Posted this on the philosophysphere.com which is down for a while.
I have a slightly different view of the Taelons, which you can probably puzzle out, and in addition, my point is to develop some of EFC's more neglected characters as well as to give old favorites new friends to interact with. In addition, since I like a larger well rounded cast, I created numerous Taelon Volunteers and other folks to flesh things out and to give different Points of View.
A few tips – my Taelons are not strictly EFC Taelons as I started writing this before explanations were forthcoming. Essentially, the Taelons have a very different view of life, relationships and up until the end of Terran Interlude, a fanfic which I actually finished and will post if anyone wants to read it, the aliens were having great difficulty in understanding humanity because although they look like us to some extent and walk about and say the right things, they don't really understand what is in our tiny twisted minds. You can discover how Taelons view relationships along with some of the characters I have invented or borrowed' and deepened a bit from EFC.
As usual in my fanfic, there will be sophisticated Taelons interacting with fairly sophisticated humans and each other in more ways other than, die alien skum' or lift that load, tote that bale.' There shall be Jaridians who aren't just 2-Dimensional Evil Villians and a universe which shows that what you see isn't always what there is. And in addition, there are my very own aliens, a client species' if you use David Brin's Uplift series' idea – of the Taelons who are much more than just clients – the Watamantha.
Warning: this will probably be long. My fanfics are usually about 600 pages since there is a lot happening to a lot of characters on various levels. Often folks print out chapters which I try to keep at 25 pages tho this one is a bit long, but as I am currently writing this story – I haven't yet gone back to editing it. The vocabulary I use is large and this is complex with lots of themes, allusions (and if you think you know what might be going on in a scene, you are probably correct) -- so ya gotta read carefully, and remember, just because a character says something, it isn't necessarily so because at times folks tend to hide their true motives from themselves. Even Taelons.
The African legends and the info about Ki energy are not things I invented, just wove into the tapestry I am creating.
[b]THE LEFT HAND:
THE TALE OF LE RENARD PALE
CHAPTER ONE
MARCUS DEVEREAUX – AUGUR & ILLEGAL ALIEN[/b]
[i]"The second great principle is this:
nature resolves everything into its component atom
s and never reduces anything to nothing."[/i]
Book I, [i]Matter and Space, [/i]
Titus Lucretius Carus circa Year 80. BC.
[b]Aqua Sothis
Café Samyama
Sénégal, West Africa
December 24. Year 5.[/b]
The rains swept down on Africa, a darkness moving over the face of the Earth, driven by great winds. Down in the small oceanside resort of Aqua Sothis, North of Dakar, not far from Saint-Louis, shop keepers stood in the doorways while their assistants either frantically cranked the awnings in or out depending upon the mood of the proprietors. In the café called Samyama, Marcus Devereaux threw down [i]The Washington Chronicle[/i]. He still liked to buy expatriate papers although his definition of staying in touch' had drastically changed with his life. Shivering slightly, he pulled up the collar of what would be termed a light jacket back in DC, which he was now sure wasn't the real world' and sipped a nice, hot cup of the mud that passed for coffee in these climes. Time to change his supplier again. The Belgian tourists wouldn't drink any of this sh*t. He drank it to economize. He was on a budget – again. Happy as a clam. Happiness was. Happiness was.
The archeologists away from the coast, just out of sight, excavating the sprawling ruins of ancient Aqua Sothis would, he knew, be having a hell of a time. They were French, on a grant from REVE in Le Cadeau, which made him, he admitted, uncomfortable, not nervous. He frankly didn't think he still had a ounce of nervousness left in his body or his mind.
No one knew he was Marcus Devereaux, here, or if THEY, the real Men in Black, the Woman in Black in his case, had done their job well, -- anywhere. To the world now he was Marcus Jardin, a gentleman from Louisiana, via DC, who had made money in the markets and gotten out just before the big London crash. Gotten out barely described his condition. He had no Global, no traceable email address, hadn't been on-line for ages except to check shipping information and café supplies. He went exotic places like http://www.HomeViewSenegal.com/inden.htm about once a week. According to the tourist site, it was expected to be around 20 Celsius this week. About 63F, not bad for a working retirement. A place to find, perhaps Samyama.
He'd chosen the Sanskrit word, Samyama -- meaning fusion'-- because it represented to him not where he'd been, but where he'd like to go. In Oriental philosophy it was the method of fusing one's consciousness with the consciousness of another object or another person, trying to get information about them from the hypothetical group databanks of its origins or its species. In other words, Marcus hated admitting it, he was becoming a mystic in his old age. He was 38, like all the Johnsons, looking young for his age. He told himself that would one day, go to the digsite and talk to the stones to see if they had met any of his ancestors, the Nommo. Sure, he would, sure.
His revelation about the meaning of life, for he had suffered a sea-change' indeed, it had come not in the darkness of a long night as to a poet or a novelist or a composer of music, but in the Nothing that was in his mind, within and without himself. For a moment, while imprisoned not just in his own flesh, his own mind, a door had opened in his head and someone else peeked in. ESP, PSI-ratings like La Fleur, his teenage cousin claimed she had, were, he now decided, possibly real. Auntie Marie, if he could get in touch with her conventionally, which he could not, would chortle and point a finger at him and favor him with a pithy remark about wasting his youth in the pursuit of wealth instead of knowledge. Knowledge had brought him wealth, but of the wrong kind. His treasures were now going to be those no one could steal. In his mind.
Now, rationally, he could say that sensory deprivation of the sort with which he had basically been legally tortured could produce hallucinations, but his readings had revealed that so many great minds – ranging from Moses, to Buddha, to Jesus, to Mohammed, the latter was revered in this Islamic nation, found a door to something beyond mere human conscious after periods of extreme isolation in the wildness and in meditation. He didn't place himself on their level, he did not aspire to become a Great Person as once he had. He sought a Teacher, hopefully one to teach him about life, about death, about love. That was why he a purchased lots of Great Books, ones he could hold in his hands. Old, used ones from America, with bindings red and green and brown, that had been held by other hands. The physicality of a book, in some manner comforted him. Plus, they were safer to read in the bath. He had to admit it, he hated baths, but the water pressure here was lousy for showers.
He had been in SenDep Prison, #3800, they had bar-coded his damn head, for two solid weeks. Floating in a nice, warm bath of oxygenated fluid. His senses dulled. No sight, no sound except for, at first, the frantic beating of his heart. The skittering thoughts flashing, like lights, Nicola Tesla, the Inventor Mr. Electric claimed to see' ideas in flashes of light too. The Augur has foreseen his own death in a large flash of light, Marcus thought. He had died, metaphorically, and been reborn. His identity changed. Forever. He was now Marcus Jardin, seeking to grow deep roots in old soils in warm climes. He would plant a garden and watch things grow. It was a time for beginnings at the end. They were the same.
"Shall I close?" Amadau Bashir hovered near Marcus. The American looked at the sky, the empty shoreline. No tourist lines were due in for the next several days. Weather was expected to be inclimate, a quick look earlier at the Agence de Voyages pour Voyageurs had revealed that the cruise ships were probably off to far-away places -- Haifa, Constantinople, Crete, though bad weather was expected all over the Mediterranean to the north east, around the Pillars of Hercules, the Rock of Gibraltar, beyond Spain, Italy, Morocco.
Here, where he sat, West Africa was expecting serious weather, time for battening down. Rolling down shutters as well as cranking the awnings in. Major storms sweeping in off the Atlantic. For a moment, Marcus wished for modern transportation, thought of leaving, flying from Point A to Point B as he had done for the previous month, but then he reflected, that the lack of amenities was precisely why he was here.
At one table a long-waisted young woman, one with the looks of a local in her elegant carriage and in her oval café-au-lait face, but one dressed in unusual clothing, very jeune Afrique, sipped her cappuccino and tried not to get her [i]Le Courier [/i] wet. He had noticed she had ignored [i]The Paris Match[/i] which probably revealed she wasn't of shallow character.
"Not yet," Marcus said to his employee, his new friend. "One customer isn't done." He got up, Perhaps she'd like to move inside where it was nice and dry and warm. A much better location for putting on some moves. He was beginning, he admitted, to feel lonely. He was tired of seeing the faces of those he had loved only in his dreams. He had started, once again, a new life. Time to begin to live.
***
[b]Aqua Sothis City Excavations
Nommo Base Camp DigSite
Sénégal, West Africa
December 24. Year 24.[/b]
"Fish," he said to himself. It all, he suspected, boiled down to fish. Not boilt fish, fish and chips fish. Fish, raw fish. Sushi. And they weren't Japanese. They had landed in West Africa much earlier than had been expected, but that was another story.
"I hate rain," Justin McNeil, Interspecies Relations Taelon Volunteers, a very special service of a special service, muttered aloud, wringing out his single thick red-gold braid. "I came to bloody Africa, and what does it do? Rain." The Scotsman put on a miserable face, but he wasn't really unhappy. He had a Friend. Out in the rain, Prime Anthropologist La'rat happily supervised a squadron of six black uniformed men busily placing what appeared to be a number of stakes around the periphery of the area.
Last night, in the dark when ordinary men could not see, someone had come, very early and did a few preliminaries. One of whom Justin jokingly called, the Dark Elves' cousins of the classic Shoemakers Elves' – those who came quietly in the night to do what had to be done. In this case, skilled excavational work associated with power generation. There were at least two of them. They didn't want a crust of bread and a glass of milk in payment. They preferred protein. Fish. Lots of fish. Fish were plentiful here in this region of West Africa. They were after all, he reflected, why We are here.
Dahlia Rohas laughed, brushing her sodden dark blonde hair out of her eyes. She enjoyed the change in weather. It would, of course, slow down the dig. She was not trained in excavation. We've employed professionals for that, she thought. Only the best and they were well paid. She had no salary as she needed nothing. She did have a line of credit so she could head for serious food later in the tourist area by the ocean. Dahlia was more of a cultural historian, a protegee of La'rat's like Justin, but not in quite the same manner. And she was the best individual on hand for this job on The Team, this team. Her home away from home. Everything here fit nicely in with her research which had brought her to a very important individual's attention. And it got her funding to do what she loved. Connect the lines between the dots.
