An Accidental Alliance (13 page)

     
“Are all Atackack wars like that?” Iris asked, amazed.

     
“Most of them,” Taodore replied. “Oh they have wars that go beyond mere shouting and raiding. They have a few that get rather bloody, in fact, but these are relatively rare and only occur in areas of high population. Okactack tells me his people go crazy when two tribes have to compete over the same farming or herding areas for more than a few years, but that in most cases their shamans can keep things manageable.”

 
    
“Crazy?” Park wondered. “Do you mean as in some sort of biological or territorial imperative?”

     
“I’m not really sure, old boy,” Taodore replied. “Not really my field of study, don’t you know, but I suppose that could be the case. It seems to only happen when two tribes have been competing for a fair number of years and the populations of one or both have grown large.”

     
“Could be that as their food sources begin to strain to feed them, certain hormonal or pheromonal changes occur to make them more aggressive,” Park commented. “I think some of the insects in the past may have behaved like that too, although that wasn’t my specialty either.”

     
“And what is your specialty, old boy?” Taodore asked.

     
“I don’t really have a single specialty,” Park chuckled. “I have degrees of higher learning in a number of subjects, but rather than specialize I have spent much of my life following whatever interest beckoned to me at the moment. I guess you could say I am a professional generalist.”

     
“Ah!” Taodore smiled broadly. “Then we are brothers of the spirit. I too have been educated in our universities, but have never settled down to a single field of competence. Some of my fellows find some amusement in my enthusiasms, I know, but I find life so much more interesting this way. And you, my dear?” He turned toward Iris.

     
“I’m an engineer,” Iris replied, “although even there I have generalized. My training was in electrical and mechanical engineering and I have taught both subjects. How about you Marisea? Are you looking for a specialty or planning to follow the path your father
 
walks?”

     
“I’m not sure,” Marisea admitted. “I like most of the subjects I have in school and most of the teachers too, although this year, Dad has been teaching me. I never really have had a specialty.”

     
“You’re a bit young for a specialized education just yet anyway, dear,” Taodore told her. “We all start with the same educational basics and only choose a specialty while at University and you’ve another two and a half years before then. My daughter,” he told the humans, “could yet be a generalist, of course, but I know she truly loves looking at the stars.”

     
Marisea sighed, but said nothing, but it was enough to let Iris know the girl wanted so much more than to actually look at the stars, but after their previous discussions it did not seem likely she would ever get any closer to them. It was not a problem Iris could see an easy solution for.

     
Taodore had been studying a unique class of motile plants on the river, which according to his map was called the Zontisso. The plants could literally walk on their roots and were to be found all over Pangaea, but here along the Zontisso there appeared to be some unique varities including a tree-sized walking plant that was unique to the middle and lower Zontisso valley. The grass-sized species could move fairly rapidly, but this tree-like species could only move a few feet each day.

     
“Motile plants?” Park whistled. “We had nothing like that when we came from, not above the microscopic scale anyway. I think that would explain what we saw on our first trip on the river, though.” He explained how he had seen grass in the water, but that by the next, the banks had been clear again.

     
“Could have been any number of common species,” Taodore told him. “There have been several dozen catalogued. It’s these big ones I’ve been interested in, although we seem to be at the limit of their range. There are more downstream, some in fair-sized forests that move a little from day to day.”

     
“What’s the point though?” Park asked. “Why should a plant be able to move?”

     
“Why not?” Taodore answered. “We do, don’t we, old boy?”

     
“Most animals do,” Park noted, “but plants?”

   
  
“I imagine the ability evolved from a need to find additional nutrients,” Taodore replied. “I know a botanist who is trying to figure out if these motile plants can think. Some have elaborate movements they go through in the pollination season and many travel in large circuits, whether to and from water or in wide circles. He was interested in the trees which was why I started out this way. But now, I’m more interested in your people and this base you tell me about.”

     
“Would you like to come for a visit?” Park invited him.

     
“Old boy,” Taodore clapped him on the shoulder. “I thought you would never ask. The oldest ruins we know of are a mere one million years old, so the chance to see an intact facility from two hundred and fifty million, well, it’s something I would give anything to see.”

     
“I’m not sure you can call it intact,” Park warned him. You have to realize it was originally built over three thousand feet underground but is now roughly half exposed.”

     
“But it is mostly intact, isn’t it?” Taodore asked.

     
“It’s still livable inside,” Park admitted. “And there are only a few holes in some of the walls, although by now they should be patched up. Fortunately, the walls were not damaged too long before our first stasis units gave out. We had a bit of dust that got blown in, but it wasn’t too bad. From what we can tell there was an earthquake that disrupted our connection to one of our geothermal energy generators and that caused power to start to fail in a number of sections until we woke up. We’ve rigged up solar panels to make up for the loss now, so I think you’ll have a fair notion of what the base was like when it was new.”

     
Okactack, or Tack as he told the humans to call him, chose to ride in Park’s and Iris’ boat as they began their return trip and that gave them both a chance to talk to the insectoid shaman. “Taodore tells me you are following a vision?” Park asked him through one of the Mer translation torqs.

     
“Yes,” Tack replied. “I am on a vision quest. Our world is in danger from beyond.”

     
“Yes,” Park nodded. “Taodore told me about the Galactic quarantine of the Earth.”

     
“It is not merely the quarantine,” Tack rocked back and forth in what Park had learned was a gesture of negativity, similar to the shaking of one’s head. “We, the people of Earth, have enemies; ones who would see us all dead if they have their way.”

     
“So they don’t like us much,” Park chuckled. It was the wrong thing to say to the devoted Atackack. Tack glared at him from his multifaceted eyes. That’s a lot of glare, Park thought to himself, but aloud he said, “Forgive me, Tack. My mouth runs without my brain behind it sometimes. I meant no disrespect.”

