Confederation -- 11

Chapter 11

When we arrived back on the ship, I had Holmes find out how many had wives or girlfriends from his men. I had determined to give them the chance to come along. Not only did I not want morale problems due to the fact that Liz was the only woman on board, but it had occurred to me that something might happen to us. If, for example, we were marooned somewhere, it would be much more conducive to our survival if we had the basis for a small colony. A group of men alone would probably end up killing each other or themselves if there were no hope of rescue.

As a result, we took the large shuttle down the next day along with the smaller one. The Sunnys had spent some late hours rigging the smaller shuttle with a plasma shooter, and it was ready to be delivered to Jake. I had asked some pilots to go along with it to train the humans to fly the thing. There had been some intense discussion among the Sunnys about the idea. Eventually, a couple had volunteered for the job, despite the group's nervous consensus that there might be too much violence involved.

I was relieved. Apparently, the Sunnys were able to overcome somewhat their adverse feelings about violence with a belief in duty or perhaps the realization that their entire race would benefit from their participation. The two that volunteered were two of the newly rescued ones. They were an elderly mated pair, past the egg-laying age. I'd taken some time to meet with them, and they were both ready to serve as instructors, non-shooting pilots, and, for my purposes, observers who would keep an eye on Jake's doings.

The large shuttle was full of men. Nearly everyone had decided to go down to try and convince women to come with us, even those who had no relationships at present. They were excitedly talking. The roar of conversation filled the passenger compartment as I took my seat and prepared for the flight. I smiled to myself at their excitement. Frazzle, who was piloting, noticed and made his closed-lip smile back at me, but I could tell he was a little puzzled.

In explanation, I jerked my head backward at the noisy passengers and then sent him a mental message. They were so loud that I doubted that I could make myself heard. "They are hoping to find mates, or they're excited about meeting their mates," I mentally sent. The puzzlement in his eyes disappeared, and he smiled again with more confidence.

We separated from the ship and were shortly leaving orbit, descending to the Denver area. The smaller shuttle was a little behind us and a few miles off to one side. The two volunteers were flying it down with a single passenger, Lieutenant Holmes. He had confided to me that he was just as excited about the chance to meet his girlfriend as the men. He'd been trying hard to hide it from them. I judged that he thought riding in the smaller craft by himself would make it easier. He wouldn't have to officially notice their boisterous behavior as a bonus.

Once we'd landed and the crew had departed on their hopeful romantic quests, I met with Jake's second-in-command.

Judith was an older woman than I'd expected. She appeared to be in her early fifties, and her appearance was one of a no-nonsense school teacher. Due to her age, she rarely left the Warlord's headquarters, preferring to monitor reports and coordinate activities. She was rather brusque and very business-like. She somewhat surprised me. I'd expected some kind of Viking-like fighter as Jake's second, but apparently, she had the admin experience that he needed.

She was a new addition to his staff. I thought that perhaps she'd taken Erin's place now that Erin and Frank were married and living in Grand Lake with our friend Stormbreaker and his wife.

"Glad to meet you, Dec. I understand that you've got a shuttle for us. I hope that you've got someone who will fly it for us also. The thing isn't so easy to fly that anyone can do it with no training, is it?"

"Good to meet you, too, Judith. No, the shuttles are more than a little complicated. They are made for alien pilots, either Sunnys or Pugs. The Pugs are more our size, so shuttles designed especially for them are a little easier for a human to fit into the pilot's seat. The Sunny-sized seats are really too small for humans, as are the control keys."

In fact, Sunnys have webbed fingers with rather pointed nails. You couldn't call them claws by any stretch of the imagination, but they were pointed enough that the Sunnys used them like a human would use a stylus. Some control switches were inset into the keyboard so that they couldn't be pressed by accident. A man would have to insert the tip of a stylus to activate one. These mainly were the important ones, like the reactor controls and engine power. The comm controls were regular buttons. The net result was that it would be challenging for a human, even an experienced pilot, to fly one of the shuttles. The day before, I had been speaking to Frazzle about making changes to the control set-up to accommodate humans better. He'd indicated that it could be done fairly easily.

"We make shuttles for de Pugs to fly, no problem. We can change the Pug seats for human seats and modify the controls and displays for human eyes. It maybe takes a few days if we have access to a full repair facility," he said.

"It'll have to wait until we return to one of your planets, then. In the meantime, the older couple can fly the small shuttle for the Warlord," I replied.

