Kris Longknife: Tenacious (Kris Longknife novellas Book 12) (12 page)

“I’ll have my network support team start working with Nelly right away.”

“Thank you, Captain,” Nelly said.

“Don’t make me regret this momentary lapse in good judgment,” Captain Drago growled.

“I will endeavor greatly to see that you don’t,” Nelly said. Was there a bit of a laugh somewhere in her voice?

“Jacques, I do have a question for you,” Nelly said.

“Yes?”

“Which group of naked, abandoned raiders are you intent on passing yourself off as being from when you make contact with the most recent set of marooned raiders?”

“I haven’t decided,” he said.

“Which explains why your kisses has been so scratchy of late,” Amanda said. “I wondered why you quit shaving.”

“Part of the price of falling in love with a field-going anthropologist,” Jacques said.

“Why, oh my heart, couldn’t you have gone pitter-pat for some nice economics major with a briefcase and a boring day job?” Amanda asked no one in particular.

“I thought that might be the case,” Nelly said. “Kris, I have enough matrix, even after you shot up some of it surviving your third alien battle. I’d like to generate the new child and give it into Jacques’s care.”

“Amanda, will you be jealous, dear?” Jacques asked.

“Of course I will be, honey,” came with not-so-sweet undertones, “but I’ll just have to muddle along with my own pet computer. Though, who knows, with me jealous of you, and you wandering around bare-ass and flirting with every other mud-caked native down there with big boobs, I just might find that nice guy with the boring day job up here.”

“There are no boring day jobs up here,” Jacques pointed out.

“Don’t you hate it when they’re right?” Kris said with a sad smile for Amanda.

“If he gets a Nelly-class computer, I want ice cream. Chocolate ice cream with nuts,” Amanda said glumly.

“Both of us do,” Kris said, and adjourned the meeting.

Jack and Jacques left for Marine country to examine what could pass as minimal gear for going native. At Jack’s collarbone, Sal was already going through the drill for bringing a new computer up to speed, no doubt with a large helping hand from Nelly, who was strangely quiet at Kris’s own collarbone.

The pantry off the wardroom did prove to have a supply of chocolate ice cream with nuts and other crunchy things and no one with the gumption to tell the admiral, princess, and viceroy that she couldn’t raid the wardroom’s supplies.

The two young women dived into their consolation prize as their men, no doubt, contemplated the joyous life of a caveman.

“What is it about men that they don’t value chocolate properly?” Kris asked.

“Who’d want a world without chocolate?” Amanda asked back.

“Or good dentistry?”

“Or proper pain control when you’re having a baby?”

“You can’t be thinking of having a baby,” Kris said. “You’ve got the same birth-control implants in you that I’ve got in me.”

“Yes, but they wear out, dearie,” Amanda said, taking a dainty and ladylike small bite of the much-praised ice cream.

“And they
will
be replaced,” Kris said, using the full authority of her command.

“I’m a civilian,” Amanda pointed out.

“In a combat zone. Check your paperwork. When you signed on, you signed a reserve commission. You cause me too much grief, and your civilian days are over.”

“I need more ice cream,” Amanda said.

“So do I,” Kris said.

Their next spoonfuls were not at all small and dainty.

A
week later, Kris, Amanda, and Penny watched as Jacques made his first try at making contact. Jack was dirtside with a squad of Marines hiding well back, but no more than two minutes away at a gallop.

If things went bad, some aliens would be seeing if sleepy darts worked on them. If they didn’t, matters would get bloody fast.

Jacques had settled himself beside a watering hole that the half-naked tribe frequented. Using a shard that he’d chipped off of a bit of flint, he’d cut himself a reed, then cut several holes in it. Blowing into it, he got some notes of a not-too-far-off-key nature.

He was making music as the five men cautiously approached the stream from the other side. He stayed where he was, squatting on the muddy bank. They stayed hunkered down in the high grass on the other side. The scout bugs caught their conversation. Their thirst was driving them to the water. Fear of the stranger was holding them back.

At the moment, they were frozen on the sharp edge of indecision.

Then the oldest woman of the group came up. ~The babies are hot and cranky. We need to bathe them in the river to cool them. The mothers must drink water to make milk for the babies. Do not stand around looking like unenlightened trees.~

The men stayed hunkered down in the grass. One of them pointed at Jacques.