     
Tack nodded, it was a human and Mer gesture he had learned. “The saviors will have many weapons,” Tack replied. “Perhaps humor is one of them.”

     
“How many saviors are you looking for?” Park asked.

     
“Two,” Tack replied. “Oh, there are many saviors, for indeed, we shall all play our parts in our own salvation, but there are two Savior Strangers who come to us from another world, and yet not another world who will do the most to save our world and everyone in it.”

     
Tack, when not praying was most interested in Park, Iris and their people and asked many questions about them. He also shared his impressions of the Mer. “They confuse me, sometimes,” Tack confessed. “The Mer are wizards who work great wonders and yet they do not believe, or rather, in spite of all their knowledge they are uncertain whether the gods exist.”

  
   
“I have heard it said that the more you learn, the more you understand that you do not know,” Park told him, “and I believe you mean to say they are agnostic, neither believers nor disbelievers.” Tack nodded emphatically. “According to what Taodore and Marisea have told me, they aren’t agnostic at all. They do have religious beliefs, but their society is a very secular one, where as for your own people, religion is a very important part of every day life.”

     
“But how can they have such power without constraint?” Tack asked. “How can they without constant divine worship and guidance?”

     
“Among my people we say that God helps those who first help themselves,” Park replied. “He does not merely hand out gifts, we have to earn them.” Tack grew very thoughtful and soon returned to his prayer.

     
On the trip back, Park and Iris also learned far more about their new Mer friends. Taodore was an aristocrat in Mer society, but had been one of the few of the upper class to opt out of the usually expected political service and competition. Instead he preferred to spend his time in what he called “worthwhile pursuits,” which as he described them were various forms of research. It had been his original intention to study the salinity in the Sink, but on meeting Tack, Taodore decided instead to conduct the survey of the motile trees his friend had wanted, as it was just as interesting and it would allow him and Marisea to conduct the shaman into the deep northwest.

     
As Tack lapsed into silence, Park stopped to study the borrowed torq. It was Marisea’s and silver in color, although Taodore’s was golden, with a series of brightly lit buttons set flush against the outer surface of the ring. It was, as Taodore explained, the ultimate personal computer, although to get full functionality one needed an input device which Park could not yet use and would not be able to until he had learned Merish. The torq, however, could be used to learn that or any other programmed-in language, and in their spare moments both he and Iris did their best to learn that most foreign tongue. Taodore and Marisea were equally anxious to learn the human language, but were surprised when Iris explained there were actually many such languages. However, since everyone at Van Winkle Base spoke English, even those from Europe and elsewhere, there was no need to teach the Mer any other language.

     
The torqs could also communicate with each other, which proved very useful as an alternative to shouting back and forth between the two boats. They could even be used to make the equivalent of phone calls when within a Mer communications network. However,
 
because the Mer were not allowed to use geosynchronous communications satellites, much of the interior of Pangaea had only spotty coverage, so that while Taodore had been able to send the results of his survey off to his botanist friend via delayed relay, he could not have simply called him up with the results.

     
Marisea was at first a bit disappointed to learn they would be going north to Van Winkle Base. She had hoped to be able to bring Park and Iris to her home city of Sanatis, in southern Pangaea on the Strait of Australis and show them around, but as they grew closer to the human’s base she became excited by the prospect.

     
“You know Arn is going to freak when he sees these maps,” Park chuckled when Marisea was showing them to him again. They were on Taodore’s boat, practicing each other’s languages without the use of the torqs. It had been a long process since neither Merish nor English had any points of commonality, but after the first month they had no trouble understanding one another and the torqs could be relegated to their more common uses.

     
“Why is that?” Marisea asked innocently.

     
“He doesn’t really believe we were in stasis this long,” Park explained. “We had our estimates, but they were based on the time our computer kept, except the computer itself was in imperfect stasis and none of us were really sure of our calculation, but from the shape of the world, I’d have to say we were close to within a few million years.”

     
“How can you tell?” Marisea asked, still unable to understand.

     
“Do you know anything of plate tectonics?” Park asked her. Behind her, he saw Taodore turn from a conversation with Tack and Iris to pay attention. Marisea just shook her head. “Well, the surface of the Earth is broken up into plates that sort of float over the molten interior we call the mantle. The mantle so far as I know is all molten rock, like you get from a volcano. Understand?”

     
“We call that lava,” she replied in Merish.

     
“Yes,” Park nodded after a brief conversation with Taodore. “So do we, but lava is what we call it when it approaches the surface. When it is down there, it is part of the mantle and the solid surface floats over it in the same way ice floats on water.” Park suddenly realized he didn’t really know if that was why the surface didn’t sink into the mantle, but decided the image was enough to go on with. “Well, like I said it isn’t all one piece, but several large pieces. They move slowly. Sometimes they move apart and sometimes they crash into each other. We are in one of those epochs in which most of the landmasses have joined to form a supercontinent, but here, I’ll draw a rough picture of how the Earth looked when I was your age.”

     
Park reached for one of his notebooks and started sketching out the continents as he remembered them. He showed the resulting map to Marisea and her father. “Now if you look carefully and allow for tectonic deformation, you can see parts of these same shapes in your own world map, especially along the edges.” He traced out the various continents on the map of Pangaea for them. “It is this movement of the plates, in fact, that causes earthquakes and some volcanoes and the formation of mountains as well. See here, for example, where Africa and North America have collided? Note the shapes they once had? All that missing land mass has been broken and pushed up to form those mountains and they are tremendous, I can tell you. Here and there you can see other mountains that have formed via similar continental collisions and in fact you can pretty much figure out where the plates’ boundaries are that way. Even Australis down in the south used to be two separate land masses.