"Dey can do that, but they might have problems with shooting," he cautioned.

"That's why we set the fire-control panel up for the third seat," I reminded him. "A human will ride along and serve as weapons officer. We don't expect Sunnys to operate the weapons."

This conversation replayed in my mind as I led Judith over to the small shuttle-craft. It was sitting close to the goalposts in the football stadium, and we walked across the end zone to the small ship. I stepped up onto the edge and opened the cockpit. The transparent cover slid back, and I reached down and assisted her as she climbed up to where she could inspect the interior.

"My goodness! It's very tight in there," she said.

"Just big enough to get three people in," I answered.

"You call those furry aliens people?" she asked, in some puzzlement.

"Look, Judith, humans are used to being the only sapient beings on the planet, and we're used to thinking of ourselves as the only ones who count. Both the Sunnys and the Sim-tigers are just as smart or perhaps smarter than humans, and they both have a sense of personal identity that is just about the same as ours. They think of themselves as people and accord us the same status. In short, I'd say they are people in the same sense that we call ourselves people. You'd better get used to treating them that way." I realized that I sounded admonitory, but her attitude had taken me by surprise, and in fact, I found it somewhat offensive.

"I guess you're right," she apologized. "It's just that they seem so strange. I hadn't thought about it much. I'll make an effort to ensure that everyone treats them with respect."

She was obviously embarrassed and trying to make amends.

"Don't worry about it. Once you get used to them, the physical differences won't seem so odd. Of course, we humans have held even smaller differences against members of our own species, so maybe it's a built-in sort of thing," I replied.

I hadn't thought about it in this way before. Humans can have funny ideas. If we can hold a ridiculously minor difference in skin tone against each other, we might also develop some form of prejudice against members of other intelligent species.

I sort of snickered to myself as I realized that I certainly disliked the Pugs. However, that was due to their aggressive nature and the fact that I'd seen them kill many humans without showing the slightest bit of empathy and not due to any in-built prejudice I secretly harbored.

The Sunnys were so cute that I didn't think they'd suffer from people disliking them. If anything, the humans that knew them tended to want to treat them as attractive pets. Their high intelligence and cheerful nature allowed them to blend in well with groups of humans, and they didn't seem to be offended if a human wanted to stroke their fur. They were just as likely to stroke our bare skin with a similar attitude of fascination.

The Sim-tigers wouldn't arouse that same emotion. They were a little too fierce-looking, but I knew from experience that humans and Sim-tigers could get along as friends.

"Look, Judith. This is an unprecedented situation for humans. We're going to have to adapt to this quickly. These people are our friends, and I think that is what really counts. Not shape or color or fur, but willingness to be friendly and a certain similarity of world-view. The enemy, the Pug-bears, and the Pugs don't think the same way. They see us more as inferior species that are only useful as slaves or food. From what I understand of their mentality, they don't see things in terms that map directly into human consciousness. You can be friends with a Sunny, but you'll never be able to be friends with a Pug."

She thoughtfully commented, "You know, if we'd had enemy aliens all along, we probably wouldn't have felt the need to discriminate against members of our own species. Being attacked by the Pug-bears makes the differences between human races seem non-existent. Having to pull together to avoid extinction has focused a lot of people on what is actually important."

That was an insightful remark, and I briefly thought that it could mean humanity was on the verge of reaching a new level of maturity. I sighed and nodded my head in agreement with the idea.

We closed up the shuttle and went back into one of the offices under the stadium to conclude our discussion. Judith led the way. As we walked down the hall, she spoke over her shoulder, "I've got someone for you to

meet in my office. He's...well, I think he's qualified to do the research you want. He's a biology professor or something like that. He was teaching at the university in Boulder and escaped to our lines when the Pugs attacked."

We entered the office. The Professor was sitting with his back to the door and stood when he heard us come in. He was about my height but older, perhaps sixty or so. His wiry, reddish hair was fading slowly to gray.

We shook hands, and he introduced himself, "I'm Ian Martin, Professor of molecular biology. I've been engaged in a wide range of brain research on primates and lower mammals also."

"Professor, or can I call you Ian?" I started.

"Ian will do. I'm afraid that my professorship evaporated when the university was destroyed by the –" he paused, "I guess you call it anti-matter weapon."

"Yes. That's what we used to wipe the main Pug force out. I'm sorry about the university, but most of them were in an area between the Pearl Street Mall and the university, and the anti-matter beam was wide enough that it got most of the university along with the Mall," I answered.

