Angry Little Aliens
The eldest Grandmotherwho had once been known as Ragil watched the strangers’ ship approach. Her fellow Grandmothers waited in silence. This was not one of the giant ships of the Cy that sometimes drifted through space, empty and sending out repetitive signals that made Imshee flee. This ship had straighter angles than the rounded lines of the Cy, and it lacked the transparent structures. It also lacked the long spider legs of an Imshee ship, but it did have one long spire that reached in front like the grasping claw of a sea creature. It was not as large as one of the in-system ships the ship-Rownt built, but it was larger than the boxy landing ships the Imshee regularly brought to Prarownt.
It was utterly alien.
“Should we quiet our transmissions?” a younger Grandmother asked.
She-who-had-been-Ragil watched the report from the satellite. Nothing indicated aggression, but that did not mean that these aliens were harmless. Likely they came to steal the meat off the table. They would find that Rownt were not likely to leave valuables in sight for strangers. Deidell would have hidden any ships, or any evidence of ships, leaving Janatjanay to fulfill its role.
“We stand on the hill for others to see us,” another Grandmother admonished the younger one. Hopefully she felt the shame of the rebuke, but She-who-had-been-Ragil did not turn to study the others. This would be the first time since the Imshee had arrived that strangers had appeared. Ship-Rownt always ran the risk of sharing a path with a stranger, only Imshee came to Prarownt. And they remained near Deidell.
Fewer Imshee visited now that the Cy ships often flew empty. When those powerful ships were alone, they reacted unpredictably.
The strangers’ ship was so slow that it would take days to approach properly, so She-who-had-been-Ragil turned her back to the display, making it clear that Rownt of any reasonable age would not live in fear of strangers appearing on the horizon. Their temple was named Janatjanay, after all. Strangers would be inevitable in such a place.
“We should check satellites and planetary defenses,” she said. She waited to see if any of the Grandmothers would contradict her and put forward a plan other than waiting for these strangers, but none did. The burden of being eldest was not in taking action—it was in knowing that others would follow and would suffer if her judgment was flawed. More than one eldest had walked away from a temple and sought a place to sit and die rather than carry the burden.
Some stories said the last Grandmother of Prabrateakil had done that. She had led the Rownt to space, to an uneasy trade with the Imshee when she had not valued or understood the true nature of the trade. The burden of that had grown to be too much, and when the town around her died, replaced by Deidell and its modern shipyard, she had walked away rather than sit on the temple floor and see if the Grandmothers of Deidell would seek her counsel.
It was a cautionary tale. Just because a Grandmother was ready to walk a border did not mean they had the right to walk it. Rownt followed where Grandmothers walked.
Ironically, every Rownt would have chosen to follow that Prabrateakil Grandmother into space. Her motives touched the Rownt soul. But in the end she chose not to follow the path she herself had set. She-who-had-been-Ragil was acutely aware of the danger that approached with the strangers’ ship—and the danger was not limited to individual Rownt lives or profits.
“I will advise parents to remove their egglings,” another said.
She-who-had-been-Ragil should have advised that first, but she walked toward the stairs without comment. She was fortunate to have so many elder Grandmothers to stand beside her. A Rownt who invited others to pick a harvest had to share the profits, but a Rownt who picked a harvest alone watched fruit rot on the plant.
“Grandmothers! A transmission!” The youngest Grandmother’s voice trembled with emotion. She-who-had-been-Ragil turned back to the monitors. “I believe they transmit visual and auditory information.” Her tail whipped so furiously that she slapped another Grandmother. The victim of that errant tail hissed, and the young Grandmother held her hands low and even showed the back of her neck.
“We are all emotional,” She-who-had-been-Ragil said, not specifying whether she intended her admonition for the hissing or the tail. The young Grandmother curled her tail around her leg where it should’ve been. She was cursed with a masculine tail that showed her emotions more than a Grandmother’s tail generally did. “Can you display the transmission?”
“The visual,” the young Grandmother said. She tapped at her computer and a figure appeared on the screen, blurred by static but unmistakably Rownt-like. The Grandmothers all looked at one another in shock. They had never seen such a familiar face on a stranger.
“It appears angry,” a Grandmother commented.
She-who-had-been-Ragil agreed. The color was most unfortunate. If they had met these strangers while standing on a ship, She-who-had-been-Ragil would assume the Rownt had trespassed—nothing else would account for the apparent rage in the stranger’s expression. Every bit of blood had fled the creature’s face, leaving it pale with anger or perhaps distress. The stranger’s mouth moved, and a Grandmother moved to a computer and opened the communication to planetary defense.
“Do they send audio?” She-who-had-been-Ragil asked. She would not have strangers treated like predators because of unfortunate coloring.
“I struggle to separate the signal from the noise the ship generates,” another Grandmother said. A new stranger moved to stand beside the first. This one was much more agreeably colored; around the room Grandmothers relaxed fractionally. Perhaps the pallor of the first did not indicate emotions as it would on a Rownt. After all, Imshee never changed color, even at their most fearful or angry.
“We should transmit,” She-who-had-been-Ragil said, and she hoped that some Grandmother would provide a logical objection. When none did, She-who-had-been-Ragil moved to a computer and brought up the communication menu. She studied the technical data collected by the satellites and hoped these strangers could receive and understand Rownt transmissions. The strangers had shown two individuals, so she made eye contact with the second oldest Grandmother. She moved to stand next to She-who-had-been-Ragil.
Since she had nothing to say to the strangers, She-who-had-been-Ragil transmitted the visual image and watched. It would take the transmission eighty-four minutes to reach the strangers. Only then would they get to see the strangers’ reactions. If they were wise traders, they would stop transmitting so they could preserve their privacy, but She-who-had-been-Ragil had no illusions about a stranger following the same rules of logic.
“I believe this is the audio transmission,” the young Grandmother said. Noise filled the temple. Not noise. A voice. It was high but not unpleasantly so. The more concerning problem was that She-who-had-been-Ragil heard no individual words. The sound went on and on for an impossible length of time before a brief pause and then more sounds. She considered her fellow Grandmothers in dismay. How could they interpret sounds that were not discrete units?
When the Imshee had come to Prarownt, they had provided the translations with their computers. This time the strangers brought strange words. But Janatjanay stood where others would not. The Janatjanay Grandmothers transmitted news and called out to strangers to come and stand where none of their kind had stood before. This was their business just as the business of Deidell was metals and ships and the business of the lost Prabrateakil had been hunting.
She-who-had-been-Ragil sent a simplified file modeled after those early files the Imshee had used to teach Rownt how to understand Cy language. If these strangers had the capacity for communication, they should recognize the primer. Hopefully. She-who-had-been-Ragil had no idea where to start on the strangers’ language.
“Grandmothers,” one of the others called. She-who-had-been-Ragil moved to look at the display. An estimate of eight hundred based off scanning technology designed to identify life forms dispersion in preparation for boarding enemy vessels.
“What is the probability of error?” she asked.
“Small. There must be over seven hundred and fifty individual strangers, although there may be far more if some of the strangers are small.”
She-who-had-been-Ragil had translated that. If this was a family ship—if these strangers had brought children—there could be far more than eight hundred individuals if their scanners were correct. She checked the size of the approaching ship. These were small strangers.
