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Jandrax 16

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Chambard wandered off, but Adrian Dumezil remained to pass the time. He was chewing a siskal twig, which the colonists had discovered to be bitter and mildly narcotic. Those who had smoked tobacco before had, to a man, taken up chewing siskal. He was one of the many to have adopted the surname of Mentor Louis Dumezil and was unrelated to Angi. 

Adrian watched the archers at their practice as Angi fed the fire. When she stood up and stretched, he grinned down at her and asked, “Has Andrax proposed yet?”

Angi flushed, then laughed, taking no offense. “No, not yet.”

“I wonder if he will?” He did not seem to notice Angi’s blush, nor recognize the inappropriateness of his comment; rather, he seemed absorbed in some problem beyond her knowledge.

“Why do you say that, Adrian?”

“That isn’t my name.”

Now she was completely bewildered.

“My name is Sabine Conners. I knew Andrax as a boy, though he has not recognized me yet. I wore a different face then, as well as a different name. Plastic surgery. I was a wanted man.”

“Why tell me that?”

He chuckled, “Why not? I’m not wanted any more, now that we’re stranded here.

“But your question was the right one. Why not isn’t an answer to why. I tell you this because I’ve known you since you were a child and I don’t want to see you hurt. Have you ever wondered why Jan keeps himself so aloof?”

“He’s awfully busy, and he has a lot of responsibilities.”

Sabine shook his head. “Jan doesn’t trust us because we are Monists.”

“I know, but I don’t know why.”

Sabine sucked on the twig for a moment longer before throwing it away. “Jan Andrax was born on Hallam. His father was the leader of the Danneline Monists in their guerrilla war against the Pertoskans. He was orphaned there.”

Angi was shocked. The Hallam war had been one of the bitterest in recent history. Then she made another connection. “You said you knew him as a boy. That was after Hallam?”

Sabine chuckled again. “Delicately put. No, I fought right beside him and his father. That is what I was wanted for.”

“Then Jan was wanted, too?”

“No, and that’s something I don’t understand. He still carries the face and name he was born with and he is a Scout. How did he ever get into the Scouts with his record?”

Angi looked puzzled, so he expanded. “Jan’s father and I lost track of him during a skirmish. We both thought he was dead – never saw him again until I got off the landing boat here and saw him giving orders. You can bet that was a shock.”

“You don’t know what happened from then till now?”

Sabine shook his head. “No, and I don’t intend to ask him and blow my cover. I’ll expect you to keep my secret; anyone who fought on either side at Hallam is still a pariah.”

“Of course.”

“In a war, people think and act differently than they do otherwise. There isn’t much time for affection. I liked Jan well enough as a boy, but I never felt toward him like I do toward you. We just didn’t have time for the softer emotions. –

“Still, I liked him. He was a brave, decent boy and he has grown into a brave, decent man. But there is some demon riding him. You’d best find out what that demon is before you marry him.”

He hesitated so long that Angi thought he had finished. Both of them were staring across the courtyard to where Jan was dressing down a careless archer. “Another thing for you to think about. Daniel Andrax, Jan’s father, was a driving, self–assured man – a born leader. He had a faith in himself and his religion that would stop at nothing.

“He was a lot like your father – and you can bet that Jan has seen the resemblance, too.”

*****

If I were writing this today, it would no longer seem realistic to export tobacco-smoking to the stars. Weed yes; tobacco no. Also, here is another reference to everyone taking the name of the originator of Monism. A good idea, yes; confusing to have everyone named Dumezil, oh, yes. more tomorrow

131. Chasing Cosmonauts

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This is a continuation of yesterday’s post First into Space.

I had the great good fortune of being born with the space age, less than two months after Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier. I was thirteen when Alan Shepard took his first sub-orbital flight and just coming back from my honeymoon when Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the moon. (see 27. That Was My Childhood)

I followed the American manned space programs closely, but the Russians were a mystery. They gleefully announced their victories – first satellite in orbit, first living creature in orbit, first man in orbit, first woman in orbit, first space walk, first space station – but there were no details. I developed a curiosity that never went away.

Time marched on. The race to the moon was won – by us, after a painfully slow start. The cold war ended. The pioneers of space drifted mostly out of public consciousness. Everybody remembers Armstrong, but Buzz Aldrin morphed into Buzz Lightyear, and Jim Lovell came to wear the face of Tom Hanks in public memory. And who remembers Gordo, or Deke, or Ed White?