The dots, were to the Dogon, stars. She was familiar with the Dogon legends from her preliminary PhD research with Dr. Goldman and Lucilla Aricia. Historical migratory patterns indicated that perhaps this was the correct site, after all, where it all began, at least for one tribe at one time in one location. Six thousand years ago. At least six thousand years ago. Having skyscans by TaelonTech helped to place the dots on the ground, to map this exciting new site. Sothis was the old name for Sirius, the Dog Star' which the ancient Egyptians used to calculate annual spring floods of the nourishing Nile River, according to the star's heliacal rising.
This city of Sothis, she had suspected was called Aqua Sothis, the Water-of-Sirius, not just because of its ancient proximity to a coastline which had, over the century, over thousands of years, receded. There had once been a large artificial lake here, in this high flat spot, with a central island. The sat-scans, even the HumanTech, revealed it.
"Merde," muttered Dominic Chemin in French. "The wet begins. It is disappointing that we did not locate this site until the season was late." The weather had been shifting across the planet as Global Warming, which the Taelons were attempting to stop via massive reforestation projects in the Amazon and other subtropical regions, still continued. The GeoSphere was, as even the typically anti-Taelon broadcaster Hector Lamballa liked to put it on his popular indepth weekly News show, broadcast live on the Web and the Vids, "Mother Gaia has been royalled f*cked up by the hand of man."
Dahlia said nothing to the Site Supervisor, just patted her expanding waistline. She had a schedule too. It was December and the baby was due in March. They thought. They who are We. She sang it a lullaby silently. Time to eat again, her stomach informed her. I, she thought, am never alone.
She looked up. "Da'an is coming," she noted. "With Winnie Malabar piloting." With Winnie coming, Engineer Pa'quar was never far behind and, if he could spare some time from the All Important Project 999, he certainly could lend a helping hand. She needed to finally talk to Pa'quar about their awkward situation. Somehow, without having met her at the time of her impregnation, he was in some manner responsible for her child. The Taelons, who had taken her under their wing as she did not feel comfortable living on the same planet as Ronald Sandoval without Very Good Friends, were, as Justin had told her.
"Taelons are just not very good at explaining. Often, humans who should know are out of the loop. We don't know if it is a deliberate slight or because we aren't fully fledged members of the Taelon Commonality."
It was a week earlier. Justin had flown in to do some setup.
"Things are happening to me," DeeDee said, looking first at her hands, then rubbing her stomach. "A don't feel alone, but I haven't felt truly comforted since"
"Since Pa'quar showed you the Taelon Commonality?" Justin glanced up with blue eyes from what he was doing. He rapidly, out of sight of the workmen, passed his open hands over each box of the shards of pottery, the debris first gathered at this site.
DeeDee nodded.
"You're worried about a shadow from your past," Justin searched her face with his eyes.
"Sandoval" she said. "My Dark Knight comes to haunt me again."
"I know about your situation, but of course not from your point of view."
"The Taelons tend to examine things, don't they?" She took a sip of bottled water and a bite of a Protein Bar, "they tend to look at things with many individuals from many angles."
"That is how they try to understand Reality." Justin stood up and stretched. "Reality here on the 2nd Level of Planar Reality."
With a flare of light, a shuttle appeared over the ruins. La'rat seemed to ignore it, but Justin knew there had been the equivalent of a hello.'
"How can you tell, DeeDee?" Justin squinted at the bright flare of the Taelon Shuttle entering normal space. "La'rat and I have a connection, but I don't know how it flows, how it goes down the lines, the threads are too complex for me to navigate alone."
He turned his attention to the satellite imaging coming down from one of the Door's birds' onto his fully opened FlatScreen Panel which laid on another table, like a large open map. As he suspected, the rest of the Team would have to make a slight adjustment. They'd probably have to move one of the site markers out about 4 more meters if what he suspected 2,6 meters below the sub-Saharan soil's surface was indeed out there, something rather big.
Dahlia just watched the action unfold around her, feeling at this moment more an observer than a participant in the dig. Dominic was out in the wind and the rain, trying to make it to the tent where the men, having figured that it was essentially The End of the dig, were lining up for their pay. Justin sighed. He was going to get wet. Wet and cold. The rain didn't seem to bother Dahlia. She was always warm. Having a baby did that to women, he'd heard. Especially, he suspected, one in her situation.
***
"Qua? What?" Chemin cupped his hand to his ear. "Je n'ecout.I can't hear you in this rain." He switched to a native language spoken by the excavation crew and shouted for them to queue up. The men sullenly formed a long, snaking line out into the wet. The rain beaded up on dark faces of many shades, revealing distant Arabic, French, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch genes in their facial features. There were also traces of Greek and doubtless Romans whose citizens and soldiers, merchants and slaves had all trod the land of their ancestors. Within a few years, as the small group of American Expatriots grew, seeking the sun and long lost Roots as the Baby Boomers all retired, there would be an even greater mix as the inevitable intermarriages occurred.
Who had indeed been their ancestors? Justin had wondered late the other night. What he had speculated was absolutely, to Chemin, incredible.
One of the men, on one of Genjin's water-resistant, economical EarthLinks, spoke rapidly in French to someone in Aqua Sothis about catching a film in Dakar over the weekend at the Film Festival, their own version of Cannes. Second-rate dubbed films which weren't really films but NewTech, but the theatre had holographics and excellent sound.
"I said," Justin loudly stated in passable French. "We'll try to get them back to work in about." he paused to access La'rat briefly. "Twenty minutes."
Swearing at the idiocy of this youth who clearly denied reality, Chemin returned to the haggling with the group leaders. Some wanted cigarettes or tobacco and the Taelons did not permit payment of this kind. The men were disappointed. There were packages of foodstuff sitting in the rain, ruined, he assumed. Rice and flour usually were.
***
[b]Aqua Sothis
Café Samyama
Sénégal, West Africa
December 24. Year 5.[/b]
While the rain softly splatted down, washing the dust off the pavements, Sadia Leon stirring the sugar into her café, her long tapered fingers holding a tin, nickel and silver alloy spoon explained, "Right now I'm taking time off my studies inParis to assist with the TOSTAN effort by UNICEF." Her accent was more Parisian with the soft cadences of the native rhythms of speech. Cultivated.
Marcus, noting that there was no ring, paused. He suspected that he was about to Strike Out. Bigtime. No facts, It was just the I'm taken,' atmosphere she was exuding. She felt, he admitted, like a Parisian. Cool, refined. But one never knew.
"So, tell me about your part in the TOSTAN Effort." He himself helped with the fight to stamp out illiteracy by helping distribute materials, just about any reading materials would do in French or English, throughout the area. People across France and the English Language Union in the UK were part of the effort and the Taelons assisted by Portalling the cargoed materials to the large freight yards in Dakar. From there, the materials made their way up and down the coast with the efforts of local businessmen, like himself. Respectable citizens, usually, of the Republique du Sénégal. He was still an illegal, supposedly legal, alien.
"Do you speak Wolof?" she asked. Most of Senegal's 8.2 million people spoke it, though as the population educated itself, French was the Lingua Franca, as well as English. Increasing numbers of African American Baby Boomers' sought their retirement at a Place of Beginning' as the retirement brochures put it. Ironically, the tribes came from inland, as slaves.
Marcus's ancestors, he suspected from family legends, handing down by word-of-mouth from generation to generation, came from further inland, Mali, most likely around Bandiagara. The Egg of the World, Auntie Marie had called it. He preferred the coast, and, from what he heard of the archeological dig, mostly rumors a café owner picked up from customers, the pickings would get better. This would be, with luck the local Shopkeepers Association had promised, a major tourist site within ten years. Things would get better.
"French and English," Marcus said. And German, and Italian, and Japanese and Dutch. But he wasn't letting anyone know that. What you had in your head you owned. That was it. The rest was just stuff. "I know that Tostan is a group effort here, with finding from abroad and the US Expats here to build the link between basic education and rural development, giving adult learners not only literacy and numeracy skills in their national languages but the ability to understand and solve local problems peacefully and in an ecologically sound manner."
"Well," she explain, now speaking in fluent English with a marked British accent, a soft and attractive underlay of French, "Tostan, literally means breaking out of the egg' in Wolof. And I like to think of myself as part of the slippery slimly stuff, the endbits, that it is a bit difficult to scoop out."
"Sounds unpleasant," he said.
"Genital mutilation, as a cultural practice, forced on unwilling women in order for their men and their society to deem them marriageable, is unpleasant," she stated.
Marcus didn't say anything. Please god, he said, don't also make her a rabid feminist as well. This is Hell and I am in it. I am going to be stuck in the rain with a Woman with a Cause who probably hates All Men for a very good reason. I should listen to Bashir. He knows. I should have closed and gone to bed.
He was trying to finish Lucretius's "On the Nature of the Universe." That would be sure to insure a nice afternoon nap. That and the rain. Alone in his bed. Safe and secure. But he was here with a damaged woman. He looked surreptitiously to see that she didn't have a knife.
"Now, I am not a rabid feminist who hates men," Sadia, as if she had picked up on the thoughts he was loudly broadcasting, letting a tone of amusement at his predicament set it. His pupils had retracted, his blood pressure increased. He had begun sweating. All involuntary signs of alarm. "I am speaking of using education, through the medium of sharing our life experiences with the less advantaged of our society, in order to effect positive changes."
Marcus swallowed, "Did you?"
"Yes. I was a student in Paris just entering university. Young. I thought I was going to visit a cousin who had come up from Africa for a nice family get-together. Our relations, all female were there, those who thought that they had a right to dictate how we lived right down to if we would be allowed to experience conjugal pleasures. There was also a very unsanitary knife. Fortunately it was sharp and I got to a hospital before blood poisoning set in."
Marcus studied his empty cup and trying to check to see if he had ESP. But Bashir either did not hear his plea or chose to ignore him.
The sing-song voice continued, low and sad, but one not seeking pity. "Most girls undergo it in the houses of relatives, much much younger. It scars our bodies, yes. But mostly it scars our minds. It enforces how other members of your own society, which my parents fled because they had daughters and were educated, enlightened, how they use brutality to subjugate not just women for other nasty things are done to other people in our societies while we who are civilized look the other way, but to enforce their mores upon others with force and brutality. And all because we women are just possessions who must be kept under control."
