An Accidental Alliance (12 page)

 
    
Marisea, it turned out, also had a torq similar to her father, Taodore’s. She just had not taken it with her on her journey upstream. “I went to collect samples for Dad,” she explained to Iris. “The
reshti
are not all that common and that was a larger pack of them than I ever imagined. Normally they only hunt in groups of two or three. My stunner should have been sufficient protection. I am glad you came along though,” she added after a pause. Then, without any warning, tears fell from her eyes and she gave Iris a bone-crushing hug. “Thank you,” she whispered repeatedly until Iris managed to calm the teenager down. “I’m sorry,” she told Iris after a while. “I don’t know what came over me.”

     
“It takes a while sometimes,” Iris replied, smiling. “When you’re in danger you just set your jaw and handle it as best you can. At least that’s what you’re supposed to do. Later you have the freedom to realize just what could have happened. That’s when you really feel the fear.”

     
“But I was frightened yesterday too,” Marisea told her, wiping tears from her face with her hands. “I screamed my head off.”

     
“We heard you,” Iris replied, “That’s why we rushed to see what was happening. But you didn’t really scream very much. Just the one time. By the time we saw you, you were shooting the neo-crocs.”

     
“Neo-crocs” Marisea echoed uncertainly. “We call them
reshti
.”

     
“Park and I didn’t know that at the time,” Iris explained.

     
“That gun of yours is the wrong way to handle them, though,” Marisea told her.

     
“Because it kills?” Iris asked.

     
“No,” Marisea laughed. “I have no problem killing
reshti
. They have no problem killing me either. No, it was the wrong way because it spills blood. The
reshti
go mad when there is blood. First they attack the one that bleeds whether
reshti
or not and then they attack anything else that is not a
resht
until there is nothing left. If you use the stunner, maybe you kill one, maybe not, but you don’t spill blood. See?”

     
“I guess I do,” Iris nodded. “In the past we had a sort of fish called sharks that sometimes behaved like that too.”

     
“Yes,” Marisea nodded, “There are fish now that do the same thing. We have other ways of dealing with them. There are certain sounds that keep them away. It’s very simple really and they don’t generally attack anyway, but the
reshti
seem always hungry.”

     
“Maybe they are,” Iris shrugged. “They seem very active for aquatic reptiles or maybe they’re neoreptiles.”

     
“If I understand what you have told me,” Marisea responded, “I think they are neos.” There are not many of the old sort left. Just a few, uh, I forget the phrase. Really old species.”

     
“Fossil species, perhaps?” Iris prompted her.

     
“Mmm, maybe,” Marisea decided. “I really need to learn your language and not depend on the torq. It’s lucky we have them really. We only keep them with us because we met Okactack shortly after starting out. It’s impossible to speak any form of Atackack language without them, you see, although Dad’s system is also programmed for any known Galactic languages and gets updates from the Central Net when we’re in contact, which around here is only once every few days.”

     
“Who are these Galactics?” Iris asked.

     
“The Galactics?” Marisea wrinkled her nose in distaste. Iris thought it was a pretty nose and would have loved to have one so cute. Her own nose had never satisfied her although she had never opted for surgery to change it. “They’re the damned, uh excuse me, lords and masters of all space or at least they act like they are. They come here sometimes, mostly scholars, archaeologists more frequently than most but I’ve never met any of them. They might be okay. I don’t know, but the ones who enforce the Covenant, they’re different. They have decreed that since the Mer are an artificially created species, as though any of them have not fiddled with their genes from time to time, we are not allowed to go to space. Who are they to say that?”

     
“It doesn’t sound fair to me,” Iris agreed. “But what’s stopping your people from going up anyway?”

     
“They have a city on the Moon,” Marisea told her. “You can see it sometimes as a bright silver dot, when the sun reflects off of it just right. From there they watch and make sure all provisions of the Covenant are upheld”

  
   
“And what provisions are those?” Iris prompted Marisea.

     
“That the Mer must never again build a space craft or satellite and fly it more than one hundred miles over the surface of the earth,” Marisea recited as though having learned it from a text book. Iris decided the girl probably had done just that.

     
“Do you have ships that can do more?” Iris asked, “and how could they stop you?”

     
“I learned in school that our space craft are capable of interplanetary flight,” Marisea told her, “but they would shoot down any vessel attempting to do so. It has happened in the past. And if we try to do it too much, they could come here and destroy our cities and maybe all of us.”

     
“But why?” Iris insisted, unable to comprehend such a restriction.

  
   
Marisea replied, “We’re a gene-locked species. It is impossible for us to evolve. So they have decided that since we are not naturally evolved, we cannot be allowed to enter the interstellar community. It isn’t fair.”

     
“It doesn’t sound fair to me,” Iris agreed. “No one sees his species evolve within his lifetime anyway. To discriminate simply because your fossil record doesn’t change seems silly and arbitrary to me.”

     
“And it’s not like any of them evolved naturally,” Marisea went on. “All the Earth-descended species came from your sort, just like mine did. They were all genetically adapted to their worlds originally, it’s just that they are not gene-locked.”

     
“Not much I can say to that, aside from I think they’re wrong,” Iris replied.

 
    
Okactack spent much of the time silently studying the two humans. He did not say much and would occasionally light some incense and go into a trance. After a while, he would wake up, nod a few times and go back to watching Park or Iris for a while. Park tried to ask if he could help the insectile shaman, but Otackack merely shook his head and clicked out, “Not yet. I am not yet sure,” in his own translated language.

     
“I don’t get him,” Park admitted to Taodore and Marisea when he found an opportunity to speak away from the ant-like shaman. That turned out to be easier than he expected as Okactack spent most of his time in prayer and a sacred trance and rarely paid much attention to the humanoids.

