I suppose not everybody I’m talking to has heard of all the aliens involved in our raiding project, so let me give a little background.
The Frizzies—no human without a vodor, not even a native Czech, can say Frzzzsitlkzrz—are a planetary race like humans, not clones. They’re the size of large Earth parrots, with wings and big highly sensitive beaks, which they use for manipulation as well as perception.
Daraks are four-foot long multipedals. The exact number of legs is large and varies as they age—Daraks get longer each time they molt, and shorter when they escape from a close scrape. They scuttle well and fast. They have four long flexible antennae that they use to sense odors, textures, temperatures, vibrations including sound, electrical fields, and more.
The Chaldor homeworlders live in the ooze zone of high-pressure gas giants. I’ve never seen one, but I understand they look rather like five-foot-across snowflakes that somehow survive in the grinding trash pile that is ooze. I figure they must bend like ballet dancers, but that’s just me. They don’t come on raids, but in the swarm around this HX, their ships provide a stable sanctuary at the top of the loot chain. Nobody knows if their crews are clones or planetaries, or even if such terms make any sense in their biology.
* * *
At first the debriefing went routinely enough. Everyone was pleased about the battery. No world outgrows its need for new HX batteries, because no one has ever been able to fathom the required tech. As much as human science has advanced over the centuries, when we pry one open all we find inside is vacuum. They’ve been described as an ultimate technology triumph: Clean, compact, reliable, and idiot-proof. But they have limited life—short on the smaller ones and long on the bigger ones—so we, and the HX, always need more.
But then I brought out object three and we all looked at it. It was little more than a small monitor screen with a button. This was odd, for HX tech does not display controls the way most raider species tech does. Naturally they’re there, but devilishly hard to find and not at all uniform, a form of HX security. This device, with its obvious start button, was clearly not designed for native HXers.
Almost as soon as they saw it the Frizzies went non-linear. “Trap!” they screamed and flew out of the room. “Destroy it!” they shouted through the speaker from the observation room.
“If this thing was going to blow, it would have done so long ago,” I said. The Frizzies are the most technically knowledgeable of our four races, but even they guess a lot. This time they were obviously guessing wrong. And in their case, the hindbrain flight-or-fight reaction results in actual flight, even though it uses the jetpacks on their suits.
On the other hand, just pushing the button in the middle of a raiding ship was obviously a fool’s move. So all three devices, a copy of my recordings—and me!—were packed onto a high-speed carrier routed for investigation to our High Security Lab, which was well away from the Argal. Since I found the device, I got to assist the tech rats in their investigation. This was fuss-and-bother for me because it meant I’d miss my second penetration cycle. Was what I’d found that unusual?
When I got to the lab ship, the devices were whisked away and I was shown to a waiting room with a food vending station, a few MegaMagazine tablet displays, reclinable chairs, and several hundred entertainment channels. It was two bags of crisps, a bag of sweets, a hot drink, a cold drink, and a big vole-flavored protein bar, along with the last two issues of Kwidatch Today, the new Raider Merc’s Review, a short nap, an Xtreme Fitness, and half an Interstellar Geographic, before my “Uncle” Alric, a long-time family friend who’s the HSL’s Chief Briefer, bounced in.
“Someone likes you over on the HX ship, Johann!” he beamed. “We’ve looked over your recording of the HX droids opening doors in the room. Based on what we’ve seen elsewhere, those sequences were a tenth of normal speed and a tenth of normal complexity. These bots were demonstrating, in slow motion, how to open kindergarten doors.
“So … this Herman the Helpful HX bot was showing you things designed for you to see, and giving you things designed for you to have. All in exchange for a few words. … Hmm.”
“It makes more sense now that the Frizzies were kind of touchy,” I said. “What kind of Trojan horse have we got here?”
“That’s what we aim to find out!” Alric grinned the grin of a bomb defuser. The HX world is still full of mysteries, and people are still destined to die unlocking them. We all know that. But no one wants to go out to a simple, stupid booby trap, the way old John B. did on the first HX. What a waste that was!