The woman eyed the stranger for a while, then scowled at the men and strode forward until her feet were just touching the water on their side of the river.

Jacques kept up his effort at getting melodic notes out of the reed.

The woman made shooing signs for Jacques to go away.

He kept on playing what he was playing. Kris thought it might be a ragged attempt at Pachelbel’s
Canon
. Or not.

The woman stooped to the water, found a rock, stood, and tossed it overhand at Jacques. It flew by his head, missing by a quarter meter or so.

Jacques raised his reed and blew a loud note at the woman. That done, he went back to his musical musings.

Giving her opponent a puzzled frown, the woman stooped again to the water, but this time she drew water into the palm of her hand and raised it to her lips. After she’d done that two or three times, the men came down to the water and slaked their own thirst. Some used the palm of their hands to draw the water up, others bent low and lapped it up.

Through this, Jacques stood his ground and made his attempt at raw music.

“Was this the music to soothe the savage beast?” Kris asked the women gathered with her in her day quarters.

Both Penny and Amanda met the question with shrugs.

Once the men had drunk, the four women with babes came down with the other young woman, who was shorter than the rest. The envious looks she gave the women and babes left Kris with a sick feeling that she’d had a child and lost it.

No doubt, life was rough with this small, abandoned group. What must it have been like to be dropped out of the world of spaceships and regimented life into the middle of an untamed world?

Then Kris remembered her own examinations of a world these people had plundered. Apparently, they didn’t even know to establish latrines when they went dirtside. Here was more proof the aliens knew ship life but nothing else.

On the screen, the small group held to its side of the stream. Now the children were babbling and splashing in the water, clearly enjoying its cool and refreshing touch.

It was time for Jacques to try his next trick.

They’d studied the other tribes not only for their language but also to see how they survived in this world. One tribe in the woods looked like it was about ready to begin passing itself off as indigenous. They’d learned how to strip sinew from their kills and use the tendons to sew skins together into rough clothing.

They also ate better than most of the gens wandering the immediate environs of the glass plain. One thing they seemed to like was the bulbous root of a plant that grew in all the streams of the area. It was starchy and rather tasteless, but it was a whole lot better than going hungry.

Jacques reached over and pulled up one of the water plants, washed the dirt off its root bulb, but not before eating a rather disgusting slug.

“Ugh,” said his wife. “He better rinse that mouth out with soap before he kisses me again?”

Kris nodded agreement while doubting Amanda would ask anything of the sort from her returned husband but hugs and kisses and to be taken to bed. They were just that kind of couple.

Maybe they would shower together first.

On-screen, Jacques was taking his second bite of the root. When the others just looked at him, he pulled another plant up by its roots and offered it to those across the stream from him. When they didn’t move any closer, he tossed it in the water.

The current began to move the plant, root and all, downstream and away from them. The short, childless woman made a dash out into the water before it went too far, retrieved it, and offered it to one of the nursing moms.

“That’s selfless,” Penny said.

“Watch,” Amanda said. “She’s learned. She’s pulling up one of the plants herself and is eating that one.” In a moment, men and women alike were plundering their side of the stream bank for the new food.

Jacques went on playing.

The others ate in a frenzied fury to his music. When they had eaten about all the tubers on that side of the stream, the group began to gather itself and move back into the woods. The short woman stayed behind. Turning her back to Jacques, she spread her legs a bit and bent over, showing Jacques about all there was to see.

Beside Kris, Amanda sighed. “We talked about this. That’s about the most standard ‘come hither’ sign the human race has. I guess that’s another way they’re like us at the basic structural level.”

“Can we even have sex with one of them?” Penny asked, maybe a bit red in the face.

“No doubt Jacques will find out,” Amanda said, and from the way the local woman was behaving, it would be sooner rather than later.

“Cut the camera feed,” Kris ordered. No doubt the scientists would study the pictures, and they would soon make their way into the onboard porn supply, but his wife didn’t need to watch her caveman husband do his caveman thing.

“So, we’ve made initial contact,” Kris said.

“And no head got bashed in,” Penny said.

