Well, it’s been a long time since I posted a new chapter. The previous chapters need a lot of editing, some of which I have been doing off-line. But I might as well post some new stuff, too, and then eventually catch up to here with my edits.
So, chapter 32…

I felt a hand shaking me, and finally opened my eyes to see Mama ‘Delphe. She wasn’t my real Mama. I knew that. And I still remembered my real Mama. And all of my brothers and sisters, who were dead now. Except Carl. Carl and I had lived, tho we had been injured. But I loved Mama ‘Delphe anyway, even tho she wasn’t my real Mama. Aunt Cynthia had talked to me, and said that was Ok. That it was OK to love a new Mama, and still love your old one who was dead.

“Wake up, Stina. Time to change ships.”

“’K ‘Delphe,” I said, getting out of bed. I didn’t call her Mama yet, just in my head. Cynthia said that was OK, too.

As I pulled my clothes on I looked. Carl and his were up waiting for us. She was my Adelphe too, Carl had said, but I hadn’t called her that yet. Carl liked her, and she was nice. But I liked my Mama ‘Delphe. Papa was up too, and Mama ‘Delphe had the baby on her back. Most everybody was still sleeping, though.

“Come now, Darling,” Mama ‘Delphe said, taking me by my hand and leading me down the aisle. We have to go.”

“Is this ‘bye’?” I asked, my eyes tearing up.

“Yes,” Carl said, when Mama ‘Delphe didn’t answer.

“May the LORD bless you and keep you,” I mumbled under my breath, Carl taking my hand and joining me, repeating the prayer that my first Mama and Papa had taught me. “Tho we go far from here, we will be ever near, in Christ our King…”

We had a quick trip in a shuttle, where I fell asleep, and then we got on another ship. I had never seen a ship like this one. It was much bigger ship than our last one. We docked and then had to go down three ladders to our dorm. “Greetings,” this lady said. She looked nice, and I saw three kids staring at me from behind her. “Let’s get you settled in. This is a special transport ship, intended for combat assaults…”

The lady started to walk us to our bunks, and I fell behind her with the kids that were there. One was a little girl. “My name’s Freana,” she said. It was a funny name, but I kissed her and said, “I’m Justina.”

“These are my brothers Drini and Mariti,” she said. They sure had funny names. I didn’t kiss them.

“That’s my big brother Carl,” I said, pointing. “And his wife, Bethany.”

“Your Mom and Dad and Sibl?” she asked.

“I call her Adelphe, and he is my Uncle Andrew.”

Freana looked at me, her eyes wide. “They’re dead,” I said, and she cried, which was nice of her. I cried too, and the boys looked funny.

“Where are you from?” I asked her.

“Nonandi Fellowship.”

“What’s that?”

“I dunno. Our planet. I don’t remember it much. Drini and Mariti were never even there. Except one vacation, when they were small. I remember my Grams’ and Gramps’.”

We had stopped and I looked up. Freana’s Mom was waving at a shelf way up high. “You’re our bunkmates,” Freana said. “We sleep right next.”

“Wow,” I said, looking up. I had never slept that high before.

“Ok, Kids, Sim time,” Freana’s mother said, suddenly. “Anyone need to use the facilities before we sim?”

Facilities? What were those? I looked at Freana, who whispered, “Do you have to pee?”

I shook my head. I had gone on the shuttle.

“Come on, then,” her mother said, and led us to the end of the dorm room, and into a sim room. “Boys this way, girls that,” she said, and Freana and I followed her into a sim room. She led us down a ways and the stopped, pulling out suits for both of us. “Will we get to sim together?” I asked, as I pulled off my uniform.

“Do you want to?” her mom asked, and I nodded. “I’ll set it up,” she said.

I pulled on my suit and the world flickered, and changed. “Adelphe?” I said.

“Here, Darling,” Adelphe said, in the ghostly way that the suits have of letting you talk to someone.

“I’m going to sim with Freana,” I said, looking around for her. “Her Mama said I could.”

“That’s nice, Darling. What are you going to be doing?”

“I don’t know yet, it hasn’t told me.”

Suddenly Freana popped into place, followed by her brothers. “Oh, Mama, did they have to come?”

Her Mother’s voice came into my ears, “I’ve given you a ‘girls’ channel, darling. But the boys need to get used to their new bunkmates too. Don’t worry, you won’t be together much.”

“Ok Mama,” Freana said, looking annoyed.

“You’re lucky you don’t…” she started to say, and then paled. “Did you? Did you have other Sibl’s?”

I guessed she meant brothers, and I nodded. I missed them too.

“What are we doing, Freana?” Drini asked.

“I dunno, squirt,” she said. “Computer, assignment?”

“Climb the mountain,” the computer said, and we all gasped. The scene we were in was a mountain scene, which I loved. But the mountain was really big! I knew nothing could hurt me, not really, not in a sim, but the mountain was really big!!

“Do we have to stay close?” Freana asked.

“No. Free climb.”

“Yeah!!!” Drini yelled, with Mariti echoed him. He ran off, his brother following, toward a steep grass covered slope. Freana looked at me and took my hand.

“Which way do you want to go?” she asked.

I looked around. The boys slope looked easy, but slow. Off to our left was a whole slope covered in fallen rocks. It looked impossible. In front of us was a cliff. But not that bad a cliff. Carl had taken me out lots of times back in Hell, and I had got to climb lots of trees. “Let’s go up here,” I said.

“Up there?!” Freana asked.

“I’ll help you,” I said. “Didn’t you climb on your last planet?”

“No. It was flat. All ‘plains’.”

“What are plains?”

“A big flat place with lots of grass. Our place had big grass, bigger than me. I got to wear a pistol to shoot Juvies. I had to wear armor a lot, though. It was really hot.”

We had reached the base of the cliff. “Look, go up there. You see?”

“I have to reach up there?”

“It’s not that hard. Just reach up and pull. Put your foot in here. Remember, it’s just a sim.”

She put her foot in, reached, and pulled herself up. “Good, now reach up…”

It took us forever go get the the top of that cliff. I had to get behind her and push a couple of times. But finally we made it. Just in time to see the boys come running up. “Girls!” Drini said. “How did you get up here? We didn’t see you following us.”

“We came up there,” I said, pointing, because Freana was kind of tired.

“Whoa!!” Drini said, looking down. “You came up that?!”

“Sure,” Freana said, getting up and grinning. “It wasn’t hard. Where do we go next?”

“Next is lunch,” Mama ‘Delphe said, coming over a little hill. “’Delphe!” I yelled, running over to her. It was so nice to see her again. It had been a long morning. I had talked to her several times by computer, but it was good to see her again. We hugged, and then went off. Carl and them, and Freana’s people were all there, too.

“Why are we doing climbing, ‘Delphe?” I asked her, sitting in Carl’s lap right next to her. “Why are we doing the climbing practice?”

“We’re going to be going to a new planet, one with lots of mountains. And we’ll be living in the mountains.”

“Oh, wow!”

“Us, too, Mommy?” Freana, asked.

“Yes, Dear. All of us. How did your climbing go this morning?”

Well, I’ve slowed down a bit with the story, but here’s the pieces of the next few bits, and the end of this section:

“I hear you two really went at it, last night,” Adelphe said to me, the next morning.

I blushed, “I don’t know what I did!” I whined.

“I don’t think you did anything, dear,” Adelphe said, kissing me. “I think life is just catching up with your dear wife. Actually, I think it is a good thing. I think she is finally settling in and relaxing.”

“And that makes her mad at me?”

