Bob
March 2167
Delta Eridani
Archides placed the bone tool with care and tapped it with a rock. A fleck of flint dropped off the core, and Moses nodded in approval. Archides repositioned the tool for his next strike, and glanced at Moses with his ears pointed slightly forward. Moses made a small hand motion. Archides moved the tool a fraction to the left and his ears curled with concentration as he again tapped on the tool.
The other Deltan adolescent, whom I’d nad Richard, watched Archides then tried to copy his technique. But the tool slipped off the cobble and stabbed into his foot. He leaped up and hopped on the other foot, cursing with enthusiasm.
After a few monts, Richard noticed Archides’ grin and scowled. Snarling, he compared Archides to pigoid droppings, then stalked off, limping.
Moses and Archides were the tribe’s best flint experts and tool-makers. And based on Richard’s performance, still the only ones. Archides was a teenager by Deltan standards—past puberty, but not yet fully grown. He was, however, easily the most intelligent Deltan in the village. Which ant, based on our searches, the most intelligent Deltan on the entire planet of Eden.
Archides was the first Deltan in years, it seed, who could understand Moses’ flint-knapping instructions. A couple of juveniles, like Richard, had shown so interest, but couldn’t maintain the level of concentration required to complete a tool. Very likely Archides would have to wait for so of his own progeny before he’d be able to attract any apprentices of his own.
“Moses isn’t looking so good,” Marvin comnted, looking over my shoulder.
“Yeah, I know. I think the march from the old village was harder than we expected. A couple of other elderly Deltans have died since they got here.”
I ntioned my theory about potential apprentices, and Marvin laughed. “I can think of at least two females from Archides’ cohort who are actively working on that.”
Yeah, gotta love adolescence. Between his flint-knapping skills, his tool-making ability in general, and his position as primary spokesperson for The Bawbe, Archides had a level of mojo totally out of keeping with his youth. All of which apparently went over quite well with the girls.
Archides set aside the core and the tools, stood up, and stretched. He and Moses exchanged a few words, and Moses got up and wandered off. There was no nine-to-five in Deltan society. Things got done when things got done. It looked like they’d had enough for the mont.
Archides turned and looked around until he located the drone I was using to observe. He grinned up at and made a head motion toward the practice range. I bobbed the drone in agreent, then floated after him as he headed in that direction.
I opened the conversation. “Things are looking good. Everyone seems to have settled in.”
Archides nodded. He walked in silence for a few more monts. “Arnold is happy with the new village, uh, Calot?” I had ntioned my na for the camp once, without running it through the translator. Archides was trying to render the word phonetically. It was a valiant attempt, but no human would have recognized the sound.
“Let’s just go with your word for it, Archides. My language doesn’t translate well into Deltan.”
“Fine with . That hurt my throat. Anyway, Arnold likes how we can defend the two access paths instead of the entire boundary.”
Calot was a located on a small sa that was surrounded by scree and cliffs most of the way around. It reminded a little of an aircraft carrier, including a rocky bluff in the center resembling a carrier’s control island. Two paths, about 120 degrees apart, were the only ways on or off the sa, unless you could fly. It was a huge improvent over their old village, which had been just a clearing in the forest. Guarding against gorilloid attacks had been a full-ti job at the old village, and they’d still been losing the battle. Ｒ₳ＮÖBÈ𐌔
“Two people were killed in the last two hands of days, though, right?” I said.
Archides shrugged. “The gorilloids are a problem. They are always hungry. And there are so many on this side of the mountains. Guarding is a bigger job when people are away from the village.”
All the more reason to make it less necessary to leave the village. I already had herding on my list of things to teach them. I still needed to find an appropriate herd animal to dosticate. I turned away from the drone window just long enough to sigh and shake my head. That TODO list just kept growing.
I found myself in one of those all-or-nothing situations. I’d made a decision to help the Deltans avoid extinction. What had started as a small, anonymous intervention quickly turned into a full-ti job as The Bawbe, resident sky god. I hoped eventually to be able to leave them to their own fate, but that probably wasn’t in the cards for a generation or so.
We had arrived at the practice range, so I dropped the topic. Practice range was a trumped-up description, of course. The range consisted of a flat area at the side of the steep embanknt leading up to the central bluff. Deltans staked up targets on the slope, and they used these to practice the new technology of spear-chucking.
We watched for a few minutes. Most Deltans could get a spear into the right area, point first, most of the ti. But actually hitting one of the targets was an accomplishnt, and usually resulted in a lot of dancing and taunts directed at the other students. Any thought of precision was an unreachable fantasy for most. So Deltans were out-and-out terrible, and one or two couldn’t get it through their heads that the spear had to fly point-first. Those individuals generally stayed on pigoid-hunting duty, where the spear never left your hand.
