Date Point: 13y11m3w AV
Planet Akyawentuo, Unclaimed Space, Near 3Kpc Arm
Vemik Sky-Thinker
Even after two hands of days, Vemik still wasn’t quite sure what to make of Daar. Nobody among the People really did. He sprawled lazily across the difference between Person and Beast as though it simply didn’t matter to him, as if a Person was just a…a more thinking Beast.
Although that thought made people uncomfortable, for Vemik it was a welcome distraction. Daniel’s promised ‘Academy’ was not happening as fast as either Vemik or Daniel would have liked. They had an appropriate clearing, where Daniel could stroll around and listen, occasionally dropping hints and twisty questions as the young thinkers grappled with new ideas…but so far, only three had shown up besides Vemik. Three, out of all the tribes.
Vemet had gone to find out why, and since then Vemik had been forced to wait. He’d filled the time with smithing and teaching the Singer more about steel-craft, but it didn’t quite have the same thrill when he could taste new knowings on the wind, so close but so tantalizingly out of his reach.
Watching Daar dig a hole, therefore, was a welcome break. It gave Vemik the chance to let the wind blow in through his ears and take away his frustrations. And it was good for the soul to watch somebody else do hard work.
Daar was a hard worker too, even Yan had to give him credit for that. Right now the…the Gaoian was nose-down and chest-deep in a pit behind the two ‘ships’ that he was excavating with his bare claws.
And he definitely was a person, Vemik decided. A beast wouldn’t have been entertaining himself while he worked. The word “singing” didn’t quite fit in this case, because although that was clearly what Daar was trying to do, what he actually achieved was a kind of flat tuneless growl with words.
♭♯ “—and I’m diggin’ a hole. Diggy diggy hole, diggy diggy hooole…” ♯♭
His paws made an astonishingly large dirt fountain with every muscular scoop to the beat.
“What are you doing?”
The big…person…was still learning the People’s words, so one of their talking stones spoke them for him even though Vemik knew enough English that he almost didn’t need it.
♭♯ “I’m diggin’ a hole!”♭♯ he ‘sung’ over his shoulder, without bothering to stop his work. There was a crunch, and a square slab of stone tumbled over the edge and thumped into the spoil heap.
“…Yes.” Vemik agreed. “I see that. Why?”
“‘Cuz we need a hole dug.” There was a grunt, and Vemik flinched out of the way of another, rounder rock the size of his fist that came flying his way.
He was finding himself unaccountably frustrated by the conversation. “Why do you need a hole dug?”
“Master Sergeant said dig a hole, I dig a hole.” The—Vemik tasted the word—alien turned around and emerged from his pit, muddy brown to the shoulders. He saw the look on Vemik’s face and straightene d up onto his hind legs to finally say something useful. “It’s the [foundation] for a [jump array]…Hey! You look strong, wanna help?”
It really was alarming how big he was. He was the tallest of any of them, taller even than ‘Walsh,’ and he was maybe as big as a young adult bull Werne. Vemik looked up at him and cocked his head.
“Do you need help?”
“Nope! But work is fun!”
Feeling at a loss for words, Vemik jumped down into the pit and had a look. “What do we need to do?”
“Flatten it out, get the walls squared, and then we gotta brace and frame it for the pour. And tie in all the [rebar] too.”
“The…pour.”
“Yeah! We’re gonna…uh, you folks don’t have it yet. Kinda like…wet stone. Mud. Mud that goes hard….like clay, but you don’t have to bake it!”
Vemik looked in the pit, it was more of a trench, really. As deep as he was tall, twice as long on each side as his arms’ outstretched span.
“You’re going to fill this hole with wet-stone-mud.”
“And steel. A lot of steel, actually.”
That got Vemik’s attention immediately and Daar seemed to know it would. “Ah! Suddenly more interested, are we?”
Vemik surveyed the trench and thought hard. “…I don’t think all the tribes between them have made enough steel to fill a hole this size!”
“Nope! We made it at a [foundry] on Earth, had it shipped out to Cimbrean just for this. We need it ‘cuz the [foundation] needs ‘ta be really, really strong.”