“No, silly. She’s not mad at ‘you’ in particular. You are her husband, so you’ve got to expect her to get mad at you from time to time. You all made up, afterwards?”

“I dunno…”

“You kissed and all?” she asked me, and I blushed. I don’t know why. We had lived together practically my whole married life, and she knew well how often we did ‘and all’.

“Yeah, that was no problem.”

“And she wasn’t like, all cold and just told you to ‘hurry up’?”

“No…”

“Well, that’s good then. Come on, you’ve heard other couples fight?”

“Of course,” I said. Good manners always meant that you ignored fights, but, growing up, everyone had fought. And sometimes they would say things that you would just have to pretend you had never heard. Actually one of our Catholic couples had been famous for it. Loud, wide-ranging, fights. Everyone knew they loved each other, and they had a whole passel of kids so it didn’t seem to affect anything else, either.

“But you and Andrew never fight,” I said.

“Sure we do,” Adelphe said. “We do it kind of different, and we are scared of it, because our relationship is kind of uncertain. We got off to a rough start.

“But, but you’re ok, aren’t you?” I asked.

She must have heard my nervousness and came and hugged me. I was glad we were alone, but I was glad for the hug, too.

“We’re fine, Carl! You’re fine too. We’re all young, and learning, and far from home, and facing death every day. It’s Ok if you fight from time to time. Just make sure you tell her you love her.”

“I did!” I said. I had, too. About a dozen times last night.

“Of course you did,” Adelphe said. “Poor Drendida,” she laughed. “I can’t imagine anything more awkward then having to share the tent of a couple who was fighting.”

“Should I…?”

“Nothing you can do. How’s she doing?”

“I dunno, I haven’t heard anything.”

“Well, maybe you had better find out. She is your responsibility.”

Sighing I left the tent.

—

“How did she do?” the woman asked, holding her stomach as if she expected to burst forth at any moment. “About like you’ld expect, for a Newtonian. All cold and clinical. Efficient, knowledgeable, but no real personal touch.”

“She’s probably scared,” I said, surprising even myself.

“What?”

“Well, she may be well trained, but this is kind of her first independent assignment. And she probably finds New Genevan’s as incomprehensible as we find her.”

The lady stopped rubbing her stomach and looked at me. “I never thought of that. Poor dear.”

“But, other than that, she did well?”

“Oh, yes, very professional and knowledgeable. That Newtonian system is amazing. I can’t imagine one of our girls doing that.”

—

Most of the other women said, basically, the same thing.

<Drendida goes swimming>

“Well, this is going better than I had feared,” Bethany said, as Drendida left early the next morning in answer to a page on her com, some mother in labor. “She’s pretty nice.”

“People are still people, no matter where they come from,” I said.

“Whoa!” Bethany said, propping herself up on one elbow. “This,from you?”

“No, from my mother,” I said. “You know we were always traveling around and, one day, I got ticked at this kid from Hallycone, and started talking about kids from strange planets, and she said that.”

“Oh. So much for your wisdom, then.”

“Hey, it still counts as wisdom if I got it from my mother,” I said.

“I guess,” Bethany said.

“Luitenant!” I heard from outside the tent.

“What is it, Private?” I asked, sitting up myself and reaching for my briefs.

“News, Lt.! Meeting.”

“Coming,” I said, pulling on the rest of my uniform.

“Where’s the meeting?” I asked, coming out. “Main tent?”

“Yeah,” the private said.

“What’s it about?”

“Dunno. Some Newtonian bigwig flew in early this morning from that other camp.”

“Seriously?” I asked. “They just got here.”

“Serious as rain,” he said.

—

“Gentlemen,” the colonel said. “We’ve won.”

We all stood around and looked at each other. What had we won?”

“The scouts found us this planet. The soldiers captured us the subjects. The pathfinders found out what had happened. And now these new colonists have put all of the pieces together. Gentlemen, we have won the war. Or, at least we have the keys to our victory in hand. I present to you researcher Ndarin Herscher.”

“We are glad to have been of assistance but, in truth, we did very little. We brought with us one of the most advanced molecular simulators and our role so far has been mostly to plug the research that the pathfinders have done into one end, all sorts of materials that you all have collected into the other end, and punch a few keys.”

He held out a branch, and I (and half the audience) stared forward to look at it. “And this is what came out.”

“That?” Bethany whispered in my ear. “That’s a spice! We had it on our meat, last night.”

I remembered it now. It was kind of a bush, with leaves that were a light green with silver streaks. It made very poor cover, the branches were too far apart and it usually grew only about three feet tall…”

“This is the plant that causes the change that leads to the new type of creature, the one that can’t breed and that kills its own types. This is the plant that we will use to destroy their culture.”

I expected him to stop there, and start talking about, you know, victory, or congratulate everyone, or something. But instead he launched into this big lecture about the plant, where it grew, what kind of soil it needed, what kind of temperature. Finally, after about two hours, the colonel seized a free few seconds and said,

“I think we could all use a bit of a break. Some of us haven’t even gotten to eat yet. So, let’s say that we’ll all come back in about half an hour?”

I grabbed Bethany’s hand and pulled her out. “I don’t’ get it,” I said. “Are we really done? Did we really win? What will we do?”

“What? What do you mean, what will we do?”

“Will the still need soldiers?”

“Will we still need soldiers?” I heard, and a hand slapped me on the back. It was YYY’s father, and he must have heard my question. “Sure we’ll need soldiers, son! This may be the beginning of the end, but it isn’t the end by a long chalk. We’ll have to go to every single enemy planet and plant those silly plants. That will keep us busy for years.”

“Oh,” I said. “Oh, ok.”

“Were you worried, son?”

“Well, a little,” I admitted. “I don’t know how to do anything except soldiering.”

“Oh, well, my friend, don’t worry about that. Our job is secure, very secure, for a long time.”

—

But not on this planet, it seemed. When we walked back into the meeting the colonel called me and several other of the soldiers aside. “New assignment, guys. Our unit, soldiers and pathfinders, will be bugging out in a couple of days. The Newtonians are going to be breeding up this plant and shipping it out. Silly thing is kind of hard to grow. But they’ll get it done, and then ship them out to us. We’re going to bug out, and soon, so you all know the drill.”

I did, indeed. How many times in my life had we ‘bugged out’? Bethany didn’t, so I found myself telling her all about the various aspects of ‘bugging out’.

“Ok, y’all, leaders meeting!”

How annoying, I thought. We had just gotten to the ship, I had gotten my family settled in their beds (we were having to switch to sleep shift) and here I was getting called to another meeting. “See you, love,” I said, kissing Bethany and waving at YYY and his wife, who were, again, right next to us.

“Have a nice meeting,” she said. “I doubt I will get to sleep before you get back.”

“Changing shifts is hard,” I agreed. “But they’ll dim the lights and play some white noise and you’ll get off to sleep eventually.”

“Even without you?” she asked, rubbing her hand up and down my leg. I blushed and hurried off.

—

“Gentlemen,” the colonel said. “Bad news and good news. Bad news, Hallycone has been invaded. Awkward for the Hallyconers, as their planet is just about ideal for the Bn. Good news for us, we soldier types anyway. We’ve been tasked to go out there and help wipe them out.”

He allowed a bit of mumbling and then said, “Carl Tome, front and center please.”

I pushed myself forward, “Sir!” I said, saluting, and the room grew very still as he said,

“Lt. Tome, I’m afraid that I have a very difficult question to ask you. The unit will be splitting up, the pathfinders going one way, the soldiers another. You have been acting as a soldier up to now, but we have been holding your final appointment in abeyance for a while. But I can’t do it any longer. I need you to decide which way you are going to go. You, your wife, your child. Will you go with your adopted family, or with the soldiers you grew up with?”

