Quofum (6 page)

One by one even the most dedicated among them retired to their respective sleeping platforms. When N’kosi had finally had enough, he too retired, after checking to make sure that the craft’s internal AI understood its instructions. It would wake them if the boat was threatened or if anything of exceptional merit manifested itself. Defining the latter meant radically expanding the AI’s definition of “exceptional.” Though they revised the definition several times during the night, the AI still woke them on two different occasions.

Tellenberg had always been able to sleep soundly. In this he was luckier than any of his colleagues. Much to the simultaneous admiration and consternation of his companions he even managed to sleep through the boat AI’s two uncertain and unnecessary alarms.

So it was not surprising that he should finally be awakened by half a cup of purified river water that N’kosi, with great precision and considerable satisfaction, trickled onto his face. He sat up sputtering.

“Hey, what’s the…?”

Valnadireb cut him off with a suitable four-armed gesture. “I have seen dead people more easily stirred. We are all jealous. How do you do it?”

Sitting up on his sleeping platform, Tellenberg wiped water from his face and muttered, “Do what?”

“Sleep through anything. Sleep through forest screams, sleep through lights that burn with the brilliance of unwanted urban advertisements, sleep through alerts sounded by the boat.”

Tellenberg looked around uneasily. “I slept through an alarm?”

“Two.” N’kosi was now preparing a hot drink in the same cup that had been used to douse his colleague. “Remarkable.”

Tellenberg was apologetic. “I’ve always been able to sleep anywhere, even out in the field.” He grinned shyly. “I have a clean conscience, I guess.”

“Or none.” Valnadireb turned away, pivoting on all four trulegs and both foothands. While Tellenberg noted that the thranx’s supporting limbs did not dig quite so deeply into the deck as when they had first boarded the craft, neither were they completely relaxed. Not even the redoubtable Valnadireb could completely ignore the fact that he still had water underfoot, even if he was separated from it by the bottom of the boat.

It was less than an hour later that Haviti, perched attractively if professionally in the observation seat in the bow, called back to N’kosi to reduce speed. Relaxing casually in the command chair behind the weatherproof console, her fellow xenologist moved to comply as Tellenberg and Valnadireb rushed to the bow.

“Take it slow,” she called back. Obedient to N’kosi’s touch, the craft decelerated until it was barely making headway against the current.

It took only a moment to share Haviti’s vision and to see what had impelled her to direct N’kosi to reduce their speed. Actually, Tellenberg heard it before he saw it. Valnadireb was standing so close to him that the thranx’s natural perfume was nearly overwhelming. Instead of being held vertically, both of the insectoid xenologist’s antennae were inclined forward, in the direction of the nearest bank.

Off to starboard, the forest was thinning rapidly. As the boat came around a bend in the river, the level of the noise they had been hearing suddenly rose tenfold in both volume and complexity. The sound was terrible. It was as if some maniacal music maker had decided that instead of mixing rhythms and melodies he would attempt to merge recordings of riots from half a dozen worlds—none of them populated by humans. The shrill, frantic cacophony threatened to give everyone on board including Valnadireb a severe headache. That concern was forgotten as soon as they got their first look at the source of the uproar.

There was a war in progress.

It was a limited war; limited by the number of participants as well as the primitive nature of the weapons they were employing. But a war nonetheless, with potentially grave and lethal consequences for all who were involved. A village was on fire. Actually, that was too sophisticated a definition for the community under siege, Tellenberg decided. It was more a cluster of slapdash huts crudely thrown together out of fallen leaves and scavenged wood. Still, it was home to those who were presently under attack.

Even from the center of the river it was not difficult to sort out the combatants. The community was being defended by stick-jellies acting in concert with groups of fuzzies. Assailing them were lines of spikers. As if the odds did not already seem stacked against the defenders, the spikers had allies of their own. To the astonishment of the scientists, these comprised yet a fourth sentient species, as unrelated to the previously discovered three as the stick-jellies and the spikers were to humans and thranx.

