growled back.

“In my defense, he’s rather soft.”

“And those soft feathers now have mold in them for certain. Then we will all be faced with the whining. Moldy feathers stink. If you’re going to be moldy, at least be moldy because you dealt with a quality bloodbath, Taesinn.”

What strange beings. “What are you?”

Pearrilla regarded me with her head tilted to the side and her crest lifted. “You truly have not seen one of us before?”

I shook my head. “I had no idea beings like you existed.”

“We are Veloc.”

“And you aren’t from this world?”

“We are not. This is one of our hunting worlds. Every few years, we come and hunt to thin out the numbers of prey and predator species before we move on. We will collect our prey, preserve them, and load them into the cargo bay of our ship. We use stasis storage. We must quarantine in space for three weeks until the virus thriving on this world has been purged from our ship, our prey, and our goods. We purify our food before taking it off world as well. Should you come with us, you will be vaccinated and monitored to make certain you are not a carrier for the disease.”

“There’s a vaccine?”

So many deaths could have been avoided?

Pearrilla sighed, and her crest lowered. “The vaccine only works on those who have been infected and survive. All it does is prevent you from spreading the illness to others. You carry the disease with you for certain — but it does not sicken you like other homo sapiens .” The Veloc came closer, and she examined my fox ears. “You likely inherited some form of genetics that has an immunity to it. The vulpes vulpes is a species that can survive here — well, they could without the birds. Birds like yours find vulpes vulpes to be particularly delicious.”

I checked on Persistence and Stupid to discover the pair napped in the warmth of my home. “And Persistence and Stupid?”

“They may venture into space with you. We will need to mod them both, but this is within our ability. You named the lepus gigas Stupid?”

“The what?”

“ Lepus gigas is a species of animal that was bred and modified based on an Earth species, the lepus alleni. They were modified to be larger, stronger, and with a higher fat content so that they could populate worlds as a better food source. Your bird is a species that was modified from Earth stock and set free to hunt the lepus gigas . Your bird is quite curious.”

“Because she’s missing a leg?”

“Yes. They normally do not thrive for long when thus injured; it is harder for them to hunt the lepus gigas , their primary food source.”

“I help her hunt, but she manages.” She’d managed poorly, but she had survived.

“We can treat her, and we can help you tame and train your lepus gigas. ”

I returned to my home and considered the sleeping critters inside. “They can go into space ?”

Pearrilla and Taesinn followed me, and she patted my shoulder, careful with her capped claws. “We are used to taking strange beings into space, homo sapiens included. But before we venture away, we will need to vaccinate you, examine your link, and prepare you for the journey to come. But first, show us where your colony lived and tell us what you can of your home world.”