To my utter shame, I started crying. And I had no idea why.

“Och, me bairne, I’m so sorry,” the colonel said, slipping into dialect and going down to one knee in front of me, where I was staring at the floor. “I’d thought you’d talked it out, you and yours. Its a hard question I be asking you, and none to blame one or the other way. We all knew and loved your Ma and Da, and all the little ones.”

“Yet there be ‘Stina and Adelphe and all, going off. And yours kin, too. None be blaming one or the other way, me bairne.”

What was I to do? I hated Adelphe for who she’d tried to be for me once Mother had died, but I loved her more. And Bethany, leaving all of her family. Coming all this way to join me with Adelphe and then I rip her out?”

“What… what should I do?” I asked, in a hoarse whisper that I hoped only he could hear.

He leaned forward and put his mouth right next to my ear. “We’ll always love ya, ya ken that. Nothing stopping, far be you go. But remember the motto of the CF, for tis a good one that the Lord Himself loves. ‘Family first’, me bairne, ‘family first’. Go and be a brother to Stina yet, till she have her own. You’ll make a fine Pathfinder. Perhaps a few new sims, but you can handle that.”

“Thank you, sir,” I said. “Could you, could you tell them?”

“Aye, that I will,” he said. Then, standing, he faced the crowd, “I present Carl Tome, lt., pathfinders.”

“Hooorah!” everyone yelled and then the colonel dismissed them, and everyone left me alone.

“What happened in the meeting?” Bethany asked me, sleepily, when I crawled in next to her.

“Oh, they told us that Hallycone was invaded,” I said. “The soldiers will be going there to help fight.”

“The soldiers?” she asked, her eyes almost shut. “Are we going with the Pathfinders?”

“Yes, love, we’re going with the Pathfinders,” I answered, putting my arm around her and spooning up in our normal sleep position. “We’ll be going with the Pathfinders…”

“I don’t understand what the teacher Paul is trying to say there,” Drendida said. “It almost sounds like he is saying that everyone has an innate knowledge of this ‘God’ person.”

“Umm, yes,” I said. “That is what it says.”

“But that’s ridiculous!” she exclaimed.

“Why?” I asked her.

“Because it just is!” She seemed to realize that this wasn’t incredibly logical and calmed down. “How can this teacher claim to know that everyone in the entire universe, all the people, anyway, have some innate knowledge of this God person?”

“He… it’s in Scripture,” I said, lamely.

“What does that mean?”

“It means we know it is true,” I said, floundering.

“So you know it is true that everyone, including me, has an innate knowledge of this God person in spite of not having any evidence?”

“I have evidence!” I said.

“Oh? Can you read my mind?” she asked.

“No, but God can!”

Her mouth, open for a rebuttal, snapped closed. “Oh, well, I suppose that is logical. The attributes of this God of yours would, naturally, include the ability to read thoughts and emotions.”

She sat for a minute, “Still, that begs the question of the existence of this God. Surely you can see you have no evidence of Him?”

“Excuse me,” a voice said, and we all turned. It was Andrew. “Can I come in?”

“Certainly, Uncle,” I said.

“I couldn’t help overhearing,” he said. “And the discussion sounded interesting. Do you mind if I interject?”

“No, no, not at all,” I said, relieved.

“You are sort of correct,” he said to Drendida. “There is a certain category of evidence that is lacking in the case of God. Much of the believe in God can be better spoken of as a ‘presupposition’. However that is the same for atheism, or the lack of a belief in God.”

“What? That’s irrational,” she said. “A lack of belief does not need evidence.”

“There may be times when that is true,” Andrew said. But not in this case, I believe. You do realize that, for most of human history, most humans have believed in a God of some sort.”

“Certainly,” she said, “I am not ignorant of history.”

“Well, then, as the minority opinion it behooves you to not think of our belief as the ‘natural’ or ‘default’ belief. If you do not believe in fairies, or unicorns, then your belief can stand without any particular evidence. But if you were to start arguing against the existence of the Bn, for example…”

“But they have been seen!”

“But not by you.”

“On video!”

“Videos can be faked.”

“That is true. Still, it is some evidence.”

“True. But not any more evidence than Christians believe they have for the existence of God.”

“Oh? Name one thing!”

“Well, there have been many arguments brought forth. All of them assume the Christian world view, as befits a presupposition, however.”

“I am familiar with that form of reasoning,” she said. “Still, name one.”

“The universal recognition of sin,” Andrew said.

“Many cultures do not recognize sin!” she countered.

“Oh?” he asked. “They may not call it that, but can you imagine a culture where murder, for example, passed without comment.”

“Of course not!” she said. “That would be counterproductive.”

“So?”

“So? What do you mean?”

“So what if it is ‘counterproductive’? Why should that matter to you? If you can get away with it?”

Drendida stared at him, aghast.

“Do you see? You don’t just not murder, or not be rude, you think those things are actually wrong, somehow. But how can you justify that?”

“How can you justify believing in this God person you haven’t even seen?”

Andrew sat for a few seconds and then reached over to the corner of the tent, where there was a box. He shut the lid. “Suppose I were to tell you that there was a spider in this box, but you were to insist there wasn’t. How could we figure out who was right?”

“We would open the box and look,” Drendida said. “Altho I was told that there are no arachnids native to this planet.”

“It is a thought experiment,” Adnrew said. “Now, suppose I were to tell you that there was a spider in this tent, and you were to disagree?”

Drendida looked over the tent. “That would be more problematical, for me at least. If we saw a spider you would be proven right. However for me to claim that there wasn’t one, especially one of the almost microscopic variety… that would be difficult.”

“Very good. Now suppose we were discussing the entire planet.”

“Well, that would be ludicrous. Altho there are not supposed to be any arachnids indiginous to this planet, that hardly proves anyhing about their existence on the planet. We might have brought some, indeed I would be surprised if we didn’t. And the Bn might have brought some, I believe that several of their planets are known to be colonized with them. I heard of one…”

“So do you see the point?”

Drendida stopped, abruptly. “Well, obviously, you are speaking of the impossibility of proving a universal negative by experimentation. A small area might be searched to disprove the existence of something, but a larger area cannot be. And a universal negative denies the very existence of something, so one would be forced to ‘search’ all of reality.”

“Only a fool actually claims a universal negative by experimentation, however,” she said. “It is the lack of evidence…”

“And yet for all of our history most humans have found the evidence not only sufficient, but overwhelming. And not only fools and ignorant people, but most of the brightest humans.”

Drendida sat for a minute. “That is true,” she said.

“Andrew,” Bethany broke in. “Could we perhaps continue this tomorrow night?”

“Ah, yes,” he said. “Certainly.”

Andrew left and I relaxed. Bethany had been looking very uncomfortable with the whole religious discussion.

“So, is that the end of the religious activities?”

“Umm, no,” I said. “We usually sing a Psalm and then pray.”

“A Psalm? Oh, yes, one of the religious songs from the Scripture.”

“Exactly. If you will turn to Psalm One, I think we will start there. Here, I will send you the file…”

Drendida, once we went through the tune, sung very well. “I think tommorrow night I will attempt to sing the Alto line,” she said, when we had finished, scrolling back and forth.

“That would be excellent,” I said.

“So what next?” she asked.

“Now we… I pray,” I said. Actually we usually both did, but I didn’t see how we could do that and leave Drendida out. So I prayed, more nervous than I had been since Bethany first came.

