Interspecies: Volume 1 (The Inlari Sagas) Read online

  Interspecies

  M.J. Kelley

  Elaine Chao

  Dana Leipold

  Woelf Dietrich

  INTERSPECIES

  Copyright © 2016 Kōsa Press

  Cover Art Copyright © 2016 by Piotr Foksowicz

  FOREWORD © 2016 by Samuel Peralta

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. For more information, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

  ISBN: 978-0-9941240-0-5 (paperback)

  Edited by Ally Bishop

  Cover Design by Piotr Foksowicz

  Published by

  Kosa Media, LLC

  San Francisco, CA, USA, & Hastings, Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand

  Interspecies is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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  Foreword

  I first met Sammy Davis, Junior, when I was nine. At the edge of the kitchen counter, he waited, a gray house lizard—what we in the Philippines called butiki. No bigger than my father’s index finger, half of him was a thin, twitching tail that tapered to a point.

  Sammy Davis was a similar specimen of Hemidactylus frenatus that my mother and father discovered long ago in their first apartment near España Boulevard in Manila. He had kept the moths and mosquitos at bay, and so they’d tolerated, then befriended him.

  Now, several years later, my father approached Junior, making a series of clicks with his tongue, his hand outstretched with a pinch of boiled rice. My mother continued nibbling at her steamed chicken while my seven-year-old brother watched with a kind of stunned, frightened look in his eyes.

  Still clicking—a quick click-click-click, pause, repeat—my father carefully set down the pinch of rice about two inches away, while the lizard watched with rotating eyes.

  It took about half a minute while the lizard twitched his tail, swung his head first this way, then that—before he darted forward and snapped up the rice, swallowed, then darted away down the vertical side of the counter.

  Triumphant, my father offered another pinch of rice.

  Click-click-click.

  Junior poked his head over the edge, scrambled to the rice, and gobbled it up.

  Click-click-click.

  Koko, a lowland gorilla trained by Dr. Penny Patterson, is said to comprehend over one thousand signs from American Sign Language and to understand and respond to a spoken vocabulary of over two thousand English words. Beyond that, Koko is reported to have invented her own signs to communicate new thoughts: for example, describing a ring by combining “finger” and “bracelet” into the new word “finger-bracelet.”

  Kanzi, a bonobo, has been using a specialized keyboard with symbols on the keys to communicate with the team of primatologist Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, using a vocabulary of six hundred words.

  Alex, an African Grey, was shown by Dr. Irene Pepperberg to understand over a hundred English words and could identify various colors and shapes.

  A controversial project in the 1970s saw a baby chimpanzee named Neam Chimpsky—“Nim,” for short—taken from his mother just days after birth at a primate research center. Behavioral psychologist Herbert Terrace aimed to raise Nim as a human child, placing him with human families who strove to teach him a form of American Sign Language. Despite a sad end, when researchers attempted to re-integrate him unsuccessfully with other chimpanzees, Nim learned to sign in three- and four-word sentences:

  Apple me eat.

  Drink me Nim.

  Finish hug Nim.

  Give me eat.

  Hug me Nim.

  Tickle me Nim.

  Yogurt Nim eat.

  Banana eat me Nim.

  Me eat drink more.

  Tickle me Nim play.

  In a NASA-funded experiment with a bottlenose dolphin named Peter, neuroscientist John C. Lilly tried to prove his theory that dolphins could learn language via constant human contact. Over ten weeks, Margaret Howe, his research assistant, spent day and night with Peter.

  Dolphins can make human-sounding noises via their blowholes, and Margaret’s goal was for Peter to mimic sounds that he heard.

  Over time, Peter could pronounce a rough version of several words, including “hello,” “we,” “one,” “triangle,” “diamond,” and “ball.” His favorites:

  Hello, Margaret

  Play, play, play

  Disturbingly, Peter got emotionally attached to and aggressive with Margaret, circling around her, nibbling her, and jamming himself against her legs. The behavior escalated, and he was quickly re-instated with other dolphins until he had calmed down enough to be re-introduced to Margaret.

  Unfortunately, after ten weeks, funding for the project ended, and Peter was shipped to another lab. Without Margaret, he apparently lost the will to live and refused to breathe, sinking to the bottom of his tank in what might be understood as suicide.

  Months later, I’m alone in the kitchen when I hear a clicking beside me.

  There is Junior, his eyes two quivering balls of black, his tail flicking, right in the middle of the table.

  Click-click-click.

  I throw a rice grain at him, and he runs forward, catching it in his mouth and swallowing. I follow with several more.

  Click-click.

  Two clicks means “I’m done.” He twitches his tail one more time, turns, and is gone.

  On August 15, 1977, astronomer Jerry Ehman was examining data from Ohio State University’s radio telescope, part of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project. He saw an anomaly in the data from the direction of the constellation Sagittarius in the 1.43GHz frequency. Most scientists agree that would be the most likely frequency an alien civilization would use to broadcast a signal. It was so amazing that Ehman circled it and wrote “Wow!” in the margin of the print-out. Up until then, the signal had resisted all explanation. The signal’s strength was represented on a scale of thirty-six intensity levels by the numerals 0-9, then A-Z. The 72-second signal formed a perfect bell curve:

  6EQUJ5

  We are here.

