The slate interrupted my presentation and politely informed me that Ruth wanted me to meet her in the main lab. I quickly put myself in order and walked to her office. Her expression was already pretty unreadable, I still hadn't worked out how these lupine faces communicated so much with so little expression...
but hers was even more impenetrable than usual.
"Yes, Ruth?" I asked.
"Sit down, Allen... We have to talk."
Already I didn't like the direction this was heading. She knew.
I could tell immediately that she knew I wasn't Allen. Hell, I couldn't believe it had taken this long.
"I think you know what we have to talk about," she said. A wave of numbness flooded over me and I nodded my agreement. "Who are you?" she asked directly.
"My name is Allen," I told her, "but when I try to say it, the guy who owned this body's name keeps coming out. His brain is translating a lot of stuff for me so I can't tell what I'm actually saying."
She looked at me as if I were some strange new insect. A sound much like "uhm hum" was all that she said as she nodded for me to continue. I sighed and began telling her the story. I guess that getting caught made it easier to talk, I was tired of trying to tapdance though this nightmare. Through it, she stopped me and asked a pointed question or two, but for the most part, she sat impassively listening to all the detail.s.
When I finished, she gestured at the slate on the wall and it divided into several sections and the tother wolves in the research group appeared.
"What do you think?" she asked them.
"I think he's telling the truth," one of the older wolves comment. Several of the other nodded agreement. "Ask the slate,"
he continued.
The slate spoke for itself and noted that based on brain wave and temperature scans, it believed with a good level of confidence that I was telling the truth. That was a relief.
"Allen... I know you're not really Allen, but I don't know what else to call you," she said, "I've contacted your mate and told her that you'll be staying overnight at the clinic. She wanted to talk to you, but I suggested that you had a very bad headache and that you shouldn't be disturbed."
"You may as well call me Allen, when you do I hear my name." She nodded. "My mate... Hmmm."
Ruth spoke quietly in the desk slate and several new people walked into the room. "Allen, these are several collegues of mine specialising in sociology, history, psychology and general science. Would you be up to talking to them about your world and how you got here?" I nodded this time. "Good. We've got to find out why you're here and how you got here." She turned to the tallest wolf,"Stan? Could you set him up with a comfort suite at the residence?" Stan agreed and moved to the side, talking to his personal slate.
She stood and lead the pack out into the corridor into a set of connected rooms. A quick check of her slate and she rattled off a list of times and places. This was one organised group. The first was the sociologist who asked me all sort of detailed questions about my culture, how our families were set up, what we considered important, how we lived our lives. I tried to answer each one accurately, but I have to admit, some of the questions caught me off-guard. It walk like trying to explain how to walk or what the colour red looked like; it sounded simple, but was too obvious to really make sense.
After the sociologist came the historian. Some of his questions struck me as a repeat of the sociologist's but with a shift in focus. At one point, he called in a linguist to help with some of the words which didn't translate well into their language.
The linguist immediately asked to be added to the roster as she excitedly tried to build the twisted vaguely English sounds into something similar to her own language. She wasn't even close.
We got further with writing. For some reason, while speech was getting translated, motion oriented actions weren't. I found that with a little practice, I could write English words and entire sentences. Within an hour, I was doing a fair impression of my own handwriting, although the influence of an arm not my own was distorting it. The only problem was that I couldn't read what I had written. The letters and words looked familiar, but for other than my knowing what I'd written, I'd have no idea what the words meant.
I left the linguist with samples of English she had collected by pointing to things and having me write the word for the object with my eyes closed. Clearly, she was excited and eager to do more research... I was less enthused.
The evening ground on with one after another scientist tramping into the conference room asking a barrage of questions. By nightfall, I was starting to develop on massive headache and asked Ruth for something to help. She ordered a herbal tea which did help the headache, and then suggested that I get some fresh air and go for a walk outside.
This suggestion surprised me. I asked if someone would supervise me and that surprised her as much as her suggestion had surprised me.
"Supervise you?" she asked. "Why?"
"So I don't run away, of course," I replied.