I finished and she looked at me. “That’s it,” I said. “We go to bed now.”

“Ah,” she said, and took her head covering off. She had the front of her jumpsuit about half unzipped when she stopped and looked at me. “I am unfamiliar with your customs. Would you prefer it if I went for a walk while you engaged in sexual activities?”

I blushed, furiously, and it was left to Bethany to answer. “No, that will not be necessary,” she said. “We are accustomed to tight quarters, on board ship, and even on planet. But thank you for your courtesy.”

“Ah,” she said, and finished undressing. As she kept sitting there, staring at us, however, Bethany added,

“It is customary, however, for the others to at least face away and pretend to be asleep.”

“Oh, of course,” Drendida said, turning reluctantly away. “My parents insist on the same thing.”

“They do?!” Bethany asked.

“Yes. It does seem to violate our rules of openeness, doesn’t it. And it has always left me rather curious.”

“Well, perhaps you will get your own partner fairly soon, and your curiosity will be assuaged,” Bethany said.

“Well, yes,” Drendida said.

“So if that was your custom, why did you keep facing us?” I asked.

“I was hoping your customs were different,” she said, “I am very curious.”

I heard the note in her voice, and Bethany grinned at me. “Well, curious you may be, but you will still have to wait,” I said and, laughing, Bethany and I undressed and waited until, a few minutes later, we heard her breathing change to that of a child asleep. “Prayers, love?” she asked me, and we prayed…

::Note: this chapter is not quite finished, but I thought I would post it as it is and invite comments.::

We were still holding hands when we got to our camp, which caused not a few eyes to glance our way. One set of which belonged to Bethany. “Carl!” she said, coming over to me, giving me a perfunctory kiss, and then looking down at the girl. “And you must be Drendida?”

“Yes. And thank you so much for hosting me.”

“Well you’re welcome,” Bethany said, in a tone of voice that the most tone deaf of people would have known was fake. “Come, let me show you our tent.”

Luckily for everyone concerned Adelphe was at the tent. “Drendida?” she asked, as the trio came up, Carl dragging miserably behind the two girls.

“Yes, ma’am?”

“I’m Aliyah Tome, head medical officer here,” Aliyah said, in a cold tone. “Please put your bags in the tent and come with me.”

“Yes, ma’am!” Drendida said, sounding excited.

“I can’t believe you did this to me!” Bethany said, a minute later, dragging me into the tent.

“I’m sorry, I just…”

“I know!” she said. “I can see the whole thing. But you better make it up to me!”

“How?” I asked.

“I dunno,” she said, sitting down on her bed. “What’s she like, anyway?”

“I dunno,” I answered, making her laugh. “She’s Newtonian… but I think she’s really trying to get it right. Give her a chance!”

“I will…” Bethany said, pouting in fun. “I was so enjoying having you all to myself, though.”

“Hardly that,” I said, stroking her stomach.

She laughed, and we talked about other things as she helped me get my armor off.

—

“Oh, Mr….” Drendida started, hours later, as she came up to Bethany and I by the fire.

“Call me Uncle Carl,” I said, waving her to a seat next to me.

‘Oh, Uncle Carl,” she said, in an almost human tone of voice. “I can’t thank you enough for what you have done. Mrs… Aunt Aliyah set me up with half a dozen appointments already this afternoon, and they all went so well.”

“Well, that’s good,” I said. “What did you do?”

“All, all the standard checks. One woman has twins!” she said. “That is so good for my experience. Twins are rare, you know.”

“I figured,” I said, “Because of their being so few of them.”

“That’s what rare means…!” she started to object and then, seeing my look, “Oh. Humor. I’m sorry, that is not the type we would usually use.”

“Oh? How would your father say it?” I asked.

She cocked her head and then said, in a dry, deep, voice, “It is always gratifying to recieve new information.”

It took me a second, but then I guffawed, and Bethany laughed. Several kids came over, and I told them the whole story and had Drendida repeat her bit, and most of them laughed, too.

“What are we doing here?” Drendida asked, after they had gone back to their place.

“Socializing. Talking. Eating. Having fun.”

“Oh,” she said. “Do we talk about anything in particular?”

“Life?” Bethany said. “Tell us about your family.”

“My Dad works in biochemical engineering. He has degrees in…”

“No, silly. Not that kind of thing. Do you have any brothers and sisters?”

“Oh, yes. There are five of us. I am the oldest. My oldest brother is studying…” She stopped as Bethany shook her head. But I said,

“Oh, come on Bethany, we might tell each other what a kid was studying in school, and how they’re doing!”

“Ok,” she said, looking at Drendida, “Go ahead, tell us.”

Her oldest brother was, apparently, interested in the physics of faster than light travel, as well as drawing. Her sister had no real career plans as yet, but was doing very well in mathmatics and painting.

“I don’t get it,” I said. “Math and painting? Seems a strange combination.”

“Right and left brain,” Drendida said, almost smugly. “Everyone knows that you need to develop both sides of one’s brain, so all Newtonian children are encouraged to have a specialty on both sides. I, personally, do singing. I specialize in Opera. Would you like to hear some?”

“Not right now,” I hastily said, trying to imagine how this campfire crowd would react to ‘opera’.

“So, you were assigned? Did that upset you, when you were expecting to know they boy you were going to be partners with?”

“Oh, no,” Bethany said, while I watched her, nervously. “I’m glad I was assigned.”

“What? Why?” I asked, shocked.

“Well, first of all because I got you, of course,” she said, patting me on the thigh. “But it really was better. I mean, think about it. A boy comes to me. I like him, or I don’t. Or I don’t know him. But either way I have to say yes, or no.”

“If I say yes then, for the rest of my life, I’m stuck with my choice… second guessing myself… did I make the right choice? Could I have made a better choice?”

“Or if I say no. The poor boy, first of all. Works himself all up to come to me, thinks I am the best thing since syrup on pancakes… and I just tell him ‘no’? How could I do that. And then I have to double guess myself. Should I have accepted him? Will the next boy be better?”

“No, this was much better. Aliyah picked me a great partner, Daddy said I should partner with him since Aliyah picked him, I got to leave some great bonuses.”

“The only thing I really regret was the boy I left behind…”

“What?!” I said.

“Poor guy,” she said, grinning at Drendida. “Can you imagine? I could see him, day after day, screwing up his courage to ask me and then one day, whoosh, I’m headed off to space.”

‘Were you upset at having to go to space?” she asked.

“Oh, no. I wasn’t going to with that other boy, but I didn’t mind that. It seems like half of the boys in my class were signing up. We are very patriotic, we New Texans.”

I looked at her. “Patriotic?” I asked her. It wasn’t a word I had heard before, not that I remembered.

“You know, flags waving, bands playing, Dulce et decorum est, all that kind of thing.”

I shook my head, and she looked confused, and amused. “Why are you here then? Why are you fighting?”

“Because I am a soldier, and that’s what soldiers do.”

“But why are you a soldier?”

“Because my dad was a soldier.”

“But why was he a soldier?”

“Because we are at war, and he was good at it.” I start myself start to tear up and I wished she would stop. But she had a right to know why she was a soldier.

“Sounds like patriotism to me,” she said.

“But I still don’t know what patriotism is,” I complained.

“Patriotism,” Drendida said, “Is a group emotion.”

We both turned to look at her. “Human beings operate frequently as groups,” she said, almost as if she was quoting. “When the group is threatened by some outside force, it is to the advantage of the group if some members of the group face the danger in order to protect the remainder of the group. Human culture and biology, in great similarity to many other mammalian cultures in particular, chooses the males to be particularly vulnerable to this emotion. A younger male, in particular, whose ‘group’ is threatened, particularly his intimate family group: his mate and offspring, will turn to face the danger, while encouraging the others in his group to hide or flee.”