"I'm sorry," Marcus realized it sounded trite, but what could he say? He'd heard of female circumcision, that in France there had been outcry against it as well as in many African nations where it was practiced. He'd skimmed, Do They Hear You When You Cry,' by Fauziya Kassindja and Layli Miller Bashir, the account of a young Togolese woman's case against the U.S. immigration authorities on this issue, which had been literally forced upon him when he'd been in London with Desdemona Finch after he fled DC. She'd set up this nest for him. He helped the TOSCON effort the best way he could, moving books from Point A to Point B trying to open closed minds to new ways of seeing, of learning.
"I hope before I have children," she said, "this nightmare is over. The movement is picking up speed as we have discovered that most of the men are horrified when put in a group situation with women who have undergone the procedure.'" She took a sip of her drink. "Many of the respected Imans have made points that the Muslim religion does not require girls' circumcision and guarantees women's rights to health and human dignity. So it helps that local authorities support our effort. After all, it is their wives, their daughters who will suffer. And what effects the women in a household must also always affect the men, the men and their children, whether male or female."
"So," said Marcus. "If you have children, where would you want to raise them?" He'd thought about it himself. Not children as miniature Devereaux, or Jardins now, he was a Jardin, but children as the kind of kid he'd been. A kid like La Fleur had been. Like her brother, Lee. Loud, obnoxious, curious, smart, active. Pains in the derierre. His kids would be smart. Good genes on both sides. Smart and with their own sense of style.
"It's not the where that I think about," Sadia said, looking away from his open face, his open mind with its images of children shouting and playing – looking out at the pelting rain. "But with whom." And, she thought to herself, moving her body slightly to the beat of distant music from across the street, I must first forget the pain. You learn hard lessons from pain. But you must leave it behind when it is time to move on.
***
[b]THE TAELON SYNOD'S
TERRAN FIRST CONTACT MISSON
PRIME ENGINEER PA'QUAR[/b]
As the music wove its sinuous rhythms though the air which the human male who is married to the woman who has my ki' piloted, I looked at my left hand and thought about all those whom I have touched with it.
[i]A thousand years ago, I stood on a once fertile plane at the edge of a sea filled with water from which most of the oxygen had been depleted.[/i]
"Laeeeee, laeeeeee," Leon's voice trilled words which she told we were her cultures methods of expressing their deep sorrow about their lot in life mingled with their hopes for the future.
[i]"We are glad that you accepted our offer," Janartha said, his feet leaving large marks in the dust which the line of his dragging tail nearly obliterated.[/i]
Ti'pra swished his hands across the drum, recreating the soft sounds of running feet. The cymbals crashed intermittently to recreate the sounds of an atmospheric disturbance – a summer storm over Africa which Sadia had Shared with us.
[i]There are no clouds here, I thought. The atmosphere was nearly gone. The sky was the deep nearly black hue, dotted with the sharp pinpricks of the other stars in the Belt.[/i]
Mu'larr and I sang, weaving words of our own language interspersed with English, whom Sadia says remind her of exotic birdcalls, with her own rising and falling cadences.
[i]"Sanartha, who is one of my Cohort, has been a good mate, but," Janartha smiled, "she
will probably throw knives at you. She usually misses.""She is a Warrior which we require as Taelon has fallen," I said, trying not to display the numbness which I still felt. Taelon now looks worse than the Watamantha Homeworld. The Jaridians left us no atmosphere and destroyed the surface of the planet 10 meters deep. My friends and I are scattered. Ti'pra now spends time with Zo'or. Ra'matra
and our Child are examining the Quirelll who have applied again for Ennoblement, but Qo'on says that they are too immature. They are non-violent, but prone to viewing personal interactions through a lens of the magical application of the conjunction of their homesystem's planets and nearby stars. They write beautiful songs of unrequited love because the numbers are not right for true lovers to meet."She will be a good match for you," the large black ruffed male, taller than I, stated. "Sanartha."
"After the marriage," I asked. "Will I have an opportunity to speak to Ooluna?"[/i]
Agent Sandoval gestured and the music he had selected for our mutual enjoyment during this flight increased slightly in volume. He likes to listen to music, exhibiting eclectic tastes ranging from jazz to German Opera, and I permit him to do so when he pilots my shuttle. I'd requested that when we flew into Senegal, we didn't drop out of ID space immediately near our destination point. I wanted to view the targeted areas in Mali first. We would do a rapid flyover, while I monitored the equipment for signs of historical underground movement as well as the usual. This surveying, I thought, could be done by an Irintha, not that I have any anymore. La'rat hadn't found anything there, but we haven't had time this Mission for lower priority work. My own reasons were more Left Hand than I wanted to admit.
[i]Janartha laughed. There was little external sound. We were communicating through series of clicks—he within his throat, using this method as it required little oxygen. I felt tendrils of his humor falling upon my mind like rain.
The emotions of the Watamantha are undistilled like our own. They are heady, earthy, speaking of the individual characters who each present us with pieces of the broken shards which are all which is left, many of us believe, though we speak not of this openly, was a Great Race. La'rat and young Barantha could sit in the ruins for years, trying to sort out the pieces of not just the physical proof of a superior civilization which existed here before the Light left their eyes, but the cultural remnants – the snatches of songs, the curving lines of a dead script which resembles proto-Euonian. The Saurian traces of fallen Megaliths dot the areas where the forcelines which are the pulse of this sector of the Maurva Galaxy intersect with the Timelines of a forgotten past.
I am slowly moving from being a mere Musician into something more practical, placing myself into the hands of aliens, learning what they know, so that we can acquire more practical skills. I will learn Surveying now that Geology and Physical Manipulation are things I comprehend. The Watamantha have sworn to be our Protectors if we can give them the technology to help their civilization reestablish itself. They do not, as many have, ask for our more esoteric assistance. They have a solid philosophy and point of view, which the longer I live here with them, has begun to permeate me.
I am becoming Watamantha, though I deny it.
"Ooluna, you Fool of a Taelon, has been speaking to you for years. Of course he will listen which you should not to be politely reciprocal, but to learn. You can't marry into the House Ooluna without speaking to him when you stand in the waters of the Third Gate." He lashed his tail in amusement.
"I shall not change my species," I warned. "I am Taelon-centric. We are not Collective, but we are interdependent, we must remain so, to function within this Time/Space, this place, this Now."
"That has already been done, earlier," the Watamanta reassured me. "We who are now alive are all essentially Taelons within Watamantha shells on our dry dead beach."
We had reached our destination.[/i]
"I like this cultural mix," Sandoval noted, being unusually chatty. I suspect that he was anticipating his inevitable meeting with our Prime, though it was hard for me to think of Dahlia Rohas as more than a Friend. I suspect that he was anticipating their reunion with a mix of dread and delight -- like me.
"It's a group called Western Rain. I thought I'd draw this song to your attention. It's at the top of the charts in its genre and I suspect that the birdcalls in the background might be Euonian. The woman is singing in Arabic and French. There are English words sung by the men who have electronically enhanced voices."
"This is correct," I noted. "You are quite observant."
"I can't speak Euonian," he said with puzzlement, "and I have a CVI. Have they copied some of the recording, do you think? I wanted to point this particular song, which I personally like, I wanted to point it out as more examples that despite the recent drop in the Taelon ratings"
"Which merely reflect the reactions of the largely Westernized populace which though they dominate the majority of this planet, are not the majority to whom this effort was targeted."
[i]"Then why do you keep your façade?"I asked the alien who is alien no more. I did not understand. He could alter himself to a Taelonesque shape if he wished. Was this a ceremonial obligation to be so solid? It denied the Liberation which we had given.
"I have a role to play and this is the part I was given," he beat his shoulder, the large slitted pupils of his blue eyes revealing his inner fires, "unlike Taelons we do not cheat."
"I resemble that remark," I gestured that I understood. I did. Sanartha and I had had many discussions and while I was concerned about my upcoming changes, for whenever you marry anyone, even an alien, you change substantially. It is just that in some cultures the Ritual of Marriage or the Ritual of Sex, or if you are Quirelll, the Bath, can very suddenly thrust an alien mind-set upon you.
"You are bio-energetic. You have a central core, but if you lose your Commonality Connection, you revert to a stage more primitive than I," he reminded me. "An Atavaii."
"The Kimera did that to us. They lifted us up too swiftly and now we are terrified to Fall."
"We will catch you. Join us," he said.
"I shall." I knew that I could love him. But Sanartha would be my Prime. He and I were her Third and Second, respectively. It was not necessary in an arranged marriage for species Ennoblement, for the Third and Second partners to mate, to connect or even to meet. Many Watamantha females never meet their rare male mates and are artificially inseminated. But they have intense relationships, nonetheless, through the shared mediums of vocalizations, of art. Janartha would raise our Irintha while Sanartha and I were employed on a Survey Mission to search out new worlds suitable for the upcoming Watamantha evacuation. They required another colony and our Interdimensional technology to travel there within days instead of centuries. They live long now, for they are Taelon, but we all wanted to get this situation over and done with – the awkward dancing before you make love.
"I will mate with you first," he commented. "Before we both go to Sanartha who is already one of my mates. My needs are rather physical but there are the necessary aspects included to see that your Voyage is not too strange. The Endpoint will be the same as it always is."
"I am, I admit," I said, "Frightened. But remember that I am not a female. I am not a male."
"Neither am I," he commented as he gave me his right hand and I gave him my left,"For I also Taelon, but this is how I manifest in this stage of the game and I certainly intend to follow the rules."
We knelt in the dust near the Gate where the shoreline had once been before the Heavens Fell and all was plunged into darkness and the despair which had sent them into our arms. [/i]
"We're over Mali. What do you wish me to do?"
"Fly in concentric circles at the airspeed I have denoted," I stated. We performed the maneuvers while I examined the readings. The soils and the subsoils were as I expected. I would compare them with the Aqua Sothis site.
"May I ask what we are looking for?" The dark haired man who is Zo'or's Atlamar whom I suspect may meet T'than's state as Zo'or increasingly spirals out of control, unless the rumors about the War Minister's fragmentation are true.
"I cannot inform you of much?"
"Professional obligations?" Sandoval's tone was wry. He swept his hand, manipulating the kinetic Headups Display's controls. We who are Taelon do not need this as we mentally interface with our vessels, at least in most situations.