Well, I do, actually. I also remember the Russians, who were pioneers just like we were, and often got there first.

In 1987, Douglas Hart produced The Encyclopedia of Soviet Spacecraft which has been my go-to source for decades. I recommend it highly for information preceding its publication date.

Another book that I recently hacked my way through, like a noxious jungle, is Russians in Space by Evgeny Riabchikov. I found it at the *** Library, my favorite impoverished institution, a public library filed with seventy year old books and few new ones. Russians in Space was written in Russia, for Russians, during the sixties. It’s translation copyright is 1971 and I doubt if this copy has been read ten times in all those years.

Do you remember Chekov from the original Star Trek, who was always telling everyone that Russia invented everything? He was a comic version of late sixties reality, when Russian bombast made everything in Pravda sound like it was written by Donald Trump. Russians in Space is of that type.

I fought my way through the bombast and bad writing in search of the details I had not found elsewhere. No such luck. I took as my touchstone, the chapter on the Voskhod 2 flight, which I had recently researched (see 116. Spacecraft Threatened by Bears). Everything that made the flight memorable was missing. Riabchikov made it seem routine, when in fact, it was the planning and mechanical failures on the mission that spotlighted the incredible courage and skill of the cosmonauts.

Our brave, valiant, plucky boys in space – that could have been the subtitle of Riabchikov’s book. It reminded me of an alternate reality prequel to the Lensmen series. Kimbal Kinnison would have fit in well with the square jawed, sturdy, blue eyed, strong but gentle supermen who made up Riabchikov’s version of the cosmonaut corps. They were comrades who always helped each other, never fought among themselves, and were ready like all good workers to do their part for the USSR. The cosmonauts who welcomed the female cosmonaut group were courteous and supportive, always ready to help them overcome any hurdle. Like big brothers who blushed when their hands touched. That is from a quotation I wrote down, then lost. You should thank me for the lapse.

So why bother telling you about a book so bad? Because something else came through, despite its manifold failings. There was a sense of pride in the Soviet space program, and particularly in its cosmonauts, that was felt throughout Soviet society. Without glossing over any of the failings of the Soviet system, an American reader can see that the Russian people admired Yuri Gagarin in exactly the same way Americans admired John Glenn. It is clear that they felt a pride in Soviet successes that mirror-matched the frustration we felt at American failings during the same era.

The story of the Soviet manned space program deserves better than Riabchikov, and I am still searching for the book that tells that story succinctly and well.

I have some leads. I’ll tell you soon how they pan out.

Jandrax 15

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Chapter 4

Two (see below, 1) local months after the Lydia was stranded, the snows began to melt. At first only the surface melted during the day, refreezing at night. For a time, footing was treacherous. Then there came a time when the water did not completely refreeze, merely skimmed over. Finally the palisade was surrounded by a vast ocean of snowmelt, extending to the horizon and breaking like an inland sea against the foothills. The river swelled until it filled its kilometer-wide bed with a violent rush of ice-clogged, mud-brown water.

Even while the land was still covered, the first vegetation appeared; leaves and flowers sprang up on every withered bush and fresh shoots thrust out, growing at an unbelievable rate. When the water receded to mud, the gluegrass burst the bounds of earth, soft, stubby spikes of mucilaginous growth that clung to and fouled the legs of those who ventured out.

Then came the leers and the first wave of krats. Angi Dumezil watched the huge flightless birds from the palisade as they slogged about, buoyed up by their webbed feet. The hunters were only a hundred kilometers north of the settlement now, which eased the strain on the failing skimmer. In the palisade, preparations were being made to greet the main herd when it came. The mammalian herbivores would not arrive until the mud had dried enough to support their hooves.

Off to the north a small, deep lake in the shape of a perfect square marked the permafrost cellar dug earlier by the men. Now water filled, it would be filled with meat in the coming weeks and sealed with a covering of soil.

In the courtyard below, Jan was conducting classes in archery. The bows were of fiberglass formed from native sand by the lifeboat’s power pile. The arrows were tipped with the first native iron to have been smelted. Angi watched the men fire a volley, pride of community mingled with pride in her man. Jan had not asked her to marry him, but she expected the invitation any day – perhaps after the herds had passed and a measure of leisure had returned.