I must have looked very confused, because Bethany said to me, “If we were attacked, me and the baby, you would rush out and kill them, while we hid.”

“Of course,” I said.

“That’s what she said,” Bethany said.

“Oh,” I said. “Want to go for a swim?”

“They’re coming,” I said.

“Who?” Bethany asked, stretching herself. I suppose it was kind of hard for her, sleeping like this, in tents and all, on the hard ground,when she had to carry all that excess weight, and couldn’t lay right, and all. I was glad it was girls that got pregnant and not boys.

“The Newtonians.”

“Oh,”she said, flatly. None of us had been all that thrilled when it had been announced that Newtonia, on learning about our situation here, long before our most recent discoveries, had decided to form a study-colony. They were big on science, the Newtonians, and could organize themselves quickly where anything scientific was concerned. And the colony would be a permanent colony, too, living, growing, breeding, and studying the Bn. I had heard that there was a huge colony force coming from Grenwhich IV. This planet, with its light sprinkling of Bn, was ripe fruit for colonization.

But Bethany was less thrilled than most. I dunno what had happened on her way here, but she had gotten some bad vibes from Newtonians or something. I had never dealt with them much, except on board ship from time to time. Their kids were OK. All hothouse education brats, but fun to play with. My mom never let me go over to their quarters tho. She never would tell me why.

“When do they get here?”

“The advance team will be arriving this afternoon. Our group is going to go over and provide protection for their landing site. It’s pretty far back in the hills, so there really shouldn’t be much issue, but, still, the Colonel has asked us to go. In fact, he’s asked me to go. I think he is trying to give some of the other lieutenants an opportunity to make ‘discoveries’.”

“So a punishment assignment?”

“No, more of a ‘we have to do boring things, too, you know’ assignment.”

Bethany laughed, stretched again, dressed, and we went to breakfast.

—

“OK, squad, let’s get going,” I said, a half an hour later. We had supplied to bring too, and the site was a couple of hours march away, so I was eager to get going. Luckily they had chosen a site near a decent stream, so we didn’t have to bring more than emergency water.

I loved this, I thought to myself an hour later, as we started up again after our second rest break. I loved Bethany, of course, and Adelphe and all, but, still, I liked time by myself. Not that I was ‘by myself’ right now, but running like this I could feel alone. And I loved running, I loved using my body as the Creator intended, not sitting around at some computer or something.

I liked this scenery, too, although not as much as I had enjoyed ‘Hell’. Green grass, blue-green sky, rolling hills, purple moons… what wasn’t there to like?

All too soon we arrived at the location and I sent my squad out. I would have been sweating but the soldier suit I had to wear on an assignment like this was too temperature controlled for that. I didn’t even have to stop to pee, but, once the others were over the hill, I opened my suit and watered the ground. Somehow peeing in the suit always made me feel so, I dunno, mechanical or something. And then, of course, I would be drinking that same water a few minutes later. Antiseptic and all, I knew that, but it was still kind of gross. And unnecessary, I knew, as I waded out into the stream and my suit ‘drank’ water and ‘excreted’ waste… like all sorts of chemicals it would have filtered out of my sweat and all.

I popped down my heads up display and watched my squad filter out into their positions. And then, setting my suit to wake me if any one of a dozen different things happened, I lay down for a quick nap, letting the water mostly cover me up. Good camouflage, actually, since it helped take care of IR as well as visual. A lot of newbies found it odd and hard to do, though… laying down to go to sleep in a stream. But I’d been simming this since I could walk, practically.

—

The tone that woke me was a routine one, so I opened my eyes slowly and popped my heads up into position. The squad was still out there, most of them chatting away with each other, chat I could hear whenever I wanted, OR JUST watch a transcript of. Mostly talk about girls, of course. Jeremy was getting almost that age and the other liked to tease him about it.

The shuttles were definitely incoming though, and that was more interesting to watch. I moved my view from screen to screen in the shuttles, saying hi to the drivers and getting the view. Five hundred Newtonians, just in this initial wave, and then ten thousand to come in the next couple of days. A pretty big colony, if you asked me. Nobody did, of course.

The shuttles started their final flare up and I pulled myself up, standing in the stream, the water cascading off of me. I moved my suit off camouflage and popped my helmet open. I already knew which shuttle held the leader or the expedition and so, when it landed a few seconds after the lead shuttle, I loped over there.

When the door opened two younger men came out first, weapons in hand. We had exchanged recognition with each other, though, so they just nodded and climbed on top of the shuttle. I wasn’t upset they had their own security, it was foolish to assume too much.

Finally the leader came out. I could tell it was him both my the

marks on his jumpsuit, a dark blue, and by his bearing. His eyes scanned the horizon and them came to rest on me. “Lt Tome, sir,” I said, saluting. “In charge of ground security.”

“As you were,” he said, saluting me back. “Is the area secure?”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “No enemy for at least ten clicks, and scouts out.”

“Good,” he said, and then turned to a man that had just come out. “That’s the hill we discussed,” he said to him, “Get the tent set up so the women can begin work.”

“Yes sir,” that other man said, with only the barest glance at me, and went to the back of the shuttle. I waited for the leader to turn back to me, but he didn’t, instead walking off toward another shuttle. In seconds this shuttle, the one I was standing in front of, started disgorging people, men and women, all seemingly far too busy to talk to me, or even acknowledge me.

I was laying in my bed, trying to convince myself that I really needed to get up. But, laying next to Bethany, it was hard. But the siren that went off made it a lot easier. Bethany, her swollen stomach making her look really funny as she leapt up, especially all naked and trying to pull on her uniform.

I leapt up, too, and pulled on my uniform, my armor, and grabbed my weapon, running out of the door. I knew that Bethany, along with the other pregnant women and children, would go to the shelter. It was my job to man the perimeter.

“What’s up?” I shouted at the sergeant as he, too, came plunging out of his tent.

“I dunno, sir. Alert from the overhead drone, by the signal. We probably overwhelmed the locals.

After our experience on Hell we had decided that too many humans in one place triggered some kind of instinctive reaction. So we had these drones… lighter than air, moving randomly around our bases, a couple to each base, to warn us in the case of an attack.

And, given the sounds of firing coming from up ahead, we were definitely under attack. “What’s up?” I asked my squad when I got to the top of the hill nearest my tent, and plopped myself down next to one of them.

“A second or two after the alert sounded a wave of normal adults came over that hill there, all armed with spears and things. We took them out, we and the other squad over there. But now they’ve stopped, coming.”

“Order, lieutenant?” the Sergeant asked, his voice just a touch sarcastically.

I waited a minute, and no more adults came. “This is really different,” I said. “Not hing like the attack on Hell. I’m going to take a couple of men up there to check it out.”

“Lieutenant?” he asked, but I had already waved a couple of the squad over and we were rushing down in the valley.

“Cover the idiot!” the Sergeant yelled. Not exactly great discipline, but I didn’t mind being ‘covered’.

We got near the top of the next hill and dropped into a crawl, I, myself, crawled up behind the corpse of an adult, and we looked over the hill.

There were adults there, dozens of them, but they were all running away from us. On the top of the far hill… “It’s one of them!” Ben said. “An adult one!”

One of them… one of the new kind of Bn. And definitely an adult… or more. I had never seen a genius but… “Is that a genius?” I asked, just as it disappeared over the hilltop. I cursed… not really but I felt like it… because here I had been, faced with my first genius, and I hadn’t even tried to shoot it. Should I, should we, give chase?