  Out there, beyond the furthest arms of our galaxy, our radio telescopes broadcast our own signals, our hopes and dreams, in a language we hope someone will understand.

  Our spacecraft bear plaques engraved with drawings and symbols of ourselves in a form we hope someone will decipher.

  And we listen, straining to hear beyond the noise of supernovae and neutron stars, to ascertain if there is indeed somebody out there.

  Click-click-click.

  Samuel Peralta, PhD

  Physicist and creator of The Future Chronicles

  Timeline

  BFC – Before First Contact on Earth

  AFC – After First Contact on Earth

  2 Million Years BFC – Inlarah, last known original inlari world, destroyed by the Rordorah.

  1.75 Million Years BFC – Landing on Lenti, first post-Inlarah planet. Rordorah destroys it.

  975 Thousand Years BFC – Landing on Nep, the sixth post-Inlarah planet. Rordorah destroys it.

  750 Thousand Years BFC – The Great Split: the fleet separates.

  600 Thousand Years BFC – First contact with the hostile species boleeron on Feralu.

  121 Years BFC – Again, the boleeron attack Naru, the eighth post-Inlarah planet.

  2 Years BFC – S
pace-time warping technology is achieved for the first time.

  0 Year – First contact: the inlari arrive on Earth.

  1 Year AFC – Inlari strike a pact with the nations of Earth to trade technology for refuge.

  20 Years AFC – Some of the nations of Earth request that the inlari distribute technology fairly or leave.

  43 Years AFC – Inlari accepted into Australia and New Zealand and most migrate there.

  50-58 Years AFC – The Great Earth/Inlari War.

  58 Years AFC – Weapons of mass destruction ravage most of Earth’s surface. Starships and warp technology are lost, as well as other technologies.

  61 Years AFC – Inlari extremists take over in New Zealand and make arrangements to enslave the human population.

  62 Years AFC – Naven expels all inlari from its walls and isolates itself from the world.

  Introduction

  Fifty years after first contact with the inlari, war ravaged the Earth, leaving New Zealand and Australia the victors and survivors but at a devastating cost. Soon after the war, an extremist group of inlari seized New Zealand’s North and South Islands, enslaving the human population in worship of their ancient galactic past. Australia remains fractured. City-states and townships govern small territories and uphold, or evade, justice. Inlari slaving parties raid human populations. Technology is scarce and hoarded by the powerful. Mass communications are all but extinct. Disparate factions maraud the last habitable land masses, and vast tent encampments swell with the hopeless and desperate. Yet there are those who still search for meaning, for a way to rebuild and reestablish the great brotherhood and the golden era of interspecies collaboration. Some still seek peace and unity—and with them, hope lives on.

  The Memoriam

  M.J. Kelley

  101 years AFC

  The needle hovered above Kene’s face, the point aiming down between his budding horns.

  A needle as long as he was tall.

  Kene pressed against the restraints that held him in a kneeling position, his hands shackled on either side of him, his head in a metallic vise-like helmet with an opening for the needle. Behind the approaching syringe, controlling its trajectory with a machine, stood Broon, tall and skinny with thick horns the color of yellow clouds. Broon focused on maneuvering the long arc of the needle.

  As the metal penetrated his scalp, crackling resounded inside his skull, like the echo of splitting wood. He winced, every muscle rebelling against the intrusion. Then he stiffened, bringing his tight and throbbing limbs under control, afraid his reactionary movements would scramble his brains as the needle slid deeper inside.

  “You’ll be fine,” Broon murmured. “Stay calm.”

  A hum vibrated in Kene’s ears, and he tried to say something. But his voice faded as the needle punctured his mind. Drool filled his mouth and dripped over his lips.

  Fear entwined memories of his family.

  “We’re so proud of you.” Mother pressed her face close to his and whispered, “You’ll do great things. You’ve been chosen.”

  His father stood above him: “Succeed or fail, you’ll always have a home here.”

  Broon informed Kene and his family: “He’s special, a genetic profile of one in a million. But many tests still remain.”

  And then Kene followed Broon away from his home as his family watched.

  Nine when he left, he’d been chosen alongside forty other children. All potential replacements for the Memoriam, a powerful, mythic figure within his people's society and government. A year of testing with the other children earned him this room, this last test.

  The syringe tunneled into Kene’s brain. Broon wavered above him, behind the apparatus’s outstretched arm, and glowed with a rainbow aura that had not been there before. Kene tried to blink it away, but with every eyelid flutter the illusion strengthened, overpowering any sense of reality as his surroundings melted. Colorful spirals swarmed outward from Broon’s face.

  Kene’s hands and feet tingled to numbness, and mucus dripped from his nose, thick saliva from his mouth. The black robotic arm holding the syringe extended toward him, driving the needle deeper. The room twisted and warped, and exhaustion permeated his limbs. If it weren’t for the helmet holding him erect, he would have collapsed onto the floor.

