An Accidental Alliance (30 page)

     
Outside, the drums were joined by things that sounded like trumpets, flutes and reed instruments all played together in what could not be called a melody to human or Mer ears. It played on for another half an hour getting louder and louder until it suddenly stopped.

     
“Now they attack?” Park asked.

     
“They may be waiting for a response from us,” Taodore replied. “Atackack war is a matter of move and response. The first foray was the move and we responded by fighting back.
 
Second they played music, but what can we use for a response.”

     
“Velvet,” Park decided, “how quickly can you dismount a pair of speakers and point them out the hatch.” He pointed at some speakers mounted in the bulkhead of the aft compartment. He was unsure why the spacecraft had been fitted with a music system, but he was glad of it now.

     
“Not long,” Velvet replied, reaching for her tools.

   
  
“Do it,” Park told her. “Marisea!”

     
“Yes, Park?” Marisea asked, hopping to the doorway.

     
“Is your torq still filled with human music classics?” Park asked her.

     
“Of course,” she smiled. “I downloaded your entire music library. I still have plenty of storage space. Why should I have deleted it?”

     
“Good, I need you to hook it up to the music system and play a certain song,” Park told her.

     
“Okay,” she nodded. “Which one?” He told her.

     
A few minutes later heavy rhythmic drumbeats resounded loudly back at the Kogacks. “Park?” Iris asked, returning to the aft cabin with a puzzled look on her face. “Do you know what you’re doing?”

     
“Not really,” Park replied. “I’m working this out along the way, but this seemed the appropriate response, and what the heck, it is an old classic.”

     
“Queen?” Iris asked incredulously.

     
“Closest thing thing we have to what they were playing,” Park shrugged. Iris rolled her eyes and went back to work on the laser while the speakers continued to boom out the rhythm and words of “We Will Rock You.”

     
Park looked out the door and saw the surrounding hills covered with brightly dressed Kogack warriors. As the human music played, they had edged ever closer to the ship and on the second repeat of Park’s chosen sound track they had started to clap their spears against one another and to their bodies in time with the music. “Hmm, Rock and Roll really is forever,” Park mused.

     
A loud trumpet blast filled the valley and the Kogacks moved back to the top of the hills and their own music began to play again even louder than before. “Heh!” Park chuckled. “We nearly won them over and their leaders were getting worried.” He turned off the music system.

     
“I don’t think so,” Taodore disagreed. “This is a bit different and there seems to be something coming up over the hill to the west.

     
“A progression of some sort,” Park noted, leaning out the hatchway to get a better look. The Kogack warriors had been wearing garments colored in bright reds and yellows, but the people coming down the slope were wearing every color in the rainbow and a few more besides. The Kogacks in that direction had moved to leave a wide corridor open for these new Atackack to walk down. In the center of this display of color was a single Atackack who wore all brown clothing.

     
“Are parades a normal part of primitive warfare?” Park asked Iris who had once more returned, having given up on restoring the laser.

     
“Well, various societies have different ways to show their strength and wealth,” Iris commented. “These Atackacks seem to be dressed differently than the others to me and the one in brown looks very familiar.”

     
“A striped brown robe is always worn by a shaman of the Totkeba tribes,” Taodore told them. “You may recall Okactack wore one.”

     
“I think that is Tack out there,” Iris remarked.

     
“Really?” Taodore asked, taking a look for himself. “I hate to admit it, but they really do all look alike to me. He does look familiar though.”

     
The Procession drew up beside the ship and the Atackack in brown waved up to them with three of his four arms. “We meet again, honored friends!” Tack shouted.

     
“My vision improved after leaving you,” Tack explained once he had climbed aboard the
Hendrick Hudson
. Outside the
 
Kogacks and other Atackack stood in respectful silence. “I saw you would
 
arrive here at this time and that you would need assistance. As a mystic, I can travel safely in all Atackack lands, of course and have traveled extensively since we parted to share my vision with all.”

     
“And these thousands of Kogacks have accepted your vision?” Taodore asked.

     
“Yes,” Tack replied. “Of course. All Atackack accept the vision once it has been revealed. I do apologize for the ones who initiated warfare against you, but I had not yet shared my vision with them. They wish to make amends this evening.”

     
“Amends?” Park asked.

     
“Food is being gathered,” Tack told him.”Even now large fires are being lit to cook it on. We know Mer and humans prefer their foods cooked. We can eat it either way, although cooked food is a delicacy we enjoy on special occasions.”

     
“So,” Park interpreted. “Tack to the rescue.”

     
“Indeed, Parker Holman,” Tack replied. “Just as you and Iris Fain will save us all.”

     
“That’s a heavy burden you’re laying on a pair of people who just crash landed a spaceship,” Park remarked. “I’ve always felt people should save themselves.”

     
“Precisely,” Tack agreed. “The Atackack will save themselves as well. We must be part of our salvation or we will be lost. The young people who accompanied me here will go with you to learn the ways of Human and Mer. If you accept them, please teach them in your schools, allow them to learn beside your children and we shall forge a bond between our peoples such as has never existed.

     
The arrival of the rescue teams an hour later was somewhat anti-climatictic, but the crews on those vehicles enjoyed the Atackack barbecue along with the crew of the
Hudson
so it was not until the next day that they were able to move on to Planaco.

     
“We’ll have to leave the
Hudson
here,” Park sighed. “I just don’t see any way to salvage her, not in her entirety. We’ll take the log recorders and anything else we can carry. I guess the local Kogacks can make a lot of tools out of this much metal.”