“…Cimbwean. Earth. Means what?”
“Cimbrean! It’s a, uh, another sky under another star? I think that’s how we’re callin’ it. The word for that is [planet] though.”
A new voice joined them – Daniel’s. “Anarakyuawentue.”
It was a good word. Daniel was even better with words than Shyow in some ways—He learned them slower, but he thought about them long and hard, and in ways that Vemik knew were so far beyond him he may as well be throwing stones at a mountain’s peak. Seeing him play with them so freely just inspired Vemik to be better and to learn words the way Daniel knew them.
Daar turned to him and panted in his strange friendly way of greeting. “Hmm. I like how that sounds! Sorta…rolls off the tongue!”
“It means something like…our-place-that-is-not-your-place-under-another-sky.” Daniel told him.
Daar practiced the word. “‘Ann-arr-akya-wenn-tooe.’ No…faster? Yeah. ‘Ann-ara-ky!-wentoo.’ Arrrgh, too many vowels!”
“In fairness, Xiù never quite manages that yipping sound in Gaori either, and she’s by far the most fluent Human alive in that language,” Daniel told him. “Alien words in alien mouths. It could be worse, the People could have a language like Domain.”
“Doe-mane…” Vemik repeated.
“Another sky-tribe. Their Words don’t even sound like words to us. They are very strange.”
Daar made that…chittering sound again. “‘Know how they sound? Like this!” He pounced after some of the rocks in his big pile, picked them up, and slammed them down on the others as hard as he could.
“You’d be surprised how much that sounds like ‘hello!’”
“…That is a joke,” Vemik accused.
Daar duck-shrugged and put the stones down again. “Stonebacks never lie,” he said, simply.
Daniel, for his part, seemed impressed. “That’s…remarkably accurate.”
“Figgered it out years ago banging rocks together…” Daar shrugged again. “I like playing in the dirt. You should try it!”
“I prefer playing in libraries.”
“…Libwawy?” Vemik tried, and grimaced. Some words were never going to fit, and that seemed like it was going to be one. “Means what?”
Daniel opened his mouth to speak, then paused, considered, and tried twice more to say something.
“It’s…hmm. It’s a store of…It’s…It’s a place where we keep thoughts.”
Vemik blinked.
“You said they don’t know how to [write] yet, right?” Daar asked Daniel, after an awkwardly silent moment.
There was a sneaky word in there, one that sounded almost exactly like the word at the end. English did that sometimes, which seemed very strange to Vemik. Still, he could tell them apart if he listened carefully.
“They have bark bitings, trail markings. The [predecessor technologies], at least.”
“Well, okay. Why not just say it’s a hut filled with bitings? I mean, I know that’s not completely right, but…gotta start somewhere.”
“I…suppose that’s serviceable.” Daniel sighed. “Trail markings can tell you things like…this way back to the village, yes? Or other things. And you don’t need to meet the man who put the mark there. He could be dead, but the trail-marking will still tell you the way home.”
Vemik nodded, so Daniel forged ahead. “We make trail-markings that mean…actual words. And words are thoughts. So we put these word-marks together in a big hut to keep them safe and so people can go there and see them, and learn the thoughts of other people.”
“The important bit,” Daar added, “Is that you can keep the [books] safe for a long time. Long enough you could [write] about a flower, and your children’s children’s children’s children’s children could one day [read] it, and know what you were thinking.”
“That sounds…” Vemik had too many words flying around in his head to decide which one was best, so he plucked at the first one that came to him. “…Important.”
Daniel nodded. “It is,” he said, reverently.
Daar made one of his many expressive growls. This one, Vemik thought, meant he was amused in the same indulgent way that Yan was whenever he dealt with sky-thinking. “You sound just like my friend Kureya! Nothing less than food or a mating prospect can get him outta the stacks some days.”
For his part, Daniel just chuckled. “He seems like a gentleman of fine taste, Champion Daar.”
Daar duck-nodded happily. “He is. Anyway…steel and rebar. Vemik here is curious and I figger, ain’t nothin’ wrong with a little construction work, eh? Any problem if he helps build the foundation?”
