Coming of Age on Tuvulot, Episode 2: Enter the Humans
[Editor’s Note: Read the entire story from the beginning!]
At the edge of Hanaplero, capital city of Tuvulot, the Yonopcry homeworld, the Kroleni had built a spaceport that always filled Lozlian with wonder. With Its soaring flight towers, it was a splendid eyeful of advanced tech. On the morning the humans were to arrive, the same towers pierced a huge bank of low-lying, fluffy clouds. Meanwhile, the port’s sleek walls of stainless steel, obsidian and translucent orange polyglass shone with gem-like brilliance in the sun’s bright rays. A faint cooling breeze, coming off Lake Coloveer, made the large, fan-like drexalia trees seem to wave Lozlian on.
It was enough, finally, to shake the young sentient mammal out of his anxious, pouty funk and help him greet the day with courage. He passed through the spaceport’s massive parabolic entryway with an easy swagger, displayed his government-issued ID and snaked through a maze of barriers, both physical and electronic, to reach the arrival lounge of the appropriate gate. Achimlemoor’s worries not withstanding, this would be a visit like any other. As he plodded along the waiting room’s light gray tiles, he reminded himself not to let the humans’ insistent questions and ceaseless demands get under his skin.
He barely had time to sit in one of the lounge’s curiously comfortable chairs, upholstered with the softest deep green vat-leather, before he spotted the offworld delegation. The first to enter though the arrival gate were, as expected. a pair of imposing security agents, dressed in a deep black so profound it made Lozlian wonder why it didn’t suck the light out every room that they entered. From Lozlian’s perspective however, their stature was an illusion created by their arrogance. Like any other average Yonopcry, he was taller, broader and stronger than all but the bulkiest humans.
Now, following close behind the security guards, were two academic scientists, whom Lozlian recognized from the briefing documents that he’d received a few days before. The perennially scowling male, just under two meters tall, was “Dr. Erwan Duval,” a balding particle physicist and inventor of the novel star drive that the Kroleni were going ga-ga over. He was dressed in typical human garb: a one-piece, form-fitting suit, tucked into graceful ankle-boots, over which was thrown a collarless calf-length jacket with wide sleeves that stopped just past the elbow. Duval favored shades of gray and dark green almost exclusively.
With him, eyes downcast, was his tall, rather plump associate, “Dr. Frances Dixon,” whose wiry hair, while hardly unkempt, had obviously received only minimal attention. She was similarly dressed, in an outfit of deep lavender, accessorized with a silver pin at her left shoulder that, apparently, signaled her membership in an elite scientific society. Yet to Lozlian, her most distinguishing feature was a face dominated by a certain wistful weariness.
Of course, ordinarily, Lozlian’s limited experience of life in general, and of the human world in particular, might never have alerted him to the visitors’ interdependent roles. But his native telepathic abilities gave him more than a sense of the two humans’ underlying personalities. Duval’s restless, brutally self-critical thoughts were firmly embedded in a colossal ego that recognized no limits to his personal authority. Dixon’s mind, by contrast, bore the stress of anchoring Duval’s continual flights of fancy with the unforgiving chains of mathematical logic. To Lozlian, she was a seething river of rage, contained only by a dark humor, deeply rooted in cynicism.
Engrossed as he was in his study of these two, he was caught off-guard by the delayed entrance of Duval’s twenty-something daughter, Elizabeth. This was the young female that he’d been warned about, the budding biologist with an “interest” in his species. As a consequence, Lozlian was even more startled when Elizabeth rushed right up to him and began chattering out a spate of traditional greetings in Versaling.
“So excited to meet you, Regional Trade Liaison Lozlian,” she said. “I’ve been studying your species remotely for years now and … well here you are!”
Though Lozlian’s breath came up short, he still managed to flash a toothy smile.
“I’m … honored to meet you, Ms. Duval,” he said.
In contrast to her father or Dr. Dixon, Elizabeth preferred rosy hues highlighted in aqua marine. Her jet-black hair, which was tortured into an elaborate coiffure that only an android stylist could achieve, gave her a strangely elfin appearance. Lozlian, of course, knew nothing of such things and accepted her appearance at face value.
“You’re so nice to agree to be my ‘subject,’” she said. “I promise. I won’t take much of your time and if I’m being intrusive, well, speak up. I realize the Yonopcry have different customs than we do. That’s why I thought we could meet in a secure location, rather than out in public. I wouldn’t want to embarrass you.”
Lozlian’s thoughts shifted uneasily. While he understood her intentions, Elizabeth had no idea what greater scandal it would cause if he were later found to be meeting with her in secret.
Whiskers would curl, for sure, he thought.
But equally troubling was the undercurrent of arousal he detected in her mind. Unlike humans, the Yonopcrys’ mating impulses were seasonal. So it was a bit of a shock to sense even a hint of that sort of thing, burbling up beneath Elizabeth’s enthusiastic greeting. His one consolation was that, at that level of consciousness, she was likely unaware of her own submerged responses. At least, he hoped….
Cut it out, he scolded himself. You’re supposed to be working.
The Kroleni needed him to shepherd the three distinguished guests to their quarters and deliver the agenda for the negotiations to commence in the morning. In light of that, Lozlian shifted into full Greeting Mode and gave his guests the welcoming speech that Elizabeth had startled him out of. Duval, however, was having none of his pleasantries.