"Run away.. to where?"
She had me there. In this culture, I stood out like a sore thumb. I didn't know how to write or read, I didn't know the customs... Hell, I didn't even know if the used money. I hadn't found any in my hosts pockets.
"Look Allen," she said to me, "You're not a prisoner here. It's obvious to us that something messed up and our Allen and you have, well, switched places." I must have made a face at that suggestion because she continued quickly, "Yes, yes, I know that you and he can't have actually switched places, but something is making it seem as if you two were. What we need to do now is find out what caused it, and how we can get you two back where you belong."
I nodded. I thanked her and told her I'd be back fairly quickly.
She handed me Allen's slate, reminding me that without it, I would be in trouble if I got lost.
The night air was cool and it did help my headache. There were still people walking around the campus and from over in the Quad area, I could hear the groans and sounds of people engaging in lovemaking. This body had an amazing night vision, even though it was dark and there was little lighting, I could still see fairly easily and clearly, just that everything was in greys.
I strolled for a bit then found a nice, quiet clearing in some very fragrent trees and lay out on the soft grass. I must have dozed off for a bit because I awoke suddenly to the slate's voice telling me that I had an incoming message.
"Go ahead," I told the slate. Ruth's face appeared on the slate and she told me that I'd been gone over an hour and asked if I was alright. I said I was and that I would return right away.
When I got back to the lab area, only Ruth and several members of the research team were there, talking about something and calling up schematics on the main wall slate. Clearly, they were onto something.
"Allen, I know this will be difficult, but can you tell us about the brain structure of your people?" asked an older, black furred wolf who's name wouldn't come back to me.
"Uh... sure," I said, "but I'm not a doctor - I'm no expert on anatomy."
The black wolf nodded and asked me to give it a try, handing me a pencil-like stylus. I took the pencil and started drawing out on the slate what I could remember of the human brain from the one anatomy class all Riders have to take. After several minutes, the sketch was pretty close to what I remember.
Ruth looked at the drawing and asked someone named Judith to come in. A few minutes later, a surprisingly attractive female wolf-person in greys and tans walked in and I was surprised to feel my body responding to her. She looked at the drawing I had made and called up a split screen showing my brain drawing and a drawing of what I presumed was their brain structure. They didn't look anything alike.
What I took to be the medulla oblongata was much large and formed nearly an entire extra lobe sandwiched between two smaller, flatter lobes. Judith noted that it was this lobe which gave them their excellent orientation and position skills.
"Your what?" I asked.
"Haven't you noticed that you always know what direction you're pointing in?" she asked.
"Uhm, no, actually. In fact, quite the opposite, I've been lost since I got here." I replied.
Ruth nodded her agreement. Clearly, I was missing something that everyone else took for granted. Judith sat down and explained.
"Our people have a structure built in this section of the brain which allows us to have perfect direction. Our ancestors were nomadic animals who migrated long distances. This structure is what led them back to their traditional mating grounds each year. It's based on the magnetic fields of Earth. You really don't feel the direction?"
I shook my head. I honestly didn't.
Judith tried a couple of simple experiments where she set me up in a direction, blindfolded me and spun me around and asked me to reorient myself. Naturally, I couldn't. This seemed to shake her.
"Gods, how can you stand not knowing which way is north?" she asked.
"It's no big deal, none of my people can do that." I thought for a moment,"Actually, I guess some can, but most can't."
Ruth called the meeting to a close and suggested that we all quit for the night. We were getting close and if we didn't take a break, we'd end up blocking. I agreed, I was pretty tired.
Judith volunteered to lead me to my suite.
She showed me the amenities and how to call up food if I was hungry. To my surprise, she waited for a long moment after finishing.
"Allen, are you really from another world? Another Earth?" she asked.
"Yes, it would seem so. I've never seen any beings like you on any of the Earth's I've seen." I answered.
"I could tell that you find me attractive," she said.
I felt my ears burn. I guess that was as close to blushing as these people could get. "Uhm... well..." I stammered. "Yes, I do. How did you know?"