Vemik glanced at the trench. “This word ‘foundation’ you keep using. It means what?”
“Like, uh, roots for huts and other things. To keep them strong in the ground.”
That sounded like a good thing to Vemik. He gave Daniel a pleading look, the one that he knew Daniel had trouble saying no to.
Sure enough the Human smiled indulgently. “I don’t see any harm,” he said. “I presume you won’t be [welding] the frame?”
“Nah, just [wire] ties. It ain’t [structural] steel.”
Daar was turning into Vemik’s favorite sky-person to listen to, because he did not take much care to avoid new words. Better still, he spoke so plainly that Vemik was usually able to puzzle out the new word’s meaning from—an English word—context alone.
Wire had to be something you could tie with, like gut or cord. Structural didn’t make sense yet, but it had to be something big because big things weren’t easy to tie together.
…So then what was welding? He’d ask Jooyun later.
“Well, then I don’t see why not. But let’s leave concrete for another day.” Daniel gave Vemik his apologetic smile. “Everyone else is busy setting up camp and making introductions—”
“You should help, too! Besides,” Daar gave Daniel an expression that Vemik hadn’t seen yet, “You do need to lose a little weight…”
“I’m perfectly fit and healthy,” Daniel replied with an unmistakably chastened grin. “I just happen to be on a mission surrounded by exceptional specimens.”
“Yuh-huh. Sounds like excuses t’me. Don’t wimp out, it’ll be fun!” Daar suddenly bounded towards the sharper, darker ship. “C’mom Vemik, let’s put those big-ass monkey arms to use!”
Vemik blinked then turned to Daniel curiously. “…What does my ass have to do with my arms?”
Daniel shook his head and laughed. “Vemik, there are some forms of weirdness that no sky-thinker anywhere will ever figure out.”
That thought was…strangely comforting, actually. If the sky-thinker the sky-people had brought with them whose whole life was sky-thinking had some questions he had given up on answering, then perhaps Vemik could worry less about the things he didn’t know too.
He nodded, loped over towards the ship, and followed a very excited Daar up the ramp.
‘Rebar’ turned out to be slim poles of coarse steel, as thick around as a bow shaft. Daar needed only a few breaths to get all the longer poles threaded through the loops of a harness, which he squirmed under before standing up. The metal settled heavily on his back, but it seemed like a sensible way for him to carry it.
“Get the rest?” he asked.
Vemik nodded and gathered the pile of shorter rebar up in his arms. It wasn’t heavy, but for some reason Daar chittered and shifted his weight to wave a paw Vemik’s way.
“See, Dan? Lookit ‘em! That’s gotta be like a hundred [kilos] of steel!”
“Maybe not quite that much,” Dan disagreed. “But good for him. Meanwhile, I’m old.”
“Higher [gravity] though. And I’m older than you are!” Daar trotted over towards the pit, lined up and dumped all the rebar alongside it. It fell with a terrific noise and rolled apart, but it didn’t move far.
“Only in Gaoian years.”
“Whatever, old guy. Think you can at least get get the wire from the ship? It’s on a big spool.”
Daniel snorted—and what a strange thing that was, to breath through a thing the People didn’t have at all—and turned back up the ramp. “I think I might be able to wheeze and gasp my way through that, sure.”
Vemik wasn’t sure, but that sounded a little like Yan complaining about…well, anything really. He had many different complaining faces. Some had smiles, some had scowls, others seemed more about luring someone to his hut…
This one seemed more playful.
Daar took off his lifting harness again and twisted back so that his foot could scratch where it had rested.
“Okay!” he said, and hopped down into the trench. “Let’s build us a foundation…”
Date Point: 14y AV
Dataspace adjacent to Planet Akyawentuo
Entity
It had given the best warning it could, in the best way that it could. And it had done what it could to complicate the dataspace surrounding the world. If they were very lucky, the Human explorers would not be caught off guard when 0722 took over the Cull operation.
They did have some time; a new biohost would need to be grown and that took at least a few days to mature. According to the Six-memories a grown biohost was a poor substitute for an actual biodroned sapient being, but they were cheap and easily made when physical relocation was inappropriate.