"No matter. I understand that you've got some kind of problem with the big aliens that you want me to figure out. I'm afraid that the Warlord has been very non-specific," he looked past me at Judith with a kind of accusing glance.

She chimed in, "Professor, in our defense, we don't know what Declan has in mind. None of us know any more than the aliens are deadly, and their venom kills humans easily. Not to mention that they have a regrettable degree of mental control over almost all humans. I don't know anything else about them."

"Don't worry about it," I answered, looking at her. Then I turned to the Professor, "Ian, the thing is, I know quite a lot about them. I was attacked by their expedition leader on Titan almost six years ago, and it somehow opened my mind to a whole spectrum of what you'd call psychic abilities. In the attack, the alien somehow downloaded the entire contents of its memory into my mind. I can't usually recall things at will, but when I ask the right question, the answer usually pops up."

He didn't look like he believed me. At the risk of seeming like a stage magician, I reached into his mind and pulled out some information. "You were born in Kansas. Emporia, I believe. You've been married twice and have two natural children and have adopted some others. You lost your second wife a few years ago, and –" An image popped into his mind. I shied away from it as a little too intimate but then went ahead and told him, "You've been involved with one of your graduate students for the past two years." Her name popped into his head, and I added, "She seems to be a good researcher, and her name is Sherry."

He turned a little pale for a moment, then responded, "You could have researched my past somehow, but I'm not sure how you found out about Sherry. We've been very careful not to be … I mean not to be, uh, obvious, if you get my meaning."

"Yes, I understand, and I'm not making any judgment about it. As far as I'm concerned, your personal life is yours. I just need you to do some research for me."

I began to explain to him how the Pug-bears achieved their intelligence. "The aliens are the top predators on their home planet. They have a natural mental ability to stun or paralyze their prey. This is something that also affects humans. I've seen unintelligent Pug-bears hold several humans in thrall so that the humans could not move or fight. There is a way to fight the control, but that's not the point now. The aliens sometimes pick up a parasite or symbiont that lodges in their braincase. The symbiont grows and merges with the alien's brain and confers a high level of intelligence in so doing. They become thinking creatures, not what we'd call rational, but able to think. When they reach this level of mentation, their primary urge is to expand their territory as much as possible. They want to dominate all forms of life and all planets. Until they came to Earth and we set them back, they had successfully attacked and dominated quite a number of planets. They're very dangerous and have no limit to their ambition."

"But what do you want me to research?" he interrupted.

"The thing is, we've killed quite a number of them here on Earth, and something seems to be suppressing the symbiont's growth. The older ones we've killed with symbionts should have a much larger skull. It grows as their brain becomes enlarged. Most of them don't show the growth that goes along with the higher intelligence, and their symbionts are somehow stunted. I think that there must be some environmental or biological factor here on Earth that is causing this, and if such a thing exists, I want to know what it is. Most especially, I want to know if we can isolate and weaponize the factor."

"That might be very difficult. Most people think weaponizing a biological agent is easy. Just spray some germs around and, well, you know what I mean, but it's not easy. It can be complicated," he said.

"Yeah. I know, but I'm faced with a difficult problem. There are five planets full of Sunnys enslaved by the Pug-bears. There is no way we have enough ships or men to free the Sunnys on even one planet. I've got to find something that will kill or disable Pug-bears without harming Sunnys, and I need it fast."

Our discussion went on for some time. I explained how the Pug-bears were usually widely separated and mixed in with the Sunny population, so they were not good targets for KEWs. I told him about our comet bomb, and he agreed that its effectiveness was a special case. The Pug-bears' breeding grounds were a good target because of the planet's geology. Not every planet would have a high mountain valley that ran entirely around the globe's circumference. Dropping a massive ice ball of a comet on most planets wouldn't have the desired effect of wiping out the Pug-bears' breeding area without washing the Sunny civilization away also.

We ended with Ian's agreement to work on the problem and Judith's promise to set him up with all the equipment and facilities he needed. There were still a few Pug-bears on Earth, and, in fact, Jake had issued a reward for live ones. As a result, the Denver Zoo was being used to hold several of the things. The keepers had gradually developed a sort of immunity to their mental control. It seemed to lose effectiveness after a man had been exposed to it repeatedly.

I didn't exactly feel confident that Ian would come up with a solution, but I was left with some hope that his research would bear fruit.