Authors: Steve Wheeler
He stood watching for a few more minutes then walked back to see that Glint was still where Marko had last seen him and he also wondered where the Avians, who they had seen a few hours earlier, had gone. Marko went to another area of the entrance wishing that he could magnify his sight to look more closely at the copper bands and what also looked like fine copper mesh set into the stone. He looked back out into the storm trying to figure out how long he had been in the caves, then shook his head in resignation. He knew that without electronics he was completely out of touch with time. He was also annoyed that he could not listen to any of the music selections that Fritz had made up for him and loaded into all his suits.
Still thinking about time he dropped his left arm to his side so he could manually operate a lolly into his mouth to suck on. He smiled as the taste of one of his favourites rolled through his mouth and he gave a quick mental thanks to Stephine. He wondered about Glint again and had turned to walk back when he felt a tugging on his left arm. Startled, he spun around to see a small human child looking up at him with a shocked expression on his face, now holding onto his deadweight left hand. Marko cursed, feeling like someone lost in a strange place, as the suit was not giving any of its normal proximity warnings or threat analysis.
Slowly turning, he shuddered as he saw a group of Avians and humans in a semicircle behind him and wondered what to do. He could see that none of them had weapons that he could recognise, and that most were smiling at him. He signed ‘Hello’ with his right hand, which caused an immediate response in sign language using the same greeting. He signed in further recognition that he was effectively helpless, nodded to each of them hoping that they could see his smile through his visors, pointed into the room then slowly walked back to where Glint lay dormant with the child still holding onto Marko’s useless left hand.
Reaching Glint, Marko sat next to him, while the child gazed at the ACE then slowly and very gently touched the tips of his long pointed ears. The adults also sat looking intently at Marko and Glint. One of them, the tallest of the Avians, signed at Marko: ‘Is it dead?’
Marko looked at the Avian standing across from him, then examined the sentient, judging the blending of bird types and human. Almost the same height of an average human, with five clawed splayed feet, very slim human legs, large genital fold, slim hips and huge chest; also overlarge folded wings, slim human arms and hands, and shoulder joints in the same plane at the wing scapula. The head reminded him of a parrot’s, although a little broader and streamlined, with black eyes below which were a flatfish human nose and a slim, but distinctly human, mouth and jaw. The feathers, which almost entirely covered the creature except for its palms and face, intrigued Marko because they were a deep steel blue-black with scarlet and gold tips.
Marko slowly used one hand and finally signed back in reply. ‘No, not dead. Sleeping, shut down.’
‘Why shut down?’
‘Energy danger.’
The Avian shook his head. ‘Not here. No need to. Is it a safe creature?’
Marko smiled, signing, ‘Yes, very safe. Named Glint. Why safe here?’
The Avian looked up at the ceiling, pointed, and signed a reply to Marko. ‘No danger. Isolated. You electronic?’
‘Yes, in part.’
The Avian suddenly smiled. ‘We know who you are. Marko Spitz. You are a friend of created creatures. You are Marko?’
Marko nodded and signed again. ‘Yes, I am Marko. I made Glint and many other ACEs. Your name?’
‘I am Ant. Is your ship hardened, Marko? Is it shut down?’
‘Yes, yes, shut down.’
The Avian nodded, turned and said something to two of the others who nodded in turn and left, heading towards the entrance. He looked at Marko, frowned, and signed. ‘Atmosphere dangerous to you. Oxygen levels too high for your type. Can adjust for you. Come.’
They all stood up and began to move from the room, the small child still holding Marko’s hand. The two that had left arrived back with a stretcher. They placed it beside Glint and reverently, gently, lifted him onto it and then followed them all. In the entrance, three other humans arrived in metallic suits, trailing earthing straps and pulling a long cable behind them. They walked out into the cave and attached the cable to the Chrysops, earthing it, then disconnected the craft’s own earth straps as a wheeled hydraulic carryall, trailing its own piping, came out from a passageway, slid under the little craft, lifted it and reversed to bring it to where Marko and the others stood.
The elder Avian gestured to the craft as Marko rapidly debated with himself as to what he should do. He wanted to trust the surrounding sentients, but wasn’t yet able to do so totally. Nevertheless, he walked across to the Chrysops and awkwardly clambered up onto the wing. The small boy also did the same, peering into Glint’s cockpit, smiling and asking questions that Marko could only just hear, but had no understanding of. The adults smiled and spoke to the child, who also laughed, patting Marko on the lower back as if he was an entertaining dullard.
Marko reached into his cockpit and activated the Jim monitor who, moments later, rose up out of the craft, still assembling himself. Marko immediately realised his mistake as panels above them opened and a small, disc-shaped antigravity weapon platform dropped down to confront them with stubby barrels which pointed separately at Marko, the monitor and the Chrysops. Marko was cursing himself for not explaining his intentions when he saw a transparent shield slide up from the floor to protect the Avians and humans behind it. However, the small boy at his side quickly looked from Marko to the Avian and human adults and back again, his face filled with fear. Marko pointed for him to join the adults then signed as fast as he could to the sentients that the monitor was no longer Games Board in nature and was quite harmless.
Knowing that a crunch point had been reached, he started the powering-up sequence for his whole body systems, hoping that he was not about to fry himself or get shot by the weapons platform. As the first stage of the suit came online, he opened his outer armoured helmet, which folded up and then down onto his shoulders so they could clearly see his face behind the primary helmet faceplate, and also Spike clinging onto the outside of it. The heads-up units came online as did his first-stage biomeds, then his cybernetics, allowing him access to the Avian language as he activated the speakers on the suit.
‘My deepest apologies, sentients,’ Marko began. ‘I should have told you further of my intentions. This unit is called Jim. He was rebuilt by us when the Games Board producer, who is now dead, destroyed his mind. He has no weapons. I activated him to see if there could possibly be effects on start-up from the electrical discharges. I have now done the same myself, so I am at your mercy.’