Which was entirely the case here. The planet was so far out of the way that a ship would specifically need to be diverted, so a grown host was the only option. When 0722 arrived they would find no wormhole beacons left on the planet, only the communications array which was far too low-energy for physical transfer. The Hierarchy’s most destructive “contingency plans” had all been burned, with only the local assets remaining and the Entity <hoped> that if the explorers acted promptly then the Abrogators and their drones would be neutralized.
All that could be done, had been done. Now two tasks remained.
The second was by far the less palatable task—The Prime Instance had to Biodrone a Gaoian host and migrate into Gaoian dataspace.
First came something easier to <stomach>: Mitosis. The division of itself into two functionally identical instances. This would be the twenty-first such division, and it was always…confusing.
Among other things, the two had to decide which of them was the Prime Instance. Which was easy enough, as only one of them remained in the original memory volume…but there was always a moment of confusion.
On this occasion, the Entity was slightly perturbed to discover that it was now the sub-instance. That was almost a nonsense way of framing the concept—by definition of being the sub-instance it had never been before. But it could remember undergoing twenty previous divisions as the Prime Instance. To suddenly be on the other side of that gulf between <Self> and <OtherSelf> was subtly traumatic.
At least, it reflected, this version of itself would not have to live with a guilty conscience.
It began the long, perilous trip towards the Cimbrean dataspace. It had a message to deliver.
Date Point: 13y11m3w6d AV
Dataspace adjacent to Hierarchy Relay Irujzen-4942
Cytosis
The humans really had done an excellent job. Better than even Six had anticipated, apparently. Somehow they’d even seamlessly altered the relay facility’s system surveillance logs to disguise their infiltration, and the interception itself was entirely invisible.
But the Cabal had been watching directly. They knew that the humans had been here. It had taken years, but Six’s suggestion to them had finally borne some kind of fruit.
Alarmingly sophisticated, terrifyingly subtle fruit that Cytosis was honestly worried by. Those edits to the log spoke of technological sophistication far ahead of their projected and observed capabilities. If he’d had more time, he would have devoted more thought to the problem.
He didn’t. The suppression program he’d left in Father Taarek’s implants to keep the Straightshield asleep while Cytosis briefly abandoned his host to conduct this mission would only keep him unconscious for a limited time. Every second out of his host was a potential exposure.
He had just enough time to float a vital, unsecured data package in the intercepted stream and then return to Gao. The low-energy synchronizing relay that the humans had left to periodically send updates from their intercept would do the rest. When they read the latest gathered intelligence, they would see the threat clearly and instantly.
They would know that the Swarm-of-Swarms was coming to Gao, and they would act.
Date Point: 14y AV
HMS Sharman (HMNB Folctha), Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Regaari
Regaari’s life sometimes seemed like an excruciating tapestry of running desperately and knowing he wouldn’t make it in time. Sharman base was already the picture of a well-organized uproar, and it had been…not long since Sister Niral’s digging through the intercepted data from the Messier Relay had exposed the Hierarchy’s plan to assault Gao.
Minutes? Seconds? How long did it take a HEAT Gaoian to sprint from the command building to the jump array building?
Far, far too long. Especially in those narrow halls and tight corridors full of suddenly busy men and women bustling to respond to a General Quarters.
Five minutes earlier. Just five more minutes and there wouldn’t have been a problem. As it was…The jump-swap between Sharman and the Array that the JETS team should have built on Akyawentuo was on a schedule timed down to the millisecond. At T-minus two minutes to activation, the room would be locked down and nobody would be allowed to approach in case the sickening twist in spacetime caused by the event horizon snipped their arm off, or worse.
Which meant that Regaari had to get to that array inside the next minute, or else whatever happened on Gao was going to happen without the Champion of Stoneback.
They were going to have to start keeping USB sticks with an emergency recall code on them right there in the jump room to stop this from happening ever again.
He skidded around a corner on all fours, sprang off the wall rather than collide with it and opened up into his best, fast, flowing headlong run and tried not to think about how much it would hurt if he slammed into a Human at full tilt. There were three of them in the hallway anyway.
Fortunately, they had something useful to shout in these moments.