No, no I couldn’t. We were, at least theoretically, under attack. All of the adults, all of the living ones, were gone now, so I took my squad back to our line.

—

But nothing happened and, two hours later, we ‘leaders’ were all sitting in the dining tent and the Colonel, who had come down, was standing in front of us. “So, gentlemen, what was that? That was not a random attack by a single adult, but, then again, no more was it an overwhelming group attack like we got on hell.”

The conversation ran for a while and then I, tentatively, raised my hand. “Yes, my newest lieutenant?”

I stood… which I suppose I really didn’t need to do. “Sir, I think I saw a genius. And a new one, I mean, one of the new types, with the new markings.”

“Well, that could be,” the colonel said. “A genius attack, I mean. I accept your expertise on the ‘new’ markings. But perhaps this is the way a genius would attack. A brand new genius, that is. We certainly haven’t seen any of the signs of a genius starting up. But who knows how long that will take?”

I raised my hand again. “Yes, lieutenant?”

“Could I take a squad out and kill him? Or maybe we could call in an air strike?”

“Well, I think you have already told us why we can’t do that.”

“Sir?”

“You said it was one of the new marking types. That means that we need to study it, not kill it. Not right away, anyway.”

I cursed (I didn’t, you know that, but I felt like it). Here I had found my first genius, and I myself had made it so they wouldn’t let me kill it. If only I had thought to shoot it! But I had been so surprised!

—

My disappointment faded over the next hour, however, as it was gradually decided that ‘studying’ meant that we would get to go sneaking over there and ‘see what was going on’, including leaving devices behind to monitor them…

That hadn’t gone well. The new creatures had startling weapons that killed from afar. It’s own life had been at stake, with only random chance dictating that none of the weapon fire had hit it… which would almost certainly have been fatal.

It moved its group to decent distance from the new creatures, displacing, and in some cases commanding, several obedient ones along the way. He set the obedient ones to farming and began to think. New thoughts flowed though his brain, and he soon had other obedient ones searching for materials to test.

The weapons of the strange creatures did not seem like they would be easy to duplicate, even if it could get ahold of one of them. But they gave ideas for weapons, simpler weapons but still better than the weapons it knew now. Weapons that could strike from afar.

—

“Bows!” Benjamin whispered. “From spears to bows in a matter of days!”

“They’re not that good at shooting them, though,” Mac said from my other side, as we watched the row of adults shooting at some improvised targets.

“No. Being able to make bows and being able to shoot are not the same thing,” I said. “But that was amazingly quick.”

“Look,” Benjamin said, “that one’s headed to the water.”

Mac got out the tagger gun while Benjamin and I watched. Soon, just before the adult we were watching got to the top of the nearby hill, there was a soft pfft and, we hoped, the adult was tagged. Benjamin got out his com, and put on some earphones. We had wanted, we still wanted, to tag the genius. But the powers that be had told us to tag any adult going to the water, so that, hopefully, we could keep track of what was said… verifying or denying the theory that the females were the repositories of knowledge for the aliens.

—

It had invented the new weapons but, reviewing its memory of the system the alien creatures had used, they were obviously not going to be enough. It thought for a while…

“Call one of the older ones in,” It said to the younger ‘adult’ standing by its door. It worked on the table it was making while it waited… a table organizing the various elements that seemed to make up all of physical stuff. The table was a fascinating mix of brute reality and mathematical beauty. It was still considering what seemed to be a hole in the mathematics when an older creature walked in, bobbing its head in the ‘I am listening’ gesture that these strange creatures used. It truly was odd that they seemed so similar to it in someway, and so different in others. It had seen others like itself, only younger, before. Indeed, it had eaten several.

“I need you to go into the aliens camp and steal me one of those weapons it used against us.”

“Aliens?”

“The other creatures. The ones we attacked the other day.”

“Oh. So, one of those long shiny things that shot the light out and killed so many of us.”

“Yes. And be careful or it will kill you.”

The creature looked startled, but bobbed and left.

—

“We have an interesting exchange between the aliens,” Benjamin said, poking his head through the open flap of our tent. “Everyone’s talking about it in the mess tent.”

I looked at Bethany and, shrugging her shoulders, she levered herself to her feet. She did look very funny.

“What’s it about?” I asked, as I took Bethany’s hand and we walked out the tent flap.

“We haven’t been able to tag the leader, not yet,” Benjamin said. “But we tagged this one adult when he went for a swim.”

“How has that been going?” I asked. “I have been out scouting.”

“Oh, it’s going great. The scientists were right. The females talk pretty much all the time, and there are female geniuses, too. And they talk alot too… and still make babies. And they are all super smart, too. We don’t even have records for a lot of the words they are using.”

“And the males get smarter?”

“Not that we can tell. They are thinking that they just kind of ‘sit on’ their new knowledge until they become geniuses.”

They pushed aside the tent flap and joined the gathering crowd.

“Just kill it!” one boy was saying. “What’s to talk about?”

“This is a great chance to study them!” another boy said. I knew him. Joel. Loved to study. He wanted to be some kind of scientist. He was good for this assignment.

“But we can’t let him come in and grab a weapon!”

“Give him a fake!” I said, and everyone turned to me. “What? We could work out a fake gun, at least one to fool a normal adult Bn, no?”

“Why?” Joel asked. Ok, so he loved to study but wasn’t always very smart.

“It will let you study it as it comes in, and leaves. You could even wire the thing for sound and video and find out what happens when he brings it back to the genius. Wire it with explosives and kill it!”

That last was sheer frustration. Here I was… I knew there was a genious just a little way away, and I couldn’t go after it.

My idea, not the explosive part but the rest, caused quite a bit of fuss. And the the colonel got called in, and that caused even more fuss…

—

Finally it came back. “What took you so long?” I asked it… him. I had been studying the differences between us, wondering why it was that I was so easily able to do things that the others couldn’t do… and why they went off to the ocean from time to time, despite anything that I said or commanded.

I had finally analyzed the differences. It seemed that the creatures were divided into two different types; and it took both types to make new creatures. This type, here, I had decided to call ‘male’, and lived here on land, mostly; entering the ocean only to meet with the ‘females’ and fertilize their eggs, which the females then laid on the shore, ensuring the continuance of our race.

They also spent a good deal of time discussing things with the females, who seemed a repository of knowledge. I had learned a great deal by interviewing males who had returned from the ocean.

But I was neither a male nor a female. Anatomically I was, or had been, a male. But I had none of the instincts and, I suspected, I was missing some internal anatomy.And I had a very different set of instincts…

“Attention!” a voice said.. A voice coming from the weapon I was about to examine. “This is Colonel YYY, the leader of the aliens.”

Aliens? I thought I had invented that word!

“We have an ultimatum for you. You realize you are different from the others?”

“Yes…” I stammered out.

“You will not be able to destroy us. We have tools and other devices that can destroy you in an instant.”

“Why… why are you telling me this?” I asked, not really doubting the creatures ability to do what they said.

“We have a job for you. If you do it, you will rule this entire planet… except for the areas that we will colonize.”

“What is the job?”

“There are others that arise, like you, only the go to the water.”

“The males, yes.”

“Ah, that is a new term for us. The males, yes, but there are ones that have made the transformation you have, to where you can command others or your sort.”

“Ah… I did not know there were such ones, but it is logical. The physical transformation surely cannot be related to the injury I sustained.”

“That injury,” the voice said, sounding different than it had, “Do you know what caused it?”