She chuckled, a surprisingly lovely sound, and then touched her nose. "I could scent it. Not to mention that your jaw dropped and your eyes tracked me around the room." She laughed. "Would you like to mate?"
I was stunned. I just nodded without saying anything.
"I take it that your people aren't so open about such things."
I shook my head no.
"How sad that must be," she continued and walked me to the bed.
The next morning, Judith and I joined the others. The two physicists were arguing about how the energy system which is formed when a Rider synchronises with a Horse can only allow one way information transfer, from the Horse to the Rider.
"But there were two Riders in the system trying to use each other as a Horse!" shouted the first, an all grey, male wolf-person.
I chuckled. They had taken up the Rider's jargon and were using it without thinking. Well, at least there was one area in which we were ahead of them.
The other physicist, a red-furred she-wolf person, seemed stymied. "Look, in that sort of a situation, neither should have been able to get through. The resonances wouldn't be able to form!"
Grey sighed and sat down while Red glowered at him.
Ruth stopped the shouting and asked a couple of questions about what kinds of things could interfere with the process.
Grey spoke up: "Hmmm, any high energy field such as a magnetic field or an electrostatic field."
Red joined in: "Or metal in the transfer field."
Ruth turned to me and asked, "Anything click there?"
I said no, but I told them something was bugging me about metal.
"We don't use metal in the helmets - it's all plastics except for the field coils. No magnetics or electrostatics."
"We use ceramics, but all non-metallic, silicates only. We don't use external field coils, we embed them into the ceramic," Ruth commented.
I nodded and thought... What is it about metal in the field? The transfer field envelopes the head. No metal in the brain. I didn't have any metal inserts or electronic implants. What was I missing?
The slate chimed and told us that a breakfast was ready. Ruth asked if it could be brought in and a moment later, a panel in the wall opened to expose the hot food. I must have stopped listening to this body, I was hungry.
We each took a tray and sat at the large common table. We continued to discuss what could have interfered. Eating with this lupine mouth was a strange experience. The muzzle was longer than a human mouth and the teeth more widely spaced. It was harder to chew and keep my mouth closed.
I stopped... teeth. Widely spaced teeth wouldn't have as many cavities. Cavities needed filling... Fillings were made of metal. My jaw dropped as did my fork.
Everyone turned around to see what had happened.
"Dental work. What do you people do for cavities in your teeth?"
I asked. That seemed to stop them. "Does anyone have a mirror?"
No one did. Ruth suggested that I use the slate's video to take a snapshot and then play it back. Instead, I asked each in turn to open their mouths and let me look... Not a single black filling anywhere. Nor any ceramic patches...No crowns. No dental work at all.
I groaned and explained that when our teeth developed cavities,
we filled them in by drilling away the damaged dental material and then filling it in with an almagam of silver and mercury.
Red looked both disgusted and excited. There was her metal.
"We don't chop out pieces of tooth," she said. "Instead we use a bacterial paste which contains organisms which eat the damaged tooth then regrows the enamel."
"That explains it. You've never had fillings." I said.
She nodded and continued, "Ok, now we know what went wrong. The combination of two Riders trying to ride each other with the bits of metal in his," pointing a thumb at me," teeth caused a peculiar resonance effect. The result is that they've both opened a permanent channel and are controlling each other."
Ruth hummed an agreement. "Yes, which explains why Allen can't read or write our language, not all of his brain components match up and not all of them are exchanged. It also explains why he can control his body functions and why he can talk and move around with little problem, our Allen's brain is running that and handling translations. Ok team, how do we fix this?"
Grey looked at me. "Well, his people are way ahead of us on this stuff. Ask him."
I shrugged my shoulders. "First, I'm a Rider, not a tech or a scientist. I know the basic principles, and I could, in a pinch,
build a transciever, but that's not the same as being an expert.
Second, this has never happened before. Your's is the first Earth ever to have discovered Riding other than our own."
Grey sighed. "So far..."
br /
I paused. "Yes, so ¯far."/pre