She returned to the task at hand, pouring boiling water through layers of ash to obtain the materials from which to make lye soap.(see below, 2) She was a pioneer and the daughter of pioneers; hard work was nothing new to her. Still, she had never been in a situation before where such a sense of urgency infused every act. It had welded them, crew and colonists alike, into a tightly knit community with the common purpose of survival. There was little bickering and an almost unnatural peace, due in part to the heritage of Benedictine Monism shared by all but the crew.

People no longer spoke of the fact that they were marooned. Angi, innocent of the complexities of spaceflight, found it strange that the uninjured ship orbiting Harmony – as they were corning to call the planet – was useless without the flight computer. And no one talked about the fact that they had been stranded by a deliberate act. Everyone knew that one of their number was responsible for their exile, but no one had the courage to speculate as to whom.

She looked up as Adrian Dumezil and Alexandre Chambard arrived from the outside with a fresh barrel of water. They had it slung from two poles. Working together they transferred its contents to the stationary barrel above her kettle. 

*****

  1.   This seems a short time for all that has happened. I didn’t make a physical calendar while writing Jandrax, so I can’t refer back to see why I said two months. Certainly it is too soon for iron smelting, as mentioned a few paragraphs later. 
  2. If I were writing this today, I would set her a different task. Lye soap fits the circumstances she is in, but it is unlikely to have been in her skill-set on the planet from which she originated.

130. First into Space

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220px-Vostok_spacecraftI grew up wanting to be a spaceman. I didn’t say astronaut, and I didn’t say cosmonaut. When I was just getting old enough to dream about the future, neither of those words were in use. Spacemen were the stuff of fiction, and the stuff of the far future.

The future arrived before I was ten in the form of Sputnik, an unwanted gift from the USSR that passed beeping over America and scared the whole nation out of its wits, and into a race for space. That was fine with me. I loved every minute of it, even though I knew I was never going to go. I was smart enough, and strong enough, but I couldn’t see across the room without glasses. Of course there were a thousand other hurdles I didn’t know about, but here we are talking about the dreams of youth.

I followed the introduction of our astronauts, and learned all I could about the craft they would fly. There wasn’t a whole lot of information available in Talala, Oklahoma in 1959.

Then, 55 years ago today, the Russians beat us into space – again – and in a much bigger way. Yuri Gagarin, cosmonaut, became the first human in space and the first to achieve orbit. Our guy Alan Shepard went up a few weeks later on a lesser flight, and America was outraged at the contrast.

Not me. I was thrilled that a human being had reached space; Russian, American, Finn, Bolivian, it didn’t matter. Space travel was real. The future had arrived. No one could ever again say, “We can’t go.”

But for all my enthusiasm, there was almost no information about Gagarin’s flight. For nearly another thirty years, Russian triumphs and disasters would be hidden from the world. Now we know enough to appreciate Gagarin’s feat.

The launch vehicle was an A-1, little different from the Soviet ICBM fleet, or the vehicle that launched Sputnik. Unlike the US, the Soviets have stayed with variations of a single workhorse vehicle through most of their space program. Also unlike American procedures, both Yuri Gagarin and Gherman Titov were suited up and ready at the pad, so that even in the event of a last second glitch, the launch would have been made by the backup pilot.

The space craft was Vostok 1. It consisted of a sphere holding the cosmonaut and a separate life support module, a style adopted by the US during Gemini and Apollo. The launch was successful and only one orbit was planned. The Soviet style was to make many launches, each incrementally more daring than the last. Unlike some subsequent launches by both countries, Vostok 1, possibly the most important launch in the history of spaceflight, went off without error.

Russia had a large land mass, a small navy, and a penchant for secrecy. Consequently, all Russian missions landed inside the Soviet Union. Technology during the Vostok missions could not yet provide soft landings, so Gagarin and his immediate successors flew their missions on ejection seats, which they used after heat shields and spacecraft mounted parachutes had brought them near the surface and slowed them to a survivable speed. They completed their missions by means of personal parachutes.

Four months later Gagarin’s backup pilot, Gherman Titov, became the second man to orbit the Earth, staying up for 17 orbits and 24 hours. more tomorrow

Jandrax 14

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After three months, Marcel Dumezil reinstituted the Sabbath. From a practical standpoint it was a good system. Planning and good judgment depend on frequent periods of rest; otherwise the immediate but trivial has a tendency to swamp more important long range considerations.