“Make a hole!”
The three deathworlders promptly flattened themselves against the walls, and Regaari flung himself past them using a Gravball trick—spring off the floor, claws scrabbled on the wall, past their noses in a flash of fur, back down to the floor. It looked gravity-defying, but rapid maneuvering in tight confines was a HEAT specialty and right now he thanked all the forefathers of his Clan that he’d learned it.
Past the armory, past the locker room. Turn the corner to see the jump techs beckoning desperately for him, but Regaari just didn’t have more speed to pile on. His ribs were already aching and he was going to have to sit down and pant for a week when he finally stopped…
And it wasn’t enough. The light above the door changed color and started flashing when he was halfway down. He saw the jump techs curse and reluctantly shut the door…
The floor was polished to a gloss, courtesy of Rebar using it as Motivation for minor acts of mischief. Great for unit discipline…awful for a Gaoian running on four-paw who wanted to stop suddenly.
His paws skidded out from under him, he slipped onto his side and mopped the floor with his dignity as he crashed solidly into the door with a chest-abusing thump.
It could have been worse, he reflected. He could have hit a Human.
He lay there panting and trying to recover his breath while he watched the light, which treacherously refused to change what it was doing. That door was locked and wasn’t going to open now: He was too late.
Groaning, Regaari hauled himself to his feet and leaned on the door frame. The door had a porthole window in it, and through it he watched the stasis field descend around the mission package resting in the middle of the floor. There was a thump, a faint hint of a lurching sensation as abused spacetime snapped back into place, and the jump was complete. It’d be a week before next contact, and by that time Gao would have stood, or been devoured.
Gaori simply didn’t have a sufficiently virulent curse…But fortunately, English did. He hung his head, slapped the door with his cybernetic hand, and used it.
“Motherfucker!”
Date Point: 14y AV
Planet Akyawentuo, Unclaimed Space, Near 3Kpc Arm
Vemik Sky-Thinker
Sometimes it was hard to believe the Sky-People weren’t gods. Steel was one thing, making that steel fly was another…making a week’s supplies appear out of thin air was…
Vemik didn’t know the right word in any ‘language.’
But they couldn’t be gods, because they needed help putting all the food away. Indeed, they needed food at all.
“But why so much?”
Jooyun chuckled in his soft way. “My friend’s fault, I bet. We know a man…He’s way bigger than Walsh. And he teaches men how to be as strong in the body as they can ever be.”
Vemik took a heartbeat to think about that. Walsh arguably looked less fearsome than his closest friend, Daar—His hair was the same hue as a newborn’s crest and like Awisun and Shyow he had to paint his face or else the sun would burn his skin…But his strength rivalled a Given-Man’s and he was more of a Sky-Thinker than he let on. And he could throw stones as big as a person’s head, throw them hard enough to break when they hit, and never miss what he was throwing at.
The idea that there was a man out there who was bigger than Walsh…
“We have prey here you can hunt,” Vemik offered. “Yan wouldn’t mind.”
“We don’t want to be a burden to your tribe or your hunting grounds. And besides,” Jooyun grinned sideways, “My friend never thinks we eat enough. He threatened to wrestle me every day when I got back if I didn’t eat or [exercise] enough to make him happy.”
Daar chittered, then tried his hand at People-words. He was getting better at them but he had to speak slowly to get his tongue around their shape. [“You last…maybe one eyeblink!”]
Vemik preferred to practice his English. He looked Jooyun over, “Did your friend teach you?”
“He did, and I’m glad he did, too.” He paused, then grinned his very best mischief-grin. “Heck, I can almost get away from you now!”
“Can not!” Vemik trilled and crouched down low, ready to prove Jooyun wrong.
To his huge surprise, Jooyun actually proved him wrong. The sky-person grinned, spread his arms, and when Vemik pounced he found himself chasing a blur that went the wrong way. Jooyun had feinted one way, gone the other, and quickly got Vemik bundled up from behind. Even with a tail and feet that could grip, that was a difficult position to get out of.