"You do like to play with words do you not?" I tartly responded. Sandoval can be sharp too, and I enjoyed this play with words, though I am awkward and inept.
"I studied Law." He turned back to me with a slight smile.
"Then you live it, I presume. This Law of yours or are you a Law to yourself?"
That quieted him. I sensed he was thinking of Zo'or.
"Zo'or, of whom you think, is dangerous and I would, if I were you, keep my thoughts to myself." I informed him, bluntly for I can too have moods owing to my condition and my charming temprament, then instructed him to set down.
When he complied, I took actual physical soil samples to Archive while just sensing the environs. Had a ship come here, most likely an older propulsion vessel and not a LightShip, most likely from the Mothership which was a stationary star DeeDee had told me of in the Nommo legends of the Dogon peoples who lived here?
The dry wind swept Sandoval's dark hair like shadows across his eyes.
"How could you tell? How could you tell, I was thinking of Zo'or?" he let me into a portion of his mind which is a cavern of most unpleasant things according to Ti'pra who Shares with Zo'or. They are Lovers, but lack a central partner, a Prime, to Triad. I am a Prime, but I am fey and seek to not to merge my energies with Zo'or. They are not what I need. I need Winnie Malabar, Ti'pra and my Prime, to ground me and now I have another human Lover who promises to give me her ki' when higher energy levels are achieved.
I seek to bear a child. Myself. This, La'rat our Prime Taelonologist claims, cannot be done. But I think that if I mingle the ki' energies, weak as they are, of several Primes or Human Friends, perhaps this is possible. Humans have DNA and genes which they mix when they share themselves physically though the act of sex in order to build the solid bodies their children inhabit. We who are Taelon have a Left Hand and a Right Hand – major conduits twisting along a central shaft of ki' energy which is our central core. The Cadecus, the winged staff of the God Hermes, with twin serpents coiled together, like the human DNA, around a central shaft. La'rat and about once a month one of our bright IRS Volunteers, whom we are hybridizing, comes forth and suggests that this similarity of an ancient medical symbol with the God Hermes, Anbus, the keeper of the Gate to Death of Egyptian legend, is no mere coincidence.
If we survive the Energy Crisis, the Jaridian Wave and the disharmonies of this sphere, I, for one, would like to sit down with Barantha and piece this out. The Synod would, being Taelon-centric, forbid this. But that is why we who are Taelons have two hands. A right to do what we are told and a left to forget.
"Sit down," I instructed the shorter man to sit upon a wind weathered rock near me. "I have been putting off this discussion which I should have had earlier."
"What do we have to discuss?" He was confused, from the frown on his brow. Sandoval dissembles, he thinks, well. He thinks he is quite clever and can amuse.
"DeeDee," I said.
"DeeDee was my wife, but now she is dead."
"Define dead, Agent Sandoval. DeeDee lives and moves and breathes."
He withdrew mentally as he clearly added up the pieces. I knew that Dahlia Rohas was a false identity which DeeDee Sandoval had used to flee from a reimplanted Ronald Sandoval when she feared he would lock her up in a mental asylum again. He had seen us together, she and me, in intimate circumstances while she attempted to deal with the cascading emotions emitting by Zo'or when La'on left us deliberately to foray outwards from the 4th Level of Planar Reality. It had not been, in my estimation, a Very Good Night, though getting to hold Sid'ra, the new Cloister Child, out of Da'an, was worth the wait.
"What was wrong that night in the Ashram?" Sandoval asked me. "DeeDee was terribly upset? I dreamt of her, as if we both had ESP or some connection."
"That is good," I remarked if he was truly so dense that he could not sense that my connection to him was through her. He and I had no commonality but shared a blue eyed Prime who at this moment in time was regarding a soggy Peachy Bar, I had brought more, with great distaste. I continued. "DeeDee is prescient from her mother's ki lineage which is in your sexually dimorphic species, the maternal line."
"What are you telling me?"
"Isn't it obvious?" I sat back and looked at him. He and I are in the same position I had been with Janartha. Electrons orbiting the nucleus of a Prime. The question was, would he be friends with an alien Prime in search of sufficient ki with which to breed?
Did I want this man as my Friend?
As a Prime I have many offers from those of my own species. But I am compelled by the songs of this planet, to seek a different solution. The heat of Sol Prime warmed my face and I dropped into full blush, my eyes turning inwards as suddenly I filled with the Light which also illuminates this dark, alien place. It flowed through my conduits like liquid gold, distancing me from the man who sat near me, lost within his own world. An undercurrent of the Western Rain song laid under my surface thoughts.
***
[b]TAELON PROTECTOR
RONALD SANDOVAL[/b]
I had heard from Liam that Engineer Pa'quar was acting very strangely even for a Taelon. Liam didn't go into specifics, and actually blushed once, but since I need to keep what few human acquaintances whose actions I suspect I can predict in my debt, I took over Liam's scheduling to fly Pa'quar to Africa. Besides, I had my own, I thought til now, most secret reasons.
DeeDee, now Dahlia Rohas, was there, supervising or assisting in some manner in an archeological dig which was clearly being Synod funded. But for what reason? Why her? Why this dig not far from a NewCity designed to accommodate the outflow of Americans as their shrinking retirement savings forced them to live abroad in their Sunset Years? I worried about my investments myself as the markets had been bouncing up and down like a yo-yo since the Taleons had done their sudden flight out of town and their unexplained return.
When I'd rushed out of my room at the Ashram that November night after Pa'quar's very disconcerting Project 999 Introduction -- since I realized the consequences which weren't mentioned to the Liaisons -- when I had literally run to the nursery/crèche to comfort DeeDee who was on the edge of hysteria, she looked at me like I was an alien. We'd made love not long before on the Taelon Mothership to create a child that the monsters sought to hybridize by, I thought, injecting it with Zo'or's genes much as Ro'ha was injected with Johnson's. I had given in, hoping to strengthen my connections to the Taelons, knowing that having a child in common, in this manner, would give me a position of strength in upcoming years, assuming I, we who are human, survive this silent invasion which seeks to transform humans into soldiers who fight the Jaridians --
The Jaridians. I didn't want to think about them. The best laid plans of mice and Ronald X. Sandoval,' DeeDee had once raged, the best laid plans which I could devise, as we on the ground try to do what we must to survive. But I had to think about the Jaridians to whom I have betrayed the Taelons by sending a biologically prepared Lili Marquette and an ID shuttle with whom to breed. Vor'yak had told me that emotional manipulation was an art his species was superior in performing, compared to the Taelons, and assured me that the fertilization of the female would not pose a difficulty. And it had not. Lili, clearly mindf*cked as good as any CVI was mad in love with him, seeing herself as some method of saving the Jaridian and via them, the human race.
We need the Jaridian Tech. We can't stand up to the Taelons in a rage. They won't bombard us directly, but we have oceans and they can create large waves without this compromising their supposedly non-violent tendancies. Zo'or, the b*stard, demonstated that, whipping me to do the impossible. But why? Things were not that critical, or were they?
"Count," was all that Liam, when I broached the subject once, would same. "You do know, how to count don't you Agent Sandoval?" He showed me his left hand.
What is it? Why do I keep seeing the aliens looking at their left hands? Is this significant or am I finally going seriously mad?
The Joining, which troubled me in that we merged three species to achieve Vor'yak's goal, the joinging appeared to go well as the child reached the birthstage with the assistance of Da'an's Taelon energies seemed to be a success. But had the alliance I proposed with the Jaridian High Command failed? Were the Jaridians as fragmented in their loyaties as we where the Resistance fought the ANA in propaganda wars while I try to keep the EndGame in mind.
The Jaridians had sent only 5 Infiltrators through a HiJacked Portal to Earth and in less than 5 hours had nearly destroyed our atmosphere. Apparently the Jaridians may be playing me along and, as Da'an repeats, will not be our Allies --and this troubles me, that I have sold my soul to another set of Devils, this time Grey instead of Taelon Blue.
A hawk stooped with a keening call, vibrating like the woman's voice in the song.
Pa'quar had just inferred that he could read my mind. What did this mean? The Taelons are sometimes interlinked, I've seen this in Synod meetings when they all fall silent speak only disjoined whispers as if they are fragments of words -- they have telepathy, but I had see signs that the left hand and the right hand did not meet, so they have, as I the keeper of many know, they have their own Dark Secrets – kept by a Dark Knight.
I have their CVI, walled off largely, in my head. My Motivational Imperative is non-functional, at least to the point that I have the option of more alternatives. But I have plotted my course alongside the Mothership and cannot stray or I shall wreck on the shoals. And the other Protectors are beginning to stray. We must keep our link to the Taelons until we can figure out how to get out of this mess.
In full blush, the Taelon turned to me. He appeared golden in the sun. A man of gold, like some ancient statue worshiped by a primitive tribe.
"I hear," he said, "through the friend of a friend, that there is a problem in our communications with you." His words cast a chill over my entire body. We spoke in the collective. Was this Professional, as the Taelons say? I hoped it would be Personal, but then as Liam says, Pa'quar is acting strange.
A long tailed bird skimmed overhead. Tall grass blew sideways. On the horizon, full bellied dark clouds hung. Distant thunder rumbled to where we would go. Great, I thought, I hate landing under conventional drives in a massive thunderstorm. My mind chittered.
[i]DeeDee is pregnant with my child. The child has Taelon energies or genes. DeeDee has changed and sought comfort with this Taelon Engineer, whom I did not know DeeDee knew, instead of with me, her technically new husband of her Dahlia Rohas persona. [/i]
While I like puzzles, the pieces in this one were too scattered for me. And now a Taelon was holding a key in his hand. His left hand which Pa'quar now studied as it did not belong to him.
"You are fond of this Goethe, this great Germanic philosopher poet whom you quote to Zo'or," Pa'quar said.
[i]So Pa'quar was not Zo'or's friends but they were connected, perhaps through a personal friend? It is hard to tell, with Taelons, who is related to, who is in debt to whom.Their politics are nearly incomprehensible.[/i]
"You have not a clue, do you, Sandoval?" Pa'quar said in an acid tone. "Goethe spoke truth when he said, [i]Man lernt nichts kennen als was man leibt.'"[/i]
"A man doesn't learn to understand anything unless he loves it." I translated.