     
“They will not,” Tack told him. “This site is holy and they will venerate it.”

     
“I’m not really very comfortable with that whole stranger-savior thing, you know,” Park reminded the shaman.

     
“You shouldn’t be,” Tack told him. “It is not a comfortable thing.”

     
“Terrific.” Park shook his head. “Are you coming with us to Palanco?”

     
“No, my friend,” Tack told him with a negative motion. “My work is here for now. Well, in Totkeba and Pakati. It is ironic, is it not, that I have not shared my vision as fully with my kin and neighbors as much as I have with strangers?”

     
“Life is full of that sort of irony,” Park told him sagely. “We’ve called for additional transport to carry your fifty chosen students. We’ll eventually bring them to Van Winkle Town and train them in our school there.”

     
“Good, then I have seen that correctly,” Tack replied.

     
“You weren’t sure?” Park asked, surprised.

   
  
“There have been false visions in the past,” Tack replied easily. “It never hurts to verify a vision. Imagine all the waste that could occur if we did not.”

     
“I see what you mean,” Park nodded, thinking of some of the sadder incidents in human history.

     
Palanco had been built along the shore at the mouth of a wide estuary in what Park estimated had once been extreme northern Russia. Now the territory was comfortably temperate and reminded him strongly of his childhood home in southern New England. The tidal water levels here had a wider range than in Ghalati, so most of the homes were situated on the land and in what Park thought was an interesting reversal, the business and governmental districts were in the water itself, although considerably upstream from the residential districts. Park’s astronauts and Atackack students were given a whole floor in a land-bound hotel. The mayor of Palanco, whose title was actually “Prime,” but Park thought of him as mayor to not get confused with Prime Terius who was the chief executive of the entire Mer Nation, had wanted to house them in a more prestigious establishment that stood in the middle of the river.

     
It was Marisea who pointed out their Atackack protégées would not be comfortable surrounded by all the deadly water. Marisea, in fact, became an instant mentor to all the Atackack students, meeting with them at least once a day to answer questions and to just make them feel welcome. It cut down on the time she could spend with Park and Iris, but she felt the sacrifice was well worth it.

     
Both Prime Terius and Arn were waiting for them in Palanco when the astronauts and their charges arrived. Both had brought a gaggle of subordinates with them and both insisted on meeting with Park and Iris immediately on their arrival. Taodore and Marisea were hauled along too. “The Galactics are livid,” Terius informed them. “They have filed demands that we destroy the new satellites immediately.”

     
“Why can’t they be bothered to do that themselves?” Park asked.

     
“They feel it is just punishment that the cost for doing so come to us for having broken the Covenant,” Terius replied.

     
“The hell with the Covenant!” Park retorted. “It’s nothing but a one-way deal for you and it doesn’t apply to us in any case. You agreed before the launch.”

     
“And I continue to agree,” Terius nodded. “I am just telling you how they feel. They probably would have ignored the satellites had you not opened fire on their ‘peaceful investigation’ of your presence there.”

 
    
“Oh, peaceful investigation my Aunt Fanny Mae!” Iris argued. “There was nothing peaceful about it, and any investigation was in a military sense if you ask me.”

     
“Still,” Terius continued, “they say you fired on their ship in an act of piracy.”

 
    
“Wait a damned minute!” Park nearly shouted. “They are calling us pirates?”

     
“Those bastards shot first!” Iris cut in angrily. “Our telemetry will confirm it.”

     
“They say otherwise,” Terius replied.

     
“They’re lying,” Iris denied.

     
“That’s nothing new,” Terius admitted, “but they have the might.”

     
“If they’re so strong,” Park asked suspiciously, “why are they just spewing lies at us? Doesn’t sound like they’re really in a position of strength to me.”

     
“Their garrison on Luna may not be as fully populated as we once thought,” Terius admitted. Park, with some amusement, noted the Mer leader had begun using the human word for the Moon, “but do not forget that they are backed up by hundreds, maybe thousands of other worlds and colonies.”

     
“Which are a long way off,” Park pointed out. “From what I can see, while technology has progressed to the point that they can effectively travel faster than the speed of light, it still takes several days to go a light year and the hyperdrive or whatever they call it cannot be used much inside the orbit of Saturn. Also, communications don’t move any faster than the ships that carry the messages. I’d say it is questionable anyone is going to do much about those satellites if we don’t meekly surrender on that point.”

   
  
“Park’s probably right, Terius,” Arn chimed in. “These Galactics talk a good game, but so far all I’ve seen is a lot of posturing. If they are as strong as they want us to believe, they shouldn’t be so vocal about it.”

     
“Vocal or not,” Terius shook his head sadly, “they are demanding we turn over the person or persons responsible for shooting at them and that we disarm all future missions.”

     
“That’s ridiculous!” Iris shouted. “We were defending ourselves and you haven’t had an armed ship in centuries. We’re not pirates and I resent the accusation.”

     
“We’re not pirates,” Park repeated quietly, but with a big grin on his face. “Oh, but we can be. Aye! If pirates they wants, then pirates we be! Arrrr!” He finished with a
 
raspy growl.

     
“Why are you talking like that?” Marisea giggled.

     
“That be how pirates talk, me lass!” Park continued the parody. “Tell you what, we have some old movies in the Van Winkle archives. I’ll pull them out when we get back and show them to you. Most of them are cheesy, but fun to watch.”

     
“Okay,” Marisea nodded. “I find most of your old movies fun to watch.”

     
“Frankly,” Arn cut in, “I think the Galactics owe us an apology and I intend to demand it.”