Alric led me into Operator Room Alpha. It was typically labbish, crowded with equipment: keyboards, voice pickups, and other input devices scattered among printers, speakers, sculptors, and other kinds of outputs, plus the holo displays that served both purposes at once. Alric introduced me to his “three top technicians”: Jeyhun, a scrawny young man; Hadiya, a plump motherly looking woman; and Zillur, light on his feet despite his massive build.
Alric began bringing up a series of visuals, each showing an object sitting on a table surrounded by waldos to manipulate it, ranging from tiny to huge and general to specialized. The HSL techs watched silently, Hadiya seated at a workstation while Jeyhun fidgeted and Zillur stood stoically, arms folded.
“Your first item, 2856-2C7-A, seems to be a bit of artwork, just as you originally assumed. We’ve looked at it from the outside in the usual non-destructive ways, and it does not seem complex, by HX standards. So far Device A has done nothing special.”
“2856-2C7-B seems to be a standard HX droid hand device battery—which could power Device A. Is it some sort of intelligence test? Are you really smart enough to put Battery B in Device A? Are you really stupid enough to do it? We don’t know yet. But it’s in Armored Lab 4 with Device A … should we want to be so stupid.” He grinned again.
“I presume you have a known good battery in there, too,” I said.
“Of course! And a known benign device as well. We can mix and match.
“The main suspect is in Armored Lab 1.
“Device C seems to be very simple, perhaps the simplest HX device we’ve ever encountered. Even more curious, it seems … how can I put this—intentionally understandable! It’s a display device with memory, and little, if anything, more. And we could see that within seconds of beginning analysis. We spent hours looking for more, of course, but that’s all we found. We thought of moving it to Standard Lab 8, but your Frizzies counseled against that, and anyway nobody’s clamoring to use AL1.
“So I suggest we start by pushing the button. I know, I know, horribly unsophisticated, but sometimes the best course of action is the obvious one.
“And since you found it, we’ll give you the honors. Just push where the button is displayed in the workspace and the waldo you see hovering will follow.”
I pushed the button, half-braced for an explosion of light, even though I knew multiple filters had to be in place.
I think perhaps it was the amateurishness of what actually followed that was the most chilling part.
Without introduction three people—three human people—stood in medium-shot on the screen in 2-D color. Two adult women and a man. They watched another, older man join them as if he’d been setting up the recording equipment. Then the first man, looking nervous, said, “Hi, there.
“I’m Karim Karzai, grandson of Mohammed Karzai. This is,” and he began gesturing, “Milly LaFarge, Merle LaFarge’s granddaughter; Joice Mugabe, granddaughter of Thokozani Nkomo; and Brian Patricio, son from Mary Patricio.”
Each in turn waved or nodded.
“Our ancestors came from the ship Delphi’s Fortune and were caught in a … blip in …. 2792. They survived and the HX helped them.
“We all live and work with the HX. We understand that you who going to see this, do not.” He seemed mildly surprised by the concept.
“We just want you to know that we are alive, happy, and doing fine. And if the HX wants to talk with you, it would probably do you well to listen.”
The older man, Brian, walked off screen again as the other three said “Bye, bye” and waved. And that was the end. The screen went dark.
For a little while no one spoke. Finally, Alric said, “Let’s watch our recording of that, first, before we do anything else with the devices. There is a copy of that off ship?” Jeyhun jerked a nod.
Almost mechanically, we watched two more times. It was just too strange a thought to bring any snap judgment to. People alive on an HX? After the gamma ray burst it causes? Alive and thriving? Sure there were lots of fantasies and even some religions built around that idea. But up until now they were as real as stories about vampires and zombies.
“Hoax?” said Alric, finally.
“I know where I got that device from,” I said. “That’s all I know.”
The techs started rattling off alternatives.
“An HX droid intercepting a recording of humans from a human ship and adding that HX backdrop we saw?” Zillur suggested.
“A pseudo-HX bot on a real HX ship giving us a recording from a human source?” Hadiya guessed.
“A … a … a phony HX ship with phony HXers?” That was Jeyhun. “Naah. Everything sounds even more preposterous than assuming it’s real. Of course the humans could be grown from ‘dark radio’–transmitted DNA code.”
Zillur snorted.
“What? The theory on it’s not even all that far out. There’s an article in the current issue of the Scientific Solarian maglog.”