“No,” I said. “I was swimming, I started to hurt inside, and then, later, it stopped hurting. Now, what do you want me to do?”

“Those others, those males, the ones that are like you. We want you to kill them.”

—

“Gladly,” the alien said. We were all sitting around in the mess tent. The colonel was sitting at the front of the room with a microphone and, in front of him, was an enormous vision screen, and we could see the alien plus, due to a variety of other cameras, we could see the rest of the room.

“Well,” the colonel said, turning back to us. “That takes care of one of our problems. We’ll keep a drone, several drones, overhead. But we’re no closer to solving our other problem.”

“Actually, sir, it really helped,” Adelphe said.

“What? How?”

“He said he was swimming at the time. So it needs to be something in the water. But it can’t be everywhere in the water, or it would affect all of them.”

“Ah… and does that help?”

“Well, it keeps us from looking at things on land, things they could eat, that is.”

I wasn’t the only one that had a look that said that that didn’t seem all that helpful.

“And it has to be water soluble,” she said, and this time it wasn’t her that wished that I had studied more technical stuff in school. Luckily someone else asked the question…

Something had happened. The creatures which, before had run away or been eaten, were now responding to this new verbal skill. It had never used the verbal skill as the others had, to cooperate and grow food. Why would it? The world was filled with food. But now, the creatures were responding… doing what they were told.

And it had ideas, plans, visions. How things would fit together, what could be done with them. More and more it gave the creatures order, had them gather food, while it thought, and created.

And then, one day, the others came. They killed several creatures. Not eating them, just leaving them for the smaller creatures to eat. And capturing many of the smaller creatures. And the creatures seemed to do nothing…

“Lieutenant, Lieutenant!” I heard, a half an hour later. “We found one!”

I sighed and got dressed. “Oh?” I said to the boy, coming out. “One what?”
“It’s one of the Juvies” the boy said, holding up a struggling Juvy for me to ‘look’ at,” but, look!”
I did look, and they were right. It was a Juvy, and it showed some of the same markings as the Pack I had brought in earlier. “Well, let’s show it to Adlephe,” I said leading the boys over to her tent.
“Hold it here, boys,” I said, enjoying their discomfitted look. They had two boys on the Juvy, one for each hind foot, but he was still getting an occasional scratch in.
“Carl,” Adelphe said, looking up from one of her instruments. I saw the Pack I had brought in in a cage in the corner, seemingly asleep. I could see it breathing. I could also see a variety of tubes and wires leading into it.
“We’ve got another one, a Juvy, same markings?”
“Really?!” she asked, turning from her instrument, “Let me see.” She went outside, examined the Juvy briefly, smiled at the poor boys trying to hold it, and then said, “Carl, if you could get a cage ready for it, I will examine this one after the other one.”
“Sure, Adelphe,” I said, and the boys eagerly followed me into the tent. I grabbed an extra cage and the boys, relieved, dropped the Juvy in, closed it, and left. I went over to Adelphe, though, and tried to see what she was doing. But all she was really doing was going over some figures on a computer screen.
“Have you figured out what is wrong with it, yet?” I asked.
“No, not yet. It’s nothing genetic, I know that already. His genetic pattern differs very little from that of the others. It is well within the norm.”
“So what gives it those funny markings?”
“I don’t know. I am beginning to think that the markings aren’t genetic at all, that they are hormonal.”
“Hormonal?” I asked, and she sighed.
“I wish you had a better education, Carl.”
I bristled, “I have all the education I need to be a soldier!”
Perhaps, but I need more than that right now. If I only had somebody…
“Do you want me to assign you a boy? Or a wife?”
“A wife would be good, actually. Even if she didn’t understand what I was doing she could still take samples and all.”
I left to get her somebody. I decided on Finella, the wife of one of the Catholic boys in my squad. I would have sent her Bethany but I knew she wasn’t up on all this medical stuff any more than I was. “Catch more of them, if you can,” Adelphe called after me. We need more. Some living Pack would be good, too, regular Pack.”
Well, that gave us something go do. I left at a run, yelling for my squad, and then we all went to get the sergeant. Oh, and I sent Bethany for Finella.
—
“So, what do we know so far?”
Adelphe stood in front of the entire crowd, looking a little nervous. The Colonel had asked Uncle Andrew, of course, but Adelphe answered: “Sir. I have discovered two thing so far, and have some suspicions about other things.”
She turned back to the computer and lit up the screen. “First of all, the physical difference.” She shifted the view to a picture of a Pack, cut in half. Not really, but the way the computer could pretend such a thing. I knew the real Pack wasn’t cut in half, I had seen it just an hour ago in her tent. “These are the, umm, these organs are what make a boy Pack a boy, she said, point to three small, round, little… things deep inside the Pack. “This is what they are supposed to look like.”
She clicked the computer again and the things, which I guess had looked like raisins, now looked like grapes, and had totally changed color, from a kind of reddish green, to a shiny black. “You see, they are basically dead.”
“So,” the Colonel said, “They aren’t ‘boys’ any more? They’ve been gelded? Like a steer?”
“Sort of,” Adelelphe said. “I traced the problem to one of the arteries, a large artery that gives blood to all three of these organs. Basically, it comes apart…” she moved the screen and we got to see what looked like a clotted up hose with some frayed pieces coming from it. “This takes the blood away from these organs, and they basically wither and die.”
“Well, that’s nice,” the Colonel said. “So they are unable to reproduce, I assume?”
“Yes, Colonel,” Adelphe said. “But that isn’t the big change.”
She flickered the screen again and suddenly some chemical formulas came up, and a bunch of charts and things. “You see there are also rather significant differences, chemically and hormonally, within the creature.”
“So, what does that do? Does it die?”
“No, sir, it seems to be stable. But I’m wondering if that isn’t what makes the Pack willing to kill its own. We took a Juvy, and put it in the Packs cage, and he ate the Juvy without any hesitation.”
“But why?”
“I don’t know. We don’t know the physiology of the Bentarri that well. I don’t really know why they don’t eat each other, quite frankly. I’m not even sure I could point to a physiological reason why we don’t eat each other.”
The audience kind of laughed at that. “But given what would otherwise be a rather dramatic coincidence, I am inclined to believe that they are linked.”
“How do you think this happened?” the Colonel asked, after a pause.
“I have no idea,” Adelphe said. “I recommend that we communicate our findings to the other teams, and start a search for exactly that.”

