Family Law 2: The Long Voyage of the Little Fleet (9 page)

"As long as they're not shooting at us, keep sending things, give them another day or two, let us know if you make any break through. If they don't respond we'll be thinking on what to do in a couple days. If they refuse to talk, well it's their planet. They don't have to answer the door," Gordon said.

* * *

"They are answering, very tentatively and limited," Luke said a few hours later.

"We're making some progress," Luke reported two days later on. He looked haggard.

"They started talking?" Gordon asked.

"One word at a time. But on three channels. It's slow. You know 'Teen'?

"Oh sure, that's the big one, so we have to get it right."

"Tentative translation is king. We got a drawing of a pyramid of stick figures. The one on the very top, all alone, is circled and labeled 'Teen'. We're capitalizing it now." Luke brought the picture up and showed Gordon. "Do you see what else there is, besides being on top?"

"No collar?"

"Got it in one. They didn't
say
anything about that, they just drew it that way. Figure the collars are slave collars, or might as well be. The Teen owns everyone. More to the point, the Teen owns
everything
. We drew exchanging objects, trying to explain trade. They can't trade. None of them own anything. If they have anything it's because the Teen gave it to them to use, but it was and is his, they just get the gift of its use by his kindness."

"That makes trade kind of tough," Gordon admitted. "Even if he gives us something, he can change his mind and take it back. We have no standing to form a contract."

"Exactly. And the meteor bombardment they suffer constantly from all the system trash has a price on their society. They explained in pictures that about two thousand years ago they detected a rock coming in and evacuated as many as possible from the town where it was headed. It still killed about twenty thousand they couldn't get out in time. They are pretty much obsessed with that and that's why they have radar. They developed it for identifying incoming rocks and asteroids. They
know
a world killing rock is a possibility, but their tech has been at this level for at least eight thousand years if we understand them correctly. In my opinion they seem a bit fatalistic and have no real idea of getting out there and controlling anything from hitting, instead of just trying to get some warning. That explains a lot of the oddities of their architecture. Most homes are build behind a wall and berm on the east side where meteors tend to come in against the planet's rotation. Really important people are housed well underground or the west side of a substantial hill where it is safer. Even roads have shelter walls and berms a vehicle can pull next to when there is a shower."

"And yet they can put up geostationary satellites and have radar."

"They do, and it is awkward expensive tech for them and takes a great deal of their wealth. They do it with tech not much better than Humans had right after the first atomic war. That's another thing. They not only don't have any but the simplest computers, but we see no neutrino emissions or other indication  they have any idea about atomic power. Certainly no detailed ideas about atomic structure, or any modern theories of particle physics. Figure no quantum theory at all. Just classical mechanics and chemistry."

"Given what we are learning about their social structure, I'm not sure I want them having better tech. They make much better neighbors behind a light years tall fence." Gordon decided.

"The crazy thing is, they see the Teen's total ownership as the only way to have peace," Luke said. "They informed us in pictures that in olden times, before there was
one
Teen, men all constantly fought over who owned what and everybody suffered war after war. But notice, with almost complete control of their society, they choose to keep it mostly agricultural, instead of developing tech and pushing further into space."

"Farmers are easier to control," Thor suggested. "They may not be thrilled to find out we still war."

"They don't look that aggressive, do they?" Gordon asked.

"They have a nasty passive aggressive attitude. They wanted to know who Lee and Ha-bob-bob-brie
belong
to, because they were wearing something around their neck. They wanted to know when we were going to bring the ships down so the Servants of the Teen, that's what the emblem on the bus said, can inspect
his
ships for the Teen."

"When they serve peppermint ice cream in hell," Thor suggested.

"They also want to know
how
we got here. We're pretty sure they saw the
Roadrunner
go through the outer system and then disappear. That's what they seemed to draw for us. They know nothing goes faster than light. They stated that to us sort of indignantly I think, because he raised his voice and moved more. Stated it as a fact, not a question, like we might argue. Maybe
scared
we might argue. So they are very uncomfortable seeing how fast our ships are compared to chemical rockets and they don't even know how to phrase the questions they need to ask about our transit time between stars."

"There's no way around it, we simply can't let these ownership assumptions go unchallenged. They would be perfectly reasonable to say we didn't object to them later, if we just ignore them now," Gordon told them.

"I expect they are not going to want to hear it," Luke warned them.

"Be as polite as it is possible to be, but make clear that while the Teen is on top of the pyramid at home, we are not under him and if we wear a collar or necklace it isn't because we are
owned
. We own ourselves. If they can't treat us with respect as independent people, peers... well not their peers I guess, they seem to be slaves. But we may have to go away, because we can't trade with them. The Teen's power doesn't reach to the stars," Gordon said.

"I'd be willing to see it never does," Thor muttered.

"That is stretching the limits of what we can say. I know we are going to have to back up and do some words again, one at a time. It may take more than a day to express those ideas."

"We're not in a rush, I'm sending the
Retribution
and
The Champion William
to look over the outer system in more detail. I don't think we need all of us here. Advise us when you feel you've made some progress again," Gordon requested. "We won't juggle your elbow and hurry you. It's rather important these things be translated accurately, rather than quickly."

"Oh, I'm curious too," Gordon asked. "Do you have a name for the natives? Do you know what they call themselves? Or have you coined an expression for their race?"

"They just call themselves their word for people. It's probably more important that they have never referred to
us
as people. They don't even call us other people or outside people. Near as we can figure they just call us other – in the singular form," He looked embarrassed. "Benson in environmental assures us they look like big prairie dogs, but nobody else is familiar with them and a two word name is awkward. Because of the flat cleft nose and how it twitches all the time, we started calling them Bunnies. I know it doesn't fit anything else about them, but when you sit and look at their faces all day on video, it seemed obvious to use that."