I knew this quote. The sounds of the song by Western Rain swept though my brain, like background music to my life. I needed to see what the Arabic words meant. The song seemed to be about despair and loneliness and love. It captured the mood of society well, at least the small slice of it I experienced with flying from Point A to Point B with time off for kidnappings, torture and other Important Tasks in keeping the Global population undercontrol.
"I," Pa'quar announced, "have been handed you or handed off to you by one who is not a true friend and I am not happy with this situation."
[i]What situation?[/i]
"What situation you ask?" He studied his hands, sheathing himself in a blue coating of flesh. Now he had a face I recognized. His manner reminded me of Zo'or, but I felt a tension between us which I had never with the Synod Leader. Was the Taelon using his energies with me, was he probing my mind?
"My situation," Pa'quar paused delicately, "perhaps our situation is not enviable and largely, as things are, under my control. I am like that bird flying over the distant trees, searching for shelter from a storm."
[i]T'than told me to seek shelter from the storm but now he is gone. The storm...[/i]
"Which broke over him, we believe but," the Taelon completed my thought. The damn alien completed my thought. Oh sh*t, I thought, this is not good.
"Dead," Pa'quar swept onwards, looking at me with gold eyes which meant that he was in an emotional state of some nature, "to a Taelon is not gone, for energy is never gone, it just, like an unwanted weed, can crop up again in the most unexpected places." He smiled, not a nice smile.
"Can you read my mind?" I asked, knowing that this made me sound dumber than I was which was my point, assuming that he couldn't read this little attempt of human subterfuge.
Sweat broke out across my brow, my upper lips -- not from the heat.
***
[b]USKE, OUTER HEBRIDES
INTERSPECIES RELATIONS TAELON VOLUNTEER
TAELON SHUTTLE PILOT: MIN HUANG
DECEMBER 24. YEAR 5.[/b]
You know, when I left Louisiana, I wanted to travel. But I would like to spend more than a few hours going from Point A to Point B to take in more scenery. I had been T'than's pilot for a short time before, for some unexplained reason, Ken Takahashi caught the Taelon Minister of War's attention, so now I had seemed to rotate to flying Tenth Engineer Le'at from one Project 999 site to another which was fine by me, not that I have a choice even if I am a top ranked Shuttle Pilot. This December 24th, we'd been in Uske to examine how the control site excavation was going when Jamie Wu, one of three Environmental Engineers attached to the Doors North Sea Oil Division portion of the co-venture with the Taelons had made a small remark which at least one of us noticed. Not me, of course.
"I hate Scotland!" Jamie says, stomping his feet, blowing on his hands. "It's supposed to improve with Global Warming, but 2C is not it!"
"Where are you from?" I ask.
"Glasgow, originally," he tells me in the local thick accent. "I moved to Uske when I was 10. I am asking to get a transfer to the Wolof Shelf off Senegal, if Doors can get the permits to authorize the construction of an oil platform. There's some red tape because the government down there is afraid that some new tourist resorts could suffer from pollution."
"Oily skum does discourage the Boomers," I comment. I've been to Aqua Sothis. They don't have a McDonald's or a Portal, but you go up the coast, it's Sin City, as far as the local, conservatives have it – but it, as they say, ain't Shreveport.
"Thanks to the new Taelon developed microbes," Jamie explains, "it is easy to make sure that nothing hits the beach." He squats down to see what my Taelon Engineer is doing. "Are you sure you won't get hypothermia?" Jamie asks him.
"I am fine," the Taelon states without moving. "There is a sensation not entirely pleasant which transmits from portions of my body which I have immersed in the water, but I am undamaged."
"I'd hate living part-time on an oil rig," I say to Jamie. Taelons, far as I know, do not get hypothermia. They do get cold and prefer warm, at least Le'at does, not that he complains about doing his job.
"I'd get a room in one of the older towns where living is easy," he replies. "Anything which is not minus 10 Celsius with strong horizontal winds would be a welcome change."
I think about my tricky landing here which had been fun. Pa'quar has asked for a Portal to be installed, but no dice.
"Much of Senegal has been socked in by bad weather," I add. Weather, in general is more irregular these days and I have to check the flight charts, the Sat info constantly to predict what to expect.
"I thought," Jamie's breath is a cloud of white, quickly whipped away by bitter cold blowing off the North Atlantic, "that ID Shuttles could fly though anything. That they were designed for deep space."
"It depends on the mode," I say. "We aren't authorized by the Synod to use the Shuttles to their full capacity." This is because Taelon energy is in short supply, I don't say because he doesn't need to know.
Ken has taught me several tricks that show that the aliens are not giving everything to us at once, but I fantasize that I could fly like Kernith and Le'at without kinetic interfaces. Le'at loves to cut things close, and I find it a thrill when he drops the Shuttle out of ID space and directly over where we wish to go. He says that if the numbers, the coordinates are right -- it is unnecessary unless you wish to just enjoy the flying, to take a very long glide to your destination.
US Airspace generally requires that ID Shuttles do not do this sudden popping in, particularly in places like Washington, D.C. where T'than's sudden buzzing of the Pentagon over a month ago got tempers up with Top Brass, but which did also accomplish his objective of revealing to humanity that we are essentially incapable of surviving an interstellar war without TaelonTech and their helping hands. We all heard the Jaridians say a definitely unfriendly hello on that day when the Taelons left and then did a yo-yo. I had gone with the Others on the Mothership, but was glad to get back. Wanted though, to go to the Wormhole at Sirius B in search of action, adventure, and new friends.
Engineer Le'at removes his hands from the ice cold water and rests his body back onto his knees. His torso is partially upright.
"Something does not feel right," he says. "Wu, are there historical records for ocean water temperatures? I would like recent daily accounts which date back, perhaps only 200 or 300 years. We could use data on seasonal temperature variations, chemical contents, changes in flow patterning."
"I'll see," Jamie swings his angular body back into his Pa'quar converted 5 year old Range Rover, shuts the door and fires up an antique laptop. I like Jamie as a good friend – well, as the sort of good friend you see for a few hours about once a week as you rush here and he rushes there. We aren't romantic as I am not obsessive compulsive and he is.
Last summer, Pa'quar and Le'at adapted several of the more modern vehicles on-site to what they call Alternative Power sources so that the Human staff would have reliable transport in weathers that can crack a cylinder block and turn diesel to sludge. They expressly forbade Second Engineer Rupert Calloway to check what they had done. Then we all waited.
Calloway's truck, his lorry ran for a week, having no sign of needing new fuel including trips south, via ferry to the Mainland, to Liverpool and Manchester. So late one night he had cracked open the hood and found a small tan gerbil running frantically in a little wire exercise wheel suspended over a flat sheet of what appeared to be white-mode Taelon energy placed about 12 inches under the hood. Jamie Wu, and of course me, were into the joke and caught the whole thing on my FlatScreen panel. Calloway had carefully closed the lid and walked to Uske for a few lagers as Jamie and me returned Hamlet to his home in Jamie's apartment where Juliette awaited his return.
"He will see, I hope, the information I have requested," Le'at says.
"He won't get a bounce off the bird in this mess," I speculate. The Web access here isn't good and the Doors InfoLoop database which would have such data for probably the last 50 years, had been dependant on the latest Sat to go south from a Taelon energy failure.
"This is a mess," Le'at comments, "but it is too windy for birds to bounce. The seagulls are all abed."
"Why did you put your hands in the water?" I ask, reaching for the Engineer's hands. They are ice cold.
"Human geologists still place rocks into their mouths in order to quickly sense information about the material," he explains, "and what I do is similar. It is not strictly scientific, but each time I have tested the water in this manner, I have noticed several differences which you would term subliminal."
"Good or bad differences?" I wonder aloud. My background is not in material science, hydraulics, or anything much which is practical. The Taelon looks at me and closes his eyes, suddenly his hands are warm, I am warm as he throws his energy corona around me and taps into his inner core.
"The change is significant, but not unanticipated," he tells me. "We need to monitor changes in the nature of the water here and over the lineal site." He points at the frigid rolling waters of the Atlantic where Bruce Mooreland has been overseeing horizontal boring efforts on dark and stormy nights with a vehicle of the sort I have never seen before.
Jamie opens the car door and walks to us, clearly, from the way he moves, without an answer. "The InfoLoop is still down," he says, "but we can try the old Chapel."
"Ah, we ask the Omnipotent," Le'at quips. He and I have debates about whether there are Akasan Records locked within the Stratosphere's energy streams.
"Actually, we ask Brian Leitch," Jamie tells us. "He's been refurbishing the place to use as a sort of Community Hall where the Art League can give lessons to our Summer Visitors. Brian told me that some of the old registers he found there from the Seaman's Association are Marine Forecasts going back to the 1840's."
"1840's?" Le'at states in a tone of dejection. "But the pollution had already begun by then. Surely you have earlier?"
***
[b] TERRAN FIRST CONTACT TEAM
PROJECT 999
VILLAGE OF USKE
TENTH ENGINEER LE'AT
PERSONAL LOG
DECEMBER 24. YEAR 5.
[/b]I have learned the English, but it is clear that I am no diplomat. The small alien with me in this space is evidently hostile. I ealier attempted a rapprochement via a submissive posturing as if he were Irintha, and we are now at the awkward moment which inevitably arrives when one is, as Min says, "eyeball to eyeball" which is not quite mind-to-mind, but close enough to be permitted within.
"Happy Christmas," I say brightly, giving a seasonal greeting.
I wonder if I shall be kissed for I am inadventently under the white berried parasite of trees, the Mistletoe which someone has placed over the only EntryWay into the Old Chapel. When Jamie Wu and Min entered first, they stopped, he pointed up, then he kissed her well and she did not protest. I followed them there and stood, looked up, but it had not the same result as by then, they had entered Brian's office and were deep in looking at the old registers. They had suggested that it would be best for me to linger in the Entry, as they were uncertain if the old man's heart could take meeting a Taelon. He apparently is the sort of recluse who did not take well to Southerners, let alone real' aliens. I suspect I have been insulted.
I am not kissed to my relief. "Seasons Greetings," I chirp.
The alien does not speak, but I sense that he thinks of balls.