“You call that a science source?” Zillur muttered.
“Besides, a first pass analysis says the vid is as raw and unedited as it looks,” Jeyhun added, waving to the display he was standing at.
Alric nodded. “Which doesn’t mean we won’t eliminate hoax possibilities.”
Silence again. Then Zillur blurted, “By the Prophet! Can we get to these people?” and the excited babbling of half a dozen questions and thoughts came rushing out from all of us men.
“What were they wearing?”
“What was that dialect?”
“How did they get a copy to our HX ship? Why our ship?”
“Maybe they’re on our ship, someplace we haven’t explored yet. I mean, it’s really big!”
“Grandchildren! They say they’re thriving!”
“So where are their parents and grandparents? Or their children? Why aren’t they in the vid too? Are those four the only ones left?”
As you’ll see, we never did get a good answer to any of those questions.
As we broke off panting, Hadiya calmly reported from her workstation, “The Delphi’s Fortune did go missing in 2792. Alpha Centauri registry, Nkomo was the owner. The other three mentioned were crew, along with spouses Laila Karzai, Millicent LaFarge, Joice Mugabe, and Brendan Patricio.”
Silence for a moment as we all watched her keyboarding. Zillur spoke up. “So I ask again, where’s the second generation? Who bred with who, or are they all clones?” Silence again, since there was no way of knowing.
Then Hadiya reported further, “Dialect is basically A-Centauri standard, both in accent and grammar, variations consistent with a 6-decade drift. Fashion is more subjective, but I’d bet their clothes will also make sense upon analysis.”
More silence.
“OK. Let’s try to prioritize.” That was Alric.
“First, who hears about this, and when?
“Do we continue our investigation of this object?
“Do we continue our investigation of the other two objects?
“Clearly the answer to those last two is yes. That’s what we’re here for. There’s no place better to do the investigation. If there’s trouble—a bomb or a plague or whatever—we want to find out here next to the HX, not on the main ship, let alone a home world.”
“As to who to tell, and when. Let’s not tell our alien friends just yet. This is a human affair. And let’s hold off on the preliminary report until we’ve investigated the other two objects. This is earthshaking news, but not urgent. We can wait for a full preliminary report before we start sharing. That will give us all time to cool a bit and think straight.
Alric looked at me, his eyes narrowing a bit. “Son, if I was prudent, I’d have you escorted to Standard Lab 15, under guard, where you couldn’t make any mistakes and screw things up.”
“What?” I said.
“You got those doohickeys. An HX droid picked you out and gave you these goodies. Maybe that was pure chance, maybe not. Yeah, I should put you in a freezer with a specimen tag on your toe: ‘Fesch, Johann. Thaw upon completion of Inquiry 2856-2C7’.”
I laughed nervously.
“Instead, I’m counting on you to act as you’ve been trained to, as you and your family have always acted in the past: As a heads-up human. We don’t have enough good people around here to pull a guy out because of coulda-shoulda-wouldas.
“So you stay on normal duty. With the understanding that you talk to no one—I mean no one!—about this. That includes the captain. No one! The only ones who know about this now are the five of us, and we’re going to keep it that way for the time being.
“Yes, I mean you techs, too.” Jeyhun cowered a bit at Alric’s tone.
“Everyone goes on as if this was a usual HX find. Anybody asks, as I’m sure your Frizzies will, it’s totally indecipherable at present but testing will continue.
“You all have that? Nothing decipherable came from our session today! Zillur? Jeyhun? Hadiya?” Each of the techs nodded as he spoke their names.
Alric seemed to relax a little. “This gag order applies for forty-eight hours starting from our first viewing of the vid. Johann, if you haven’t heard any more from us by then, something’s gone seriously wrong, and you may, and should, spill the beans to anyone who’ll listen. In the meantime,” he went on, grinning widely, “I wouldn’t make any new long-term commitments that require your staying aboard the Argal.”
Then he started laughing delightedly, and soon we were all five laughing.
This was huge!
While we were laughing, Zillur manipulated a waldo to put battery B into slot A. The little sculpture started twirling slowly, opening and closing its three arms or petals or whatever they were, and we all laughed even harder.