Averaging about a meter in height and almost as broad, these hard-shelled newcomers advanced slowly on twin muscular pseudopods. The stone axes they wielded at the ends of their short, stubby arms had very little reach. On the other hand, their armored bodies were impervious to the spears of the stick-jellies.

The fuzzies had better luck against them. Rounded stones accelerated by throwing slings were capable of cracking the outer carapaces of the hardshells. Stone-headed clubs were able to bash in less heavily armored skulls. Meanwhile the stick-jellies showed surprising determination and agility in battling the spikers. Such confrontations looked uneven, until N’kosi pointed out that stones cast by the spikers simply slid off or lodged harmlessly in the stick-jellies’ bodies while spear thrusts had to strike a vital spot to do any damage at all. Relying on first impressions in combat, Tellenberg realized, was as dangerous and foolish as doing so in science.

So preoccupied with the intense fighting were the combatants that they failed to notice the boatload of aliens that had by now halted in the middle of the river. Meanwhile more and more of the primitive shelters were going up in flames. On board the boat each of the scientists looked on in fascination, their recorders automatically preserving multiple accounts of the native confrontation. Except for an occasional whisper, no one on board said a word. Nor did they stop to wonder why they were whispering.

It looked bad for the defenders of the village. Then, just when it seemed as if one more push by the attackers would overrun the community completely, the defenders counterattacked. From the woods to the north, a small horde of fuzzies erupted to pounce on the attackers’ flank. Taken completely by surprise and believing themselves on the verge of total victory, the spikers and hardshells suddenly found themselves assailed on two fronts. While stones rained down on the attackers, the stick-jellies rallied to hold the ground in the middle of the village, using the surviving structures to split and isolate their attackers’ lines.

For the first time since they had come upon the battle, N’kosi raised his voice above a murmur. It prompted a collective clearing of throats from all on board. “Our first evidence that at least one of the species displaying sentience is capable of concocting advanced tactics.”

“I don’t know that I would call them advanced.” Valnadireb was recording with a handheld unit in addition to the automatic that was mounted atop the right side of his b-thorax. “Although hardly my specialty, it would seem an obvious maneuver.”

“To someone developed enough to understand the concept of maneuvering, yes.” Haviti was still sitting in the bow. Her legs hung over the side of the boat. Not one to tell others how to comport themselves out in the field, Tellenberg kept his thoughts to himself while hoping that nothing lurking in the water found those dangling offworld limbs worthy of a nibble.

“Tactics and maneuvers might have nothing to do with it,” she continued. “The newly arrived combatants might be allies arriving from another village off to the north, or members of a returning hunting party. Advanced strategy and subterfuge might not enter into the present circumstances.” She gestured with her own handheld. “What appears premeditated on the battlefield might be nothing more than fortuitous coincidence.”

Valnadireb gestured understandingly. “There’s one way to find out. Talk to some of the natives and ask them.”

“In good time,” Haviti replied. “First we have to see who survives.”

The tide of battle had definitely turned in favor of the defenders. Assailed from two sides, whether by design or accident, the spikers and the hardshells fell back. Unfortunately for them, that meant retreating to the river. Regrouping, they made a stand there, bunching together and packing themselves tight so that their organic armor presented a solid wall to any attackers. Stones fell on them like hail.

Three times the defenders of the village rushed their tormentors. Each time the assault was repelled with loss of life on both sides. On the third occasion, so ferocious and forceful was the charge of the stick-jellies and fuzzies that some of the spikers and hardshells were pushed off the sandy shore and into the water. This produced two new and interesting facts about sentient native life-forms. Hardshells could float, if not exactly swim. Spikers could do neither.

No wonder they were defending themselves so vigorously, Tellenberg realized as he continued to observe the ongoing mêlée. Preliminary cursory observation revealed that a spiker sank faster than a thranx wearing a lead-lined backpack.