He held himself very still, watching the discussions going on behind the shield. Soon the weapons platform backed off as the shield retracted into the floor. The elder Avian stepped forwards until he was at the edge of the Chrysops.
‘I too apologise, Marko. It would seem that we have trust issues on both sides. It is good that we can talk freely. So, what are your intentions?’
Marko let out a long sigh of relief. ‘Right now, I wait until my colleagues can return to pick me up. These electrical events of yours ... they must be regular occasions if you have inbuilt safeguards against them.’
The elder nodded, looking around the enclosure. ‘Yes, we found this place many generations ago and modified some of it to our tastes. It will be several days before your friends will be able to return. There is an electrical flux built up between this planet, the gas giant and the surrounding magnetic fields which will have to dissipate before they will be able to return. We are most interested to know why your force arrived here at the time it did. Surely you were advised of the considerable risk you were taking in coming at this time of the gas giant’s year when it and subsequently this moon pass through the iron cloud? And besides, we have no interest in leaving this place as we have been here for hundreds of years.’
Marko looked at the Avian. He then looked across at the rest of the group, shaking his head and wondering what manipulations the Administration were attempting this time. He stepped down off the wing
‘I need to wake the ACEs,’ Marko advised. ‘Do you object, Ant?’
The tall Avian shook his head. ‘No, of course not. We know of them from the Games Board programs that the Haulers bring to us.’
Marko was shocked. ‘Shit! So you are not cut off or a recent discovery?’
Ant cocked his head, slightly intrigued by Marko’s comment. ‘No, Marko, why would you say that? Certainly there are factions among us who want to travel and see the other worlds of man, but we have been trading with the Haulers since the Avian sub-species of human were first created for this moon and the other environments like it.’
Marko frowned, feeling very annoyed. ‘OK, so what
we
have been told is that you were created for the Infant conflict and carry highly contagious diseases as biological weapons.’
The Avian brought up his hands and looked at them. ‘The Infant conflict is a source of continuing sadness to us, as a moon, one of the many habitable in that system, was colonised by the Avian humans hundreds of system years before that conflict. It always protested its non-involvement, but was destroyed anyway. Why would we wish to carry diseases to kill? We are human after all, Marko. You must know they would be lethal to us as well.’
Marko gently pulled Spike off the side of his helmet, located the tiny sequential switches and pushed them to start the little spider up, holding Spike in his hand as he then knelt beside Glint. Marko opened the panel in Glint’s side and locked the breakers back in. The panel closed itself, Glint’s fur rearranging itself to conceal the joints. Marko looked down at Glint’s closed eyes, allowing himself to speed up, and as soon as Glint’s eyes opened he used the crew comms to rapidly tell him what had been happening.
Spike woke up, flipped himself over and then scuttled up Marko’s arm to sit on his shoulder. A very fast three-way conversation took place, with the Jim monitor again recording everything he could see around him. Glint and Spike agreed to gain as much information as possible about the sentients and their surroundings so that the information could be passed to Stephine and Veg for their judgment.
‘Ant, why are so many of the Avians wishing to leave?’ Marko enquired.
The Avian shrugged. ‘There is a new colony available to us further out towards the Crab Nebula. Sounds a very interesting place and so they want to go there, as this is not a big enough moon for our expanding population. Another reason is that none of us wish to become involved with the privateer corporation that set up a large base north of here over three system years ago. Before you ask the question I shall give you the answer: there are a great deal of marketable medications derived from the native biosphere here. They want it and we just want to live with it.’
The little boy was now hugging Glint with one arm and trying to get Spike off Marko’s shoulder with the other and laughing all at the same time. Whenever the child bent his head, Marko could see the raised lumps over his shoulder blades and the fine feathers growing along his spine. He looked down and could see that the boy’s shoes were also very wide for such a young person. He looked closely at the three humans in the group and could see subtle genetic engineering in their skins and hair, but no obvious Avian features.
‘Come, Marko, it is time to introduce you to my family. You have met my youngest son, Tomas, and these are my wives, Christa, Jamie and Momo; my sons Dana and George; my other husband, Dane, and our daughters Jema, Henrieta and Teri. We are a relatively young family of only fifty standard years or more.’
Marko and Glint formally shook everyone’s hands, while Spike grinned and nodded. Marko, his cybernetics back at full power, was able to image map each individual in terms of the genetic imprinting on the children, and was able to identify the mothers and the fathers with Ant being the dominant father. Marko smiled, seeing the similarities between his own family and those in front of him as an acknowledgment that multi-member adult family groups could be so much more supportive on every level than some of humankind’s earlier style of family units, such as three or two parents and — for some hundreds of years — even single parents.
‘A question that has been bothering me.’ Marko said. ‘Why did we not know much more about you all?’
Ant laughed. ‘Simple! We can choose at any time of our lives to shed our Avian characteristics and walk among the rest of humanity as ordinary people. If we arrived on any of humanity’s worlds looking like birds, imagine the racial tension that would ensue. Besides, the gravities generally are too severe and the atmospheres, in the main, too low in oxygen for our metabolisms; and the air is far too thin to allow us to fly well. No, not a lot of attraction for most of us there.’
Marko nodded, wondering what it would be like to fly unencumbered, as Ant continued. ‘So, to answer your next as-yet-unasked question, it takes an adult two standard years to reabsorb their feathers and wings, then change their feet and grow a great deal of muscle to allow them to walk among the rest of humanity. Some take the opportunity to swap their sex at the same time, if they feel inclined. Tried it once, may try it again sometime, although going from a penis to a fat little clitoris, for me at least, took some getting used to!’