Archides was exceptionally good with a spear, but he lacked the upper-body strength to get any kind of distance. When he reached full adulthood, though, he would be formidable.
Arnold was the other prodigy in this new technology. He had an intuitive feel for anything that involved killing. A natural warrior, he’d been the first Deltan to kill a gorilloid with a hand axe, splitting the beast’s skull with one blow. Arnold was almost as big as a juvenile gorilloid, so he generally got very little backtalk.
Arnold paced back and forth, helping individuals with their technique and yelling encouragent. I chuckled, without letting it play out through the drone. I’d rigged the translator to render his speech with an Austrian accent. It never got old.
“How is it going with the dicine woman?” Archides asked, interrupting my train of thought.
I cringed inwardly. One of the surprising things about Deltans was their lack of awe for the divine authority of The Bawbe, and Cruella took that philosophy to new heights. A tribe of primitive humans would have been hanging on to my every word, but Deltans were much more skeptical and inclined to question. My first attempt to introduce them to tents still smarted a little.
“Not so well. She either flat out doesn’t believe most of what I say, or she just doesn’t want to change her ways. I am able to get the occasional concession, but it’s an uphill battle.”
Archides grinned up at the drone. “Welco to my tribe. Maybe you should use one of the flying rocks on her.”
I laughed, not only at the comnt, but at the fact that Archides was sounding so much like . He’d picked up the concept of dry humor right away, but it was completely beyond any but maybe a half-dozen other Deltans.
And using a buster on the dicine woman was certainly tempting. A self-propelled forty-pound ball of steel impacting at Mach 1 didn’t leave much room for argunt. “I’ll take it under advisent. She’s at least taken my suggestions for cleaning wounds. She’s not completely closed-minded, just very conservative.”
Archides shrugged. He’d been dealing with that level of conservatism his whole life. It was a constant source of amusent to him that I was surprised by the attitude.
We continued along the path, which led up to the top of the central bluff. It was a flat area, about the size of a small house. Completely exposed to the elents, it would be useless as a living space, but the view was spectacular. On a sunny day like this, many of the adolescent Deltans gathered here to do what teenagers did the universe over—get away from the adults.
We endured a few monts of staring as Archides ca over the crest, the football-sized drone hovering by his shoulder. But I was old news, and the kids soon went back to what they were doing. They appeared to be playing Rinjhaxa, a sort of pick-up-sticks with betting. Again, I was struck by how very human-like these people were. We only had two data points as of yet, but I wondered if there was so universality about the way intelligent species developed and behaved.
Archides waved at Diana, who sat with so of her friends. She smiled and waved back, then glared at the drone and turned away. Not my number one fan, for sure. I’d never given her any reason to hate , as far as I knew. It might be as simple as competition for Archides’ attention.
Archides sat down, facing north-east towards the mountain range that split this section of the continent. I brought the drone down to a comfortable talking height and took a mont to enjoy the view.
One of the two moons of Eden hung in the sky, twice the apparent size of Earth’s moon. The sun, low in the west, imparted a golden highlight on the scattered clouds. The forest, stretching horizon to horizon, would have looked completely natural on Earth, before human beings clear-cut the planet.
Archides gestured towards the mountains in the distance. Most of them were high enough to have snow year-round. “That’s a big journey. It was hard with you leading us back here, when we knew what we were heading for. It must have been harder when our parents and their parents were going the other way and had no idea what they’d find.”
He looked around at the village, spread below us on the sa. “It’s so much better here. Except for all the gorilloids, of course.” Archides showed his teeth, which I automatically translated to a frown.
“That’s good, Archides. I want to see your people succeed. I don’t know if there are a lot of intelligent species in all the worlds of the sky, but each one is priceless. So far, my brothers haven’t found any others.”
“How many Bawbes are there?”
I smiled at the question, but Archides couldn’t see that. “I don’t really know. I made four others before I left the last star, but they will hopefully have made more. I’ve made three here, so far. Two have left, and Marvin is still here, helping .”
“You make brothers?”
“It’s complicated, Archides. I’m not flesh and blood, like you. Each brother I make is a copy of , with my mories and everything. But usually a little different in personality. Marvin is more cautious than and tends to keep from implenting wild plans.”
Archides stared at the drone for a few more seconds, then looked away. “Questions just bring more questions, and I never catch up. I should stick to things that affect my people.”
I laughed, which the translation routine converted into the Deltan expression of humor. “That’s fine, Archides. I have a very similar problem. I call it a TODO list. It only ever seems to get bigger.”
Archides grinned in response and turned to the vista spread out before us. He sat and I hovered in silence, enjoying the scenery.
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