“Can’t see how we need an escort to our hotel,” he said. “Just transmit the coordinates to the taxi, and let’s get on with it.”
“Right away,” said Lozlian. “Let me, uh….”
The Yonopcry pulled a small handheld out of his uniform pocket and entered a short command string.
“All set, Dr. Duval,” he said. “I’ll simply walk you to the taxi stand. Look out for tomorrow’s meeting agenda in your message box this evening.”
Duval scowled, but kept quiet and Lozlian waved them on in the right direction. Soon, the four of them plus the human bodyguards, were strolling across the spaceport, with the humans’ luggage rolling behind them on a lightweight, gravity-modulated luggage rack. Soon the hover taxi stand came into view and Lozlian explained exactly how to approach the automated vehicle, how to input the coordinates and….
A blinding flash of light overwhelmed their senses and was quickly followed by ear-splitting explosion that ripped through the spaceport’s dome and rumbled up behind them. Chunks of floor and ceiling tile escaped their moorings and it was all Lozlian could do to shield his charges from fatal injury. Panicked passengers ran this way and that, intermingled with the spaceport’s largely ineffectual team of bright green, spidery servicebots, which were engaged in damage control.
“What the blazing Plasma Star is going on?” shouted Duval.
But because of the intense din no one took notice. The next moment, time seemed to stand still as the panic of the moment before was replaced with shocked silence. And no wonder. Striding down the spaceport’s main causeway was a battalion of Chyloradrin soldiers in emerald-green mechanized armor, standing ten meters tall, weapons cocked and ready. The battalion commander stomped his right, armor-clad foot.
“Which of you lepton lickers is the human Erwan Duval?” he asked.
Duval turned and ran right in front of the intruders.
“I am, you evolutionary throwback,” he said. “Craters, no wonder giant reptiles were wiped out on Earth. You’re pathetic. Why don’t you go home to your swamps and suck on some eggs?”
“Daddy, no,” said Elizabeth.
But it was too late for mediation. The Commander waved on his men, who launched a sticky web from a large canon that wrapped Duval up tight, then reeled him into a mobile stasis chamber. The Chyloradrin commander snarled out a contemptuous chuckle.
“If this is the Kroleni’s idea of security,” he said. “We’ll have them sealed up in stasis, too, in no time. Come on, move out.”
He activated the mech-unit’s embedded jetpack and soared out of the hole that he and his troops had blasted into the spaceport’s ceiling. The others followed his example and they were gone nearly as fast as they’d arrived.
“Good riddance,” said Elizabeth.
“But your father,” said Lozlian, “You don’t seem….”
A slight creaking sound to his right made Lozlian’s head pivot, in time to see the person he’d thought of as Frances Dixon split in half. His jaw dropped as her torso swung open like a pair of double doors to reveal a smaller version of Erwan Duval standing about a meter tall on a platform inside what Lozlian could now see was actually a robotic shell. This Duval flipped a nearby toggle switch. A small ladder emerged from inside the shell.
“Elizabeth,” he said, “help me down, for quark’s sake.”
His daughter rushed to his side and held one hand as he climbed down to floor level.
Still stunned, Lozlian marveled at how carefully the robotic decoys of Duval and Dixon had fooled both the Chyloradrin and he himself, by mimicking the two humans so convincingly — even down to their brainwave activity.
“Nothing to gawk at,” said Duval.
He turned to the tall bodyguards who’d proved useless against the Chyloradrin warriors.
“Have my real android shell transmatted to my hotel room,” he said. “And give Frances the coordinates to. Come on, Elizabeth. You can play with your Teddy bear later.”
Accompanied by the guards, Duval stalked off to the nearest taxi stand. Elizabeth grabbed Lozlian’s forearm.
“He’s not always so grumpy,” she said. “But he hates being exposed. I guess you figured out that the real Frances was back in our lander the whole time. She’s so dedicated to Father.”
Despite Duval’s urgent hand-waving, Elizabeth lingered long enough to explain his condition, before Lozlian had even thought to ask.
Born on a mostly abandoned research base on Titan, Jupiter’s largest moon, Duval had picked up a rare infection from an indigenous strain of bacteria that had never been fully eradicated. Duval’s parents, a pair of tenth-generation research scientists, doted on him but his condition left him bed-ridden and stunted his growth. With nothing else to do, Duval developed his mind and astonished first his parents, than Titan’s edubots with a command of mathematics beyond his years.
His parents were given a full government stipend to relocate to Earth’s most advanced colony in the Tau Ceti sector, where Erwan blossomed and, eventually learned to walk after hours of painful physical therapy. All the same, the scars of his diminutive stature never left him and he used the prize money he received for his first great experiments in star drive development to have a specially designed android shell created. It was his perfect likeness, cast in proportions more typical of the average human.
“But the Chyloradrin,” said Lozlian. “What did they.…?”
“Oh, that was an android,” said Elizabeth, “programmed to lead them the wrong way — before exploding in their faces. Must dash. Now don’t forget our joint project!”
Lozlian watched her run off in the direction of her father. If every human were as determined as those two, it was no wonder the Kroleni were keeping their distance.
A new episode appears every other Monday.
^^^
Mark Laporta is the author of Probability Shadow and Entropy Refraction, the first two novels in the science fiction series, Against the Glare of Darkness, which are available at a bookstore near you, on Amazon and at Barnes & Noble. He is also the author of Orbitals: Journeys to Future Worlds, a collection of short science fiction, which is available as an ebook.