Lee put her hand over her mouth, clearly trying to control her amusement.

"We won't make that official just yet. Hear me?" Gordon asked him sternly. Luke just nodded.

* * *

"Gordon, I think you and Thor need to see our latest exchange," Luke said six shifts later. They joined him in the end of the dining area that had become their make-shift translation and communication center. Luke and his partner had recruited another crew member and they were both seated against the wall, looking distressed and leaving it to Luke to make the report to their commander.

"This is the last conversation with the Teen's men charged with talking to us. In reality they were charged with issuing us orders. I'm afraid the fact we would not accept those orders put them in a no win situation. Their personal survival was probably in question. Watch."

The English sub-titles were auto-translated from the transmission. There were three of the natives seated before the camera and others came in and out, laying down documents and picking up notes the three made.

Luke speaking: "We will not land. Stop asking. We expect (see literally) you take our (literally, not Teen) ships if we land. Teen is your Teen. We have no Teen. We no want one."

First native: "If Teen not own everything (unknown word) to far stars – Teen owns almost nothing. One star in all the (unknown word) heavens is nothing. Either he owns all or our law and (peace?) is (unknown word, may be curse) nothing (zero?)."

Second native: "We have no way (hand literally) (to? variation on word) make them land. What you suggest we do?" (Face of native is very contorted. This may indicate great stress.)

First native: "Tell it to Teen." (His face assumes similar contortions. This statement may not have been a serious suggestion, but identifying sarcasm in a new alien language is chancy.)

Third native: "We are doomed (dead?)."

First native: "Tell Teen this!" (He rips off collar. Second native jumps up and snatches it from his hand and grabs him in a head-lock from behind.)

Third native: (Looks at struggling pair. Then looks at camera lens.) Says: (three unknown words. Camera feed cuts off. Carrier signal follows quickly.)

"That was about a half hour ago," Luke explained. "We haven't been able to get a signal again. The volume of traffic to their satellites went way up for a few minutes and then dropped off hard. I'm afraid we made a mess of it."

"Do we have a current video feed for the big city?" Gordon asked. "That's where their studio is right?"

"Yeah, just outside the city. Near one of those palaces. We have a telescope on them, recording. We figured we'd want to see later if they moved vehicles or changed defensive posture in response to anything we said. I'll bring it up on the big screen for all of us." Thor said.

Nobody wanted to say anything. There was a good wind blowing across the city. Plumes of smoke drifted in narrow lines from the area of the studio and the nearby palace, that seemed to be burning, even more robustly than the studio. Vehicles were going down the road away from the city in a clump, they'd never seen so many before. A number of vehicles also seemed to be on the shoulders of the road nearer the city, burning.

One of the large barrack structures was burning and there were a large number of vehicles around the burning palace. One of the bridges across a river that ran through the city seemed to be missing, just a stub left on each shore. The other bridge had a jumble of vehicles piled in the middle, one actually hanging over the rail. There were a half dozen big fires across the city, in buildings whose function they hadn't identified.

"Boy, am I glad they
don't
have nukes and stuff," Luke observed. They sat and watched the smoke spread for awhile in silence.

"Doesn't that seem a bit of over-reaction?" Lee finally asked in a strained voice.

"To you, or me, yeah," Gordon agreed. "I mean, we carefully never said anything to indicate we would interfere with their system, or that we even
wanted
them to change. We just refused to submit to the Teen ourselves."

"Apparently they are so invested in the idea the Teen's ownership must be universal, that to be shown it has limits destroys the authority of the whole system," Luke theorized. "They never asked us how our system worked without a Teen. There was just no interest at all."

"You said you made a mess of it," Gordon reminded him. "I can't blame you for this. Even if we sat back and studied them for years, there is just no way we'd have known they were this close to the tipping point of their system collapsing. All on the basis of a few words we said to them. The only safe way would have been to sneak away and never try to talk to them, never even run a ship through like we did the
Roadrunner
. It's ridiculous to assign yourself guilt over such a crazy reaction."

"I hope the rest of our civilization agrees with you," Luke said. "Otherwise it may become the law that we can't speak with an alien civilization. Not even approach their system if we detect signals from outside."

"On the other hand," Thor said, looking grim, "imagine the Bunnies figuring out a jump drive and bursting forth upon the other populated worlds, announcing they own everything and demanding the peasants all line up and get slave collars. I don't see that as any improvement. It's not like contact with the Derf and Hinth were totally trouble free. But nothing so widely violent, so quickly and the Elves and the Beavers never had a hiccup," he said, naming the two known aboriginal races, who still were uninterested in any real close contact.

"Call
The Champion William
and the
Retribution
back from the outer system survey," Gordon ordered. "Anything more we say, even if we could contact them, would just be digging ourselves in deeper at this point in my opinion. I'd like for us all to rendezvous outside the orbit of their moon. We'll continue looking for other worlds. We'll discuss whether we should stop on the way back home and see how things settled out, or leave well enough alone."

"Aye, aye,"  Thor agreed. "But I'll continue to record and leave a small satellite to continue surveillance after we leave. I doubt they can spare the resources to come up and interfere with it even if they can see such a tiny one. Especially with things in turmoil. When we pass back by it'll be interesting to see how things progress and how long they take to stabilize."

The ships found nothing in the outer system to indicate the Bunnies ever sent probes out there. If they had they were long dead and silent or crashed.

By the time the Little Fleet broke orbit and left, the other city was burning too. Then somebody pointed out that some of the dams on the second continent seemed to have burst. Nobody had much to say. At least nobody suggested destroying the recordings and pretending they'd never been there.