With that in mind, Jan walked with Angi to the field beyond the palisade after the service. Everyone in the colony seemed to have the same idea and soon the snowy earth was dotted with furry shapes, each sitting a little apart from his neighbor, relishing privacy after the cramped squalor of life within the palisade.

“Jan,” she said, placing her hand on his arm, “you look worried. Today is a day of rest, so please relax. I spend half my time worrying that either you or Papa will crack under the strain you are carrying.”

Jan looked up at the broad, barren expanse of snow, at the mountains beyond, where the scars of their cutting lay, and behind at the palisade. They had done well; yet it was not any natural disaster that worried him, He feared the seeds of dissension carried within the group.

“Nur and Tenn did not attend the service,” Jan pointed out. “How will your people feel about that?”

She shrugged. “It is their right. We are not barbarians, you know.”

Jan said nothing. Angi scooped up snow, balled it angrily and tossed it down. “You think we are, don’t you?”

“Huh? Are what?”

“Barbarians. You think Nur and Tenny are in danger from us because they are of a different religion. Where did you ever get such an idea? What have we done to make you think that of us. Or are you just prejudiced?”

“I never said any such thing,” Jan replied, but he was thinking of Jason. And he was remembering Hallam.

***

There was a holiday air about the camp. Raoul LaBarge was a trained geologist; he had explored the hills back of the settlement – keeping mainly to the creeks for reasons of future transportation – and he found an outcropping of iron ore, something infinitely more precious than gold.

Jan gave himself the afternoon off for good behavior and took Angi out. They went on skis, for the snow was half a meter deep. She looked beautiful to him, though, in truth, imagination played a good part in that. She was dressed as everyone else, Jan included, in a trihorn parka cut from the hairy shoulder section of the hide, wide herbyskin trousers, and boots made from the hairless rump section of trihorn hide. Only her face and a few wisps of hair showed from beneath her krathide cap. Angi’s beauty was a thing remembered from warmer days, not something available for immediate experience.

They talked of things which had become commonplace and of the future of the colony. They spoke a little of a more personal future and she remained very close to him while he cursed the cold that imprisoned them in their furry armor.

Jan was not a man given to noticing natural beauty. It was not a thing to brag about, but his profession had made him very businesslike in his relationship to the environment. Were that not so, he would long since have been dead. Yet he had come to love their cold, barren world – but never so much as on that afternoon when imprisoned passion was transmuted into softer feelings as they skiied hand in hand across the clean, white plains, moving in a common rhythm.

*****

Jan’s indifference to natural beauty was suggested a decade before I became a writer when Peter Matthiessen, in The Cloud Forest, considered an orange that he was eating after a long period of near starvation. He was a world traveller who often found himself short on meals. He confessed to having no interest in food as anything but fuel, until that orange after that privation became the finest taste he had ever encountered. more tomorrow

129. Poetry on Cyan

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What do you do at the end of a long day of exploring a new planet like Cyan? Watch TV? Read a book? Maybe a western shoot-em-up, since science fiction wouldn’t be much of a change of pace.

If Uke Tomiki were one of your colleagues, you might write poetry.

It was late.  Beyond the meadow, the jungle was predominantly blue-green with spots of color where flowers of innumerable variety grew, and where tiny, flower-winged amphibians fluttered.  Globewombs glittered in the tree tops like a scattering of jewels in the dying light.  Procyon was setting as they watched, and night flying amphibians were coming out to catch the chitropods.  A small herd of dropels grazed just beyond the fence.

Tasmeen said:

Sunlight pearls,
Treetop caught.
Wombs of glass wherein
Tomorrow waits.

“Nice,” Keir said.  “Did you just compose it?”

“Oh, no.  I’ve been working on it for days, but it won’t come right.  What do you think?”

“Maybe a bit too clever at the end.”

“Too sweet?”

“Something like that.”

“Any suggestions?”

Keir smiled.  “You’ve heard my poetry.  You know I’m not the one to ask.  What would Uke tell you?”

Tasmeen made a face.  “Less is more.”

“So I humbly submit – bearing in mind the humility that Uke’s poetry has forced upon me . . .”  Tasmeen hit him in the arm, and he grinned, “that you take an axe to it.”

She sighed and said, “I knew you were going to say that.”  She repeated the poem, now abbreviated:

Sunlight pearls,
Treetop caught.
Wombs of glass.

Keir spread his hands.  “That’s it.”

“It will require a more knowledgeable audience than the first version.”