Just when it seemed as if the defense of the village was going to turn into a complete slaughter of its assailants, the defenders backed off. Their number had also been considerably reduced and they continued to suffer casualties. Both sides were exhausted; physically, in numbers, and resource-wise. With their original stockpiles of throwing stones depleted, fuzzies and spikers alike were reduced to scavenging suitable rocks from where they lay on the field of battle. Even the discordant sounds and weird alien cries of battle had given way to an excess of heavy breathing interspersed with only occasional outbursts of passion or defiance.

Slowly and carefully the surviving spikers and hardshells began working their way southward, maintaining a rudimentary defensive formation as they did so. A few of the most energetic defenders followed them, slinging the intermittent stone, throwing the occasional sharpened stick. Once the ongoing battle moved back into the dense vegetation, the pursuing defenders’ advantage in numbers was reduced. The chase broke off and the remaining attackers were allowed to disappear into the brush.

In their wake, noncombatant stick-jellies and fuzzies worked together in a cooperative effort to put out the fires that continued to consume the surviving huts. Water carried from the river in crude pots and tightly woven baskets was thrown on the crackling flames. Native intelligence had not risen to the point where someone thought to organize a simple bucket brigade.

Limited in quantity though it was, there was fire-suppressant equipment on the boat that could have put out the remaining blazes in a couple of minutes. Looking over at N’kosi, Tellenberg saw that his colleague was thinking the same thing. He swallowed, his throat unexpectedly dry.

“We can’t,” he muttered. “We can’t interfere.”

“I know.” N’kosi summoned up a wan smile. “Contact regulations. We can only observe.”

Fortunately, there was no fuzzy or stick-jelly equivalent of human children running screaming through the flaming village, no limbless thranx larvae squirming helplessly on the ground. Had that been the case, a sympathetic Tellenberg might have found himself hard-pressed not to interfere in the fight with technologically advanced gear a good deal more proactive than just fire-suppressant equipment.

Take a step back,
he told himself. For all they knew the brutal assault that had been mounted by the spikers and the hardshells was payback for some earlier, even worse offense that had been committed by the fuzzies and the stick-jellies. For a second time he found himself reflecting on the unsuitability of relying on first impressions.

Odd. The boat seemed to be pitching slightly under his feet. Cruising down the middle of the river with the current due aft there was no reason for a sudden swing in stability. If any of his colleagues noticed the subtle pitching they did not remark on it. A moment later he chanced to glance around. As soon as he did so the reason for the rocking became immediately apparent.

Having drifted downstream silent and unseen while fleeing the aftermath of the battle for the village, three hardshells were struggling to clamber into the boat.

Scientific detachment tends to fall rapidly by the wayside when a croaking, dark-eyed, angry alien suddenly appears within arm’s length brandishing a lethal weapon in one’s face. To their credit, none of the researchers panicked. All of them had spent time on other worlds; some inhabited by primitive sentients, others not. Perhaps because his kind lived under interminable threat of attack from their traditional enemies the AAnn, Valnadireb was first to draw his sidearm. Up on the bow, Haviti followed him in close order despite the awkwardness of her position.

By the time a slightly rattled but responsive Tellenberg and N’kosi had joined them in taking aim at the intruders, the latter had halted their attempt to climb aboard. Maybe they expected the strange floating object to be full of loathsome stick-jellies and stone-wielding fuzzies. The sight of three soft-bodied, multicolored bipeds and one very large golden-eyed arthropod must have been as unsettling to them as their sudden appearance was to the occupants of the boat. Whatever the reason, it was sufficient to halt potentially lethal stone axes in midswing. Following this first confrontation, formal first contact between the official representatives of the Humanx Commonwealth and the indigenous hard-shelled natives of Quofum progressed swiftly and not at all according to preferred protocol.

Emerging from the state of shock into which sight of the creatures on board the floating vehicle had sent it, the hardshell nearest Tellenberg took one step forward and one roundhouse swipe with the axe it gripped in its right pseudopod. Stepping easily back out of range of the powerful but short-reached swing, Tellenberg uttered a startled “Hey!” and promptly tripped over a supply canister that was lying on the deck. Both actions set the other pair of hardshells in motion.