     
“Who?” Taodore asked. “Old Okactack? Don’t mind him. He’s a good old bug. Never gets in the way and even helps out when asked. You have to respect a guy like that. He rides with us in the boat even though he would drown in rather short order should he fall in the water. The Atackack are rather scared of water for that reason although they do have some novel means of building bridges when they need to, you know?”

     
“I don’t,” Park smiled, “but I’ll take your word for it. Well, if they have a civilization, I suppose they would need to be able to build a decent bridge especially if they drown so easily.”

     
“Civilization, old boy?” Taodore laughed as though that had been the funniest thing he could have heard. “The Atackack aren’t civilized, not by a long shot.”

     
“The Atackack are what my teacher called, a collection of neolithic tribes, loosely bound into five related groups,” Marisea explained to Park and Iris.

     
“They use stone tools?” Iris asked.

     
“Not if they can help it,” Taodore replied. “The Gecks and Bidachiks trade fairly extensively with the Mer of the southern coast and they in turn have a thriving trade network with the Totkebas and Pakatis…”

     
“Who?” Park interrupted to ask.

     
“The Atackack Tribal groupings,” Marisea supplied. “Many people call them tribes, but actually they are five groups of related tribes. They are not quite organized enough to refer to as nations. The Gecks are the southernmost tribes, they live between the Strait of Australis and the Sink and the Bidichiks live in the southeast corner of the continent. The Totkeba Tribes live in Otke, you know, on the other side of The Sink, to the north of Geck Territory and north of them live the Pakatis.”

     
“You’ll have to show me a map,” Park told her.

     
“I’ll get a pad from the boat,” she volunteered enthusiastically and quickly hop-stepped away.

     
“That’s only four tribal groups,” Iris noted. “What of the fifth?”

     
“The Kogacks aren’t really a group of related tribes,” Taodore explained. “That’s just a name the other Atackack give to all the bands of Atackack who live in the far east beyond the Mediterranean Mountains. They are not as advanced, either culturally or technologically, as the other Atackack. I suppose when you get right down to it, you could refer to them as Stone Age savages. Unlike their cousins they do no farming or herding of animals. They make their subsistence almost entirely from hunting and gathering.”

     
“Almost?” Park asked.

     
“I understand that some occasionally visit our cities to trade, but not very often. Mostly they bring gemstones from their lands, and craft goods they make. They’re fairly popular, I understand.”

     
“And knowing there are expensive gemstones on their lands doesn’t make anyone want to go get some for themselves?” Iris asked. “You know, to cut out the middle man as it were?”

     
“Are you kidding?” Taodore laughed. “The Kogacks really are savages. I wouldn’t call them cannibals as we’re different species, but you get the idea. I wouldn’t have you believe all Mer are all honest and lacking in greed. We’re only mortal, after all. There have been attempts to go inland there to get the gems directly. One or two groups of people try it every year, but no one ever succeeds and only a few very lucky ones ever return alive. Even other Atackack hesitate to enter Kogack lands and, in fact, only a shaman can do so with impunity.”

     
Marisea returned then and showed Park and Iris a map of the world as the Mer knew it. On it they could see the supercontinent of Pangaea Proxima, although on the Mer map it was simply labled with a Merish word that meant “the Land.” They could make out the rough and contorted outlines of the continents they had once known. The Atlantic Ocean no longer existed. Africa had been pushed up into Europe which, in time, had rotated with Asia in a long clockwise motion. South America was now connected to what had been Southeast Asia and the remains of the Indian Ocean was now a large inland sea called, “The Sink.” South of the supercontinent was the smaller continent, Australis, which appeared to have been formed by a collision between Australia and Antarctica. And here and there were chains of islands that had no doubt once bordered the Pacific Ocean, which was now the only remaining ocean, and completely encircled Pangaea. There were no ice caps; this was a warm world.

     
“We met Okactack over here in Geck territory on the southeast side of the Sink,” Taodore told Park and Iris. “That was kind of strange. He said he had been waiting for us and that we would take him to where he needed to go.”

     
“Did it occur to you he might be a little crazy?” Park asked in hushed tones.

     
“Of course he’s crazy!” Taodore laughed. “By our standards, all the Atackack mystics are crazy, but not by their own. Tack is actually one of the more normal ones I’ve met. At least his prayers and trances are quiet. He’s a shaman on a mission, though and that could make a difference. He told me he has been graced with the curse of prophecy.”

     
“An interesting way to put it,” Park noted.

     
“His own words,” Taodore shrugged.

     
“His?” Iris asked. “Aren’t most insects female?”

     
“Most Atackack workers are female, but they are not quite like the lower orders of insect,” Taodore replied. “There are about five females for every male and all their shamans are male. Anyway, Tack had a vision about a year ago from what I understand.”

     
“What sort of vision?” Park asked.

     
“Oh the usual sort,” Taodore replied. “Death, destruction, general mayhem, world in danger and all that. Tack believes the world is in danger from the outside. Given the way the Galactics don’t like us much, I suppose this is believable, though I’m not sure how many Atackacks would know a Galactic from a reshi. And he is following his vision to a place where he claims he will find a savior.

     
“I figured it was the neighborly thing to bring him along. If he’s right then maybe I’m helping the whole world and if not, well where’s the harm, eh? Besides I’ve never met an Atackack shaman who was violent. They are all pacifists by oath. It is part of why they can travel anywhere on Atackack lands without fear of the locals turning on them. The other Atackack frequently war on their neighbors.”

     
“War?” Iris asked.

     
“Well, our culturologists call it war,” Taodore shrugged. “In truth, they do more shouting and waving at each other than actual fighting most of the time. It’s all very riutualized, I understand. Last year I witnessed such a war. It lasted five or six hours and ended after the first spear was thrown. Not only that, but it landed short.”