“Hey,” Ramananda demanded, “ain’t we sophisticated enough for you?”

Sometimes Keir thought that Tasmeen and Uke’s poetry caught more of Cyan than their scientific findings.  After sex and discussing their research – probably in the other order – making poetry had become their primary form of recreation.  

Tasmeen recited several of her newer poems, then teased Keir, “Do you have any new bordello rhymes for us?”

Keir knew that Tasmeen would only badger him until he relented, so he recited his latest.

Call me Gomorrah, she said.
Nothing more —
Unless you count her straining
          breasts as speech.
Call me Gomorrah —
          It told me all I had to know.

Ramananda shook his head in mock distaste.  “Always the dirty mind.”

“I like it!”  Tasmeen protested, then took Keir’s hand and said, “You can call me Gomorrah any time you want to.

Jandrax 13

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Valikili felt the spurt of blood and knew that he had only moments before losing consciousness. He ducked his head, jamming his sliced arm into his stomach to stop the bleeding. A club caught his shoulder and drove him down, rolling him over. The knife drove into his back, aimed for his kidney but deflected by his movement. He rolled forward and the knife thrust in again, tearing the muscles of his back and glancing off a rib.

He plunged into the vegetation, struck the river and fell forward. The stream was small, but swift. It carried him southward, bouncing him against rocks and mudbars. Blackness swept in and receded. He caught at the bottom with scrabbling fingers and reached the bank, then rolled in the mud trying to stop the wounds in his back. He felt consciousness slipping again and rolled over on his face, forcing his open forearm into the mud and pressing it under the weight of his body.

***

Marcel LaBarge found him, but Valikili remembered nothing until the pain of movement awakened him. By that time a dozen men had gathered around and Dr. Marcuse was bandaging his arm with practiced efficiency. “There,” he said, seeing Val’s eyes open “that should hold you together long enough to get you back to camp. What did you tangle with – a longneck?”

“Forget it, Doc.” It was Jan and his eyes bore fire. “Don’t pretend ignorance. You know damned well those are knife slashes.”

Valikili reached up with his free hand and Jan took it. “Helene?”

“She staggered into camp with a concussion. Nothing very serious, but it set off our search for you.”

Valikili relaxed into unconsciousness. Marcuse looked sideways at Jan and said, “Don’t make a big thing out of this. You have to expect violence when the sex ratio is this disturbed.”

“Just a jealous boyfriend. Is that what you’re saying?”

“Yes.”

“Stick to your stitches, Doc. You don’t have the faintest damned idea what’s going on.”

***

The snow came nearly every night, layer upon thin layer, moisture squeezed from the upper atmosphere by the cold.

The palisade was nearly completed and there were some makeshift brush and mud shelters inside. Everyone was constantly cold. They had collected only enough furs for blankets, though soon they would have enough to start making clothing. The coveralls that were standard for shipboard wear were scant protection here, and Dr. Marcuse had two cases of pneumonia as well as the slowly recovering Valikili housed in his makeshift infirmary in the hold of the landing craft.

Nur Mohammet closed the hide curtain behind him and crossed to the central fire. He shook out the blanket he had wrapped about him and laid it near the hearth, then dropped onto it. Marcel Damle stirred the dung-cake fire and asked, “How is he?”

“Better. He was actually in good spirits today.”

“That’s a switch,” Risley said.

Nur grinned. It always took Tenn by surprise when Nur’s solemn face opened up. “His girl came to see him.”

“Helene?” Tenn asked.

“She took her sweet time,” Jan added. “Why?”

“She told Valikili that she was scared to go to him before.”

“Bull breeze.”

“No, Tenn,” Jan said, “I believe her. She really was scared.”

Henri looked up from his work; his scars showed pale in the firelight as he asked, “Was she raped?”

Jan shrugged, “Marcuse knows, but he’s not talking. With only six or eight decent looking women in a colony full of young bucks, you figure it out.”

Staal cursed and his hands shook. Marcel touched his knee and spoke softly, “Henri, marry Marie. Don’t wait until someone else takes her away from you. Also, once you are living with her, you can protect her.”

Nur turned to Jan. “You don’t think rape was the motive, do you?”

Jan shook his head. “I think it was an excuse, an afterthought, and a diversion. I think they were out to kill Val.”

“Because he is one of the crew?”