  “The test is positive.” Broon’s words throbbed into Kene’s awareness.

  Positive?

  He would not be going home.

  The thought dissipated as the unreality caused by the syringe overwhelmed his senses. He could no longer tell whether his eyes were open or closed, could no longer sense his body or anyone else in the room. A desperate part of his mind searched for a dream or fantasy to soothe and distract himself from the trauma, but his brain formed no pictures, recalled no memories. No dreams came. So, too, his fear dwindled, evaporating like steam. And Kene’s awareness blinked out.

  After a long sea voyage, Broon delivered Kene to a wind-swept beach on the South Island, far from his North Island home of Lakarta. On a wave-carved embankment, he presented Kene before two males, seaside hills rising behind them.

  One figure wore the black uniform of a Parhata soldier. He stood tall and wide-chested with skinny, ridged horns advancing from his scalp.

  The other figure stood shorter than Broon and the Parhata, his horns not the lattice-type or the skinny type nor the kind that extend from the sides of his face—rather, they grew thick and tall, jutting from the upper sides of his skull and reaching back behind his head like upturned tusks. A simple black garment draped his narrow frame.

  Broon touched Kene’s shoulder. “This is Palor. And the Parhata is called Deliz; he’s charged with the Memoriam’s protection.”

  Palor tilted his head down toward Kene, compassion curving one side of his mouth. “He’s older than I expected.”

  “He passed the test,” Broon said.

  “I see the scar.” Palor kneeled down to meet Kene’s gaze and then pointed to a puckered dot of flesh between his own long horns. “I am like you.”

  Palor’s inviting face encouraged Kene to relax. The need to impress this Memoriam swelled inside him, but his anxiety over making a mistake and his longing for home suppressed the urge. He said nothing, his gaze falling to the sand.

  Palor stood, turning to the high hills in the distance. “We should depart.”

  Broon said his goodbyes. And then Kene, Palor, and Deliz slogged onward parallel to the shore. The waves’ rhythmic crashing resounded inside Kene as he watched the small curling swells impact the sand and dissolve to milky foam. On this south island, nature seemed to rule, as no roads carved the hillsides. No homes mounted the curved peaks.

  The light had faded by the time they reached a break in the shoreline where a river emptied into the sea. Arriving at the river’s mouth, they turned inland. Kene’s legs blazed from trouncing through the sand. They strode onward, a dusky, pink hue all around as the sun set behind them and the river rushed by far below. Ahead, a dingy encampment clung to a valley’s edge, nestled between the hill’s base and the river. Thin smoke rose from between plastic habitats and oddly shaped lodges. Beyond the encampment’s hodgepodge, the grass relinquished the land to trees, which lined only the fringes of the valley.

  At the farthest end, the fields abruptly ended, but not at trees. Silver towers rose from behind a fortified wall—a city, with no roads going in or out. The monolithic buildings didn’t belong against the snowcapped mountains yet, there they endured, as if nature had evolved around them, the lush surroundings exalting the city’s symmetry in the vanishing light, interrupting the landscape like an afterimage from a dream.

  “The city is Naven.” Palor’s voice startled Kene, who shivered at his words. “It’s an old city, built eighty or so years ago, long before the Great Earth War.” Palor stared out at the darkening valley. “We’ll spend a long time here together.”

  When they reached the small camp, Deliz, who had been silent during the journey, said goodbye, bowed to Palor, and
walked off.

  Palor guided Kene through the mud-riddled paths snaking between the encampment’s plastic canvas homes. Exhausted, Kene’s hands dangled like weights at his sides, fatigue suppressing his apprehension of being in a new place.

  Some inhabitants toted water from the river in plastic canisters; fires snapped and sputtered, ready for cooking; old emergency habitats, left over from the Great Earth War, offered shelter. No one wore armor or carried weapons.

  Kene sensed an absence in the scenery, something missing. “Where are all the machines? The power?” The encampment seemed impoverished, a bizarre contrast to the luxury he expected from Palor’s position.

  Palor glanced at him and then he pointed at the darkening city, the spires reflecting the sunset’s reddish violet hues. “Here, we obey Naven’s laws. Naven is a human city. They’re purists. Isolationists. A human stronghold in the midst of our territory. Naven demands that no inlari shall come within fourteen miles of the city with any machines, weapons, or digital technology. Nothing that runs on electricity shall enter the city’s perimeter. No threats, you see. Otherwise, the penalty is death.” He took in a deep breath. “We obey their laws. We’re guests in Naven’s shadow.”

  Kene scanned the muddy trails between the homes: tunic-clad figures scrubbed elaborately woven cloths in an oblong wash basin carved from a tree trunk; long wooden flutes, hollowed to hold water, stood erect near the dark entryways of homes; green metal sheets abutting the nearest fire, sizzled with strange smells as a short male carefully positioned smoking fish and mussels on them.

  “Hungry? If there’s one name you should memorize, it’s Talib. Our cook.” Palor gestured to the short male.