“And I am a professional woman married to a scientist who does a lot of fieldwork. I just wish he didn’t enjoy it so much,” Amanda said, with a resigned sigh.

“So, what do we do now?” Kris asked.

“We wait,” Amanda said. “Jacques can’t exactly ask them what ship they’re from and what their myth is for wandering the stars and massacring all life, now can he?”

“That would be an interesting icebreaker,” Kris admitted.

“So he waits and sees what he can find out.”

“For how long?” Penny asked.

“For however long he thinks he has to,” Amanda said. “Of course, if the pickets sound an alarm, it may go differently, but for now, we just wait.”

The
wait lasted a week. During that time, Kris avoided the voyeuristic urge to watch Jacques in action, or rather observe his research. Or whatever.

Jack came back the next day, and Kris showed him just how grateful she was to have him back in her ship and in her bed.

“I take it you missed me,” he said when they came up for air.

“And I want you to remember how pleasant a nice, clean, civilized girl can be,” Kris said.

“Honey, you don’t need to remind me of that. That place stinks. The insects don’t make any distinction between us and them. Even with bug repellent, you’re swatting them all the time. It was almost enough to put us back in full space suits and armor. But, oh, did I mention how hot it was?”

“I think you should have stayed in full space armor.”

“We’ve been over this too many times before. The scientists agree we’re safe down there. I couldn’t carry enough oxygen to stay down there as long as I did, and if we’d had to go running in to grab someone trying to beat Jacques’s head in, it would have looked better if we were as low-tech as possible. Otherwise, they might suicide on the spot. You do want someone to talk to, right?”

“Yes,” Kris said, trying not to sound too pouty. “You do have some nasty bug bites.”

“The surgeon looked at them on the flight up. They’ve been treated and are not going to make me turn into a monster or cause you to shrivel up into an old lady in the next five minutes. So come here and remind me again why I wanted to come home to my civilized gal.”

“Since you put it that way,” Kris said, and did.

Kris and Jack monitored Jacques constantly. Or near constantly. It seemed that every woman in the group wanted a part of Jacques.

When Kris said something catty, Jack jumped in, man defending man.

“Kris, they stink. It’s hot and buggy as all get out. He’s really taking one for the team here.”

Kris chose not to dispute Jack’s opinion. She did, however, notice that the younger women began to bathe themselves along with their babies. The childless one damn near became a fish. Only the older woman would have nothing to do with the stranger.

Jacques certainly did his best to improve the quality of life for these outcasts. He showed them several more plants that were edible, and the clan became less gaunt. He also began to twist twine from grass.

The older woman, the one who bossed the young mothers and had tried to shoo Jacques away in the first place, made it clear she considered Jacques touched in the head. ~He makes noises from hollow thick grass. Now he twists grass into something that only the babies find interesting. He is not all there in the head.~

Then Jacques set his first trap.

And caught something.

It was small, something like a big-eared fox, but it had a bit of meat on its bones. He showed them how to skin it using a sharp stone flake. Nelly alerted Kris that something important might be about to happen. She also summoned Jack and Amanda to Kris’s day quarters. Together, they gathered around the screens as the issue of how the locals would react to their first fresh meat played out.

The locals looked hungry enough to eat the thing raw, but Jacques used the string again to make a fire bow. They stood back while he got a fire going, then stood back farther and mumbled among themselves.

Nelly translated for Kris and Jack. “I think they’re arguing among themselves about whether or not he’s the Enlightened One. We’ve heard a word like that among the other naked tribes. The established tribes have no word like it. Not even close.”

“The Enlightened One,” Kris said.

“Notice the emphasis on the ‘one,’” Jack said.

“I wonder what they mean by that?” Amanda questioned.

Several of the mothers seemed sure that Jacques was indeed “the Enlightened One.” The older woman definitely thought he wasn’t. The men seemed concerned about this theological debate, but they remained quiet. It was the childless young woman who took the bull by the horns and put the question to Jacques.

~Are you the Enlightened One?~ she demanded, hands on hips.

“How’s he going to play that?” Jack asked.

“Smart,” Amanda said.

~I do not know this word,~ Jacques said.

~Are you from the ship?~ the woman asked.