“No. Because he isn’t a Monist.” more tomorrow

128. Science Fiction in the Wild

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If you are what you eat, I used to be beefsteak, fried okra, and hominy. That comes from growing up in Oklahoma. I also lived outdoors most of the hours of every spring, summer, and fall day, and way too many hours of every winter day. That comes from growing up on a working farm.

If you are what you read, then I used to be an Andre Norton protagonist, at least in my imagination. Although I never met or corresponded with her, Andre Norton was something of a long distance mentor.

Alice Mary Norton legally changed her name to Andre Norton early on, in an era when being a woman was no help to a science fiction writer. I didn’t know that when I first read her; I thought Andre Norton was a man. Not that I thought about it much, but she didn’t write like a girl. Looking back, I see that she actually wrote like a person, but I wasn’t that sophisticated then.

One reason Norton got away with writing gender neutral fiction was that her characters spent most of their time alone. Even in their relationships with others of their own kind, they were loners, if not complete outcasts.

Star Man’s Son was the first Norton I read. In it, Fors spent all but a few pages on a quest away from his people; that was a pattern to which Norton frequently returned. I could easily identify with the solo quest while I spent endless hours alone on a tractor. The only variations in my daily life were whether I was pulling a disk or a hay rake, and which Norton novel was replaying in my head, forty years before someone invented the iPod.

Every time Shann Lantee on Warlock, or Naill Renfro on Janus, or any of a dozen other young men found himself stranded alone, or nearly alone, on an alien world, I could look up from my tractor seat at the Oklahoma prairie and say, “Yup, been there.”

The best thing about Norton’s characters was that they didn’t whine about being alone. They liked it. So did I.

I didn’t live in a city until I went to college. I spent my adult life living in the suburbs of a reasonably small city, and taught school in a very small town. As soon as I could retire, I moved to a few acres in the foothills. I would move further out if I could afford it.

I was born not liking cities, and my opinion never changed. It should be no surprise that my first novel was about a hunter surviving alone in the woods, or that my first science fiction novel was about a hundred or so humans stranded on an alien world (Jandrax, presently appearing in Serial). My three fantasy novels have a rural and medieval feel. David Singer, in A Fond Farewell to Dying, is a mountain boy who has to go urban to get his life’s work done. And Cyan, due out soon, begins with ten explorers on an empty world, then continues with the story of the peopling that world by hyper-urbanized refugees from an overcrowded Earth.

You write what you’ve lived.

Jandrax 12

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Chapter 3

Valikili crouched lower. Claude Delacroix was on sentry duty and, sleepy though he might be, the colonist would take great pleasure if he were to catch Val slipping past the cordon. No punishment would be exacted, of course, but considerable embarrassment – for Helene as well as himself. Delacroix and Helene had once had an understanding. On Bordeaux, before their emigration, they had talked of marriage. Helene had told Valikili of this, but their new situation had thrown all old understandings into question.

Delacroix disappeared behind the half-completed stockade wall and Valikili trotted down toward the river. There was no cover, so stealth was pointless. He had to drop below the break in the land before the sentry returned.

He did not see the figures that followed him.

Valikili was the Lydia‘s third engineer and, though he felt allegiance to his fellow crewmembers, he was adapting rapidly. He was a short, powerful Polynesian; his face reflected his open nature and his body was a statue sculpted in muscle. He was not unaware of his beauty.

Nor were the colonist girls. He had his pick, and he had chosen Helene Dumezil.

Helene was not related to Angi or the patriarch. Two-thirds of the colonists were named Dumezil after Louis Dumezil, the founder of their religion, and there weren’t enough first names to keep track by.

Valikili reached the river and started upstream toward their meeting place. A fringe of tough vegetation grew along the water’s edge – the only vegetation that survived into the dry season. He avoided its suggestive darkness. No incident had yet justified the sentries that Jan had placed, but Valikili, more than the colonists, respected his judgment. Besides, there were the precursors; everyone was speculating as to what had happened to whoever built those ruins.

It was unlikely that this generation would find time to explore that mystery and the next generation – what would they be like, so unnaturally cut off from the rest of mankind. Valikili shuddered at the thought.

His mood was anything but playful when he reached their appointed meeting place. Helene was not there. Valikili squatted to wait, uneasily watching the shadows. He regretted arranging the tryst and regretted his mood, which might well ruin it anyway. Something about the shadows of the vegetation near the water looked odd. He tried to ignore it, but his eyes kept straying back. It looked like a crumpled, human form.