I have rapidly learned that with strange humans, not that all humans are not strange at times, including Min, you say random remarks to get them to take over the burden of social conversation. You say, "Happy Holiday. How is the weather? What do you think about Manchester United?" Then you appear to listen and move your head up and down at appropriate times if the individual pauses for breath more than 4 seconds.
I quickly add, "Do you prefer that Glasgow or Edinburgh win the Title?"
What title I know not, but then I am not one of these aliens and I have not been imprinted with the same material the FirstStage of the First Contact Team. I have been given limited preparations and told to consort with aliens in order to familiarize myself with their customs as part of one of the Anthropological Constructs devised by La'rat and T'marr – in other words, I am a pig from New Guinea.
Small black eyes glare at me. I sense menace which will soon be vocalized which is not desirable as in this place, I am still regarded as most alien. The Villagers, they say, are suspicious of anyone whose origins are off-island, says Jamie Wu, so it is reassuring that I am not unwanted because I am Taelon, but rather because I am not one of Them.
The Villagers are of a classic isolationist US/THEM mentality, even with their own species. Children at play here in the stony streets chant to each other the chorus we hear again and again from aliens who do not understand that life is a web that expands across the universe, blown by energies beyound even our understanding.
Before the snows came here, I observed a small blonde boy watch the others with empty eyes. Then he walked to the library -- he is the son of Charis, a long haired woman who works in the Village who is not a native. The others follow alongside him, not touching him, not actually looking at him, but his differences to them lives in their thoughts and their minds, disquieting them for he is clearly a Light and they still live in the darkness of their individual minds.
The children sing and taunt Paean, showing their innate fear of the Different: "sticks and stones may break your bones, but names will never hurt you."
That boy knows as I know that even though we are different, we are the same. We are strangers in strange lands who are here not by choice but because Fate has opened her hand and placed us here on the cold, hard ground in order that we will learn to explore whatever we must in order to progress in our journey to the center within. I have an advantage to Paean -- sticks and stones do not hurt me for I have no bones and I can alter my vibrational frequencies to permit solid objects to pass through my body. Like the boy, I fear vibrational dissent, as I have told Min, I fear to be verbally chastised far more than anything, particularly when I permit myself to enter into the life of this ever-changing world. Being disliked discomforts me.
Presently, I do not want this new, small alien to dislike me because I think that he could be an interesting friend with interesting points of view to discover.
"Do you prefer Cricket?" I say as I know that Football and Cricket are two different sorts and the fan of one may be insulted if you infer that they are of a different lot.
I know about Human sports. I learnt from an Expert who is himself, Human. Pa'quar informs me that Second Engineer Rupert Calloway is a great source of cultural wisdom and humor from a British Male point of view, and Pa'quar is usually a good judge of character himself. Paean, my other small friend, likes Cricket and crickets. Crickets are also small singing creatures, insects who live in the dark under stones and logs, who employ legs for locomotion and concerts.
"Now there are footballers, cricketeers and that lot," Engineer Calloway told me last month as we examined what had not been done properly in the supply of copper tubing because humans are incapable of following simple directions. I note that the tubing has not been properly charged. Humans expect materials to change colors or to exhibit exterior differences. The tubing would not do. I needed to speak to Tom Hanson, in charge of this and to Renee Palmer to insure that she would see that we absolutely must have all the procedures followed in the proper order. She is not an Engineer, but as Taelon Liaison, she knows how to crack the whip at the executive levels. Having her on-board to put pressure on the workers from the Human side will, we hope, reduce friction at this site.
"And there are the Others," Calloway pronounces, "who like Polo, Tennis, Riding to Hounds."
"What do you like?" I ask him, all politeness and courtesy.
I have been married to Quirelll as well as to Watamantha and know the importance of putting your wording rightly. I know Polo. Polo is a fragrance, similar to Essence, the recently popular Reve manufactured substance advertised by an androgynous young man whose image sprawls across innumerable buses in the London Transport System. Tennis involves several individuals beating balls with racquets across short nets and even I know that hounds are too small to ride even if dogs are Man's Best Friend. Calloway has made a joke.
I tilt my head and examine the man whose lower face is covered with dense brownish red fur. Riding dogs, indeed! I suspect that Calloway is pulling my foot. This means that he likes my company.
"Now, what do I like? Nude wrestling in mud," he says, displaying his teeth, "between savage females who are amply endowed." He then growls like a Quirelll in hot pursuit during Festival.
"That is sensible," I reply, "to wrestle unclothed --clothing is rather inhibitory if you grapple and why soil clothing in mud as fabric is hard to clean?"
Human clothing is badly made, poorly fitted and typically drab and it appears to wear out continuously. I have a perfectly decent Quirelll manufactured Z'qth and it is in excellent condition for an item which is 1094 years old which has been lost in space, eaten, then traveled through the digestive tract of one of my younger, more curious Irintha. The average sweater, as Min tells me the tale of one she had owned, had lasted her about one year before the moths, winged forms of caterpillars, ate it. I suspect that it is for this reason that humans continuously change their clothing, because they do not understand how to make it properly.
"It's all," Calloway places one finger vertically to the side of his pug nose, "what you like, you see, about Class." His voice goes up and down. "You are tied to your origins as much as you are tied to your Native Land."
Calloway has proudly informed me that he is Working Class but now Professional so he has hopes that his offspring will move up to Middle Class. The gesture with his finger indicates, I believe, he has bestowed a confidence or a piece of wisdom upon me as a favor. Kernith informs me that if you place a finger inside of the nose, this is a rude gesture which is why we only see humans do this gesture furtively performed. Kernith and I are collecting rude alien gestures so that one day we can shock Barantha and stop him when he is being particularly long-winded in a Synod Meeting and we owe Zo'or.
"I comprehend you well, Second Engineer Calloway," I nod my head up and down. In India you move it gently from side to side which means the same. In England you move your head side to side it is not the same. Human multiculturality is confusing, particularly when diverse groups, who are related to each other, war over small parcels of so-called Native Lands which have passed through all their hands.
Callow purses his lips. This does not mean that he wishes to be kissed by me. It means that he is in some manner in agreement with what I have vocalized. Humans press their lips together frequently to denote various semiotics that I often do not decode properly, but often they do it to kiss.
The origin of the kiss lies both with the Pleasure Bond and the Nourishment Bond which binds those in a relationship together. According to Prime Anthropologist La'rat, kissing stems from ancient feeding practices still extant amongst peoples they term Primitive.' So, when two individuals press their lips to another's and perform gentle massaging, as if they are feeding their maturing offspring with prechewed protein or vegetable substances, they are combining the Pleasure Bond with the Nourishment bond. Parents and Children, Friends and friends and Lovers perform this act, but Prime Engineer Pa'quar, who is in ka'a'tham and in various relationships with several aliens and is our kissing expert -- if one kisses another with an open mouth, one is indicating that you are open to a deeper level of getting to know the Other.
"The difficulty," Pa'quar recently told me as we walked about the grounds of the Human/Taelon Interface Institute in Hindley's Creek, Virginia, "is that humans do not realize that Opening the Mouth, when one is in ka'a'tham, as opposed to merely making love through a Friendly exchange of ki, when one is in their period of fertility and the proper overtures have been made"
"Playing music together, dancing, writing poetry, making Art," I say, thinking with pleasure of all of the Arts of Love that I have shared over the years with Others. "Or diving into intense collaborative research which requires frequent Sharings" A light snow is falling, but the woods are brown.
"They do not realize," Pa'quar tells me, his eyes beautiful, his energy corona throwing indications all around him that he is become a true Prime, "that when they open their mouths to me when I am Prime, this is sexual and that I expect to be filled with their ki and not a moist tongue. It matters not if they are male or female." Winnie has not come to terms with the fact that Pa'quar expects her to give him a child. She is a female and only female humans can conceive and because of this, she mistakenly thinks of Pa'quar as a male.
"Humans use a mechanical pistonlike churning, a sliding action to stimulate the hormonal/bio-electrical responses," I note with an appropriate gesture.
Pa'quar casts me an inquisitive sidelong glance and, me being myself as my procreational ki flow is intensifying, I merely smile. He has not responded to my overtures to him to begin the popular teasing, cooperative Bar'ma dance, where one becomes the Pursuer and the Other the Pursued intermittently. I suppose that I have been rejected as Pa'quar's position as solidified whereas I am unsure of my developing state. If we Triad too soon, we may be incompatible or even in opposition and there we will sit, frustrated with no bundle of joy.'
"I had expected," Pa'quar says with a trace of bitterness, "That as T'than was developing into a Third that there would be hope for me there, but that option is gone."
T'than is now one of the Sleepers, awaiting the Awakening. Pa'quar picks up a small piece of pink quartz and tosses it up and down in his hand, gazing at the Mere. I sense that he is composing. He is a noted Musician of high repute. I am but a didler, making small, amusing tunes with strange alien sounds.
"I can give you ki," I offer. "It is not sufficient to spin a child within you, but perhaps if Ti'pra and the others in combination can" According to Those in the Wall, who are usually reliable, Pa'quar is starting to spin out of control again.
Ti'pra and Winnie Malabar are in Triad with Pa'quar, an official marriage with Child on the Way as Winnie likes to say. They managed to ensure that her child, conceived by an implantation of her embryo which had been fertilized by Justin McNeil's biological contribution, did receive sufficient Taelon ki energy to hybridize it. But that was before Pa'quar rotated to Prime.
Ti'pra is in the state you reach where you only seek to nurture and protect your Prime and developing child. This leaves Pa'quar now wandering the Earth, searching the hands of Others to a sign that it is his time again to bear a child. We have also noticed that Ti'pra is no longer paying as rapt attention to Zo'or which is not good as the combination of Zo'or, the Leadership of the Synod and ka'a'tham spells danger to those whose position is dependent upon their bonds with him. There is a movement afoot to shift the balance of power to those with more steady hands.
"I have tried everything!" Pa'quar slices the air with a rude gesture. "Everyone available is in a commitment or turning to Prime!" His skiff is driven before the winds of passion, and he frantically seeks to tack here and there in hopes his slack sail will be filled
"I wonder why there are so many Primes," I say. "Da'an" Rumor has it that Zo'or and Pa'quar have begun an involvement, but none of us believe this.
"Da'an was a surrogate in our Triad, the one with Winnie, for a time," Pa'quar examines the quartz closely, "then his shaqarava revealed that my Liaison with him shall be fruitless."