~Ship? I was born under this sky. My mother spoke of a ship, a world with no sky, but my father would have no talk of it and shushed her. Are you from a ship?~

The woman seemed hesitant to go on, but finally admitted, ~Yes, I was born of the ship.~

“Notice she said
the
ship, not
a
ship,” Amanda said. “I wish I’d taken more courses in sociology. It think that’s important.”

~I dream of being on the ship,~ Jacques said. ~Is that where the Enlightened One is?~

~Yes, he guides our ship. He guides us to the light. You guide us to food. Are you the Enlightened One under this sky?~

“How’s he going to answer that question?” Kris asked.

“Very carefully,” Amanda repeated.

~I am young. Aren’t Enlightened Ones full of years?~

~Yes, yes,~ the woman agreed. She looked back at the others, who waited expectantly. ~Are there young Enlightened Ones?~ she asked them.

The others, Kris would not have put any of them much past thirty, had no answer for her. The young woman turned from Jacques and rejoined the others. They squatted down in a circle, and their talk was long and animated.

“Nelly, are you getting this?”

“I’m getting all the words, Kris. The meaning, not so much. There are a lot of allusions to people and places that I can’t connect. I don’t think any of them ever saw any Enlightened One except the one they always had. One of them thinks there is a ceremony for the death of an Enlightened One and the recognition of a new one. Oh, oh, that got him in trouble. They’re saying that it was his crazy ideas that got them dumped here in the first place.”

On-screen, one of the men shoved two of the others away.

“He’s saying that they did nothing to cause them to be dropped here. They’re here, oh, that’s a bad turn of phrase, but I think it means to impress the others and make sure they meet their work assignments.”

“What were the actual words?” Amanda said. “That might tell us something.”

“It’s not nice,” Nelly said. “I think it’s something like ‘we are made to eat shit so that the others will be happy with their porridge.’”

“E-uw,” Kris said. “You’re right, Nelly. I’ll stick with your first translation.”

“You take the nice words, Princess,” Amanda said. “I’ll stick with the original. They’re traveling in a bound space, recycling everything. After hearing that, I have to wonder how well it works. As well as who gets the shit and who gets the porridge. And who maybe gets the best available?”

“You think you’re seeing fractures along class lines?” Kris asked.

“This Enlightened One is clearly at the top. ‘May the king or emperor live forever,’ was a popular illusion back when we had potentates with divine pretensions. I’m thinking we’ve got something like that here.”

Kris frowned as she let that bounce around in her head. “A hundred thousand years ago, someone pounded the living hell out of the next planet over. Someone abandoned this planet to go roving among the stars looking for any poor bastard that might rise up and do unto these as they were busy doing unto them.”

Kris eyed Jack and Amanda. They nodded agreement back. She went on.

“Somehow, these ships multiplied, but always, they kept the hate alive. No, let’s make that fear. It seems there is always someone to harangue the people. That must be the ‘Enlightened One’ we saw giving The Word to the folks in the first mother ship we blasted to bits.”

Again, Kris only got agreement from the others.

“It appears that this planet serves as some kind of dumping grounds for any problem children. If anyone won’t conform, get with the program, or maybe just voices doubts, they get a one-way ticket to here. Or maybe all you have to be is slow to get your work done if they don’t have enough examples to scare the others.”

“I think you may have something there, Kris,” Jack said.

“So how do we break into this chain of insanity and make them see that the whole universe isn’t out to get them? At least not if they aren’t out to get us?” Kris said.

She got no answer from the other two. She let the silence stretch for a minute or more, then made her call.

“Jack, would you please go down there and bring me back one of those men.”

“They stink pretty bad, Kris.”

“I’m not taking him to bed, Jack.” That got her a laugh from the other two. “You can douse him in the brig’s head, but I want to talk to him. Nelly has a vocabulary now. We need to find out just how bad this thing is. There’s got to be a way to reason with them.”

“I think you’re an optimist,” Amanda said.

“No doubt. The alternative, however, is just too bloody to contemplate.”

That got nods from the other two.

“I’ll be back for supper,” Jack said.

“I’ll see that the wardroom has some good chow for you and Jacques,” Kris said.

“They’ll need to keep it warm for later,” Amanda said. “Jacques is all mine.”