Precursor? A superstitious shiver ran up his spine, followed immediately by a more urgent fear. Helene?

He approached the shadow warily. It was – something. Closer; it was a humanoid form, sprawled face downward.

“Helene?”

It was. He dropped beside her, feeling for her carotid pulse and drew back a hand sticky with blood. “No!” He felt closely, found a lump at the base of her skull, detected a weak pulse.

Something moved in the bushes.

He crouched over her and snarled, “Come out of there!” A figure rose, human, but anonymous in the darkness. It raised a knife to catch the moonlight.

Valikili crouched lower, trying to remember the rudimentary fighting skills he had been taught so many years before. The figure advanced and Valikili circled, trying to draw him out into the light. .

Something struck him from behind, knocking him to his knees, while his first adversary swept the knife forward, cutting him from elbow to wrist. Valikili felt the spurt of blood and knew that he had only moments before losing consciousness.

*****

Two-thirds of the colonists were named Dumezil after Louis Dumezil, the founder of their religion, and there weren’t enough first names to keep track by. I still like this conceit, but it painted me into a corner. Even I had a hard time keeping track of everybody, and I can only assume that it was worse for my readers. Rule one for new writers – make sure your characters’ names are easy for your readers to remember.

By the way, over in A Writing Life the post Science Fiction in the Wild will tell you why so few of my works take place in cities.

127. Not a Frog, Not a Kangaroo

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220px-Litoria_tyleri220px-RedRoo

Flashback: 1963, riding in a car, reading an article, probably by Arthur C. Clarke, on why humans should go into space. A little fish, swimming in shallow water, said to his father, “Why don’t we go up on the land and see what we can find?” The father fish responded, “Why would you want to do that?”

I read the passage out loud, but no one was interested, so I relapsed into nerdy silence.

Years later I found that the now accepted theory is that fish in shallow waters, accustomed to using their fins against the sea bottom, began to use them to navigate mud flats at low tide as mud skippers still do in mangrove swamps today. Legs evolved from fins.

It didn’t happen this way on Cyan. (This is a follow-on to yesterday’s post. If you missed it, we’ll wait for you to read it. Done? Good.)

On the planet Cyan, hundreds of millions of years ago, primitive chordates developed a split vertebral column, which resulted in twin tails. When they moved onto land, their tiny front steering fins were never used for locomotion and their twin tails (they had no back fins) became legs.

As Gus Lienhoff said when he dissected the first one Cyanian creature the explorers had collected:

Look, no pelvis. Look at this complex of bones. Some are fused, some flex, and these four are cantilevered. And look up here; no scapulae, just three extra thick, specialized vertebrae. Tiny front legs, powerful back legs with twice as many joints as you would expect, and absolutely no hint of a tail. Not even anything like a coccyx. A truly tailless, truly hopping biped. I wouldn’t have believed such a thing was possible.

Not a frog, not a kangaroo.

Frogs are quadrupeds with overdeveloped hind legs, like rabbits. They have a vestigial tail, like a human coccyx. If you look at a frog’s skeleton, it looks a bit like a massively deformed human. They can leap, but they also walk.

Kangaroos have a five-legged gait when walking. They lift up on a tripod made of small front legs and a powerful tail to shift their massive hind legs forward. Then they stand balanced on their hind legs while moving their forelegs and tail forward. 3 – 2 – 3 – 2, etc.

Cyanian bipeds, from the simplest to the most complex are hoppers. They all have short, grasping forelimbs; not quite T-rex hands, perhaps, but too weak to knuckle walk. They can move miles with grace and speed, but moving inches puts them into a condition of stumbling clumsiness. There are tree dwelling bipeds; how they navigate is a mystery I didn’t get around to investigating

When a trio of Cyl (intelligent Cyanian creatures created through recombinant DNA – its a long story) first enter a human habitat . . .

They were awkward inside the dome where the furnishings of the place made a maze for them to negotiate. As bounders, they were creatures of the unobstructed open plain. This human habitation was utterly foreign to them, not because of the steel from which it was made, or the interlocking triangles of its geodesic construction, but because it was cluttered. How could one hope to move about in it?

I don’t claim to be an artist, so I have made no effort to draw or paint these critters. I also haven’t seen the cover EDGE is putting on Cyan. If it has Cyanian hoppers, I sure hope they don’t look like frogs or kangaroos.