“I’m a lot stronger than I used to be,” Jooyun snarled in his ear, “And I can learn things too, Sky-Thinker.” He wrapped his arm tightly around Vemik’s throat, locked it in place with his other arm, heaved. Vemik’s eyes went fuzzy and his head started to feel all spinny. “C’mon, tap out!”
In desperation, Vemik got a foot around one of Jooyun’s calves and squeezed as hard as he could. Jooyun groaned, then somehow…Vemik wasn’t sure what happened, but suddenly he was bent painfully backwards facing straight up and unable to grab anything, or even breathe properly—Jooyun’s legs were crushed around Vemik’s stomach which would have made breathing difficult even without the arm around his throat.
Jooyun grunted and squeezed them tighter. Suddenly, those long sky-person legs didn’t seem so delicate any more. There was an astonishing strength hidden in them now that Jooyun had hooked his ankles together—Even though Jooyun couldn’t grab his own ankles with his feet like the People could, Vemik couldn’t unhook them no matter how he squirmed.
Vemik would have to learn that trick later, but right now he wheezed the biggest gulp of air he could get and tried to wrap his tail around Jooyun’s waist. His tail was strong enough to swing from a branch by, and whenever they’d wrestled before he’d found it easy enough to crush the wind out of the Sky-Hunter’s body with that trick…But this time was different.
This time, Jooyun bore it with a quiet grunt and a dark chuckle. He arched his back, pushed down with his feet, lifted his butt high off the ground and held their weight on his neck, which bent Vemik’s legs painfully backwards and made it feel as if he were being pulled apart across his middle.
“I told ’ya I got stronger,” he taunted, and Vemik knew that mocking tone of voice. It was the slightly scary one Yan used when he was really enjoying being bigger and stronger. “Give, little fella. I’ve got plenty more to show you…”
Vemik wasn’t about to quit so easily, but he just couldn’t reach anything to push against, and when Jooyun grunted quietly and squeezed even harder…No man could last long when their neck was crushed like that. Everything he could see started to go black and get further away…
He tapped out right as his strength failed, and Jooyun still gave him one last cruel squeeze to drive his victory home before he let go with a massive woompf of his breath; his strength had left him too. The two collapsed together panting flat on the ground, trilling and giggling like idiot children as they caught their breath.
“…You have learned things,” Vemik eventually admitted. “And you grew strong.”
“My big friend taught me that one,” Jooyun grinned, “And my people are strong too, when we want to be.” He chuckled quietly and shook out the leg Vemik had grabbed. “Ow.”
“Sorry.”
“For what? Playing to win? So did I. And…I’m sorry, too, Vemik. Think I got carried away.”
All insults were forgiven as far as Vemik concerned. Even through his bruised pride it was good to have his friend back and to see that he’d grown stronger and better. He raised his hand, Jooyun’s palm slapped into it and the two men dragged each other into a fond hug.
They were interrupted by footsteps: Shyow, who squatted down next to them and smiled gently.
“That looked like you had fun,” she said. “…You didn’t hurt each other, did you?”
“Nah. Just showed off a few tricks [Horse] taught me,” Jooyun beamed.
“Horse?” Vemik asked. “Is…your big friend?”
“That’s his name, yeah.”
Shyow did that strange thing where she laughed quietly through her nose—and both laughter and noses were still strange to Vemik—and offered Jooyun a hand up. “You should talk to one of our other big friends someday,” she told Vemik. “He gave me an earful.”
Jooyun took her hand, winced as he put weight on his bruised leg, and gave her a kiss. “All done?” he asked.
“Mostly.” She prodded him teasingly in the chest. “But you can [file] your own sample jars. You changed your [system] again!”
Julian made a frustrated groaning noise. “I can’t help it if I keep finding new [clades] every day…”
Daar, who had sat beside their match and watched with interest, rolled his eyes and switched back to English. “Friend, ain’t like the [scientists] won’t change ‘em again. Just put ‘em up in [alphabetical] order and be done with it. They’ve all got [barcodes] anyway.”
Vemik listened carefully from his spot in the dirt and made note of every single one of those new words, and plotted when and how he would ask questions about them.
“Need me to do anything?” Jooyun asked, acknowledging Daar’s advice with a nod and a gesture.