"Da'an is a Prime. La'rat is a Prime." I think and sneak a look at my own palms which are dark. T'than was in Triad with those two, so there might be an opening it is a great coup to be invited to dance with Da'an even if nothing truly spins out of it.
"It makes NO SENSE!" Pa'quar turns swiftly and throws the rock into the distance, skipping it across the Mere exactly 10 times. "Da'an and La'rat are in Triad together. There should only be one Prime."
"You and Winnie Malabar are Prime," I remind him that so many of us are Prime, not that many of us have the will, the ability or the energy to begin a dance of new life. "And you are both in the same Triad. Perhaps it is your exposure to Gaian energies via Yuki Okuda-Takahashi."
"Take a number," Pa'quar mumbles, "a guess as to why I am the way that I presently am and why I am so attractive to aliens." He has been very busy, at the forefront of our action to begin to add these aliens to our bouquet. He no longer requires much kryss.
"Gaian energy?" I voice the latest speculation going the rounds. He got a large jolt, a true stream from the hands of his latest Human Prime. Yuki's ancesteral connection with what her culture terms Ki Energy or Q'i, shall, we hope, prove to be useful in establishing us on this plane and staving off our needs for kryss maintenance. She attuned Pa'quar to her Gaian ki energy last month at Bosworth College, Oxford, a matter we are all extremely grateful for, though Pa'quar is not sure if she understands the importance of her act was not on a mere Personal level as she expressed her love and concern for Pa'quar, but had more important effects for him on a Professional level.
Mit'gai has been working with our Taelon co-Venture at the Summer-Skye Ashram with practitioners of various cultures in order to see how well they access their natural energies, usually they transmit their energies through their hands in the same manner a Louyai readjusts your internal energies and cleanses you. He hopes that we can find a shorter route to hybridizing this species by Transforming, Incorporating or Amalgamating presently living individuals rather than via procreational means.
"I would say that Gaian energies influence us to make us Prime or that the kryss of human manufacture has caused the shift of so many of us to the condition where we are primed to be the vessel into which new life will be poured" Pa'quar pauses as we watch a small bird examine us. "but I do not believe that this situation has a simple cause." He looks at his hands.
We all take or have taken kryss, those exposed to Terran energies beyond minimal levels. Typically we get a few crystals of this nourishment supplement, Min calls it my vitamins,' when we require it, depending on how long we have been on Terra and what our duties are. Those who interact with humans on an intense level, such as Da'an, those who receive a constant psychic bombardment, require more than those like me. Until recently, I was merely a bee flitting here and there, for brief sojourns on Terra before Kernith persuaded T'than to assign me here full time.
There is a dreadful, truly vile synthesized kryss substitute, lacking in vital energetics and trace elements, which some human created when there was a flap because some human entrusted to do a good job did not and we got the blame because we trusted someone we should not. The extraction process, devised by Sandoval I suspect as he is a sadist, involved humans being placed in painful positions which is Not Good here. Pain is seen as very wrong and not as a necessary step towards understanding. Humans are unlike Taelons or Watamantha and are exquisitely sensitive to pain, even when it is merely transitory and there is no lasting harm done.
"Pain," as T'than told me when I joined his Engineering Team, "is often the quickest and easiest method to teach a human why not to do something. It imprints the action and its consequences well in a manner"
Pa'quar interjects, " that the reading of innumerable manuals, the hearing many verbal cautionings cannot achieve." The Meme Chair Imprintation in Taos will, we hope, help, not that the Humans will not forget that experience as they do so many of our attempts to contact them on a deeper level.
Our Prime Engineer has had to verbally dress down' several of the Project 999 staff when they repeatedly do the SNAFU here, not understanding the consequences, for example, if subsurface strata of methane hydrate are breeched too soon before the copper underlayment channeling is complete. The SHOUTING usually seems to do the job – at least with the males in charge although most females tend to wilt at the Noise. But after the verbage is said and done and when you expect all to be made up -- their aggression levels remain high for weeks and days, and that causes unhealthy bodily stress which is undesirable amongst our Human cohort of helpers. We are hoping that the addition of Yuki, an International Business Relations expert, to our still incomplete team, will help us to get the points about safety, cooperation and the immediate dissemination of bad feelings' across to our human staff before they all accidentally kill each other.
I am gratified that we succeeded in impressing this upon Jamie Wu and that he thought to mention to me that in his subconsious state he was having bad dreams.' He'd been swimming offshore within the range of 3.3 Hertz, when suddenly the water boiled and a large sea-monster arose and pulled down the Doors International Oil Platform. Which one, he could not say. He'd laughed it off, saying that he'd recently seen a Gozilla Festival on the vid, but when Min told me that she'd had similar dreams – that her Shuttle suddenly founded, dropped over the Platform, I knew that it was time again to hit all four Project 999 sites to see if one of the balls are being dropped. We need more assistance, but as the Taelonologists are on the verge of making this a One Way system where one may come in but not go out, the Synod has not permitted more Taelon Engineers to arrive, though, as Pa'quar continuously states, we really need Watamantha.
At least now we do have one new helper, T'than's assistant. Protector Bruce Mooreland is well versed in equipment operation, as he Apprenticed with Melantha in rudimentary ReForming, but he is young and does not possess the tact required to be entrusted with Synod level dealings so we can't send him to any of the interminable mid-level meetings our governing body is encumbered with in these darkening times. I would suggest to Pa'quar to use his influence with Zo'or, but I am no idiot.
"Thank you, we all thank you," I tell Pa'quar, "that we are now better attuned with the aliens. Now I better understand Min." I understand Pa'quar. He is stressed, in ka'a'tham and in need of soothing of his not inconsiderable ego.
"I wish I understood Winnie," Pa'quar says, throwing one palm up. "I have been corresponding with Yuki for years via the GreenWorld Forums, so I have greater hopes for that relationship, particularly as she understands how to extend Ki."
Via Yuki's gifting him with information about Gaian energy patterning, via her Gaian Ki, our Prime Engineer has given us what he should—a firmer foundation to plant our roots deeper in Terran soils. Basically, the upper levels of our First Contact Team have finally made first contact with a 4th Planar Level entity of Gaian origin and we hope, that we have communicated our intensions correctly. Nirath and Lo'par, our Meme Chair experts, have now incorporated the energetic frequency shifts that had eluded us so that we can all be Imprinted and begin to Interface more accurately with the Humans in their Conscious Mode instead of primarily at the 3.3Hertz level of the Theta waves which is when their Unconsciousness reigns.
The problem is, that as an Emergent Race, Humans are fragmented on this 2nd Planar Level of reality into three minds – conscious, unconscious, and subconsciousness and until we had the proper filters all of our communications were falling into deaf ears. I have tried to explain to Min that interacting with even a single human was, until I was Imprinted with basic energy protocols, much like being at a Quirelll Wake where everyone is singing, shouting and communicating on a multitude of levels such a great diversity of thoughts, emotions and NOISE. Of course, I could not tell Min about the Quirelll, so that did not help my explanation. She did laugh at what I said, not derisively, but she gave me an odd look as I suspect that I have been particularly incoherent.
"My part in the Lock on Gaian Energies and the Nexus Location was only as part of a Team," Pa'quar states modestly. "It was a tripronged, tripartite effort spearheaded by Zo'or and Renee Palmer and flanked by La'rat and Justin McNeil, though George Gordon, Lord Byron was, I suspect, the flare which caught everyone's attention. This infers that there are stray Gaian agents roaming the 3rd Planar Level of Reality who can Interface with upper levels."
Pa'quar pauses, a flicker of illumination crossing his features, the Prime Engineer smiles and states, "As Yuki would say, Damn, I'm good!'" He kicked a grey rock. "But why, I ask, do I feel so bad?"
Why indeed, I think, is Love so elusive when you need it? We keep grasping the hands of the Others here, and they either overwhelm us emotionally or disappear into the mists of the Dreaming. I, for one, do not envy Zo'or his relationship with his Prime which began most likely too soon and too rapidly for either one of them to properly adjust. They have known each other for many years, but each time they meet, Zo'or explains, it is a new experience for her. As he likes to state to in the times when we who are on the Team bemoan our Fate, "I am married to an Emu!" T'marr has made several suggestions of What to Do which we hope, will allow the two of them to interact for short times in something resembling a normal marital relationship.
Zo'or has gone to extremes to gain contact with Renee and to ensure that her subconsious desire for children is met. He contacted a 3rd Planar Level entity, and the poet Byron, in a body cloned from a lock of his original incarnation's hair by Scientists Be'tan and Ja'nat, obligingly served as Animus for the clone and impregnated Renee Palmer. After this, Zo'or filled Renee with his ki energy so their child Pa'al should be a decent First Generation Human/Taelon Hybrid. T'marr hopes that if Renee can carry Pa'al longer than she did La'ra, the male child will be more skillful in emulating human behavior patterns. La'ra is, we suspect, too Taelon in outlook, but at least she has not inherited Zo'or's xenophobia. She is too immature to help on the Commonality levels of issues, but there is hope she will be of political assistance in creating bonds with Humanity she has been popping in and out of Forums and was spied once in the Human Nexus under the Green Tree.
The 3rd Planar Level of Reality is also where the Nexus of our local Taelon Commonality has been established and where the higher levels of our Interspecies Relations shall take place over the next few centuries. There is increasing activity on the fringes as more and more humans whose ancestors were Awakened by Ma'el, those termed psychic,' cluster about us, seeking warmth and to join in the concert. But we cannot permit them in our Sphere, unless they wholly join us. We seek to divert the Human Lights to the Human Commonality which Someone, some think Ma'el, some think Buddha, some whisper Ha'gel, set up in the early days of human consciousness.
Our High PSI Taelon Volunteers, like Justin McNeil, Min Huang, Jennifer Summer-Skye, have all ventured there, at least in their dreams. Yuki has been there, without Taelon assistance. Ken Takahashi, her son has as well,. And we have still not found the Interlopers who first endangered us through their random wanderings and who endangered Da'an by assuming his ki frequency levels and abruptly severing his Taelon Commonality bonds. La'rat, at Le Cadeau, is using Guy Martin to persuade high PSI humans to join the ISR Volunteers, so we can at least teach the humans are to be self-policing and to stop wandering, like unwanted sheep, into Other's dreams.