“Corporal Tome!” the Sergeant yelled, and I went forward at a fast crawl. “Sir!” I said. We looked, together, over the hill, down at the river. There were several juvies, crawling around in the mud at the side of the river. They only stayed near the river for a little while, so these must have recently hatched.
“Corporal, take your squad and move over there, to the far right. I will have the other two squads take the left and center.”
It was funny, him calling us ‘squads’. We had a bunch of boys, mostly, plus a few newly married men. The older men were all ranging out, watching out for us, so we could do our hunting in peace. “Sir!” I said, crawling off.
The boys and I, safely behind the hill, took off at a run, with another squad following us soon after. We reached our assigned position and we each got out our nets. These were cool, weighted nets with a way to draw them closed. We spread out and our right flank reached the river and our left flank reached the center squad, with each boy about ten yards apart. We sat for a minute or two and then, from the sergeant’s position, we heard our whistle. I was watching the Juvies at the time, and they kind of lifted their heads up, but none of them tried to run away or anything, but went back to kind of random nosing around, like they do when they just get out of the eggs.
We started to move forward, slowly and, so stupid were they after their egg phase, that we were practically on top of them by the time that they started to notice us and mill around. And then, almost as one accord, to charge at us.
There was a lot of yelling, and throwing, and confusion. As the ‘squad’ leader I mostly stood back and watched, watching how things were going. Thus it was that I saw the one that got away, darting between two of my boys and off over the hills.
“Sergeant,” I yelled, as my boys pulled their sacks closed. My squad had captured four, and the other squads had done almost as well. “I’d like to go get that one, the one that ran away. With our luck it will be the one Adelphe will need.”
Everyone accepted her as ‘Adelphe’ now. As I was the only New Genevan around she didn’t have any competition for the title and, as our doctor in charge (her orders mediated through Uncle Andrew, of course) she was highly respected and unique.
The Sergeant looked around, seeing everyone else tying up their bags, and nodded. “Don’t go too far,” he said.
I called to my boys and we set off. It was actually kind of easy to see where it went, as the dew was still on the grass and it had left a trail. We couldn’t go to fast, as the boys with the struggling Juvies on their backs had to go slowly. I cursed myself for a fool for not having asked the Sergeant to send, instead, the unencumbered boys with me.
Three hills we crossed, and a couple of the boys were starting to make ‘why do we have to go after one lousy Juvy’ noises when I heard a noise from over the hill and, with a wave of my hand, we all dropped flat. My assistant, Micah, and I crawled to the top of the hill we were on and looked down.
“Yuck!” Micah said, but my hears stood still. Down, below us, a solitary pack was busy eating the Juvy we were chasing, obviously recently killed.
I rolled over and waved a boy up, “Get to the others,” I said. “I want everyone here, right away.”
“The others?” he said, looking down at my squad, which I could have called to me with a wave of my hand.
“The one’s with the Sergeant, all of them. Tell them to loose their captives and come, here, now, right now. Go!” I whispered, urgently and, with an incredulous look, he crawled and then ran away.
“What?” Micah asked me.
“Get down there and tell our boys the same thing. Kill their Juvies, and take their sacks and surround that Pack. It must be taken alive.”
“What?!”
“Now,” I said, and, as he scampered away, I turned back to watch the scene. The longer I stared, the surer I was. This one had to be captured.
Our boys surrounded the Pack, but our lines were so thin I decided to wait. The Pack, however, had other ideas. I don’t know if it saw one of my boys, or just got full, because, about a minute after our last boy was in place, it started to move. I stood up, “Take it, boys! Alive!”
The boys, confused by my reasoning but not by my order, stood up. The ones behind the Pack darted forward, and the ones in front got ready to throw. The Pack, itself, turned toward me at my yell, and hesitated, then charged the nearest boy.
This boy, a little early, threw his net, which the Pack ducked around. Then, bravely or stupidly, we still discuss it, the boy stood his ground, his arms outspread.
The enemy, even lowly Packs, are too quick to wrestle, tho, and the Pack was on him in a second, biting him in the arm. He screamed and started beating at him with his other arm, while the boys next to him tried to throw their nets over the Pack.
The nets were designed for Juvies, though, and weren’t big enough to surround him. He did let go of our boy and snap at the nets, though.
“He’ll kill him!” I heard from beside me and looked to see the Sergeant, raising his pistol.
“No!” I shouted, pushing his pistol out of the way. Just then the two neighbor boys followed their nets and literally jumped on the Pack. Seconds later three other boys had piled on and the Juvy which, despite its speed and teeth still weighed less than any of the boys, started to falter under their weight, squirming frantically and only rarely scoring with its claws.
Micah, from the far said, and I were both running forward, reaching for the wires that we had on our belts for just such a circumstance. I reached the Pack seconds before Micah and had the prepared loop over one claw, getting myself nicely scratched. I stepped back and started to pull, immobilizing the limb, and Micah, and then the sergeant, did the same thing. One of the boys on top of the Pack managed to loop his wire and give it to another boy, while two other boys pulled the injured boy free of the pile and stared administering first aid.
“You had better have a very good explanation for your behavior, ‘Corporal’, the Sergeant said, his voice cold as he watched the boy getting worked on.”
“Yes, sir, I believe I do,” I answered, “If you please, that Pack needs to be taken back to headquarters, alive, and as soon as possible.”
Apparently my orders, which the sergeant had actually obeyed implicitly, had been relayed to headquarters and beyond because, by the time we got the struggling Pack back (the injured boy having been taken back by his squad mates long ahead of us) there was an entire inquisition waiting for us… for me. Led by Uncle Andrew, in the sense that he came first, the Pack was soon surrounded by a whole group from headquarters, including Adelphe and the Colonel.
“Well, corporal,” the colonel asked, after they all had stared at the Pack for a minute or so, “What makes this enemy worth almost getting one of yours killed? You are all soldiers, and expected to risk your lives, but I would like for the mission to be important. We were planning on capturing Packs, in a little while, so I hope it wasn’t just that.”
“No, sir,” I said, rather intimidated by the company. Just then Bethany took my hand, which was embarrassing but reassuring. “Sir, we were chasing a Juvy that got away from the egg area and we came upon this Pack. Sir, he had killed the Juvy.”
Most of the crowd didn’t look particularly impressed, but Andrew, Adelphe, the Colonel, and a couple of the others turned and stared at the Pack with more interest. “And, colonel, Adelphe, it’s markings aren’t right. They aren’t male, but they aren’t female either.”
“He’s right,” Adelphe said. “The colors are wrong. Subtly wrong, but wrong. What is this?”
“It’s not a pack?” the sergeant said.
“It’s that age,” she said. “And I expect the brain development will be about equal, but the markings are all wrong. Even the physiology is wrong. And you say it killed that Juvy?”
“I didn’t see it kill it,” I admitted, “but we were second behind over a hill, and it certainly sounded like that, and then looked like that.”
“Well, corporal,” the colonel said, “it seems you can think on your feet, and aren’t afraid of overruling your superiors when necessary. I’m afraid we can’t have a corporal like that. That sounds like the kind of thing a particularly lucky lieutenant might do. I hope you enjoy the extra study.”
I stared at him. I hadn’t done this to get promoted!
Bethany squeezed my hand, and the sergeant started barking orders about getting the Pack to a cage ‘so the doctor can examine it’. As everyone moved away the colonel, Uncle Andrew, and Adelphe came up to me. “Will he be OK, that boy?” I asked Adelphe.
“We’ll have to regrow part of his arm,” she said. “He’ll be evaced in a few minutes. This is an incredible find, Carl.”
I blushed. I hated being the center of attention like this. Adlephe hugged me, which made me feel even worse. The colonel, however, just handed me a couple of shoulder tabs, saluted, and walked away. Andrew… “What are you trying to do, Carl? Start your own video series? ‘Carl Tome, Pathfinder extraordinaire!’ You two take some time off to cuddle, and prove you’re human.”
We tried to walk away but, halfway back to our tent, we were surrounded by boys. “I don’t get it, Carl,” Micah said. “What’s up with this enemy?”
I stopped, annoyed. Usually when you were told you could cuddle no one bothered you but here a whole pack of them were keeping us from going off. “Didn’t you hear? It ate a Juvy. Packs don’t eat Juvies, unless they’re dead. So there is something different about this Pack.”
“He wasn’t in a pack, anyway,” one boy said, and I looked at him.
“That’s true,” I said, “I hadn’t thought of that.” Packs weren’t always in packs, actually, but it very much was the regular rule. “Anyway, can we go cuddle? You all go talk about it or something. See if you can catch another one. You saw the differences, right?”
“Hey, that sounds good,” Micah said, and the boys ran off.
“Finally!” I said, and Bethany giggled as I led her into our tent.