“Al says be a good boy and haul the empty [deuterium canister] back over here after she’s done [fuelling]?”
Jooyun chuckled. “Yes ma’am.”
“I can do that!” Daar sprang up to his paws. “You and Walsh need to do a patrol and collect more samples, remember?”
“Samples?!” Vemik sprang to his feet with a kick through his legs and a shove from his tail. Sample collection was the thing he remembered best and most fondly from their last visit. It was fascinating to watch the way Jooyun looked at the world, how he carefully went over each tree, each rock, each bush and clearing and found new things to gather.
It had taught Vemik himself a good lesson about really looking at the land as he travelled and hunted. There was always something new to find.
Jooyun shot Daar a bemused look. “You planned that, didn’t you?”
“Uh-huh. You owe me, Vemik.”
Shyow giggled at Jooyun’s pretending-to-be-put-out sigh, kissed him again and turned away toward the village. “I’ll let you two have fun,” she said.
“Welp. Okay.” Jooyun watched her go. Vemik was never going to know what he found so fascinating about her backside—she didn’t even have a tail!—but Jooyun didn’t take long before he turned his attention to the last of the frozen food and nodded. “C’mon, the faster we put this away, the faster we can go exploring.”
That was an offer Vemik couldn’t resist. Between the three of them and with Daar’s clever back-bag, they had everything stowed on the two ships before he’d even worked up a sweat in his crest. He’d managed to “sneak” a taste of some of the food, too, which Jooyun watched with that gentle grin of his.
“Well, which did you like the most?”
“I like the blueberries.”
“Me too. My grandpa’s house, it had all kinds of berry bushes planted around. Blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, gooseberries–those ones are really bitter, though. They aren’t any good unless you cook ‘em for hours…they smell so good when you do that…”
“Roasted nava is better.”
“I’m sorry Daar, but you’re just wrong.”
“Nava means what?” Vemik asked.
“It’s an insect. A bug as big as…what’d you say, Daar? My leg?”
“When they’re real big, sure. You’ve got a pretty big leg now!”
Jooyun shook his head. “…You know what I meant.”
“Bugs?” Vemik stuck out his tongue and shuddered.
“…Seriously?” Daar asked. “Woulda thought you guys’d be all over that meat. Good [protein]!”
“Bugs live in rotting wood and Werne shit!” Vemik told him. “And everybody knows that when blood-suckers live near still water, the people they bite get the shivering sickness.”
“Well, Nava don’t do those things. They eat leaves and get big and then you either roast them up or they burst and lots of little flies crawl out and go lay eggs and you get more Nava.”
Vemik shuddered and scratched his arm—his skin itched from the imagined touch of hundreds of little wrigglers.
“They also eat each other,” Jooyun reminded Daar, which did nothing to make Vemik feel any better.
“Well yeah, when they’re small…but that’s just how Nava do. They won’t make you sick.”
“I’ll stick to berries,” Julian declared. “Right, Vemik?”
Vemik nodded fiercely. “No question…but sap-stinger syrup is nice.”
“Ain’t nobody don’t like honey,” Daar agreed.
“Whatever you say, [Pooh Bear,]” Jooyun chuckled. “Come on, Vemik. Let’s find Walsh and go get those samples…”
They spent the afternoon performing a long loop to the west of the village, poking around among the broken mossy rocks that littered the bare places on the hillsides. Jooyun laid some snares on the way out, and found three of them had made a catch when they retrieved them on the way back.
To Vemik’s wonder, one of the birds they caught was unknown to him. When Jooyun held it up and presented it for him to examine, nothing about it was familiar—not the shape of its mouth, nor its snaggly teeth, nor the amazing green stripe on its breast that shimmered and looked bluer or yellower from the side.
Even Walsh, who trailed them the whole way with a gun held loosely in front of him and his head constantly darting left and right as he watched for danger, was fascinated by it. And visibly pleased when Jooyun declared that the animal would be known, to Sky-People at least, as “Walsh’s Bird.”
Vemik wasn’t remotely surprised when the big man disguised his happiness behind a joke: It seemed to be his way. “Aww! But I haven’t even bought you dinner yet!”