"All this reveals," T'marr explains to me as I speak to him about my slowly developing relationship with Min in the month of October last, "is that via the similarity of our internal energies, the fact that Pa'quar was able to show that there is only a slight shift to the Left Hand in our energies, that we are related to these aliens, despite their obvious differences in physicality and density spin, on even more levels than we had anticipated."
"But what of the Jaridians?" I question the Second Anthropologist as we sit in his Chamber in Le Cadeau, France watching leaves outside his window turn slowly to yellow, "How do they fit into the algorithm? Surely we are the Ki, but I cannot see them as Right Hand. Are the Humans our Left Hand?" I ask not what about the Watamantha and the Quirelll, are they truly now Taelon, for I know that they are underneath different surfaces, the same as us.
What I really wanted to say, what they whisper in the Walls but dare not vocalize, what I cannot say for I am involved with Kernith who would Cleanse me if I expressed such a thought, is – Clearly we are all Children of the Kimera, who planted life in many forms on many planets in many galaxies in a Time we have all forgot, but is it safe to truly love the Others who are Human? The debate is by doing this, will they Rise or shall we Fall? I plan to ask Barantha for the Watamantha view for they are, as ever, silent within Commonality Forums. Zo'or fears that T'than is in alliance with them and they plan to shift the Prime Nexus over here as they flee, we flee before the Jaridians as the Wave is breaking over the Quirelll and all the talk there is of Evacuations as world after world is Cleansed and drained of Taelon energies.
"The rule is," T'marr has picked up my non-vocalized thought, "you do NOT place yourself in a situation where you are outnumbered by humans when you are open and vulnerable to attack on a mental or emotional level. Nirath did this and fragmented, reverting to his Primal state after losing his ability to maintain his bi-pedal façade, because he loved both Guy Martin and Mary Jane Vincent too deeply and this caused him to transfer much of himself to them and when Guy accidentally downshifted to another level of reality in an ID Vortex accident, this cut Nirath off from himself and he pulled Lo'par down."
It was only when Nirath and Lo'par Triaded with Mary Anne that Nirath was restored. Now Mary Anne is named Ha'na – she is a human Prime, expecting a child who will have two Taelon Parents and two Human Parents.
"I do not know about Nirath," I comment. "He is still strange." And Ha'na has perversely refused to deal with Guy Martin, causing stress within their interlocking Triads.
"Strange? Strange?" T'marr laughs. "What about Pa'quar and Zo'or? Examine their situations to see what loving aliens can do to you both energetically and on a Memetic level."
I know this. I have been within Min's mind as she sleeps. Recently she was dreaming of having Oolong and Jasmine Tea with her Dragon Lord and the Vietnamese goddess Au Co and her Dragon Prince. The god A Nhi, like the Greek Prometheus, had shown them how to make fire, to transform one element from one state to another by striking flint, setting kindling aflame via the movement of energies. There is much of Quantum Physics embedded within ancient Human legends. We all immediately noted that symbol after symbol resemble some of our most ancient ones. The symbol for gold, for the ancient Alchemists is exactly the same as used by Taelon traders in times before the Human species on this planet had made the dominance transition from Neanderthal to Cro-Magnun. And that was, of course, much earlier than the present day Humans suspect.
We still will not tell them about what we have found on Mars, on Ios and the strange energies adrift near Persephone. The majority of the population of Terra and their governmental bodies are not ready for such disillusioning Enlightenments.
And when Min is awake, I listen more carefully than she imagines to her words, her ideas knowing well that the intensity of human thoughts, their ideas, their Memes – all constantly infuse us with their cultural views via the mediums of speech, art, music and more. It is in this manner, by opening yourself freely to alien influences that we begin to change, one by one or two by two, our own perceptions of who we actually are. The Commonality serves as my anchor, my point of stability as I make these slight species-drifts, incorporating alien behavior patterns into your personality so that you become the Other and they shift into You and eventually we all return to the Oneness which is the source of All.
Min and Barnatha already communicate in the GreenWorld Forums – she is FireFly and he is DragonLord and they did so before I spun into her life. In the shadow world of the Net I am Kabu, when we have 3-way debates about the changing realities of life, the universe, and the nature of existance in Post-Taelon Terra.
"Walk a very careful line and fear not to be rude or push the Human away if you sense that you will Fragment yourself as we have seen that Fragmentation is injurious to the emotional stability of all partners in Triad. Keep your current relationships with those who are Taelon in the forefront before you even consider inviting a human to dance." I assumed that by this he meant those such as Kernith, Barantha and not the Quirelll.
Once again, my mind drifts also to Scotland and Engineer Rupert Calloway's discussion of sport and class. I continue speaking to the man, delighted at our growing rapport, "You mean to inform me that the individual advocates are from different classes, so they do not like each other because they do not know how to play the game."
Sport is, after all, a religion for these aliens and they kill each other more for religious and philosophical reasons these days than they do for food now that we have insured that there is sufficient for all via our giftings.
"Precisely," Calloway says to me. "Class is the name of the game, even in the USA, though they deny it."
I think of class and lessons I have learned from aliens who often assume that there is only one way to tickle a fish into your hands. Most children take classes in sport, which is a prescribed method to curb the natural human tendency to physically resolve differences by beating and kicking. Sport channels the aggressive instinct into acceptable pastimes, but because people take different classes in different sports, and because they are passionate about their sports, this unfortunately leads again to more violence as fanatics battle fanatics in the stands.
But what game, I wonder as I lie upon the floor of the Old Chapel in a non-threatening gesture, does this small individual of British origin favor? There are many -- rugby, Australian rules football, tennis, baseball, hockey, basketball, Jai Alai, skiing, surfing, mud wrestling -- and each of these has fervent followers, each with a passionate identification with the individuals on the Team or the lone performer. At times fanatics adhere to the geographic locality of the Team's origin, though these things change according to how much money passes hands.
The alien is silent. Therefore I have struck out. This individual does not like football or cricket. Perhaps, I think, he is not British. He is a Scot. They throw large logs into the air, kill avians for dinner and other strange things. Bruce is Welsh and likes, as Da'an and many of us, to climb the walls when things are stressful. I think that this alien is too small to climb walls.
"Do you prefer Polo?" I ask.
The alien curls its small lip at me, revealing small white teeth. I smile in return which seems to disconcert it as much as the fact that I have no scent. I sense strongly that he favors a ball game, but clearly not the ones I have mentioned. It involves me throwing the ball and his returning it to me. It is called Catch the Ball," an unfamiliar game with childish rules.
On reflection, I consider I have made an error in my approach because I failed to notice the alien's stature. I say to myself, Le'at -- the alien is small, this infers, at least here, that it is young. I know that young of this planet are typically noisy, confused, needing of help for the strangest reasons, hungry. You mollify them with a smile or a small material gift which usually comes with a KidMeal. I had none and the alien had not liked my little tricks with energy balls, so I thought of what was supposed to be on every Scottish child's mind tonight.
"Did you put your shoe out for Santa Claus?" I inquire politely. There is, behind me, a small intake of breath, then an explosion as Min Huang laughs. I turn.
"Why is laughter?" I say. "Should I have said Father Christmas or the Green Man? We are aliens here and my linguistic ability is not that of Diplomats for I am Scientist Caste."
Min puts one hand over her mouth. "Le'at! Why in the name of Hector's puppydawg are you lyin' on the floor, eyeball to eyeball with a Pomeranian?"
"This individual is from Pomerania, not Scotland?" I wonder if Pomeranians speak Pomeranian. He did seem to comprehend my speech. Who, I wonder is Hector? Is this a sacred dog?
Min shakes her head at me. This means that I have done wrong.
"Is Pomeranian an Indo-European language?" I inquire of her. "Does it have Latinate roots? It is not, I fear, in my Lexicon so my communication skills appear minimal."
"Oh Le'at! This heah individual is a dawg!" Min laughs at me, drops down upon a bench they call a pew, wiping her eyes. "An ankle biter. A digger of lawns, a chaser of balls."
Minette rapidly tells Min, "Yapyapyapyap," with great indignation.
"You have distressed Minette," I say.
One corner of Min's mouth curves upwards showing that I am not in disfavor for my error. She gets up and walks to Minette and stoops down, holding out the back of her hand. Minette slowly approaches to take a sniff. Min has a way with animals, an innate ability to communicate with the many small Others, winged, furred, scaled, upon this fertile planet. A quick glance upwards to the vegetation suspended from the ceiling, as I slowly rise to my knees, reveals that my plan has be laid well. The trap is set. Min Huang is in an excellent location.
She turns her head to me, chin length hair, shining and as black as a Watamantha male's ruff, accents her high narrow cheeks."Howah do you know this here lil'ole dawg is named Minette?"
I feign indignance. "How indeed you know names? You ask! They tell!" Unless they are Quirelll, but that is a different matter.
Tell an unattached Quirelll his real name and you must marry him or her or thim or ther or else Scandal occurs unless the Tides are right and the Moons are wrong, but then, as they say here, scandal is my middle name.'
I still think it wrong that Da'an and Qo'on agreed after the Bath Fiasco and the Quirelll Delegation that we radically change our approach with the next aliens we formally meet as I suspect humans are actually approachable. But then, I still love the Watamantha and as everyone knows, their favorite method of invasion is not always appreciated by those without the same sense of humor.
Personally, I feel these days that both T'than and Zo'or's approaches are wrong for this species and I suspect Da'an, as usual, will be too conservative. Let Fate show her hand. I feel like flinging the entire deck she has placed into our hands into the air and letting the cards fall where they may. You play the hand you are dealt and you cannot cheat someone who is Transdimensional, someone who knows that Past, Present and Future are merely different streams of the same TimeLine.
And what card had I been dealt? I examine my hand. The Joker, the Trickster smiles at me, and, as we all know, he has many, many names and faces to achieve his objectives. I look at Min as she knees under the Mistletoe within easy reach, think of what I should do.
I smile and catch her eye. She smiles back. First base. I look up as does she. Our eyes meet. I sit back on my heels and wait for her to come to me. The trouble I forsee for Min and me is, that she does not realize that for a Taelon, if you play the game right, First Base is Home Run.