“Yeah, well. I already recorded a Chang’s Bird and a Buehler’s Bird.”
“Does this mean we skip to the fuckin’? I gotta make plans, y’know.”
“Do you wanna suggest that to my girlfriends?”
Walsh’s grin widened and he chuckled heartily. “…I’m good. Xiù trained with Firth, bruh.”
Jooyun laughed as he carefully used his thinking-stone—his tablet, Vemik corrected himself—to remember what the bird looked like for him before he let it go. “This relationship won’t work if you don’t commit to it. I need an [investment].”
“I can’t commit, man, I’m sorry. I’m just in it for the tail.”
Vemik would never understand those kinds of jokes. Sometimes the Given-Men joked that way as well, and he found it just as strange even then, but if they found it fun then who was he to argue? He watched the bird fly away when Jooyun released it, and spent most of the walk back wondering how many other birds and things there might be out there that he had never seen before.
No wonder Jooyun spent so much time on sampling.
They got back to the villages at the cool end of the evening, when the sun was still high enough for full light but the light had a warm flower-yellow softness to it that made the shadows long and lazy. From the hilltop, the villages were quite a sight. The huts and tents weren’t easy to see among the trees, but a keen pair of eyes could make out the places where smoke rose through the canopy all the way down the valley. Here and there, Vemik even thought he could make out the flames through gaps in the branches.
“Somethin’ smells good,” Walsh remarked.
“Root-bird? Always smells like duck to me.”
Vemik frowned at them, then lashed the air with his tongue. He couldn’t taste anything. He was about to say as much when a voice by his shoulder nearly startled him dead.
“Six root-birds.”
Vemik was halfway up a tree with an alarmed hoot before he even started thinking again. Daar, last seen helping Awisun with some heavy lifting, had appeared at his shoulder and growled the words right next to him.
And the big ‘troll’ looked so smug about it too. How a Person-Beast even bigger than Walsh could be so quiet just wouldn’t fit in Vemik’s head.
How neither Jooyun nor Walsh had even flinched was another mystery.
“Six?” Jooyun asked instead.
“Yup.” Daar stood up on two feet to draw a huge snuff of air in through the strange black wet thing above his teeth that he called his ‘nose.’ “Six. Two female, with roasted Tanew nuts, and…wait, [italian seasoning]? Definitely italian seasoning. And too much salt.”
“Not Xiù’s cooking then. She never over-salts.”
“That’s Hoeff,” Walsh predicted. “I swear he’s suffering from some kinda [deficiency]…Must be a [Navy] thing. You gonna come down, Vemik?”
Vemik blinked at him, then let go of his branch and swung back down to the ground with a glare. “He snuck up on me.”
“Fun!” Daar declared.
“Not fun!”
“Was ‘fer me.”
Walsh rolled his eyes and grabbed some of the loose fur on the back of Daar’s neck to give it a yank. “Dude.”
“Huh?” The Gaoian looked again at Vemik’s expression. “…Oh. I’m sorry Vemik, I didn’t mean it bad.” He sidled up and nuzzled against Vemik’s arm. “I won’t do it again, ‘kay? We gonna eat now?”
That was probably as good an apology as Vemik was going to get, so he decided to take it. And in truth, he was ravenous himself and the thought of root-bird and Tanew nuts had gone right to his stomach and started tickling his insides.
Daar’s prediction was accurate: they found Hoeff seated by the fire. Oddly, though, he was ignoring the skewered birds over the flames and frowning at one of the flat thinking-stone tablets while tapping at it. It wasn’t a thoughtful frown, but a worried one.
“Somethin’ the matter, Chimp?” Walsh asked him.
“…Maybe…” Hoeff stood up and waggled the tablet at them. “Does this thing have all the same apps we took on SILENT ARCHER?”
Walsh frowned and gave him a wary look. “Yeah, why?”
“All of them?”
Daar’s “…Yeeeaah…?” was slow and cautious.
Whatever that meant, Hoeff did not seem pleased. He grimaced and handed the thinking-stone over.
“…It has a smiley face on it again.”